absurdly employed, and he as reproachfully checks himself: What an ass am I! ay, sure, this is most brave; That I, the son of the dear murthered, Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell, Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words, A scullion! As he proceeds we seem incidentally to learn from himself, now alone, and much in earnest, what is highly important in relation to his real and unfeigned condition. He suddenly changes the course of his reflection. Certain doubts, which seem at times to have arisen in his mind in his recent state of tumult, now recur to him. His real position is enough to produce perplexity; for if he were rash enough, or determined enough, to act as revenge would dictate, how could such an act be judged aright by those unacquainted with the crime revealed to Hamlet, and to him alone, by the ghost? The revelation may, by this time, have been imparted to Horatio; but the impressive oath taken on Hamlet's sword, and witnessed by the spirit from under-ground, is binding on Horatio and, we must conclude, on Bernardo and Marcellus, who never tell what they have seen, and who know nothing of the ghost's story. To kill the king, therefore, would be to do an act which no one could explain or excuse. Even when the revenge is completed, and Hamlet's agitations are subsiding in death, the explanation has to be bequeathed to those who survive him, as a vindication of his wounded name. But doubts of a different kind at present add to Hamlet's troubles,-doubts if the spirit he has seen was in reality the spirit of his father; and whether the horrible story so speciously told to him might not have been the mere prompting of hell; or the whole scene the ghost, the narrative, and the dread injunction to remember and to revenge—the mere creation of his own heat-oppressed and disordered brain. Such doubts were not merely embarrassing, but dreadful; for if what he had seen and heard were unreal, it had driven him to meditate the murder of his uncle for a crime of which he was innocent; an act which would have desolated the court, and convulsed the kingdom, and embittered his own conscience for ever. But some times he has even feared all this. The remembrance of the ghost has become somewhat dimmed in his great confusion, its remembrance shadowy, all that he saw and listened to unsubstantial and questionable; and he snatches at a device for relief. And thus he goes on : Fye upon't! foh! About my brains! I have heard, Have by the very cunning of the scene For murther, though it have no tongue, will speak (As he is very potent with such spirits,) Abuses me to damn me: :—I'll have grounds More relative than this :-The play's the thing, From all this soliloquy we gain a deep insight of Hamlet's constitution and condition, of his disposition to delay all action, his consciousness of this infirmity, his pleasure in finding further excuses for it, and the weakness and the melancholy, and the actual malady that has invaded his mind. By such incidental revelations of thought are often betrayed, in actual life, the inward sufferings of partially disordered minds, when the sufferers would fain make a show of utter insensibility. ACT THIRD. THERE is not any part of the play of "Hamlet" that has appeared to be more enigmatical than the first scene in the third act, comprising Hamlet's accidental interview with Ophelia, whom he has only once before seen since he beheld his father's ghost. She had not been allowed to see him, although, on one occasion, she had indeed been alarmed by his unexpected appearance, and when he had not uttered a word. The first scene of the third act is in a room in the castle, and there are assembled the king and queen, Polonius and Ophelia, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. anxious king and queen question Rosencrantz and Guildenstern concerning their recent conversation with Hamlet. KING. And can you, by no drift of circumstance, The |