xtent,
again, as we may see from the conversation where Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern first present themselves (II. ii. 227), he is merely
following the fashion of the young courtiers about him, just as in his
love-letter to Ophelia[70] he uses for the most part the fantastic
language of Court Euphuism. Nevertheless in this trait there is
something very characteristic. We should be greatly surprised to find it
marked in Othello or Lear or Timon, in Macbeth or Antony or Coriolanus;
and, in fact, we find it in them hardly at all. One reason of this may
perhaps be that these characters are all later creations than Hamlet,
and that Shakespeare's own fondness for this kind of play, like the
fondness of the theatrical audience for it, diminished with time. But
the main reason is surely that this tendency, as we see it in Hamlet,
betokens a nimbleness and flexibility of mind which is characteristic of
him and not of the later less many-sided heroes. Macbeth, for instance,
has an imagination quite as sensitive as Hamlet's to certain
impressions, but he has none of Hamlet's delight in freaks and twists of
thought, or of his tendency to perceive and play with resemblances in
the most diverse objects and ideas. Though Romeo shows this tendency,
the only tragic hero who approaches Hamlet here is Richard II., who
indeed in several ways recalls the emasculated Hamlet of some critics,
and may, like the real Hamlet, have owed his existence in part to
Shakespeare's personal familiarity with the weaknesses and dangers of an
imaginative temperament.

That Shakespeare meant this trait to be characteristic of Hamlet is
beyond question. The very first line the hero speaks contains a play on
words:

A little more than kin and less than kind.

The fact is significant, though the pun itself is not specially
characteristic. Much more so, and indeed absolutely individual, are the
uses of word-play in moments of extreme excitement. Remember the awe and
terror of the scene where the Ghost beckons Hamlet to leave his friends
and follow him into the darkness, and then consider this dialogue:

_Hamlet._ It waves me still.
Go on; I'll follow thee.

_Marcellus._ You shall not go, my lord.

_Hamlet._ Hold off your hands.

_Horatio._ Be ruled; you shall not go.

_Hamlet._ My fate cries out,
And makes each petty artery i