is a lesson in unity that the greatest art can least work alone; that
the greatest _finder_ most needs the help of others to show his
_findings_. The dramatist has live men and women for the very
instruments of his art--who must not be mere instruments, but
fellow-workers; and upon them he is greatly dependent for final outcome.

Here the actor should show a marked calmness and elevation in Hamlet. He
should have around him as it were a luminous cloud, the cloud of his
coming end. A smile not all of this world should close the speech. He
has given himself up, and is at peace.]

[Footnote 4: Note in this apology the sweetness of Hamlet's nature. How
few are alive enough, that is unselfish and true enough, to be capable
of genuine apology! The low nature always feels, not the wrong, but the
confession of it, degrading.]

[Footnote 5: --the wrong of his rudeness at the funeral.]

[Footnote 6: all present.]

[Footnote 7: --true in a deeper sense than they would understand.]

[Footnote 8: 'that might roughly awake your nature, honour, and
exception,':--consider the phrase--_to take exception at a thing_.]

[Footnote 9: It was by cause of madness, not by cause of evil intent.
For all purpose of excuse it was madness, if only pretended madness; it
was there of another necessity, and excused offence like real madness.
What he said was true, not merely expedient, to the end he meant it to
serve. But all passion may be called madness, because therein the mind
is absorbed with one idea; 'anger is a brief madness,' and he was in a
'towering passion': he proclaims it madness and so abjures it.]

[Footnote 10: 'refuses the wrong altogether--will in his true self have
nothing to do with it.' No evil thing comes of our true selves, and
confession is the casting of it from us, the only true denial. He who
will not confess a wrong, holds to the wrong.]

[Footnote 11: All here depends on the expression in the utterance.]

[Footnote 12: _This line not in Q._]

[Footnote 13: This is Hamlet's summing up of the whole--his explanation
of the speech.]

[Footnote 14: 'so far as this in your generous judgment--that you regard
me as having shot &c.']

[Footnote 15: _Brother_ is much easier to accept, though _Mother_ might
be in the simile.

To do justice to the speech we must remember that Hamlet has no quarrel
whatever with Laertes, that he has expressed admiration of him, and that
he is inclined to love him for Ophelia's sake. H