ending interference for
their lives: as heir apparent, he would certainly have been listened to.
The tone of his reply to Horatio is that of one who has been made the
unintending cause of a deserved fate: the thing having fallen out so,
the Divinity having so shaped their ends, there was nothing in their
character, any more than in that of Polonius, to make him regret their
death, or the part he had had in it.]

[Footnote 5: The 'mighty opposites' here are the king and Hamlet.]

[Footnote 6: Perhaps, as Hamlet talked, he has been parenthetically
glancing at the real commission. Anyhow conviction is growing stronger
in Horatio, whom, for the occasion, we may regard as a type of the
public.]

[Footnote 7: 'thinkst thee,' in the fashion of the Friends, or 'thinke
thee' in the sense of 'bethink thee.']

[Footnote 8: 'Does it not rest now on me?--is it not now my duty?--is it
not _incumbent on me_ (with _lie_ for _stand_)--"is't not perfect
conscience"?']

[Footnote 9: Note '_my king_' not _my father_: he had to avenge a crime
against the state, the country, himself as a subject--not merely a
private wrong.]

[Page 252]

Throwne out his Angle for my proper life,[1]
And with such coozenage;[2] is't not perfect conscience,[3]
[Sidenote: conscience?]
[Sidenote: 120] To quit him with this arme?[4] And is't not to be
damn'd[5]
To let this Canker of our nature come
In further euill.[6]

_Hor._ It must be shortly knowne to him from England
What is the issue of the businesse there.[7]

_Ham._ It will be short,
[Sidenote: 262] The _interim's_ mine,[8] and a mans life's no more[9]
Then to say one:[10] but I am very sorry good _Horatio_,
[Sidenote: 245] That to _Laertes_ I forgot my selfe;
For by the image of my Cause, I see
[Sidenote: 262] The Portraiture of his;[11] Ile count his fauours:[12]

[Footnote 1: Here is the charge at length in full against the king--of
quality and proof sufficient now, not merely to justify, but to compel
action against him.]

[Footnote 2: He was such a _fine_ hypocrite that Hamlet, although he
hated and distrusted him, was perplexed as to the possibility of his
guilt. His good acting was almost too much for Hamlet himself. This is
his 'coozenage.'

After 'coozenage' should come a dash, bringing '--is't not perfect
conscience' (_is it not absolutely righteous_) into closest sequence,
almost apposition, with 'Does it not stand me now upon-