The whole play is an exact
transcript of what might be supposed to have taken place at the
court of Denmark, at the remote period of time fixed upon, before
the modern refinements in morals and manners were heard of. It would
have been interesting enough to have been admitted as a bystander in
such a scene, at such a time, to have heard and seen something of
what was going on. But here we are more than spectators. We have not
only 'the outward pageants and the signs of grief; but 'we have that
within which passes show'. We read the thoughts of the heart, we
catch the passions living as they rise. Other dramatic writers give
us very fine versions and paraphrases of nature: but Shakespeare,
together with his own comments, gives us the original text, that we
may judge for ourselves. This is a very great advantage.
The character of Hamlet is itself a pure effusion of genius. It is
not a character marked by strength of will or even of passion, but
by refinement of thought and sentiment. Hamlet is as little of the
hero as a man can well be: but he is a young and princely novice,
full of high enthusiasm and quick sensibility--the sport of
circumstances, questioning with fortune and refining on his own
feelings, and forced from the natural bias of his disposition by the
strangeness of his situation. He seems incapable of deliberate
action, and is only hurried into extremities on the spur of the
occasion, when he has no time to reflect, as in the scene where he
kills Polonius, and again, where he alters the letters which
Rosencraus and Guildenstern are taking with them to England,
purporting his death.
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