Shakespeare, You Lummox!

Lots of people have pointed out Shakespeare's many mistakes (e.g. "the seacoast of Bohemia" in The Winter's Tale). George Bernard Shaw wrote several trenchant pages to the effect that As You Like It--which is approximately contemporary with Hamlet--is a piece of silly fluff, though Shaw allows that it is successful as entertainment.

To strengthen my credentials as a professor and wit, let me point out one of the poor benighted devil's blunders, this from Hamlet:

                    . . . Who would fardels bear,
          To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
          But that the dread of something after death,
          The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
          No traveller returns, puzzles the will . . .                             80

Shakespeare has apparently forgotten that he wrote a scene that appears earlier in the play in which Hamlet meets a traveller from beyond the grave--his father's Ghost, in fact--and has a long conversation with him.

Unless, of course, it is Hamlet that has forgotten that he met the Ghost. A Freudian would like that idea. If Hamlet can forget about his conversation with the Ghost, then he is free from certain unpleasant obligations, like murdering his uncle.

But maybe the Ghost still exists in Hamlet's unconscious. That might explain why the beginning of the speech has so many feminine endings, and why Hamlet has nightmares. You'll notice he complains about his dreams in this speech.

But that would mean that Shakespeare might not be a lummox.

Back to the text.       Acting Shakespeare's Verse.