That flesh is heir to——
Perchance to dream; ay, there’s the rub——
The whips and scorns of time——
The law’s delay, the insolence of office——
The spurns—that patient merit from th’ unworthy takes——
That undiscover’d country, from whose bourne
No traveller returns——?”
Can Voltaire, who has omitted in this short passage all the above striking peculiarities of thought and expression, be said to have given a translation from Shakespeare?
But in return for what he has retrenched from his author, he has made a liberal addition of several new and original ideas of his own. Hamlet, whose character in Shakespeare exhibits the strongest impressions of religion, who feels these impressions even to a degree of superstition, which influences his conduct in the most important exigences, and renders him weak and irresolute, appears in Mr. Voltaire’s translation a thorough sceptic and freethinker. In the course of a few lines, he expresses his doubt of the existence of a God; he treats the priests as liars and hypocrites, and the Christian religion as a system which debases human nature, and makes a coward of a hero:
Dieux justes! S’il en est——