ing intensifies the joys of the moment. At all events, in such a
time, emotions become stronger, colors are brighter, and contrasts are
more violent. The "tragedy of blood," therefore, was more than a learned
imitation. Its sound and fury met the need of men who lived and died
intensely.

The primitive _Hamlet_ was such a play. Shakespeare took over, doubtless
with little change, both fable and characters, but he gave to both a new
spiritual content. Hamlet's revenge gained a new significance. It is no
longer a fight against the murderer of his father, but a battle against
"a world out of joint." No wonder that a simple duty of blood revenge
becomes a task beyond his powers. He sees the world as a mass of
faithlessness, and the weight of it crushes him and makes him sick at
heart. This is the tragedy of Hamlet--his will is paralyzed and, with
it, his passion for revenge. He fights a double battle, against his
uncle and against himself. The conviction that Shakespeare, and not his
predecessor, has given this turn to the tragedy is sustained by the
other plays of the same period, _Lear_ and _Timon of Athens_. They
exhibit three different stages of the same disease, a disease in which
man's natural love of fighting is turned against himself.

Collin denies that the tragedy of Hamlet is that of a contemplative soul
who is called upon to solve great practical problems. What right have we
to assume that Hamlet is a weak, excessively reflective nature? Hamlet
is strong and regal, capable of great, concrete attainments. But he can
do nothing except by violent and eccentric starts; his will is paralyzed
by a fatal sickness. He suffers from a disease not so uncommon in modern
literature--the tendency to see things in the darkest light. Is it far
from the pessimism of Hamlet to the pessimism of Schopenhauer and
Tolstoi? Great souls like Byron and Heine and Ibsen have seen life as
Hamlet saw it, and they have struggled as he did, "like wounded warriors
against the miseries of the times."

But from this we must not assume that Shakespeare himself was
pessimistic. To him Hamlet's state of mind was pathological. One might
as well say that he was a murderer because he wrote _Macbeth_, a
misogynist because he created characters like Isabella and Ophelia, a
wife murderer because he wrote _Othello_, or a suicide because he wrote
_Timon of Athens_ as to say that he was a pessimist because he wrote
_Hamlet_--the tragedy of an irresolute a