This had, indeed, already shown itself at the
death of Polonius,[64] and perhaps at Hamlet's farewell to the King,[65]
but the idea seems now to be constantly present in his mind. 'There's a
divinity that shapes our ends,' he declares to Horatio in speaking of
the fighting in his heart that would not let him sleep, and of his
rashness in groping his way to the courtiers to find their commission.
How was he able, Horatio asks, to seal the substituted commission?
Why, even in that was heaven ordinant,
Hamlet answers; he had his father's signet in his purse. And though he
has a presentiment of evil about the fencing-match he refuses to yield
to it: 'we defy augury: there is special providence in the fall of a
sparrow ... the readiness is all.'
Though these passages strike us more when put together thus than when
they come upon us at intervals in reading the play, they have a marked
effect on our feeling about Hamlet's character and still more about the
events of the action. But I find it impossible to believe, with some
critics, that they indicate any material change in his general
condition, or the formation of any effective resolution to fulfil the
appointed duty. On the contrary, they seem to express that kind of
religious resignation which, however beautiful in one aspect, really
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.
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