That he did so is surely next door to incredible.  In any case, it certainly requires an explanation, and certainly has not received one. (b) Let us test the theory by reference to a single important passage, that where Hamlet finds the King at prayer and spares him.  The reason Hamlet gives himself for sparing the King is that, if he kills him now, he will send him to heaven, whereas he desires to send him to hell.  Now, this reason may be an unconscious excuse, but is it believable that, if the real reason had been the stirrings of his deeper conscience, that could have masked itself in the form of a desire to send his enemy’s soul to hell?  Is not the idea quite ludicrous? (c) The theory requires us to suppose that, when the Ghost enjoins Hamlet to avenge the murder of his father, it is laying on him a duty which we are to understand to be no duty but the very reverse.  And is not that supposition wholly contrary to the natural impression which we all receive in reading the play?  Surely it is clear that, whatever we in the twentieth century may think about Hamlet’s duty, we are meant in the play to assume that he ought to have obeyed the Ghost.

The conscience theory, then, in either of its forms we must reject.  But it may remind us of points worth noting.  In the first place, it is certainly true that Hamlet, in spite of some appearances to the contrary, was, as Goethe said, of a most moral nature, and had a great anxiety to do right.  In this anxiety he resembles Brutus, and it is stronger in him than in any of the later heroes.  And, secondly, it is highly probable that in his interminable broodings the kind of paralysis with which he was stricken masked itself in the shape of conscientious scruples as well as in many other shapes.  And, finally, in his shrinking from the deed there was probably, together with much else, something which may be called a moral, though not a conscientious, repulsion:  I mean a repugnance to the idea of falling suddenly on a man who could not defend himself.  This, so far as we can see, was the only plan that Hamlet ever contemplated.  There is no positive evidence in the play that he regarded it with the aversion that any brave and honourable man, one must suppose, would feel for it; but, as Hamlet certainly was brave and honourable, we may presume that he did so.

(3) We come next to what may be called the sentimental view of Hamlet, a view common both among his worshippers and among his defamers.  Its germ may perhaps be found in an unfortunate phrase of Goethe’s (who of course is not responsible for the whole view):  ’a lovely, pure and most moral nature, without the strength of nerve which forms a hero, sinks beneath a burden which it cannot bear and must not cast away.’  When this idea is isolated, developed and popularised, we get the picture of a graceful youth, sweet and sensitive, full of delicate sympathies and yearning aspirations, shrinking from the touch of everything gross and earthly; but frail and weak, a kind of Werther, with a face like Shelley’s and a voice like Mr. Tree’s.  And then we ask in tender pity, how could such a man perform the terrible duty laid on him?