True Art is Flawed Redux – C.S. Lewis on Imperfect Art

I recently looked back on my blog post, True Art is Flawed, and then I came across this quote from C.S. Lewis about Hamlet. And it’s another great example of what I’m trying to say. Lewis describes the literary debate over whether Hamlet is a good play, and whether it is flawed or whether Shakespeare meant to write it the way he did. This is Lewis’s conclusion:

‘Most certainly an artistic failure.’ All argument is for that conclusion—until you read or see Hamlet again. And when you do, you are left saying that if this is failure, then failure is better than success.

We want more of these ‘bad’ plays. From our first childish reading of the ghost scenes down to those golden minutes which we stole from marking examination papers on Hamlet to read a few pages of Hamlet itself, have we ever known the day or the hour when its enchantment failed? That castle is part of our own world. The affection we feel for the Prince, and, through him, for Horatio, is like a friendship in real life. The very turns of expression—half-lines and odd connecting links—of this play are worked into the language.

It appears, said Shaftesbury in 1710, ‘most to have affected English hearts and has perhaps been oftenest acted’. It has a taste of its own, an all-pervading relish which we recognize even in its smallest fragments, and which, once tasted, we recur to. When we want that taste, no other book will do instead. It may turn out in the end that the thing is not a complete success. This compelling quality in it may coexist with some radical defect. But I doubt if we shall ever be able to say, sad brow and true maid, that it is ‘most certainly’ a failure. Even if the proposition that it has failed were at last admitted for true, I can think of few critical truths which most of us would utter with less certainty, and with a more divided mind.

• CS Lewis, “Hamlet: The Prince or the Poem?” Annual Shakespeare Lecture of the British Academy 1942

I certainly struggled to appreciate Hamlet in high school. But there is a lot about it that sticks in my mind – Ophelia floating down the river, Hamlet holding the skull of poor Yorick, etc. I can’t say I like the play (maybe I should see it again), but it does stick with you.

What about you, do you agree with Lewis that we want more of these ‘bad’ plays?

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