It has been said of the play “Hamlet” that its best scene is the one in which Horatio first sees the ghost, or the one in which he tells Hamlet of it, or the one in which Hamlet himself sees it and swears his friends to secrecy, or the one in which Polonius bids farewell to his son and warns his daughter away from the prince, or the one in which Ophelia reports Hamlet’s disorder, or the one in which Polonius explains it to the King and Queen, or the one in which Hamlet, entering with a book, seems to Polonius to support the explanation, or the one in which Hamlet discovers the intentions of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and discourses to them of his misanthropy, or the one in which he greets the players and conceives a use to which they can be put, or the one in which Ophelia is loosed to him while the King and Polonius listen as spies, or the one in which he addresses the players on the subject of their art, or the one in which the play he has planned breaks down the King’s composure, or the one with the recorders, or the one in which Hamlet cannot kill the King because he is praying, or the one in his mother’s closet when Polonius is stabbed and the ghost walks again, or the one in which he makes merry over Polonius’s supper of worms, or the one in which he watches Fortinbras march against Poland, or the one in which Ophelia sings mad songs and rouses her brother to revenge, or the one in which, while Laertes plots with the King, the Queen reports Ophelia’s death, or the one in the graveyard, or the one with Osric, or the one at the end which leaves only Horatio and Fortinbras alive. Any of them will do. For all the scenes in “Hamlet” are good, and relatively to the play as a whole each one in its turn is best.
Mark Van Doren, Shakespeare, 190-191
