"He took me by the wrist, and held me hard; It was physiologically speaking, but unfixedness, | to us, at some short period after the superderangement, we would have said, had not natural visitation :that word become a sort of synonym for madness), which Shakspere intended, as it appears to us, to exhibit as the result of his supernatural visitation. Goethe says, "To me it is clear that Shakspere meant, in the present case, to represent the effects of a great action laid upon a soul unfit for the performance of it." Coleridge, in speaking of that part of the scene after the interview with the ghost, in which Hamlet assumes what has been called "an improbable eccentricity," attributes to Hamlet "the disposition to escape from his own feelings of the overwhelming and supernatural by a wild transition to the ludicrous, a sort of cunning bravado, bordering on the flights of delirium." He adds, "For you may perhaps observe that Hamlet's wildness is but half false." It is under the immediate influence of this "disorder in his soul," this "shaking and unsettling of its powers from their due sources of action," "that Hamlet takes the instantaneous resolution of feigning himself mad. He feels that his mind is horridly disturbed with thoughts beyond mortal reach; but he believes that the habitual powers of his intellect can control this disturbance, and even render it an instrument of his own safety. The very able writer from whose anonymous paper we have just quoted says, "If there be anything disproportioned in his mind, it seems to be this only,--that intellect is in excess. It is even ungovernable, and too subtle. His own description of perfect man, ending with 'In apprehension how like a god!' appears to me consonant with that character, and spoken in the high and overwrought consciousness of intellect. Much that requires explanation in the play may perhaps be explained by this predominance and consciousness of great intellectual power. Is it not possible that the instantaneous idea of feigning himself mad belongs to this ?" It is here, then, that the complexity of Hamlet's character begins. It is in the description of Ophelia that he is first presented *Blackwood's Magazine,' vol. ii. page 504. He rais'd a sigh so piteous and profound, That it did seem to shatter all his bulk, And end his being: That done, he lets me go: And, with his head over his shoulder turn'd, He seem'd to find his way without his eyes; For out o' doors he went without their help, And, to the last, bended their light on me." This was not the "antic disposition" which Hamlet thought meet to put on. not the " ecstacy of love," produced by Ophelia's coldness, according to Polonius. But it was the utterance, as far as it could be uttered, of his sense of the hard necessity that was put upon him to go forth to a mortal struggle with evil powers and influences ;-to cast away all the high and pleasant thoughts that belonged to the cultivation of his understanding ;—to tear himself from all the soothing and delicious fancies that would arise out of the growth of his affection for that simple maid upon whom he bestowed "a sigh so piteous." Under the pressure of the one absorbing "commandment" that had been imposed upon him, he had vowed that it should live "within the volume of his brain, unmixed with baser matter." All else in the world had become to him mean and unimportant. Love was now to him a "trivial fond record,"—the wisdom of philosophy, "the saws of books." All "that youth and observation copied," was to be forgotten in that dread word, "remember me." But Hamlet had put the "antic disposition on." The King had seen his "transformation." The courtiers talked familiarly of his “lunacy." The disguise which he had adopted was not accidentally chosen. The subtlety of his intellect directed him to that tone of wayward sarcasm in which, while he appeared to others to be merely wandering, the bitter ness of his soul might be relieved by the utterance of "wild and hurling words." But even in this disguise his intellectual supremacy is constantly manifested. "He is far gone, far gone," says Polonius; but, "how pregnant his replies are," very quickly follows. In the scene with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern the natural Hamlet instantly comes back. They were his school-fellows; they ought to have been his friends. To them, therefore, he is the Hamlet they once knew; the gentleman -the scholar. He even discloses to them a glimpse of the deep melancholy with which his soul laboured: "O God! I could be bounded in a nut-shell, and count myself a king of infinite space; were it not that I have bad dreams." But he goes no further :-he sees through their purpose; "nay, then I have an eye of you." They were to be spies upon him; and from that moment he hates them. They stood, or they