Page:Some Textual Difficulties in Shakespeare.djvu/54

36 life that Hamlet would wish to destroy, but his being.

To die; to sleep;—

To sleep? Perchance to dream! Ay, there's the rub.

There indeed was the rub to a man with his reasons for dying. His impelling reason for wanting to die is stated at once, first and foremost. It is "the heartache and the thousand and one natural shocks that flesh is heir to." By "natural shocks" he means the shocks to his very nature—his heart and affections and ideals. He had had a terrible insight of the possibilities of human nature. Life had touched him to the quick on all four sides—through father, mother, sweetheart and friends. He had a father whose own brother had murdered him, a mother guilty of incest, a sweetheart who proved shallow and conventional in her love, boyhood friends equally vain and shallow who would spy upon him through selfish motives. All this came upon him suddenly; and being a man of high mental power it gave him a terrible insight of the world as it is. So long as he could remember these things and these people, his heart must ache. The only remedy is oblivion.

In mere "action" there is no remedy for such things. They are simple facts; and of such facts his life must consist, no matter what he does or how successful he might be. It is often wondered why he did not kill the king, console himself with "revenge" and then aspire