The
conduct is perhaps not wholly secure against objections. The action is
indeed for the most part in continual progression, but there are some
scenes which neither forward nor retard it. Of the feigned madness of
Hamlet there appears no adequate cause, for he does nothing which he
might not have done with the reputation of sanity. He plays the madman
most, when he treats Ophelia with so much rudeness, which seems to be
useless and wanton cruelty.
Hamlet is, through the whole play, rather an instrument than an agent.
After he has, by the stratagem of the play, convicted the king, he makes
no attempt to punish him, and his death is at last effected by an
incident which Hamlet had no part in producing.
The catastrophe is not very happily produced; the exchange of weapons is
rather an expedient of necessity, than a stroke of art. A scheme might
easily have been formed to kill Hamlet with the dagger, and Laertes with
the bowl.
The poet is accused of having shewn little regard to poetical justice,
and may be charged with equal neglect of poetical probability. The
apparition left the regions of the dead to little purpose; the revenge
which he demands is not obtained, but by the death of him that was
required to take it; and the gratification which would arise from the
destruction of an usurper and a murderer, is abated by the untimely
death of Ophelia, the young, the beautiful, the harmless, and the pious.
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