Page:The Psychology of Shakespeare.pdf/89

74 and wretched,” although it is the dying swan-song of her own sanity. “O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown

The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, sword: The expectancy and rose of the fair state, The glass of fashion, and the mould of form, The observ'd of all observers: quite, quite down And I, of ladies most deject and wretched, That suck'd the honey of his musick vows, Now see that noble and most sovereign reason, Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh ;

That unmatch'd form and feature of blown youth Blasted with ecstasy: O, woe is me ! To have seen what I have seen, see what I see '''

The King, in the meanwhile, whose keenness of vision has not been dimmed by the mists of affection, like that of Ophelia, nor by self-conceit, like that of Polonius, has detected the prevalence of melancholy and sorrow in the assumed wild ness of the Prince :

“Love his affections do not that way tend ; Nor what he spake, though it lack'd form a little,

Was not like madness. There's something in his soul, O'er which his melancholy sits on brood ; And, I do doubt, the hatch, and the disclose, Will be some danger.”

Polonius thinks well of the King's scheme to get Hamlet out of the way by pretext of benefiting his health by change of scene; though with senile obstinacy he still holds to his opinion that the commencement of his grief sprung in neglected love. To test this further, he proposes the inter view with the Queen, who is to be round with her son, and whose conference Polonius will hear. If this scheme fails,

let him be sent to England without delay, or be put into confinement.

In his speech to the players, Hamlet's attention, abstracted for a moment from the view of his sorrows, leaves his mind

free from the clouds of melancholy, and permits him to dis