nuine, and I
see no reason whatever to doubt that Hamlet would have been very sorry
to send his father's murderer to heaven, nor much to doubt that he would
have been glad to send him to perdition. The reason for refusing to
accept his own version of his motive in sparing Claudius is not that his
sentiments are horrible, but that elsewhere, and also in the opening of
his speech here, we can see that his reluctance to act is due to other
causes.

The incident of the sparing of the King is contrived with extraordinary
dramatic insight. On the one side we feel that the opportunity was
perfect. Hamlet could not possibly any longer tell himself that he had
no certainty as to his uncle's guilt. And the external conditions were
most favourable; for the King's remarkable behaviour at the play-scene
would have supplied a damning confirmation of the story Hamlet had to
tell about the Ghost. Even now, probably, in a Court so corrupt as that
of Elsinore, he could not with perfect security have begun by charging
the King with the murder; but he could quite safely have killed him
first and given his justification afterwards, especially as he would
certainly have had on his side the people, who loved him and despised
Claudius. On the other hand, Shakespeare has taken care to give this
perfect opportunity so repulsive a character that we can hardly bring
ourselves to wish that the hero should accept it. One of his minor
difficulties, we have seen, probably was that he seemed to be required
to attack a defenceless man; and here this difficulty is at its maximum.

This incident is, again, the turning-point of the tragedy. So far,
Hamlet's delay, though it is endangering his freedom and his life, has
done no irreparable harm; but his failure here is the cause of all the
disasters that follow. In sparing the King, he sacrifices Polonius,
Ophelia, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Laertes, the Queen and himself.
This central significance of the passage is dramatically indicated in
the following scene by the reappearance of the Ghost and the repetition
of its charge.

Polonius is the first to fall. The old courtier, whose vanity would not
allow him to confess that his diagnosis of Hamlet's lunacy was mistaken,
had suggested that, after the theatricals, the Queen should endeavour in
a private interview with her son to penetrate the mystery, while he
himself would repeat his favourite part of eaves-dropper (III. i. 184
ff.). It has now become q