Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/350

 which he will not rudely shatter. After every visit he used to leave behind him a sense of honor which occupied her heart when his lips had ceased protesting. Yet she will defer to the father, with the instinct, perhaps, that more favorable dispositions will transpire. Polonius, the old stickler for the conventions of royalty, is thoroughly possessed with the idea that the Prince, from that point of view, cannot be intending marriage. Some over-subtle critics will have it that the old schemer is secretly chuckling over the idea that a match may be made, but that he dreads the king. If Hamlet can only be brought to the decisive point, and held there, the temper of the court will be of little consequence. But what method shall be employed with a prince who so loves to push off upon his moods of feeling to let them get unhitched and float him from corresponding facts? A double contrivance occurs to Polonius,—to protect his daughter from the possible waywardness of a prince, and to pique him into making a declaration of alliance. This is a delicate operation; for the king will jealously scrutinize his movements. It seems as if he was merely protecting his daughter, and keeping faith with his king, when he urges her not to receive the letters which besiege her door, nor to admit him any longer to her presence. Then the sly old rat, not yet gone to burrow behind the arras, hopes to gnaw into the King by attributing Hamlet's strange behavior to love for Ophelia. And he has so nicely arranged matters, by prohibiting letters and visits, that when the King, bending severe brows upon him, asks, "How hath she received his