Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/173

 Hamlet gives us unconsciously an opportunity to infer his ability to frame the incoherences which real madness suggests to one who would feign it. It occurs directly upon the Queen's suspicion, who, being unable to see her husband's ghost standing in her chamber, exclaims,—

"This is the very coinage of your brain: This bodiless creation ecstasy Is very cunning in."

Hamlet, repelling the insinuation, says,—

"It is not madness That I have uttered: bring me to the test, And I the matter will re-word, which madness Would gambol from."

And herein he implies that as he can construct the phrases of sanity, being all the time of a sound mind, so the soundness would serve him to invent the non sequiturs of madness. If, then, he purposed to feign it when he said that perhaps he might hereafter put on an antic disposition, the reader may ask why so subtle a person did not carry out his plan. No doubt, it occurred to him that, as he travelled towards his purpose, his demeanor must be of the kind that would cover up his traces. But he could baffle Polonius and the other spies by the natural penetration of a mind that suspicion had sharpened. Those emergencies did not call for any style of feigning. It is enough for him to finger the ventages of a recorder and invite Guildenstern to play upon it; the latter understands that he knows no touch of Hamlet, and leaves the heart of that mystery to be voiced by the varying breaths of critics.