ified with boisterous dance and mirthful song. When the King in swaggering reel drinks the health of all, it is according to Danish custom, accompanied by blare of trumpets and by beat of drums. Such barbarous customs were most odious to the refined Hamlet, and he looked upon their breach as more honorable than their observance. These frequent royal revels pained him grievously; for he knew from his travels abroad, how they caused foreigners to call the Danes drunkards and to liken them to swine, and so vilify the nation's name and honor. Laboring under great nervous tension, and eager to subdue his feelings of excitement, Hamlet passes from moralizing on the Danish custom of wassailing, to more general reflections. His speculative turn of mind naturally leads him from the particular to the universal, from the vice of Claudius to failings common to human nature; and in deep philosophy he finds a sedative for his impatient and uneasy feelings. As with Claudius, so it is with men in general. One defect whether natural or acquired, if allowed to grow in strength by habit, will at length break down the very guards of reason, and vitiate in man all that is really good. "One sad losel soils a name for aye, Nor all that heralds rake from coffined clay, For confirmation of his argument, Shakespeare borrows from offend in one point is become guilty of all."" Hence the Poet reasons: let a man be ever so noble in character, be adorned with every virtue; and let that virtue be refined and purified by grace, yet if one blemish or evil trait be found among them, it will taint the very essence of his goodness, and bring him into disrepute in the eyes of his fellowmen. ANGELS AND MINISTERS OF GRACE While Hamlet, apparently absorbed in moralizing thought, continues his discourse, he is suddenly interrupted by the alarming words of Horatio, who chances to catch a glimpse of the silently approaching spectre. His surprise is equally shared by the spectator; for as Coleridge remarks: "by thus entangling the attention of the audience in the nice distinctions and parenthetical sentences of this speech, Shakespeare takes them completely by surprise at the appearance of the ghost, which comes upon them in all the suddenness of its character." The spectre appears in arms, in the full panoply of war, just as the corpse of Hamlet's father was buried according to Danish custom. This circumstance lends greater solemnity to the scene, whose picturesqueness is heightened by the silvery moon beaming here and there through the openings of the massive battlements. The sight of the mysterious spectre fills all with fear and amazement. As the solemn ghost silently approaches, Hamlet is suddenly overpowered by awe and terror, and, feeling himself in the grasp of the preternatural, shudders and staggers backwards, uttering from fear the first thought that flashes on his mind. It expresses a sentiment that is distinctly Christian. The force of Hamlet's exclamatory prayer, like other indices of his Catholic faith, either is not understood, or is silently ignored by certain critics who would make him an 7 II, 10. Agnostic, or a Rationalist, or a Positivist, or anything but a Christian, and who are wont to seize upon a few obscure passages in support of their tenets, all the while remaining blind to the clear evidences, multiplied through the drama, of his thorough Catholicity. Considering that Hamlet is a pure creation of Shakespeare's mind, and that he makes him a Christian prince of the eleventh century, it follows that in justice to the Poet, we must view his hero through Catholic eyes, and judge his words and actions according to Christian principles and practises. Such is the fundamental law of rational criticism, and any critic who ignores it, must necessarily misinterpret the Prince, and give us nothing more than a distorted view of his character. If the Poet could not prudently enlarge upon the faith of Hamlet, because he wrote his dramas for presentation at a time when not only his audiences were anti-Catholic, but also when the government pursued a policy of intolerance and persecution, he, nevertheless, from fondness for the old religion, did not fail to enrich the tragedy with lustrous gems, which brilliantly reflect the clear sunshine of Catholic belief. One of these gems, in the present instance, is Hamlet's invocation of angels and ministers of grace to defend him. In the days of the "great Reformer" and of "good Queen Bess," many treatises were issued and penal laws enacted against the good old Catholic belief and practice of invoking the aid of angels and of saints, as here exemplified by Hamlet. The first few lines of his address to the ghost contain a depth of meaning, which none perhaps but a Catholic mind can fathom. Besides his belief in the power of angels and of saints to hear and help us, he emphatically implies the existence of a heaven and a hell, of good spirits who are the ministers of God's favor, and of evil spirits who are bent on man's destruction, and of a divine revelation on which these Catholic doctrines are based. Furthermore, his brief and hurried prayer is heightened in force, when we consider that it was uttered in a moment of overpowering fear and terror, which left him no time for reflection. It is a well known fact that men, under such circumstances, invariably utter words to which by frequent use they have become habituated, and which, therefore, without thought come to their lips as it were from custom or second nature. This fact reveals how deeply religion and its supernatural elements were engraven upon the soul of Hamlet and entered into his every day life. Hamlet as a Christian knew that evil spirits may at times assume various forms, the better to beguile to evil, and, therefore, he doubted whether this spectre-like form of his father were really his ghost or a demon. He was further cognizant of the popular belief that to accost and speak to a ghost, is to invite dire consequences; nevertheless, all regardless whether the spectre before him be a "spirit of health or goblin damned;" whether "he bring grace from heaven or blasts from hell," Hamlet determined to stay the course of his mysterious visitor and to address him in questioning words. His resolve in presence of Horatio and the officers, who are quaking with fear, evinces a wondrous courage and a remarkable strength of will. His invocation of angels and ministers of grace had halted the walking ghost, which, turning in his footsteps, stood facing him. Recognizing now more clearly the form and very features of his father, Hamlet speaks to him in words, whose grandeur reveals the heated state of his mind. In the course of an animated address, Hamlet slowly draws nearer and nearer, and, fixing his look on the pallid face, gazes into the glassy eyes of his father's spectral form. For the moment he forgets all fear and awe of the preternat 1 ural. Fond memories which he cherished return with all their freshness, as he feels himself again in the presence of his idolized father. His heart aglow with filial love and devotion, he passionately appeals on bended knee and with outstretched hands to the solemn, silent shade to answer him. He calls him Hamlet, king, father, and on the last appellation his voice falters in lingering loving accents; and then he utters the climax, "royal Dane," to him, indeed, the Dane of all Danes the paragon of perfect manhood. In outpouring questions of overmastering eagerness and yearning, he seeks the cause of his unrest, and fears the confirmation of his own foul suspicions. "Tell me," he pleads, "why thy corpse, which we consecrated by sacred rites of burial, has burst its cerements! Why has the sepulchre wherein we laid thee to peaceful rest, opened wide its ponderous and marble jaws to give thee up again? Why dost thou, dread corpse, revisit again in complete armor the glimpses of the moon to make us fear and tremble, to mock and laugh at us, poor fools of nature, who vainly search to know her mysteries, though they are beyond the reach of our souls? O, answer me! What should we do to bring peace to thy burdened, wandering soul?”’ Hamlet's anxious filial desire and impassioned pleadings extort no response from the mute spectre, save a waving of the hand, by which the spirit beckons him to follow apart from his companions. Allowed by divine permission to revisit earth in the cause of justice, the ghost can speak its secret message to no other ears than Hamlet's. It is a purgatorial spirit and, therefore, necessarily good; confirmed in the grace and love of God, it can do no wrong. But to destroy a man's reputation by revealing his secret crimes to others than those whose concern it is to avenge the crime or to right the wrong, is an offence forbidden by the moral law of God. Hence to |