CHAPTER X

The Character of Hamlet

No character in the literary world either real or fictitious has perhaps been more productive of controversy than Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark. This is readily conceivable, if we consider that, though he be said to reflect the universality of Shakespeare's genius, erities have been accustomed to study him from different points of view. Each dwelling largely upon one quality or another, has attempted to make this the dominant and distinctive trait of his character. One adjudges him heroic in courage, another deems him timid and cow.ardly; one finds him possessed of high virtue, another sees him devoid of moral sense; one admires his wondrous force of will, another discovers him, a dreamer incapable of action; one exalts him as the pattern of all that is noble, another condemns him as a mass of inconsistencies. These divergent opinions, arising from failure to study the composite character of the hero, as well as his religious principles and motives of action, give but a partial and inadequate view of the wondrous creation, which in versatility of mind, philosophic musings, moral struggles, and charm of person has wielded a universal fascination, and caused the many to see in him “a concentration of all that belongs to humanity."

Shakespeare has sketched many and varied characters, and of these he admired and loved most Prince Hal and Hamlet. Both stand contrasted as examples of princely gayety and princely melancholy; yet both, thinks Minto, bear many points of resemblance. The description which Ophelia gives of Hamlet before his father's death is also a picture of Prince Hal. He too had "the courtier's, soldier's, scholar's eye, tongue, sword"; and, though he concealed these qualities be

neath the wildness of his youth his friends discover them as soon as he mounts the throne. What they say of him is verified in Hamlet:

Hear him but reason in divinity,

And all admiring with an inward wish

You would desire the King were made a prelate;
Hear him debate of commonwealth affairs

You'll say it hath been all in all his study;
List his discourse of war, and you shall hear
A fearful battle rendered you in music;
Turn him to any course of policy

The Gordian Knot of it he will unloose
Familiar as his garter; that when he speaks,
The air, a chartered libertine, is still,

And the mute wonder lurketh in men's ears
To steal his sweet and honeyed sentences.

Further, Prince Hal is opposed to the impatient Hotspur and is anxious to try his skill in arms with him. Like Hamlet he does not think much of himself, and cares little for mere reputation. Hotspur like Laertes is hot tempered, oversensitive of personal honor, lacks self-control, and is wholly wanting in equipoise of character. Prince Hal like Hamlet holds his true self well-guarded in reserve, and consorts for a time with Falstaff and his crew, as Hamlet does with the Players. Henry is eminently a religious and conscientious man, and hesitates to involve two nations in bloodshed until he is fully assured of the justice of his cause. In like manner Hamlet delays the bloody work of "revenge" till he obtains unequivocal and tangible proofs of his uncle's guilt. Henry, however, is not without his gloomy hours, nor is he always in the vein for doffing the world aside. His picture sketches in outline the very image of Prince Hamlet:

For he is gracious, if he be observed;

He hath a tear for pity and a hand

Open as day for melting charity;

Yet notwithstanding, being incensed, he's flint,

As humorous as winter and as sudden

As flows congealed in the spring of day,

His temper, therefore, must be well observed
Chide him for faults, and do it reverently,
When you perceive his blood inclined to mirth;
But being moody, give him line and scope.

Such a prince, if harassed by deep mental grief, would easily
fall a victim to gloom and melancholy.

Though with the opening of the play, Hamlet be enveloped in gloom and afflicted with grief, which induce a great and continued depression of spirits, it is clear that his natural temperament was far from melancholic. He is characterized as refined and courteous, princely in dignity and royal in manners, in form prepossessing, in temperament imaginative, in feelings sensitive and generous, and with a deep sense of propriety and respect for the moral order of things. Adorned with virtuous qualities and a wisdom uncommon to his years, he was before his father's death, unacquainted with dishonor, vice, and the sorrows of life, and lived enamored of the beauties of nature and the goodness and happiness in humanity around him.