appeared to stand, between him and the great purpose of his life. But he suppresses his feelings, and bursts out in that majestic piece of rhetoric which could only have been conceived by a being of the highest intellectual power, in the full possession of that power: "What a piece of work is a 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!" The writer in Blackwood truly says, that this is "spoken in the high and overwrought consciousness of intellect." Hamlet has described his melancholy to his old school-fellows, the indifference with which he views "this visible world." Here again, unquestionably, he is not feigning. He knows that the admission of his melancholy will put the spies upon a false scent. Burton's Anatomy' was not published when Shakspere wrote this play; and yet how consonant is the following passage of that book with Shakspere's conception of the melancholy Hamlet: "Albertus Durer paints Melancholy like a sad woman, leaning on her arm with fixed looks, neglected habit, &c., held therefore by some proud, soft, sottish, or half-mad, as the Abderites esteemed of Democritus: and yet of a deep reach, excellent apprehension, judicious, wise, and witty." In the scene with the players Hamlet is perfectly at ease, "judicious, wise, and witty." He has escaped for a moment, out of the dense clouds of the one o'er-mastering thought, into the sunny region of taste and fancy in which he once dwelt. But even here the one thought follows him :— "Dost thou hear me, old friend; can you play the murder of Gonzago?" Then comes, "Now I am alone;" and, as Charles Lamb has beautifully expressed it, "the silent meditations with which his bosom is bursting are reduced to words, for the sake of the reader." But, in the midst of his paroxysm, his intellectual activity predominates : "About, my brains;" and he escapes from the thought "I should have fatted all the region kites into "I'll have grounds More relative than this: The play's the thing." The indecision of Hamlet is thus described by Goethe: "A lovely, pure, noble, and most moral nature, without the strength of nerve which forms a hero, sinks beneath a burden which it cannot bear, and must not cast away." The writer in 'Blackwood's Magazine' takes another view of this indecision, which, to our minds, is more philosophic: "He sees no course clear enough to satisfy his understanding." Hamlet, be it observed, Let us recollect-"I is not without nerve. will watch to-night,”—and, My fate cries out, And makes each petty artery in this body As hardy as the Nemean lion's nerve." He is not without nerve. But his will is subject to higher faculties. He would have been greater had he been less great. We are scarcely yet cognizant of the depths of Hamlet's meditations. Under the first pressure of his wounded sensibilities we have heard him exclaim "Oh, that this too too solid flesh would melt;' but he has since communed with unearthly things, and he now fearlessly approaches the great questions that have reference to the 66 'something after death," as if the mystery and "I loved you not;" and, perhaps, as could be pierced by the eye of reason. Of Lamb expresses it, these "tokens of an the soliloquy, "To be, or not to be," Coleridge | unhinged mind" are mixed “with a profound remarks, "This speech is of absolutely artifice of love, to alienate Ophelia by affected universal interest,-and yet to which of all discourtesies, so to prepare her mind for the Shakspere's characters could it have been breaking off of that loving intercourse which appropriately given but to Hamlet?" But can no longer find a place amidst business so we must mark the period of its introduction. serious as that which he has to do." At any It immediately precedes the scene of Hamlet's rate, the gentle and tender Ophelia is not abrupt behaviour to Ophelia. It does so in outraged. Her pity only is excited; and, if the original sketch. She comes upon him the apparent harshness of Hamlet requires with a proper appreciation of his character to reconcile it with our admiration of him, Shakspere has at this moment most adroitly presented to us that description of him which Goethe anticipated My lord, I have remembrances of yours," at a moment when his mind had surrendered itself to a train of the most solemn thought, induced by following out all the mysterious and fearful circumstances connected with his own being, and the awful responsibilities that were imposed upon him. It appears to us, that his rude denial of having given Ophelia "remembrances," and his "Ha, ha! are you honest?" with all the bitter words that follow, are meant to indicate the disturbance which is produced in his mind by the clashing of his love for her with the predominant thought that now makes all that belongs to his personal happiness worthless. His invective against women is not more