FRASER'S MAGAZINE FOR TOWN AND COUNTRY. VOL. XIV. JULY TO DECEMBER, 1836. LONDON: JAMES FRASER, 215 REGENT STREET; AND SOLD BY ALL BOOKSELLERS AND NEWSMEN IN TOWN AND COUNTRY. "So Ecstasy, Fantastic Dotage, Madness, Frenzy, Rapture From MELANCHOLY, which is briefly thus: SHAKESPEARE has written plays, and VOL. XIV. NO. LXXIX. "The heartach, And the thousand natural shocks the flesh is heir to ;" human infirmities, human afflictions, and supernatural agency, are so blended questions and considerations of Melancholy, of Pathology, Metaphysics, and Demonology, are so intertangled --the powers of man's Will, which are well nigh almighty, and the dictates of inexorable Fate, are brought into such an appalling yet dim collision, that to wring a meaning from a work else inscrutable requires the exercise of every faculty, and renders it necessary that not an incident should escape the observation, that not a word should be passed over, without being scanned curiously. Hamlet is, even more peculiarly than Lear, or Macbeth, or Othello, a play for the study. And not this alone; for it is, in good sooth, a work for the high student, who, through the earnestness of his Love, the intensity of his Thoughts, the pervading purity of his B |