The scene between Hamlet and Horatio (act i. sc. 4), which in both
texts is about the same, contains an innovation in which the Prince's
mistrust of nature is even more sharply expressed. These lines are new:--
This heavy-headed revel east and west
Makes us traduced and tax'd of other nations--
as far as--
... The dram of eale (evil)
Doth (drawth) all the substance of a doubt
To his own scandal.
The contents of this interpolated speech may concisely be thus given:
that the virtues of man, however pure and numerous they may be, are
often infected by 'some vicious mole of Nature,' wherein he himself
is guiltless; and that from such a fault in the chance of birth a stamp
of defect is impressed upon his character, and thus contaminates the
whole.
These innovations are evidently introduced for the purpose of making
us understand why Hamlet does not trust to the excitements of his own
reason and his own blood, in order to find out by natural means whether
it be true what his 'prophetic soul' anticipates--namely, that his
uncle may 'smile and smile, and yet be a villain.'
Man, says Montaigne, has no hold-fast, no firm and fixed point, within
himself, in spite of his apparently splendid outfit. [1]
Man can do nothing with his own weapons alone without help from outside.
In the Essay 'On the Folly of Referring the True and the False to the
Trustworthiness of our Judgment,' [2] he maintains that 'it is a
silly presumption to go about despising and condemning as false that
which does not seem probable to us; which is a common fault of those who
think they have more self-sufficiency than the vulgar.
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