Hamlet as a Play About Nothing

Under the conventional academic reading, Hamlet's indecision reflects the historical collision between medieval religious moral certainty and emerging Renaissance humanism, which left individuals to reason out moral answers alone. Hamlet is read as a fundamentally good person paralyzed by the difficulty of that task, and his 'to be or not to be' speech expresses this modern condition of endless self-questioning.

Drawing on Nietzsche's line that knowledge kills action and that action requires the veil of illusion, Critchley and Webster argue Hamlet cannot act not because he is confused about what is right, but because he sees through the illusion that any action, including honorable revenge, can be morally clean. He understands the messy fallout any choice would cause and cannot believe in the simple moral story that would justify acting.

Critchley and Webster describe Hamlet as an inversion of Oedipus: where Oedipus acts in total ignorance and only later discovers his guilt, Hamlet possesses knowledge and insight from the start, and it is precisely this knowledge that prevents him from ever acting. This is the source of the title of their book, The Hamlet Doctrine.

Traditional readings treat the play's spying as a reflection of the real surveillance apparatus of Elizabethan England. Critchley and Webster push this further, arguing that surveillance is a structural condition of the play itself, and that Hamlet's habit of relentless self-analysis is a psychological adaptation to living inside a world that constantly watches him, similar to living in a modern digital panopticon.

Traditional readings cast Ophelia as a symbol of lost innocence and a foil to Hamlet, showing another way corruption can destroy a person. Critchley and Webster instead compare her to Antigone, arguing that Ophelia is used as an object by every man around her and that her death is her only remaining act of self-expression, making her death a kind of protest and her the real tragic center of the play.

Building on Lacan and quoting Dostoevsky's line that hell is the inability to love, Critchley and Webster argue that love requires accepting one's own lack and vulnerability, something Hamlet's controlling, over-analytical mind never permits. Ophelia, by contrast, is capable of real vulnerability and love, which is what makes her final act meaningful where Hamlet remains trapped.

Critchley and Webster's overarching claim is that Hamlet is a play about nothing in the sense of nihilism: Hamlet is reduced to nothing by his paralysis, Ophelia is reduced to nothing by the men who use her, and nearly the entire cast is literally reduced to nothing by death at the play's end.

Traditional critics read Hamlet as a fundamentally good person trapped by an impossible moral situation created by the erosion of settled religious answers. Critchley and Webster instead present Hamlet as a damaged, often cruel person whose paralysis stems from seeing through the illusions that make action possible, making him complicit in the harm that follows rather than simply a victim of circumstance.

The traditional reading treats Ophelia as a symbolic casualty of political and moral decay, a foil illustrating a different way a person can be destroyed by corruption. Critchley and Webster instead argue she should be read as the play's true tragic hero, comparable to Antigone, whose death is an act of love and protest rather than mere collateral damage.