Afraid at the same time lest his aspect or demeanor should betray him, his agitation is such as threatens the overthrow of his reason. He trembles, as it were, on the brink of madness; and is at times not altogether certain that he acts or speaks according to the dictates of a sound understanding. He partakes of such insanity as may arise in a mind of great sensibility, from excessive agitation of spirit, and much labor of thought; but which naturally subsides when the perturbation ceases. Yet he must act, and with prudence. He must even conceal his intentions,-his actual condition suggests a mode of concealment. Knowing that he must appear incoherent and inconsistent, he is not unwilling to have it believed that his reason is somewhat disarranged, and that the strangeness of his conduct admits of no other explanation. As it is of signal consequence to him to have the rumor of his madness believed and propagated, he endeavors to render the counterfeit specious. There is nothing that reconciles men more readily to believe in any extraordinary appearance than to have it accounted for. A reason of this kind is often more plausible and imposing than many forcible arguments, particularly if the theory be of our own invention. Accordingly, Hamlet, the more easily to deceive the King and his creatures, and to furnish them with an explication of his uncommon deportment, practises his artifice on Ophelia. There is no change in his attachment, unless in so far as other passions of a violent character have assumed a temporary influence. His affection is permanent. To confirm and publish the report that his understanding was disordered, he would act in direct opposition to his former conduct. Full of honor and affection, he would put on the semblance of rudeness. To Ophelia he would show dislike, because a change of this nature would be, of all others, the most remarkable, and because his affection for her was passionate and sincere.

[Page 102.] The tendency of indignation, and of furious and inflamed resentment, is to inflict punishment on the offender. But if resentment is ingrafted on the moral faculty and grows from it, its tenor and conduct will be different. In its first emotion it may breathe excessive and immediate vengeance; but sentiments of justice and propriety interposing will arrest and suspend its violence. An ingenuous mind, thus agitated by powerful and contending principles, exceedingly tortured and perplexed, will appear hesitating and undetermined. Thus the vehemence of the vindictive passion will, by delay, suffer abatement; by its own ardor it will be exhausted; and our natural and habituated propensities will resume their influence. These continue in possession of the heart until the mind reposes and recovers vigor; then if the conviction of injury still remains, and if our resentment seems justified by every amiable principle, by reason and the sentiments of mankind, it will return with power and authority. Should any unintended incident awaken our sensibility, and dispose us to a state of mind favorable to the influence and operation of ardent and impetuous passions, our resentment will revisit us at that precise period, and turn in its favor, and avail itself of every other sentiment and affection. The mind of Hamlet, weary and exhausted by violent agitation, continues doubtful and undecided till his sensibility, excited by a theatrical exhibition, restores to their authority his indignation and desire of vengeance. Still, however, his moral principles, the supreme and governing powers of his constitution, conducting those passions which they seem to justify and excite, determine him again to examine his evidence, or endeavor by additional circumstances to have it strengthened.

[Page 117.] On reviewing the analysis now given, a sense of virtue seems to be the ruling principle in the character of Hamlet. In other men it may appear with the ensigns of high authority; in Hamlet it possesses absolute power. United with amia

....

ble affections, with every graceful accomplishment, and every agreeable quality, it embellishes and exalts them. It rivets his attachment to his friends when he finds them deserving; it is a source of sorrow if they appear corrupted. It even sharpens his penetration; and, if unexpectedly he discerns turpitude or impropriety in any character, it inclines him to think more deeply of their transgression than if his sentiments were less refined. It thus induces him to scrutinize their conduct, and may lead him to the discovery of more enormous guilt. . . . . Yet with all this purity of moral sentiment, with the utmost rectitude of intention, and the most active zeal in the exercise of every duty, he is hated, persecuted, and destroyed. Nor is this so inconsistent with poetical justice as may at first sight be apprehended. The particular temper and state of Hamlet's mind is connected with weaknesses that embarrass, or may be somewhat incompatible with bold and persevering projects. His amiable hesitations and reluctant scruples lead him at one time to indecision; and then betray him, by the self-condemning consciousness of such apparent imbecility, into acts of rash and inconsiderate violence. Meantime, his adversaries, suffering no such internal conflict, persist with uniform determined vigor in the prosecution of unlawful schemes. Thus Hamlet, and persons of his constitution, contending with less virtuous opponents, can have little hope of success; and so the poet has not in the catastrophe been guilty of any departure from nature, or any infringement of poetical justice. We love, we almost revere, the character of Hamlet, and grieve for his sufferings. But we must at the same time confess, that his weaknesses, amiable weaknesses! are the cause of his disappointment and early death.

