which they play before the king and queen; and all that relates to the distraction of Ophelia, and to her death, and the whole scene in the churchyard, are so absolutely expunged as to remind the English reader of the cutting and slashing which perplexed and tried the manager Puff, in the Tragedy Rehearsed. But with all these omissions the tragedy of M. Ducis is a composition of great beauty, and the language is both expressive and full of dignity.

On our own stage we can only acknowledge the difficulty of representing the ghost of Hamlet's father "in his habit as he lived"; but when the play is read we enter fully into the spirit of the queen's reflections ; for, when she sees her son following with eager eyes and affrighted expression what is to her but vacancy or an imagined object, and hears his fervent description of some moving figure, to her invisible, she can but conclude that he is delirious, as his previous words had already made her fear, and she says,

This is the very coinage of your brain :
This bodily creation ecstasy

Is very cunning in.

But Hamlet has himself seen his father's ghost, and has heard the words of his father's spirit, as palpably as when he saw and heard them on the platform, when, although now only visible to him, it was no less distinctly seen by Horatio and Marcellus; and he seizes on the queen's incorrect conclusion, and steadfast in the evidence of his senses, repudiates the theory of his ecstasy or madness. It is curious to observe that the arguments he adduces to disprove his mother's supposition are precisely such as certain ingenious madmen delight to employ

HAM. Ecstasy!

My pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep time,
And makes as healthful music: It is not madness
That I have uttered: bring me to the test

And I the matter will re-word; which madness
Would gambol from.

This distinction of Hamlet has been too confidently quoted as affording an unerring test of sanity or insanity; but in truth it is only in the acute stage of mania, or, according to the old expression, the stage of ecstasy, that the madman is unable to re-word any matter spoken by him, and gambols from it. In many

chronic forms of mania, and in almost every form of melancholia, the patient is not only able to re-word what he has uttered, but is found to repeat it every day, for weeks, or months, or years. Such patients will even re-write words or letters, copying them precisely for presentation every morning. Many of them who are even generally violent, and sometimes dangerous, are yet shrewd enough to challenge those who address them to prove their madness, asking them to propose questions or calculations to them, or to examine them as to circumstances, and times, and dates. This medical view of Hamlet's argument is taken by Dr. Bucknill in his minutely critical analysis of Hamlet's psychology, founded on large and careful observation,* and conducted with a generous regard for all other commentators upon this "magnificent drama," which, it is truly observed, scarcely any two minds can contemplate from the same point of view.

In Hamlet's case, the denial of his madness to his mother would have been equivalent to an avowal that all the strange conduct she had observed and grieved

* The Psychology of Shakespeare, p. 88.

over, all his insolent behaviour to the king and to Polonius, all his cruelty to Ophelia, all his conduct in the play scene, had merely been put on to deceive, whilst still the object of all this deception remained unaccomplished, and must be frustrated by the avowal. A man capable of feigning madness so long would scarcely have so far forgotten himself as to confess his deception so prematurely.

In all this conversation, which could not have had its peculiar character if Hamlet's mind had been calm enough to remember the respect due to his mother, and which no part of her conduct had forfeited since he so strongly expressed it in the first act of the play, he is anxious not to avail himself of the plea of madness, which is commonly supposed to have been assumed in his former discourse with Ophelia. The motives for desiring to be thought mad, if there were any defined motives, still exist; but he desires to deprive his mother of any such belief to support her under his insults. His ferocity seems to his disturbed judgment no more than just and natural anger. The same inconsistency leads him still to wish that the king may continue to think

him mad, although one of the consequences must be that he is to be banished under that supposition. With equal want of consistency, he seems to think no more of that solemn second visit of the ghost which shook his frame so severely; and, protesting that he is of sound mind, reverts to and dilates upon his mother's marriage with his uncle. All that he says and does is tinctured by the general disturbance of his understanding.

Towards the close of this scene with his mother, when, in her agitation, she exclaims, "What shall I do?" and he enjoins her not to let the king suppose him merely mad in craft, he starts wildly off to another subject, or rather to two subjects in rapid succession, certainly with no motive for affecting any mental disorder,—

HAM. I must to England; you know that?

and finds matter of amusement in the arrangements making for setting him packing to England with his two schoolfellows, whom he says he will trust as he will adders fanged; and at the same time indulges a few