the power of will? Certainly his intellect was greater than his will.
"He would have been greater had he been less great." The
"concentration of all the interests that belong to humanity" was in
Hamlet. Except the gifts of serenity and calmness, what did he lack?
And because he was not inwardly serene, Maeterlinck considers him
blind and ignorant. It is strange to connect blindness and ignorance
with a wit of intellectual keenness, an imagination of a poet, and the
unflinching questioning of the philosopher. Maeterlinck says: "Hamlet
thinks much but is by no means wise." How does Hamlet show he had not
the wisdom of life? Maeterlinck, no doubt, would dwell on his varying
moods, his subtle melancholy, his nature baffled by a supernatural
command. If he was not wise how strange he should have said so many
words of truest wisdom both of Life and Death, "If it be now, 'tis not
to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet
it will come; the readiness is all." We feel that Hamlet was "a being
with springs of thought and feeling and action deeper than we can
search." But the elements in his nature could not resolve themselves
into an inner life of calm. Therefore, according to Maeterlinck, he
was not wise, for he could not conquer his inner fatality--destiny in
himself. Maeterlinck's ideas are very beautiful, and he writes
delightfully, but his test of wisdom is questionable, for Hamlet's
thoughts have captured and invaded and influenced the best minds and
experiences of thinkers for centuries, How many a Shakespearean reader
has _felt_ that Hamlet is one of the very wisest of men as well as one
of the most lovable and attractive! Not his ignorance, but his wisdom
has borne the test of study and time. He did not bear the tragedy of
life when the supernatural entered it, with an unshaken soul, but
ourselves and the realities of life become clearer to us, the more we
read his thoughts. If "it is _we_ who are Hamlet," as Hazlitt said, it
is a great tribute to his universality--but a greater one to