to some defect in Hamlet's constitution, was independently elaborated more than a century ago by Goethe,[1] Schlegel[2] and Coleridge.[3] Owing mainly to Goethe's advocacy it has been the most widely-held view of Hamlet, though in different hands it has undergone innumerable modifications. Goethe promulgated the view as a young man and when under the influence of Herder,[4] who later abandoned it.[5] It essentially maintains that Hamlet, for temperamental reasons, was fundamentally incapable of decisive action of any kind. These temperamental reasons are variously described by different writers, by Coleridge as "overbalance in the contemplative faculty," by Schlegel as "reflective deliberation often a pretext to cover cowardice and lack of decision," by Vischer[6] as "melancholic disposition," and so on. A view fairly representative of the pure Goethe school would run as follows: Owing to his highly developed intellectual powers, and his broad and many-sided sympathies, Hamlet could never take a simple view of any question, but always saw a number of different aspects and possible explanations of every problem. A given course of action never seemed to him unequivocal and obvious, so that in practical life his scepticism and reflective powers paralysed his conduct. He thus stands for what may roughly be called the type of an intellect over-developed at the expense of the will, and in Germany he has frequently been held up as a warning example to university professors who shew signs of losing themselves in abstract trains of thought at the expense of contact with reality.[7]
There are at least three grave objections to this view of Hamlet's hesitancy, one based on general psychological considerations and the others on objective evidence furnished by the play. It is true that at first sight increasing scepticism and reflexion apparently tend to weaken motive, in that they tear aside common illusions as to the value of certain lines of
- ↑ Goethe: Wilhelm Meister's Lehrjahre, 1795.
- ↑ Schlegel: Vorlesungen über dramatische Kunst und Litteratur, III, 1809.
- ↑ Coleridge: Lectures on Shakespeare, 1808.
- ↑ Herder: Von deutscher Art und Kunst, 1773.
- ↑ Herder: Aufsatz über Shakespeare im dritten Stuck der Adrastea, 1801.
- ↑ Vischer: Kritische Gänge. N. F., Ht. 2, 1861.
- ↑ See for instance Köstlin: Shakespeare und Hamlet. Morgenblatt, 1864, Nr. 25, 26. Already in 1816 Borne in his Dramaturgischen Blattern had cleverly developed this idea. He closes one article with the words "Hätte ein Deutscher den Hamlet gemacht, so würde ich mich gar nicht dariiber wundern. Ein Deutscher braucht nur eine schöne, leserliche Hand dazu. Er schreibt sich ab und Hamlet ist fertig."
