Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/361

 much for this, sir." So much for what? we think. Then it dawns upon us that the only other interest of the moment must have been Ophelia's death.

And we recollect that Horatio was absent at the time of her death, having gone to meet Hamlet near the sea-*coast. So both of them were ignorant of the occurrence. But now Horatio has been making inquiries during the time that elapses between the burial and the next scene. He picks up all the particulars, and has been detailing to the eager Hamlet all that we know. And Hamlet's entry upon the next scene is timed exactly when Horatio has ceased narrating. There is nothing more to tell. Hamlet enters, saying, "So much for this, sir. Now you shall see the other." That is, I will relate what has happened to me also, and how a divinity has shaped my ends to this return. And his brief life is claimed again by the native land on which a ghost has left the tracks of a murder; for great Heaven has not yet hunted it down. So

"Lay her i' the earth; And from her fair and unpolluted flesh May violets spring,"

to renew the breed which withered with the death of her father.