od! I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a
king of infinite space; were it not that I have bad dreams;"

and Guildenstern answers:

"Which dreams, indeed, are ambition; for the very substance
of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream."

The first sentence may be compared with a number in Montaigne,[58] of
which the following[59] is a type:

"Man clean contrary [to the Gods] possesseth goods in
imagination and evils essentially. We have had reason to
make the powers of our imagination to be of force, for all
our felicities are but in conceipt, and as it were in a
dream;"

while the reply of Guildenstern further recalls several of the passages
already cited.

XIV. Another apparent parallel of no great importance, but of more
verbal closeness, is that between Hamlet's jeering phrase:[60] "Your
worm is your only emperor for diet," and a sentence in the APOLOGY: "The
heart and the life of a great and triumphant emperor are the dinner of a
little worm," which M. Stapfer compares further with the talk of Hamlet
in the grave-diggers' scene. Here, doubtless, we are near the level of
proverbial sayings, current in all countries.

XV. As regards HAMLET, I can find no further parallelisms so direct as
any of the foregoing, except some to be considered later, in connection
with the "To be" soliloquy. I do not think it can be made out that, as
M. Chasles affirmed, Hamlet's words on his friendship for Horatio can be
traced directly to any of Montaigne's passages on that theme. "It would
be easy," says M. Chasles, "to show in Shakspere the _branloire
perenne_[61] of Montaigne, and the whole magnificent passage on
friendship, which is found reproduced (_se trouve reporte_) in HAMLET."
The idea of the world as a perpetual mutation is certainly prevalent in
Shakspere's work; but I can find no exact correspondence of phrase
between Montaigne's pages on his love for his dead friend Etienne de la
Boetie and the lines in which Hamlet speaks of his love for Horatio. He
rather gives his reasons for his love than describes the nature and
completeness of it in Montaigne's way; and as regards the description
of Horatio, it could have been independently suggested by such a
treatise as Seneca's DE CONSTANTIA SAPIENTIS, which is a monody on the
theme with which it closes: _esse aliquem invictum, esse aliquem in quem
nihil fortuna possit_--"to be something unconquered, something against
which fortune i