ve not the study of a special affliction,
but the fundamental drama of the soul and the world. This, whatever we
may call it, was the work at which Shakespeare laboured so long, and for
which he withdrew Hamlet from time to time for special study, every
fresh touch telling in this direction.

VI.

How far is such an interpretation consonant with the genius and method
of Shakespeare? Certainly I should hardly have found courage to add
another to the many studies of Hamlet had it not been for the hope of
bringing out a characteristic of our great national poet that is rather
unobtrusive than obscure. I mean a singular unworldliness of thought and
feeling; a cherished idealism; an inborn magnanimity. Not the
unworldliness of the study and the cloister, or the other-worldliness of
such poets as Dante and Milton, but the unworldliness of a man of the
world, the idealism that is closely allied with humour. And it is in
this union and not elsewhere that the "breadth" of Shakespeare, of which
we hear so much, is found. This unworldliness is elusive, ubiquitous,
full of disguise. Now it is militant, and now observant; now it is
fastidious in its scorn, and now it is piercing in its dissection; now
it is satire, and now it is melancholy. He gives the most knightly
chivalry of friendship to a merchant, and the most exquisite fidelity of
service to a fool, and makes the ingrained worldliness of Cleopatra die
before her love. He not only scatters through his pages rebukes of the
arrogance of power and the more pitiable pride of wealth, but makes his
kings deride their own ceremonies and mock their own state. Who has not
observed the easy and effortless way in which his heroes and heroines
move from one station to the other, from authority to service like Kent,
from obscurity to splendour like Perdita, or to the greenwood from the
palace like Rosalind. The change affects their happiness no more than
the change of their position in the sky affects the brightness of the
stars. It is all so truthful and clear that we grow more simple as we
read. Lear utters but one cry of joy, and that is when he is entering a
prison with Cordelia:

"Come, let's away to prison!
We two alone will sing like birds in a cage;"

while the Queen of France has just said:

"For thee, oppressed king, am I cast down,
Myself could else outfrown false fortune's frown."

In these two lines the magnanimity of Shakespeare is p