This superiority of the general public taste in
dramatic literature during the Elizabethan era is one of the remarkable
phenomena in literary history; and it is one that remains unaccounted
for, and is, I think, altogether inexplicable, except upon the
assumption that theatres nowadays rely for their support upon a public
of low intellectual grade, and a taste for gross luxury and material
splendor.

In reading "Hamlet" there is little opportunity of comparing it
instructively with any of its predecessors. Its principal personage is
entirely unlike any other created by Shakespeare. The play is all
Hamlet: the other personages are mere occasions for his presence and
means of his development. But Polonius is something the same kind of
man as old Capulet in "Romeo and Juliet;" and although there were
opportunities enough for the noble Veronese father to utter
sententiously the knowledge of the world which he had gained by living
in it, see how comparatively meagre and superficial his "wise saws" are
compared with the counsel that Polonius gives to his son and to his
daughter, and to the King and Queen; although Polonius, with all his
sagacity, is garrulous and a bore; in Hamlet's words, a tedious old
fool. As to Hamlet's character, Shakespeare did not mean it to be
altogether admirable or otherwise, but simply to be Hamlet--a perfectly
natural and not very uncommon man, although he expresses natural and not
uncommon feelings with the marvellous utterance of the great master of
dramatic poetry. And Hamlet's character is not altogether admirable; but
it is therefore none the less, but probably the more, deeply
interesting. How closely packed the play is with profound truths of life
philosophy is shown by the fact that it has contributed not only very
much more--four or five times more--than any other poem of similar
length to the storehouse of adage and familiar phrase, but at least
twice as much as any other of Shakespeare's plays. I know two boys who,
going to see the play for the first time, some years before the
appearance of a like story in the newspapers, came home and did
actually, in the innocence of their hearts, qualify the great admiration
they expressed for it by adding, "but how full it is of quotations." In
fact, about one eighth of this long play has become so familiar to the
world that it is in common use, and is recognized as the best expression
known of the thoughts that it embodies. This, however, is not