IV.

HAMLET.

In the foregoing sketch of Montaigne our especial object was to point
out the inconsistency of the French writer in advising us to follow
Nature as our guide, yet at the same time maintaining a strict
adherence to tenets and dogmas which qualify the impulses and
inclinations of nature as sinful, and which even declare war against
them.

Let us see how Shakspere incarnates these contrasts in the character
of Hamlet.

He makes the Danish Prince come back from the University of Wittenberg.
There, we certainly may assume, he has become imbued with the new spirit
that then shook the world. We refrain from mentioning it by name,
because the designation we now confer upon it has become a lifeless
word, comprising no longer those free thoughts of the Humanist, for
which Shakspere, in this powerful tragedy, boldly enters the lists.

Hamlet longs to be back to Wittenberg. This desire represents his
inclination towards free, humanistic studies. On the other hand, his
adherence to old dogmatic views can be deduced from the fact of his
being so terribly impressed by the circumstance of his father having
had to die

Unhousel'd, disappointed, unaneled;