retence, and what
sincerity, appears to me an insoluble problem. Something depends here on
the further question whether or no Hamlet suspects or detects the
presence of listeners; but, in the absence of an authentic stage
tradition, this question too seems to be unanswerable.

But something further seems to follow from the considerations adduced.
Hamlet's love, they seem to show, was not only mingled with bitterness,
it was also, like all his healthy feelings, weakened and deadened by his
melancholy.[75] It was far from being extinguished; probably it was
_one_ of the causes which drove him to force his way to Ophelia;
whenever he saw Ophelia, it awoke and, the circumstances being what they
were, tormented him. But it was not an absorbing passion; it did not
habitually occupy his thoughts; and when he declared that it was such a
love as forty thousand brothers could not equal, he spoke sincerely
indeed but not truly. What he said was true, if I may put it thus, of
the inner healthy self which doubtless in time would have fully
reasserted itself; but it was only partly true of the Hamlet whom we see
in the play. And the morbid influence of his melancholy on his love is
the cause of those strange facts, that he never alludes to her in his
soliloquies, and that he appears not to realise how the death of her
father must affect her.

The facts seem almost to force this idea on us. That it is less
'romantic' than the popular view is no argument against it. And
psychologically it is quite sound, for a frequent symptom of such
melancholy as Hamlet's is a more or less complete paralysis, or even
perversion, of the emotion of love. And yet, while feeling no doubt that
up to a certain point it is true, I confess I am not satisfied that the
explanation of Hamlet's silence regarding Ophelia lies in it. And the
reason of this uncertainty is that scarcely any spectators or readers of
_Hamlet_ notice this silence at all; that I never noticed it myself till
I began to try to solve the problem of Hamlet's relation to Ophelia; and
that even now, when I read the play through without pausing to consider
particular questions, it scarcely strikes me. Now Shakespeare wrote
primarily for the theatre and not for students, and therefore great
weight should be attached to the immediate impressions made by his
works. And so it seems at least possible that the explanation of
Hamlet's silence may be that Shakespeare, having already a very
difficult