What Happens in Hamlet

by John Dover Wilson

John Dover Wilson's What Happens in Hamlet is a classic of Shakespeare criticism. First published in 1935, it is still being read throughout the English-speaking world and has been widely translated. Hamlet has excited more curiosity and aroused more debate than any other play ever written. Is Hamlet really mad? Does he really see his father's ghost, or is it an illusion? Is the ghost good or bad? What does it all mean? Dover Wilson brings out the significance of each part of the complex action, against the background. His analysis of the play emphasises Shakespeare's dramatic art and shows how the play must be seen and heard to be understood. This is a readable, entertaining and scholarly book.

Genres: Shakespeare, Nonfiction, Literary Criticism, Criticism, Drama, Theatre, Literature

380 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1935

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Elizabethan scholar

Reviews

[Paul Bryant · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hamlet’s situation is so totally relatable.* Just imagine if you were an overseas student and you got the terrible news that your dad died suddenly. And because of Corona travel restrictions it’s a couple of months before you can get back home. When you get there you find that your dear mother has already remarried! WFT right? And she’s married your father’s brother! And she’s in this tacky loved-up shagtastic cloud of bliss, canoodling with this nasty uncle at every opportunity! Eww, gross! Public displays of affection! Please, mama, not in front of the children! And before your dad was cold in his coffin! Mama, how could you! What a skeeve!

Then there’s this other thing. Your dad was King of Denmark. I probably should have mentioned that. So you kind of assumed that now he’s dead and you’re his only son you’ll be the new King, but nope. Think again kiddo. This weaselly uncle not only married your moms but convinced everyone that HE should be King, because do you really want some dope smoking radical layabout student as your King people? Of course not.**

Then there’s this third thing, that happens when you get back to the castle. Your dad’s GHOST appears! I mean, who believes in ghosts anymore, but damn, there it is! Walking and talking! And sort of glowing all over, like the kids in adverts who eat a particular kind of soup. And the things it says! It’s come from the land of shade to throw some shade, so to speak. Naturally it’s more than a little disgusted by your dear mama’s newfound hot milfness, but it’s got more than that to moan and rattle about. It says that in spite of what you may have heard, it was no heart attack at all, this brother of his poisoned his ear! That’s what killed him! Ear poison! It was murder.

This being the Olden Days, there was not so much in the way of forensics available, so it does not occur to Hamlet to get his dad’s body exhumed and demand a toxicology report, and anyway, who would have taken him seriously? But the Ghost, having imparted this informational overload, adds another turn of the screw – you, my son, must take revenge! Expose him as a murdering scumbag and then chop off his goolies or whatever, you’ll think of something. Oh and don’t upset your mother when you kill her new husband. That wouldn’t be nice.

And with that, the cock croweth thrice and the wraith begones.

Poor Hamlet – what’s he supposed to do?*** He tells himself Claudius “hath killed my King and whored my mother” but like he can’t just saunter in to the throne room and stab King Claudius. Feathers would be ruffled. He might get arrested! The cops would probably not be saying “Oh, a GHOST told you to stab the king, did it? Well, then, that’s okay – all charges dropped.” No – this thing has to be thought through. I mean, maybe the ghost wasn’t real. I mean, ghosts? Really? Could might it have been those mushrooms you ate? Or maybe it was a demon pretending to be your dad – they do that sometimes.

So you have to find a way of figuring out if it was a murder, and if this uncle did it, and meanwhile Claudius is trying to figure out if you’ve figured out that it was murder, and if so, what are you going to do about it.

So that’s the setup, and as I say, I think everyone can relate to this tough situation that Hamlet finds himself in. Fact is, it doesn’t turn out so well. No spoiler, I think it’s well known.

NOTES

*As opposed to like King Lear. So who cares if some rich guy transfers all his property to his kids probably to avoid tax like they do. I don’t care about that. Do you?

**Hamlet has got his uncle’s number : A cutpurse of the empire and the rule, that from a shelf the precious diadem stole and put it in his pocket.

***The Ghost is really not helpful, it just says “howsomever thou pursues this act”. Really, Ghost, Give the poor kid a hint.

[Paul Bryant · Rating 4 out of 5]

Writing in 1935, our author says that modern audiences are always going to have a problem with Hamlet, because of the Ghost. Other ghosts in Shakespeare can be read as the products of fevered imaginations, like the appearance of the dead Banquo to Macbeth. Only he sees Banquo’s ghost, and the other dinner guests think Macbeth’s gone off his trolley. But the ghost of Hamlet’s father is REAL, objective, a thing which can be conversed with, observed by several persons.
You have to accept its reality, or the play falls to pieces, and that gives modern non-ghost-believing types a problem.

Other ghost related problems follow :

1) Where does the ghost come from – heaven, hell, or purgatory? Hamlet is constantly trying to figure this out.

2) Hamlet speaks with his father’s ghost but then in a later scene refers to the afterlife as

The undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns

So isn’t that a contradiction? Some kind of Shakespearian muddle?

