64 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The character of Hamlet is generally conceded to be the most 

 wonderful production amid all that vast galaxy of dramatic figures 

 which has enchanted the world for three hundred years, and if one 

 new to the subject inquires why it thus takes precedence of Lear, 

 Othello, Macbeth, Shylock, and their proximate peers, we must first 

 answer negatively that it is not because there is so much deeper phi- 

 losophy in Hamlet than may be found, scattered pearl-like, throughout 

 all the plays by the same master hand, nor because any single passion 

 is therein better delineated but, affirmatively, because in the Prince 

 of Denmark there is combined the greatest complexity of mental acu- 

 men, allied to an unparalleled variety of passional influxes, and bound, 

 alas ! to an inefficient temperament. It is not one master passion which 

 stirs, nor one affection alone that is outraged ; not one sole grief that 

 afflicts, or one emotion which reigns supreme over that great but 

 erratic mind : it is a commingling of jarring elements, most difficult 

 to reconcile in the formation of a characteristic individuality. 



In the rising tide of the Moor's jealousy we have the most vivid 

 description of a half-savage tornado of mental suffering, produced 

 by the uncontrolled agonies of a strong but simple and ill-balanced 

 mind ; in Lear, an already tottering intellect, quite overthrown 

 by the cruel irritations of unimagined ingratitude ; in Macbeth, an 

 unsafe ambition troubled with a conscience ; in Shylock, a member of 

 an outraged race, essaying an hereditary revenge, stimulated by ava- 

 rice : but in Hamlet we have a whole circle of passions, a complication 

 of emotions to draw into one converging action, like an engine required 

 to run on a main road with many branches, and no steam in the 

 boiler. 



To particularize : there is first his natural sorrow for the death of 

 his father ; sorrow, anger, and chagrin at the hasty marriage of his 

 mother ; hatred and suspicion of his uncle ; his loss of the crown of 

 Denmark for an indefinite time ; the necessity for concealing his sus- 

 picions as to the " taking off " of the King ; the perplexing and terri- 

 fying impressions produced by the vision of the ghost ; its adjuration 

 to active revenge ; his love for Ophelia, and its interruption apparently 

 at her own caprice ; the annoying surveillance of old Polonius ; dis- 

 trust of his old school friends, Guildenstern and Rosencrantz ; the vol- 

 untary assumption of the role of madness, and the necessity of combin- 

 ing this with the retention of his true mental status with certain of 

 his friends ; his unintended injury of Ophelia and her brother through 

 his " brainish " homicide of their father, when he had hoped to slay 

 the King ; the distressing madness and death of Ophelia, with her 

 scanty burial rites imperiling her soul, in the common opinion of the 

 time ; the encounter with the irate Laertes : all these and minor com- 

 plications and difficulties were thrust upon him, a situation scarcely to 

 be successfully encountered by a soul incased in the very fittest frame- 

 work which nature ever contrived as its instrument for setting a dis- 



