Hamlet is an individual, a person, an actual being—and for that reason there is a difference of opinion as to his motives and as to his character. We differ about Hamlet as we do about Cæsar, or about Shakespeare himself.
Hamlet saw the ghost of his father and heard again his fathers voice, and yet, afterward, he speaks of "the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns."
In this there is no contradiction. The reason outweighs the senses. If we should see a dead man rise from his grave, we would not, the next day, believe that we did. No one can credit a miracle until it becomes so common that it ceases to be miraculous.
Types are puppets—controlled from without—characters act from within. There is the same difference between characters and types that there is between springs and water-works, between canals and rivers, between wooden soldiers and heroes.
In most plays and in most novels the characters are so shadowy that we have to piece them out with the imagination.
One waking in the morning sometimes sees at the foot of his bed a strange figure—it may be of an ancient lady with cap and ruffles and with the expression of garrulous and fussy old age—but when the light gets stronger, the figure gradually changes and he sees a few clothes on a chair.
The dramatist lives the lives of others, and in order to delineate character must not only have imagination but sympathy with the character delineated. The great dramatist thinks of a character as an entirety, as an individual.
I once had a dream, and in this dream I was discussing a subject with another man. It occurred to me that I was dreaming, and I then said to myself: If this is a dream, I am doing the talking for both sides—consequently I ought to know in advance what the other man is going to say. In my dream I tried the experiment. I then asked the other man a question, and before he answered made up my mind what the answer was to be. To my surprise, the man did not say what I expected he would, and so great was my astonishment that I awoke.
It then occurred to me that I had discovered the secret of Shakespeare. He did, when awake, what I did when asleep—that is, he threw off a character so perfect that it acted independently of him.
In the delineation of character Shakespeare has no rivals. He creates no monsters. His characters do not act without reason, without motive.