He enjoys his own crafty policy which shall blow his school-friends,
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (who yet, so far as he knows, have not
been guilty in any way towards him!) 'at the moon:'--
O, 'tis most sweet
When in one line two crafts directly meet.
Because Hamlet gives utterance to high-sounding thoughts, to
sentimental dreams, and melancholy subtleties, it has been assumed
that his character is one nourished with the poet's own heart's blood.
A thousand times the noble sentiment of duty has been dwelt upon,
which it is alleged he is inspired with; and on account of his fine
words he has been more taken a fancy to than any other Shaksperian
figure. But that was not the poet's object. Great deeds were more
to him than the finest words. His contemporaries understood him;
for Montaigne--as we shall prove--was given over to the lowest scorn
of the age through 'Hamlet,' because the whole reasoning of Hamlet not
only was a fruitless, but a pernicious one.
In the fourth scene of the fourth act, the poet describes the frame of
mind of the hero before he steps on board ship. 'Excitements of his
reason and his blood' once more call him to revenge. This monologue,
in which Hamlet gives expression to his feelings and thoughts, is only
in the quarto of 1604. The folio of 1623 does not contain it. Shakspere,
in later years, may have thought that the soul-struggle of his hero had
been ended; and so he may have regarded the passage as a superfluous one,
in which Hamlet's better self once more asks him to seize the reins of
destiny with his own hands.
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