Page:The Psychology of Shakespeare.pdf/137

122 maiden to read a book as a colour to her loneliness, was a species of conduct inconsistent with her ingenuousness of character, and to which she appears to have lent herself in sorrowful unquestioning obedience. The dialogue which follows is a terrible punishment for any fault she may almost unconsciously have committed. Her lover sees the snare laid for him, and recognizes the deceitful part she is taking. She has not seen him "for this many a day," and longs to re-deliver his remembrances formerly so precious to her, now become so poor since he has proved unkind. How much she expresses in how few words. What simplicity and faith in his love—"Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so." What patient anguish at his denial of his love—"I was the more deceived." What unselfish forgetfulness of her own deep sorrow, to which the word forgiveness would be misapplied, since the slightest notion of resentment never seems to have entered her gentle soul. When she recognizes in his disdainful vituperation the incoherence of insanity, she cries, "Oh help him, ye sweet heavens!"—not herself, but him. Not because she is deceived and rejected, but because he is quite, quite down, is she of ladies most deject and wretched. Not for her own blighted hopes, but because his unmatched form is blasted with ecstacy, does she raise that cry of anguish—

In the whole of the play there is not a more exquisite passage than this lamentation of the desolate maid over the supposed ruin of her lover's intellect.

Ophelia appears once more, before her own mind is "as sweet bells jangled out of tune," when one of the audience before the players; but it is to be remarked, that she never makes a consecutive speech again. To Hamlet's indelicate banter, she makes the curtest replies, scarcely sufficient to defend her