Inferring and Explaining

90 InferrIng and exPlaInIng tragedy. Hamlet would surely spend the rest of the play avenging his father’s murder. Hamlet does eventually kill Claudius but more by acci- dent than an avenging action. In the meantime, for a good four hours of the play, Hamlet mainly dithers, second-guesses himself, and seriously messes up his love life with Ophelia. Why, crit- ics have asked for three hundred years, doesn’t Hamlet get on with it and kill his uncle, as the genre dictates? Earnest Jones begins his analysis of the play with a very general summary of critical responses: Te most important hypotheses that have been put forward are sub-varieties of three main points of view. Te frst of these sees the difculty in the perfor- mance of the task in Hamlet’s temperament, which is not suited to efective action of any kind; the second sees it in the nature of the task, which is such as to be almost impossible of performance by any one; and the third in some special feature in the nature of the task which renders it peculiarly difcult or repugnant to Hamlet. 3 Besides its fame or perhaps infamy, Jones’s essay ofering the Oedipus complex as an inter- pretation of “the cause of Hamlet’s hesitancy in seeking to obtain revenge for the murder of his father” 4 would merit some discussion simply because of its title—“Te Oedipus-Complex as an Explanation of Hamlet’s Mystery: A Study in Motive.” 5 Jones’s interpretation explicitly appeals to the notion of explanation at two dis- tinct levels. One, of course, is Hamlet’s inaction. Why all the dithering? Jones argues that Hamlet is sufering from an Oedipus complex and ofers as evidence in support of this hypothesis several bits of textual data. Inference to the best expla- nation (IBE) would structure this argument in the following way: e 1. What we know from the text about Ham- let’s behavior—his inaction, his peculiar relationship with Gertrude, his misogynistic treatment of Ophelia, and so on t 0 . Hamlet was sufering from an Oedipus complex. Te psychoanalytic diagnosis explains all this puzzling behavior. Te obvious critical problem for this interpretation is the embarrassing fact that Shakespeare wrote Hamlet almost three hundred years before Freud identifed the Oedi- pus complex. Jones wisely anticipates the prob- lem and ofers an explanation of Shakespeare’s mental state in writing the play. We have fnally to return to the subject with which we started, namely poetic creation, and in this connec- tion to enquire into the relation of Hamlet’s confict to the inner workings of Shakespeare’s [sic] mind. It is here maintained that this confict is an echo of a similar one in Shakespeare himself, as to a greater or less extent it is in all men. It is, therefore, as much beside the point to enquire into Shakespeare’s con- scious intention, moral or otherwise, in the play as it is in the case of most works of genius. Te play is the form in which his feeling fnds its spontaneous expression, without any inquiry being possible on his part as to the essential nature or source of that feeling. 6 So now we are presented with an explanation not just of the events in the play but of its author