Something noble; and yet, when a sacred duty is still
undone, ought one to be so ready to die? With the same carelessness, and
with that trustfulness which makes us love him, but which is here so
fatally misplaced, he picks up the first foil that comes to his hand,
asks indifferently, 'These foils have all a length?' and begins. And
Fate descends upon his enemies, and his mother, and himself.
But he is not left in utter defeat. Not only is his task at last
accomplished, but Shakespeare seems to have determined that his hero
should exhibit in his latest hour all the glorious power and all the
nobility and sweetness of his nature. Of the first, the power, I spoke
before,[67] but there is a wonderful beauty in the revelation of the
second. His body already labouring in the pangs of death, his mind soars
above them. He forgives Laertes; he remembers his wretched mother and
bids her adieu, ignorant that she has preceded him. We hear now no word
of lamentation or self-reproach. He has will, and just time, to think,
not of the past or of what might have been, but of the future; to forbid
his friend's death in words more pathetic in their sadness than even his
agony of spirit had been; and to take care, so far as in him lies, for
the welfare of the State which he himself should have guided.
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