Page:William Strunk Jr. - The Importance of The Ghost in Hamlet.djvu/22

484 The conclusions resulting from this principle of the virtual infallibility of the ghost are in large part not new. Indeed, any comprehensive discussion of Hamlet's conduct which is wholly new can hardly escape being fantastic. My aim has been to emphasize the importance of the words and actions of the ghost as the necessary point of departure for all interpretation of the play, and within due limits, as the final authority in such interpretation. An examination of these words and actions enables us in large measure to discriminate between the conclusions derived from other data. We are enabled to conclude with certainty that Hamlet essentially is not in madness, but mad in craft; that he is not temperamentally unfit for the task assigned him, but a fit instrument of revenge; that his task does not include self-justification or the bringing of the king to public ignominy, but is limited to the attainment of vengeance, a task possible to him only when he shall first have succeeded in overcoming his inclination to melancholy and in banishing from his mind his indignation at his mother's frailty. In the second and third acts we see him fail to carry out the ghost's command, because he has not yet overcome these obstacles. But his efforts at self-mastery have so far availed that the reappearance of the ghost, aided by his own self-reproaches, makes it possible for him to advance thenceforward steadily and surely toward the