as given rise to a rather favourite saying with the Germans, that
Hamlet is a modern. Hamlet seems to step forth from an antiquated
time,--with its priestly bigotry, its duels for a province, its
heavy-headed revels, its barbarous code of revenge, and its ghostly
visitations to enforce it,--to meet and converse with a riper age. But
this is because Hamlet belongs wholly and intimately to the poet, while
the other characters, though informed with new and original expression,
are left in close relation, to the old plot.

Such being the ambiguity resulting from this continued spiritualization
of the play, the actor would instinctively endeavour to remove it, and
to bring the hero in closer relation with the main action of the stage
piece. Hamlet must not be too disengaged; he must not be too ironical. A
few omissions, a fit of misplaced fury, a too emphatic accent, a too
effective attitude, with what is called a bold grasp of character, and
Shakespeare's latest and finest work on the hero is obliterated.

Now, the great actors who have personated Hamlet have done much, and the
thrilling treatment of the ghost-story has done more, to stamp upon the
minds of learned and unlearned alike the impression that _the great
event of Hamlet's life is the command to kill his uncle_. As he does not
do this, and as he is given to much meditation and much discussion, it
is assumed that he thinks and talks in order to avoid acting. And then
the word "irresolution" leaps forth, and all is explained. This curious
assumption, that all the pains taken by Shakespeare on the work and its
hero has no other object but to illustrate this theme--a command to kill
and a delayed obedience--pervades the criticism even of those who
consider the intellectual element the great attraction of the play. And
yet, when you ask what is the dramatic situation out of which this
speculative matter arises, the German and English critics alike reply in
chorus, "Irresolution." Each one has his particular shade of it, and
finds something not quite satisfactory in the interpretations of others.
Goethe's finished portrait of Hamlet as the amiable and accomplished
young prince, too weak to support the burden of a great action, did not
recommend itself either to Schlegel or Coleridge, who take the mental
rather than the moral disposition to task. Schlegel, with some asperity,
speaks of "a calculating consideration that cripples the power of
action;" and Coleridge, with m