he is superior to Horatio, how much more to Laertes? Had
Shakespeare wished to exalt the quality of resolution at Hamlet's
expense, he would not have chosen so ignoble a representative of it as
this man. A true son of Polonius, a prater of moral maxims, while he is
all for Paris and its pleasures; violent, but weak; who, when he is told
of the tragic and untimely death of his sister, can find nothing better
to say than--

"Too much of water, hast thou, dear Ophelia?"

who, like Aufidius, has the outward habit and encounter of honour, but
is a facile tool of treacherous murder in the hands of the king. Compare
the conduct of the two when they are brought into collision, and the
final impression they leave. The readiness with which Hamlet undertakes
to fence for his uncle's wager is one of the most surprising strokes in
the play. What! with the foil in his hand, no plot, no project, not even
a word, not a look between him and Horatio that the occasion might be
improved! What absolute freedom from the malice which in another mind
is preparing his death. The treachery of Laertes is the more odious in
this, that the success of his plot depends on the generous confidence of
his victim. Polonius is handled in the same way with special reference
to Hamlet. His thinking is marked by slowness and insincerity, and when
he comes in contact with the rapid current of Hamlet's mind he is
benumbed; he can only mutter, "If this is madness, there is method in
it." What little portable wisdom was given to him in the first Act is
soon withdrawn--he stammers in his deceit, and the old indirectness
having no material of thought to work upon becomes a circumlocution of
truisms. As the play proceeds he is made, as if with a second intention,
more and more the antithesis, as he is the antipathy, of the prince. It
is the careful portrait of what Hamlet would hate--a remnant of senile
craft in the method with folly in the matter--a shy look in the dull and
glazing eye, that insults the honesty of Hamlet as much as the
shrivelled meaning with its pompous phrase insults his intelligence. So
with the other characters; they are all made to justify his demeanour
towards them. The queen is heard to confess her guilt, Ophelia is seen
to act as a decoy; his college friends attempt his death.

In as far then as Hamlet is right in his verdicts, blameless in his
aims, lofty in his ideal, and just in his resentment, he is a
representative man; and we ha