of complicity in the killing of Polonius.

Had his con

science been free as regarded his late brother, had his assumption of the throne been the consequence of a legal vote on the part of the people, and not a half-condoned usurpation, his course would have been very simple; he would have commanded Hamlet to be tried before a proper court, and the circumstances of the Lord Chamberlain's death would have been fully investigated; but this he could not do, because no inquiry could take place without subjecting him to the danger of discovery with regard to that crime, of which he now must have known that Hamlet more than suspected him. Under all these circumstances the device of sending Hamlet to England was the most ingenious that Claudius could adopt. He made it appear to the courtiers, on the one hand, as a measure taken for the safety of the State, and to Hamlet, on the other hand, as one taken for his individual safety

KING. Hamlet, this deed, for thine especial safety,

HAM.

KING.

HAM.

Which we do tender, as we dearly grieve

For that which thou hast done, must send thee hence
With fiery quickness: therefore prepare thyself;

The bark is ready and the wind at help,

The associates tend, and everything is bent
For England.

For England?

Ay, Hamlet.

Good.

KING. So is it, if thou knew'st our purposes.

Hamlet's answer here is worthy of remark, as taken in connection with that declaration of his purpose with regard to this expedition to England, which he had made to his mother at the end of the scene which concludes the last act—

HAM. I see a cherub that sees them. But, come; for England! Farewell, dear mother.

KING. Thy loving father, Hamlet.

:

HAM. My mother father and mother is man and wife; man and wife is one flesh, and so, my mother. Come, for England!

[Exit.

Hamlet cannot carry his hypocrisy so far as to pretend any cordiality towards Claudius. However slow his arm may be, his tongue at least is quick to wound the murderer of his father.

The last speech of the King in this scene, of which the four first lines are addressed to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, is of considerable importance as bearing on the question, whether they had any guilty knowledge of the purport of the despatches which they were taking from Claudius to the

Government of England;* the words addressed to them

are

Follow him at foot; tempt him with speed aboard;
Delay it not; I'll have him hence to-night :

Away! for everything is seal'd and done

That else leans on the affair: pray you, make haste.

It is not till they are gone, and he is alone, that the King confesses his treacherous purpose, and that the commission given to the two courtiers contained "an exact command," as Hamlet afterwards calls it, that his nephew's head should be instantly struck off. I do not see how Rosencrantz and Guildenstern can be supposed to have known for certain the purpose on which they were sent; but had they been true to their early friendship for Hamlet, and loyal to the young prince, who should have been their king, and was, by the acknowledgment of his usurping uncle, the heir to the crown; if they had not been false to the nobler duties of friend and subject alike, they would never have undertaken the mission at all. It is impossible they could have believed that, in sending Hamlet to England, the King was really consulting anything but his own safety.

It will be more convenient to examine, at this point, such defence of his conduct towards Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as Hamlet makes when narrating his adventures to Horatio in Act V., Scene 2. The scene commences thus :

HAM. So much for this, sir: now shall you see the other.

Of what Hamlet had been previously speaking we do not know exactly; most probably, judging from the letter to Horatio (see Act IV., Scene 6), he had been giving his friend a more detailed account of his adventure with, and capture by, the pirates. The letter ends thus:

"I have words to speak in thine ear will make thee dumb; yet are they much too light for the bore of the matter. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern hold their course for England: of them I have much to tell thee."

It is evident that Hamlet attached great importance to the news which he had to tell, and that, although he had all along suspected the King of some treacherous purpose in sending him to England, and had resolved to run the risk of going there with a hope of discovering that same treachery, yet, when his suspicions were so completely confirmed, he felt the same kind of painful satisfaction, and half-delighted agitation, which he displayed after the revelation made to him by his

*See Additional Notes, No. 6.

father's ghost, though, in that case, those feelings were then mingled with a horror, which is lacking here. We may, however, note this feature in Hamlet's character, that while he is very ready to suspect some evil purpose in the minds of those about him, and though these suspicions are in most cases justified by the event, he receives the confirmation of them with as much astonishment as if he had never had any suspicion at all. There is something of childish exultation at the proofs of his shrewdness; there is also that which shows us that his cynicism was of the mind and not of the heartthat however ill he thought of the world in general, his indignation against particular instances of evil-doing was in no degree blunted.

Hamlet continues

You do remember all the circumstance?

To which Horatio replies, as if the very suspicion of forgetfulness on this subject was intolerable—

Remember it, my lord!

What was the circumstance, or, as we should say, what were the circumstances, to which Hamlet alludes? I suppose they were the circumstances under which he left Denmark; that is to say, just after the accidental killing of Polonius, the agitating interview with his mother, the reappearance of the ghost "to whet his blunted purpose;" add to these the increased fear and suspicion with which the King evidently regarded him, and the small chance which, at the time of his departure, there seemed to be that Hamlet would ever accomplish the task of revenge which had been set him. All these circumstances would naturally agitate his mind, and heighten the apprehension of treachery which he felt. Hamlet thus continues his narrative :

HOR.

Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting

That would not let me sleep: methought I lay

Worse than the mutines in the bilboes. Rashly,*

And praised be rashness for it, let us know,

Our indiscretion sometime serves us well

When our deep plots do pall; and that should learn us
There's a divinity that shapes our ends,

Rough-hew them how we will.

HAM. Up from my cabin,

That is most certain.

My sea-gown scarf'd about me, in the dark

Groped I to find out them ;† had my desire,

The

* The long parenthesis here will be observed by the careful reader. sentence would run, "Rashly, up from my cabin," &c., or the parenthesis may begin, as suggested by Seymour (" Remarks," &c., Vol. II., p. 200), at the words, "let us know."

+ See Additional Notes, No. 7.

Finger'd their packet, and in fine withdrew
To mine own room again; making so bold,
My fears forgetting manners, to unseal

Their grand commission; where I found, Horatio,—
O royal knavery !—an exact command,

Larded with many several sorts of reasons,
Importing Denmark's health and England's too,
With, ho! such bugs and goblins in my life,
That, on the supervise, no leisure bated,

No, not to stay the grinding of the axe,
My head should be struck off.

The tone in which Hamlet speaks of the treacherous plot against his life, which he had so opportunely discovered, is throughout one of gleeful irony; it would seem he had never communicated his suspicions to Horatio, who receives his narrative with expressions of unaffected astonishment. Hamlet thus continues the account of his proceedings:Being thus be-netted round with villanies, – Or I could make a prologue to my brains,* They had begun the play, -I sat me down ; Devised a new commission; wrote it fair : I once did hold it, as our statists do,

A baseness to write fair, and labour'd much
How to forget that learning; but, sir, now
It did me yeoman's service: wilt thou know
The effect of what 1 wrote?

HOR.
Ay, good my lord.
HAM. An earnest conjuration from the king,

As England was his faithful tributary,

As love between them like the palm might flourish,
As peace should still her wheaten garland wear

And stand a comma 'tween their amities,

And many such-like' As 'es of great charge,
That, on the view and knowing of these contents,
Without debatement further, more or less,
He should the bearers put to sudden death,
Not shriving-time allow'd.

HOR.
How was this seal'd?
HAM. Why, even in that was heaven ordinant.
I had my father's signet in my purse,
Which was the model of that Danish seal :
Folded the writ up in the form of the other;

Subscribed it; gave't the impression; placed it safely,
The changeling never known. Now, the next day
Was our sea-fight; and what to this was sequent
Thou know'st already.

The language of Hamlet indicates great excitement, and, as I have said before, it is characterised by a childish exultation in the success of his strategy. That he should have thus craftily obtained, at the same time, such strong proofs of the King's treachery, and so ready a means of avenging himself on the two time-serving courtiers who had been so faith

* See Additional Notes, No. 8.

less to their professed friendship for him, seems to have produced no other impression on his mind than one of delighted self-satisfaction; no gratitude to Providence for his almost miraculous escape from so imminent a danger finds a place in his heart; and we feel almost disgusted for the moment at what strikes us, at first sight, as a mixture of malice and vanity. But let us read a little further on :--

HOR.

Why, what a king is this!
HAM. Does it not, thinks't thee, stand me now upon –

He that hath kill'd my king, and whored my mother;
Popp'd in between the election and my hopes;
Thrown out his angle for my proper life,

And with such cozenage-is't not perfect conscience,
To quit him with this arm? and is't not to be damn'd,
To let this canker of our nature come

In further evil?

HOR. It must be shortly known to him from England
What is the issue of the business there.

HAM. It will be short: the interim is mine;

And a man's life's no more than to say "One."

We see now that Hamlet is really trying to justify to his own conscience the revenge which he has never been able to accomplish. As I have pointed out before, his great difficulty is to bring himself to commit an open act of homicide; he could kill the King on the spur of the moment, when he thought he was hid behind the arras, but not when he was kneeling before his eyes. He professes to regard the task of revenging his father's murder as a sacred duty imposed on him by a supernatural visitation, and justified by the corroborating evidence of the murderer's demeanour during the play scene. If there could be anything wanting to remove all merciful scruples from his mind, and to make the life of Claudius more justly forfeit to him, it was this treacherous attempt on Hamlet's own life; the motive of self-defence was now added to all the others, urging him to lose no time in seizing the sword of justice and striking the decisive blow which should rid the world of such a monster of guilt. But instead of doing so, he still debates the matter over and over again with himself; still wastes his ingenuity in devising more urgent incitements to action while he does nothing; still spends his energy in bitter satire and vigorous denunciations of the murderer; until accident brings the opportunity, until the impulse of passion lends the necessary resolution.

Strange, indeed, is the contrast between his endless selfvindications, as far as the King is concerned, and his utter indifference at the sudden and fearful end he has contrived for the two courtiers. Is it that, because the sea is between