There is in Romeo, too, that peculiar mixture of pensive sadness and loving sympathy which is the very vesture of Hamlet's soul; he says to "Noble County Paris":
"O, give me thy hand, One writ with me in sour misfortune's book."
And finally Shakespeare's supreme lyrical gift is used by Romeo as unconstrainedly as by Hamlet himself. The beauty in the last soliloquy is of passion rather than of intellect, but in sheer triumphant beauty some lines of it have never been surpassed:
"Here, here will I remain With worms that are thy chambermaids; O, here Will I set up my everlasting rest And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars From this world-wearied flesh."
The whole soliloquy and especially the superb epithet "world-wearied" are at least as suitable to Hamlet as to Romeo. Passion, it is true, is more accentuated in Romeo, just as there is greater irresolution combined with intenser self-consciousness in Hamlet, yet all the qualities of the youthful lover are to be found in the student-prince. Hamlet is evidently the later finished picture of which Romeo was merely the charming sketch. Hamlet says he is revengeful and ambitious, although he is nothing of the kind, and in much the same way Romeo says:
whereas he plays the chief part and a very active part in the drama. If he were more of a "candle-holder" and onlooker, he would more resemble Hamlet. Then too, though he generalizes, he does not search the darkness with aching eyeballs as Hamlet does; the problems of life do not as yet lie heavy on his soul; he is too young to have felt their mystery and terror; he is only just within the shadow of that melancholy which to Hamlet discolours the world.
Seven or eight years after writing "Romeo and Juliet," Shakespeare growing conscious of these changes in his own temperament embodied them in another character, the melancholy "Jaques" in "As You Like It." Every one knows that Jaques is Shakespeare's creation; he is not to be found in Lodge's "Rosalynde," whence Shakespeare took the story and most of the characters of his play. Jaques is only sketched in with light strokes, but all his traits are peculiarly Hamlet's traits. For Jaques is a melancholy student of life as Hamlet is, with lightning-quick intelligence and heavy heart, and these are the Hamlet qualities which were not brought into prominence in the youthful Romeo. Passages taken at haphazard will suffice to establish my contention. "Motley's the only wear," says Jaques, as if longing to assume the cap and bells, and Hamlet plays the fool's part with little better reason. Jaques exclaims: