In King Lear and Macbeth, in different ways, the hero by his own actions sets tragic forces in motion; in Othello the hero is gradually ‘wrought’ to destructive passion; but when Hamlet begins, someone other than the hero has already violated the natural order of the kingdom, and the hero, although profoundly disturbed, is only partially aware of the evil which is entrenched. Hamlet’s original ‘intent’ to go back to Wittenberg seems to reflect a feeling of helplessness and a desire simply to escape from Elsinore as it now is. Agreeing to stay, he rightly senses that ‘it is not, nor it cannot come to good’ (I, 2). Thus, for the hero of Hamlet, the situation is from the very start one of tragic disruption: to see the play in terms of a conflict which shatters the prince when he is faced with life in the Denmark of Claudius constitutes a key approach — not a new one, but, as I hope to demonstrate, one which it is illuminating to carry further. In this play Shakespeare creates and intensifies the sense of tragic conflict by particularly subtle and oblique presentation of concepts of the universe, the state, and man, which were familiar in his day. As they are also familiar to all students of Shakespeare I wish to draw attention only to points most relevant to subsequent discussion.