From The Library of Literary Criticism of English and American Authors, ed. Charles Wells Moulton, 8 vols. (London: Moulton Publishing, 1901), 1: 500-07.
HAMLET
1602-3
The | Tragicall Historie of | HAMLET | Prince of Denmarke | By William Shakespeare. | As it hath beene diuerse times acted by his Highnesse ser- | uants in the Cittie of London: as also in the two V- | niuersities of Cambridge and Oxford, and else-where | At London printed for N. L. and John Trundell. | 1603. -- TITLE PAGE OF FIRST EDITION, 1603.
It should be like the Never-too-well read Arcadia, where the Prose and Verce (Matter and Words) are like his Mistresses eyes, one still excelling another and without Corivall: or to come home to the vulgars Element, like Friendly Shakespeare's Tragedies, where the Commedian rides, when the Tragedian stands on Tip-toe: Faith it should please all, like Prince Hamlet. But in sadnesse, then it were to be feared he would runne mad: Insooth I will not be moone-sicke to please: nor out of my wits though I displeased all. -- SCOLOKER, ANTHONY, 1604, Daiphantus, or the Passions of Love, Epistle to the Reader, Roxburghe Club reprint, 1818.
September 5 (At "Serra Leona") I sent the interpreter, according to his desier, abord the Hector, whear he brooke fast, and after came abord mee, wher we gave the tragedie of Hamlett. -- (Sept.) 30. Captain Hawkins dined with me, wher my companions acted Kinge Richard the Second. -- 31. I envited Captain Hawkins to a ffishe dinner, and had Hamlet acted abord me: w[hich] I p[er]mitt to keepe my people from idlens and unlawfull games, or sleepe. -- KEELING, CAPTAIN, 1607, Narratives of Voyages towards the North-West in search of a Passage to Cathay and India, 1496 to 1631, ed. Rundall, 1849, p. 231. Journal of the Dragon.
I saw "Hamlet Prince of Denmark" played, but now the old plays began to disgust this refined age, since his Majestie's being so long abroad. -- EVELYN, JOHN, 1661, Diary, Nov. 26.
August 31. -- To the Duke of York's playhouse, . . . and saw "Hamlet," which we have not seen this year before, or more: and mightily pleased with it, but above all, with Betterton, the best part, I believe, that ever man acted. -- PEPYS, SAMUEL, 1668, Diary and Correspondence.
The scene represented by the Players is in wretched verse. This we may, without incurring the denomination of an ill-natured critic, venture to pronounce: that in almost every place where Shakespeare has attempted rhyme, either in the body of his plays, or at the ends of Acts or Scenes, he falls far short of the beauty and force of his blank verse. One would think they were written by two different persons. I believe we may justly take notice that rhyme never arrived at its true beauty, never came to its perfection, in England until long since Shakespeare's time. -- HANMER, SIR THOMAS, 1736, Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, p. 39.
If the dramas of Shakspeare were to be characterized, each by the particular excellence which distinguishes it from the rest, we must allow to the tragedy of "Hamlet" the praise of variety. The incidents are so numerous that the argument of the play would make a long tale. The scenes are interchangeably diversified with merriment and solemnity; with merriment, that includes judicious and instructive observations, and solemnity not strained by poetical violence above the natural sentiments of man. New characters appear from time to time in continual succession, exhibiting various forms of life and particular modes of conversation. The pretended madness of Hamlet causes much mirth; the mournful distraction of Ophelia fills the heart with tenderness, and every personage produces the effect intended, from the apparition that in the first act chills the blood with horror, to the fop in the last, that exposes affectation to just contempt. The conduct is perhaps not wholly secure against objections. The action is indeed for the most part in continual progression, but there are some scenes which neither forward nor retard it. Of the feigned mad ness of Hamlet there appears no adequate cause, for he does nothing which he might not have done with the reputation of sanity. -- JOHNSON, SAMUEL, 1768, General Observations on Shakspeare's Plays.
