Of all the unclean ones, Hamlet was the
uncleanest. But he accused only the others.
Except in the 'great' speeches, and there Enrico was betrayed, Hamlet
suffered the extremity of physical self-loathing, loathing of his own
flesh. The play is the statement of the most significant philosophic
position of the Renaissance. Hamlet is far more even than Orestes, his
prototype, a mental creature, anti-physical, anti-sensual. The whole
drama is the tragedy of the convulsed reaction of the mind from the
flesh, of the spirit from the self, the reaction from the great
aristocratic to the great democratic principle.
An ordinary instinctive man, in Hamlet's position, would either have set
about murdering his uncle, by reflex action, or else would have gone
right away. There would have been no need for Hamlet to murder his
mother. It would have been sufficient blood-vengeance if he had killed
his uncle. But that is the statement according to the aristocratic
principle.
Orestes was in the same position, but the same position two thousand
years earlier, with two thousand years of experience wanting.
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