wrong deed retains him; he rises from the single to the generic, and from the concrete to the abstract; and he thinks of a system, and a wholesale scheme of things beneath the sun. He can think of nothing but he instantly thinks of the whole world. Denmark is a prison, and the world is a prison. If the world is grown honest, then is doomsday near.

'The time is out of joint ;-O cursed spite

That ever I was born to set it right.'

In all his soliloquies he deals in generals, and harps upon the discords and burdens in the order of things here as a whole. Upon this generalizing vein an unsettlement of will with respect to his task of vengeance immediately follows. For, after all (he seems to say), what is the good of it when it is done? This deed of violence is only one out of a thousand. You may adjust a particular case, but the wrong system goes on; it is out of your reach; do what you can you cannot touch it; and true evil, impalpable and ubiquitous, still mocks you like the air. To set one case right is only to commit yourself to do the same with respect to others, ad infinitum, and to enter upon an impossible task. Thus the work of vengeance lags; he takes it up and lays it down again, according to his humor; he plays with it, and, when he might easily execute it, puts it off for an absurd reason, which had he been practically earnest would not have weighed a feather with him. Upon the basis of the philosopher he erects the child again; an assumed volatility, waywardness, and indifference express the hopelessness which a large survey of things has produced in him. The lofty ruminator within exhibits himself as a jester and an oddity without; and, not content with levity, he assumes madness, as if to enable himself to enjoy a fantastic isolation from the world and human society altogether, and to live alone within himself. And when at last he does execute his work, he seems to do it by chance, and from the humor of the moment more than from any constancy of original purpose. Such appears the explanation of Hamlet's weakness and irresoluteness. So true is it that a mind may easily be too large for effectiveness, and energy suffer from an expansion of the field of view. . . . .

For success in action a certain narrowness and confinement of mind is indeed almost requisite. If a man is to do any work well, he must be possessed with the idea of that work's importance. He has this idea of necessity strongly so long as the particular scene in which he is is the whole world to him, and therefore, while he thinks this, he is effective; but once enlarge his vision, and show him that his field of labor is only the same with a thousand others, and that he himself is one of a class containing thousands; make him, that is to say, realize the world and its vastness, and he ceases to be absorbed in his task, and is tempted to unconcern and disrelish for it; and thus the class of what are called able men, in the departments of public business or trade, may be observed as a whole to have the idea of the immense importance of their several departments even to excess, and advantageously so, a wise providence, securing, by the exclusive pretensions of each department of the world's business, a most effective pledge for the safe and careful administration of the whole, and converting the ignorance and narrowness of mankind individually to their great benefit as a body.

The stimulus of narrowness, then, being requisite for vigor in action, Hamlet wants vigor, because he is without it. His want of vigor does not proceed from a want of passion, for he has plenty of that, but from a disproportionate largeness of intellect. He has not too little feeling, but too much thought. He is never satisfied with, never rests in, feeling, however strong, but carries it up immediately into

the intellectual sphere. The quickest impulse, by some twist of his mind, takes immediately the expansive form of some general contemplation. He is always thinking of the whole of things, and any one work seems nothing. As the air we breathe is not all air, and true courage has an ingredient of fear in it, the intellect should part with something of its own nature to qualify itself as proper human intellect. It should yoke itself contentedly with a wholesome narrowness in a compound, practical, and intellectual being. Its largeness tends, without such check, to feebleness. The mind of Hamlet lies all abroad, like the sea,-a universal reflector, but wanting the self-moving principle. Musing, reflection, and irony upon all the world supersede action, and a task evaporates in philosophy.

MRS LEWES (1860)

(The Mill on the Floss, Book VI, chapter vi, p. 355. New York, 1860.)—' Character,' says Novalis, in one of his questionable aphorisms-character is destiny.' But not the whole of our destiny. Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, was speculative and irresolute, and we have a great tragedy in consequence. But if his father had lived to a good old age, and his uncle had died an early death, we can conceive Hamlet's having married Ophelia, and got through life with a reputation of sanity, notwithstanding many soliloquies, and some moody sarcasms towards the fair daughter of Polonius, to say nothing of the frankest incivility to his father-in-law.

KENNY (1864)

(The Life and Genius of Shakespeare, London, 1864, p. 379.)—We cannot help thinking that the perplexity to which we are thus exposed is founded on conditions which, from their very nature, are more or less irremovable. It has its origin, as it seems to us, in two sources. It is owing, in the first place, to the essential character of the work itself; and in the second place it arises, in no small degree, from the large license which the poet has allowed himself in dealing with his intrinsically obscure and disordered materials.

ness.

