Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/25

 Lawrence ^ Both the play itself and the comments of Hamlet now take a more incisive turn. First, "your majesty, and we that have free souls, it touches us not, " then the revelation that the Poisoner who gains the love of the Queen is a relative of the dead man, then the actual enactment of the poisoning-scene. The King's agitation increases; it is of a twofold nature: fear of betrayal by Hamlet's comments, and the working of his own conscience at seeing his crime reenacted. Hamlet, for his part, reaches a pitch of almost uncontrollable nervous excitement. With a bombastic tag, " Come, the croaking raven doth bellow for revenge, " taken at random from old play-material, 15 he hurries on the climax, which may be expected to contain a speech in the grand style. The actual speech of the Poisoner is not very terrifying. But the king, who is not a man without imagination and conscience, as his soliloquy while at prayer proves, is not quite able to control himself. He has steeled himself through the dumb-show, but now, with the whisperings of the court about him, with his knowledge that Hamlet is fully acquainted with his guilt and the details of his crime, and with his suspense lest Hamlet shall betray him, he is not strong enough to endure the emotional strain of the action of the poisoning, repro- ducing before his eyes an act which is continually causing him the sharpest stings of conscience. It needs no very pointed language to strike him with horror; the revolting action of the crime, coupled with the murderer's damnable faces in the darkened hall, is enough. So, " upon the talk of the poisoning, " as Hamlet later tells Horatio, and just at the moment that the murder is committed on the stage, he "blenches, " and Hamlet, unable longer to contain himself, leaps up and cries out, He poisons him i' the garden for's estate. His name's Gonzago; the story is extant, and writ in choice Italian; you shall see anon how the murderer gets the love of Gonzago's wife. Cf. Dowden, note, p. 123, Tragedy of Hamlet,' quoting a communication by Simpson (Academy, Dec. 19, 1874) who "shows that Hamlet rolls into one two lines of The True Tragedie 0} Richard the Third. " Greg objects that there is nothing in the action of the inserted play at this point which suggests revenge. But Hamlet's words concern the style of the speech, not its matter. His m polations all through this sc ene, which are, of course, half made in his r6lc madman, and much affected by his intense excitement, should not be taken too literally.