commentators have been embarrassed. One of the most judicious critics of dramatic literature and of Shakspeare (A. W. Schlegel), although he has pronounced the play of "Hamlet" the tragedy of thought, has still regarded it, with reference to each of the parts and their reunion, as an enigma never to be solved.* Possibly the solution of it only requires a fuller consideration of the various parts than they have obtained. The very exhortations to secresy, shown to be so important in Hamlet's imagination, are but illustrations of one part of his character, and must be recognisable as such by all physicians intimately acquainted with the beginnings of insanity. It is by no means unfrequent that when the disease is only incipient, and especially in men of exercised minds, that the patient has an uneasy consciousness of his own departure from a perfectly sound understanding. He becomes aware that, however he may refuse to acknowledge it, his command over his thoughts or his words is not steadily maintained, whilst at the same time he has not wholly lost his control over either. He suspects that he is

*Cour de Littérature Dramatique, vol. iii., p. 59.

suspected; and anxiously and ingeniously accounts for his oddities. Sometimes he challenges inquiry, and courts various tests of his sanity, and sometimes he declares that in doing extravagant things he has only been pretending to be eccentric, in order to astonish the fools about him, and who he knew were watching him.

The young Hamlet has suddenly become a changed man. The curse of madness-ever fatal to beauty, to order, to happiness-has fallen upon him: deep vexation has undermined his reason, and thoughts beyond the reaches of his soul have agitated him beyond cure. His affections are in disorder, and the disorder will increase; so that he will become by turns suspicious and malicious, impulsive and reflective, pensive and facetious, and undergo all the transformations of the most afflicting of human maladies. profound and dignified sadness on our first introduction to him; his natural and serious astonishment on receiving from his friends the almost incredible relation of the three appearances of his father's ghost; the acuteness with which he was able to question them; the

His

solemnity with which he addressed the awful shade when it appeared to himself: these were consistent with a state of mind not indeed tranquil, nay, even grievously troubled, but not overthrown. His wild, jesting, mocking words and manner, after the ghost has spoken to him alone, and has revealed crimes which nature no less than the ghost's injunctions calls upon him to revenge, are indicative of a more appreciable stage of mental disorder having supervened the sense of the great wrongs committed is almost obscured, the emotions of his heart are tumultuous, and he has become a wild unsettled being, incapable of consistent resolve. This condition will become aggravated for a time, and alternately abate and recur; but will never be wholly recovered from. Here, as indeed everywhere, the colours of nature accompany the pencil of Shakspeare. In this strange scene, as in all the subsequent scenes of this wonderful play, he appears to me to have delineated a most true as well as a most affecting picture of an accomplished but infirmly sensitive mind bending under the weight of unexpected and sudden trial.

From the time of the interview with the ghost to

the end of the play, Hamlet's conversation scarcely ever regains the composure and power of which it was previously capable. There is an appreciable change; often more brilliancy, but always less coherence; so that almost on all occasions his conversation is marred by flightiness, and by cynical disdain both of himself and others, until nearly at the conclusion, when the agitations of life are ended, and he is dying (Act v., Sc. 2). Then, indeed, in his brief and last conversation with Horatio, the consciousness of approaching death prevails over all temporal and minor influences, and his expressions are affectionate and noble. At present he is overburdened and borne down by a vague feeling of some course of action to be entered upon, some duty to be performed, which he has no strength to commence, no fortitude to fulfil.

HAM.

Let us go in together;

The time is out of joint ;-O cursed spite!
That ever I was born to set it right!

Nay, come, let's go together.

[Exeunt.

ACT SECOND.

IT is a relief to quit the platform, and to exchange the dismal events of the past night for the ordinary occurrences of the cheerful day. The conversation of Polonius with Reynaldo, who is departing for Paris, where Laertes now is, diverts the thoughts for awhile, and makes us almost forgetful of the sadness of Hamlet. We are amused by the old man's mingled wisdom and cunning, and the self-approval with which he labours to draw a web of circumvention round his absent son. His very manner, his abundance of words and studied preciseness of phrase, his "mark you this, Reynaldo," and his slight obliviousness, and "what was I about to say?" and other words familiar, curiously hold up to us the mirror of garrulous but not unrespected age. He also considers all this as rather above the level of Reynaldo's unpractised comprehension.