Otherworldly Hamlet: Four Essays

Barry Thorne is an associate professor of English at Queen’s
University.

This book is a collection of four essays: “Sorrow,” “Sexuality,”
“Revenge,” and “Death.” Two of these have been published
elsewhere: “Sorrow” in Cahiers Elisabethains (Vol. 35, 1989) and
“Sexuality” in Hamlet Studies (Vol. 10, 1988).

The general theme of this 79-page manuscript is that, by the end of the
play, Hamlet has “undergone an experience or providential re-direction
of his destiny.” Rejecting “some psychotic disturbance” on the
part of Hamlet, O’Meara moves through a Lutheran vision of human
nature, to the “sorrowful imagination” of the Native narrative
tradition, to lust as a universal spiritual condition, to revenge as a
“sacred, heroic and creative act,” and finally to “death’s final
triumph.” The argument assumes Gertrude’s adultery as given,
discusses Hamlet’s sexual disgust as a reaction to disillusionment in
marriage as a means of sanctifying sexual love, presents ideal revenge
as unattainable, and concludes with Hamlet’s “psychological-heroic
‘struggle’ with death and damnation.” The analysis concludes
conventionally with Hamlet’s “hard-won faith in a guiding providence
at work independently in developments in his world.”

Curiously, the text cites no scholarship more recent than the late
1970s and concentrates conventionally on older traditional criticism.
While providing some clear and pointed commentary, the text bogs down in
murky, turgid, and unnecessarily convoluted prose. A 23-line sentence
exemplifies the repetition, wordiness, and lack of clarity that obscure
interesting insights like Hamlet’s revelation of lust as “loss of an
innocent perspective on religion as a whole.” Abrupt endings and
absent transitions between poorly edited chapters make Otherworldly
Hamlet somewhat less than the sum of its parts. The failure to address
more recent issues in Shakespearean studies makes it less rewarding than
it should be.