This _tædium vitæ_ is a common oppression on minds cast in the Hamlet mould, and is caused by disproportionate mental exertion, which necessitates exhaustion of bodily feeling. Where there is a just coincidence of external and internal action, pleasure is always the result; but where the former is deficient, and the mind's appetency of the ideal is unchecked, realities will seem cold and unmoving. In such cases, passion combines itself with the indefinite alone. In this mood of his mind the relation of the appearance of his father's spirit in arms is made all at once to Hamlet:--it is--Horatio's speech in particular--a perfect model of the true style of dramatic narrative;--the purest poetry, and yet in the most natural language, equally remote from the ink-horn and the plough.
_Ib._ sc. 3. This scene must be regarded as one of Shakespeare's lyric movements in the play, and the skill with which it is interwoven with the dramatic parts is peculiarly an excellence of our poet. You experience the sensation of a pause without the sense of a stop. You will observe in Ophelia's short and general answer to the long speech of Laertes the natural carelessness of innocence, which cannot think such a code of cautions and prudences necessary to its own preservation.
_Ib._ Speech of Polonius (in Stockdale's edition):--
"Or (not to crack the wind of the poor phrase), Wronging it thus, you'll tender me a fool."
I suspect this "wronging" is here used much in the same sense as "wringing" or "wrenching," and that the parenthesis should be extended to "thus."
... "How prodigal the soul Lends the tongue vows:--these blazes, daughter," &c.
A spondee has, I doubt not, dropped out of the text. Either insert "Go to" after "vows";--
"Lends the tongue vows: Go to, these blazes, daughter"--
"Lends the tongue vows:--These blazes, daughter, mark you"--
Shakespeare never introduces a catalectic line without intending an equivalent to the foot omitted in the pauses, or the dwelling emphasis, or the diffused retardation. I do not, however, deny that a good actor might, by employing the last mentioned means--namely, the retardation, or solemn knowing drawl--supply the missing spondee with good effect. But I do not believe that in this or any other of the foregoing speeches of Polonius, Shakespeare meant to bring out the senility or weakness of that personage's mind. In the great ever-recurring dangers and duties of life, where to distinguish the fit objects for the application of the maxims collected by the experience of a long life, requires no fineness of tact, as in the admonitions to his son and daughter, Polonius is uniformly made respectable. But if an actor were even capable of catching these shades in the character, the pit and the gallery would be malcontent at their exhibition. It is to Hamlet that Polonius is, and is meant to be, contemptible, because in inwardness and uncontrollable activity of movement, Hamlet's mind is the logical contrary to that of Polonius; and besides, as I have observed before, Hamlet dislikes the man as false to his true allegiance in the matter of the succession to the crown.