end, of the artificial elegancies of education and custom; it is a
universal right of man, of the highest as well as the lowest; and
hence also, in Shakespeare, the nobility of nature and morality is
ennobled above the artificial nobility of society. Not infrequently
also he makes the very same persons express themselves at times in the
sublimest language, and at others in the lowest; and this inequality
is in like manner founded in truth. Extraordinary situations, which
intensely occupy the head and throw mighty passions into play, give
elevation and tension to the soul: it collects all its powers and
exhibits an unusual energy, both in its operations and in its
communications by language. On the other hand, even the greatest men
have their moments of remissness, when to a certain degree they forget
the dignity of their character in unreserved relaxation. This very
tone of mind is necessary before they can receive amusement from the
jokes of others, or, what surely cannot dishonor even a hero, from
passing jokes themselves. Let any person, for example, go carefully
through the part of Hamlet. How bold and powerful the language of his
poetry when he conjures the ghost of his father, when he spurs himself
on to the bloody deed, when he thunders into the soul of his mother!
How he lowers his tone down to that of common life, when he has to do
with persons whose station demands from him such a line of conduct;
when he makes game of Polonius and the courtiers, instructs the
player, and even enters into the jokes of the grave-digger. Of all the
poet's serious leading characters there is none so rich in wit and
humor as Hamlet; hence he it is of all of them that makes the greatest
use of the familiar style. Others, again, never do fall into it;
either because they are constantly surrounded by the pomp of rank, or
because a uniform seriousness is natural to them; or, in short,
because through the whole piece they are under the dominion of a
passion calculated to excite, and not, like the sorrow of Hamlet, to
depress the mind. The choice of the one form or the other is
everywhere so appropriate, and so much founded in the nature of the
thing, that I will venture to assert, even where the poet in the very
same speech makes the speaker leave prose for poetry, or the converse,
this could not be altered without danger of injuring or destroying
some beauty or other. The blank verse has this advantage, that its
tone may be elevated o