THE MURDER NOT KNOWN TO THE QUEEN.

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and left the Queen's character in what Coleridge calls "an unpleasant perplexity." I can, however, find no reason for thinking that Hamlet suspected her of being an accessory to the murder, except what may be inferred from his saying—

A bloody deed; almost as bad, good mother,

As kill a king, and marry with his brother :

but this would be sufficiently met by the evident surprise of the Queen's reply- As kill a king?'—even if the jingle of Hamlet's words did not mark it for a retort in which a little sacrifice of sense would be made to sound. And as in a subsequent scene, he insists on calling the king his dear mother,' and sneeringly explains that 'father and mother is man and wife; man and wife is one flesh; and so my mother," he may here be covertly expressing a like sentiment, and making his mother responsible for her husband's crime. The speeches of the Ghost, and of the king and queen, in the Interlude, with the real Queen's behaviour at the latter, give sufficient, though negative, evidence of her innocence of the murder; while Hamlet's whole conduct in the scene before us would be preposterous, if he had any doubt of that innocence-for how could he reprove the guilt of the second marriage, and pass over that of the murder, if the Queen had been partaker in this? She must have known facts which might reasonably excite her suspicion after the event, and perhaps, from her neither pressing for an explanation, nor attempting a refutation of Hamlet's implied charge against her present husband, such suspicions may have passed through her mind. But nothing is more universal (though often nothing more puzzling) than that characteristic of the female mind which, even in grave and thoughtful women, and much more in the light and trifling, enables them to receive impressions, and make observations, without bringing them before

their minds in distinct consciousness. Women feel and act with an intuitive wisdom far superior to that of men, but they have not the same power of reflecting on their feelings and acts, and translating them into the shape of thoughts. The Queen's want of any clear and distinct views and opinions on this occasion is in perfect keeping with her whole character: and at the same time it helps the action of the play far better than her admission to a knowledge of Hamlet's designs, for it would have been madness for him to have trusted them with so weak a person, and one so much under the influence of the King.

Hamlet's protestation to his mother that he is not mad ' essentially,' but mad in craft,' and his reasoning on the subject, call for our attention:

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.

If we compare these assertions, and the calm rational discourse of which they form a part, with the excitement of Hamlet on other occasions, and both with his apology to Laertes, for his wild violence at the grave of Ophelia,

You must needs have heard

How I am punish'd with a sore distraction.

What I have done,

That might your nature, honour, and exception,
Roughly awake, I here proclaim was madness.
Was 't Hamlet wrong'd Laertes? Never, Hamlet:
If Hamlet from himself be ta'en away,

And, when he 's not himself, does wrong Laertes,

Then Hamlet does it not, Hamlet denies it.

Who does it, then? His madness: if't be so,
Hamlet is of the faction that is wrong'd;
His madness is poor Hamlet's enemy :—

If, I say, we compare these things, and see them in the

HAMLET WHEN NOT HIMSELF.'

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full light of the true idea of Hamlet's character, I think we shall not say with Dr. Johnson, " I wish that Hamlet had made some other defence: it is unsuitable to the character of a good or a brave man, to shelter himself in falsehood." For surely both assertions of Hamlet are true— one of Hamlet, the other of the other Hamlet who is not himself,' but his madness,' and ' poor Hamlet's enemy.' His mind is diseased, but not a mere mass of disease health is still very strong there, so strong as to keep the disease under great controul, and often to suppress it altogether for a time. And these opposite assertions are not only true of Hamlet's two opposite states of mind, but true in reference to the two occasions on which they are made. His reason did lose its authority for the time at the grave of Ophelia, but his designs on the murdering usurper are quite rational, and it is his craft to make them seem madness. Nor is his ghost-seeing, ecstasy,—that is (as we learn from the distinction between madness and ecstasy in a previous speech in this scene) the excitement and delirium of the senses: it has nothing in common with the fantasies of a fever or night-mare, and if it be a delusion, it is one which leaves the head cool, and the powers of the practical understanding in full vigour.

ACT IV, SCENES 1, 2, 3.-Leaving the reader to consider the quiet female tact with which the Queen fulfils her promise to Hamlet not to betray his sober saneness; the skilful craft with which the King makes new circumstances seem the motives for previously fixed plans; the servile readiness of the two courtiers, blindly to work the King's designs upon their old schoolfellow; the careless courage with which Hamlet submits to those designs, relying on himself, and on the cherub who sees them ;'

and his recognition of a ruling Providence, involved in the last expression;—we come to

ACT IV, SCENE 4.-This little scene at first seems to come in very oddly: its practical bearing on the play, and how it carries forward the action, are not immediately obvious. Yet I believe it is not only important, but indispensable: and that we find in it one of the innumerable instances, both that Shakspeare's Plays are most carefully constructed upon philosophical principles, and that he surpasses all other poets in the art of concealing his art. Nay, is it art,-consciously working out the details of its prescribed task-or is it an almost superhuman instinct, superseding the need of art? The more I study Shakspeare, the oftener I ask, and the less I am able to answer, this question. This alone is certain, that nature, and the beauties of nature, are not all. Shakspeare does not merely present us with a perfectly beautiful outside show, covering a mass of inorganic matter. There is a living organization within, even more wonderful and beautiful than the external covering which it clothes itself with, and which is its proper living manifestation. I think Flaxman said, that the anatomy of the Elgin marbles was perfect, as far as muscles could show externally, and be copied in marble; but if you cut in, you find nothing below but brute matter. But in Shakspeare, the more minutely you anatomize, the more you discover of highly organized tissues; and you may go on, making ever new discoveries, like those of the microscopic anatomy which has of late years revealed to us the mysteries in the structure of every particle of skin or bone, or like those of Lord Rosse's telescope, which has found worlds in what had previously been supposed to be mere nebulous material for making them.

But to return. Hamlet, in his soliloquy at the beginning of the third Act, explains to himself, as well as to

HAMLET'S SYMPATHY WITH SOLDIERS.

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us, that it is the dread of unknown conséquences, and the fear of responsibility, which prevent men of his character from acting, however their circumstances, like his, may call for aciton. Since then, the clear proof of the King's guilt, the hopeful remorse of the Queen, and even the unfortunate death of Polonius, have given a more practical tone to Hamlet's mind, by encouraging him to believe that even he can act, and with energy, and success too. Still he has shrunk from the great act, the killing the King, and has rather submitted to banishment, than do it He now falls in with the troops of Fortinbras,Twenty thousand men,

at once.

That, for a fantasy and trick of fame,

Go to their graves like beds.

That sympathy with soldiers, and the soldierly character, which all men of Hamlet-like mind feel, just because their own mental tendencies are so opposite, is immediately roused in him, as we see in the tone of his conversation with the Captain. His questions are marked by his usual quickness and courtesy, and he moralizes, as usual,

on

The imposthume of much wealth and peace;
That inward breaks, and shows no cause without,
Why the man dies.

But then he proceeds to draw the important practical conclusion, that the sense of responsibility and the fear of consequences, if they are not kept within due limits, will prove to contain but one part wisdom, and ever, three parts coward.' There is wisdom in not stirring without great argument,' and therefore in carefully ascertaining that we have such argument on our side: but this done, we should then throw aside all care about consequences, and responsibility, and

Make mouths at the invisible event.

It may often have seemed to him, while brooding over

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