PART III. THE fourth act opens with a short but significant scene: the persons present are the King, the Queen, Rosencrantz, and Guidenstern. The Queen has evidently just returned from her interview with Hamlet. In fact, the action at this point of the play is continuous. The King speaks first :— KING. There's matter in these sighs, these profound heaves: You must translate: 'tis fit we understand them. Where is your son? QUEEN. Bestow this place on us a little while. [Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN. What the Queen has to reveal is for the King's ears alone; not even the supple fidelity of the two courtiers entitles them to the privilege of being admitted into the royal confidence. When they are gone the Queen continues : Ah, mine own lord, what have I seen to-night! KING. This speech is certainly, at first sight, a most puzzling one; we have just heard Gertrude give her son the most solemn assurance that she will not reveal to his uncle the fact that his madness is assumed; therefore we must understand that she is now deliberately.deceiving Claudius, and affecting to believe in the reality of Hamlet's madness. Otherwise it would seem that the Queen had only pretended to believe her son was not mad, and that she was now giving his uncle fresh cause to put some restraint on him. The meaning of her conduct becomes much more intelligible on reference to the Quarto of 1603. In that edition a subsequent scene between the Queen and Horatio,* to which I have before alluded, makes it clear that the author's intention was to represent the Queen now as helping Hamlet's counterplots against the treachery of Claudius. In order to do this, she could adopt no better device than to pretend a most thorough belief in the genuineness of her son's madness, knowing, as we have seen, from the latter part of the preceding act, she did, that Hamlet had determined to go to England agreeably to the advice, or rather the command, of Claudius. As doubts and fears of discovery thicken around the guilty Claudius, his sententious bursts of plausible hypocrisy become more and more specious. He overflows with nice morality. It would seem as if, not content with treacherously robbing his brother of his crown, his Queen, and his life, he had also pilfered his philosophy. Listen to his exquisite and pathetic complaint : Alas, how shall this bloody deed be answer'd ! Should have kept short, restrain'd and out of haunt, But, like the owner of a foul disease, To keep it from divulging, let it feed We almost feel inclined to bring out our handkerchiefs and weep for this poor injured uncle, whose impracticable nephew was always trying his angelic patience, till at last even its limit was reached, and it could endure no more, The first actor who has the courage to represent Claudius as the plausible smiling villain he really was, with features so expanded by conviviality that even the pangs he suffered from the ingratitude of his dear brother's son, whom he loved with such a disinterested love, could grave no wrinkle there ;" who attempts to realise Shakespeare's conception, so exquisitely sarcastic, yet so true to nature, instead of representing the seducer of Gertrude as a beetle-browed villain, on whose brain and shoulders all the melodramas for the last fifty years seem to have left their fearful weight-the first actor who has courage to effect this innovation will, I venture to predict, create at once a great sensation and a greater success. The Queen's next speech contains a beautiful touch; in answer to the inquiry of Claudius, where Hamlet is gone, she says: * See Appendix M. To draw apart the body he hath kill'd: Shows itself pure; he weeps for what is done. This shows that Hamlet's affectation of something which seemed like brutality, at the end of the last scene, was not long sustained; and that the suffering of his gentle nature, when the excitement under which he had committed this misdirected deed of violence had passed away, was greater than he cared to show before those whom he wished to believe in his assumption of insanity. Claudius has not yet exhausted his vein of moral indignation this vile deed We must, with all our majesty and skill, The two courtiers are summoned back Ho, Guildenstern! It is a remarkable fact, that the inseparability of these two charming young men is so great, that it is only necessary to call one for both to appear. They remind us of nothing so much as of a well-fed pair of lap-dogs, each so jealous of the other that neither will let his companion out of his sight, in case he should receive a greater share of caresses and food from their master's hand. They are commissioned to seek Hamlet out, to find where he has put the body, and bring it into the chapel. The King's last words in this scene, addressed to Gertrude, foreshadow the tragic events that are near at hand O, come away! My soul is full of discord and dismay. [Exeunt. The next scene, a very short one, commences with Hamlet's entrance