A nice little article in the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/15/bo...av=bottom-well
We've discussed this sort of thing here before. My own views are closer to that of the first writer, after having explored the other side in younger days.
My favorite line, and the most revealing of what I see to be the error of the second author's argument is where he writes:
"What Shakespeare himself thought about Hamlet is unknowable, and really it doesn’t matter; the words on the page constitute his final statement." [My emphasis added.]
Which sort of says to me that certain academics are so language focused that they simply lose site of the art form itself. They don't feel it. Not really. Shakespeare's final statement surely occurred somewhere on stage, sadly unrecorded. Not in the text, cobbled together from various sources after his death. Whether Shakespeare intended Hamlet to be a "conscience-stricken intellectual" or a "victim of the Oedipus complex" would have been, I think, quite clear from the performance.
--Darin
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