If a dominant, all powerful soul—­a Jesus—­had been in Hamlet’s palace at Elsinore, would the tragedy of four deaths have happened?  Can you conceive any wise man living in the unnatural gloom that overhung Elsinore?  Is not every action of Hamlet induced by a fanatical impulse, which tells him that duty consists in revenge alone?  And revenge never can be a duty.  Hamlet thinks much, continues Maeterlinck, but is by no means wise.  Destiny can withstand lofty thoughts but not simple, good, tender and loyal thoughts.  We only triumph over destiny by doing the reverse of the evil she would have us commit. No tragedy is inevitable.  But at Elsinore no one had vision—­no one saw—­hence the catastrophe.  The soul that saw would have made others see.  Because of Hamlet’s pitiful blindness, Laertes, Ophelia, the King, Queen, and Hamlet die.  Was his blindness inevitable?  A single thought had sufficed to arrest all the forces of murder.  Hamlet’s ignorance puts the seal on his unhappiness, and his shadow lay on Horatio, who lacked the courage to shake himself free.  Had there been one brave soul to cry out the truth, the history of Elsinore had not been shrouded in horror.  All depended not on destiny, but on the wisdom of the wisest, and this Hamlet was; therefore he was the centre of the drama of Elsinore, for he had no one wiser than himself on whom to depend.

Maeterlinck’s doctrine of the soul and its power over Destiny is very captivating, but it is doubtful if he was fortunate in his choice of Hamlet as an example of ignorance and blindness, and of failure to conquer fate, through lack of soul-power.

How Hamlet should have acted is not told us, but that it was his duty to have given up revenge is clearly suggested.  We might, perhaps, sum up Hamlet’s right course, from the hints Maeterlinck has given us, in a sentence.  Had he relinquished all idea of revenge and forgiven his uncle and mother, he would have ennobled his soul, gained inward happiness, spread a gracious calm around and have so deeply influenced his wicked relations, that they would have become repentant and reformed.  Thus his evil Destiny would have been averted and we should have had no tragedy of Hamlet.  This explanation sounds rather conventional and tract-like put into ordinary language, but, indeed, Maeterlinck’s doctrine might be compressed into a syllogism:—­

  All the wise are serene,
    Hamlet was not serene,
    Hamlet was not wise.

That is the simple syllogism by which Maeterlinck tests human nature.  But Hamlet’s nature cannot be packed into a syllogism.  A Theorist, who tries to fit into his theory a peculiar nature cannot always afford to understand that nature.  The external event that froze Hamlet’s soul with horror, and deprived it of “transforming power” was a supernatural event, not “disease, accident, or sudden death!” The mandate laid on his soul was a supernatural mandate, and as Judge Webb said in a suggestive and interesting paper: