parting jests over poor dead Polonius, ascribing the

packing to "this man,"

this counsellor

most sweet and most grave

Who was in life a foolish prating knave.

And with this cold insensibility he bids his mother good night. Both his words and his conduct, long indicative of his not being in his perfect mind, seem now to mark the height of mental malady. As sequences true to nature, we shall find that intervals of calmness still from time to time recur, but interrupted in exciting circumstances by fresh gusts of malady, until all Hamlet's tragic history of wretchedness and madness is completed, and his unhappy destiny fulfilled.

ACT FOURTH.

THE impression made on the queen's mind by her late painful interview with her son, like that made on the mind of Ophelia, is that he is really mad; or, as she expresses herself to the king, in answer to his inquiries when he finds her discomposed and full of grief

Mad as the sea, and wind, when both contend
Which is the mightier :

To this impression it must be allowed that his sudden addresses to a figure invisible to herself have much contributed. Overlooking his cruel conduct to herself, and saying nothing of his abundant abuse of her second husband, she thinks only of his hasty killing, "in his brainish apprehension," of the unseen good old man Polonius. She makes no allusion to Hamlet's

coarser scoffing of the dead, but, in the gentle spirit which seems ever to animate her, remembers only that even in his madness he was not wholly insensible of the wrong he had done. When the king, with very reasonable anxiety, asks "Where is he gone?" she replies

To draw apart the body he hath killed:

O'er whom his very madness, like some ore,
Among a mineral of metals base,

Shows itself pure; he weeps for what is done.

The king has other impressions. Suspecting that the manner of the late king's death has in some unexplained way become known to Hamlet, and was not without design imitated in the play scene, although not interpreted by the queen who was not a participator in the crime, he has both doubts and fears as respects the entire conduct of Hamlet being the result of madness. Even before the play scene, after witnessing from his concealment the interview between Hamlet and Ophelia, his commentary was

There's something in his soul,

O'er which his melancholy sits on brood;
And, I do doubt, the hatch and the disclose
Will be some danger.

M

From that time the king has been bent on getting him altogether out of the way; on sending him to England, where he believes the influence of Denmark will be sufficient to prevent further inconvenience being occasioned by him. He has revolved the project of sending him there, nominally to demand neglected tribute, and also with the specious hope that change of scene might overcome his mental infirmity; but, as it afterward appears, with less politic and less benevolent purposes. For the present, however, he thinks it best to countenance the idea of Hamlet's actual madness, for he knows he can ill afford the loss of popularity which the death of Polonius may occasion :—

Alas! how shall this bloody deed be answered?
It will be laid to us, whose providence
Should have kept short, restrain'd, and out of haunt,
This mad young man: but, so much was our love,
We would not understand what was most fit ;-

In the second scene of the fourth act, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are sent again to Hamlet by the troubled king, with charge to speak fair to him: he tells them also that Hamlet has in madness slain Polonius, and

begs them to bring the dead body into the chapel: but Hamlet treats these ambassadors with utter disdain, calls Rosencrantz a sponge out of whom the king will squeeze what he can glean, and leave him dry again; he will not say what has been done with the dead body; goes on angrily, says "the king is a thing—” but when Guildenstern exclaims, in surprise, "a thing, my lord?” checks himself, saying " of nothing: bring me to him," and he accompanies them to the presence, where, as usual, his words become wilder. When the king asks him where Polonius is, he answers " at supper;" and when more closely questioned, says

HAM. In heaven; send thither to see: if your messenger find him not there, seek him i' the other place yourself. But, indeed, if you find him not this month, you shall nose him as you go up the stairs into the lobby.

KING. Go seek him there.

HAM. He will stay till you come.

[To some ATTENDANTS.

[Exeunt ATTENDANTS.

The interview is concluded by the king's announcement of the necessity for his immediate removal, and the third scene of the fourth act closes with the departure of Hamlet for England, and with a soliloquy in