by the meditative, he
is really a man of singular determination, and, excepting in occasional
paroxsyms, one of powerful self-control. His rapidity of decision is
strikingly exhibited after his first interview with the Ghost. Perceiving
at once how important it was that Marcellus, at all events, should not
suspect the grave revelations that had been made, although they had been
sufficient to have paralyzed one of less courage and resolution than
himself, he outwits his companions by banter, treating the apparition
with intentional and grotesque disrespect and jocularity at a moment when
an irresolute mind would have been terrified and prostrated.

Then Hamlet's powerful intellect not only enables him to recognize almost
instantaneously the difficulties which beset his path, but immediately to
devise a scheme by which some of them might be overcome. The compliance
with the advice of his father's spirit, in strict unison with his own
natural temperament, that the pursuit of his revenge was to harmonize
with the dictates of his conscience, involving of course his duties to
others, was attended by obstacles apparently insurmountable; yet all were
to be removed before the final catastrophe, however acutely he might feel
the effort of suppressing his desire for vengeance, that obligation the
fulfilment of which was postponed by subtle considerations, and by fear
lest precipitate action might leave him with "a wounded name." But this
duty, it is important to observe, was never sought to be relinquished.
The influences practically render delay a matter of necessity with him,
and leaving a murderer to contend against one who, as he must have felt,
would not have scrupled to design his assassination if at any moment
safety could be in that way secured, his determination to assume the garb
of insanity in the presence of the King and of those likely to divulge
the secret, is easily and naturally explained.

Hamlet is wildly impetuous in moments of excitement, so that his
utterances are not invariably to be accepted as evidences of his general
nature. Much of the difficulty in the interpretation of the tragedy
arises from the oversight of accepting his soliloquies as continuous
illustrations of his character, instead of being, as they mostly are,
transient emanations of his subtle irritability. Even in the midst of his
impetuosity the current of violent thought was subject to a controlling
interruption by a sudden reaction arising