deserves the name of fatalism rather than that of faith in Providence,
because it is not united to any determination to do what is believed to
be the will of Providence. In place of this determination, the Hamlet of
the Fifth Act shows a kind of sad or indifferent self-abandonment, as if
he secretly despaired of forcing himself to action, and were ready to
leave his duty to some other power than his own. _This_ is really the
main change which appears in him after his return to Denmark, and which
had begun to show itself before he went,--this, and not a determination
to act, nor even an anxiety to do so.

For when he returns he stands in a most perilous position. On one side
of him is the King, whose safety depends on his death, and who has done
his best to murder him; on the other, Laertes, whose father and sister
he has sent to their graves, and of whose behaviour and probable
attitude he must surely be informed by Horatio. What is required of him,
therefore, if he is not to perish with his duty undone, is the utmost
wariness and the swiftest resolution. Yet it is not too much to say
that, except when Horatio forces the matter on his attention, he shows
no consciousness of this position. He muses in the graveyard on the
nothingness of life and fame, and the base uses to which our dust
returns, whether it be a court-jester's or a world-conqueror's. He
learns that the open grave over which he muses has been dug for the
woman he loved; and he suffers one terrible pang, from which he gains
relief in frenzied words and frenzied action,--action which must needs
intensify, if that were possible, the fury of the man whom he has,
however unwittingly, so cruelly injured. Yet he appears absolutely
unconscious that he has injured Laertes at all, and asks him:

What is the reason that you use me thus?