Page:The Psychology of Shakespeare.pdf/58

Rh of being a little spoiled. A singular trace of this remodeling, which the commentators appear to have overlooked, is left in the different ages which are assigned to Hamlet in the earlier part and at the end of the drama. as a mere youth, whose intent,

The Prince is introduced

“In going back to school in Wittenburg,” the King opposes.

His love is described as

“A violet in the youth of primy nature;” and he is so “young” that he may walk with a large tether in such matters. He has not even attained his full stature, for “Nature, crescent, does not grow alone In thews and bulk; but, as this temple waxes, The inward service of the mind and soul Grows wide withal.”

To his mistress he appears in the “unmatched form and

feature of blown youth.” In fact, he is a young gentleman of eighteen or thereabouts. The inconsistency of attributing such profound powers of reflection, and such a blasé state of emotion, to a youth who could scarcely have had beard enough to be plucked, appears so forcibly to have struck Shakespeare, that he condescended to that which with him is a matter of

the rarest occurrence, an explanation or contradiction of the error. With curious care, he makes the Sexton lay down the age of the Prince at thirty years. He came to his office “the very day that young Hamlet was born ;” and he had been “sexton here, man and boy, thirty years.”

As if this were

not enough, he confirms it with the antiquarianism of Yorick's skull, which “has been in the earth three and twenty years.”

Yorick, whose qualities were well remembered by Hamlet, “a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy; he hath

borne me on his back a thousand times;" a kind of

memory

not likely to have stamped itself before the age of seven ; and thus we have Hamlet presented to us not as an unformed "