Page:Four and Twenty Minds.djvu/206

190 irremediable solutions. But Shakespeare’s psychology and philosophy no longer have their former power for one who has undergone the desolation of the modern spiritual hell, and has won back for himself, stone by stone, and blade of grass by blade of grass, a corner in the cold and cruel paradise of perfect knowledge. Yet the majority of mankind has not yet come even to the point which Shakespeare reached, and is content therefore to wonder and to worship. For the development of the human spirit does not proceed in lines of contemporary parallelism: brutes of the Neanderthal were at large in the very years when Plato lifted his youthful eyes to the face of Socrates and listened to his holy virtuosities.

I am thinking in particular of Hamlet. Hamlet has been regarded by critics and by the public as the most profound of Shakespeare’s plays. Historians, actors, and dilettantes consider it his masterpiece. I, too, many years ago, had a languid fondness for the Prince of Denmark, who returned my affection. How many nights we spent in each other’s company! How many fantastic and exciting conversations we enjoyed which are not to be found in any printed text! Hamlet was a brother to me, more than a brother. Side by side we delved, and side by side discovered some of those mysteries that are not dreamt of in human philosophies.