And the common result takes place; the exceptional breaks down against the steady and terrible pull of the ordinary.

It is Hamlet over again, and when Sordello does act it is just as Hamlet does, by a sudden impulse which lifts him from dreaming into momentary action, out of which, almost before he has realised he is acting, he slips back again into dreams.

And his action seems to him the dream, and his dream the activity.

That saying of Hamlet's would be easy on the lips of Sordello, if we take "bad dreams" to mean for him what they meant for Hamlet the moment he is forced to action in the real world--"I could be bounded in a nut-shell and think myself king of infinite space, had I not bad dreams." When he is surprised into action at the Court of Love at Mantua, and wins the prize of song, he seems to slip back into a sleepy cloud.

But Palma, bending her beautiful face over him and giving him her scarf, wins him to stay at Mantua; and for a short time he becomes the famous poet.