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And day by day is Science herself endorsing more emphatically than ever Hamlet’s dictum, that “there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” By the aid of imagination our souls confront the present, and, as a rule, the present only.
Look how our young people commit suicide, without asking themselves Hamlet’s question what there is beyond, without a sign of such a question, as though all that relates to the soul and to what awaits us beyond the grave had long been erased in their minds and buried under the sands. Look at our vice, at our profligates.
And again, though Prospero was very likely a philosopher too, even he steals from Hamlet’s mouth such words of the metaphysician as these:— We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep. That this is one of Shakespeare’s most striking characteristics will not be denied by any competent student of his works.
The Christian’s comment on this would be in the words of Hamlet’s reply to Polonius: “God’s bodkin, man! use every man after his desert and who should ’scape whipping?”
‘Hicks,’ said he, ‘I have sent for you, in consequence of certain arrangements which are pending in this house, connected with a marriage.’ ‘With a marriage!’ gasped Hicks, compared with whose expression of countenance, Hamlet’s, when he sees his father’s ghost, is pleasing and composed.
Such marriages are intelligible only if we suppose that the queen had the power of conferring the kingdom upon her consort, which could only happen where maternal descent was, or had been, practised. These marriages with the widow of a king were at one time very common. The familiar example of Hamlet’s uncle is one, who, after murdering his brother, married his wife and became king.
His acceptance by the people, in spite of his crime, is explained if it was the old Danish custom for marriage with the king’s widow to carry the kingdom with it. In Hamlet’s position as avenger, and his curious hesitancy, we have really an indication of the conflict between the old and the new ways of descent. See Frazer, Golden Bough, Part I. The Magic Art, Vol.
Suddenly we are startled by the tramp of a heavy foot, and the clang and rattle of a steel weapon as it strikes upon the ground. A burly voice assails us: “Whither are you going?” Is this Bernardo, wandered from the ramparts in search of the ghost of Hamlet’s father?
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