And let me speak to th’ yet unknowing world How these things came about. So shall you hear Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts; Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters; Of deaths put on by cunning and forc’d cause; And, in this upshot, purposes mistook Fall’n on th’ inventors’ heads—all this can I Truly deliver. (5.2.371-78) The
In order to understand Hamlet as Shakespeare understood it, we need to see the play through the playwright’s profoundly Christian eyes. This inescapable truth was understood by the Shakespearean critic E. M. W. Tillyard, who emphasized Shakespeare’s breadth of spiritual vision in Hamlet: I doubt if in any other play of Shakespeare there is so strong an impression of the total range of creation from the angels to the beasts.
Che la vostra prudenzasia la vostra guida: adattate l’azione al mondo,la parola all’azione, ma attenti a non oltrepassarela moderazione della natura: qualsiasi esagerazioneè estranea allo scopo del dramma, il cui fine, in originecome ora, era ed è porgere uno specchioalla natura, mostrando alla virtù il suo aspetto,al vizio la sua immagine e all’età e al tempola loro forma e la loro impronta.