The Man Shakespeare | Page 7

analysis of the
character. Coleridge followed with the confession whose truth we shall
see later: "I have a smack of Hamlet myself, if I may say so." But even
if it be admitted that Hamlet is the most complex and profound of
Shakespeare's creations, and therefore probably the character in which
Shakespeare revealed most of himself, the question of degree still
remains to be determined. Is it possible to show certainly that even the
broad outlines of Hamlet's character are those of the master-poet?
There are various ways in which this might be proved. For instance, if
one could show that whenever Shakespeare fell out of a character he
was drawing, he unconsciously dropped into the Hamlet vein, one's
suspicion as to the identity of Hamlet and the poet would be
enormously strengthened. There is another piece of evidence still more
convincing. Suppose that Shakespeare in painting another character did
nothing but paint Hamlet over again trait by trait--virtue by virtue, fault
by fault--our assurance would be almost complete; for a dramatist only
makes this mistake when he is speaking unconsciously in his proper
person. But if both these kinds of proof were forthcoming, and not once
but a dozen times, then surely our conviction as to the essential identity
of Hamlet and Shakespeare would amount to practical certitude.
Of course it would be foolish, even in this event, to pretend that Hamlet
exhausts Shakespeare; art does little more than embroider the fringe of

the garment of life, and the most complex character in drama or even in
fiction is simple indeed when compared with even the simplest of
living men or women. Shakespeare included in himself Falstaff and
Cleopatra, beside the author of the sonnets, and knowledge drawn from
all these must be used to fill out and perhaps to modify the outlines
given in Hamlet before one can feel sure that the portrait is a
re-presentment of reality. But when this study is completed, it will be
seen that with many necessary limitations, Hamlet is indeed a
revelation of some of the most characteristic traits of Shakespeare.
To come to the point quickly, I will take Hamlet's character as analyzed
by Coleridge and Professor Dowden.
Coleridge says: "Hamlet's character is the prevalence of the abstracting
and generalizing habit over the practical. He does not want courage,
skill, will or opportunity; but every incident sets him thinking: and it is
curious, and at the same time strictly natural, that Hamlet, who all the
play seems reason itself, should be impelled at last by mere accident to
effect his object." Again he says: "in Hamlet we see a great, an almost
enormous intellectual activity and a proportionate aversion to real
action consequent upon it."
Professor Dowden's analysis is more careful but hardly as complete. He
calls Hamlet "the meditative son" of a strong-willed father, and adds,
"he has slipped on into years of full manhood still a haunter of the
university, a student of philosophies, an amateur in art, a ponderer on
the things of life and death who has never formed a resolution or
executed a deed. This long course of thinking apart from action has
destroyed Hamlet's very capacity for belief.... In presence of the spirit
he is himself 'a spirit,' and believes in the immortality of the soul. When
left to his private thoughts he wavers uncertainly to and fro; death is a
sleep; a sleep, it may be, troubled with dreams.... He is incapable of
certitude.... After his fashion (that of one who relieves himself by
speech rather than by deeds) he unpacks his heart in words."
Now what other personage is there in Shakespeare who shows these
traits or some of them? He should be bookish and irresolute, a lover of
thought and not of action, of melancholy temper too, and prone to

unpack his heart with words. Almost every one who has followed the
argument thus far will be inclined to think of Romeo. Hazlitt declared
that "Romeo is Hamlet in love. There is the same rich exuberance of
passion and sentiment in the one, that there is of thought and sentiment
in the other. Both are absent and self-involved; both live out of
themselves in a world of imagination." Much of this is true and affords
a noteworthy example of Hazlitt's occasional insight into character, yet
for reasons that will appear later it is not possible to insist, as Hazlitt
does, upon the identity of Romeo and Hamlet. The most that can be
said is that Romeo is a younger brother of Hamlet, whose character is
much less mature and less complex than that of the student-prince.
Moreover, the characterization in Romeo--the mere drawing and
painting--is very inferior to that put to use in Hamlet. Romeo is half
hidden from us in the rose-mist of