i. 75 ff.). But what he says in that very passage
shows that he is thinking chiefly of the greater wrong he has done
Laertes by depriving him of his father:

For, by the image of my cause, I see
The portraiture of his.

And it is also evident in the last words of the apology itself that he
is referring in it to the deaths of Polonius and Ophelia:

Sir, in this audience,
Let my disclaiming from a purposed evil
Free me so far in your most generous thoughts,
_That I have shot mine arrow o'er the house,
And hurt my brother._

But now, as to the falsehood. The charge is not to be set aside lightly;
and, for my part, I confess that, while rejecting of course Johnson's
notion that Shakespeare wanted to paint 'a good man,' I have momentarily
shared Johnson's wish that Hamlet had made 'some other defence' than
that of madness. But I think the wish proceeds from failure to imagine
the situation.

In the first place, _what_ other defence can we wish Hamlet to have
made? I can think of none. He cannot tell the truth. He cannot say to
Laertes, 'I meant to stab the King, not your father.' He cannot explain
why he was unkind to Ophelia. Even on the false supposition that he is
referring simply to his behaviour at the grave, he can hardly say, I
suppose, 'You ranted so abominably that you put me into a towering
passion.' _Whatever_ he said, it would have to be more or less untrue.

Next, what moral difference is there between feigning insanity and
asserting it? If we are to blame Hamlet for the second, why not equally
for the first?

And, finally, even if he were referring simply to his behaviour at the
grave, his excuse, besides falling in with his whole plan of feigning
insanity, would be as near the truth as any he could devise. For we are
not to take the account he gives to Horatio, that he was put in a
passion by the bravery of Laertes' grief, as the whole truth. His raving
over the grave is not _mere_ acting. On the contrary, that passage is
the best card that the believers in Hamlet's madness have to play. He is
really almost beside himself with grief as well as anger, half-maddened
by the impossibility of explaining to Laertes how he has come to do what
he has done, full of wild rage and then of sick despair at this wretched
world which drives him to such deeds and such misery. It is the same
rage and despair that mingle with other feelings in his outbreak to
Ophelia in the Nunnery-s