Englishmen believe in ghosts no more than the Romans did, yet they take pleasure in the tragedy of "Hamlet," in which the ghost of a king appears on the stage. Far be it from me to justify everything in that tragedy; it is a vulgar and barbarous drama, which would not be tolerated by the vilest populace of France, or Italy. Hamlet becomes crazy in the second act, and his mistress becomes crazy in the third; the prince slays the father of his mistress under the pretence of killing a rat, and the heroine throws herself into the river; a grave is dug on the stage, and the grave-diggers talk quodlibets worthy of themselves, while holding skulls in their hands; Hamlet responds to their nasty vulgarities in sillinesses no less disgusting. In the meanwhile another of the actors conquers Poland. Hamlet, his mother, and his father-in-law carouse on the stage, songs are sung at table, there is quarreling, fighting, killing, -- one would imagine this piece to be the work of a drunken savage. But amidst all these vulgar irregularities, which to this day make the English drama so absurd and so barbarous, there are to be found in "Hamlet," by a bizarrerie still greater, some sublime passages, worthy of the greatest genius. It seems as though nature had mingled in the brain of Shakespeare the greatest conceivable strength and grandeur with whatsoever witless vulgarity can devise that is lowest and most detestable. It must be confessed that, amid the beauties which sparkle through this horrible extravagance, the ghost of Hamlet's father has a most striking theatrical effect. It always had a great effect upon the English, -- I mean upon those who are the most highly educated and who see most clearly all the irregularity of their old drama. -- VOLTAIRE, FRANCOIS MARIE AROUET, 1768, Theatre Complet, vol.II, p. 201.
"The time is out of joint, O cursed spite
That ever I was born to set it right!"
In these words, I imagine, is the key to Hamlet's whole procedure, and to me it is clear that Shakespeare sought to depict a great deed laid upon a soul unequal to the performance of it. In this view I find the piece composed throughout. Here is an oak-tree planted in a costly vase, which should have received into its bosom only lovely flowers; the roots spread out, the vase is shivered to pieces. A beautiful, pure, and most moral nature, without the strength of nerve which makes the hero, sinks beneath a burden which it can neither bear nor throw off; every duty is holy to him, --this too hard. The impossible is required of him, -- not the impossible in itself, but the impossible to him. How he winds, turns, agonizes, advances, and recoils, ever reminded, ever reminding himself, and at last almost loses his purpose from his thoughts, without ever again recovering his peace of mind. ... Hamlet is endowed more properly with sentiment than with a character, it is events alone that push him on; and accordingly the piece has somewhat the amplification of a novel. But as it is Fate that draws the plan, as the piece proceeds from a deed of terror, and the hero is steadily driven on to a deed of terror, the work is tragic in its highest sense, and admits of no other than a tragic end. -- GOETHE, JOHANN WOLFGANG, 1778, Wilhelm Meister.
Hamlet cannot be said to have pursued his ends by very warrantable means, and if the poet, when he sacrificed him at last, meant to have enforced such a moral, it is not the worst that can be deduced from the play; for, as Maximus, in Beaumont and Fletcher's "Valentinian," says: --
"Although his justice severe as white as truth,
His way was crooked to it; that condemns him."
The late Dr. Akinside once observed to me, that the conduct of Hamlet was every way unnatural and indefensible, unless he were to be regarded as a young man whose intellects were in some degree impaired by his own misfortunes; by the death of his father, the loss of expected sovereignty, and a sense of shame resulting from the hasty and incestuous marriage of his mother. I have dwelt the longer on this subject because Hamlet seems to have been hitherto regarded as a hero not undeserving the pity of the audience; and because no writer on Shakspeare has taken the pains to point out the immoral tendency of his character. -- STEEVENS, GEORGE, 1718, The Plays of William Shakspeare, vol. x.
The character is consistent. Hamlet is exhibited with good dispositions, and struggling with untoward circumstances. The contest is interesting. As he endeavours to act aright we approve and esteem him. But his original constitution, renders him unequal to the contest: he displays the weaknesses and imperfections to which his peculiar character is liable, he is unfortunate, his misfortunes are in some measure occasioned by his weakness: he thus becomes an object not of blame, but of genuine and tender regret. -- RICHARDSON, WILLIAM, 1783, Some of Shakespeare's Remarkable Characters.
