is a member of a family of whom we shall hear much, son of Polonius, an old counsellor of the king, and brother to the heroine Ophelia. His present wish is to go back to Paris in spite of his father's disinclination, and the king grants his request. Claudius then turns to Hamlet. That prince has stood moodily by, and his gloomy face and reproachful air seem to have had their effect upon the king and his newly married wife, for they turn smartly upon him and try the effect both of flattery and argument to change his temper. Hamlet's answers are bitter. He indignantly repudiates his mother's phrase of "seems,” and declares that it is not

"Forms, modes, shows of grief

That can denote me truly: these indeed seem,
For they are actions that a man might play :
But I have that within that passeth show;
These but the trappings and the suits of woe."

It is in vain that the king brings to bear upon him the stereotyped argument that death of fathers is common, and offers to treat him as his own son, in proof of which affection he implores him not to go back to college at Wittenberg; and Hamlet, in whom, unlike Laertes, the sense of duty is strong, consents to remain. The king then, with an expression of joy, retires, and the court with him, leaving Hamlet alone.

What, then, is the situation so far? Hamlet, a youth at college, has been summoned home by the news of his father's death. On his arrival, or shortly afterwards,

his mother marries his uncle, who with the consent of the nation has ascended the throne. He himself is treated with every consideration, and, so far as we can see, with the honour due to his rank. But what is his frame of mind? On being left alone, he instantly breaks out into a soliloquy upon the subject of suicide, and we learn that the cause of his distress is the hasty marriage of his mother.

"A little month; or ere those shoes were old,

With which she followed my poor father's body,

Like Niobe, all tears; . . . she married with mine uncle,
My father's brother.

It is not, nor it cannot come to, good;

But break, my heart; for I must hold my tongue!" Such are his feelings; but if so, why did he not escape from them by an immediate return to Wittenberg? He had the opportunity, yet he did not take it. Why was it? Was it because he hated to take any definite step, and that he seized eagerly the entreaties of his mother and his uncle as an excuse to stay? Remember, no rumour of the ghost had yet reached him, but so great is his sensibility that he is already considering the desirability of suicide.

It is at this moment that Horatio and the soldiers come to announce the appearance of the ghost. Hamlet is at once all attention, and he shows the same intellectual dexterity in cross-examining the witnesses as he had done in parrying the arguments of the king and queen. He catches at evidence of inconsistency in the

story. He asks exactly the right question to determine whether the ghost was a ghost or a living man dressed to personate one. Finally, he shows no want of resolution, but declares his intention of seeing it for himself. Then for the first time comes the suggestion from Hamlet, in soliloquy, that the appearance is connected with foul play.

"My father's spirit in arms! all is not well;

I doubt some foul play would the night were come!
Till then sit still, my soul. Foul deeds will rise,
Though all the earth o'erwhelm them, to men's eyes."

Shakespeare employs the interval till night by carrying his audience a little further into the plot. We remember that Laertes is to go to Paris. In saying farewell to his sister (Act i. Scene 3) he, brother-like, takes the opportunity to read her a lecture upon her relations with Hamlet. That prince, it appears, has been making love to her, and the theory of the Polonius household is that Hamlet's intentions are not serious. Laertes takes up the simple line of argument that the Crown Prince does not marry the Prime Minister's daughter, and he implores his sister to be circumspect in her conduct. Ophelia, who is no Juliet, but a mere tool in the hands of her family, agrees with him.

"I shall the effect of this good lesson keep,

As watchman to my heart."

Fancy Juliet saying this! It at once marks Ophelia's position among Shakespeare's heroines. She is the doll.

But though a child in mental development she is not altogether free from taint. At least her answer to her brother, and her suggested counsel to him, savour of an indelicacy of thought from which Shakespeare's other heroines, however plain-spoken in mere language, are altogether exempt. Laertes, however, smartly puts her down. It is not a sister's business to lecture her brother, and at that moment Polonius makes his appear

ance.

Polonius is the comic character of the play. As Shakespeare advanced in art he threw aside the rude merriment of the clown, and contrived to satisfy the pit's demand for humour by the introduction of a laughable character as one of the regular dramatis persona, and in the earlier part of Hamlet this role is played by Polonius. Polonius is the true father of both Laertes and Ophelia. Greatness of mind is utterly absent from his system. He is fitted out with a stock of "old saws and modern instances," which serve as contrasts to the imbecility of his own behaviour. As a young man he has had the same pleasant trick of lecturing his friends as Laertes has now, and it has grown upon him. His loquaciousness has increased with his years. In figure he is ungainly to the point of exciting merriment, and though Shakespeare never raises laughter at mere deformity, he makes the combination of self-satisfied imbecility with ludicrous incompetence both of mind and body sufficiently amusing.

Polonius has already said farewell to his son.

The

ship is waiting, the sail is set: and yet loquacity so far gets the better of the old man that a speech a page long follows. In it a series of copy-book maxims are tacked together. Each is excellent in its way, but all are made singularly humorous by the contrast they bear to the subsequent conduct of their utterer. "Give thy thoughts no tongue" is the first dogma of the most talkative man in the play. "Beware of entrance to a quarrel" is the advice thrown away on the most headstrong of young men. And among these sections of proverbial philosophy there is embalmed, like the fly in amber, one true guide of conduct. "To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man."

As Laertes turns to go, he adjures his sister to remember his advice. What does the doll say? ""Tis in my memory locked, and you yourself shall keep the key of it." Brave words! But what does the doll do? Why, her very first answer to her father, 'So please you, something touching the lord Hamlet,' betrays the conversation about her lover. Polonius takes the same view of Hamlet that Laertes holds. Like his son, he is incapable of understanding the depth of pure affection. He looks on Hamlet's vows as the stock-intrade of the seducer, and no more. Nor is Ophelia herself any better. A true girl understands her lover. Ophelia "does not know, my lord, what she should think." Ordered to talk no more to Hamlet, her dutiful answer is, "I shall obey, my lord." Such, then, are