Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/74

 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 philosophy 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 acumen, 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 avarice: 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 suspicions as to the "taking off" of the King; the perplexing and terrifying 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; distrust of his old school friends, Guildenstern and Rosencrantz; the voluntary assumption of the rôle of madness, and the necessity of combining 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 complications and difficulties were thrust upon him, a situation scarcely to be successfully encountered by a soul incased in the very fittest framework which nature ever contrived as its instrument for setting a