Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/358

 lover: he was always "ill at such numbers. His emotion smouldered underneath all the refinements of intellect and conscience, and rarely gleamed through the scruples of his will. When it did gain a moment's mastery, as in that scene of surrendering love,—

"He raised a sigh so piteous and profound, That it did seem to shatter all his bulk, And end his being,"

it palsied the tongue, and only advertised itself in the pathetic eyes which fell to such perusal of Ophelia's face, "and to the last bended their light" on her.

Let us try to conceive the situation at the grave. Hamlet has been absent in England during Ophelia's distraction. Returning, he strolls into a churchyard, amuses himself with the old grave-digger, withdraws aside when the train approaches, so as not to be recognized by the King. Then comes the discovery that Ophelia is dead. There was always in Hamlet's brain that time allowed for the transit of a message between his feeling and his deed. The line connected with a great many intermediate tracts, in each of which there was delay. Nothing but an unsyllabled fluid of conjecture passed all along the way. Dead? How? Was that glad girl the one to take her own life? Why? There was just time enough for him to hear that confession of his mother,—

"I hop'd thou shouldst have been my Hamlet's wife."

What a remembrance, extorted from death, of the old love that he never could conceal from the mother's