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“Things are seldom what they seem,Skim milk masquerades as cream,High-lows pass as patent leathers,Jackdaws strut in peacock's feathersVery true, so they do.All that glitters is not gold,Black sheep dwell in every fold …”
The land of Shakespeare was also the country of those gifted musical political satirists, Gilbert and Sullivan. Their penetrating observations and delightful way of poking fun at the hypocrisies, dishonesties, and misuses of power in political process, provided delicious entertainment, and perhaps offered a safety valve for some of the disillusioned. Gilbert and Sullivan grasped something essential about personality.
I propose that Hamlet, the play, seemingly centered on revenge, offers as a major problem for insight not psychodynamics, but diagnosis; not symptoms, but character; not past, but process; not declared intent, but veiled intent. Whether Hamlet, the man, is a black sheep—as I believe—or a white sheep in a black fold—as some believe (Lidz 1972, Friedman and Jones 1970)—or a black sheep in a black fold, or a wolf in sheep's clothing, or a rogue in priest's garb (but most certainly not the self-averred peasant slave), or whether pretending to, or really wearing a hair shirt: he was most