from the lobby where he has placed the body of Polonius, with the words Safely stowed. The voices of the two concordant courtiers are heard from within, calling Hamlet Lord Hamlet! Hamlet hears, but apparently does not recognise them. It is not very clear what Shakespeare's intention is in this 'scene, to which we find no parallel in the earliest edition of the play (4to, 1603), the greater portion of the dialogue which follows being embodied in that edition with the second scene of the third act. Hamlet could never have believed that by hiding the body of Polonius he could conceal the circum stances of the hapless Lord Chamberlain's death; it is more Ros. What have you done, my lord, with the dead body? Ros. Tell us where 'tis, that we may take it thence And bear it to the chapel. HAM. Do not believe it. Ros. Believe what? HAM. That I can keep your counsel and not mine own. Besides, to be demanded of a sponge 1* what replication should be made by the son of a king? Ros. Take you me for a sponge, my lord? HAM. Ay, sir; that soaks up the king's countenance, his rewards, his authorities. But such officers do the king best service in the end; he keeps them, like an ape, in the corner of his jaw; first mouthed, to be last swallowed when he needs what you have gleaned, it is but squeezing you, and, sponge, you shall be dry again. Ros. I understand you not, my lord. HAM. I am glad of it: a knavish speech sleeps in a foolish ear. Ros. My lord, you must tell us where the body is, and go with us to the king. HAM. The body is with the king, but the king is not with the body. The king is a thing GUIL. A thing, my lord? HAM. Of nothing: bring me to him. Hide fox, and all after. [Exeunt. We need only compare the above with Hamlet's language to these same courtiers immediately after the play scene, to see that he gives rein to his eccentric humour more completely than he has yet done in the presence of any one, except Polonius. In the next scene the King enters, attended. The speech, which he addresses to those about him, is a kind of apology for the leniency which he has shown towards Hamlet.+ The King has a very difficult part to play; he dares not leave unpunished such a deed of violence as Hamlet has committed in killing Polonius; at the same time he dares not openly punish Hamlet on account of his popularity: so he remains between two dilemmas, and though the course which he takes is, in his position, the safest one, he does not succeed, as we shall see further on, in exonerating himself from the suspicion The comparison of courtiers to a sponge is found in other works of this period. See Additional Note, No. 5A. + In the Quarto, 1603, this speech, or, rather, the speech which corresponds to it, is addressed to the Queen alone. See Appendix N. of complicity in the killing of Polonius. Had his con science been free as regarded his late brother, had his assumption of the throne been the consequence of a legal vote on the part of the people, and not a half-condoned usurpation, his course would have been very simple; he would have commanded Hamlet to be tried before a proper court, and the circumstances of the Lord Chamberlain's death would have been fully investigated; but this he could not do, because no inquiry could take place without subjecting him to the danger of discovery with regard to that crime, of which he now must have known that Hamlet more than suspected him. Under all these circumstances the device of sending Hamlet to England was the most ingenious that Claudius could adopt. He made it appear to the courtiers, on the one hand, as a measure taken for the safety of the State, and to Hamlet, on the other hand, as one taken for his individual safety KING. Hamlet, this deed, for thine especial safety, Which we do tender, as we dearly grieve For that which thou hast done, must send thee hence The bark is ready and the wind at help, The associates tend, and everything is bent HAM. НАМ. For England? Ay, Hamlet. Good. KING. So is it, if thou knew'st our purposes. Hamlet's answer here is worthy of remark, as taken in connection with that declaration of his purpose with regard to this expedition to England, which he had made to his mother at the end of the scene which concludes the last act HAM. I see a cherub that sees them. But, come; for England! Farewell, dear mother. KING. Thy loving father, Hamlet. HAM. My mother : father and mother is man and wife; man and wife is one flesh, and so, my mother. Come, for England ! [Exit. Hamlet cannot carry his hypocrisy so far as to pretend any cordiality towards Claudius. However slow his arm may be, his tongue at least is quick to wound the murderer of his father. The last speech of the King in this scene, of which the four first lines are addressed to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, is of considerable importance as bearing on the question, whether they had any guilty knowledge of the purport of the despatches which they were taking from Claudius to the |