In speaking of a “burden of proof” in Hamlet I refer of course to Hamlet's declared purpose in simultaneously testing the Ghost's honesty and Claudius's conscience by means of the play-withinthe-play, which stages the story of murder by poisoning. At the same time I allude to the problem of skepticism that has prompted me in each of my amateur forays into Shakespeare, finding, so far, in the cases of Lear, and of Othello, and of Coriolanus, and of Leontes, that tragedy is the result, and the study, of a burden of knowledge, of an attempt to deny the all but undeniable (it may begin, or seem to, as a simple wish to test it) – that a loving daughter loves you, that your imagination has elicited the desire of a beautiful young woman, that however exceptional you may be you arc a member of human society, that your children are yours. Lives are founded on such truths, yet something about their acknowledgment – a different thematic something in each case – can seem more horrible to these lives than the denial and disappearance of the world. In turning to the surprising place of skepticism in Hamlet's burden, it is important to me to repeat: the burden of my story in spinning the interplay of philosophy with literature is not that of applying philosophy to literature, where so-called literary works would become kinds of illustrations of matters already independently known.