In those happier days, his was not the life of a mere student, nor was he peculiarly addicted to moody reflection, nor indisposed to action, but on the contrary, his must have been other qualities such as are loved and admired by the masses, and which won for him popular favor, and in fact made him the idol of Denmark. All know him to love and admire him. To the valiant Fortinbras he was a soldier, nor did he lose his love for military skill even in his saddest and gloomiest days. To Ophelia and the court, who knew him more intimately, he was, moreover, a scholar and a courtier, the pride of the state, "the glass of fashion and the mould of form, the observed of all observers."

From certain hints in the play and from logical inferences, we may reasonably surmise what was Hamlet's natural disposition. In other and sunny days, when unstricken by affliction, he was not prone to gloomy and brooding thoughtful

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ness, which is characteristic of the melancholic temperament; nor were his the mental sluggishness and dullness of passionate emotion, which mark the phlegmatic; nor was his temper the choleric which is fiery, irascible, and easily roused to anger. On the contrary, he exhibited a calm and placid disposition, which his mother compared to that of "the turtle dove sitting over her golden couplets," and which Claudius calls "sweet and commendable." As a consequence, he was seldom, and then only under extreme provocation, stirred to anger. On such occasions his quiescent but sensitive nature readily flamed into a feverish excitement, which made him a dangerous antagonist. This he discloses in his words to Laertes:

I prithee, take thy fingers from my throat;
For though I am not splenetive and rash,
Yet have I something in me dangerous,

Which let thy wisdom fear; hold off thy hand!

His natural temperament seems a happy combination, which is characterized by marked physical vitality, quick mental activity, strong sensibility, impetuous action. The latter quality prompted him to rush after the ghost, to strike Polonius, to leap abroad the pirate ship, to grapple with Laertes, and to give the hasty death-blow to Claudius. Though his charming frankness, courteousness, and kindness; his confidence, light-heartedness, and bouyancy of disposition; his vivacity of thought and fancy, wit and humor, and quickness and energy of action, disclose a composite temperament in which the sanguine normally predominates; his character is, notwithstanding, marked by a nervous instability which inclines him to rapid changes of joyous or gloomy feelings. But such a temper does not develop into melancholy, save under some extraordinary strain; and this strain comes when Hamlet from the sunshine of happiness is suddenly engulfed in the gloomy depths of an overpowering grief. Even then on innumerable occasions his normal temperament peeps through the deep gloom which envelopes him, and finds expression in

humorous and sarcastic images, and in witty comparisons and allusions. Though oppressed by intense sorrow, he turns for solace to books of satire, or quibbles with every visitor. His solemn mourning and dejected visage, which betoken his depressed mental state, are no bar to the humorous jest, nor play of wit, nor to the amusement which he finds in the absurdities of his assumed dementia. Through all his depressing gloom shine forth at frequent intervals the irrepressible traits of his normal disposition, which, though suppressed, is not overpowered by his deep and settled melancholy.

Hamlet is gifted with remarkable prudence. At every turn save one, when sudden rage momentarily overpowers his judgment, he acts with caution under most trying circumstances. In keen foresight he swears his friends to secrecy, and assumes madness in order to mask the changed disposition in which he finds himself in consequence of the ghostly revelations. In masterly prudence he devises a play to catch the conscience of the King, and to test the reality and veracity of the supposed spirit of his father. In prudence he meditates 1 on his new circumstances, and on the obstacles to be mastered, and above all, as a Christian, upon the moral nature of the revenge imposed upon him, and the ways and means of its accomplishment.

No less remarkable is the habitual power of self-command, which Hamlet strikingly exhibits throughout the drama. In playing consistently the antics of a madman, in baffling the curiosity of his friends, in staying his savage impulse to slay the King at prayer, in checking his moral nature when stirred to the verge of violence in the interview with his mother, and in his command of circumstances in the contest with Laertes, in all, he displays a masterly self-control, which in fine turns the nefarious plans of the conspirators against themselves, and enables him at the opportune moment to attain a just and adequate "revenge".

One of the strongest traits of the Prince's character is