This difference of effect was owing to the advantage which the King possessed over his minister. An astute and close observer, Claudius had from the very start suspected that Hamlet was only feigning madness, and feared lest he possessed a knowledge of the secret crime. Hence, with his wits sharpened by anxiety, he was quick to notice that his nephew's words and actions, though lacking a little in coher ence, as was natural to a man who was playing madness, were nevertheless, both in form and matter, far from those of a real madman. He considered the question from the side of its practical bearings on his own interests, and concluded that, as far as these are concerned, Hamlet is not mad, but most dangerously sane. His conclusion now assumes almost certainty, in face of the Prince's declaration, "all but one shall live." These words were without meaning for Polonius; but, shot forth in the violence of a maddening triumph, they startled Claudius, because he recognized in them a parting threat, full of significance and of menace to his safety. Hence his guilty soul, at once, overawed by Hamlet's mad violence and open threat, was filled with fear and apprehen. sion. There is, he affirms, in his nephew's melancholy soul some hidden thing on which he broods, and "the hatch no doubt will be some danger." His secret knowledge enables him to suspect the true nature of the danger, and this suspicion prompts him to immediate action.

A man like Claudius, rich in experience and quick in resolve, determined without delay upon a plan that would rid himself and Denmark of the Prince's presence. It was a specious plan. The Danes, the masters of the sea, were at that period accustomed to invade England at intervals unto great destruction, until its people in their helplessness, had in fine decided to stay these hostile incursions by a voluntary payment of an annual tribute. This tax, which of late years

remained unpaid, afforded the King a ready pretext to send Hamlet on an embassy for its collection. There is nothing at this point, to justify the idea that Claudius had already hatched the plot to murder the Prince by royal proxy In England. His sole thought, for the present, is centered in the hope that foreign travel with its varied scenes and climate, may rift he clouds of melancholy that darken the Prince's moody brain. If this prove fruitless, he sees in the absence of his nephew a riddance of present danger and a gaining of time to think of other safeguards against his dangerous lunacy. At this juncture, Ophelia approaches and Polonius in surprise at her sad plight exclaims, "How now, Ophelia!" She had come forth from the ordeal with evident signs of distress: her flushed face, troubled mien, and utter dejection of spirits, plainly told her sufferings of mind and heart.

If Polonius was puzzled, he was still more chagrined at the collapse of his vaunted plan. Having confidently assured the King that the "espials" would prove the correctness of his theory concerning Hamlet's madness, and having boastfully staked his reputation upon its success, he naturally felt a keen disappointment. If the failure seemed to Claudius, to prove beyond doubt the hollowness of the old man's theory, Polonius, under the influence of his imaginary infallibility of judgment, still tenaciously adhered to his discredited opinions. Hence while diplomatically approving the King's new project, he is unwilling to admit his error, and in unshaken assurance proposes a new scheme to attest the soundness of his judgment.

His new design, as shady as the former, is but another sample of his boasted diplomacy, "by indirection to find direction out." The senile intriguer, who gloried in a statecraft founded in the main on a system of espionage and eavesdrop

as

ping, was so long addicted to cunning ways and devious paths that he became a victim of suspicion; and this mental trait destroyed his confidence in human nature, even in his own children. His son, he discredited by spying on his life in Paris; Ophelia, he scarcely trusted beyond his presence; and in his new plot, he cannot rely upon the fidelity of the Queen. Hence he urges the King to insist that she exercise her just parental authority in the interview to be prearranged between herself and Hamlet. He was wont to do the same, we have seen, when he browbeat Ophelia into a confession of her love affair. In like manner the Queen-mother must be urged to use her full authority in all severity. If she be outspoken with her son; if she be severe, peremptory, and bold, and speak in plain, unmincing words, she may root from his heart the secret of his melancholy malady. Furthermore, in mistrust of the mother, lest, under the influence of maternal affection, she may fail to report the interview aright, he assures the King that he himself, unknown to them, will, from his concealment in the Queen's boudoir, overhear all that passes, and report in full and correctly to his royal highness. Claudius agrees to the project, and, while postponing for a time his design of Hamlet's embassy to England, decides to redouble his vigilance:

"Madness in great ones must not unwatched go."

SCENE SECOND

The transition from the last scene of tumultuous raging passion to the present, in which the Prince appears a judicious critic, self-possessed, and in perfect equanimity of mind, reveals a new and surprising trait of his character. If he is pictured as suddenly passing from the whirlwind of passion to a perfect calm, in which his instruction to the Players, discloses him keen of judgment and an admirable critic of the dramatic art; if at this trying moment, when the assured triumph of his plot arouses him to the highest nervous and mental strain, he is, nevertheless, pictured in perfect repression of feelings, as interesting himself in the minutiae of the player's art, and in manifesting by private conversation his strong affection for Horatio; if while awaiting the opening of the Play, he is seen, in presence of the assembled court, to adapt himself readily to every character, whether friend or foe, revealing to the former his sanity and to the latter his feigned madness, now irritating the King by his ironical shafts, now exposing Polonius to ridicule, now tantalizing Ophelia, and now turning aside to discourse sanely with Horatio; all seems done for the express purpose of affording by this luminous contrast to his former violent outburst, sufficient evidence to guard us against the mistaken notion that he is in reality dethroned in reason.

IDENTIFIED WITH HAMLET

Shakespeare's natural pride in the dramatic art, leads him to identify himself with Hamlet at the opening of the present scene. He portrays the Prince as a man of rare mental attainments, cultivated tastes, and a lover and patron of

the drama. By sketching in his intruction to the Players, the essential laws which should govern every impersonation, and by decrying the manifold evils which infested the stage of his day, he discloses his own high ideals of the histrionic art. He insists upon distinctness of utterance and a naturalness of action in harmony with the thought expressed. He demands a spirit of truthfulness and simplicity which, safeguarding the actor against overstepping "the modesty of nature," will save him from arrogance in overdoing his character, and from diffidence in reaching the required elevation. His supreme norm is simplicity and fidelity to truth. The purpose of his art is "to show virtue her own features, and scorn, her own image.'

By these words, Shakespeare, who speaks in the person of Hamlet, is far from advocating the realism, which, without the idealization of art, reproduces with exactness upon our modern stage human life in all its vulgarities. Such license is an abuse of the histrionic art, and necessarily leads to evil in the deterioration of morals. True to the real, to the ideal art, he himself "holds the mirror up to nature." He reflects to our mental vision, by means of vivid representation, human life and action in its varied purposes and motive powers, its virtues and opposing vices, their origin and nature, their growth and fruit, with the view of revealing the important truth that man is not a slave of circumstances, nor of chance, nor of inexorable fate; but a free agent, the creator of his own character, and the arbiter of his own destiny. If he rationally conform his life to the natural and moral law, it will lead him to virtue and to unfailing reward; but if, ignoring or defying the same law, he pursue evil, he shall inevitably find an avenging Nemesis following on his trail. This, in the mind of the Poet, is the noble purpose of the dramatic art, a purpose which endows it with a lasting