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Ib. sc. 3. Speech of Polonius. Polonius's volunteer obtrusion of himself into this business, while it is appropriate to his character, still itching after former importance, removes all likelihood that Hamlet should suspect his presence, and prevents us from making his death injure Hamlet in our opinion.

Ib. The king's speech:—

“O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven,” &c.

This speech well marks the difference between crime and guilt of habit. The conscience here is still admitted to audience. Nay, even as an audible soliloquy, it is far less improbable than is supposed by such as have watched men only in the beaten road of their feelings. But the final—“all may be well!” is remarkable;—the degree of merit attributed by the self-flattering soul to its own struggle, though baffled, and to the indefinite half-promise, half-command, to persevere in religious duties. The solution is in the divine medium of the Christian doctrine of expiation:—not what you have done, but what you are, must determine.

Ib. Hamlet's speech:—

“Now might I do it, pat, now he is praying:

And now I'll do't:—And so he goes to heaven:

And so am I revenged? That would be scann'd,” &c.

Dr. Johnson's mistaking of the marks of reluctance and procrastination for impetuous, horror-striking, fiendishness!—Of such importance is it to understand the germ of a character. But the interval taken by Hamlet's speech is truly awful! And then—

“My words fly up, my thoughts remain below:

Words, without thoughts, never to heaven go.”

O what a lesson concerning the essential difference between wishing and willing, and the folly of all motive-mongering, while the individual self remains!

Ib. sc. 4.—

“Ham. A bloody deed;—almost as bad, good mother,

As kill a king, and marry with his brother.

Queen. As kill a king?”

I confess that Shakespeare has left the character of the Queen in an unpleasant perplexity. Was she, or was she not, conscious of the fratricide?

Act iv. sc. 2.—

“Ros. Take you me for a spunge, my lord?

Ham. Ay, Sir; that soaks up the King's countenance, his

rewards, his authorities,” &c.

Hamlet's madness is made to consist in the free utterance of all the thoughts that had passed through his mind before;—in fact, in telling home-truths.

Act iv. sc. 5. Ophelia's singing. O, note the conjunction here of these two thoughts that had never subsisted in disjunction, the love for Hamlet, and her filial love, with the guileless floating on the surface of her pure imagination of the cautions so lately expressed, and the fears not too delicately avowed, by her father and brother, concerning the dangers to which her honour lay exposed. Thought, affliction, passion, murder itself—she turns to favour and prettiness. This play of association is instanced in the close:—

“My brother shall know of it, and I thank you for your good counsel.”

Ib. Gentleman's speech:—

“And as the world were now but to begin

Antiquity forgot, custom not known,

The ratifiers and props of every word—

They cry,” &c.

Fearful and self-suspicious as I always feel, when I seem to see an error of judgment in Shakespeare, yet I cannot reconcile the cool, and, as Warburton calls it, “rational and consequential,” reflection in these lines with the anonymousness, or the alarm, of this Gentleman or Messenger, as he is called in other editions.

Ib. King's speech:—

“There's such divinity doth hedge a king,

That treason can but peep to what it would,

Acts little of his will.”

Proof, as indeed all else is, that Shakespeare never intended us to see the King with Hamlet's eyes; though, I suspect, the managers have long done so.

Ib. Speech of Laertes:—

“To hell, allegiance! vows, to the blackest devil!”

“Laertes is a good character, but,” &c.—Warburton.

Mercy on Warburton's notion of goodness! Please to refer to the seventh scene of this act;—

“I will do't;

And for that purpose I'll anoint my sword,” &c.—

uttered by Laertes after the King's description