Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/175

 second acts; and that is another strange thing in Shakspeare. Then, too, the style, if it was dissimulation, is such as to bring to pass the opposite of what he seems to have intended. So far from being disguised by it he is rather betrayed. And what is the use of any feigning when he does things like that of contriving the mock play? For that betrays him to the King more than it does the King to him. It makes the situation all awry, because the King must now know on what footing he is with Hamlet. At all events, the courtiers keep telling how danger is threatened to the King from Hamlet: they have no means of fathoming the King's offence. They merely presage some danger to the King, and they manifest no surprise. Hamlet must be conscious that he would be in great peril if the King knew that he knew every thing; the King would be put on his defence, and he was quite capable of contriving another murder to forestall retribution for the first one. Why, then, does he keep on feigning? Yet we do not observe that he hits upon any expedients to meet this possible case; it does not even occur to him before he concocts the trial-scene."

Ophelia thinks that she sees

"That noble and most sovereign reason, Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh,"

because she cannot understand his unflattering talk that appears to be disclaiming any regard for her and any desire to marry her. In all those sentences that make such a coarse rupture with love and soil the previous sentiment of their intercourse, there is no trace of a dis