Shakspeare's Hamlet - 1848 Author:Edward Strachey Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: sleeping, or a praying man; and when to this instinctive feeling are united Hamlet's undoubted reluctance to shed his uncle's blood, even as the just avenger... more » of his father's murder, and his habitual disposition to procrastinate, and put off action of every kind, these motives are enough to stay his hand for the present. And to excuse his procrastination to himself, and also to gratify that inclination 'to unpack his heart with words' which impels every man who, having deep thoughts and strong feelings, does not carry them out by action, he falls into language which, if he meant what he said, would certainly be as horrible and infernal as Dr. Johnson and others have called it. The commentators show, that this thought of killing an enemy under circumstances that might destroy his soul at the same time, has not only been adopted by more than one of Shakspeare's dramatic contemporaries, but is said to have been really uttered and acted upon. And this may warn us not to think the words mere pretext, even in Hamlet's case. Though assuredly Hamlet would not have deliberately done anything to cause his uncle's damnation, he gratifies his bitter hatred by saying that he desires, and will contrive it: he gives way (as I have observed on another occasion) to evil inclinations, instead of strictly restraining them, because he feels that they are not so bad, that is, so strong, as to lead to guilt of action. To avenge his father's murder with his own hand, is, under all the circumstances of country, age, form of government, and social condition, in which Shakspeare has laid the scene of the play, a judicial act required of him by the strictest laws of public and private duty: but with the universal infirmity and sinfulness of human nature, he mixes up more or less of bad feelings with the ...« less