weak out of power. Mysteriously our sympathies run with the weak. It is part of the action of the play that Hamlet should only find out that his enemies have unjustly got power after they are in possession.

The whole play is the action or conflict of Hamlet and friends versus King and supporters. Hamlet wants power and resolution to effect his revenge. But time alone brings it; and this time is such an important element in the play, that we believe it is the groundwork of it. The action of the play, again, is one in which the King is always losing power, and Hamlet gaining it. For example: two of the King's supporters, Voltimand and Cornelius, disappear at an early period from the play. Thus, two of Hamlet's enemies are gone, and the King's power lessened. Next, the chief bulwark of the King dies at Hamlet's hands. With the death of Polonius the King is visibly alarmed. So Hamlet is banished. Next, Guildenstern and Rosencrantz disappear, and Hamlet comes back alone. Lastly, Laertes dies; when Hamlet kills the King, dies himself, and the drama is brought to a close. Let it be noticed how Hamlet gets bolder and bolder, and more resolute in every act of the play. He cannot kill the King, because he lacks power. But he kills Polonius, and that is the only way to get at the King. He is still nearer to the King when Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead. And nearest when Laertes dies by his own poison. We must, therefore, take these supporters of the King as indispensables to his power and evil doing. Let us begin with Voltimand and Cornelius. They evidently are only necessary at an early stage of the play. They shortly disappear. All they complete, or the part they play, is the putting down of a revolt. They are sent to Norway. They savour of direct force. They disappear. So we must take it that force disappears. Next comes Polonius, who uses cunning, stratagem, and interference. He is fond of espionage. Witness the task he sets his servant Reynaldo. He repeats himself over and over again. He is certain he can find truth anywhere. He is full of pedantic words. He is old. He is tedious. What is he? Antiquity on account

of his repetition, certainty on account of his self-conceit, and thus infallibility. We therefore see how perfectly Polonius realizes Tradition, which repeats ever the same monotone; and Antiquity, on account of his age; also Pedantry, in his garrulous unmeaning jargon. He is wrong in all his surmises, yet shows unrivalled worldly wisdom. He is the very back-bone of the King, and does all the spying and dirty work of that monarch. Now, the death of Polonius is peculiar. He is killed as if by accident. Hamlet thought he was killing the King. And he was killed because he interfered between Hamlet and his mother. Is this an end of interference? Is this the end of religious intolerance? The death of autocratic authority and tradition. The text, presently, will throw more light upon this point. Thus another of the King's chief supports is gone. And we must be struck with the helpless way Hamlet is obliged to kill the King's bulwarks before he can get at the King. And this leads us to conjecture that all these supporters of the King are the very substance of the King himself. This is a conjecture which the text, by and by, will strengthen. Hamlet only gets rid of what is immediately, and at a certain period, obstructive to himself. He only kills Polonius when driven into it by his prying interference. Until this is done he cannot speak to his mother. Again, he only plots against his former friends, Guildenstern and Rosencrantz, when he reads the grand commission of the King. But we are more especially struck with the irresolution of Hamlet. Let us also remark how this irresolution gets incentives to further resolution, from epochs in the play. One of these is the appearance and revelation of the Ghost. Again, the Player scene is another. The march of Fortinbras a similar one. And yet, after all, the death of the King is almost forced upon him. What is the meaning of this apparent contradiction? It is not one; it merely is meant to convey the meaning that the King and his supporters are one. The death of Laertes is the death of the King. Law is the power which ties the hands of Hamlet. Time alone sets them free in the last scene of all. After the

death of Polonius, Hamlet has two more enemies, who, pretending to be his friends, are enlisted in reality upon the King's side. Let us remark how these two, who are never far apart from each other, hunt in couples. And they offer a direct contrast to Polonius. For the interference and pedantry of the latter, they substitute a form of bad logic and optimistic view of life. They directly recommend the banishment of Hamlet. At first they are his friends. Latterly in the play Hamlet first suspects, then repudiates, and finally escapes from them.

