ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN.

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mere words for the most part, seldom or never distinct images, all head-work, and fancy drolleries; there is no sensation supposed in the speaker." This may all be true; and probably we might add, that Hamlet's unhinged, and now over-excited, state of mind, and his habitual disposition to talk and not act, instinctively licensing him to talk now without the least notion of its being more than talk, give something characteristic to the language. Still, after all arguments, it cannot be denied, that in fact this part of the scene is disgusting to the taste of every one in the present day; and I am compelled to come to the conclusion that Shakspeare here wrote for his own age, and not "for all time." But this can only be said of Hamlet's share in the dialogue, which, like a foil, shows off the entire purity, modesty, and delicacy, of Ophelia. She, in all times, will continue to be a perfect model of maidenhood:-no standard of womanly virtue will ever be too refined for her to bear its test.

On the king making his guilt manifest by the way in which he breaks up the play at the moment of its representing the murder, Hamlet, left alone with Horatio, shows his excited spirits by singing scraps of songs, talking in an abrupt, excited way, and calling for music. And in this mood he sneers more openly at Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and at what they say of the king, than he has done before. They, on their part provoke him more, because they have discovered something of the king's real feeling towards him. Guildenstern, who is the chief speaker, seems influenced by the desire to pay court to the king, and to soothe his own sense of inferiority to Hamlet, by treating him in a haughty, over-bearing manner, while this desire contends with his fear of Hamlet personally, and his doubt exactly how far the king's dislike goes, and may be echoed by a good courtier. Coleridge says, that when in answer to Rosencrantz's My lord, you once did love me,' Hamlet replies, So I do still, by

6

these pickers and stealers,' he lays an emphasis on 'so;' and that Shakspeare's meaning is- Loved you? Hum! so I do still, &c.' There has been no change in my opinion: I think as ill of you as I did. "Else," he adds, "Hamlet tells an ignoble falsehood, and a useless one, as the last speech to Guildenstern- Why, look you now,' &c. proves." But there can be no doubt that Hamlet did love them once, for he received them on the former occasion with the warmth of sincere affection, reminding them of the rights of their mutual fellowship, the consonancy of their youth, and the obligation of their ever preserved love. He was indeed, instantly after, roused to suspicion that no such friendly feelings survived on their side, but that they had devoted themselves to the king's service against him; and his bitterness in the present scene, as well as the fact (which we learn afterwards) that he had got information of the plan of sending him to England, indicate that he had been sharply watching the designs of the court, and that he must therefore have had abundant confirmation of that suspicion. But "the last speech to Guildenstern," was made after some fresh indication that they were acting as spies, as is evident (though the critics are not agreed as to the precise movements which draw his attention) from Hamlet's angry demand- Why do you go about to recover the wind of me, as if you would drive me into a toil?' And therefore I should rather say, that in-'So I do still, by these pickers and stealers,' the last gleam of Hamlet's old regard for his school fellows shines for a moment; but it fades again instantly, and he ends with the jesting allusion to the catechism-intended to avow, rather than to conceal, his feeling that he is using his tongue in a way forbidden as much as picking and stealing are to his hands. Though the occasion is more serious, the contradiction is much like that which nine men out of ten find themselves guilty of, without the

THE KING PRAYING.

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least intention of hypocrisy, when they pay a morning visit to a common acquaintance, and express their pleasure at seeing the person whom they had the moment before hoped to find not at home. Each is the real feeling at the moment, because each is a mere transient impulse. It seems worth while to say so much in connection with these subordinate characters, because it is necessary to a just appreciation of Hamlet's after conduct, to notice the way in which the growing evidence of their worthlessness and malevolence prepares him to take, without remorse, the strong step of sacrificing their lives to save his own.

ACT III, SCENE 3.—It gives a new and deeper interest to Hamlet's device of the Play, that it has not only discovered the King's guilt, but that it has awakened his conscience, and given him a last call to repentance. In the King's soliloquy in the next scene, before he kneels down to pray, the metaphysical, moral, and Christian philosophy, are equally deep and true. First, the condemnation of conscience passing the sentence of God's law on the criminal :

:

O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven;
It hath the primal eldest curse upon 't,

A brother's murder !

Then the subsequent despair, from the consciousness of that awful truth, that the will, when once enslaved by sin, vainly desires to regain its freedom; and that the inclinations of that earthly nature which first suggested the sin for its own gratification, and now would but too gladly be freed from its share in the stings of conscience, are become as powerless for good, as they once were mighty for evil :

Pray can I not,
Though inclination be as sharp as will;
My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent;
And like a man to double business bound,
I stand in pause where I shall first begin,
And both neglect :--

in which last lines we may further observe the metaphysical accuracy not only of the distinction between inclination and will, but also of the illustration of that moral state in which the will, being enslaved, has lost its self-originating, willing, power.-Then follows the comforting recollection of the infiniteness of divine mercy, and that one very purpose for which prayer is appointed, is to obtain that mercy for past guilt:

What if this cursed hand

Were thicker than itself with brother's blood?
Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens,
To wash it white as snow? Whereto serves mercy,
But to confront the visage of offence?

And what's in prayer, but this two-fold force,—
To be forestalled, ere we come to fall,

Or pardon'd, being down? Then I'll look up;
My fault is past.

But again the consciousness returns that his guilt has
become his master, and that its chain cannot be broken :
for he feels that it is a chain, though a golden one, and
one which his now slavish nature hugs, because it is
made

Of those effects for which he did this murder,

His crown, his own ambition, and his queen.

And to this consciousness of the loss of free-will, follows
again the sense of responsibility to a Law and Judge that
no gold can bribe, and no arts deceive :-

In the corrupted currents of this world,
Offence's gilded hand may shove by justice;
And oft 't is seen, the wicked prize itself
Buys out the law: but 't is not so above:
There is no shuffling, there the action lies
In his true nature; and we ourselves compell'd,
Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults,

To give in evidence.

We often talk of nature as a chain of causes and effects;

CRIME THE BONDAGE OF THE WILL.

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and we use the expression in its deepest sense, and have the clearest illustration of it, in this its moral aspect; in which we see the causes and effects of crime (which is the submission to the evil inclinations of nature) forming an endless succession of links, each indissolubly knit into that which precedes and that which follows, and the whole binding down that human will which ought to possess a godlike freedom, and power to originate its own acts at every moment. If the guilty King could only take the first step, he feels that every other would be easy, but to take that first is impossible: he tries every link of the chain, one after another, but each is too fast to the rest, to be broken: the possibility of loosening any one, depends on the possibility of previously loosening that which goes before :

Try what repentance can: What can it not?
Yet what can it, when one cannot repent?

As it has been said, "pardon is promised as the consequence of repentance, but is repentance promised as the consequence of sin?"

Thus the whole soliloquy of the King shows him going backwards and forwards, to this side and to that, vainly seeking deliverance :

O wretched state! O bosom, black as death!

O limed soul, that struggling to be free,

Art more engag'd!

"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 halfpromise, 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."

Hamlet enters, and sees that now he might do it pat;' but only the coward or the assassin would willingly kill a