"
If this is not Hamlet's very tone, manner and phrase, then individuality
of nature has no peculiar voice.
I have laid such stress upon this, the first scene in which Macbeth
appears, because the first appearance is by far the most important for
the purpose of establishing the main outlines of a character; first
impressions in a drama being exceedingly difficult to modify and almost
impossible to change.
Macbeth, however, acts Hamlet from one end of the play to the other; and
Lady Macbeth's first appearance (a personage almost as important to the
drama as Macbeth himself) is used by Shakespeare to confirm this view of
Macbeth's character. After reading her husband's letter almost her first
words are:
"Yet do I fear thy nature.
It is too full o' the milk of human kindness
To catch the nearest way."
What is this but a more perfect expression of Hamlet's nature than
Hamlet himself gives? Hamlet declares bitterly that he is "pigeon
livered," and lacks "gall to make oppression bitter"; he says to
Laertes, "I loved you ever," and to his mother:
"I must be cruel only to be kind,"
and she tells the King that he wept for Polonius' death.
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