Furthermore, Hamlet says in act ii. sc. 2:—'I am but mad north-north-west. When the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handshaw (heronshaw!).' Now, the north-west wind would drive Montaigne back into his native province, Perigord, where, very likely according to Shakspere's view, he ought to have remained with his sham logic. The south wind, on the contrary, brings the able falconer to England. The latter possesses such a penetrating glance for the nature of things as to be able to distinguish the bird (the heronshaw) that is to be pursued from the hawk that has been unhooded and cast.
In the second scene of the fifth act, between Hamlet and Horatio (to the weak-minded Osrick the words spoken there are incomprehensible), the excellent qualities of Laertes are apparently judged. [69] This whole discussion is meant against Montaigne; and in the first quarto the chief points are wanting. Florio calls Montaigne's Essays 'Moral, Political, and Military Discourses.' [70] Osrick praises the qualities of the cavalier who has returned from France; and Hamlet replies that 'to divide him inventorily would dizzy the arithmetic of memory.'
The further, hitherto utterly unexplained, words ('and yet but yaw neither in respect of his quick sail') seem to have reference to the sonnet [71] by which the third book of the Essays is dedicated by Florio to Lady Grey. Montaigne is praised therein under the guise of Talbot's name, who, 'in peace or war, at sea or land, for princes' service, countries' good, sweetly sails before the wind.' In act ii. sc. 2, the north-north-west and the south wind were already alluded to, which are said to influence Hamlet's madness.
The translators and admirers of Montaigne are meant when Hamlet says that 'to make true diction of him, his semblable' must be 'his mirror; and, who else would trace him, his umbrage—nothing more.' That is, one must be Montaigne, or become his absolute admirer, 'his umbrage,' 'his semblable,' in order to do justice to him. The whole scene is full of allusions, easily explainable from the point of view we have indicated. So also, the reference to self-knowledge ('to know himself) —an art which Montaigne never learnt and the 'two weapons' with which he fights, are full of deep meaning.
It was probably no small number of men that took delight in the French essayist. No doubt, the jest of the gravedigger is directed against them, when he says that if the mad Hamlet does not recover his wits in England, it is no great matter there, because there the men are as mad as he.
Montaigne, especially in Essay III. (2) and III. (5), brings forward indecencies of the most shameless kind. We quite bear in mind what period it was when he wrote. Our manners and ideas are totally different from those of the sixteenth century. But what indignation must Shakspere have felt—he who had already created his noblest female characters, Helena and Olivia; and who had sung his paean of love, 'Romeo and Juliet'—when he read the ideas of the French nobleman about love and women! Nowhere, and on no occasion, does Shakspere in his dramas, in spite of phrases which to-day we qualify as obscene ones, lower the ideal of the womanly character—of the ewig Weibliche.
But let us read Montaigne's view: [72]—
'I find that love is nothing else than a thirst of enjoying a desired subject; nor that Venus is anything else but the pleasure of emptying one's seminary vessels, similar to the pleasure which Nature has given us in discharging other parts.'
Now, this significant quality also, of saying indecencies without shame, Hamlet has in common with Montaigne. No character in Shakspere's dramas uses such language as Hamlet; and in this case, let it be observed, it is not used between men, but towards the beloved one! We shall remark upon his relations with Ophelia later on.
The frivolous Montaigne speaks of love as one might do of a good dish to be enjoyed at every degree of age, according to taste and inclination. In Essay III.(4) we learn how, in his youth, 'standing in need of a vehement diversion for the sake of distraction, he made himself amorous by art and study.' Elsewhere he tells what great things he was able, as a young man, to achieve in this line. [73] He, therefore, does not agree with the sage who praises age because it frees us from voluptuousness. [74]