Why did Hamlet hate his mother's
lechery? Most men would hardly have condemned it, certainly would not
have suffered their thoughts to dwell on it beyond the moment; but to
Hamlet his mother's faithlessness was horrible, shameful, degrading,
simply because Hamlet-Shakespeare had identified her with Miss Fitton,
and it was Miss Fitton's faithlessness, it was her deception he was
condemning in the bitterest words he could find. He thus gets into a
somewhat unreal tragedy, a passionate intensity which is otherwise
wholly inexplicable. This is how he talks to his mother:
"Have you eyes?
Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed,
And batten on this moor? Ha! have you eyes ...
... ... ... What devil was't
That thus cozen'd you at hoodman-blind?
Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight,
Ears without hands or eyes, smelling sans all,
Or but a sickly part of one true sense
Could not so mope.
O, shame! where is thy blush?"
If anyone can imagine that this is the way a son thinks of a mother's
slip he is past my persuading.
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