Page:The Psychology of Shakespeare.pdf/87

72 that Ophelia entertains the fondest love towards Hamlet; but he, ignorant of this, only knows that, after accepting the tender of his affections, she has repulsed him with every appearance of heartless cruelty. He feels her to be, the cause in himself, of “the pangs of despised love;” yet he at first addresses her in a manner indicating his own faithfulness and fond appre ciation of all her goodness and virtue, as if he could best approach Heaven through her gracious intercession. “The fair Ophelia: Nymph, in thy orisons Be all my sins remember'd.” What follows is so opposed to the tenderness of this greeting, that we are compelled to assume that he sees through the snare

set for him ; and that in resisting it he works himself up into one of those ebullitions of temper to which he is prone. He sees that Ophelia is under the constraint of other presence,

as what keen-sighted lover would not immediately distinguish whether his mistress, in whatever mood she may be, feels her self alone with him, or under the observation of others. He has before shewn his repugnance to the idea that he is love sick mad. He knows that Polonius thus explains his conduct;

and his harshness to Ophelia is addressed to Polonius, and any others who may be in hiding, more than to Ophelia herself. Yet the harshest words, and those most unfit to be used to

any woman, are the true reflex of the morbid side of his mind," which passion and suspicion have cast into the bitterest forms of expression. The true melancholy and the counterfeit mad ness are strangely commingled in this scene. The latter is shewn by disjointed exclamations and half-reasonings. “Ha, haſ are you honest ?” “Are you fair?” “I did love you once.” “I loved you not,” &c., and by the wild form in which the melancholy is here cast. “Get thee to a nunnery: why would'st thou be a breeder of sinners ?” “What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven "

“Where's your father ?” Ophelia tells a white lie, “At home,