Thus the action of the play is one of unbroken continuity. It is one of progress and development. The power of the King is constantly getting weakened. With his last bulwark, Laertes, he dies himself. Hamlet is the direct means of the removal of all the King's supports. Force, hard-heartedness, authority, bigotry, tradition, sophistry, optimism, casuistry, and conservatism disappear before Hamlet, one after another. Hamlet is only set naked in the kingdom, when Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are gone and are dead. He is no longer hampered with false logic. He is indeed naked. The action of the drama, we repeat, is one of devolopment, of continuity. There is no break. It is all a chain of cause and effect, over which there rests

"A divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will." And we also notice how action and reaction have their legitimate and historical expression in this sublime drama.

The Players are prompted by Hamlet; and they, in their turn, react upon him, giving him further force. The march of Fortinbras, as the chorus of liberty, acts and reacts in a similar manner. But there is a long pause, whilst Hamlet is being banished.

With regard to time, we must infer that epochs of moment and movements of great strength are alone dramatically portrayed in the action. The Player scene, which we shall endeavour to show is the Reformation itself, is thus the most important point in the whole action of the play. It is the

direct recognition of error, and the drawing up of the two great forces of society in Europe. These are the stationary and the progressive. Antiquity, tradition, and the past are for the first time face to face with inquiry, reason, truth, or science and modern liberalism. From this point of the play events take a new turn. Hamlet is no longer the irresolute character some believe him to be. He soon (dramatically) kills Polonius. And from the death of the latter results the banishment of Hamlet. From the banishment of Hamlet results the death of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. And, again, their death signifies the return of Hamlet. At this point we have a rapidity of action, which defies any further elaboration of the play as hitherto. Shakespeare, in all he did, was eclectic; and the fifth act of the play is in reality a chorus of condensed time, in which great change is represented in a striking and magnificent manner. But if we go back to the beginning of the drama, we shall find little or no action. The play opens with the deep stillness and darkness of the

"Dead waste and middle of the night."
"Not a mouse stirring."

One solitary sentinel alone on his watch; and this solitary being reports himself as cold, and sick at heart. Nothing can be more impressive, and nothing could realize better the darkness and ignorance of the Middle Ages, which are so well expressed in the word 'waste.' This solitary sentinel, Francisco, strangely disappears, at once and for ever, from the play. And we ask ourselves why? Because, if he is ignorance, as we suspect, his relief by Bernardo would be the relief of ignorance for enlightenment. And we suspect Bernardo to mean education of some sort, or the art of reading. And our reasons for this are very strong. In the first place, the word Bernardo spells Born read.' Whether this is simply accidental or otherwise, we leave to others to decide. But when coupled with similar results, and when classed with other facts of the same nature, we cannot escape

the conviction forced upon us. Without specifying any

direct attribute as to the spiritual meaning of Bernardo, we
will call him the growth of knowledge. And we must
notice that he is an officer, as is also his friend Marcellus.
Now Professor Morley says, in his History of English Litera-
ture, that Shakespeare employs soldiers as symbols of whole
workers, body and mind. Francisco may thus stand for the
first feeble inquiries and questionings, which led from the end
of the Dark Ages (about the end of the tenth century) to-
wards that ever-increasing movement which ended in the
Reformation. And the whole of the first act of Hamlet is
in accordance with this theory. For it is one of the accre-
tion of doubt, and a growing certainty of the Ghost's reality
and truth. It is questionable, even, if Bernardo and Mar-
cellus do not go far to form Hamlet himself. For Hamlet
does not appear until the second scene of the first act. And
Bernardo and Marcellus, like Francisco, disappear from the
play after the end of the first act. And why? Because
they are understood in Hamlet. Hamlet himself says:
"Let us go in together;

And still your fingers on your lips, I pray.
The time is out of joint;-O cursed spite!
That ever I was born to set it right!
Nay, come, let's go together."

Thus we see Hamlet is himself an embodiment of many
elements. And those elements are, to our minds, inquiry
and doubt, a love of justice and truth, and liberty. The
first scene of the first act already points to a gradual increase
of light. And it ends with the beautiful words of Horatio:
But, look, the morn, in russet mantle clad.
Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastern hill."

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The darkness of the Dark Ages is thus typically portrayed as breaking up. The dawn of modern Europe was dispersing the vapours of credulity and superstition. Confidence in the Ghost gradually culminates into a greater and greater scepticism on the part of Hamlet. And how beautifully is all this gradually growing scepticism pictured in the play! Seen by no one at first but Bernardo; then by Marcellus and Horatio; it remains a mere spectre, that cannot and will not