3) What on earth is going on in the cellarage scene where the ghost speaks from below the stage and Hamlet refers to him as “old mole” (not a very dignified way to address his father’s ghost)?

4) Why does Hamlet think he has to test the truth of the ghost’s story with the Mousetrap play within a play when he’s already said he believes the ghost speaks the truth about the murder?

5) Why does the ghost appear in the bedroom scene and why can Gertrude neither hear nor see him?

These are excellent questions and John Dover Wilson thinks most of them can be answered by reference to Elizabethan beliefs about ghosts and also by the complex religious situation of 1602, when Protestants who didn’t believe in ghosts were chucking out Catholics who did. It turns out that the ghost is a Catholic but Hamlet is a Protestant!

Well, as far as I know they don’t write compellingly readable books about Shakespeare any more, it’s all now in the hands of incomprehensible theoreticians. And no traveller ever returns to tell the tale from the land of theory.

[طارق الصالحي]

I think It is the most book that I learn about the play of Hamlet

[Dominick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Classic study of Hamlet that still stands up well today. Dover Wilson has an easy, engaging writing style; it may be a bit dated, but it flows well and, to me, at least, reads far better than much of the more abstruse and obtuse lit crit written these days. Of course, this book was written at a time when the average well-educated person could and often did read literary criticism, whereas today such writing has (with few exceptions) become inaccessible to most readers who are not experts or scholars themselves, a sad state of affairs in my opinion. Anyway, here Dover Wilson tackles the play primarily with an eye to how it makes sense in performance, buttressed by a pretty impressive application of contemporary contextual knowledge of Elizabethan England to the discussion. The book would appear to be the first reading to offer what are now commonplaces of interpretation (e.g. that the play within the play's identification of a nephew as the murderer exposes the antagonism Hamlet feels for Claudius as much as it reveals Hamlet's knowledge of Claudius's crime), though some of Dover Wilson's readings are perhaps over-nice (e.g. his extensive argument that the players--inadvertently or otherwise--nearly betray Hamlet) and not particularly performable. Regardless, anyone interested in Hamlet will find this an accessible and insightful starting place for study of the play.

[Nika · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hamlet ending EXPLAINED

[monika]

WAR IS OVER

[David Kowalski · Rating 5 out of 5]

I feel that this, in concert with Granville-Barker’s Preface to Hamlet, and Bradley’s Shakespearean Tragedy, constitute the Big 3 in early 20th Century Hamlet analysis.
Of the three, I find this the most readable and personable. From its opening epistolary dedication to its closing appendices, I have loved this journey.
A genuine pleasure to read and explore and crucial text in appreciating Hamlet.

[Christine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wilson takes a close look at the action in Hamlet, esp. with regards to staging the play. If you have seen any recent film editions of Hamlet, you can see Wilson's influence.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought I'd read this decades ago when teaching the play, but I can't remember, so I dipped into it after a commentator on Goodreads mentioned some questions raised by Gabriel Josopovici's Hamlet: Fold on Fold (written about eight decades after Wilson) had been answered. I reviewed that recent study, and checked to find Wilson's not cited. It's probably long fallen out of favor given it influenced Olivier, "the man who can't make up his mind" via a now-outmoded Freudian mid-20c interpretation once so dominant in pop culture (in turn via psychoanalyst Ernest Jones ca. 1930 if memory serves).

My curiosity comes from two questions I found intriguing when presenting students with the famously complex drama. Is Gertrude in on Claudius' crime? John Dover Wilson avers that while she was adulterous, she wasn't complicit. He uses the fact she cannot see the Ghost in the Act 3 encounter, although Michael Almeydra's 1990 film staged it so she does view her late husband's appeal although denies it to their son. And I can defend that decision as plausible, for I don't think it's fixed as exonerating his widow without any alternative reading or theatrical decision--and we have to as Josopovici reminds us (with further years of scholarship which JDW preceded) stay aware of the compromise any director or editor must make with a notoriously unstable and unresolved script.

And my pet concern, whether the Ghost comes from the disavowed Catholic purgatory or the no-exit Protestant hell to tempt the Prince. Josopovici shrugs it's a muddle, while JDW sensibly takes pains to investigate the exchanges of Marcellus and companions (presumably papist perhaps: the nature of the Reformation in a sort-of-medieval legendary realm but also a Northern European society up on the aftershocks of 1517 is left jumbled). Or the Elsinore guards remain understandably uninformed on what Horatio and Hamlet as trained Wittenberg graduates know as Lutheran doctrine, about the true provenance of spirits. While JDW doesn't definitively settle the intentionally vexing and cloudy "discernment" predicament (and the state of the texts may bear blame), he provides deeper context.

Finally, the succession to sovereignty debate gets intelligent treatment. Josopovici emphasizes the Danish model of elective consensus, rather than heredity, denying a brother would inherit the kingship automatically, but I agree with JDW that it's a stretch that an Elizabethan audience would have any inkling of Scandinavian niceties, and that the fictional device of "Denmark" as if a real entity in 1600 as representative of games of thrones isn't credits when contrasted with the probability that Shakespeare simply meant British procedures as the implicit norm, violated by Claudius. I agree that the lines Josopovici quotes might support an alternative view, but I side with JDW about the strained imposition of learned gen-current Danish procedures upon what's "really" an English court in transition, which provides the impetus drawing in the groundlings and their betters at the Globe as their Queen falters.

