This scene is an unnatural one: the son's
reproaches to his mother, even the fact of his being able to discuss
the subject with her, is more repulsive than her relations with her
deceased husband's brother.
Here, too, Shakespear betrays for once his religious sense by making
Hamlet, in his agony of shame, declare that his mother's conduct makes
"sweet religion a rhapsody of words." But for that passage we might
almost suppose that the feeling of Sunday morning in the country which
Orlando describes so perfectly in As You Like It was the beginning and
end of Shakespear's notion of religion. I say almost, because
Isabella in Measure for Measure has religious charm, in spite of the
conventional theatrical assumption that female religion means an
inhumanly ferocious chastity. But for the most part Shakespear
differentiates his heroes from his villains much more by what they do
than by what they are. Don John in Much Ado is a true villain: a man
with a malicious will; but he is too dull a duffer to be of any use in
a leading part; and when we come to the great villains like Macbeth,
we find, as Mr Harris points out, that they are precisely identical
with the heroes: Macbeth is only Hamlet incongruously committing
murders and engaging in hand-to-hand combats.
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