"Nature, nature, sir!" cried Goethe; "nothing so natural as Shakspeare's men. Alas! how can our age form a judgment as to what is natural; we who from youth upwards feel everything within us, and see everything in others, laced up and decorated? I am often ashamed before Shakspeare, for it happens that at the first glance I think to myself, I should have done differently; but soon I perceive that I am a poor sinner, that nature prophesies through Shakspeare, and that my men are soap-bubbles blown from romantic fancies."
"I must confess," said Anna, "that I do not know much about the poetry; but the interest of the story never flagged for a moment."
"And yet there seemed to be no action, properly so called," interposed a young man near Goethe; "but only a development of the strange character of Hamlet."
"You are right," answered Goethe; "Shakspeare's plots, as they are called, are no plots. All his plays turn upon the hidden point which no philosopher has yet seen and defined, in which the peculiarity of our Ego, the pretended freedom of our will, clashes with the necessary course of the whole."
"I think it is very unsatisfactory," said Rahel, in her blunt way, "not to know so much at the end of a play as whether the hero was really in love or not. Was Hamlet in love with Ophelia, Wolfgang?"
Alide started as though she herself had been the object of her sister's inquiry. There was a general smile at the abruptness of the question, and Goethe himself seemed rather disconcerted.
"My clever little Mademoiselle Rahel," said he, at last, "you have hit upon the most vexed question concerning our melancholy hero. I believe that scarcely any two readers of Shakspeare have precisely the same idea in regard to Hamlet's feeling for Ophelia. In regard to hers for him, in spite of the exquisite delicacy and modesty of her character, there can, unfortunately for her, be no doubt."
Why did Alide feel as if a loved hand had struck her a sudden blow? "But you do not answer me,—what is your opinion?" persisted Rahel.
"My opinion," answered he, after a brief pause, "is that he sincerely loved her—before the opening of the play. She was the sweetheart of his boyhood, the companion of his hours of recreation. But from the moment that his capacities are disclosed to him by the revelation from another world, he is bound by the highest duty of man—that which he owes himself—to discard everything that can cramp or impede the development of his own nature, and the fulfilment of the sacred office to which he is called. The beauty and sweetness of Ophelia's character cannot be exaggerated, yet she is no mate for Hamlet. He simply outgrows her; or rather, in binding himself to her, he had underestimated his own powers, and after these have been supernaturally revealed to him it is impossible for him to return to his earlier position. His heart remains true to her, but his whole intellectual nature has gone beyond her."
"On one point I cannot agree with you," answered the young man who had previously spoken: "I think Ophelia was the proper wife for Hamlet. Her character had all the grace, lightness, sentiment, and simplicity which his lacked, and only she, to my thinking, could have saved him, if he had but seen it in time, from the sombre madness and melancholy which ultimately destroyed him."