Changing Interpretations Over Time: A C Bradley
Now we reach the twentieth century in our journey into changing interpretations of Hamlet over time. A C Bradley (1851-1935) - 'Andrew Cecil', in case you were wondering - was known as a Shakespearian scholar and literary critic. He wrote this: He was another Oxford graduate who held the Professor of Poetry role there between 1901 and 1906. His psychological approach to the analysis of Shakespeare’s characters is considered to anticipate post-Freudian criticism. In this extract we return to the frequently discussed idea of Hamlet's inaction, but with some psychological insight and explanation. A. C. BRADLEY: from Shakespearean Tragedy , 1904 Let me try to show now, briefly, how much this melancholy accounts for. It accounts for the main fact, Hamlet's inaction. For the immediate cause of that is simply that his habitual feeling is one of disgust at life and everything in it, himself included, - a disgust which varies in intensity, rising at times into a longing for de...