The night-watch on the platform before the Castle of Elsinore, and the appearance of the Ghost to the soldiers and officers there. Then, in contrast to the splendidly-attired courtiers, the blackrobed figure of the Prince, standing apart, a living image of grief, his countenance bespeaking both soul and intellect, but with an expression which seems to say that henceforth joy and he are strangers. Next, his meeting with his father's spirit; the oath upon the sword, with the constant change of place. Then his wild behaviour when, to hide his excitement, he feigns madness. Then the play within the play; the sword-thrust through the arras; the beautiful Ophelia with flowers and straw in her hair; Hamlet with Yorick's skull in his hand; the struggle with Laertes in Ophelia's grave, that grotesque but most significant episode. According to the custom of the time, a dumb show foretold the poisoning in the play, and this fight in the grave is the dumb show which foretells the mortal combat that is soon to take place: both are presently to be swallowed up by the grave in which they stand. Then follows the fencing-scene, during the course of which the Queen dies by the poison which the King destined for Hamlet, and Laertes by the stroke of the poisoned sword also prepared for the Prince, who, with a last great effort, kills the King, and then sinks down poisoned. This wholesale "havock" arranged by the poet, a fourfold lying-in-state, has its gloom broken by the triumphal march of young Fortinbras, which, in its turn, soon changes to a funeral measure. The whole is as effective to the eye as it is great and beautiful.
And now add to this ocular picturesqueness of the play the fascination which it owes to the sympathy Shakespeare has made us feel for its principal character, the impression he has given us of the agonies of a strong and sensitive spirit surrounded by corruption and depravity. Hamlet was by nature candid, enthusiastic, trustful, loving; the guile of others forces him to take refuge in guile; the wickedness of others drives him to distrust and hate; and the crime committed against his murdered father calls upon him from the underworld for vengeance.
His indignation at the infamy around him is heartrending, his contempt for it is stimulating.
By nature he is a thinker. He thinks not only when he is contemplating and planning a course of action, but also from a passionate longing for comprehension in the abstract. Though he is merely making use of the players to unmask the murderer, he gives them apt and profound advice with regard to the practice of their art. When Rosencrantz and Guildenstern question him as to the reason of his melancholy, he expounds to them in words of deep significance his rooted distaste for life.
The feeling produced in him by any strong impression never finds vent in straightforward, laconic words. His speeches never take the direct, the shortest way to express his thoughts. They consist of ingenious, far-fetched similes and witty conceits, apparently remote from the matter in hand. Sarcastic and enigmatical phrases conceal his emotions. This dissimulation is forced upon him by the very strength of his feelings: in order not to betray himself, not to give way to the pain he is suffering, he must smother it in fantastic and boisterous ejaculations. Thus he shouts after having seen the apparition: "Hillo, ho, ho, boy! come, bird, come!" Thus he apostrophises the Ghost: "Well said, old mole! canst work i' the earth so fast?" And therefore, after the play has made the King betray himself, he cries: "Ah, ha! Come, some music! come, the recorders!" His feigned madness is only an intentional exaggeration of this tendency.
The horrible secret that has been discovered to him has upset his equilibrium. The show of madness enables him to find solace in expressing indirectly what it tortures him to talk of directly, and at the same time his seeming lunacy diverts attention from the real reason of his deep melancholy. He does not altogether dissemble when he talks so wildly; given his surroundings, these fantastic and daring sarcasms are a natural enough mode of utterance for the wild agitation produced by the horror that has entered into his life; "though this be madness, yet there is method in't." But the almost frenzied excitement into which he is so often thrown by the action of others subsides at intervals, when he feels the need for mental concentration—a craving which he satisfies in the solitary reflections forming his monologues.
When his passions are roused, he has difficulty in controlling them. It is nervous over-excitement that finds vent when he bids Ophelia get her to a nunnery, and it is in a fit of nervous frenzy that he stabs Polonius. But his passion generally strikes inwards. Constrained as he is, or thinks himself, to employ dissimulation and cunning, he is in a fever of impatience, and is for ever reviling and scoffing at himself for his inaction, as though it were due to indifference or cowardice.
Distrust, that new element in his character, makes him cautious; he cannot act on impulse, nor even speak. "There's ne'er a villain dwelling in all Denmark," he begins; "so great as the King" should be the continuation; but fear of being betrayed by his comrades takes possession of him, and he ends with, "but he's an arrant knave."
He is by nature open-hearted and warm, as we see him with Horatio; he speaks to the sentinel on the platform as to a comrade; he is cordial, at first, to old acquaintances like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern; and he is frank, amiable, kind without condescension, to the troupe of travelling players. But reticence has been suddenly forced upon him by the bitterest, most agonising experiences; no sooner has he put on a mask, so as not to be instantly found out, than he feels that he is being spied upon; even his friends and the woman he loves are on the side of his opponents; and though he believes his life to be threatened, he feels that he must keep silent and wait.
His mask is often enough only of gauze; if only for the sake of the spectators, Shakespeare had to make the madness transparent, that it might not pall.