in order to render wickedness less frequent;' but when Horatio exclaims on the death of his friend,

Now crack'd a noble heart!

we forget the murder of the king, the villainy of Claudius, the guilt of Gertrude; our recollection dwells only on the memory of that 'sweet prince,' the delicacy of whose feelings a milder planet should have ruled, whose gentle virtues should have bloomed through a life of felicity and useful

ness.

Hamlet, from the very opening of the piece, is delineated as one under the dominion of melancholy, whose spirits were overborne by his feelings. Grief for his father's death, and displeasure at his mother's marriage, prey on his mind; and he seems, with the weakness natural to such a disposition, to yield to their controul. He does not attempt to resist or combat these impressions, but is willing to fly from the contest, though it were into the grave.

Oh! that this too too solid flesh would melt, &c.

Even after his father's ghost has informed him of his murder, and commissioned him to avenge it, we find him complaining of that situation in which his fate had placed him:

The time is out of joint; oh! cursed spight,

That ever I was born to set it right!

And afterwards, in the perplexity of his condition, meditating on the expediency of suicide:

To be, or not to be, that is the question.

The account he gives of his own feelings to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, which is evidently spoken in earnest, though somewhat covered with the mist of his affected distraction, is exactly descriptive of a mind full of that weariness of life which is characteristic of low spirits: This goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory,' &c. And, indeed, he expressly delineates his own character as of the kind above-mentioned, when, hesitating on the evidence of his uncle's villainy, he says,

The spirit that I have seen

May be the devil, and the devil hath power

T'assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps,
Out of my weakness and my melancholy,

Abuses me to damn me.

This doubt of the grounds on which our purpose is founded, is as often the effect as the cause of irresolution, which first hesitates, and then seeks out an excuse for its hesitation.

It may, perhaps, be doing Shakspeare no injustice to suppose that he sometimes began a play without having fixed in his mind, in any determined manner, the plan or conduct of his piece. The character of some principal person of the drama might strike his imagination strongly in the opening scenes; as he went on, this character

would continue to impress itself on the conduct as well as the discourse of that person, and, it is possible, might affect the situations and incidents, especially in those romantic or legendary subjects, where history did not confine him to certain unchangeable events. In the story of Amleth, the son of Horwondil, told by Saxo-Grammaticus, from which the tragedy of Hamlet is taken, the young prince, who is to revenge the death of his father, murdered by his uncle Fengo, counterfeits madness, that he may be allowed to remain about the court in safety and without suspicion. He never forgets his purposed vengeance, and acts with much more cunning towards its accomplishment than the Hamlet of Shakspeare. But Shakspeare, wishing to elevate the hero of his tragedy, and at the same time to interest the audience in his behalf, throws around him, from the beginning, the majesty of melancholy, along with that sort of weakness and irresolution which frequently attends it. The incident of the Ghost, which is entirely the poet's own, and not to be found in the Danish legend, not only produces the happiest stage effect, but is also of the greatest advantage in unfolding that character which is stamped on the young prince at the opening of the play. In the communications of such a visionary being, there is an uncertain kind of belief, and a dark unlimited horror, which are aptly suited to display the wavering purpose and varied emotions of a mind endowed with a delicacy of feeling that often shakes its

fortitude, with sensibility that strength.'

overpowers

its

MACKENZIE."

The following observations on the conduct of Hamlet, taken from the lectures on Shakspeare lately delivered at Hamburgh by Mr. George Egestorf, and inserted in the Literary Gazette, appear to me to exhibit uncommon acuteness and profundity of remark, both with regard to Hamlet, and to the object of the poet in the delineation of this remarkable cha

racter.

"Singular it is," he observes, "that so many theories should have been formed respecting the personal character of Hamlet, and that all should fall so far short of it, as drawn by Shakspeare himself, and as the poet has put it into his own mouth in the well-known monologue,

To be, or not to be, &c.

a monologue, in which all is comprised that can make a man exclaim,

How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable,

Seem to me all the uses of this world!

and, at the same time, every consideration summed up that 'must give us pause,' &c.

"In this state of mind, he is too much disgusted with every thing, that the assumed air of kindness in the usurper should be able to make any impression upon him. He is shocked at the evident want of discretion, and at the inconstancy of his mother:

And

Why she would hang on him,

As if increase of appetite had grown

By what it fed on: and yet within a month, &c.

Frailty, thy name is woman!

"After the discovery has been made by the Ghost, and he is convinced of the licentiousness and infidelity of his parent, he exclaims,

O most pernicious woman!

This makes him so doubtful respecting conjugal faith, that his gloomy state of mind even casts a dark shade on the object of his affection-the amiable Ophelia; a shade which is not dispelled until it is too late. That he did not merely feign an attachment to Ophelia, but really loved her, is evident from his conduct at her grave, which, indeed, reminds us of the beautiful lines of Goldsmith:

To give repentance to her lover,

And wring his bosom, is-to die,

"It is worthy of remark that the poet does not once bring Ophelia into the presence of Hamlet during her alienation of mind had Hamlet seen her thus, and had he still remained unmoved by her calamity, of which he must have known his conduct to have been the cause, his want of feeling would have amounted to unnatural hardness of heart, and necessarily have lessened him in our esteem, or have even made us despise and hate him. The harshness of his conversation with her must likewise be ascribed to the state of mind he was in when he encountered her,-immediately after that energetic and important monologue. Subsequently to this, as, for instance, at the representation of the play, his colloquy with her is much more qualified and less severe, though still ironical and sarcastic.

"It is, however, Hamlet's irresolution, his want of firmness, his constantly wavering between a resolve and its execution, his poring and sceptic disposition, as displayed in the abovecited monologue, that the poet intended to display in the personal character of his hero; the danger of a want of stability, which Shakspeare points out to us, a state of mind that is indeed inimical to happiness, and that renders us inadequate to the discharge of the duties of our station in life. Hamlet is not a character of exemplary virtue, and was not designed by the poet to be such; he is, however, perfectly a dramatical character, and engages our attention from the commencement to the conclusion of the representation, which could not be the case if he were a character unfit for representation on the stage. Those who, notwithstanding this, would fain dispute