Here, certainly, we have questions of religion!
Shakspere's genius has known how to transport these most important
questions of his time, away from the shrill contact with contemporary
disputes, into the harmonious domain of the Muses. He, and his friends
and patrons, did not look upon the subjects discussed in this tragedy
with the passionless, indifferent eyes of our century. Many men, no
doubt, were filled with the thought, to which Bacon soon gave a
scientific form, that the human mind can only make true progress if
it turns towards the inquiry into Nature, keeping far away from the
hampering influence of transcendental dogmas. The liberal, intellectual
tendencies of the Reformation were not yet fettered in England with
the new dogmatic strait waistcoat of a narrow-minded, melancholy sect.
And Shakspere's views, which he has embodied in 'Hamlet,' were not in
divinatory advance of his age; they were easily comprehensible to the
best of his time.
Our chief argument will be contained in the chapter in which we shall
hear Shakspere's adversaries launch out furiously against the tendency
of this drama. Meanwhile, we will exhaust the course of its action.
Hamlet has already come very near to that point of view where Reason
at last ceases to guide his conduct, and where he becomes convinced that
indiscretion often is of better service than deep planning.
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