Wilhelm’s Interpretation of Hamlet and Depiction of Eighteenth

Century’s Psychology
Goethe’s novel ‘Wilhelm Meister Lahrjahre’ contains disclosure of
Eighteenth century’s psychology and his main character Wilhelm revises Hamlet
according to eighteenth century’s tradition. Wilhelm delves in Hamlet’s character
and merges Aristotelian concept of tragedy with age of Enlightenment to solve
Hamlet’s troubles. He declares Hamlet as a beautiful, pure, noble, highly moral
being, without the sensual strength that makes the hero, perishes under a burden
that it cannot bear can still throw off. He asserts his ideas systematically in
arrangement of his new version of Hamlet. Removing unnecessary elements and
changing in mostly incidents, e.g. deletion of references to the Fortinbras and
journey of Laertes.

Wilhelm’s interpretation of Shakespeare is same as Goethe’s but Goethe

doesn’t use Wilhelm to deliver his own ideas about Shakespeare. But Wilhelm’s
changing in Hamlet’s plot is for the construction of the novel’s plot and for depiction
eighteenth century’s Philosophy and Psychology.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Excerpt from "Lecture on

Hamlet"

Samuel Coleridge a prominent figure of Romanticism planned to establish a

democratic society but this planned became unsuccessful. Later on with William
Wordsworth, he established the society and published Lyrical Ballads, a
masterpiece of Romanticism.

Coleridge gave lecture on Hamlet in 1818, and in his lecture he focused on

the psyche and personality of Hamlet. Hamlet holds contemplative, indecisive and
mentally weak to sort out any solution of his problems. Hamlet’s mental
processes are mentioned in details to show his personality disorder. ‘To be or not
to be’ is a great explanation of his personality. Mental indefiniteness of human
nature is deep focus of Hamlet.

Feelings of a person are related with material objects and his thoughts are
deeply depicted by his actions; but in Hamlet’s case one can’t guess upcoming
events of his life, because his psyche and philosophy is only concerned with
inactiveness, far from actions.