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 accepting stage considerations and conformed to the romantic ideal
of character-study. Indeed his interpretation of the psychology of Hamlet
seems to owe considerably to the tradition of character-studies introduced by
such eighteenth-century critics as William Richardson, Henry Mackenzie,
and Maurice Morgann. It cannot be said with certainty that Coleridge was
directly indebted to any one of these critics, but it is unthinkable that an avid
and discerning reader, such as he was, should have been entirely ignorant of
his English predecessors.
Much .h been made of .the German influence on his Shakespearian
criticism, of the alleged cribbing in his philosophical suppositions and
enquiries, although he himself protested that he had formulated his theory
before he saw Schlegel's Vor!esu
