“I’ll call thee Hamlet,
King, father, royal Dane,”
so unlike in its order to what would have been in any other mind, as also to the two expressions in the speech so delicately characteristic,
“The glimpses of the moon.”
and
“With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls.”
I think I have in myself improved, that I feel more than ever what Macready does not, the deep calmness, always apparent beneath the delicate variations of this soul’s atmosphere.
“The readiness is all.”
This religion from the very first harmonizes all these thrilling notes, and the sweet bells, even when most jangled out of tune, suggest all their silenced melody.
From Hamlet I turned to Timon and Lear; the transition was natural yet surprising, from the indifference and sadness of the heaven-craving soul to the misanthropy of the disappointed affections and wounded trust. Hamlet would well have understood them both, yet what a firmament of spheres lies between his “pangs of despised love,” and the anguish of Lear.
“O Regan, Goneril!
“Your old kind father, whose frank heart gave you all—
“O that way madness lies, let me shun that,
“No more of that,
*****
“I tax you not, you elements, with unkindness;
“I never gave you kingdom, called you children.”
*****
It rends the heart only; no grief would be possible from a Hamlet, which would not, at the same time, exalt the soul.
The outraged heart of Timon takes refuge at once in action, in curses, and bitter deeds. It needs to be relieved by the native
