found, I think, by substituting the word
"preoccupation" for the word "irresolution." And the "preoccupation" is
found by antedating the crisis of Hamlet's career from the revelation of
the ghost to the marriage of his mother, and the persistent mental and
moral condition thus induced. Start from this, as a fixed point, and a
dramatic situation is gained in which every stroke of satire, every
curiosity of logic, every strain of melancholy; is appropriate and
pertinent to the action.

In order to measure the full effect of this strange event, we must bring
before us the Hamlet of the earlier time, before his father's death, and
for this we have abundant material in the play.

II.

Hamlet was an enthusiast. His love for his father was not an ordinary
filial affection, it was a hero-worship. He was to him the type of
sovereignty--

"The front of Jove himself;
An eye like Mars, to threaten and command;"

a link between earth and heaven--

"A combination, and a form, indeed,
Where every god did seem to set his seal,
To give the world assurance of a man."

To Hamlet, this "assurance of a man" was the great reality which made
other things real, which gave meaning to life, and substance to the
world. That his love for his mother was equally intense, is clearly
discernible in the inverted characters of his rage and grief. In her he
reverenced wifehood and womanhood. He sees the rose on

"the fair forehead of an innocent love."

And of his mother we are told--

"The queen his mother
Lives almost by his looks."

But this enthusiasm was connected with a habit of thought that was
rather critical than sentimental. Hamlet had a shrewd judgment, a lively
and caustic wit, an exacting standard, and a turn for satire. He was
fond of question and debate, an enemy to all illusion, impatient of
dulness,[typo for dullness?] and not indisposed to alarm and bewilder
it; and he had brought with him from Wittenberg a philosophy half
stoical and half transcendental, with whose eccentricities he would
torment the wisdom of the Court. He looked upon the machinery of power
as part of the comedy of life, and would be more amused than impressed
by the equipage of office, its chains and titles, the frowns of
authority, and the smiles of imaginary greatness. He therefore of all
men needed a personal centre in which faith and affection could unite to
give seriousness and dignity to life; and th