To the doughty friends of Shakspere, this French Knight of the Order of St. Michael, who says [60] that, if his freedom were in the least encroached upon, or 'if the laws under which he lives threatened merely the tip of his finger, he would at once betake himself to any other place to find better ones;' but who yet lets everything around him go out of joint without offering a helping hand for repair, because 'the maintenance of States is probably something beyond our powers of understanding' [61]—verily, to Shakspere's doughty friends, such a specimen of humanity as Montaigne must have been quite a new and strange phenomenon. They were children of an age which achieved great things because its nobler natures willingly suffered death when the ideals of their life were to be realised. In them, the fire of enthusiasm of the first Reformation, of the glorious time of Elizabeth, was still glowing. They energetically championed the cause of Humanism. The sublime conceptions of their epoch were not yet marred by that dark and gloomy set of men whose mischievous members were just beginning to hatch their hidden plans in the most remote manors of England.
The friends of Shakspere well understood the true meaning of Hamlet's words: [62]—'What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven?' [63] They easily seized the gist and point of the answer given to the King's question: [64]—'How fares our cousin Hamlet?' when Hamlet replies:—
Excellent, i' faith; of the chameleon's dish!
Surely, some of them had read the Essay 'On the Inconsistency of our
Actions,' and had smiled at the passage:—
'Our ordinary manner is, to follow the inclination of our appetite—this way, that way; upwards, downwards; even as the wind of the occasion drives us. We never think of what we would have, but at the moment we would have it; and we change like that animal (the chameleon) of which it is said that it takes the colour of the place where it is laid down.' [65]
Shakspere's teaching is, that if the nobler-gifted man who stands at the head of the commonwealth, allows himself to be driven about by every wind of the occasion, instead of furthering his better aims with all his strength and energy of will, the wicked, on their part, will all the more easily carry out their own ends. He therefore makes the King say: [66]—
That we would do,
We should do when we would; for this 'would' changes…
Shakspere's friends understood the allusion contained in the first act, after the apparition of the Ghost, when Hamlet calls for his 'tablets.' They knew that the much-scribbling Montaigne was meant, who, as he avows, had so bad a memory that he could not receive any commission without writing it down in his 'tablets' (tablettes). This defect of his, Montaigne mentions over and over again, and may have been the cause of his many most ludicrous contradictions. [67]
After Hamlet has written down the important fact that 'one may smile, and smile, and be a villain—at least, I am sure it may be so in Denmark,' he exclaims:—'Now to my word!' That 'word' undoubtedly consists of the admonition addressed to him by the Ghost, that Hamlet, after having heard his duty, also should fulfil it—that is:—
'So art thou to revenge, when thou shalt hear.'