his stockings loose,
Ungartred, and down-gyved to his ancle,
Pale as his shirt, his knees knocking each other,
And with a look so piteous,
As if he had been sent from hell
To speak of horrors, thus he comes before me.
_Polonius_. Mad for thy love!
_Oph_. My lord, I do not know,
But truly I do fear it.
_Pol_. What said he?
_Oph_. He took me by the wrist, and held me hard,
Then goes he to the length of all his arm;
And with his other hand thus o'er his brow,
He falls to such perusal of my face,
As he would draw it: long staid he so;
At last, a little shaking of my arm,
And thrice his head thus waving up and down,
He rais'd a sigh so piteous and profound,
As it did seem to shatter all his bulk,
And end his being. That done, he lets me go,
And with his head over his shoulder turn'd,
He seem'd to find his way without his eyes;
For out of doors he went without their help,
And to the last bended their light on me."
_Act. II. Scene 1_.

How after this airy, fantastic idea of irregular grace and bewildered
melancholy any one can play Hamlet, as we have seen it played, with
strut, and stare, and antic right-angled sharp-pointed gestures, it is
difficult to say, unless it be that Hamlet is not bound, by the
prompter's cue, to study the part of Ophelia. The account of Ophelia's
death begins thus:

"There is a willow hanging o'er a brook,
That shows its hoary leaves in the glassy stream."--

Now this is an instance of the same unconscious power of mind which is
as true to nature as itself. The leaves of the willow are, in fact,
white underneath, and it is this part of them which would appear "hoary"
in the reflection in the brook. The same sort of intuitive power, the
same faculty of bringing every object in nature, whether present or
absent, before the mind's eye, is observable in the speech of Cleopatra,
when conjecturing what were the employments of Antony in his absence:--
"He's speaking now, or murmuring, where's my serpent of old Nile?" How
fine to make Cleopatra have this consciousness of her own character, and
to make her feel that it is this for which Antony is in love with her!
She says, after the battle of Actium, when Antony has resolved to risk
another fight, "It is my birth-day; I ha