+Hamlet+.--On the surface the story of Hamlet is a comparatively simple one. The young prince is heart-broken over the recent death of his father, and his mother's scandalously hasty marriage to Hamlet's uncle, the usurping sovereign. In this mood he is brought face to face with his father's spirit, told that his uncle was his father's murderer, and given as a sacred duty the task of revenging the crime. To this object he sacrifices all other aims in life--pleasure, ambition, and love. But this savage task is the last one on earth for which his fine-grained nature was fitted. He wastes his energy in feverish efforts which fail to accomplish his purpose, just as many a man wavers helplessly in trying to do something for which nature never intended him. Partly to deceive his enemies, partly to provide a freer expression for his pent-up emotions than the normal conditions of life would justify, he acts the role of one who is mentally deranged. Finally, more by chance than any plan of his own, he achieves his revenge on the king, but not until he himself is mortally wounded. His story is the tragedy of a sensitive, refined, imaginative nature which is required to perform a brutal task in a brutal world. But around this story as a framework Shakespeare has woven such a wealth of poetry and philosophy that the play has been called the "tragedy of thought." It is in Hamlet's brain that the great action of the drama {181} takes place; the other characters are mere accessories and foils. Here we are brought face to face with the fear and mystery of the future life and the deepest problems of this. It is hardly true to say that Hamlet himself is a philosopher. He gives some very wise advice to the players; but in the main he is grappling problems without solving them, peering into the dark, but bringing from it no definite addition to our knowledge. He represents rather the eternal questioning of the human heart when face to face with the great mysteries of existence; and perhaps this accounts largely for the wide and lasting popularity of the play. Side by side with this deep-souled, earnest man, moving in the shadow of the unseen, with his terrible duties and haunting fears, Shakespeare has placed in intentional mockery the old dotard Polonius, the incarnation of shallow worldly wisdom. No other play of Shakespeare's has called forth such a mass of comment as this or so many varied interpretations. Neither has any other roused a deeper interest in its readers. The spell which it casts over old and young alike is due partly to the character of the young prince himself, partly to the suggestive mystery with which it invests all problems of life and sorrow.