SOURCE: “Superposed Plays: Hamlet,” in Shakespeare's Middle Tragedies: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by David Young, Prentice Hall, 1993, pp. 18-28.

In the following essay, originally published in 1976, Lanham traces the use of rhetoric in Hamlet and investigates the relation between elaborate and theatrical rhetoric in the play.

Shakespeare uses a variation on the sonnets strategy in Hamlet. He writes two plays in one. Laertes plays the revenge-tragedy hero straight. He does, true enough, veer toward self-parody, as when he complains that crying for Ophelia has interfered with his rants: “I have a speech o' fire, that fain would blaze / But that this folly drowns it” (4.7.189-90). But he knows his generic duty and does it. No sooner has his “good old man” (Polonius's role in the straight, “serious” play) been polished off than he comes screaming with a rabble army. He delivers predictably and suitably stupid lines...