is complicated by torturing perplexity and the ghastly suspicion of foul play, which come to embitter his grief. Then comes the loss of his kingdom, already referred to. It is often assumed that Hamlet tamely submitted to be set aside and might have secured his rights at once by a vigorous exertion, but we are really told nothing about it, and though Hamlet abuses himself heartily for being slack in other respects, he has no sense of being remiss on this point, but rather deeply wronged. His position is truly an intolerable one. He finds himself not only excluded from the throne, but actually dependent on the usurper, whom, till now, he seems to have regarded as beneath contempt, his deepest feelings hurt, his taste continually offended, and no escape left for him. Then, worse than all, comes his mother's marriage. The agony of shame and grief which this causes him far outweighs his previous sorrow and disappointment, it seems to blacken not only his future, but even his past, his pure memories are poisoned, the mother he seemed to know has utterly disappeared, she never has been at all. In intense bitterness of soul, her son stands in the world which her deed has blighted for him, and feels life hardly to be endured. He turns for relief to the idea of going back to his studies, but even that is denied him. There is but one gleam of light in his sadness, and it comes from Ophelia. Though by moments, Hamlet feels his faith in womanhood destroyed, yet it would seem to come back when he is with the innocent girl who simply loves and trusts him, and however wretched he may be, it is still some consolation to see Ophelia, or write to her, trying to find fresh ways of expressing the old theme, 'I love you.'

Such is Hamlet when we first see his black-clad figure moving sadly among the gay courtiers, all apparently quite content with the new order of things. How all the parade and ostentation of the new King must jar on the sick soul watching it all, disgusted by Gertrude's attempts to disperse his melancholy till his indignation at her shallowness gets beyond his control. But when Claudius takes up the tale, every decent feeling becomes outraged. We do not know how far Hamlet's suspicions go at this stage, but with even a faint notion lurking in his mind that his uncle had in any way been connected with King Hamlet's death, what unutterable loathing must be aroused by the oily commonplaces which Claudius pours out so glibly! There is no help for it either but silent endurance, and we may notice that Hamlet never speaks to the King if he can avoid it. With the Queen, it is different; she is still his mother, though he would 'twere not so,' and against her express wish he will not insist on going back to Wittenberg. The noisy heartless crowd sweep away, eaving Hamlet free to relieve himself in one of the famous monologues of the play, which reveal to us the workings of his sorelytried nature. Here we meet the first expression of the feeling which underlies his most famous soliloquy, the desire, so natural in great trouble, 'Let me die and escape this pain.'

At this time Hamlet is only recognising that he cannot die by wishing, and may not take his own life, he goes no further with the subject, turning to his ever-present cause of sorrow, his mother's fearful degradation in his eyes. He is so very lonely in his grief that we gladly welcome the arrival of good Horatio to whose fidelity Hamlet may freely unburden himself. The pleasure of seeing his friend again brightens Hamlet up for the moment, as he heartily loves and values Horatio, and sorely needs to love and trust some one just now, but the bitter present soon comes back to his mind. Taken in connection with other passages, there is a bitter significance in his remark to Horatio: 'We'll teach you to drink deep ere you depart,' for we can see that Claudius' excesses in this respect add to his hatefulness in Hamlet's eyes. We should like to know, as a matter of curiosity, whether anything had attracted Shakspere's attention to this subject of extravagant revelry, just at this time, whether, for instance, any such drunken scenes as disgraced the English Court a few years later, had come under his notice. It is possible that he merely meant to put his Hamlet, the image of intellectual superiority, into strong contrast with the half-brutal types of sensuality and self-indulgence. We may remark that the Hamlet of the Historie' murders most of his foes in their drunken sleep, without any compunction!