All Nature has its impenetrable secrets, and there seems to be no reason why the poet should not restore to us any of the accidental forms of this universal mysteriousThe world of art, like the world of real life, may have its obscure recesses, its vague instincts, its undeveloped passions, its unknown motives, its half-formed judgements, its wild aberrations, its momentary caprices. The mood of Hamlet is necessarily an extraordinary and an unaccountable mood. In him exceptional influences agitate an exceptional temperament. He is wayward, fitful, excited, horrorstricken. The foundations of his being are unseated. His intellect and his will are ajar and unbalanced. He has become an exception to the common forms of humanity. The poet, in his turn struck with this strange figure, seems to have resolved on bringing its special peculiarities into special prominence, and the story which he dramatised afforded him the most ample opportunity of accomplishing this design. Hamlet is not only in reality agitated and bewildered, but he is led to adopt the disguise of a feigned madness, and he is thus perpetually intensifying and distorting the peculiarities of an already over-excited imagination. It was, we think, inevitable that a composition which attempted to follow the workings of so unusual an individuality should itself seem abrupt and capricious; and this natural

effect of the scene is still further deepened, not only by the exceptionally large genius, but by the exceptionally negligent workmanship, of the poet.

We believe we can discover in the history of the drama a further reason why its details were not always perfectly harmonised. It was written under two different and somewhat conflicting influences. The poet throughout many portions of its composition had, no doubt, the old story which formed its groundwork directly present to his mind; but he did not apparently always clearly distinguish between the impressions in his memory and the creations of his imagination, and the result is, that some of his incidents now seem to his readers more or less inexplicable or discordant.

[Page 384.] Hamlet is, perhaps, of all the plays of Shakespeare the one which a great actor would find most difficult to embody in an ideally complete form. It would, we think, be a mistake to attempt to elaborate its multiform details into any distinctly harmonious unity. Its whole action is devious, violent, spasmodic. Its distempered, inconstant irritability is its very essence. Its only order is the manifestation of a wholly disordered energy. It is a type of the endless perplexity with which man, stripped of the hopes and illusions of this life, harassed and oppressed by the immediate sense of his own helplessness and isolation, stands face to face with the silent and immovable world of destiny. In it the agony of an individual mind grows to the dimensions of the universe; and the genius of the poet himself, regardless of the passing and somewhat incongruous incidents with which it deals, rises before our astonished vision, apparently as illimitable and inexhaustible as the mystery which it unfolds.

It is manifest that Hamlet does not solve, or even attempt to solve, the riddle of life. It only serves to present the problem in its most vivid and most dramatic intensity. The poet reproduces Nature; he is in no way admitted into the secret of the mystery beyond Nature; he could not penetrate it; he only knew of the infinite longings and the infinite misgivings with which its presence fills the human heart.

[Page 385.] Hamlet is, in some sense, Shakespeare's most typical work. In no other of his dramas does his highest personality seem to blend so closely with his highest genius. It is throughout informed with his skepticism, his melancholy, his ever-present sense of the shadowiness and the fleetingness of life. He has given us more artistically complete and harmonious creations. His absolute imagination is, perhaps, more distinctly displayed in the real madness of King Lear than in the feigned madness, or the fitful and disordered impulses, of the Danish Prince. But the very rapidity and extravagance of these moods help to produce their own peculiar dramatic effect. Wonder and mystery are the strongest and most abiding elements in all human interest; and, under this universal condition of our nature, Hamlet, with its unexplained and inexplicable singularities, and even inconsistencies, will most probably for ever remain the most remarkable and the most enthralling of all the works of mortal hands.

HUDSON (1870)

(Introduction to Hamlet, Boston, 1870, p. 512.)—Hamlet himself has caused more of perplexity and discussion than any other character in the whole range of art. The charm of his mind and person amounts to an almost universal fascination; and VOL. II.-12

he has been well described as a concentration of all the interests that belong to humanity.' I have learned by experience that one seems to understand him better after a little study than after a great deal; and that the less one sees into him the more apt one is to think he sees through him; in which respect he is indeed like Nature herself. One man considers Hamlet great, but wicked; another good, but weak; a third, that he lacks courage, and dare not act; a fourth, that he has too much intellect for his will, and so reflects away the time of action; some conclude his madness half genuine; others, that it is wholly feigned. Doubtless there are facts in the delineation which, considered by themselves, would sustain any one of these views; but none of them seems reconcilable with all the facts taken together. Yet, notwithstanding this diversity of opinions, all agree in thinking of Hamlet as an actual person. It is easy to invest with plausibility almost any theory respecting him, but very hard to make any theory comprehend the whole subject; and while all are impressed with the truth of the character, no one is satisfied with another's explanation of it. The question is, Why such unanimity as to his being a man, and at the same time such diversity as to what sort of a man he is?

