If the strain continued long
enough he would no doubt have become insane.
As well as we can penetrate through this adventitious _nimbus_, we
discover Hamlet to be a person of generous, princely nature, high-minded
and chivalrous. He is cordial to every one, but always succeeds in
asserting the superiority of his position, even in his conversation with
Horatio. If he is mentally sensitive he shows no indication of it. He
never appears shy or reserved, but on the contrary, confident and even
bold. This may be owing to the mental excitement under which he labors;
but the best critics from Goethe down have accredited him with a lack of
resolution; and it is this which produces the catastrophe of the play. He
must have realized, as we all do, that after the scene of the players in
which he "catches the conscience of a king," his life was in great
danger. He should either have organized a conspiracy at once, or fled to
the court of Fortinbras; but he allows events to take their course, and
is controlled by them instead of shaping his own destiny. Instead of
planning and acting he philosophizes.
Of Hawthorne, on the contrary, we know nothing except as a person in a
perfectly normal condition. His wife once said that she had rarely known
him to be indignant, and never to lose his temper.
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