He never
keeps on one tack long enough to get steerage-way, even if, in a nature
like his, with those electric streamers of whim and fancy forever
wavering across the vault of his brain, the needle of judgment would
point in one direction long enough to strike a course by. The scheme of
simulated insanity is precisely the one he would have been likely to hit
upon, because it enabled him to follow his own bent, and to drift with an
apparent purpose, postponing decisive action by the very means he adopts
to arrive at its accomplishment, and satisfying himself with the show of
doing something that he may escape so much the longer the dreaded
necessity of really doing anything at all. It enables him to _play_ with
life and duty, instead of taking them by the rougher side, where alone
any firm grip is possible,--to feel that he is on the way toward
accomplishing somewhat, when he is really paltering with his own
irresolution. Nothing, I think, could be more finely imagined than this.
Voltaire complains that he goes mad without any sufficient object or
result. Perfectly true, and precisely what was most natural for him to
do, and, accordingly, precisely what Shakespeare meant that he should do.
It was delightful to him to indulge his imagination and humor, to prove
his capacity for something by playing a part: the one thing he could not
do was to bring himself to _act_, unless when surprised by a sudden
impulse of suspicion,--as where he kills Polonius, and there he could not
see his victim.
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