Disillusion had deeper consequences; forced to see other men as
they were, he tried for a moment to see himself as he was. The outcome
of that objective vision was Hamlet--a masterpiece of self-revealing.
Yet, when he wrote "Hamlet," nothing was clear to him; the significance
of the catastrophe had only dawned upon him; he had no notion how
complete his soul-shipwreck was, still less did he dream of painting
himself realistically in all his obsequious flunkeyism and ungovernable
sensuality. He saw himself less idealistically than heretofore, and,
trying to look at himself fairly, honestly, he could not but accuse
himself of irresolution at the very least; he had hung on with Herbert,
as the sonnets tell us, hoping to build again the confidence which had
been ruined by betrayal, hoping he knew not what of gain or place, to
the injury of his own self-respect; while brooding all the time on quite
impossible plans of revenge, impossible, for action had been "sicklied
o'er with the pale cast of thought." Hamlet could not screw his courage
to the sticking point, and so became a type for ever of the philosopher
or man of letters who, by thinking, has lost the capacity for action.
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