This little book takes up varied themes and as I've done can be consulted judiciously, if with necessary caution about its datedness, but I found JDW useful on persistent cruxes. Not the final word, but don't let the "antiquity" dissuade. We still may look up Bradley or Dr Johnson on the Bard, after all.

[Fred Daly · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a careful but somewhat dated analysis of several key questions raised by the play. Before making a point, he often says something like, "Nobody has dealt with this issue before," and while he may have been right, it's a little tiresome to keep reading that. The book has a chatty quality -- he refers frequently to correspondence with other scholars, so you get a sense of a clubby Shakespeare community in England between the wars. I'm not sure how much of what's in here will find its way into my teaching of the play next time -- we'll see.

[Bill FromPA · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perhaps the best scholarly work on Shakespeare I've read. Wilson writes in a highly accessible style, with passion and occasional wit, on a subject in which he is deeply interested. His close readings are always meant to get to the text's meaning and implications for an understanding of the play, not to weave a tapestry of imagery nor to excavate some sub-subtext based a a word's secondary or tertiary meaning.

[Andrew Darling · Rating 5 out of 5]

Why doesn't Hamlet recognise his old friend Horatio when he meets him in Scene 2 of Act 1? It's often puzzled me. But of course! Hamlet's eyes were full of tears! Obvious, innit? Well, it wasn't to me, until I read this excellent book. So much which is opaque in this sublime play suddenly becomes clear through Professor Wilson's words.

[Terry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Essential but not infallible.

He rides a couple of hobby-horses, some now pretty dated, and this book, first published in 1936, of course is not able to take advantage of more recent scholarship (e.g. James Shapiro in "1599") on the variations in texts.

[Joyce · Rating 5 out of 5]

you can't accuse wilson of false advertising. the most astonishing part for me was that he'd talked to living witnesses of a performance which took place in 1878(!) and recorded how the fencing was fought in it

[Jay Edwards · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one really readable and engaging book. My copy is the 1936 version. Hopefully it has been updated because there were some outdated ideas and points brought up that have been found to be wrong as we learn more about Shakespeare, the script, and the way it was originally produced on stage.

[jules · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful insight in what is probably one of the richest and most mysterious tragedies ever written. Hamlet has always and will always hold a secure spot in my heart (along with Horatio).

[Jacob Hurley · Rating 3 out of 5]

a thorough analysis of the "problems" of hamlet, and its context

[Hannah Alkadi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finally, some delicious food. This should be required reading for any author aspiring to write a Hamlet retelling. Or anyone who wants to understand the play. Or anyone in general.

[Cory Howell · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book, which has been through numerous reprintings, has been widely cited as one of the more influential texts on Hamlet that has been written in the twentieth century. When I first read it, I found it interesting, to say the least. But a lot of Wilson's reasoning about the plot of Shakespeare's play seemed quite flawed to me. I was annoyed as well by Wilson's smug writing style, and the way in which he would have us believe in Shakespeare as an almost supernaturally gifted writer. Sure, Shakespeare was a great playwright, probably the best ever, but that doesn't mean he didn't have flaws. A much better, more plausible, analysis of Hamlet, for my money, is the less widely available book by Bernard Grebanier, entitled The Heart of Hamlet.

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Employing a close reading of the play, and including commentary on the textual variants among the quarto and Folio texts, Dover Wilson's interpretation of Hamlet is a deep dive into the Shakespearean tragedy.

I remember really liking this one a lot when I read it. I have read a lot of commentary on the play and its author since then, however, and suspect that if I were to re-read it now, I might find its ideas and approaches somewhat dated. Which is not to say that I would not re-read it.

Acquired 1990
Cheap Thrills, Montreal, Quebec

[Louise Armstrong · Rating 5 out of 5]

FAB_U_LOUS!!

I'm not even teaching Hamlet at the moment but this is so clear and interesting I sat down and read it straight through. JDW spent 17 years reading about Elizabethan history so that we don't have to!! He illuminates puzzling bits of the plot with this knowledge. I wish I'd found it earlier.

I loathe people who think they are cleverer than Shakespeare and write fashionable toffee about his work. JDW starts with the idea that Shakespeare was a brilliant dramatist who knew exactly what he was doing and interprets the play from that standpoint.

Pure gold.

[Sue · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book changed my life. My 6th form teacher asked the class to read it in the year we were studying Hamlet for A level. I learned so much about the play and Dover Wilson’s understanding of the “Hamlet” in performance is unrivalled. Absolutely essential reading for any student of the play.

[Sannie Hald · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fine study

[Derek Bosshard]

When I first read Hamlet, I remember wishing that I could have read it with the guidance of a good teacher. This book is that teacher. (And it was a great resource for me when I was teaching Hamlet.)

[janie · Rating 4 out of 5]

what an intellectual roller coaster!