Page:The Psychology of Shakespeare.pdf/63

48 he is equally capable of dismissing them, and throwing himself into the present. How thoroughly self-possessed is he in his interview with his friend and fellow-student and the soldiers,

and the reception he gives to their account of the apparition, by

which they were “distilled almost to jelly by the act of fear;"| how unhesitating his decision to see and speak to it, “though hell itself should gape" and in the seventh scene, when

actually waiting for the Ghost, what cool reflection in his comments on the wassail of the country. Yet he heard not the clock strike midnight, which the less pre-occupied sense of Marcellus had caught.

His address to the Ghost,

“Angels and ministers of grace defend us! Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damned 7” &c. is marked by a bold and cool reason, at a time when the awful evidences of the future make

“us fools in nature, So horribly to shake our disposition,

With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls.” The courage of the Prince is of the noblest temper, and is made the more obvious from its contrast with the dread of his

companions, who suggest that it, the neutral thing, as it has before been called, may tempt him to the summit of the cliff, “And there assume some other horrible form,

Which might deprave your sov’reignty of reason, And draw you into madness. Think of it; The very place puts toys of desperation, Without more motive, into every brain, That looks so many fathoms to the sea, And hears it roar beneath.””

But Hamlet is beyond all touch of fear.

“I’ll look no more,
 * This danger again is remarked in Lear:

Lest my brain turn, and the deficient sight Topple down headlong.”