It’s been a dream of mine for a long time: Write a scholarly article about Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

It’s easy to see that my dream is unlikely to come true, for two reasons. 1) I’m a Shaw scholar, not a Shakespearean expert. 2) So many articles and books have been written about Hamlet already that I’m unlikely to come up with an idea to write about.

(I do have one advantage: I spent several years obsessively reading about Hamlet. And I knew I’d be quoting from my favorite scholarly piece about Hamlet: “The Prince or the Poem” by C. S. Lewis.)

But I wasn’t really going to waste time on such an unlikely project, was I? My unconscious mind had an answer to that. A couple of mornings ago, it woke me up at 4 AM with the beginning of an article in my head. It’s a terrific idea – one I’d mentioned, in fact, in an article I just published about Shaw’s Pygmalion.

But there’s this teeny-weeny problem that I don’t know anything – big, fat zero – about the idea I want to pursue (here it is, in a nutshell: Hamlet as a student of literature). Where should I start my research? Jacques Derrida? Stanley Fish? Roland Barthes? There’s no guarantee they’d have anything useful to say.

And even if I were able to create a research plan, I don’t know if there’s enough content to warrant an article.

Nothing daunted, I started doing some research this morning. And what I found out – improbably – is that C. S. Lewis – yes, the same C. S. Lewis! – has written a book (not about Shakespeare – its topic is literary criticism) that might feed me some of the ideas I need.

I downloaded the e-book edition this morning and started reading. Yikes. I had forgotten what a fabulous writer Lewis is. (I used to be a Lewis maniac – have read almost everything he ever published. It’s so good to be spending time with him again.)

So thank you, Unconscious Mind, for an early Christmas present: I am having FUN!