Again, how jealous he is that his friends should not refer his melancholy to love-sickness. With his acute insight into cha racter, the opinion propounded by Polonius, that he was mad for love, could not have escaped him ; a theory, moreover, which would be likely to wound his pride severely. Polonious had already made, in his presence, sundry aside observations on this point; and the significant smile of Rosencrantz at his observation, “Man delights not me,” would be likely to stimulate the sleeping suspicion that he was set down as a brain-sick, rejected lover, and some annoyance at an attempt to explain his madness as the result of his rejection by Ophelia, may combine with the suspicion that he is watched, to explain his harshness towards her in his subsequent inter view with her. How are we to understand his confession to the men he
already distrusts, that in the appearance of his madness the King and Queen are deceived, except by his contempt for their discrimination, and his dislike to wear the antic disposition before all company.
When Polonius returns, he immediately puts on the full disguise, playing upon the old man's infirmities with the ironical nonsense about Jephtha, king of Israel, who had a
daughter, &c., and skilfully leading Polonius by the nose on the scent of his own theory, “Still on my daughter.” When the players enter, however, he thoroughly throws off not only the antic counterfeit, but the melancholy reality of his disposition ; he shakes his faculties together, and becomes perfectly master of himself in courtesy, scholarship, and solid sense. His retort to Polonius, who objects to the speech of the player as too long, seems a valuable hint of Shakespeare's own opinion respecting the bad necessity he felt to introduce ribald scenes into his plays: “It shall to the barber's, with
your beard. Pr'ythee, say on : he's for a jig, or a tale of bawdry, or he sleeps.” What a noble sentiment in homely
