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THE PLAYS OF SHAKSPEARE. 



No. L HAMLET. 



" THERE is a wide difference between knowledge and languages," 

 says a profound critic nor does it signify, if a man has knowledge, 

 through what medium it has been conveyed to him. Shakspeare 

 appears to have been gifted with what Cicero calls the animus bene 

 a natura informatus , with a facility of conception through which 

 flowed the rich materials of his scenes and characters, and with a 

 natural promptitude of execution and universality of expression 

 which enabled him to clothe his inventions with the most striking 

 and natural apparel. 



The character which will form the subject of a portion of this 

 lecture is a powerful elucidation of these observations different 

 from any thing we are acquainted with in other dramatic works : our 

 author varies the tone and feelings of Hamlet as rapidly and with as 

 close an adherence to nature as we could expect from reality itself; 

 hence the magnificent individuality of this character, and the evident 

 impracticability of placing it in any known category of dramatic 

 being. The thoughts and actions are ever as varied and original as 

 the vivid and ingeniously devised incidents that give them birth 

 the glowing and reflective qualities of the mind of the noble youth 

 render back every the most trivial impression with accumulated 

 richness; and the endless productiveness of the poet is no where 

 seen to a greater extent than in the development of this personage, 

 in which we simultaneously recognise the fervid elasticity of a youth- 

 ful sensibility and playfulness, with the deep-toned and imposing 

 solemnity of a sublime and dignified philosophy. 



Every expression, every word that Hamlet utters, is full of point 

 and replete with meaning and pathos : he speaks from the heart, and 

 conviction goes to the soul of the hearer ; when his mother re- 

 proaches him with forgetting who she is, his retort carries con- 

 demnation and punishment within itself, 



" No, by the rood, not so ; 



You are the queen, your husband's brother's wife; 

 And 'would it were not so ! you are my mother !" 



It is nevertheless true that there are moments when the unstrung 

 sympathies of his nature are wrested from the guidance of reason 

 when the grosser parts of humanity abandon the " inner man," and 

 lay open the soul in all the spirituality of intellectual abstraction, 

 when we 



" * * see that noble and most sovereign reason, 

 Like sweet bells jangling, out of tune and harsh," 