[Page 131.] The sentiments that Hamlet expresses when he finds Claudius at prayer are not, I will venture to affirm, his real ones. There is nothing in his whole character that justifies such savage enormity. We are therefore bound in justice and candor to look for some hypothesis that shall reconcile what he now delivers with his usual maxims and general deportment. I would ask, then, whether on many occasions we do not allege as the motives of our conduct those considerations which are not really our motives? Nay, is not this sometimes done almost without our knowledge? Is it not done when we have no intention to deceive others; but when by the influences of some present passion we deceive ourselves? When the profligate is accused of enormities he will have them pass for manly spirit, or love of society; and imposes this opinion not upon others, but upon himself. When the miser indulges his love of wealth, he says, and believes, that he follows the maxims of a laudable economy. So also, while the censorious and invidious slanderer gratifies his malignity, he boasts, and believes, that he obeys the dictates of justice. Apply this principle to the case of Hamlet; sense of supposed duty and a regard to character prompt him to slay his uncle; and he is withheld at that instant by the ascendant of a gentle disposition; by the scruples, and perhaps weakness, of extreme sensibility. But how can he answer to the world and to his sense of duty for missing this opportunity? The real motive cannot be urged. Instead of excusing, it would expose him, he thinks, to censure; perhaps to contempt. He looks about for a motive; and one better suited to the opinions of the multitude, and better calculated to lull resentment, is immediately suggested. He alleges, as direct causes of his delay, motives that could never influence his conduct; and thus exhibits a most exquisite picture of amiable self-deceit.

[Page 139.] Thinking himself incapable of happiness, he thinks he should be quite unconcerned with any human event. This is another effort of self-deceit, for in truth he is not unconcerned. He affects to regard serious and even important

matters with a careless indifference. He would laugh; but his laughter is not that of mirth. Add to this, that in those moments when he fancies himself indifferent or unconcerned he endeavors to treat those actions, which would naturally excite indignation, with scorn or contempt. This on several occasions leads him to assume the appearance of an ironical, but melancholy, gayety.

[Page 141.] The character is consistent. Hamlet is exhibited with good dispositions, and struggling with untoward circumstances. The contest is interesting. As he endeavors to do right, we approve and esteem him. But his original constitution renders him unequal to the contest; he displays the weaknesses and imperfections to which his peculiar character is liable; he is unfortunate; his misfortunes are in some measure occasioned by his weakness; he thus becomes an object not of blame, but of genuine and tender regret.

COLERIDGE (1808)

(Notes and Lectures upon Shakespeare, New York, 1868, vol. iv, p. 144.)—I gave these lectures at the Royal Institution in the spring of the same year (1808) in which Sir Humphrey Davy, a fellow-lecturer, made his great revolutionary discoveries in chemistry. Even in detail, the coincidence of Schlegel with my lectures was so extraordinary that all who at a later period heard the same words, taken by me from my notes of the lectures at the Royal Institution, concluded a borrowing on my part from Schlegel. Mr Hazlitt replied to an assertion of my plagiarism from Schlegel in these words:-That is a lie; for I myself heard the very same character of Hamlet from Coleridge before he went to Germany, and when he had neither read, nor could read, a page of German!' [COLLIER (Introduction to Hamlet, 1843, p. 193) also corroborates this by the assertion, that he had himself heard Coleridge 'broach these views some years before Schlegel's Lectures, Ueber Dramatische Kunst und Literatur, were published.' ED.] . .

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I believe the character of Hamlet may be traced to Shakespeare's deep and accurate science in mental philosophy. Indeed, that this character must have some connection with the common fundamental laws of our nature may be assumed from the fact that Hamlet has been the darling of every country in which the literature of England has been fostered. In order to understand him, it is essential that we should reflect on the constitution of our own minds. Man is distinguished from the brute animals in proportion as thought prevails over sense; but in the healthy processes of the mind, a balance is constantly maintained between the impressions from outward objects and the inward operations of the intellect; for if there be an overbalance in the contemplative faculty, man thereby becomes the creature of mere meditation, and loses his natural power of action. Now, one of Shakespeare's modes of creating characters is to conceive any one intellectual or moral faculty in morbid excess, and then to place himself, Shakespeare, thus mutilated or diseased, under given circumstances. In Hamlet he seems to have wished to exemplify the moral necessity of a due balance between our attention to the objects of our senses and our meditation on the working of our minds,-an equilibrium between the real and the imaginary worlds. In Hamlet this balance is disturbed; his thoughts and the images of his fancy are far more vivid than his actual perceptions, and his very perceptions, instantly passing through the medium of his contemplations, acquire, as they pass, a form and a color not naturally their own. Hence we see a great, an almost enormous, intellectual activity, and a proportionate aversion to real action

consequent upon it, with all its symptoms and accompanying qualities. This character Shakespeare places in circumstances under which it is obliged to act on the spur of the moment: Hamlet is brave and careless of death; but he vacillates from sensibility, and procrastinates from thought, and loses the power of action in the energy of resolve. Thus it is that this tragedy presents a direct contrast to that of Macbeth; the one proceeds with the utmost slowness, the other with a crowded and breathless rapidity.

