All this
force of contrast, and this horror of surprise, were necessary so to
intensify his remorseful regret that he should believe himself for once
in earnest. The speech of the King, "O, he is mad, Laertes," recalls him
to himself, and he at once begins to rave:--
"Zounds! show me what thou'lt do!
Woul't weep? woul't fight? woul't fast? woul't tear thyself?
Woul't drink up eysil? eat a crocodile?"
It is easy to see that the whole plot hinges upon the character of
Hamlet, that Shakespeare's conception of this was the ovum out of which
the whole organism was hatched. And here let me remark, that there is a
kind of genealogical necessity in the character,--a thing not altogether
strange to the attentive reader of Shakespeare. Hamlet seems the natural
result of the mixture of father and mother in his temperament, the
resolution and persistence of the one, like sound timber wormholed and
made shaky, as it were, by the other's infirmity of will and
discontinuity of purpose. In natures so imperfectly mixed it is not
uncommon to find vehemence of intention the prelude and counterpoise of
weak performance, the conscious nature striving to keep up its
self-respect by a triumph in words all the more resolute that it feels
assured beforehand of inevitable defeat in action.
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