at the doubts ever tearing his
spirit and sickening his brain, are but the offspring of his phantasy.
There she sits!--and there he stands, vainly endeavouring through her
eyes to read her soul! for, alas,

there's no art
To find the mind's construction in the face!

--until at length, finding himself utterly baffled, but unable, save by
the removal of his person, to take his eyes from her face, he retires
speechless as he came. Such is the man whom we are now to see wandering
about the halls and corridors of the great castle-palace.

He may by this time have begun to doubt even the reality of the sight he
had seen. The moment the pressure of a marvellous presence is removed,
it is in the nature of man the same moment to begin to doubt; and
instead of having any reason to wish the apparition a true one, he had
every reason to desire to believe it an illusion or a lying spirit.
Great were his excuse even if he forced likelihoods, and suborned
witnesses in the court of his own judgment. To conclude it false was to
think his father in heaven, and his mother not an adulteress, not a
murderess! At once to kill his uncle would be to seal these horrible
things irrevocable, indisputable facts. Strongest reasons he had for not
taking immediate action in vengeance; but no smallest incapacity for
action had share in his delay. The Poet takes recurrent pains, as if he
foresaw hasty conclusions, to show his hero a man of promptitude, with
this truest fitness for action, that he would not make unlawful haste.
Without sufficing assurance, he would have no part in the fate either of
the uncle he disliked or the mother he loved.]

[Footnote 3: _a doors_, like _an end_. 51, 175.]

[Footnote 4: _undoes, frustrates, destroys_.]

[Footnote 5: See quotation from _1st Quarto,_ 43.]

[Footnote 6: _Quoted_ or _coted: observed_; Fr. _coter_, to mark the
number. Compare 95.]

[Page 72]

It seemes it is as proper to our Age, [Sidenote: By heauen it is]
To cast beyond our selues[1] in our Opinions,
As it is common for the yonger sort
To lacke discretion.[2] Come, go we to the King,
This must be knowne, which being kept close might moue
More greefe to hide, then hate to vtter loue.[3] [Sidenote: Come.]
_Exeunt._

_SCENA SECUNDA._[4]

_Enter King, Queene, Rosincrane, and Guildensterne Cum alijs.
[Sidenote: Florish: Enter King and Queene, Rosenc