76 STUDIFS inuicacies of Hamlet was that he regarded Shakespeare's play as a closet-
drama and repudiated the hisuionic tradition of Hamlet criticism, initiated by
David Garrick and scrupulously pursued by Charles Kemble, J.P. Kemble, and
Edmund Kean. There is no denying the fact that a play by Shakespeare,
notwithstandingi original excellence as a piece of literature, becomes more
arresting than ever when it is Wanslated into stage terms, being associated with
thenifying skill of a director (like Stanislavsky), the visual imagination of
a designer (like Gordon Craig) and the histrionic talent of actors (like John
Gielgud whose production of Hamlet which he played in New York in 1935
has been acknowledged as one of the finest of the century). But Coleridge was
far from accep