bitter than his invective against himself:"What should such fellows as I do crawling between heaven and earth!" His bitterness escapes in generalizations: it is not against Ophelia, but against her sex, that he exclaims. To that gentle creature, the harshest thing he says is, “Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny." Coleridge thinks that the "certain harshness" in Hamlet's manner is produced by his perceiving that Ophelia was acting a part towards him and that they were watched. We doubt whether Shakspere intended Hamlet to be here feigning. The passionate words are merely the exponents of the contest within, the contest between his love and the purpose which appeared to him to exclude all other thoughts. There was a real disturbance of his soul, which could only recover its balance by such an outbreak. The character of the disturbance is indicated by the contradiction of "I did love you once," "The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, sword, The expectancy and rose of the fair state." Hamlet recovers a temporary tranquillity. He has something to do; and that something is connected with his great business. It is more agreeable that it postpones that one duty, while it seems to lead onward to it. He has to prepare the players to speak his speech. Those who look upon the surface only may think these directions uncharacteristic of Hamlet; but nothing can really be more appropriate than that these rules of art, so just, so universal, and so complete, should be put by Shakspere into the mouth of him who had pre-eminently "the scholar's tongue." Hamlet revels in this lesson; and it has produced a calm in his spirits, which is displayed in that affectionate address to Horatio, in which he appears to repose upon his friend as one "Whose blood and judgment are so well co- to be, as it were, a prop to his own "weakness elevation to his spirits, which may pass for his feigned "madness." He utters whatever comes uppermost; and the freedoms which he takes with Ophelia, while they are equally remote from bitterness or harshness, are such as in Shakspere's age would not offend pure ears. The mixture in his wild speeches of fun and pathos is nevertheless most touching. “What should a man do, but be merry?" comes from the profoundest depths of a wounded spirit. The test is applied; the King is "frighted with false fire,"—his "occulted" guilt has unkennelled itself. The elation of Hamlet's mind is at its height. His contempt of the King is openly pronounced to his creatures;-Rosencrantz and Guildenstern quail before his biting sarcasm; -Polonius is his butt. All this is, as he thinks, the coruscations of the cloud before the deadly flash. "Now could I drink hot blood," is the feeling that is at the bottom of all. Then comes the scene in which the King prays, and Hamlet postpones his revenge, with an excuse almost too dreadful to belong to human motives. They were not his motives. Coleridge discriminates between "impetuous, horror-striking fiendishness," and "the marks of reluctance and procrastination;" and it is sufficient to note this distinction, without entering into any refutation of opinions which show that it is easier to write mouthingly or pertly, as some have done, than to understand Shakspere. It is in the scene with the Queen that Hamlet vindicates his own sanity "It is not madness That I have uttered: bring me to the test, This is 'Shakspere's Test of Insanity;'-the title of an Essay by Sir H. Halford, in which he illustrates from his experience the accuracy of our great poet's delineations of the phenomena of mental disorder. Our readers will find a very able article on this Essay in "The Quarterly Review,' vol. xlix. p. 181. Hamlet abstained from killing the King when he was "praying." This was a part of his weakness. But he did not abandon his purpose. The forced devotion of the guilty man, the "physic," as Hamlet calls it, did but prolong his "sickly days." Polonius falls by an accident, instead of his "betters." The "wretched, rash, intruding fool" was sacrificed to a sudden impulse, which stood in the place of a determinate exercise of the will. Hamlet scarcely regrets the accident: "take thy fortune." His mind is eased by his colloquy with his mother. The vision again appears to whet his "almost blunted purpose;" but nothing is done. His intellect is again at its subtleties: "There's letters seal'd: and my two schoolfellows, Whom I will trust, as I will adders fang'd,-They bear the mandate; they must sweep my way, And marshal me to knavery: Let it work; He casts himself like a feather upon the great wave of fate;-he embraces the events that marshalled him "to knavery." Dangerous as they be, they are better than doubt. He believes that he pierces through the darkness of his fate:-" I see a cherub, that sees him.” He leaves for England; not forgetting him whose "Form and cause conjoin'd, preaching to stones, Would make them capable;" but still meditating instead of acting. It would be a curious problem to be solved, but it will never be solved, whether Shakspere himself obliterated the scene which only appears in the second quarto*, in which the workings of Hamlet's mind at this juncture That he are so distinctly revealed to us. meant the character to be mysterious, though not inexplicable, there can be no doubt. Does it become too plain when Hamlet's meeting with the Norwegian captain leads him into a train of thought, at first made up of generalizations, but in the end most conclusive as to the causes of his indecision?