_By heaven I'll make a ghost of him that lets me._
Would any other character in Shakespeare have used those words? And,
again, where is Hamlet more Hamlet than when he accompanies with a pun
the furious action by which he compels his enemy to drink the 'poison
tempered by himself'?
Here, thou incestuous, murderous, damn'd Dane,
Drink off this potion. Is thy union here?
Follow my mother.
The 'union' was the pearl which Claudius professed to throw into the
cup, and in place of which (as Hamlet supposes) he dropped poison in.
But the 'union' is also that incestuous marriage which must not be
broken by his remaining alive now that his partner is dead. What rage
there is in the words, and what a strange lightning of the mind!
Much of Hamlet's play with words and ideas is imaginatively humorous.
That of Richard II. is fanciful, but rarely, if ever, humorous. Antony
has touches of humour, and Richard III. has more; but Hamlet, we may
safely assert, is the only one of the tragic heroes who can be called a
humorist, his humour being first cousin to that speculative tendency
which keeps his mental world in perpetual movement. Some of his quips
are, of course, poor enough, and many are not distinctive. Those of his
retorts which strike one as perfectly individual do so, I think, chiefly
because they suddenly reveal the misery and bitterness below the
surface; as when, to Rosencrantz's message from his mother, 'She desires
to speak with you in her closet, ere you go to bed,' he answers, 'We
shall obey, were she ten times our mother'; or as when he replies to
Polonius's invitation, 'Will you walk out of the air, my lord?' with
words that suddenly turn one cold, 'Into my grave.
Pages:
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219