"Hamlet" was at first written by Shakespeare as a brief sketch; slowly, by degrees, it was amplified. With what love the poet did this, the work itself shows: it contains reflections upon life, the dreams of youth, partly philosophical, partly melancholy, such as Shakespeare himself (rank and situation put out of view) may have had. Every still soul loves to look into this calm sea in which is mirrored the universe of humanity, of time and eternity. The only piece, perhaps, which the pure sensus humanitatis has written, and yet a tragedy of Destiny, of dark, awful Fate. -- HERDER, JOHANN GOTTFRIED, l800? Literatur und Kunst.
"Hamlet" is single in its kind: a tragedy of thought inspired by continual and never satisfied meditation on human destiny and the dark perplexity of the events of this world, and calculated to call forth the very same meditation in the minds of the spectators. This enigmatical work resembles those irrational equations in which a fraction of unknown magnitude always remains, that will in no manner admit of solution. Much has been said, much written on this piece, and yet no thinking man who anew expresses himself on it will, in his view of the connection and the signification of all the parts entirely coincide with his predecessors. . . . Respecting Hamlet's character I cannot, according to the poet's views as I understand them, pronounce altogether so favourable a sentence as Goethe's. -- SCHLEGEL, AUGUSTUS WILLIAM, 1809, Dramatic Art and Literature, tr. Black.
I see no reason to think that if the play of "Hamlet" were written over again by some such writer as Banks or Lillo, retaining the process of the story, but totally omitting all the poetry of it, all the divine features of Shakespeare, his stupendous intellect; and only taking care to give us enough of passionate dialogue which Banks or Lillo were never at a loss to furnish; I see not how the effect could be much different upon an audience, nor how the actor has it in his power to represent Shakespeare to us differently from his representation of Banks or Lillo. -- LAMB, CHARLES, 1810? The Tragedies of Shakespeare.
Hamlet is a name, his speeches and sayings but the idle coinage of the poet's brain. What then, are they not real? They are as real as our own thoughts. Their reality is in the reader's mind. It is we who are Hamlet. This play has a prophetic truth, which is above that of history. Whoever has become thoughtful and melancholy through his own mishaps or those of others whoever has borne about with him the clouded brow of reflection, and thought himself "too much i'th' sun," whoever has seen the golden lamp of day dimmed by envious mists rising in his own breast, and could find in the world before him only a dull blank with nothing left remarkable in it; whoever has known "the pangs of despised love, the insolence of office, or the spurns which patient merit of the unworthy takes," he who has felt his mind sink within him, and sadness cling to his heart like a malady, who has had his hopes blighted and his youth staggered by the apparitions of strange things; who cannot be well at ease, while he sees evil hovering near him like a spectre, whose powers of actions have been eaten up by thought, he to whom the universe seems infinite, and himself nothing; whose bitterness of souls makes him careless of consequences, and who goes to a play as his best resource to shove off, to a second remove, the evils of life by a mock representation of them -- this is the true Hamlet. -- HAZLITT, WILLIAM, 1817-69, Characters of Shakespear's Plays, p. 74.
I believe the character of Hamlet may be traced to Shakspere's deep and accurate science in mental philosophy. Indeed, that this character must have some connection with the common fundamental, laws of our nature may be assumed from the fact, that Hamlet has been the darling of every country in which the literature of England has been fostered. -- COLERIDGE, SAMUEL TAYLOR, 1818, Lectures and Notes on Shakspere, ed. Ashe, p. 343.
"Hamlet" is not the finest of Shakspeare's dramas; "Macbeth," and, I think, "Othello" also, are, on the whole, superior to it: but it perhaps contains the most remarkable examples of its author's most sublime beauties, as well as of his most glaring defects. Never has he unveiled with more originality, depth, and dramatic effect the inmost state of a mighty soul; never also, has he yielded with greater unrestraint to the terrible or burlesque fancies of his imagination, and to the abundant intemperance that is characteristic of a mind without any selection, and which delights to render them striking by a strong, ingenious, and unexpected expression without caring to give them a pure and natural form. -- GUIZOT, FRANCOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME, 1821-52, Shakspeare and His Times, p. 174.
