Excerpt from Hamlet; Coriolanus; Twelfth Night: Edited With Introductions and Notes The first thing to do, in discussing a problem, is to simplify. I propose, in this part of my Introduction, to simplify the problem of Hamlet. There is only one way. It is to consider Hamlet first and always, and to consider nothing else except in its relation to Hamlet. The play is as varied as life, but its variety cannot hide this truth that there are in it Simply two things: a Person and a Situation. This Person is Hamlet. Everything else is Situation, Circumstance, nothing more. The King and Queen, Horatio and Osric, the Players and the Clowns, the whole Polonius family, exist only for the Prince. They have, as we see them, no self-existence. Take away the Prince and their parts vanish, like spirits at cockcrow. This is the simplification of which I spoke. That it should be so easy among so much variety is the first testimony to Shakespeare's art. It is the one indispensable mark of a work of art that the centre of it is simple, however much the fulfilment may be complicated. Thus, in Hamlet, the grotesqueness of the grave-digger, the flowers of the mad girl, the fantastic finery of Osric, the pallor of the ghost and the grin of the skull are all oddities in a tangled wreath round one plain tragic figure of a man in black.'1 Let us look at this figure in its setting. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.