Hume and Pope are two thinkers who has criticised Shakespeare, mainly due to his populist tendencies and supposed lack of refinement. Pope’s snobbery leads him to dismiss Hamlet as the work of a genius tainted by a barbaric nature.
“It is a gross and barbarous piece, and would never be borne by the lowest rabble in France or Italy. [10] … The grave-diggers make a grave for the poor girl [Ophelia] ; one asking the other whether a woman who drowns herself ought to be interred in holy ground: after which they sing ballads, worthy of their profession and their manners; at the same time, throwing out the bones and skulls of the dead upon the stage. [11]… In the first scene, for instance, the guards says: “Not a mouse stirring” Yes, sir, a soldier might make such an answer when in the barracks; but not upon the stage, before the first persons of distinction, who express themselves nobly, and before whom every one should express himself in like manner.”
The suggestion that theatre should filter life through a system of purification, rather than to seek to present it accurately and honestly, is not a philosophy that should be applied to Tragedy, and certainly not one which Shakespeare or his English peers applied to their work. Decorum is the death of art, seeing it set itself up as a noble, clean and sanitised reflection of life to be digested by an elite few who do not want to be jostled out of the comfort of their existence, be this the aristocracy or in more recent history the bourgeoisie. Art, through history, has had to be to some extent in the service of the classes with power and money, after all its is these properties which all for the production and consumption of the work. Yet the artist must, as Shakespeare did, find ways to work within this system without bowing to its desire for particular packages of culture and limiting notions of taste.