Why Hamlet Went Mad.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLI, Issue 9, 26 August 1908, Page 60

Why Hamlet Went Mad.

"HAD BEEN TOO IaONG AT THE UNIVERSITY.” A new aud amusing theory regarding Hamlet’s madness, which will be of particular interest to varsity men. is put forward by the writer of "The Point of View" in "Scribner's Magazine.” "I am convinced,” he says., “that I know the very cause of Hamlet's lunacy. The simple truth of the matter is that Hamlet had been too long at the university. "We find him at thirty still a student at Wittenberg, prolonging his college life nearly ten years beyond the legitimate time, whether from difficulty with the curriculum or from desire to participate longer in collegiate amusements, or from sheer lust for scholarship, we do not know. "Most of the problems that have puzzled the critics can lie explained in the light of this simple fact, and the evidence in favour of this supposition is overwhelming when the text is examined. “When the terrible revelation of a father's murder, a mother's shame, an uncle’s guilt, is made to Hamlet by the ghost, what does he do? He bunts for his note-book My tables! meet it is I set it down That one may smile and smile and be a villain. “The undergraduate habit of mind! That which should have burned itself into the memory for ever, written down to save the trouble of remembering it; moreover, the damning, concrete fact turned into a generalisation! "Here two phases of the training of the schools are clearly set forth by Shakespeare, who had escaped the university himself, but whose association with the scholar playwrights of the time made him aware of ita evil effect*.”