THE

6895-*

AMERICAN MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

APRIL, 1836.

OBSERVATIONS

ON SOME OF THE MALE CHARACTERS OF SHAKSPEARE.

HAMLET.

THE character of Hamlet the Prince, the Lover of Ophelia, the Son, the Philosopher, the MAN, with all his hopes and ambitions, frustrated plans and far-reaching thoughts, deep intelligence and childlike weakness and untimely death — claims our sympathies and study. In him we behold the type of Man; and in his story, and the play in which it is found, are involved some of the loftiest ideas to which the human mind can be directed. More than any other of Shakspeare's heroes, he attracts at once our sympathies and wonder. He stands before us in almost the distinctness of actual existence. He receives this distinctness and this vividness in our minds from his melancholy, his speculative and philosophizing temperament, the tenderness and purity of his feelings and motives, and especially from his relation with Ophelia, whose affection he feels himself compelled to forego when the awful visitation of his father's spirit summons him to his great task. The many reflections he is constantly making on themes that come so near to the universal heart of man, attract our attention and deepen our interest. When he falls at last, surrounded by the toils of the very persons whom he had so long intended to punish, we feel as if bidding adieu to one whom we have actually known and loved, and whose misfortunes we have wept over and pitied.

I confess I can see none so great mystery in the character of Hamlet as it has been supposed to involve. Critics have drawn out numberless discussions on his real or pretended insanity, on his sincerity or insincerity towards Ophelia; and many among the Germans have been able to regard the whole character and play as but a tremendous manifestation of destiny, at the same time captivating our sorrows and striking awe into our hearts. There are, certainly, difficult points in Hamlet; and it is true, that if we regard merely the cause of the hero's

fate without attention to the moral which we may extract from it, we may easily fall into the same doubts and difficulties with which others have been troubled. The Prince sometimes rouses our most fearful apprehensions by reflections that strike deep into the very abysses of existence; but if we will listen to it, there often comes up from those depths of our spiritual nature an echo that speaks at once to our hearts. But for one occurrence in his history he would have been a sceptic. He was surrounded by wickedness and vice triumphant : he felt that there was a meaning in the great riddle of the world, but that meaning he could not solve. The visitation of his father's spirit introduced a new element and a fact into his speculations, and led his thoughts out into the boundless ocean of Being. There he wandered, indeed, and seemed lost; there he grasped at awful shadows which eluded him; but he felt the truth of an hereafter, for it had been re

vealed.

But while we regard his intellectual character which was of the finest order and his probable speculative ideas, we must carry along with us his peculiar temperament and the many cruel distractions of his situation. We shall then see that his course took its disastrous result, not from any laxity of principle, not from uncertainty of faith, or an abandonment without struggle to the relentless stream of destiny; but from a constitution of mind and heart unfit for the mighty task imposed upon him. The unfortunate issue of all his plans is as much the result of his peculiar character, as of the circumstances and of the agency of those that were about him. The study of his character, therefore, is the only means by which we can comprehend the apparent enigma of the tragedy itself.

His character, then, is that of a person of great refinement of sentiment and feeling, and of one tenderly alive to the beauty of virtue and the deformity of vice. With all the moral courage proper to a being of a high intellectual order, he is still retiring and sensitive, and seems to prefer the quiet and contemplative life of a scholar to the glare and show of the court. Yet he is ambitious - for he was born to a kingdom - ambitious, as men of fine moral and intellectual mould generally are, which is, to be the means of controlling affairs in consonance to the best principles on which they can be administered. While he is living as a student at the university, he is suddenly called to court by the death of the King, his father; and hardly have "the funeral baked meats" become cold, when his mother marries his uncle, who assumes the crown. The play opens, and he is presented to us in the mingled and crushing feelings of grief, disgust, and suspicion, that weigh him down to the earth; grief for his father's death, disgust at his mother's conduct, and suspicions of his uncle. In this state he receives a visitation from the grave of his murdered parent, which con