obeys her father when she is forbidden to
receive Hamlet's visits and letters. If we remember not what _we_ know
but what _she_ knows of her lover and her father; if we remember that
she had not, like Juliet, confessed her love; and if we remember that
she was much below her suitor in station, her compliance surely must
seem perfectly natural, apart from the fact that the standard of
obedience to a father was in Shakespeare's day higher than in ours.

'But she does more than obey,' we are told; 'she runs off frightened to
report to her father Hamlet's strange visit and behaviour; she shows to
her father one of Hamlet's letters, and tells him[77] the whole story of
the courtship; and she joins in a plot to win Hamlet's secret from him.'
One must remember, however, that she had never read the tragedy.
Consider for a moment how matters looked to _her_. She knows nothing
about the Ghost and its disclosures. She has undergone for some time the
pain of repelling her lover and appearing to have turned against him.
She sees him, or hears of him, sinking daily into deeper gloom, and so
transformed from what he was that he is considered to be out of his
mind. She hears the question constantly discussed what the cause of this
sad change can be; and her heart tells her--how can it fail to tell
her?--that her unkindness is the chief cause. Suddenly Hamlet forces his
way into her chamber; and his appearance and his behaviour are those of
a man crazed with love. She is frightened--why not? She is not Lady
Macbeth. Rosalind would have been frightened. Which of her censors would
be wholly unmoved if his room were invaded by a lunatic? She is
frightened, then; frightened, if you will, like a child. Yes, but,
observe, her one idea is to help Hamlet. She goes, therefore, at once to
her father. To whom else should she go? Her brother is away. Her father,
whom she saw with her own eyes and not with Shakespeare's, is kind, and
the wisest of men, and concerned about Hamlet's state. Her father finds,
in her report, the solution of the mystery: Hamlet is mad because she
has repulsed him. Why should she not tell her father the whole story and
give him an old letter which may help to convince the King and the
Queen? Nay, why should she not allow herself to be used as a 'decoy' to
settle the question why Hamlet is mad? It is all-important that it
should be settled, in order that he may be cured; all her seniors are
simply and solely anxious for his