thwart the happiness of the young, and not in the over-drawn and melodramatic portrait in which he delineates his father: "A combination and a form indeed, where every god did seem to set his seal to give the world assurance of a man."
In this discussion of the motives that move or restrain Hamlet we have purposely depreciated the subsidiary ones, which also play a part, so as to bring out in greater relief the deeper and effective ones that are of preponderating importance. These, as we have seen, spring from sources of which Hamlet is unaware, and we might summarise the internal conflict of which he is a victim as consisting in a struggle of the ' ' repressed ' ' mental processes to become conscious. The call of duty, which automatically arouses to activity these unconscious processes, conflicts with the necessity for ' ' repressing ' ' then still further; for the more urgent is the need for external action the greater is the effort demanded of the " repressing" forces. Action is paralysed at its very inception, and there is thus produced the picture of causeless inhibition which is so inexplicable both to Hamlet[1] and to readers of the play. This paralysis arises, however, not from physical or moral cowardice, but from that intellectual cowardice, that reluctance to dare the exploration of his inner mind, which Hamlet shares with the rest of the human race.
We have finally to return to the subject with which we started, namely poetic creation, and in this connection to enquire into the relation of Hamlet's conflict to the inner workings of Shakspere's mind. It is here maintained that this conflict is an echo of a similar one in Shakspere himself,[2] as to a greater or less extent it is in all men. It is, therefore, as much beside the point to enquire into Shakspere's conscious intention, moral or otherwise, in the play as it is in the case of most works of genius. The play is the form in which his
- ↑ The situation is perfectly depicted by Hamlet in his cry (Act IV, Sc. 4.):
"I do not know
Why yet I live to say ' This thing 's to do,'
To do't."
Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and means,
With greater insight he could have replaced the word "will" by "pious wish," which, as Loening (Op. cit., S. 246) points out, it obviously means. Curiously enough, Rolfe (Op. cit. p. 23) quotes this very passage in support of Werder's hypothesis that Hamlet was inhibited by the external difficulties of the situation.
- ↑ The view that Shakspere depicted in Hamlet his own inner self is a wide-spread one. See especially Doring, Shakespeare's Hamlet seinem Grundgedanken und Inhalte nach erlautert, 1865; Hermann, Erganzungen und Berichtigungen der hergebrachten ShakespeareBiographic, 1884; Taine, Histoire de la literature anglaise; Vischer, Altes und Neues, 1882, Ht. 3.
