Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Written by Mr. William Shakespeare

says, "Concerning the Design of this scene, we shall find it is necessary towards the whole plot of the Play"; he speaks of I, iv as an "important Scene, on which turns the Whole Play"; the killing of Polonious, he explains, "was in Conformity to the Plan Shakespeare built his Play upon"; and finally, of the piece as a whole, he asserts that "there is not one Scene but what some way or other conduces toward the Denoument of the Whole; and thus the Unity of Action is indisputably kept up by everything tending to what we may call the main Design, and it all hangs by Consequence so close together, that no Scene can be omitted, without Prejudice to the Whole." When one recalls that the idea of unity of design as evolved in Thomas Warton, Hurd, and Johnson was the intermediate step on the way to a full theory of organic unity we see the importance of such passages in the forward march of criticism.

There is in the Remarks a closer examination of event and character than is usual