ned in a tone that is suggestive
of evil. What scenes she must have witnessed--the confusion on the death
of the king, the exclusion of Hamlet from the throne, the marriage of
the queen to the usurper! Yet she takes it all quite sweetly and
subserviently. She is as docile to events as she is to parental advice.
To such a one every circumstance is a fate, and she bows to it, as she
bows to her father: "Yes, my lord, I will obey my lord." She denies
Hamlet's access to her though he is in sorrow; though he has lost all,
she will "come in for an after loss." One would rather leave her
blameless in the sweetness of her maiden prime and the pathos of her
end, but to place her, as some do, high on the list of Shakespeare's
peerless women fastens upon Hamlet unmerited reproach. There is a love
that includes friendship, as religion includes morality, and such was
Portia's for Bassanio. There is a love whose first instinctive movement
is to share the burden of the loved one, and such was Miranda's love for
Ferdinand. And there is a love that reserves the light of its light and
the perfume of its sweetness for the shadowed heart and the sunless
mind. How would Cordelia have addressed this king and queen--how would
she have aroused the energy of Hamlet and rehabilitated his trust, with
that voice, soft and low indeed, but firmer than the voice of Cato's
daughter claiming to know her husband's cause of grief! As Hamlet talks
to Ophelia, you perceive that the marriage of his mother is more present
to him than the murder of his father. He discourses on the frailty of
woman and the corruption of the world; "Go to, it hath made me mad. We
will have no more marriages."

The play is acted. The king is "frighted with false fire," and Hamlet is
left with the feeling of a dramatic success and the proof of his uncle's
guilt. He sings snatches of song. Horatio falls in with his mood. "You
might have rhymed," he says. The only effect of the confirmation of the
ghost's story, as at its first hearing, is a fresh blaze of indignation
against his mother. When Polonius has delivered his message that the
queen would speak with him, Hamlet presently says, "Leave me, friend;"
and then his mind clouds like the mind of Macbeth before he enters the
chamber of Duncan--

"'Tis now the very witching time of night,
When churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out
Contagion to this world: now could I drink hot blood,
And do such bitter busines