Then all at once (how could an impulsive manner of action be better
described?), before he could 'make a prologue to his brains,' Hamlet
lets himself be overcome by such a daimonic influence. He breaks open
the grand commission of others, forges a seal with a signet in his
possession, becomes a murderer of two innocent men, and draws the evil
conclusion therefrom:--
Let us know,
Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well,
When our deep plots do pall; and that should learn us,
There's a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will.
This view we have already quoted from Essay III. (12). In Florio's
translation (632):--'Therefore do our dessigns so often miscarry....
The heavens are angry, and I may say envious of the extension
and large privilege we ascribe to human wisdome, to the prejudice of
theirs: and abridge them so more unto us, by so much more we endeavour
to amplifie them.'
Hamlet takes the twofold murder committed against Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern as little to heart as the 'indiscreet' deed by which
Polonius was killed. Then the consolation was sufficient for him that
lovingkindness had forced him to be cruel. This time, his conscience
is not touched, because--
't is dangerous when the baser nature comes
Between the pass and fell incensed points
Of mighty opposites.
With such argumentation every tyranny may be palliated, especially by
those who, like Hamlet, think that--
A man's life 's no more than to say 'One.
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