over the animal nature is constantly mistaken for weakness. The difference between a strong man and a weak one, though indefinable, is infinite. The prevalent view of Hamlet is, that he is weak. We hear him spoken of as the gentle prince, the doomed prince, the meditative prince, but never as the strong prince, the great prince, the terrible prince. He is commonly regarded as more of a dreamer than a doer; something of a railer at destiny; a blighted, morbid existence, unequal either to forgiveness or revenge; delaying action till action is of no use, and dying the victim of mere circumstance and accident. The exquisite metaphor of Goethe's about the oak tree and the vase predestined for a rose, crystallizes and perpetuates both the critical and the popular estimate of Hamlet. The Wilhelm Meister view is, practically, the only view; a hero without a plan, pushed on by events alone, endowed more properly with sentiments than with a character, — in a word, weak. But the Hamlet of the critics and the Hamlet of Shakespeare are two different persons. A close review of the play will show that Hamlet is strong, not weak, — that the basis of his character is strength, illimitable strength. There is not an act or an utterance of his, from first to last, which is not a manifestation of power. Slow, cautious, capricious, he may sometimes be, or seem to be; but always strong, always largesouled, always resistless. The care, the awe, with which Shakespeare approached his work, are visible in the opening scene. You cannot advance three lines without feeling that the poet is before you in all his majesty, armed for some vast achievement, winged for the empyrean. In all that solemn guard relief, there is not a word too much or too little. How calm and sad it is! sadness prefiguring the unearthly theme, grand syncopated minor chords, -the Adagio of the overture to Don Giovanni! The super human is instantly foreshadowed, and hardly foreshadowed before revealed. The dreaded twice-seen sight is scarcely mentioned. Bernardo has just begun his story, Last night of all When yon same star that's westward from the pole Had made his course to illume that part of Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself, when, without farther prelude, the sepul- Mark that fair and warlike form In which the majesty of buried Denmark Did sometimes march,— the very armor he had on When he the ambitious Norway combated; The second touches are more precise and vivid. Ham. Arm'd, say you? Mar., Bern. Arm❜d, my Lord. Ham. From top to toe? Mar., Bern. My lord from head to foot. Ham. Then saw you not his face? Hor. O yes, my lord, he wore his beaver up. Ham. What, looked he frowningly? Hor. A countenance more in sorrow than in anger. Ham. Pale or red? Hor. Nay, very pale. Ham. And fixed his eyes upon you? Hor. Most constantly. * * * Ham. Stayed it long? * Hor. While one with moderate haste might tell a hundred. Mar., Bern. Longer, longer. Hor. Not when I saw it. Ham. His beard was grizzled? no! No misconception now, my heavy friend who plays the ghost; no room for speculation in the wardrobe now. You cannot go wrong if you would. 'Armed from top to toe,' 'his beaver up,' 'frowning,' but the eyebrows not too bushy, for the frown is more in sorrow than in anger. Not a particle of rouge, but pale, very pale; nor any rolling of the eyes, sir, either, but a fixed gaze. The very pace at which you are to move is measured: count a hundred as you make your martial stalk and vanish. The delineation is Pre-Raphaelite, even to that last consummate touch, the sable silvered beard. It seems easy, this slow portraiture of a Phantom, just as all perfectly executed feats seem easy; but |