Goethe wrote his _Faust_ in its earliest
form without a thought of the deeper meaning which the exposition of an
age of criticism was to find in it: without foremeaning it, he had
impersonated in Mephistopheles the genius of his century. Shall this
subtract from the debt we owe him? Not at all. If originality were
conscious of itself, it would have lost its right to be original. I
believe that Shakespeare intended to impersonate in Hamlet not a mere
metaphysical entity, but a man of flesh and blood: yet it is certainly
curious how prophetically typical the character is of that introversion
of mind which is so constant a phenomenon of these latter days, of that
over-consciousness which wastes itself in analyzing the motives of action
instead of acting.
The old painters had a rule, that all compositions should be pyramidal in
form,--a central figure, from which the others slope gradually away on
the two sides. Shakespeare probably had never heard of this rule, and, if
he had, would not have been likely to respect it more than he has the
so-called classical unities of time and place. But he understood
perfectly the artistic advantages of gradation, contrast, and relief.
Taking Hamlet as the key-note, we find in him weakness of character,
which, on the one hand, is contrasted with the feebleness that springs
from overweening conceit in Polonius and with frailty of temperament in
Ophelia, while, on the other hand, it is brought into fuller relief by
the steady force of Horatio and the impulsive violence of Laertes, who is
resolute from thoughtlessness, just as Hamlet is irresolute from overplus
of thought.
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