Just such a crisis, bringing with it the "loss of all his mirth," Shakespeare himself had recently undergone. He had lost in the previous year the protectors of his youth. The woman he loved, and to whom he had looked up as to a being of a rarer, loftier order, had all of a sudden proved to be a heartless, faithless wanton. The friend he loved, worshipped, and adored had conspired against him with this woman, laughed at him in her arms, betrayed his confidence, and treated him with coldness and distance. Even the prospect of winning the poet's wreath had been overcast for him. Truly he too had seen his illusions vanish and his vision of the world fall to ruins.
In his first consternation he had been submissive, had stood defenceless, had spoken words without a sting, had been all mildness and melancholy. But this was not his whole, nor his inmost, nature. In his heart of hearts he knew himself a power—a power! He was incomparably armed, quick and keen of fence, full of wit and indignation, the master of them all, and infinitely greater than his fate. Burrow as they might, "it should go hard but he would delve one yard below their mines." He had suffered many a humiliation; but the revenge which was denied him in real life he could now take incognito through Hamlet's bitter and scathing invectives.
He had seen high-born gentlemen play a princely part in the society of artists, players, men whom public opinion undervalued and contemned. Now he himself would be the high-born gentleman, would show how the truly princely spirit bore itself towards the poor artists, and give utterance to his own thoughts about art, and his conception of its value and significance.
He merged himself in Hamlet; he felt as Hamlet did; he now and then so mingled their identities that, in placing his own weightiest thoughts in Hamlet's mouth, as in the famous "To be or not to be" soliloquy, he made him think, not as a prince, but as a subject, with all the passionate bitterness of one who sees brutality and stupidity lording it in high places. Thus it was that he made Hamlet say—
"For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressors wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despis'd love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin?"
Every one can see that this is felt and thought from below upwards, not from above downwards, and that the words are improbable, almost impossible, in the mouth of the Prince. But they embody feelings and thoughts to which Shakespeare had recently given expression in his own name in Sonnet lxvi.:—
"Tir'd with all these, for restful death I cry;—
As, to behold desert a beggar born,
And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity,
And purest faith unhappily forsworn,
And gilded honour shamefully misplac'd,
And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,
And right perfection wrongfully disgrac'd,
And strength by limping sway disabled,
And art made tongue-tied by authority,
And folly (doctor-like) controlling skill,
And simple truth miscall'd simplicity,
And captive good attending captain ill:
Tir'd with all these, from these would I be gone,
Save that, to die, I leave my love alone."
The bright view of life which had prevailed in his youth was overclouded; he saw the strength of malignity, the power of stupidity, unworthiness exalted, true desert elbowed aside. Existence turned its seamy side towards him. Through what experiences had he not come! How often, in the year that had just passed, must he have exclaimed, like Hamlet in his first soliloquy, "Frailty, thy name is woman!" and how much cause had he had to say, "Let her not walk i' the sun: conception is a blessing; but not as your daughter may conceive." So far had it gone with him that, finding everything "weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable," he thought it monstrous that such an existence should be handed on from generation to generation, and that ever new hordes of miserable creatures should come into existence: "Get thee to a nunnery! Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners?"
The glimpse of high life which he had seen, his relations with the Court, and the gossip from Whitehall and Greenwich which circulated through the town, had proved to him the truth of the couplet—
"Cog, lie, flatter, and face
Four ways in Court to win men grace."