If we must draw a moral from Hamlet, it would seem to be, that Will is
Fate, and that, Will once abdicating, the inevitable successor in the
regency is Chance. Had Hamlet acted, instead of musing how good it would
be to act, the king might have been the only victim. As it is, all the
main actors in the story are the fortuitous sacrifice of his
irresolution. We see how a single great vice of character at last draws
to itself as allies and confederates all other weaknesses of the man, as
in civil wars the timid and the selfish wait to throw themselves upon the
stronger side.
"In Life's small things be resolute and great
To keep thy muscles trained: know'st thou when Fate
Thy measure takes? or when she'll say to thee,
'I find thee worthy, do this thing for me'?"
I have said that it was doubtful if Shakespeare had any conscious moral
intention in his writings. I meant only that he was purely and primarily
poet. And while he was an English poet in a sense that is true of no
other, his method was thoroughly Greek, yet with this remarkable
difference,--that, while the Greek dramatists took purely national themes
and gave them a universal interest by their mode of treatment, he took
what may be called cosmopolitan traditions, legends of human nature, and
nationalized them by the infusion of his perfectly Anglican breadth of
character and solidity of understanding.
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