may perhaps be found in an unfortunate phrase of Goethe's (who of course
is not responsible for the whole view): 'a lovely, pure and most moral
nature, _without the strength of nerve which forms a hero_, sinks
beneath a burden which it cannot bear and must not cast away.' When this
idea is isolated, developed and popularised, we get the picture of a
graceful youth, sweet and sensitive, full of delicate sympathies and
yearning aspirations, shrinking from the touch of everything gross and
earthly; but frail and weak, a kind of Werther, with a face like
Shelley's and a voice like Mr. Tree's. And then we ask in tender pity,
how could such a man perform the terrible duty laid on him?

How, indeed! And what a foolish Ghost even to suggest such a duty! But
this conception, though not without its basis in certain beautiful
traits of Hamlet's nature, is utterly untrue. It is too kind to Hamlet
on one side, and it is quite unjust to him on another. The 'conscience'
theory at any rate leaves Hamlet a great nature which you can admire and
even revere. But for the 'sentimental' Hamlet you can feel only pity not
unmingled with contempt. Whatever else he is, he is no _hero_.

But consider the text. This shrinking, flower-like youth--how could he
possibly have done what we _see_ Hamlet do? What likeness to him is
there in the Hamlet who, summoned by the Ghost, bursts from his
terrified friends with the cry:

Unhand me, gentlemen!
By heaven, I'll make a ghost of him that lets me;

the Hamlet who scarcely once speaks to the King without an insult, or to
Polonius without a gibe; the Hamlet who storms at Ophelia and speaks
daggers to his mother; the Hamlet who, hearing a cry behind the arras,