We should naturally expect Hamlet to be agitated on hearing that his father's ghost had appeared, but his agitation is complicated by feelings unknown to Horatio and the soldiers. They connect the warlike spectre with the martial preparations going on in the country, Hamlet sees in it a confirmation of his suspicions. Yet he masters his perturbation, and clearly and keenly questions the witnesses till he knows what they have seen in minute particulars, and then quickly determines to verify their story for himself while letting it go no further. This appearance of the old King, and the revelation which he makes to his son, constitute the turning-point in Hamlet's life, and consequently, of the play. Everything which he says, does, or leaves undone, after this event, is more or less affected by it, and has to be considered in relation to it. He goes to it calmly enough, no doubt anxious to understand the perplexed business and what it indicates, but sufficiently disengaged in mind to philosophise over the noisy revelry going on in the castle. Suddenly his reflections are cut short by the awful apparition which evidently startles Hamlet more than he expected, and through the whole of his address to the ghost, we trace the natural horror mixed with resolution not to be baffled in his efforts to penetrate this mystery. However much nature recoils from this contact with the supernatural, he forces himself to go through with it. At the same time he has no fear that the ghost can actually injure him, and the well-meant attempt of his anxious friends to keep him from following it only exasperates him. 'By heaven, I'll make a ghost of him that lets me,' he bursts out, more like one of his Viking ancestry than his philosophic self, and

boldly follows the retreating spectre. Here we see none of the slowness to act which is often conspicuous in him. When Fate says to Hamlet, Now or never,' he can be prompt enough, as his insight is usually clear as to what he should do, when he has to decide on the spot, but the unlucky thing is that Fate does not often supply us with this amount of pressure, and then Hamlet cannot put the screw on for himself. The ghost's terrible revelation thrills him to the heart's core, confirming his darkest suspicions, and adding horror unsuspected before, it touches both his affection and his pride, and all other feelings seem lost in fierce craving for revenge, as the idea of the perpetrator of this double outrage, the fatal 'smiling villain' rises in his mind, while the echo of the ghost's last sad, Hamlet, remember me,' is still vibrating in his ear. Stunned with horror, he hardly knows what to say when found by his friends to whom he cannot possibly explain the truth. The wild and whirling words' with which he tries to dismiss them, have a strange power of echoing through ones brain :

'You, as your business, and desire, shall point you;—

For every man hath business, and desire,

Such as it is, and for mine own poor part,

Look you, I will go pray.'

Collecting himself with an effort, he does succeed in impressing on them the necessity for secrecy as to the events of the night, and warn them of a possible change in his demeanour in the future, which they are not to try and explain. Already, therefore, the idea of feigning madness to assist his designs of revenge has crossed his mind. In this stratagem he follows the action of the Hamlet of the Historie,' but with this difference, that the older Hamlet adopts it to avoid being murdered like his father, a peril which is always near him while his uncle lives. Now our Hamlet never seems to anticipate danger from Claudius till his voyage to England takes place, and his design in assuming an antic disposition,' seems to be rather to throw Claudius off his guard, though he never explains it. Even in his keenest excitement on the subject of revenge, it never occurs to him to walk straight up to Claudius and kill him in cold blood. That might be practicable for some natures, Laertes, for instance, but not for Hamlet. Moreover, the King generally seems to be pretty well guarded from sudden attacks.

So now we have reached the central situation of the play. Hamlet is face to face with the thing he has to do, feels that he ought to do it, and must do it, but has to find ways and means and occasion, and to bring himself up to the point. That is, the meditative philosopher and student has to transform himself into an executioner and even in appearance, into an assassin! Claudius may have deserved to die fifty times, but that does not make the actual taking of his life an easy matter to Hamlet. In the first shock of the ghost's disclosure

are

it seems an easy matter to abandon everything for revenge, but when the inevitable reaction comes, the thing takes a different complexion. The critics agree almost to a man, nowadays, in abusing Hamlet's weakness on this point; they talk of his procrastinations, his pretexts for avoiding his duty, and so on and so on, and we do not say they wrong, but we wish they would remember two or three things. First, that the determined ruffian hero of the 'Historie,' though sticking to the idea of vengeance with true northern doggedness, yet takes his time over it quite as much as his modern namesake, allowing himself to be sent off to England, and delayed in various ways, so Hamlet's slowness was not invented by Shakspere. Secondly, if Hamlet had proceeded forthwith from the platform where he saw the ghost, and run Claudius through, we should have been badly off for a play, and thirdly, such a single-minded Hamlet would have appealed far less to our common human nature. For what is the story of every human soul to whom duty means anything at all, but a struggle between a sense, more or less clear, of what should be done, and natural disinclination to do it? Surely everybody not wrapped up absolutely in self-conceit and satisfaction, has been Hamlet some time or other, seeing duty clearly in a moment of exaltation, and shrinking back from it in the cold fit which follows, hating it, and catching at every reason for delaying the performance thereof, yet haunted by it, and abusing oneself secretly for neglecting it. With Hamlet, the case is put in the most extreme form, the duty being the most distasteful which could be laid on his peculiar nature, and requiring the strongest effort, but in other shapes it is one of the most universal of experiences, and perhaps this is one reason why Hamlet appeals to everybody, and is the most human of all Shakspere's very human creations.

