If there be now and then an unmannerly rudeness and
bitterness in it, as in the scenes with Polonius and Osrick, we must
remember that Hamlet was just in the condition which spurs men to sallies
of this kind: dissatisfied, at one neither with the world nor with
himself, and accordingly casting about for something out of himself to
vent his spleen upon. But even in these passages there is no hint of
earnestness, of any purpose beyond the moment; they are mere cat's-paws
of vexation, and not the deep-raking ground-swell of passion, as we see
it in the sarcasm of Lear.
The question of Hamlet's madness has been much discussed and variously
decided. High medical authority has pronounced, as usual, on both sides
of the question. But the induction has been drawn from too narrow
premises, being based on a mere diagnosis of the _case_, and not on an
appreciation of the character in its completeness. We have a case of
pretended madness in the Edgar of _King Lear_; and it is certainly true
that that is a charcoal sketch, coarsely outlined, compared with the
delicate drawing, the lights, shades, and half-tints of the portraiture
in Hamlet. But does this tend to prove that the madness of the latter,
because truer to the recorded observation of experts, is real, and meant
to be real, as the other to be fictitious? Not in the least, as it
appears to me.
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