That our honored prince was a fat man, is proved by his own confession, as well as by the evidence of the queen.  Tossed about in a hot desert of doubt and despair, he exclaims in one of his incomparable soliloquies: 

  ‘Oh! that this too, too solid flesh WOULD MELT!’

What thin man would melt away even in the hot solstice of June?  In the fencing scene, (Act IV.,) his flabby muscles are soon fatigued, and the queen exclaims: 

  ’He’s fat, and scant of breath: 
  Here, Hamlet, take my napkin, rub thy brows.’

However, to be serious, it must be confessed that there are splendid traits in the mental character of the prince; every grandeur or folly can be found in him.  From the lowest pit of despair, his soul debates the question of suicide as a logical proposition, forgetting the divine prohibition against ‘self-slaughter.’  Eloquence, genius, and brilliant fancies, are constantly manifested, and also a gorgeous imagination.

It may be mentioned, incidentally, that Hamlet’s character has been contrasted with that of Orestes, the Greek, who, when he arrived at years of manhood, avenged his father’s death by assassinating his mother, Clytemnestra, and her adulterer, OEgisthus.  In other words, he avenged a crime by a crime.

And now let us drop these serious comments, and return to the more humorous side of our theory—­the plumpness of the prince, overlooked as a mere accident, by critics and actors.  It is a physiological propriety that he should be of a phlegmatic temperament—­a temperament often united to an acute intellect, but also, to a sluggish and heavy person.  A weak, wavering inactivity, fickleness of purpose, a keen sensibility, or sensitiveness, are also noticeable; while the subtlety of his theories is sharply penetrating, and forms the keystone to the arch of his character.

Truly, Hamlet’s intellect is that of a giant; his strength of will, that of a child.  He has, so to speak, no executive talent.  He is the doubting philosopher, the subtle metaphysician, the self-analyzer, always ‘thinking too precisely upon the event.’  He sees so far into the consequences of human action that he is fearful of taking decided steps.  He has the nerve to kill neither his uncle nor himself, although he debates the latter question with great dexterity.  He never effected any one of the plans upon which he had deliberated.  Any one who reads Hamlet, under the influence of this theory, will see that it is confirmed by every incident in the tragedy.

A series of accidents hurried the prince to the final catastrophe.  His was a lovely, great, and noble nature; but it lacked one element of heroism—­strength of will.  It was an exquisite touch in the mighty poet to make Hamlet gross in figure, as he was phlegmatic, inactive, and irresolute in temperament.  Had he been a thin, brown, choleric, and nervous man, the tragedy would have ended in the first Act.