"Hamlet" is not the most admirable of Shakespeare's works; but Shakespeare is most admirable in "Hamlet." -- BOERNE, L., 1829, Gesammelte Schriften, Dram. Blaetter, p. 172.
Ophelia -- poor Ophelia! O, far too soft, too good, too fair to be cast among the briers of this working-day world, and fall and bleed upon the thorns of life! What shall be said of her ? for eloquence is mute before her! Like a strain of sad sweet music which comes floating by us on the wings of night and silence, and which we rather feel than hear--like the exhalation of the violet dying even upon the sense it charms -- like the snow-flake dissolved in air before it has caught a stain of earth -- like the light serf severed from the billow, which a breath disperses -- such is the character of Ophelia: so exquisitely delicate, it seems as if a touch would profane it; so sanctified in our thoughts by the last and worst of human woes, that we scarcely dare to consider it too deeply. The love of Ophelia, which she never once confesses, is like a secret which we have stolen from her, and which ought to die upon our hearts as upon her own. Her sorrow ask not words but tears; and her madness has precisely the same effect that would be produced by the spectacle of real insanity, if brought before us: we feel inclined to turn away, and veil our eyes in reverential pity and too painful sympathy. -- JAMESON, ANNA BROWNELL, 1832, Characteristics of Women.
If Shakespeare's "Hamlet" is to be characterized in a word, it is the tragedy of the Nothingness of Reflection, or, as even this phrase may be varied, it is the tragedy of the Intellect.... Next to "Faust," "Hamlet" is the profoundest, boldest, most characteristic tragedy that has ever been written. -- GANS, EDUARD, 1834, Vermischte Schriften, vol. II, p. 270.
"Hamlet," that tragedy of maniacs, this Royal Bedlam in which every character is either crazy or criminal, in which feigned madness is added to real madness, and in which the grave itself furnishes the stage with the skull of a fool; in that Odeon of shadows and spectres where we hear nothing but reveries, the challenge of sentinels, the screeching of the night-bird and the roaring of the sea. -- DE CHATEAUBRIAND, FRANCOIS RENE, VISCOMTE, 1837, Sketches of English Literature, vol. I, p. 274.
If, in all Shakspeare's pieces, it is necessary to dig deep before we can reach to the lowest foundation on which the dramatic edifice is raised, this is the case especially in the present one. Every fresh commentator who studies and writes about "Hamlet," goes deeper and further than his predecessors, and thinks he has reached to the true foundation which nevertheless, lies all the while still deeper and far beyond his researches. This perhaps will be the fate also of my own speculations. However, I shall not be deterred by such a prospect, but comfort myself rather with the consoling certainty it affords of the surpassing fulness and the ever freshly-springing fertility of human genius. -- ULRICI, HERMANN, 1839, Shakspeare's Dramatic Art, p. 213.
Yes, Germany is Hamlet! Lo!
Upon her ramparts every night
There stalks in silence, grim and slow,
Her buried Freedom's steel-clad sprite
Beck'ning the warders watching there,
And to the shrinking doubter saying:
"They've dropt fell poison in mine ear,
Draw thou the sword! I no more delaying!"
-- FREILIGRATH, FERDINAND, 1844, April, tr. Wister.
There is no drama, as all the world knows, upon which so much has been written as Shakespeare's "Hamlet." Quick-witted heads (Herr Rotscher's excepted) have all had their say about it. After all sorts of fashions lofty, profound, radical superficial, polished, crude, desultory (Herr Rotscher's lucubrations not excepted), it has been aestheticised about, romanced about, dogmatized about, bemastered, berated, cut up, quibbled at, be-Hegeled, and be-Rotschered. A critical tower of Babel of amazing height and breadth has been reared, and for the same purpose as is in the Scripture: to scale celestial heights, and, as people see, with the same result. The celestial heights remain unscaled. A glib little sophomore (Schulfuchs) clambering up over the shoulders of Goethe, Cans, Tieck, and others, has reached the loftiest pinnacle of the tower, and there he is waving high in the air a school-programme with the device "The Nothingness of Reflection," but showing only the nothingness of his own reflection; for his motto assumes that the all-powerful imagination of Shakespeare was impregnated by a miserable scholastic abstraction that has not virility enough to engender anything. -- KLEIN, L., 1846, Berliner Modenspiegel.
