No More Learning

. . .

A great friend of mine--a friend of ten years' standing--came to see me
some time ago, and told me that he did not believe a single word of what
was said against me, and wished me to know that he considered me quite
innocent, and the victim of a hideous plot. I burst into tears at what
he said, and told him that while there was much amongst the definite
charges that was quite untrue and transferred to me by revolting malice,
still that my life had been full of perverse pleasures, and that unless
he accepted that as a fact about me and realised it to the full I could
not possibly be friends with him any more, or ever be in his company. It
was a terrible shock to him, but we are friends, and I have not got his
friendship on false pretences.

Emotional forces, as I say somewhere in _Intentions_, are as limited in
extent and duration as the forces of physical energy. The little cup
that is made to hold so much can hold so much and no more, though all the
purple vats of Burgundy be filled with wine to the brim, and the treaders
stand knee-deep in the gathered grapes of the stony vineyards of Spain.
There is no error more common than that of thinking that those who are
the causes or occasions of great tragedies share in the feelings suitable
to the tragic mood: no error more fatal than expecting it of them. The
martyr in his 'shirt of flame' may be looking on the face of God, but to
him who is piling the faggots or loosening the logs for the blast the
whole scene is no more than the slaying of an ox is to the butcher, or
the felling of a tree to the charcoal burner in the forest, or the fall
of a flower to one who is mowing down the grass with a scythe. Great
passions are for the great of soul, and great events can be seen only by
those who are on a level with them.

* * * * *

I know of nothing in all drama more incomparable from the point of view
of art, nothing more suggestive in its subtlety of observation, than
Shakespeare's drawing of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. They are Hamlet's
college friends. They have been his companions. They bring with them
memories of pleasant days together.
At the moment when they come across
him in the play he is staggering under the weight of a burden intolerable
to one of his temperament. The dead have come armed out of the grave to
impose on him a mission at once too great and too mean for him. He is a
dreamer, and he is called upon to act. He has the nature of the poet,
and he is asked to grapple with the common complexity of cause and
effect, with life in its practical realisation, of which he knows
nothing, not with life in its ideal essence, of which he knows so much.
He has no conception of what to do, and his folly is to feign folly.
Brutus used madness as a cloak to conceal the sword of his purpose, the
dagger of his will, but the Hamlet madness is a mere mask for the hiding
of weakness. In the making of fancies and jests he sees a chance of
delay. He keeps playing with action as an artist plays with a theory. He
makes himself the spy of his proper actions, and listening to his own
words knows them to be but 'words, words, words. ' Instead of trying to
be the hero of his own history, he seeks to be the spectator of his own
tragedy. He disbelieves in everything, including himself, and yet his
doubt helps him not, as it comes not from scepticism but from a divided
will.

Of all this Guildenstern and Rosencrantz realise nothing. They bow and
smirk and smile, and what the one says the other echoes with sickliest
intonation. When, at last, by means of the play within the play, and the
puppets in their dalliance, Hamlet 'catches the conscience' of the King,
and drives the wretched man in terror from his throne, Guildenstern and
Rosencrantz see no more in his conduct than a rather painful breach of
Court etiquette. That is as far as they can attain to in 'the
contemplation of the spectacle of life with appropriate emotions. ' They
are close to his very secret and know nothing of it.