But we desire more; and we receive it.  As those mysterious words, ’The rest is silence,’ die upon Hamlet’s lips, Horatio answers: 

     Now cracks a noble heart.  Good night, sweet prince,
     And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

Why did Shakespeare here, so much against his custom, introduce this reference to another life?  Did he remember that Hamlet is the only one of his tragic heroes whom he has not allowed us to see in the days when this life smiled on him?  Did he feel that, while for the others we might be content to imagine after life’s fitful fever nothing more than release and silence, we must ask more for one whose ‘godlike reason’ and passionate love of goodness have only gleamed upon us through the heavy clouds of melancholy, and yet have left us murmuring, as we bow our heads, ‘This was the noblest spirit of them all’?

2

How many things still remain to say of Hamlet!  Before I touch on his relation to Ophelia, I will choose but two.  Neither of them, compared with the matters so far considered, is of great consequence, but both are interesting, and the first seems to have quite escaped observation.

(1) Most people have, beside their more essential traits of character, little peculiarities which, for their intimates, form an indissoluble part of their personality.  In comedy, and in other humorous works of fiction, such peculiarities often figure prominently, but they rarely do so, I think, in tragedy.  Shakespeare, however, seems to have given one such idiosyncrasy to Hamlet.

It is a trick of speech, a habit of repetition.  And these are simple examples of it from the first soliloquy: 

                            O God!  God!
     How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable
     Seem to me all the uses of this world!
     Fie on’t! ah fie!

Now I ask your patience.  You will say:  ’There is nothing individual here.  Everybody repeats words thus.  And the tendency, in particular, to use such repetitions in moments of great emotion is well-known, and frequently illustrated in literature—­for example, in David’s cry of lament for Absalom.’

This is perfectly true, and plenty of examples could be drawn from Shakespeare himself.  But what we find in Hamlet’s case is, I believe, not common.  In the first place, this repetition is a habit with him.  Here are some more instances:  ‘Thrift, thrift, Horatio’; ’Indeed, indeed, sirs, but this troubles me’; ’Come, deal justly with me:  come, come’; ‘Wormwood, wormwood!’ I do not profess to have made an exhaustive search, but I am much mistaken if this habit is to be found in any other serious character of Shakespeare.[68]

And, in the second place—­and here I appeal with confidence to lovers of Hamlet—­some of these repetitions strike us as intensely characteristic.  Some even of those already quoted strike one thus, and still more do the following: