SOURCE: "The Rest Is Silence: Hamlet as Decadent," in Jules Laforgue: Essays on a Poet's Life and Work, edited by Warren Ramsey, Southern Illinois University Press, 1969, pp. 93-110.

Brooks is an American critic and educator. In the following excerpt, he argues that in the story "Hamlet" Laforque presents William Shakespeare's fictional character Hamlet as a Decadent artist, with the intention of demonstrating that "the art of the Decadents is a retreat from a reality which they are psychologically incapable of confronting."

The Hamlet of Jules Laforgue—one who is aware of his own mythic function: "Plus tard, on m'accusera d'avoir fait école" [Later they will accuse me of having started a movement]—seems a .. . promising figure. A theme which emerges from the verbal acrobatics of all the Moralités légendaires is the quest for purity and eternity, variously pursued by Syrinx fleeing Pan, Salomé decapitating Iaokannan, Lohengrin...