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194, drives him to slay six human beings by his own or by another hand, though his father had asked as sacrifice but a single life. He destroys two families, a dynasty, his love, himself; and from all this death not a single principle of life comes forth.

He knows that his father was a guilty man; he knows that he himself is base, vicious, and homicidal. Within the drama he appears to us as a deceiver, a slayer of souls and bodies. Had he the right to heap up so much torture when his father was not innocent, when he himself was not innocent? A savage, a primitive man, would have hastened to Claudius and killed him immediately on receiving the command to avenge. Hamlet requires proof, that is, reflection. But his reflection yields merely a restless play of shrewdness, a comedy of fits and starts, through which there gleams a deep filial piety and, at the end, a refined cruelty. He even spares Claudius when he might safely kill him, merely because he finds him kneeling and in a state of grace. He toys with his tempestuous despair.

His inner experience is utterly illogical. Even before he has spoken with the spectre he feels repugnance for his mother and hatred for his uncle. Yet even after the terrible revelation he is not fully convinced. He devises the scene of the Murder of Gonzago in order to obtain a definite certainty, and he does not even trust his own