We have been so used to this tragedy that we hardly know how to
criticize it any more than we should know how to describe our own
faces. But we must make such observations as we can. It is the one
of Shakespeare's plays that we think of oftenest, because it abounds
most in striking reflections on human life, and because the
distresses of Hamlet are transferred, by the turn of his mind, to
the general account of humanity. Whatever happens to him, we apply
to ourselves, because he applies it so himself as a means of general
reasoning. He is a great moralizer; and what makes him worth
attending to is, that he moralizes on his own feelings and
experience. He is not a commonplace pedant. If Lear shows the
greatest depth of passion, Hamlet is the most remarkable for the
ingenuity, originality, and unstudied development of character.
Shakespeare had more magnanimity than any other poet, and he has
shown more of it in this play than in any other. There is no attempt
to force an interest: everything is left for time and circumstances
to unfold. The attention is excited without effort, the incidents
succeed each other as matters of course, the characters think and
speak and act just as they might do, if left entirely to themselves.
There is no set purpose, no straining at a point. The observations
are suggested by the passing scene--the gusts of passion come and go
like sounds of music borne on the wind.
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