ties the
play. For Hamlet, according to all the indications in the text, was not
naturally or normally such a man, but rather, I venture to affirm, a man
who at any _other_ time and in any _other_ circumstances than those
presented would have been perfectly equal to his task; and it is, in
fact, the very cruelty of his fate that the crisis of his life comes on
him at the one moment when he cannot meet it, and when his highest
gifts, instead of helping him, conspire to paralyse him. This aspect of
the tragedy the theory quite misses; and it does so because it
misconceives the cause of that irresolution which, on the whole, it
truly describes. For the cause was not directly or mainly an habitual
excess of reflectiveness. The direct cause was a state of mind quite
abnormal and induced by special circumstances,--a state of profound
melancholy. Now, Hamlet's reflectiveness doubtless played a certain part
in the _production_ of that melancholy, and was thus one indirect
contributory cause of his irresolution. And, again, the melancholy, once
established, displayed, as one of its _symptoms_, an excessive
reflection on the required deed. But excess of reflection was not, as
the theory makes it, the _direct_ cause of the irresolution at all; nor
was it the _only_ indirect cause; and in the Hamlet of the last four
Acts it is to be considered rather a symptom of his state than a cause
of it.

These assertions may be too brief to be at once clear, but I hope they
will presently become so.

3

Let us first ask ourselves what we can gather from the play, immediately
or by inference, concerning Hamlet as he was just before his father's
death. And I begin by observing that the text does not bear out the idea
that he was one-sidedly reflective and indisposed to action. Nobody who
knew him seems to have noticed this weakness. Nobody regards him as a
mere scholar who has 'never formed a resolution or executed a deed.' In
a court which certainly would not much admire such a person he is the
observed of all observers. Though he has been disappointed of the throne
everyone shows him respect; and he is the favourite of the people, who
are not given to worship philosophers. Fortinbras, a sufficiently
practical man, considered that he was likely, had he been put on, to
have proved most royally. He has Hamlet borne by four captains 'like a
soldier' to his grave; and Ophelia says that Hamlet _was_ a soldier. If
he was fond of acting, an aes