Page:The Psychology of Shakespeare.pdf/83

68 tion in which they found their friend described by the King, as “turbulent and dangerous lunacy,” since, up to this time, this is an untrue description of Hamlet's state, whatever cause the King may subsequently have to apply it, when the death of Polonius makes him feel that Hamlet’s “liberty is full of threats to all.” The expression used by the King, that Hamlet “puts on this confusion,” would seem to point to a suspicion, even at this early time, that his madness is but counterfeit. The Queen, however, appears to accept its reality, and, notwithstanding all the arguments of Polonius, she adheres to her first opinion of its cause. She doth wish, indeed, that Ophelia’s “good beauties be the happy cause of Hamlet's wildness;” since, if so, she entertains the hope that her virtues may bring the remedy. It seems here implied that the King and Queen have been made aware of Ophelia's love for Hamlet ; and both in this speech of the Queen, and in the one she makes over Ophelia's grave, “I hop'd thou should'st have been my Hamlet's wife,” it appears that the remedy by which the Queen at this time hopes to attain his recovery to “his wonted way again,” is by his marriage.

This understanding, however, or arrange

ment, is nowhere expressed, and indeed, although the Queen may desire to think with Polonius respecting the cause and nature of her son's malady, her mother's knowledge and woman's tact lead her conviction nearer to the truth, when she avows the real cause to be “His father's death, and our

o'erhasty marriage.” The soliloquy which follows, “To be, or not to be,” is one of the most exquisite pieces of poetic self-communing ever conceived. Imbued with a profoundly melancholy view of human life, which is relieved by no gleam of cheerfulness, illumined by no ray of hope, the mind of the unhappy Prince dwells with longing desire, not on a future and happier state of existence, but on annihilation. He wishes to end the