266 . An ESSAY on the 



cannot be affirmed. It is poffible, that, finding the character 

 of Hamlet to grow upon him, he varied in the progrefs from 

 what he had intended in the outfetting of the play, and giving 

 to Hamlet, on this account, a fuller fcope, (but without de- 

 parting from the character) he eventually threw more interefl 

 into the perfon than into the plot. Whatever may have been 

 the caufe, we fee the effect, — Hamlet, in his fole perfon, 

 predominating over, and almoft eclipfing the whole action 

 of the drama. It is he that draws the admiration ; it is he 

 that engroMes the concern ; all eyes are turned more and more 

 to him; Hamlet is wilhed for in every fcene ; king and queen, 

 inceft and murder, as objects of tragic attention, vaniih almoft 

 away ; the moment Hamlet's own fate arrives, the play is 

 ended. The interefl which the hearts of men take in the prin- 

 cipal character of this tragedy, (lands thus in competition 

 with the laws of the drama ; and it becomes a problem, which 

 of the two, the means or the end, mould preponderate. 



On account of the interefl being transferred from the action 

 to the agent, the moral, taking the fame courfe, is to be drawn 

 rather from the particular conduct of Hamlet than from the 

 general bufinefs of the play. But what that particular moral 

 is, may be difficult to afcertain. We may fay, perhaps, that 

 from the conduct of Hamlet, it appears, how unfit for the 

 work of revenge are the qualities of a foldier and hero, when 

 conjoined with thofe of a fcholar and philofopher ; yet we can- 

 not prefume to affirm, that it was Shakespeare's object merely 

 to exemplify this, or even to conceive, that he limited himfelf 

 to any fingle object or moral. Thofe things which feem to have 

 been uppermoft in his mind, and which he has made to fhine 

 with moft light, are the charms in the perfonal character of 

 Hamlet. Enamoured with thefe himfelf, it feems to have been 

 his chief purpofe to raife the fame paffion in his audiences. 

 That he has intimated this, by his interpreter Horatio, only 



in 



