Barkov's Hamlet: A Tragedy of Errors

William Shakespeare authorship:

The text of Hamlet contains indications

that Shakespeare portrayed himself as

an allegedly dead university graduate.

HAMLET: A TRAGEDY OF ERRORS,

OR THE TRAGICAL FATE OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE?

by

Alfred Barkov

To the contents

When the text of

William Shakespeare: a mask for Hamlet - Christopher Marlowe?

William Shakespeare

Hamlet is read attentively, and no details are disregarded, it becomes evident that William Shakespeare included in it something quite different from what has been traditionally interpreted. According to the text, prince Hamlet was not a son to king Hamlet, king Hamlet has never been poisoned, pregnant Ophelia was drowned by prince Hamlet's half-brother. Though that might sound odd, the facts Shakespeare included in the text suggest that the plot of Hamlet has been perceived erroneously.

In what we traditionally consider to be the plot of Hamlet, there exist multiple contradictions and discrepancies which cannot be explained within the established interpretation. Even the age of the hero is not known for sure: Hamlet of the Act I is around twenty while in the Act V he appears to be thirty years old.

If we really rate Shakespeare's talent that highly as we use to proclaim, we have to exercise a different approach to the contradictions in Hamlet. That is, they must be treated as composition means intended by Shakespeare as integral parts of the structure of Hamlet. Attentive reading suggests that the contradictions reflect a sophisticated structure with two plots both containing seemingly the same cast of characters factually possessing with different biographies.

Though the real plot of Hamlet as it was intended by Shakespeare can be comprehended without employment of any theory, there was necessary to develop a version of Literary Theory capable to address the problems of decoding and describing the inner structure of special class of fiction called menippeah. Despite that Hamlet belongs to that class, in my paper, I avoided plunging into the issues of literary theory because the hidden content of any menippeah can be perceived with just attentive reading, Shakespeare's Hamlet being no exception.

Menippeah is different from the three known classes of fiction: the epics, the lyrics, and the drama. It employs a specific way of narrating widely used even in everyday communication (when irony is intended.) The principal structural feature of the 'mysterious' works including Hamlet is a special composition function of special characters, the Narrators with biased attitude towards the events they recount. According to Shakespeare's intention, the whole text of Hamlet is narrated by one of the characters who is Hamlet's half-brother, though we erroneously perceive him as if he were Shakespeare himself.

The nature of the contradictions is explained with the fact that the text of Hamlet contains two different plots, the one depicting the 'real' events in Elsinore (the prosaic passages), and the other being the text of the drama staged in the castle (the pentameter portion.) The plot of the staged pentameter drama features the 'real' persons with changed biographies. That is, the prince's age is twenty within the plot of the staged drama while the 'real' Hamlet who instructs the actors and watches and comments that drama is thirty. Moreover, it appears that he is king Hamlet's son only within the plot of the 'inner' drama. In 'reality', he is a son to king Fortinbras killed by his brother on the very day prince Hamlet was born. This feature was openly manifested in the First Quarto while in the Second Quarto as well as in the Folio it became disguised, and to reveal it, it's necessary to compare facts included in the text and apply some logic.

The character whom Shakespeare made to narrate the text had many reasons to conceal the truth; what has been apprehended as the content of Shakespeare's drama is actually the Narrator's faked account of the events in which he played an evil role.

As the paper is in Russian, I have made an attempt to produce a short summary of every chapter in English (see the Contents.) Below is a summary of the content of Hamlet as it appears when all details of the text are treated as having composition significance intended by Shakespeare.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

HAMLET: A SUMMARY OF THE CONTENT

Despite outstanding efforts, in the four centuries of the existence of Hamlet there has hardly been achieved any significant success in the apprehension of its content. On the contrary, new contradictions and absurdities are still being revealed in the famous plot. To be more precise, in what has been considered to be the plot of Shakespeare's Hamlet. As it has been established, the plot of Hamlet does not exist as a singular entity.

The contradictions in Hamlet were intended by Shakespeare

Due to wrong comprehension of what is believed to be the plot of Hamlet, even the 'simplest' contradictions have not yet been explained. One of them is the famous discrepancy concerning Hamlet's age: from the first act it is evident that he hardly should be more than twenty, while in the fifth act Hamlet's age is distinctly stated as thirty. Contents

I would like to outline here one more startling paradox which I am afraid has never been scrutinized in scholarly essays. It goes on the scene with the gravedigger which sometimes is labeled as meaningless for the comprehension of the content of Hamlet (it is the very scene in which Hamlet's age is stated as thirty.)

From the episode with Yorick's scull it is evident that Hamlet and the gravedigger must have been acquainted since Hamlet's early childhood. The gravedigger recalls the case when Yorick the jester poured Reinish on his head. It should be taken into consideration that jesters performed their professional duties only among peers, and only in the presence of monarchs. As the gravedigger attended royal receptions and was treated there as a peer, he must have possessed with considerably higher social status than that of a mere sexton.

On the other hand, Hamlet