“The whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes.”
The deep intuition that felt there were more things in heaven and earth than philosophy had ever dreamed, the sore resentment at the unjust discriminations of the world, the over-inquisitive intellect of the fool of nature, horridly shaking his disposition with thoughts beyond the reaches of his soul, the instinctive shrinking from the undiscovered country after death, the broken will forever hankering after action but forever baffled from it, the unfathomable desire for rest, the intense ennui raising sighs so piteous and profound that they seemed to shatter all the bulk,—all these were so brought out as to constitute a revelation of the history of genius diseased by excessive exercise within itself with no external outlets of wholesome activity. This lesson has the greatest significance for the present time, when so many gifted men allow their faculties to spin barrenly in their sockets, incessantly struggling with abstract desires and doubts, wasting the health and strength all away because the spiritual mechanism is not lubricated by outward fruition of its functions, till normal religious faith is made impossible, and at last, in their sterilized and irritable exhaustion, they apotheosize despair, like Schopenhauer, and perpetually toss between the two poles of pessimism and nihilism,—Everything is bad, Everything is nothing! The true moral of the revelation is, Shut off the wastes of an ambitious intellect and a rebellious will by humility and resignation, do the clear duties next your hand, enjoy the simple pleasures of the day with an innocent heart, trusting in the benignant order of the universe, and you shall at last find peace in such an optimistic faith as that illustrated by Leibnitz,—Everything is good, Everything in the infinite degrees of being from vacuity to plenum is centred in God!
It has always been felt that in Hamlet Shakspeare has embodied more of his own inner life than in any other of his characters. Certainly Hamlet is the literary father of the prolific modern brood of men of genius who fail of all satisfactory outward activity because wasting their spiritual peace and force in the friction of an inane cerebral strife and worry. Few appreciate the true teaching or importance of this portrayal. Hamlet said he lacked advancement, and that there was nothing good or bad but thinking made it so, and that were it not that he had bad dreams he could be bounded in a nutshell and count himself king of infinite space. His comments on others were usually contemptuous and satirical. He despised and mocked Polonius, and treated Osric, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern with scorn and sarcasm. And yet, although he vilifies the general crowd and the drossy age, he is clearly sensitive to public opinion and really most anxious to appear well, and unwilling to bear a wounded name. In a word, he represents that class of select and unhappy spirits whose great imaginative sympathy is constantly showing to them themselves reflected in others and others reflected in themselves, the result of the comparisons being personal complacence and social irritability. For they form an estimate of their own superiority which they cannot by action justify to others and get them to ratify. The disparity of their inward power and their outward production annoys them, fixes itself in chronic consciousness, and in the consequent spiritual resistance and fret expends all the energy which if economized and fruitfully directed would remove the evil they resent and bless them with the good they desire. Then they react from the world into cynical bitterness and painful solitude. The empty struggle and misanthropic buzz within exhaust brain and nerves, and initiate a resentful, desponding, suicidal state made up of discordant aspiration and despair. Unable to fulfil themselves happily they madly seek to destroy themselves in order to end their misery. The remedy lies in a secret at once so deep and so transparent that hardly any of the victims ever see it. It is simply to think less pamperingly of themselves and more lovingly of others; cease from resistance, purify their ambition with humble faith, and in a quiet surrender to the Universal allow their drained and exasperated individuality leisure to be replenished and harmonized. Corresponding with a religious attunement of the soul, nervous tissues divinely filled with equalizing vitality and power are the physical ground of contentment with self, nature, mankind, destiny, and God. And the man of genius who has once lost it can gain this combined moral and physical condition only by a modest self-conquest, lowering his excessive exactions, and giving him a fair outlet for his inward desires in productive activity.
Forrest distinguished the wavering of his Hamlet from the indecision of his Macbeth and the promptitude of his Richard, and contrasted their deaths with a luminous marking both fine and bold. Richard, whose selfish intellect and stony heart had no conscience mediating between them, with solid equilibrium and ruthless decision swept directly to his object without pause or question. His death was characterized by convulsions of impotent rage that closed in paralyzing horror. The conscience of Macbeth made him hesitate, weigh, and vacillate until rising passion or foreign influence turned the scale. His death was one of climacteric bravery and frenzied exertion embraced in reckless despair. The intellect of Hamlet set his heart and his conscience at odds, and kept him ever balancing between opposed thoughts and solicitations. He had lost his stable poise, and was continually tipping from central sanity now towards dramatic madness, now towards substantial madness. He died with philosophic resignation and undemonstrative quietude. While all the mutes and audience to the act looked pale and trembled at the tragic chance, he bequeathed the justification of his memory to his dear Horatio, gave his dying voice for the election of Fortinbras, and slowly, as the potent poison quite o’ercrowed his spirit, let his head sink on the bosom of his one friend, and with a long breath faintly whispered,—
“The rest is silence;”—
and then all was done.