No work of Shakespeare's is truly more clear in its design than this, although none, if we except the sonnets, has been so long and so entirely misunderstood. . . . The soliloquies of this "prince of speculative philosophy" are masterpieces of reflection, in which Shakespeare had recourse to the most profound depths of his wisdom; and the intricacies of his subtle thoughts mock the profundity of Scandinavian mysteries. -- GERVINUS, G. G., 1849-62, Shakespeare Commentaries, tr. Bunnètt, pp. 550, 567.
From the rich troop of his heroes Shakespeare has chosen Hamlet as the exponent, to the spectators and to posterity of all that lay nearest to his own heart. It is Hamlet to whom Shakespeare has confided his confession of faith as an artist. -- KREYSSIG, F., 1858, Vorlesungen über Shakespeare, vol. II, p. 235.
Two marvellous Adams, we have just said, are the man of AEschylus, Prometheus, and the man of Shakespeare, Hamlet. Prometheus is action. Hamlet is hesitation. In Prometheus, the obstacle is exterior; in Hamlet it is interior. In Prometheus, the will is securely nailed down by nails of brass and cannot get loose; besides, it has by its side two watchers, Force and Power. In Hamlet the will is more tied down yet, it is bound by previous meditation, the endless chain of the undecided. Try to get out of yourself if you can! What a Gordian knot is our reverie! Slavery from within, that is slavery indeed. Scale this enclosure, "to dream!" escape, if you can, from this prison, "to love!" the only dungeon is that which walls conscience in. Prometheus, in order to be free, has but a bronze collar to break and a god to conquer; Hamlet must break and conquer himself. Prometheus can raise himself upright, if he only lifts a mountain; to raise himself up, Hamlet must lift his own thoughts. If Prometheus plucks the vulture from his breast, all is said, Hamlet must tear Hamlet from his breast. Prometheus and Hamlet are two naked spleens; from one runs blood, from the other doubt. -- HUGO VICTOR, 1864, William Shakespeare, tr. Baillot, p. 195.
There would not be such a difference of opinion about this tragedy, and especially about the hero of it, were it only borne in mind that it is a tragedy written simply for the stage. But how has the poor prince been taken to task the last ten years! He could not help it that things went all askew in Germany in 1848. "Hamlet is Germany" in a most indubitable sense, in that the German attempts at elucidating "Hamlet" are the contemporaneous history of the German mind in miniature. -- HEBLER, C., 1864, Aufstäze über Shakespeare, p. 83.
If a dramatist wished to represent one of his persons as feigning madness, that assumed condition would be naturally desired by the writer to be as like as possible to the real affliction. If the other persons associated with him could at once discover that the madness was put on, of course the entire action would be marred, and the object for which the pretended madness would be designed would be defeated by the discovery. How consummate must be the poet's art who can have so skilfully described, to the minutest symptoms, the mental malady of a great mind as to leave it uncertain to the present day, even among learned physicians versed in such maladies, whether Hamlet's madness was real or assumed. -- WISEMAN, NICHOLAS PATRICK STEPHEN, 1865, William Shakespeare, p. 41.
It is a curious fact that in this struggle "Hamlet," the very play the subject of which came to England from, or at least through, France, is always found in the vanguard. Whenever Shakespeare is spoken of, he is styled the author of "Hamlet," "Hamlet" being to a certain extent regarded as the embodiment not only of Shakespeare, but of the English drama in general. -- ELZE, KARL, 1865, Essays on Shakespeare, tr. Schmitz. p. 194.
