Page:The Psychology of Shakespeare.pdf/247

232

"The melancholy Jaques" is another phase of the Hamlet character, contemplated under totally different circumstances. There is the same contemplative cast of thought on the frailties of man exercising itself in obedience to a depressed state of emotion. In Jaques this has not been the result of sudden revulsion of feeling, of some one great grief, which has, as it were, overspread the heavens with a pall. It is of more gradual and wholesome growth, the result of matured intellect and exhausted desire. Jaques is an "old man," or at least old enough to be called so by the rustic lass in her anger of disappointment; and he himself indirectly attributes his melancholy to his wide knowledge of the world.

"It is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects; and, indeed, the sundry contemplation of my travels, in which my often rumination wraps me in a most humourous sadness.""Yes, I have gained my experience."

It is thus he hath gained knowledge, if not wisdom; unless wisdom be not truly described in that line of the poet, which says that it enables us

"To see all other's faults and feel our own."

He does indeed suffer from more than intellectual depreciation of man's sensuality. He has wallowed in it himself, and if he suffers not the acute sting of remorse, he endures