Hamlet has been called a philosopher whose energy has been paralysed
by too great a range of thought. For the sovereignty of human reason
this is a most dangerous premiss. Do we not owe to the full and free
use of that reason everything great which mankind has created?
History speaks of a thousand heroes (only think of Alexander, of Julius
Caesar, of Frederick the Great!) whose doings convince us that a strong
power of thought and action can go hand in hand, nay, that the latter
cannot be successful without the former.

But, on the other hand, there is a way of thinking with preconceived
supernatural conclusions--or rather, we must call it an absence of
thinking--when men allow themselves to be moved by the circumstances
of a traditional course of thought. Against such intellectual
slavery the great century of the Reformation rose. And the greatest
Humanist, Shakspere, scourges that slavery in the catharsis of his
powerful drama.

Questions of religion were not permitted to be treated on the stage.
But not merely the one deeply intelligent person for whom Shakspere
asks the players to act, and for whom the great master certainly
endeavoured to write--no, the public at large, too, will have
understood that the 'course of thought' which induced Hamlet to forego
action from a subtle refinement of cruelty, was not the course of
thought prevalent on this side of the Channel, and held up, in this
important scene, as that of a hero to be admired.

Hamlet resolved upon keeping out the soul of Nero from his 'firm bosom.'
(What a satire there is in this adjective 'firm'!) He means to be cruel,
but not unnatural; he will 'speak daggers, but use none.' A man who
lets himself be moved by extraneous circumstances is not his own