"Hamlet," which has never been fitly and perfectly played and never will be and never can be, "Hamlet" the intranslatable, "Hamlet" that twenty volumes of notes scarcely elucidate -- "Hamlet" is Shakespeare, as the "Misanthrope" is Moliere. -- CHASLES, PHILARÈTE, 1867, Etudes Contemporaines, p. 101.
Let us put aside altogether the idea that Hamlet, with his delays, was, in the mind of the poet, the type of the German race. In the first place, Hamlet is not German; he is a Dane, which is not the same thing; ask the Danes of the present day. -- COURDAVEAUX, V., 1867, Caractères et Talents. Études sur la Littérature Ancienne et Moderne, p. 305.
Notwithstanding the wonderful manner in which Shakespeare has sublimated the material, the stuff of the old legend, there yet remains something of its original rudeness, and must always remain, because the fruit never can disown the soil out of which it has sprung. -- BODENSTEDT, FRIEDRICH, 1870, Introduction to Translation of Hamlet, p. viii.
If we must draw a moral from Hamlet it would seem to be, that Will is Fate, and that, Will once abdicating, the inevitable successor in the regency is Chance. Had Hamlet acted, instead of musing how good it would be to act, the king might have been the only victim. As it is, all the main actors in the story are the fortuitous sacrifice of his irresolution. We see how a single great vice of character at last draws to itself as allies and confederates all other weaknesses of the man, as in civil wars the timid and the selfish wait to throw themselves upon the stronger side. -- LOWELL, JAMES RUSSELL, 1868-90, Shakespeare Once More, Prose Works. Riverside ed., vol. III, p. 91. Hamlet is Shakspeare, and, at the close of this gallery of portraits which have all some features of his own, Shakspeare has painted himself in the most striking of all. --TAINE, H. A., 1871, History of English Literature, tr. Van Laun, vol. I, bk. ii, ch. iv, p. 340.
Shakespeare carefully avoids the appearance of everything sketchy, rectilineal, hurried. The branch ramifies. The situation is hollowed out. -- LUDWIG, OTTO, 1872, Shakespeare-Studien, p. 138.
That it is not the piece itself particularly which impresses the public is evident from the fact, that for several decades the play has been given in different places in different shapes. Every one who has undertaken to alter the piece has picked out such parts as he considered especially effective, and left out other portions. . . . The fact that a piece has admitted of so many alterations shows how very loosely it is constructed. -- BENEDIX, RODERICH, 1873, Die Shakespearomanie, p. 289.
In no other piece has Shakespeare employed in such measure all the means of his art. The earlier acts are among the most powerful in all dramatic literature. The epic ductus of the last two must not he considered as a defect. We find the same mode of composition in his other dramas. -- GRIMM, HERMAN, 1875, Hamlet, Preussische Jahrbücher, April, p. 398.
In "Hamlet" alone, the most marvellously true as it is the most marvellously profound example of Shakspere's power of characterisation, the central character is conceived on a far broader basis than is furnished by the action of the play. In reading this tragedy, or seeing it acted on the stage, the plot is forgotten in the hero. It is as if Hamlet were pausing, not before the deed which he is in reality hesitating to perform -- and which is neither a great nor a difficult one -- but before action in general. This one necessity proves too heavy for Hamlet to bear, the acorn -- to use Goethe's simile -- bursts the vessel in which it has been planted, and Hamlet succumbs beneath the fardel which is imposed on all humanity. -- WARD, ADOLPHUS WILLIAM, 1875-99, A History of English Dramatic Literature, vol. II, p. 294.
Not the faintest streak of Humor appears in this tragedy to reconncile us with the drift of it. -- WEISS, JOHN, 1876, Wit, Humor, and Shakespeare, p. 159.
No one of mortal mould (save Him, "whose blessed feet were nailed for our advantage to the bitter cross") ever trod this earth, commanding such absorbing interest as this Hamlet, this mere creation of a poet's brain. No syllable that he whispers, no word let fall by any one near him, but is caught and pondered as no words ever have been, except of Holy Writ. Upon no throne built by mortal hands has ever "beat so fierce a light" as upon that airy fabric reared at Elsinore. -- FURNESS, HORACE HOWARD, 1877, ed., New Variorum Shakespeare, Hamlet, p. xii.
