Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/79

 to revenge his father's death. Like all persons of a lymphatic temperament, Hamlet could be suddenly aroused to a high pitch of daring, but was utterly incapable of persistent effort. He follows the Ghost to the edge of the cliff in defiance of the warnings of his companions, threatening to "make a ghost of him that lets me"—he could make a sudden stab in the hangings of his mother's apartment—could leap into the grave with Laertes, and outrave the latter's frenzied demonstration, with the self-asserted passion of "forty thousand brothers," but it was soon over. The immediate cause of excitement being removed, he returns to his natural inactivity.

The episode of the voyage to England at the instance of the King, submitted to without protest, is a terrible descent from the sublime grandeur of his philosophizing and thunderous threats. A tame passivity rules him; but, discovering the imminence of his danger on the voyage, there is revealed a cunning cruelty in his nature that the brave, active man would have scorned. But persons who are noted for their general inertia, when they do move, are very liable to astonish by the intensity and unexpected turn of their action.

Once again, toward the close of the play, we get another insight into the torpid constitution of the Prince. In the preliminary discussion with Horatio as to his fitness for the duel with Laertes, his friend says:

And Hamlet replies: "No, I shall win at the odds; but thou wouldst not think how ill all's here about my heart; but it's no matter." Just such an answer as a person might make who was suffering from "fatty degeneration." Evidently, in the opinion of the writer, the consideration of the unpleasant possibilities of the duel had brought the action of the heart almost to a standstill—the result of a chronic, sluggish circulatory system. Had his blood been accelerated, as would naturally have occurred in a nervous temperament, other expressions would have been more fitting; but the phrase above quoted better indicates partial stagnation than anything else. His philosophy, indeed, "defies augury," but his physical organization can not choose but respond to the near presence of a fatal venture. With the one not surprising exception of the first sight of the Ghost, Hamlet is throughout like the obese class generally which he represents, sufficiently careful of his personal safety. He puts himself to no bodily risk. In leaping into the open grave after Laertes, it must be remembered that he is on his native heath, as it were, surrounded by friends, while the unfortunate brother is the alien and unwelcome guest; and the apparent calmness but real tremor with which he accepts the invitation to a passage at arms is painfully betrayed by the abnormal action of the heart above referred to: besides, in that age it required more courage to decline a duel than to accept one.

The medley of the last scene, including the death of the King,