Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/159

 that, as he did: it will interpret to us the tone of his subsequent demeanor which everybody thought was madness. In the mean time we are upon this spectre-haunted platform, seeking with his friends to discover what news the ghost brought. Hamlet trifles with them to put off their curiosity; but the scene soon rises to the solemnity of taking an oath, and one that is extorted by the experience of a vision which comes to so few that mankind has only heard of such things. But just as the human voices are about to pledge themselves to a secrecy which they must feel all their lives, and shudder in feeling, to be reflected upon them from the glare and publicity of purgatorial fires, a voice comes, building this terrific chord of a nether world up to their purpose, that it may unalterably stand. "Swear!" The deep craves it of them; it has joined the company uninvited, but they feel convinced that it is a comrade fated to go with them to their graves. "Swear!" it reiterates: no change of place can remove them from this importunity. The centre of an unatoned murder is beneath every spot to which they shift their feet.

Now the two friends of Hamlet possess nerves which have been hitherto tuned only by the vibrations of the sunshine or of the moon's unhaunted silver. Even if they had known of the murder, their interest in it would not have been personal enough to lend fortitude to help them tolerate this unseen visitor, the murdered man himself! What an encounter! Whose wits of earthly stoutness can sustain it? They feel, and so do we, that the awe is accumulating into a wave that may o'ertopple every sense.