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Show Hamlet Avenging: His Father's Death. It has always been a subject of astonishment aston-ishment that Hamlet was so long before avenging the death of his father. The reason for this is apparent. The creed of the philosopher, who believed in the triumph tri-umph of the good and punishment of the wicked, has received a more severe shock than the filial affection of the son. These general thoughts and recollections troubled trou-bled him and weigli on his mind far more than the mere personal desire for revenge. Will the death of the murderer re-establish an order of justice in society ? "The world's a goodly prison, in which there are many confines, wards and dungeons, Denmark being one of the worst," (act II., scene 2.) "To be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand," (act II., scene 2.) "How very Btale, flat and unprofitable seem tome all the uses of this world," (act I., scene 2.) "Oh, cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it right," (act I., scene 5.) "For in the fatness of these pursy times, virtue itself of vice must pardon beg," (act III, scene 4.) Does not this last quotation resume the whole moral situation under the second empire in France ? How well Hamlet paints the perversity which has invaded everything when he says to Ophelia, "If thou dost marry I'll give thee this pledge for thy dowry be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny." cal-umny." To a nunnery, and quickly, too. "What should such fellows as I do, crawling between heaven and earth We are arrant knaves all, believe none of us. Go thy way to a nunnery. Why shouldst thou be a breeder of sinners; l am myself indifferent honest, but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother bad not borne me." (Act III,, scene I.) Here Shakespeare expresses exactly the senti ments of the early Christians of the millenarians and of the ascetic school. The corruptions of the world by which they were surrounded filled them with horror. They longed for the kingdom of God, for justice to reign universally, and for the perfect happiness of the unfaithful; unfaith-ful; but how is this to be established? By the end of the world ; that is to say, by a cosmic revolution, -when fire from heaven is to descend and purify all things. As these eschatological hopes failed to be realized, and the world continued as perverted per-verted as heretofore, but one course was left open to those persons who longed for purity and holiness, to flee to the desert and cry out with Hamlet, "To a nunnery, to a nunnery." This was the feeling which peopled the Thebaides in the first centuries after Christ, and later on the convents and monasteries, especially as the year 1000 approached, which was considered con-sidered to be the date of the long expected end of the world. Tlie Comtomparary Review. |