(Shakespeare: his Life, Art, and Characters. Boston, 1872, vol. ii, p. 268.)— The Ghost calls for revenge, but specifies no particular mode of revenge. Hamlet naturally supposes the meaning to be payment in kind,- an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.' Is this, from Hamlet's own moral point of view, right? It is nothing less than to kill at once his uncle, his mother's husband, and his king; and this, not in a judicial manner, but by assassination. How shall he justify such a deed to the world? how vindicate himself from the very crime which he must allege against another? For, as he cannot subpoena the Ghost, the evidence on which he is to act is available only in the court of his own conscience. To serve any good end, the deed must so stand in the public eye as it does in his own; else he will be in effect setting an example of murder, not of justice. And the crown will seem to be his real motive, duty but a pretence. Can a man of his 'large discourse, looking before and after,' be expected to act thus? His understanding seems indeed to be convinced, but yet I suspect he feels a diviner power in the shape of a 'still small voice' drawing the other way. He thinks he ought to do the thing, resolves that he will do it, blames himself for not doing it; still, an unspoken law, deeper and stronger than conviction, withholds him. And his not doing it he imputes to craven scruples,' or some ignoble weakness in himself; just as the best men sometimes charge themselves with acting only from a selfish fear of punishment, while their whole course of life shows them to be actuated by a disinterested love of virtue, and that they would rather be punished for doing right than rewarded for doing wrong.

[Page 271.] Will it be said that, if strength of conscience is what keeps him from killing the King, then the same strength should enable him to abandon the purpose altogether? I answer, that his mind is hedged off by similar scruples from that side also. Conscience urges him different ways, and whichever way he takes he is still haunted by the feeling that he ought to have taken the other. His will is indeed distracted between two opposing duties; so that his conscience is divided, not merely against his understanding, but against itself; while that very distraction operates as a stimulus to his intellect. Nor can I think it just to speak of his course as a failure. Morally, he succeeds, though, to be sure, at the cost of his own life. He falls, as many others have fallen, a martyr to his own rectitude and elevation of

soul. It is a triumph of the noblest virtue, through the most trying struggles, and over temptation in the most imposing form. And it should be noted further, that whenever he sees or even thinks of the King his calmness instantly forsakes him, and a fury of madness takes possession of him, throwing his mind into the wildest exorbitancy. The best instance of this is in the horrid excuses which he raves out for sparing the King when he finds him praying; where it is plainly neither his moral reason nor his understanding, but simply his madness, that speaks, and this too in its fiercest strain.

[Page 276.] Horatio is one of the very noblest and most beautiful of Shakespeare's male characters: and there is not a single loose stitch in his make-up; he is at all times superbly self-contained; he feels deeply, but never gushes nor runs over; as true as a diamond, as modest as a virgin, and utterly unselfish; a most manly soul, full alike of strength, tenderness, and solidity. But he moves so quietly in the drama that his rare traits of character have hardly had justice done them. Should we undertake to go through the play without him, we might then feel how much of the best spirit and impression of the scenes is owing to his presence. He is the medium whereby many of the hero's finest and noblest qualities are conveyed to us, yet himself so clear and simple and transparent that he scarcely catches the attention. . . . . The great charm of Horatio's unselfishness is that he seems not to be himself in the least aware of it; as one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing.' His mild skepticism at first, touching this dreaded sight twice seen of us,' is exceedingly graceful and scholarly. And indeed all that comes from him marks the presence of a calm, clear head, keeping touch and time perfectly with a good heart.

REV. C. E. MOBERLY (1873)

(Introduction to Hamlet. Rugby edition.)-The main point to be noted in reference to the tone of reflection and sentiment which prevailed in Shakespeare's time, and the circumstances out of which it grew, is this: that there was in those times a conscious struggle in men's minds between cheerfulness and melancholy, more real, natural, and widely felt by far than that which we remember in our own days as springing from the conflict between the poetical principles of Byron and Wordsworth. On the one side, in these battles, stood the prodigious animal spirits and mental vigor of the time manifesting themselves in a thousand ways. It astonishes us in the wonderful cheerfulness with which men like Drake, Grenville, or Raleigh could bear the most awful trials in carrying on our undeclared naval war with Spain; in the fervid spirit which the commanders threw into the thankless and unremitting Irish struggle; in the personal devotion of her people to Elizabeth which made them cry, 'God save the Queen!' under the very mutilating knife of the executioner; perhaps, also, in the strenuous resistance to monopolies, and in the unsolicitous and cheerful persuasion of Elizabeth's ministers, that, in spite of all adverse appearances, she would always be safe against foreign aggression, because she could always hold the balance between France and Spain. And so in the field of literature we are amazed at the torrent-like flow of Lord Bacon's speeches, where image crowds on image, and thought on thought, with a rapidity beyond our conception; at the vigorous and unflagging optimism of Hooker; at the well-spring of independent speculation in Gilbert and Harvey; and at the creative power of the Elizabethan dramatists. But all this light and vigor had its reverse. It maintained itself only by battling unremittingly against the dark spirit of melancholy. We get glimpses of this