An Argument for Hamlet. jade wince," and while he hesitated to take the desired mode of vengeance, he was un sparing in the kind of warfare which came natural to him. The King himself speaks of Hamlet's transformation, but he was evi dently chiefly anxious to discover the cause of his step-son's strange behavior; not only had his conscience made him a coward, but he could not close his eyes to his real danger from the Prince's manifestation of hatred and enmity; he did not believe Hamlet insane. Before Hamlet saw the ghost he was cold and dignified, but respectful towards his mother. She had wounded him most deeply; her actions had destroyed his confidence in woman; yet she was his mother to whom he had given his heart's best affection; his re serve, his formality, his speeches to her when they are first brought together in the play, have not only an unspeakable pathos, but they are honest though refined* manifesta tions of his displeasure. Even the shallow nature of the Queen comprehended this fact. Later Hamlet probably brooded over his mother's possible guilt, or at least guilty knowledge in respect to the murder of his father; he sought to satisfy himself through the effect of the player-queen upon her; and, after this test, he was without doubt con vinced of her innocence of this crime. In his awful interview with her, he seemed to wish first of all to arouse her to a sense of her degradation and to lead her to a repent ant shame for her second marriage. What a vivid contrast he drew for her between her two husbands. He morbidly exaggerated her action into a worse sin than that of which she can justly be called guilty and exhibits therefor a terrible intensity of emotion; yet the intentional sternness, earnestness, and depth of feeling in his reproaches preclude the thought of either real or feigned insanity. In this connection, indeed, it savors of ab surdity if not of irreverence to apply the term insane in either sense to him. The sudden second appearance to him of the ghost may be looked upon as a delusion
229
— but why a delusion of insanity? Does it appear altogether improbable that such a mental picture should have naturally become a living impression upon the mind of a man whose imaginative, poetic temperament was laboring under the pressure of an excitement produced by thoughts of a wronged and murdered father? He was in the presence of one who had most shamefully insulted that father's memory; he had just received con firmation of his suspicions, or of the ghost's testimony, if the reader prefers, concerning the guilt of Claudius; he had but a moment before slain Polonius in mistake for the king, and had been thus foiled by his own hand of his revenge; still, his strong, intuitive in stinct warned him that his indignation was in danger of expending itself in words only, when this " visitation " came to " whet " his "almost blunted purpose." For a moment his mother's surprise and consternation ex cited his pity and forced him to speak kindly to her. He tried to make her see the pic ture his mental eye gazed upon, but when she simply accused him of frenzy he re strained himself and soberly denied his mad ness, soberly entreated her to repent, and woos for leave to do her good. The queen from the beginning of his trouble thought her son insane : — "Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works."
It was natural for her to accept such an easy explanation of Hamlet's change from a gentle, loving, submissive youth to a gloomy mis anthrope, whose satirical speeches, occasional unwonted excitement, and, finally, fierce re proaches, while they puzzled and alarmed her, in themselves had for her no adequate cause. It is worthy of emphatic notice that it is upon the feeblest characters in the play alone that a lasting impression of Hamlet's insanity is made. The contempt he manifested for Polonius and the other courtiers, who have so easily transferred their affection and allegiance from the old and good king to the new and bad
