Passages taken
at haphazard will suffice to establish my contention. "Motley's the only
wear," says Jaques, as if longing to assume the cap and bells, and
Hamlet plays the fool's part with little better reason. Jaques exclaims:
"Give me leave
To speak my mind, and I will through and through
Cleanse the foul body of the infected world,
If they will patiently receive my medicine."
And Hamlet cries:
"The Time is out of joint; O cursed spite
That ever I was born to set it right."
The famous speech of Jaques, "All the world's a stage," might have been
said by Hamlet, indeed belongs of right to the person who gave the
exquisite counsel to the players. Jaques' confession of melancholy, too,
both in manner and matter is characteristic of Hamlet. How often
Shakespeare must have thought it over before he was able to bring the
peculiar nature of his own malady into such relief:
"I have neither the scholar's melancholy, which is emulation; nor the
musician's, which is fantastical; nor the courtier's, which is proud;
nor the soldier's, which is ambitious; nor the lawyer's, which is
politic; nor the lady's, which is nice; nor the lover's, which is all
these; but it is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples,
extracted from many objects, and, indeed, the sundry contemplation of my
travels; which, by often rumination, wraps me in, a most humourous
sadness.
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