Page:The Psychology of Shakespeare.pdf/91

76 spoil his scheme by exposing it to the King, who, on the point of taking the alarm, exclaims, “Have you heard the argu ment 1

Is there no offence in't f" He is little likely to be

reassured by Hamlet's disclaimer, “They poison in jest; no offence i'the world.”

When the crisis has come, and the King's guilt has been unkenneled, and Hamlet is again left alone with Horatio, before whom he would not feign, his real excitement borders so closely upon the wildest antics of the madness he has put on in craft, that there is little left to distinguish between the two. He quotes senseless doggerel, will join “a fellowship in a cry of players,” will “take the ghost's word for a thousand pound,” and is altogether in that state of flippant merriment which men sometimes assume to defend themselves from deep emotion ; as they sometimes jest in the face of physical horrors or mental woe. It is like the hysterical laughter of intense emotion; though not quite. It is partly that levity of mind which succeeds intense strain of thought and feeling, as naturally as it is to yawn and stretch after one long-con tinued wearisome position. This mood of unfeigned flippancy continues after the re-entrance of his treacherous school

friends, well expressing its tone in the doggerel, “For if the king like not the comedy, Why then, belike, he likes it not, perdy.” To the courtier's request, that he will put his “discourse into some frame,” he rejoins, “I am tame, sir: pronounce.” He affects a display of politeness, but the “courtesy is not of the right breed.” To the entreaty to give “a wholesome answer” to the Queen's message, he affords an unconscious indication

that some at least of his wildness is also not of the right breed, since he appeals to it as a reality. “Make you a wholesome answer; my wit’s diseased.”

Of a disease, how

ever, which leaves the wit too quick for their play. He sees through them thoroughly. To the silly-enough inquiry of