The Contemporary Review, January 1883 / Vol 43, No. 1

and the sanctity of love chills the life-blood of his heart, and then rushes burning through it like the shame

de them, and the Court ladies; the pretentious gravity of Polonius' brow; the dreamy innocence of Ophelia. The sovereigns seat themselves, the Queen looks smilingly around her as of old. All

too too solid f

solve itself

Everlasting

gainst self

agitation as in this. He struggles for utterance, repeats himself, mingles oaths and axioms, confuses and then annihilates

s discours

ed longer-marrie

life-weariness so prevalent throughout the play to this supreme emotion; we s

tale, flat, a

ll the uses o

ie! 'tis an un

n

thy name

, we can follow them to the graveyard

e the heart of Regan to account for her ingratitude. In attacking it he is attacking her guilt, in its inferior forms and obscure disguises. It is the nest of her depravity, and the small vices are but hers in the shell, and the whole is a vast confederacy of evil. Here are no "superfluous activities," no desultory talk; Hamlet's preoccupation is one throughout. He alternates between the desire to escape from so vile a world, and the pleasure of exposing its vice and fraud. The one gives us soliloquies, the other dia

rs in the mirror of his ironical mind! The state-craft, the love-making, the "absurd pomp," the "heavy-headed revels," the women that "jig and amble and lisp," the nobles that are "spacious in the possession of dirt," the sovereign that is a "king of shreds and patches;" as for their opinions, "do but blow; them to their trials, and the bubb

ht is good and action is good, but they will not work together. Our reason is our glory, but our indiscretions serve us best-we must either be cowards or fools. We have a perception of infinite goodness, just sufficient to make us conclude that we are "arrant knaves, all

self, with his ingenuities of wit and triumphs of ambition, is whirled from form to form in "a fine revolution

ar, dead, and

hole to keep

th the worm that has eat of a king, and e

sk with the point of his dexterous wit, and exposes the pretence of virtue or conceit of knowledge with sarcastic glee, while there is a savour of retribution in his chastisement of vice. The vivacity of this running comment, critical and satirical, on the ways and works of men adds much to the charm of the play, but it is a charm that properly be

e it seem a separate study, as thus alone could this fatal "thought-sickness," in which

elation of a particular crime can rival the revelation lately made to him of sin in the most holy place-the seat of virtue itself and heavenly purity. He may acknowledge the ties of filial obedience and the duty of revenge,

he greater m

r scarce

of life. They garner up happiness and they store the harvest of pain; they make the "majestical roof fretted with golden fire" and the "pestilential cloud." The basis on which Haml

t sie z

ch?ne

bsorbing ideas. The shadow descends till it measures the fo