:

N° 100.

T

SATURDAY, April 22. 1780.

HE view of Hamlet's character exhibited in my last number, may, perhaps, serve to explain a difficulty which has always occur. red both to the reader and the spectator, on perceiving his madness, at one time, put on the appearance, not of fiction, but of reality; a difficulty by which some have been induced to suppose the distraction of the prince a strange unaccountable mixture, throughout, of real infanity and counterfeit disorder.

The distraction of Hamlet, however, is clearly affected through the whole play, always subject to the controul of his reason, and subservient to the accomplishment of his designs. At the grave of Ophelia, indeed, it exhibits fome temporary marks of a real diforder. His mind, fubject from Nature to all the weakness of sensibility, agitated by the incidental misfortune of Ophelia's death, amidst the dark and permanent impression of his revenge, is thrown for a while off its poise, and, in the paroxyfm of the moment, breaks forth

into that extravagant rhapsody which he utters to Laertes.

Counterfeited madness, in a person of the character I have ascribed to Hamlet, could not be so uniformly kept up as not to allow the reigning impressions of his mind to shew themselves in the midst of his affected extravagance. It turned chiefly on his love to Ophelia, which he meant to hold forth as its great subject; but it frequently glanced on the wickedness of his uncle, his knowledge of which it was certainly his business to conceal.

In two of Shakespeare's tragedies are introduced, at the fame time, instances of counterfeit madnefs and of real distraction. In both plays the fame distinction is observed, and the false difcriminated from the true by similar appearances. Lear's imagination constantly runs on the ingratitude of his daughters, and the refignation of his crown; and Ophelia, after she has wasted the first ebullience of her distraction in fome wild and incoherent fentences, fixes on the death of her father for the fubject of her song:

They bore him bare-fac'd on the bier" And will he not come again,

" And will he not come again?" &c.

But

But Edgar puts on a semblance as oppofite as may be to his real fituation and his ruling thoughts. He never ventures on any expref. sion bordering on the subjects of a father's cruelty or a fon's misfortune. Hamlet, in the same manner, were he as firm in mind as Edgar, would never hint any thing in his affected disorder, that might lead to a fufpicion of his having difcovered the villany of his uncle; but his feeling, too powerful for his prudence, often breaks through that disguisc which it seems to have been his original, and ought to have continued his invariable purpose to maintain, till an opportunity should present itself of accomplishing the revenge which he meditated.

Of the reality of Hamlet's love, doubts alfo have been fuggested. But, if that delicacy of feeling, approaching to weakness, for which I contend, be allowed him, the affected abuse, which he suffers at last to grow into scurrility, of his mistress, will, I think, be found not inconsistent with the truth of his affection for her. Feeling its real force, and defigning to play the madman on that ground, he would naturally go as far from the reality as poffible. Had he not loved her at all, or flightly

flightly loved her, he might have kept up. fome appearance of passion amidst his feigned infanity; but really loving her, he would have been hurt by such a resemblance in the, counterfeit. We can bear a downright caricature of our friend much easier than an unfavourable likeness.

It must be allowed, however, that the mo mentous scenes in which he is afterwards engaged, seem to have smothered, if not extinguished, the feelings of his love. His total forgetfulness of Ophelia so soon after her death, cannot easily be justified. It is vain, indeed, to attempt justifying Shakespeare in such particulars. "Time," says Dr Johnfon, "toil'd after him in vain." He seems often to forget its rights, as well in the progress of the paffions, as in the business of the stage. That change of feeling and of refolution which time only can effect, he brings forth within the limits of a single scene. Whether love is to be excited, or resentment al. layed, guilt to be made penitent, or forrow chearful, the effect is frequently produced in a space hardly fufficient for words to express

it.

It has been remarked, that our great poet VOL. III.

X

was

was not fo happy in the delineation of love as of the other passions. Were it not treason against the majesty of Shakespeare, one might observe, that, though he looked with a fort of instinctive perception into the recesses of Nature, yet it was impossible for him to pofsess a knowledge of the refinements of delicacy, or to catch in his pictures the nicer shades of polished manners; and, without this knowledge, love can feldom be introduced on the stage but with a degree of coarseness which will offend an audience of good taste. This observation is not meant to extend to Shakespeare's tragic scenes: in situations of deep distress or violent emotion, the manners are lost in the passions; but if we examine his lovers in the lighter scenes of ordinary life, we shall generally find them trefpaffing against the rules of decorum, and the feelings of delicacy.

That gaiety and playfulness of deportment and of conversation which Hamlet sometimes not only affumes, but seems actually disposed to, is, I apprehend, no contradiction to the general tone of melancholy in his character. That fort of melancholy which is the most genuine as well as the most amiable of any, neither