Hamlet's dearest relations in life-his mother and the mistress of his heart. Is it any wonder that he despairs?

Evening has come, and Hamlet, Horatio, and Marcellus find themselves on the platform (Act i. Scene 4). It is very cold. A consciousness of the cause of their vigils subdues their spirits to seriousness. The least external event naturally is dealt with from a moral point of view. So Hamlet, hearing the loud revelry of the king, remarks on the injury done to the Danish character by the reputation for drunkenness under which the nation labours. From this he passes on to apply in general the bearing of this particular fact. Few men, he thinks, are fairly judged. Friends and enemies alike form their opinion from some solitary defect. The one thing which fastens itself upon the memory gives colour to the whole. This speech of Hamlet's requires careful study. It is introduced by Shakespeare apparently without need, and therefore it must have been designed by him either to give some important information about Hamlet's own character or to supply the audience with some caution or hint which would aid them in understanding the play. It may do both. If the former, it gives another instance of Hamlet's habit of seeking the moral significance of what he sees before him. His mind is distinctly subjective, not objective. He is never satisfied with grasping merely the surfaces of things: he is always asking for something more. Or it may convey a caution to the audience. Do not judge

Hamlet by one trait of his character: look rather at the whole man.

At this moment the ghost enters. Observe Hamlet's address to it. He covers every condition.

"Be thou a spirit of health, or goblin damned,

Bring with thee airs from heaven, or blasts from hell,

Be thy intents wicked or charitable

I will speak to thee."

These alternatives are never again absent from his mind. He reminds one of the soldier's prayer: "O God, if there be a God, save my soul, if I have a soul." He asks the reason why it, duly buried, again in complete steel “revisiteth the glimpses of the moon, making night hideous." The ghost beckons Hamlet to follow, and regardless of the entreaties of his companions, who fear for his life, Hamlet goes.

By this artifice Shakespeare secures that Hamlet alone should hear the ghost's message. Mark its speech. The design of the ghost is to work to a climax, and only when Hamlet's blood is frozen with the horror of the unknown, will it make its revelation.

"If thou didst ever thy dear father love,——
Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder."

Hamlet's horror-stricken question "Murder?” conclusively shows that the idea of murder is new to him. The agony of his soul, which even under the thought of his mother's hasty marriage had carried him to the verge of suicide,

is now intensified. More than this, he is confronted with an opportunity for action. His mother's marriage was an accomplished fact, legal if not conformable to good taste; but here was a murder to be revenged. The dreamy and sensitive youth is called to become the man of action.

He hails the change. "Haste me to know it, that I, with wings as swift as meditation or the thoughts of love, may sweep to my revenge." That is exactly the sentiment which might be expected either from a man to whom consequences were nothing because he could not see them, or from a dreamy scholar who, not having yet been confronted with life, had no idea of the limits which the practical world sets upon action. In Hamlet's case it is the latter.

The ghost then relates to Hamlet the circumstances of the murder, which amount to a declaration that his brother, the present king, took his life by pouring poison into his ear while he was sleeping in his orchard. No external signs of violence appeared, and the plausible story that the death had been due to the sting of a serpent had been accepted as explaining the symptoms. This murder is to be revenged, but two limitations are placed by the ghost on Hamlet's course of action. "Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive against thy mother aught." That is, the punishment of the murderer was to be effected in such a way that the propriety of Hamlet's conduct in the matter should be evident, and secondly, in the revenge the wife was not

to be involved in the punishment of her husband. These directions having been given, the ghost vanishes.

Hamlet's first impulses are all for action. Everything but the order for revenge he will erase from his memory. Never again will he trust a smiling villain. He will keep his secret to himself. He declines to share it with his friends. Their inquisitiveness has to be satisfied with the answer that "it is an honest ghost." Their secrecy is secured by an oath, whose sanctity is attested by the apparition itself. Meanwhile, Hamlet has to form his first plan of action. To act at once on such evidence might be the part of a madman, but never of a philosopher. To appear as before with such a secret on his mind was equally out of the question. So he decides to gain time by counterfeiting madness, and imparts just a hint to his friends to keep their counsel, and not to betray his secret by word or deed.

"But come ;—

Here, as before, never, so help you mercy,
How strange or odd soe'er I bear myself,-
As I, perchance, hereafter shall think meet
To put an antic disposition on—

That you, at such times seeing me, never shall
With arms encumbered thus, or this head-shake,

Or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase,

As, Well, we know ;—or, We could, an if we would ;

Or, If we list to speak;-or, There be, an if they might ;

Or such ambiguous giving out, to note

That you know aught of me :-This not to do,

So

grace and mercy at your most need help you, Swear!"

This closes the first act. What is the plot so far? Hamlet, a young scholar (for I take the whole tone of the play to be of more value than a casual date, which would make Hamlet a man of full age and his mother a woman in the decline of life) whose experience of the world has been gained from books and thought, is suddenly summoned home by the news of his father's death. On arriving he finds that his uncle has been accepted by the voice of the country as king, and that he has already become the husband of Hamlet's mother. The sensitive youth is bitterly shocked. The mother in whom he has believed has shown herself to be worthless. His faith in the sanctity of motherhood has received a fatal blow. Horrified at what he sees, his sensitive mind even contemplates suicide as a relief. At all costs he will escape. While in this mood he receives a new blow. The father whom he loved had been murdered by his uncle. The family life which he has accepted as ideal is a sham. Nay, too, he is on a sudden called to leave his studies and to take an active part in affairs of the most delicate complexity. duty of avenging his father's death is entrusted to him, and this at a moment when he realises fully his own isolation and the untrustworthiness of mankind. What line he will take is the problem to be worked out. This time alone will show.

The

The audience having in the last scene been worked up to the highest pitch of excitement, Shakespeare now provides a scene which, while carrying forward the