sites; as extreme sorrow, in laughter; extreme joy, in tears; utter despair, in a voice of mirth; a wounded spirit, in gushes of humour. Hence Shakespeare heightens the effect of some of his awfulest scenes by making the persons indulge in flashes of merriment; for what so appalling as to see a person laughing and playing from excess of anguish or terror? Now, the expressions of mirth, in such cases, are plainly neither the reality nor the affectation of mirth. People, when overwhelmed with distress, certainly are not in a condition either to feel merry or to feign mirth; yet they do sometimes express it. The truth is, such extremes naturally and spontaneously express themselves by their opposites. In like manner, Hamlet's madness, it seems to us, is neither real nor affected, but a sort of natural and spontaneous imitation of madness; the triumph of his reason over his passion naturally expressing itself in the tokens of insanity, just as the agonies of despair naturally vent themselves in flashes of mirth.

HUDSON: The Works of Shakespeare.

V.

Hamlet the Subtle.

Hamlet is not the exponent of a philosophy; he has, it is true, a remarkable power of reflection and a tendency to generalize, but he is not a philosophical thinker who seeks to co-ordinate his ideas in a coherent system. Perhaps Ulysses, perhaps Prospero approaches nearer to the philosopher, but neither Ulysses nor Prospero is a wit; and Hamlet is a wit inspired by melancholy. He is swift, ingenious, versatile, penetrative; and he is also sad. And when Shakespeare proceeded to follow the story in the main as he had probably received it from Kyd, it turned out that such subtlety overreached itself which Shakespeare recognized as wholly right, and

true to the facts of life. Hamlet's madness is not deliberately assumed; an antic disposition is, as it were, imposed upon him by the almost hysterical excitement which follows his interview with the Ghost, and he ingeniously justifies it to himself by discovering that it may hereafter serve a purpose. But in truth his subtlety does not produce direct and effective action. Hamlet is neither a boisterous Laertes, who with small resources almost effects a rebellion in revenge for a murdered father, nor a resolute Fortinbras, who, mindful of his dead father's honour, can march through danger to victory. Hamlet's intellectual subtlety sees every side of every question, thinks too precisely on the event, considers all things too curiously, studies anew every conviction, doubts of the past, interrogates the future; it delights in ironically adopting the mental attitudes of other minds; it refines contempt into an ingenious art; it puts on and puts off a disguise; it assumes and lays aside the antic disposition; it can even use frankness as a veil-for sometimes display is a concealment, as happened with Edgar Poe's purloined letter. Hamlet the subtle is pre-eminently a critic-a critic of art, a critic of character, a critic of society, a critic of life, a critic of himself.

Together with such an intellectual and such a moral nature, Hamlet has in him something dangerous—a will capable of being roused to sudden and desperate activity. It is a will which is determined to action by the flash and flame of an excitable temperament, or by those sudden impulses or inspirations, leaping forth from a sub-conscious self, which come almost like the revelation and the decree of Providence. It is thus that he suddenly conceives the possibility of unmasking the King's guilt, on the accidental arrival of the players, and proceeds without delay to put the matter to the test, suddenly overwhelms Ophelia with his reproaches of womanhood, suddenly stabs the eavesdropper behind

the arras, suddenly, as if under some irresistible inspiration, sends his companions on shipboard to their death, suddenly boards the pirate, suddenly grapples with Laertes in the grave, suddenly does execution on the guilty King, plucks the poison from Horatio's hand, and gives his dying voice for a successor to the throne. DOWDEN: The Tragedy of Hamlet.

VI.

Shakespeare's Thanatopsis Voiced in Hamlet.

However strong the sense of continued life such a mind as his [Shakespeare's] may have had, it could never reach that assurance of eternal existence which Christ alone can give-which alone robs the grave of victory, and takes from death its sting. Here lie the materials out of which this remarkable tragedy was built up. From the wrestling of his own soul with the great enemy, comes that depth and mystery which startles us in Hamlet.

It is to this condition that Hamlet has been reduced. This is the low portal of grief to which we must stoop, before we can enter the heaven-pointing pile that the poet has raised to his memory. Stunned by the sudden storm of woes, he doubts, as he looks at the havoc spread around him, whether he himself is left, and fears lest the very ground on which he lies prostrate may not prove treacherous. Stripped of all else, he is sensible on this point alone. Here is the life from which all else grows. Interested in the glare of prosperity around him, only because he lives, he is ever turning his eyes from it to the desolation in which he himself stands. His glance ever descends from the lofty pinnacle of pride and false security to the rotten foundation-and tears follow smiles. He raises his eye to heaven, and "this brave o'erhanging firmament" seems to him but

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"a pestilent congregation of vapors "; it descends to earth, and its "goodly frame seems sterile promontory." He fixes it on man, and his noble apostrophe " What a piece of work is man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god!" is followed fast upon by the sad confession, "And yet

man de

lights not me; no, nor woman neither." He does not, as we say, "get accustomed to his situation." He holds fast by the wisdom of affliction, and will not let her go. He would keep her, for she is his life. The storm has descended, and all has been swept away but the rock. To this he clings for safety. He will not return, like the dog to his vomit. He will not render unavailing the lessons of Providence by "getting accustomed" to feed on that which is not bread, on which to live is death. He fears nothing save the loss of existence. But this thought thunders at the very base of the cliff on which, shipwrecked of every other hope, he had been thrown. That which to everybody else seems common, presses upon him with an all-absorbing interest; he struggles with the mystery of his own being, the root of all other mysteries, until it has become an overmastering element in his own mind, before which all others yield and seem as nothing.

This is the hinge on which his every endeavour turns. Such a thought as this might well prove more than an equal counterpoise to any incentive to what we call action. The obscurity that lies over these depths of Hamlet's character arises from this unique position in which the poet exhibits him; a position which opens to us the basis of Shakespeare's own being, and which, though dimly visible to all, is yet familiar to but few. But it may be asked, if Hamlet valued this life so cheaply, nay, even meditated self-slaughter, why, when he had an opportunity of dying by only suffering him

self to be carried to England, he should fly that very death he before sought. To this question, the state of his mind affords us a satisfactory answer; and his wavering does but confirm our belief in his sincerity, and give us a still stronger proof that although there is nothing from which he would more willingly part withal-except, as he says, "my life," yet still does the deep instinct of his soul prompt him to retain it, though crushed by the burden, while he doubts lest with its loss may not be connected the loss of all being. He cared not, as he says, for this little life, a pin's fee; but for life itself, his whole nature called in cries that would not be silenced. In his perplexity and doubt, Hamlet had interrogated his own nature on the great question of his future being; but its only response was "the dread of something after death"; that something might be annihilation, or,

To lie in cold obstruction and to rot;

or to be worse than worst

Of those that lawless and incertain thought
Imagine howling.

In the bitterness of his spirit, but half concealed by his jests in the graveyard, he asks again that question from which he cannot escape, sending his voice down into the hollow tomb, and hearing but the echo of his own words in reply. He loved not this life, yet endured and clung to it because he doubted of another; this it was [in Hamlet's view]

That makes calamity of so long life,

And makes us rather bear those ills we have

Than fly to others that we know not of.

VERY: Essays and Poems.