The notes of time in this play are more than usually puzzling, as if Shakspere could not be troubled by making them agree. Now if the account of Hamlet's strange visit to Ophelia stood alone, we should have considered it as following closely on his vow to discard everything but revenge from his mind, and one last look and sigh, might well be the close of his ill-starred courtship. But it is clear that a considerable time intervenes, during which Hamlet gradually assumes the antic behaviour' he spoke of, which seems to consist in extreme depression of spirits varied by fits of wild excitement and incoherency. All the time, he tries to continue his visits to Ophelia, but is thwarted by Polonius' precautions, till at last he makes his way in, apparently hardly knowing what he wants or expects of her, but craving for another sight of his lost joy. He has to let her think him mad as the courtiers do, there is no help for it, but it seems to 'shatter all his bulk,' so to part from her.

One of Hamlet's peculiarities is the extreme presence of Polonius always produces in him.

irritation which the There seems an in

stinctive antipathy between the deep thinking young philosopher

and the sentenious cunning old politician, and we cannot honestly say that Hamlet preserves his princely courtesy as intact as we could wish, in their encounters. Polonius bores him so inexpressibly that he cannot help showing that he considers him an old fool, if he is Ophelia's father! Another side of the Prince's character reveals itself when his college comrades, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern make their appearance unexpectedly. They are not in his heart's core like Horatio, but he has many pleasant associations with them, he likes them and believes in their liking for him, so that he is, at first, unfeignedly pleased to see them. We notice that he does not play the madman with them, in this interview, he merely lets them see the natural sadness which oppresses him. Suddenly he begins to wonder why they had arrived exactly at this juncture, and their overdone professions quickly show him the truth, that the King has sent for them to spy on him. Hamlet is by no means an easy person to conspire against at all times. Although even Claudius owns him to be 'most generous and free from all contriving,' he has nevertheless a knack of divining what is plotted against him and confounding the intriguers, and when once his suspicions of double dealing are aroused, he is not to be lulled again into confidence. In this case, he keeps a close watch on his schoolfellows from the moment he sees that they are not dealing frankly with him. We should like to know whether his phrase of being most dreadfully attended' should be taken to mean that he is neglected even by his own servants in the usurper's court, or that he feels himself surrounded by spies at every turn? It will bear either meaning, but the latter seems the more likely complaint for Hamlet to make.

The arrival of the actors gives a turn to the conversation which threatened to become awkward for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and also presents Hamlet in quite another aspect. The weary Prince struggling with his heavy destiny gives place, for the moment, to the kindly and genial art critic, heartily interested in the players and their art. They are not to suffer because he is in trouble, nor be disappointed of any favour that he can show them, and he is interested to learn how the shiftings of fashion have affected them. As usual, he cannot refrain from mocking at Polonius, when that worthy joins him, and the difference between his reception of the actors and of his schoolfellows almost obliges him to give a broad hint to the latter that he is playing a part. Nothing could be more pleasant and gracious than Hamlet's demeanour to the troop of actors, and one only hopes that here Shakspere was painting from life, and that his royal and noble patrons behaved with as genial a courtesy, and snubbed any impertinent remarks as decidedly as Hamlet does Polonius' uncivil interruption. It would be interesting to know, too, if the play, of which Hamlet speaks had any real existence, and whether the Pyrrhus and Hecuba passages from it are Shakspere's own, or quotations from somebody else. The player must have had