murder to the King.
Before this time, Claudius thinks his
nephew's madness must be watched, and although he fears that the hatch and disclose of his melancholy will be some danger, it does not appear that he yet proposes to send him to England with any purpose upon his life. After the play, and before the death of Polonius, the King's apprehension is excited.
“I like him not ; nor stands it safe with us
To let his madness range.” “The terms of our estate may not endure
Hazard so near us, as doth hourly grow Out of his lunes.”
“We will fetters put upon this fear, Which now goes too free-footed.”
Although the King speaks to the courtiers of dispatching their commission to England forthwith, and desires them to arm to this speedy voyage, it can scarcely be that at this time he is guilty of that treacherous design on Hamlet's life which he unfolds after the death of Polonius. The agony of repentance for his past crime, so vehemently expressed in the soliloquy, “Oh, my offence is rank,” &c., appears scarcely consistent with the project of a new murder on his mind.
The King has no inconsiderable mental endowments and moral courage, though personally he is a coward, and a sottish debauchee. But notwithstanding this personal cowardice, we must accept Hamlet's abuse of him, in contrast to the manly perfection of his father, as applying rather to his appearance, and to his deficiency in those soldier-like qualities which would command respect in a nation of war riors, than to his intellect. Although the King holds fencing, that quality of Laertes which hath plucked envy from Hamlet, “as of the unworthiest siege;” yet, although a plotter, “a cut-purse of the empire and the rule,” and, according to the description of his son-in-law, altogether a contemptible person, intellectually, he is by no means despicable. That burst of
