Page:The Psychology of Shakespeare.pdf/112

Rh they are somewhat better acquainted with the means of ame liorating their sad condition.

Madness, however, and suicide,

are now known to be as prevalent in the great neighbour nation, whose own writers jest upon their universal diffusion. All men are mad, writes Boileau, the grand distinction among them being the amount of skill employed in concealing the crack; and if statistics prove anything with regard to suicides, it is that our once volatile neighbours have an un

happy advantage over us in that respect, both in numbers and variety.

If it was ever a habit with us; it has now become

a fashion with them.

The funeral of Ophelia, and the bravery of her brother's grief, are the occasion of conduct in Hamlet which cannot be considered either that of a sane man or of a counterfeit mad

man. He acknowledges to his friend that he forgot himself, and that he was in a towering passion. The more probable explanation is, that the shock of Ophelia's death, made known to him so suddenly, strangely, and painfully, gave rise to an outburst of passionate excitement referrible to the latent

unsoundness of his mind, and that the Queen's explanation of his conduct is the true one :

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“This is mere madness :

And thus a while the fit will work on him ; Anon, as patient as the female dove,

When that her golden couplets are disclos'd, His silence will sit drooping.” It is indeed mere madness; for why should a brother's

phrase of sorrow over the grave of a sister, however exag gerated its expression, excite a sane lover to such rage, the rage of passion, not of grief. A sane man would have been struck dumb by overwhelming grief, if he had thus acci

dentally met at the verge of the tomb the body of a mistress whom he devotedly loved, and whose stinted ritual betokened that with desperate hand she had foredone her own life. In H