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As a literary critic I have noted with some uneasiness the unfruitful feud during recent years between Freudian and traditional interpreters of the play.1
What distinguishes Eissler's work is the fairness and competence with which arguments different from his own are summarized, and the thoroughness of the research which the establishment of an internal dialectic demands.
Nonetheless, I found myself questioning strongly the position which Eissler articulates in the course of his very important seventh chapter on “Hamlet and Revenge.” In this section, which quite effectively challenges the long-dominant belief that Hamlet's actions in Act Five, Scene two are based on a sincere acceptance of Christian passivity to the Divine will, Eissler holds that the play's final scene represents a sort of existential apotheosis for the protagonist; that Hamlet's chief aim throughout has been “not the act per se, but rather the motive for the act (245),” and that by the play's end he has satisfactorily found that motive in the realm not of Christian faith but of individually willed action:
… If Augustine or Luther or Calvin were to share our lives for only one day, they would surely tell us that Christianity is irrevocably lost. And this extraordinary play, Hamlet, has contributed its share to that loss, for “the readiness is all” cannot possibly mean the readiness to die and to appear before one's Creator, but the readiness to act. When Hamlet died, he was certainly not ready to appear before his Creator, for his soul was immersed in sin; yet he had reached a state of mind in which he was ready to act, whether or not it was at the cost of his life, or even of his hope of eternal bliss. (245)