— Of thinking too precisely on the event,(A thought, which, quarter'd, hath but one part wisdom, And ever, three parts coward),-I do not know Why yet I live to say, 'This thing's to do;' Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and means, To do 't." It was not "bestial oblivion."-Oh, no. The eternal presence of the thought -"this thing 's to do," made him incapable of doing it. It was the "thinking too precisely on the event" that destroyed his will. It was in the same spirit that his will had been "puzzled" by the "dread of something after death," that his conscience-(consciousness)" sicklied o'er" his "native hue of resolution." The "delicate and tender prince" exposed what was mortal and unsure to fortune, death, and danger, even for an eggshell. Twenty thousand men, for a fantasy and trick of fame, went to their graves like beds. But, then, the men and their leader made "mouths at the invisible event." The "large discourse" of Hamlet, "looking before, and after," absorbed the tangible and present. In actions that appear indirectly to advance the execution of the great "commandment" that was laid upon him, he has decision and alacrity enough. His relation to Horatio (we are somewhat anticipating) of his successful device against Rosencrantz and Guildenstern would appear to come from a man who is all will. His intellectual activity revels in the telling of the story. Coleridge has admirably pointed out, in 'The Friend,' how "the circumstances of time and place are all stated with equal compression and rapidity;" but still, with the relater's general tendency to generalize. The event has happened, and Hamlet does not think too precisely of its consequences. The issue will be shortly known. "It will be short: the interim is mine; And a man's life's no more than to say-one." This looks like decision, growing out of the narrative of the events in which Hamlet had exhibited his decision. But, even in his own account, the beginning of this action was his "indiscretion," proceeding from sudden and indefinable impulses: "Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting That would not let me sleep." Wonderfully, indeed, has Shakspere managed to follow the old history-"How Fengon devised to send Hamlet to the king of England with secret letters to have him put to death, and how Hamlet, when his companions slept, read the letters, and, instead of them, counterfeited others, willing the king of England to put the two messengers to death," -without destroying the unity of his own conception of Hamlet. Mrs. Jameson, in her delightful 'Characteristics of Women,' has sketched the character of Ophelia with all a woman's truth and tenderness. One passage only can we venture to take, for it is an image that to our minds is far better than many words: "Once at Murano, I saw a dove caught in a tempest; perhaps it was young, and either lacked strength of wing to reach its home, or the instinct which teaches to shun the brooding storm; but so it was-and I watched it, pitying, as it flitted, poor bird! hither and thither, with its silver pinions shining against the black thunder-cloud, till, after a few giddy whirls, it fell, blinded, affrighted, and bewildered, into the turbid wave beneath, and was swallowed up for ever. It reminded me then of the fate of Ophelia; and now, when I think of her, I see again before me that poor dove, beating with weary wing, bewildered amid the storm." And why is it, when we think upon the fate of the poor storm-striken Ophelia, that we never reproach Hamlet? We are certain that it was no "trifling of his favour" that broke her heart. We are assured that his seeming harshness did not sink deep into her spirit. We believe that he loved her more than "forty thousand brothers"-though a very ingenious question has been raised upon that point. And yet she certainly perished through Hamlet and his actions. But we blame him not; for her destiny was involved in his. We cannot avoid transcribing a passage from the article in 'Blackwood's Magazine,' which we have already mentioned: "Soon as we connect her destiny with Hamlet, we know that darkness |