Page:The Psychology of Shakespeare.pdf/108

Rh marks a state of inclination to act, in advance of that mani

fested in the soliloquy beginning, “Oh, what a rogue and pea sant slave am I ?” but still not screwed up to the point of resolve. The gross example of soldiers, who “for a fantasy, and trick of fame,” are so lavish of life and limb, places before Hamlet, in the strongest light, his own craven scruples, and, as he chooses to say, his apprehension of results. But on

this point he does not do himself justice. His personal courage is of the most undaunted temper. In his first inter view with the Ghost, he does not set his “life at a pin's fee;” and the independent evidence of Fortinbras testifies to his

high promise as a soldier. It is not the lack of courage, but the inability to carry the excitements of his reason and his blood, into an act so repugnant to his nature as the assassi

nation of his uncle, that yet withholds his hand; and although he concludes, “O, from this time forth,

My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth !” he leaves his purpose unfulfilled, and allows himself to be sent out of the country; a proceeding likely to postpone his revenge indefinitely, or to defeat it altogether; and it is not until he discovers the King's villainous plot against his own life, that he determines to “quit him with this arm.” There is an inconsistency in the reasoning of the first part of this soliloquy, which leads us to surmise that after the words “to rust in us unused,” a sentence has been lost.

Hamlet is fully aware that his meditative tendency is exces sive; that his reason is so far from being unused that it is overstrong for his active powers, and turns aside the current

of his enterprise. He is therefore not likely to censure him self for allowing his reason to rust in him unused, especially as he immediately afterwards objects to the impediment to action he finds in a too vigilant forethought. The train of argument appears to have been, that memory and forethought,