260 REMARKS ON THE THILOSOPHY AND 



to one point, and by the solemnity tones the mind to a right key 

 with the incidents of the play. The appearance of Hamlet in the 

 second scene, in company with the King, Queen, and courtiers, is 

 essential to the development of his character. Any other mind than 

 Shakspeare's would have introduced him with more positive effect 

 by himself, or with Horatio and Marcellus ; but Hamlet, as it were, 

 gives us his own biography. 



Hamlet's interview with Horatio, his fellow-student, friend, and 

 confidant, relieves and quickens our minds ; it throws us back to the 

 truant hours at Wittenberg, when Hamlet was the high-minded, ele- 

 gant Prince of Denmark, without a scathe of grief. There is a 

 touching affection in this dialogue with Horatio which we see no 

 where after. Hamlet, surprised, listens eagerly to Horatio's account 

 of the Ghost, and, true to nature, inquires of the form, features, and 

 personation of his father. He pauses a moment abstractedly, breaks 

 into a passion of words, and then abruptly leaves. The eagerness 

 which Hamlet manifests to learn the mystery of the Ghost, though 

 contradictory to his after inertness, is perfectly in agreement with his 

 hypochondriacal idiosyncrasy ; at first passionately excited by the 

 expected novelty, full of a thousand alarms and imaginings as to the 

 cause of such a visitation ; whereas, after the revelation of the mur- 

 der, he falls back again, with a satiated curiosity, into the same or 

 even a more profound abstraction, out of which he occasionally 

 starts as from a dream, for a time impetuous and self-criminating. 

 The character of Hamlet, then, is true to nature. The inconsis- 

 tencies belong to one who would be a perfect being were he not a 

 fallible creature. He is wise, but, not being essentially prescient, 

 every act and intention is " sicklied o'er with the pale cast of 

 thought." The name of action is lost from the many-sidedness of 

 his reflections, that strike into all the uncertainties of a distant 

 event. It may naturally be asked, then, what did Hamlet antici- 

 pate, or what direct process of revenge did he purpose ? We reply, 

 None definitively, but, by a watchful observation of the King, to 

 manifest his guilt beyond contradiction, and to punish him at a time 

 suitable to an act so dreadful, though inevitable. To kill a king, 

 even though by a prince of the blood, is not easily accomplished, and 

 especially when that prince was Hamlet, naturally, nay, religiously 

 merciful. Death with him was nothing, he did not value life 

 at a pin's fee ; but the dread of something after death puzzled his 

 will. 



" To sleep — perchance to dream !" 



It is very evident that Shakspeare intended this play as the bio- 



