Hamlet is not just “an allegory of our time,” but it is an allegory of all time. While I tend to agree with Goddard, it’s only because of how sweeping and broad his two “forces” and “choices” are. With imagination or violence, one could contend that if any violence—whatsoever—is absent, then only one’s imagination is left, and vice versa. And his reasoning for war of a “pressure of events” is spot on, but this leads me to a disagreement. I disagree in his unbridled claim of their only being a binary choice between “Imagination or violence” and “Art or war.” There is argument to say that many have found art in war, and have created war within art. The two binary systems that Goddard proposes could very well contain an “and” instead of an “or.”
