Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/179

 of satire which indicates an ideal far lifted above the methods by which men live. He puts that fine sense into the skulls of the politician, the courtier, and the lawyer, and we acknowledge the satirical tone of an exalted mind. And this lends to that scene a feeling that in it Hamlet recurs to himself, and resumes the usual tone which always advertised him to his friends. To them his long maintenance of ironical behavior, broken by so few sallies of his healthy satire, was additional confirmation of his madness because it was so unusual with him. Old friends remembered nothing of the kind; they were first puzzled, then convinced, and we saw that Polonius hurried to show his insapiency by attributing the craze to love for his daughter. 'Tis very likely, they all thought, for they could refer to no other probable cause for it.

It is by unconsciously remanding Hamlet to Irony that Shakspeare has expressed the effect of an apparition, and of the disenchanting news it brought, upon a mind of that firm yet subtle temper. Lear's noble mind tottered with age before grief struck it into the abyss of madness. Constance stands before us, like Niobe, all tears, or sits with sorrow; but she was a too finely tempered woman to drip into craziness, till health, hope, and life broke up. Shakspeare has not represented any of his mature and well-constructed natures as capable of being overthrown by passion the most exigent or events the most heart-rending. They preserve their sanity to suffer, as all great souls must do to make us worship them with tears. So Hamlet, being incapable of mad