But instead of adopting this dignified course, he concludes his discourse with the sagacious observation

For if the king likes not the comedy,

Why then, belike, he likes it not, perdy.

The king believed Hamlet to be really mad: and he very wisely sent for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to endeavour to discover from him the cause of his madness! It required no small portion of insanity to suppose that a man actually in that state could know his situation, or, if he did, that he would discover the cause of his misfortune. A leading feature of madness is a confidence of our own superior abilities, and a belief of the imbecility of others. However, dismissing this consideration, let us examine the conduct of Hamlet in his interview with these courtiers.

He had previously taken very considerable pains to impress the world with a persuasion of his madness, but appears to have abandoned his scheme, precisely at a time when, and in company of those persons with whom, it was highly essential to continue to support the character he had assumed. In some parts of his discourse with the courtiers, there is, it is true, a slight tincture of absence or flightiness; but nothing that could in any degree deserve to be styled madness:

Ham. What news?

Ros. None, my lord; but that the world's grown honest.

Ham. Then is doomsday near; but your news is not true. Let me ques tion more in particular: what have you, my good friends, deserved at the hands of fortune, that she sends you to prison hither?

Guil. Prison, my lord!

Ham. Denmark's a prison.

Ros. Then is the world one.

Ham. A goodly one; in which there are many confines, wards, and dungeons; Denmark being one of the worst.

Ros. We think not so, my lord.

Ham. Why, then 'tis none to you; for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so; to me it is a prison.

Ros. Why, then your ambition makes it one; 'tis too narrow for your mind.

Ham. O God! I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.

Guil. Which dreams, indeed, are ambition; for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.

Ham. A dream itself is but a shadow.

Ros. Truly, and I hold ambition of so airy and light a quality, that it is but a shadow's shadow.

Ham. Then are our beggars, bodies; and our monarchs, and outstretch'd heroes, the beggars' shadows. Shall we to the court? for, by my fay, I can

not reason.

This is very far remote from madness, and merely denotes a perturbed mind. In another part of his conversation with these courtiers, Hamlet launches out into the most profound and sublime reflections.

Ham. I have of late (but, wherefore, I know not), lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises: and, indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposi tion, that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculties! In form, and moving, how express and admirable! In action, how like an angel! In apprehension, how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals?—And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me,-nor woman neither; though, by your smiling you seem to say so.

If Hamlet takes no pains to appear deranged, Rosencrantz and his associate equally lose sight of their object. They make no effort to ascertain what is the cause of the distraction, or melancholy of the prince. They were therefore summoned to the scene of action to very little purpose.

In his interview with the players, Hamlet likewise makes not the slightest pretence to derangement. Every sentence he addresses to them is perfectly lucid and correct; and displays a consummate knowledge of the subject on which he treats. He descants on the duties of their profession as elaborately, and inculcates on them as sound instruction, as if he had taken out his degrees in a theatrical university.

Ham. Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounce it to you, trippingly on the tongue: but if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as lieve the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus; but use all gently: for in the very torrent, tempest, and (as I may say) whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance, that may give it smoothness. O, it offends me to the soul, to hear a robustious perriwig-pated follow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the oars of the groundlings; who, for the most part, are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb shows, and noise: I would have such a fellow whipp'd for o'erdoing Termagant; it out-herods Herod: pray you, avoid it.—Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor; suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature: for any thing so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first, and now, was, and is, to hold

as 'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure. Now, this, overdone, or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of which one, must, in your allowance, o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. O, there be players, that 1 have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly,—not to speak it profanely, that, neither having the accent of christians, nor the gait of christian, pagan nor man, have so strutted, and bellow'd, that I have thought some of nature's journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably.

He moreover recites, memoriter, a long and intricate passage from an old play, on the catastrophe of Priam when he fell into the hands of the bloody and inexorable Pyrrhus. In the whole, therefore, of his proceedings with the players there appears not the most distant semblance of madness.

This deportment must be allowed to have been in direct hostility with the plan he had formed, and to have betrayed extreme inconsistency.

But the case of the queen is still more striking and forcible than that of all the rest of the dramatis personæ. As Hamlet's principal object must have been to deceive the king, it was highly essential for that purpose to keep the queen in ignorance of the real state of his mind, and of his views. But in the whole of the extended dialogue with her, every pretence of madness is discarded. Every line teems with wholesome, sound advice, perfectly suited to her situation. Neither Sherlock, nor Tillotson, nor Massillon, could have argued with more intelligence, acuteness, or conviction. Indeed, he not only does not affect madness, but he most explicitly disclaims all pretence to it, and most earnestly labours to convince his mother of the perfect sanity of his mind.

