Together with
himself, he has dragged them all into the grave. It is blind passion,
unbridled by reason, which does the deed: a sublime satire upon the
words of Montaigne in Essay II. (12), 'that the most beautiful actions
of the soul proceed from, and have need of, this impulse of passion;
valour, they say, cannot become perfect without the help of wrath; and
that nobody pursues the wicked and the enemies with sufficient energy,
except he be thoroughly in anger.'
Even the kind of death by which Shakspere makes Hamlet lose his life,
looks like a satire against Montaigne. The latter, always a coward in
regard to death, and continually pondering over it, says: [57]--'I
would rather have chosen to drink the potion of Sokrates than wound
myself as Cato did.' Their 'virtuous deeds' he calls [58] 'vain and
fruitless ones, because they were done from no love of, or obedience
to, the true Creator of all things.'
Hamlet dies wounded and poisoned, as if Shakspere had intended expressing
his abhorrence of so vacillating and weak-willed a character, who places
the treacherous excesses of passion above the power of that human
reason in whose free service alone Greeks and Romans did their most
exalted deeds of virtue. [59]
The subtlety of the best psychologists has endeavoured to fix the limits
of Hamlet's madness, and to find the proper name for it. No agreement
has been arrived at.
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