Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: GERTRUDE, QUEEN OF DENMARK. By Miss N. B. Bowman. June, 1882. FINDING the voice of criticism concerning the Queen in Hamlet by no means uniform, we are impelled to abandon commentaries, and, from a careful study of the play alone, to endeavor to form an opinion for ourselves. And at the close of our investigation this variance amongst the scholars seems to us but another tribute to Shakespeare’s inimitable art and boundless knowledge of men. The veil of uncertainty cast about her, lends to Gertrude that peculiar fascination which always attends the mysterious. It is thus that the artist secures for her the attention and sympathetic interest which a direct revelation of her true character would never have called forth. Nor does the poet ever wholly tear away this veil, exclaiming
Behold, this is Gertrude ! Nevertheless, if earnestly intent, we are enabled now and then, as it is lifted by the strong breath of genius, to catch a glimpse of the real woman beneath. The greatest source of this confusion would seem, then, to lie in the minds of the critics themselves. Guided by over-weening confidence in their own intellectual powers, deeming their penetration irresistible, their judgment infallible, believing that they have thoroughly plucked out the heart of the Queen’s mystery, and therefore never stopping to decipher what the artist has, as it were, delicately but clearly traced between the lines, many pronounce at once and finally the terrible verdict ?Guilty! But whatever the ultimate decision, the poet has still, in every case, attained his object?interest is never abated ! And now let us see what we have been enabled to find out, directly or indirectly, concerning this woman. With personal charms she seems to have been peculiarly endowed. Beautiful, with that fragile,…