'imperial jointress' of the State, and the
King says that the lords consented to the marriage, but makes no
separate mention of his election.

The solution of the difficulty is to be found in the lines quoted above.
The marriage followed, within a month, not the _death_ of Hamlet's
father, but the _funeral_. And this makes all clear. The death happened
nearly two months ago. The funeral did not succeed it immediately, but
(say) in a fortnight or three weeks. And the marriage and coronation,
coming rather less than a month after the funeral, have just taken
place. So that the Ghost has not waited at all; nor has the King, nor
Laertes.

On this hypothesis it follows that Hamlet's agonised soliloquy is not
uttered nearly a month after the marriage which has so horrified him,
but quite soon after it (though presumably he would know rather earlier
what was coming). And from this hypothesis we get also a partial
explanation of two other difficulties, (_a_) When Horatio, at the end of
the soliloquy, enters and greets Hamlet, it is evident that he and
Hamlet have not recently met at Elsinore. Yet Horatio came to Elsinore
for the funeral (I. ii. 176). Now even if the funeral took place some
three weeks ago, it seems rather strange that Hamlet, however absorbed
in grief and however withdrawn from the Court, has not met Horatio; but
if the funeral took place some seven weeks ago, the difficulty is
considerably greater. (_b_) We are twice told that Hamlet has '_of
late_' been seeking the society of Ophelia and protesting his love for
her (I. iii. 91, 99). It always seemed to me, on the usual view of the
chronology, rather difficult (though not, of course, impossible) to
understand this, considering the state of feeling produced in him by his
mother's marriage, and in particular the shock it appears to have given
to his faith in woman. But if the marriage has only just been celebrated
the words 'of late' would naturally refer to a time before it. This time
presumably would be subsequent to the death of Hamlet's father, but it
is not so hard to fancy that Hamlet may have sought relief from mere
_grief_ in his love for Ophelia.

But here another question arises; May not the words 'of late' include,
or even wholly refer to,[250] a time prior to the death of Hamlet's
father? And this question would be answered universally, I suppose, in
the negative, on the ground that Hamlet was not at Court but at
Wittenberg when his father died. I