Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/359

 instinct which was so fond and clear! He listens thus to despair reclaiming former hopes, and it draws his spirit backward, so that the body cannot move and the tongue dare not break this sacred silence of his retrospection. Therefore, Laertes has plenty of time to rant like Pistol in a tavern. His exaggerated action plunges into the grave of Hamlet's reverie and breaks it up. The Prince is forced into disgust at hearing a man vaunt love against his own. All scruples are shrivelled up in anger; and he instinctively assumes the tone he hears. The old ironical disgust for sham makes the imitation perfect. Afterward, to Horatio, he acknowledges that he forgot himself:—

"But, sure, the bravery of his grief did put me Into a towering passion."

And this passion broke open his respect and prudence, and let loose the first cry of his love that had ever reached the ears of others. Else it would have lain buried with Ophelia in the silence of her lover's breast.

It was too much,—to discover at such a moment what used to be his mother's expectations; to see the sprinkling of those flowers that should have been for marriage; to have the old conviction return, that marriage was impossible for him,—a man whose bed, watched by a ghost, could have no other tenant; to recall how he ousted love, that revenge might occupy. It was too much for this heart of sensitive and noble strain to see the dead girl, and catch through the rant of Laertes that her prince had indirectly caused her death. His solid