ibes Laertes as a
'very noble youth,' which he was far from being. In his first greeting
of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, where his old self revives, we trace
the same affectionateness and readiness to take men at their best. His
love for Ophelia, too, which seems strange to some, is surely the most
natural thing in the world. He saw her innocence, simplicity and
sweetness, and it was like him to ask no more; and it is noticeable that
Horatio, though entirely worthy of his friendship, is, like Ophelia,
intellectually not remarkable. To the very end, however clouded, this
generous disposition, this 'free and open nature,' this unsuspiciousness
survive. They cost him his life; for the King knew them, and was sure
that he was too 'generous and free from all contriving' to 'peruse the
foils.' To the very end, his soul, however sick and tortured it may be,
answers instantaneously when good and evil are presented to it, loving
the one and hating the other. He is called a sceptic who has no firm
belief in anything, but he is never sceptical about _them_.

And the negative side of his idealism, the aversion to evil, is perhaps
even more developed in the hero of the tragedy than in the Hamlet of
earlier days. It is intensely characteristic. Nothing, I believe, is to
be found elsewhere in Shakespeare (unless in the rage of the
disillusioned idealist Timon) of quite the same kind as Hamlet's disgust
at his uncle's drunkenness, his loathing of his mother's sensuality, his
astonishment and horror at her shallowness, his contempt for everything
pretentious or false, his indifference to everything merely external.
This last characteristic appears in his choice of the friend of his
heart, and in a certain impatience of distinctions of rank or wealth.
When Horatio calls his father 'a goodly king,' he answers, surely with
an emphasis on 'man,'

He was a man, take him for all in all,
I shall not look upon his like again.

He will not listen to talk of Horatio being his 'servant.' When the
others speak of their 'duty' to him, he answers, 'Your love, as mine to
you.' He speaks to the actor precisely as he does to an honest courtier.
He is not in the least a revolutionary, but still, in effect, a king and
a beggar are all one to him. He cares for nothing but human worth, and
his pitilessness towards Polonius and Osric and his 'school-fellows' is
not wholly due to morbidity, but belongs in part to his original
character.

Now,