Page:The Psychology of Shakespeare.pdf/61

46 To the King's unfeeling arguments that the son ought not to grieve for the death of his father, because it is a common theme, and an unavailing woe, Hamlet vouchsafes no reply. But to his mother's rebuke, that the common grief “seems” parti cular to him, he answers with a vehemence which shews that

the clouds which hang on him are surcharged with electric fire :

“Seems, madam ; nay, it is. I know not seems. 'Tis not alone my inky cloak,” &c. He has that within which passes show; and, when left alone, he tells us what it is in that outburst of grief: “Oh that this too, too solid flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew Or that the Everlasting had not fixed

His canon 'gainst self-slaughter

Oh God! Oh God!

How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable, Seem to me all the uses of this world :

Fye on't, oh fye 'tis an unweeded garden

That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature Possess it merely. That it should come to this, But two months dead " &c.

It is the conflict of religious belief with suicidal desire. In his pure and sensitive mind, the conduct of his mother has produced shame and keen distress. His generalising tendency leads him to extend his mother's failings to her whole sex— “Frailty, thy name is woman ;” and from thence the sense of disgust shrouds as with foul mist the beauty of the world, and all its uses seem “weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable.” To general dissatisfaction with men and the world, suc ceeds the longing desire to quit the scene of shame and woe. In the subsequent arguments which the Prince holds with himself on suicide, he acknowledges the constraining power to be the fear of future punishment; but in this passage the higher motive of religious obedience without fear is acknowledged ; a higher and a holier motive to the duty of