In Hamlet, if one may dare to say so, Shakespeare has
discovered too much of himself: Hamlet is at one and the same time
philosopher and poet, critic and courtier, lover and cynic--the extremes
that Shakespeare's intellect could cover--and he fills every part so
easily that he might almost be a bookish Admirable Crichton, a type of
perfection rather than an individual man, were it not for his feminine
gentleness and forgivingness of nature, and particularly for the
brooding melancholy and disbelief which darkened Shakespeare's outlook
at the time. But though the melancholy scepticism was an abiding
characteristic of Shakespeare, to be found in his Richard II. as in his
Prospero, it did not overshadow all his being as it does Hamlet's. There
was a summer-time, too, in Shakespeare's life, and in his nature a
capacity for sunny gaiety and a delight in life and love which came to
full expression in the golden comedies, "Much Ado," "As You Like It" and
"Twelfth Night." The complement to Hamlet the sad philosopher-sceptic is
the sensuous happy poet-lover Orsino, and when we take these seeming
antitheses and unite them we have a good portrait of Shakespeare.
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