Every change in the text of "Hamlet" has impaired its fitness for the stage and increased its value for the closet in exact and perfect proportion. Now, this is not a matter of opinion -- of Mr. Pope's opinion or Mr. Carlyle's; it is a matter of fact and evidence. Even in Shakespeare's time the actors threw out his additions; they throw out these very same additions in our own. The one especial speech, if any one such especial speech there be, in which the personal genius of Shakespeare soars up to the very highest of its height and strikes down to the very deepest of its depth, is passed over by modern actors; it was cut away by Hemmings and Condell. We may almost assume it as certain that no boards have ever echoed -- at least, more than once or twice -- to the supreme soliloquy of Hamlet. Those words which combine the noblest pleading ever proffered for the rights of human reason with the loftiest vindication ever uttered of those rights, no mortal ear within our knowledge has ever heard spoken on the stage. A convocation even of all priests could not have been more unhesitatingly unanimous in its rejection than seems to have been the hereditary verdict of all actors. It could hardly have been found worthier of theological than it has been found of theatrical condemnation. Yet, beyond all question, magnificent as is that monologue on suicide and doubt which has passed from a proverb into a byword, it is actually eclipsed and distanced at once on philosophic and on poetical grounds by the later soliloquy on reason and resolution. -- SWINBURNE, ALGERNON CHARLES, 1880, A Study of Shakespeare, p. 164.
Highly educated, possessed of a vivid imagination, his intellect is continually at war with his heart, and while the latter impels him to action, the stronger influence of his mind controls him, and he remains inert.... With him it is thought that produces doubt, and the idea of Shakspere as represented in "Hamlet" seems to be "the prevalence of thought over the faculty of action." -- SALVINI, TOMMASO, 1881, Impressions of Some Shaksperean Characters, Century Magazine, vol. 23, p. 112.
"Hamlet" is the greatest creation in literature that I know of though there may be elsewhere finer scenes and passages of poetry. Ugolino and Paolo and Francesca in Dante equal anything anywhere. It is said that Shakespeare was such a poor actor that he never got beyond his ghost in this play, but then the ghost is the most real ghost that ever was. The Queen did not think that Ophelia committed suicide, neither do I .-- TENNYSON, ALFRED, LORD, 1883, Some Criticisms on Poets, Memoir by His Son, vol. II, p. 291.
"Hamlet" has given the name of Denmark a world-wide renown. Of all Danish men, there is only one who can be called famous on the largest scale; only one with whom the thoughts of men are for ever busied in Europe, America, Australia, aye, even in Asia and Africa, wherever European culture has made its way, and this one never existed, atany rate in the form in which he has become known to the world. Denmark has produced several men of note -- Tycho Brahe, Thorvaldsen, and Hans Christian Andersen -- but none of them has attained a hundredth part of Hamlet's fame. The "Hamlet" literature is comparable in extent to the literature of one of the smaller European peoples -- the Slovaks, for instance. -- BRANDES, GEORGE, 1898, William Shakespeare, A Critical Study, vol. I, p. 2.
"Hamlet" was the only drama by Shakespeare that was acted in his lifetime at the two Universities. It has since attracted more attnetion from actors, play-goers, and readers of all capacities than any other of Shakespeare's plays. Its world-wide popularity from its author's day to our own, when it is as warmly welcomed in the theatres of France and Germany as in those of England and America, is the most striking of the many testimonies to the eminence of Shakespeare's dramatic instinct. At a first glance there seems little in the play to attract the uneducated or the unreflecting. . . . It is the intensity of interest which Shakespeare contrives to excite in the character of the hero that explains the position of the play in popular esteem. The play's unrivalled power of attraction lies in the pathetic fascination exerted on minds of almost every calibre by the central figure -- a high-born youth of chivalric instincts and finely developed intellect, who, when stirred to avenge in action a desperate private wrong, is foiled by introspective workings of the brain that paralyse the will. -- LEE, SIDNEY, 1898, A Life of William Shakespeare, pp. 224, 225.
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