Ham. Ecstasy!

My pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep time,
And makes as healthful music: it is not madness
That I have utter'd: bring me to the test,
And I the matter will re-word; which madness
Would gambol from. Mother, for love of grace,
Lay not that flattering unction to your soul,
That not your trespass, but my madness, speaks ;-
It will but skin and film the ulcerous place;
Whilst rank corruption, mining all within,
Infects unseen. Confess yourself to heaven;
Repent what's past; avoid what is to come;
And do not spread the compost on the weeds,

To make them ranker. Forgive me this, my virtue :
For, in the fatness of these pursy times,

Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg;

Yea, curb, and woo, for leave to do him good.

This was most completely tearing off the mask, and totally abandoning an awkward contrivance, by no means calculated, under the very best management, to answer the purpose he had in view. It was morally certain, that she would directly reveal the communication to the king, whose guilty conscience would suggest means of freeing himself from the danger of his situation.

But Hamlet's imprudence carries him a step further. He has, in some manner that does not appear in the tragedy, discovered the plot laid for his destruction in England, and reveals this knowledge to the queen, thus inexpressibly increasing the difficulties by which he was surrounded, and still further awakening the jealousy of his enemies.

Ham. I must to England; you know that?

Queen. Alack, I had forgot; 'tis so concluded on.

Ham. There's letters seal'd: and my two school-fellows,

Whom I will trust, as I will adders fang'd,—

They bear the mandate, they must sweep my way,

And marshal me to knavery. Let it work;

For 'tis the sport to have the engineer

Hoist with his own petar: and it shall go hard,

But I will delve one yard below their mines,
And blow them at the moon ;-O, 'tis most sweet,
When in one line two crafts directly meet!

It is not easy to define exactly the character of mind display. ed in the treatment of Polonius by Hamlet. Pure madness it certainly is not. There is, it must be confessed, occasionally a tincture of a certain something, that wears the semblance of derangement. But the most predominant features are, a puny attempt at wit, and a rude and indelicate kind of sarcasm, from which the age and rank of Polonius ought to have protected him. Had it been intended to impose on him an idea that the prince was really insane, the course pursued was very far, indeed, from bearing strong marks of sagacity.

Ham. My lord, you play'd once i' the university, you say?
Pol. That I did, my lord: and was accounted a good actor.
Ham. And what did you enact?

Pol. I did enact Julius Cæsar: I was kill'd in the capitol ;—Brutus kill'd me.

Ham. It was a brute part of him to kill so capital a calf there.-Be the players ready?

This has been regarded by some as witty. But by every correct mind it must be regarded as a miserable attempt at punning, combined with a wanton attack on the feelings of a man incapable of resenting the injury.

Again, on another occasion:

Pol. What do you read, my lord!
Ham. Words, words, words!
Pol. What is the matter, my lord?
Ham. Between who?

Pol. I mean the matter that you read, my lord.

Ham. Slanders, sir: for the satirical rogue says here, that old men have gray beards; that their faces are wrinkled; their eyes purging thick amber, and plum-tree gum; and that they have a plentiful lack of wit, together with most weak hams: all which, sir, though I most powerfully and potently believe, yet I hold it not honesty to have it thus set down; for yourself, sir, shall be as old as I am, if, like a crab, you could go backward.

This procedure was not, as I have already stated, calculated to carry on the deception which Hamlet had begun. But even admitting for a moment that it had been, how can it be reconciled to a good heart-a clear head-or to the excellent character lavished on Hamlet by the critics generally? He was, by his elevated rank, protected from the resentment or vengeance of those whom he injured or insulted. Was it then decent-was it decorous-nay, was it not dishonourable, for a person thus intrenched by "the sanctity of high dignity," to offer outrage to the feelings of a man, and more particularly of one in the wane of life, whose age, as far as we can infer from the drama, was his only offence? This circumstance, of itself, would have secured him kindness and attention from any magnanimous mind, far from exposing him to the keen and biting jeers and sarcasms which he uniformly experienced whenever he encoun tered a prince who is preposterously styled

"The expectancy and rose of the fair state,
The glass of fashion, and the mould of form."

I come now to the conduct of Hamlet to Ophelia. To do justice to the subject, it is necessary to bear constantly in mind the relative situation of the parties. The one was a prince,