The effect of this overbalance of the imaginative power is beautifully illustrated in the everlasting broodings and superfluous activities of Hamlet's mind, which, unseated from its healthy relation, is constantly occupied with the world within, and abstracted from the world without,-giving substance to shadows, and throwing a mist over all commonplace actualities. It is the nature of thought to be indefinite; -definiteness belongs to external imagery alone. Hence it is that the sense of sublimity arises, not from the sight of an outward subject, but from the beholder's reflection upon it;—not from the sensuous impression, but from the imaginative reflex. Few have seen a celebrated waterfall without feeling something akin to disappointment; it is only subsequently that the image comes back full into the mind, and brings with it a train of grand or beautiful associations. Hamlet feels this; his senses are in a state of trance, and he looks upon external things as hieroglyphics. His soliloquy: Oh! that this too, too solid flesh would melt,' &c., springs from that craving after the indefinite,-for that which is not,-which most easily besets men of genius; and the self-delusion common to this temper of mind is finely exemplified in the character which Hamlet gives of himself:

'It cannot be

But I am pigeon-livered, and lack gall

To make oppression bitter.'

He mistakes the seeing of his chains for the breaking of them, delays action till action is of no use, and dies the victim of mere circumstance and accident.

With the single exception of Cymbeline, [the First Scenes of all of Shakespeare's dramas] either place before us at one glance both the past and the future in some effect, which implies the continuance and full agency of its cause, as in the feuds and party-spirit of the Servants of the two houses in the first scene in Romeo and Juliet; or in the degrading passion for shows and public spectacles, and the overwhelming attachment for the newest successful war-chief in the Roman people, already become a populace, contrasted with the jealousy of the nobles, in Julius Casar; or they at once commence the action so as to excite a curiosity for the explanation in the following scenes, as in the storm of wind and waves, and the boatswain, in The Tempest, instead of anticipating our curiosity, as in most other First Scenes, and in too many other First Acts;-or they act, by contrast of diction suited to the characters, at once to heighten the effect, and yet to give a naturalness to the language and rhythm of the principal personages, either as that of Prospero and Miranda by the appropriate lowness of the style, or as in King John, by the equally appropriate stateliness of official harangues or narratives, so that the after blank verse seems to belong to the rank and quality of the speakers, and not to the poet; -or they strike at once the key-note, and give the predominant spirit of the play, as in Twelfth Night and in Macbeth ;—or, finally, the First Scene comprises all these advantages at once, as in Hamlet.

Compare the easy language of common life, in which this drama commences, with the direful music and wild wayward rhythm and abrupt lyrics of the opening of

Macbeth. The tone is quite familiar;—there is no poetic description of night, no elaborate information conveyed by one speaker to another of what both had immediately before their senses (such as the first distich in Addison's Cato, which is a translation into poetry of Past four o'clock and a dark morning!');-and yet nothing bordering on the comic on the one hand, nor any striving of the intellect on the other. It is precisely the language of sensation among men who feared no charge of effeminacy for feeling what they had no want of resolution to bear. Yet the armor, the dead silence, the watchfulness that first interrupts it, the welcome relief of the guard, the cold, the broken expressions of compelled attention to bodily feelings still under control, all excellently accord with, and prepare for, the after gradual rise into tragedy ;—but, above all, into a tragedy the interest of which is as eminently ad et apud intra as that of Macbeth is directly ad extra. [The rest of Coleridge's notes are incorporated in the commentary to the text. ED.]

COLERIDGE (1812)

(Seven Lectures on Shakespeare and Milton, London, 1856, p. 141.)—The first question we should ask ourselves is: What did Shakespeare mean when he drew the character of Hamlet? He never wrote anything without design, and what was his design when he sat down to produce this tragedy? My belief is, that he always regarded his story before he began to write much in the same light as a painter regards his canvas before he begins to paint: as a mere vehicle for his thoughts,-as a ground upon which he was to work. What, then, was the point to which Shakespeare directed himself in Hamlet? He intended to portray a person in whose view the external world and all its incidents and objects were comparatively dim and of no interest in themselves, and which began to interest only when they were reflected in the mirror of his mind. Hamlet beheld external things in the same way that a man of vivid imagination, who shuts his eyes, sees what has previously made an impression on his organs. The poet places him in the most stimulating circumstances that a human being can be placed in. He is the heir-apparent of a throne: his father dies suspiciously; his mother excludes her son from his throne by marrying his uncle. This is not enough; but the Ghost of the murdered father is introduced to assure the son that he was put to death by his own brother. What is the effect upon the son?-instant action and pursuit of revenge? No: endless reasoning and hesitating, constant urging and solicitation of the mind to act, and as constant an escape from action; ceaseless reproaches of himself for sloth and negli. gence, while the whole energy of his resolution evaporates in these reproaches. This, too, not from cowardice, for he is drawn as one of the bravest of his time,— not from want of forethought or slowness of apprehension, for he sees through the very souls of all who surround him, but merely from that aversion to action which prevails among such as have a world in themselves.....

[Page 148.] Shakespeare wished to impress upon us the truth: that action is the chief end of existence,―that no faculties of intellect, however brilliant, can be considered valuable, or indeed otherwise than as misfortunes, if they withdraw us from, or render us repugnant to action, and lead us to think and think of doing, until the time has elapsed when we can do anything effectually. In enforcing this moral truth, Shakespeare has shown the fulness and force of his powers; all that is amiable and excellent in nature is combined in Hamlet, with the exception of one quality.