been lost. There are such beings as brazen prudes. There are also those who have fallen and are pure. Rousseau well says, "Le vice a beau se cacher dans l'obscurité, son empreinte est sur les fronts coupables; l'audace d'une femme est le signe assurá de sa honte; c'est pour avoir trop a rougir qu’elle ne rougit plus, et si quelquefois la pudeur survit a la chastité, que doit on penser de la chastité quand la pudeur même est éteinte?"
Between this scene and the next one in which Ophelia appears, time must have elapsed, during which Hamlet has pursued his suit; since Ophelia, in obedience to her father's command, has repelled his letters and denied access. These letters would scarcely have been written by Hamlet, subsequently to his interview with the ghost and his vow to erase all trivial fond records from the table of his memory. According to the progress of the love story, therefore, the last scene of the first act would appear to belong to the second act; which would leave Hamlet's mad appearance in Ophelia's closet as the first and immediate consequence of his resolve to "put an antick disposition on." This it is which changes the old courtier's fear that Hamlet intended to wreck his daughter's honour, into the belief in his sincerity and consequent madness; and thus arises his regret that he had not noted him with better heed and judgment.
Ophelia's plasticity and yieldingness of character, rather than her depth of filial affection, appear manifested in the readiness with which she first obeys the old man's orders to reject Hamlet's addresses, and with which she subsequently lends herself to the deceit which is practised upon her lover, to test and demonstrate his state of mind, and especially, whether, as Polonius maintained, and the Queen finely expressed, that her "good beauties be the happy cause of Hamlet's wildness." The arranged meeting of Hamlet and Ophelia, "as 'twere by accident," and the pretence of the
