an accomplice in the blacker crime. On this point the First and Second Quartos differ widely. In the former, which follows closely the legend of Amleth, she emphatically affirms her innocence in the words:

"But as I have a soul, I swear by heaven,
I never knew of this most horrid murder,'

and after the present scene she not only becomes an active partisan of Hamlet, but also promises her aid in his purpose of revenge:

"Hamlet, I vow by that same Majesty

That knows our thoughts, and looks into our hearts,

I will conceal, consent, and do my best,

What stratagem soe'er thou shalt devise."

In the Second Quarto, however, as well as in our modern text, the extent of the Queen's guilt is left vague and doubtful: she vacillates to the end between Claudius and her son. It may be noted that the ghost, while charging the murder to the King, does not affirm the Queen's innocence, but commands that she be left to the judgment of heaven; that nowhere does the murderer indicate his sister-in-law's collusion, nor even insinuate her knowledge of the crime; that, unlike Claudius, she betrays neither at the interlude, nor in the present scene any consciousness of guilt. Had she connived at the murder, then, because of her most surprising self-command, she must be rated one of the strongest characters of the play; whereas, all other incidents prove her the weakest.

Though the Queen is greatly distressed at the sight of the corpse and at her son's continued excitement, Hamlet proceeds with burning eloquence in his purpose of awakening her by words of reproof and indignation to a sense of her shameful conduct and to the infamy of her present state. If habitual sinning has not deadened her moral sense of evil, and choked the voice of conscience, he yet hopes to excite in her the better

feelings of the woman, and to re-enkindle in her heart a true mother's love. Her query, in remonstrance, is in keeping with her character; without clear and distinct notions of moral responsibilities, she seems not to divine the true cause of her son's anger and indignation. Before her mind is Hamlet's implied charge of murder against Claudius; but she attempts no refutation. Her ignorance of her son's secret information, leads her, perhaps, to imagine that indifference to her former husband's death, as indicated by her over-hasty marriage, as well as by her neglect to press for an explanation of his sudden taking off, which by reason of its gruesome and mysterious manner excited grave suspicion, is the cause of Hamlet's present angry reprehension. If so, severe is the shock of her awakening, as in poignant, scathing terms, he commands her to leave off wringing her hands. If her heart be made of penetrable stuff, if it be not brazened by damned custom against conscience and the sense of shame, he shall make her look therein, and see how horrid and black it shows.

In self-defense the irritated mother questions what she has done that he dare reproach her in terms so noisy and so rude. The question shows her impervious to a sense of guilt and shame, and only irritates her son the more. He proceeds to charge her with conduct that blights the beauty and the modest blush of chastity, confounds vice and virtue, wilts the rose on the brow of pure love, and sets a blister there."

18

Gertrude as already shown was only a nominal or nonpracticing Catholic. Though outwardly professing the Christian religion of the elder Hamlet and her son, she cared little for its principles and moral precepts. Still unweaned from the old religion of Odin, which was yet common to many of her subjects, she followed in private life the more indulgent customs of the pagan Norsemen. Hence her conduct was specially

18 An allusion to an old time custom of branding harlots on the forehead.

1

offensive to her son. In what this offence particularly lay,
non-Catholic critics usually fail to grasp, because they disre-
gard the difference between modern lax notions of matrimony,
which have flowed from the doctrines of the "Reformers,"
and those of the Church, which now as in Hamlet's day holds
marriage to be a sacred and sacramental contract.

19

His grief, shame, and indignation arose not only from
his mother's previous perfidy to his father, but more from
her sinful and incestuous union in a pretended marriage with
his uncle. He felt assured that her pagan laxity of morals,
while disgracing him, would also be a scandal to the public
eye, and would, moreover, sanction license in life at court.
As a Catholic he knew that matrimony is not a mere natural
contract, but over and above a sacred rite, a holy sacrament of
grace instituted by the Savior Himself; and, therefore, he
charges his mother with having perjured her vows of "sweet
religion," and made them an empty parody of words. Her
lawless and incestuous union has desecrated a holy sacrament,
has sacrilegiously plucked from the sacred contract its life-
giving principle, its very soul, and left it a lifeless body, sub-
ject to the natural law of decay. His abhorrence of her crime
induces a high strain of passion, and his fervid mind rises in
denunciation to a noble and poetic climax: All nature is
affected by her sin; heaven glows with the blush of indigna-
tion; earth loathes it, and seems stricken with grief and horror,
as if doomsday were at hand. The noble lines vividly suggest
Milton's description of the immediate consequences of the
first sin:

"Earth trembled from her entrails, as again

In pangs, and Nature gave a second groan,
Sky lowr'd, and mutt'ring thunder, some sad drops
Wept at completing of the mortal sin
Original." (Book IX.)

19 Vide, part I, Chap. VII, p. 49.

Though anxious and in fear from her son's towering passion and angry words, Gertrude, who is characteristically obtuse in matters of morals and religion, still holds out against her son's accusation, and, hiding behind his supposed ignor ance of her guilt, asks in assumed innocence the cause of his angry denunciation:

"Ay me, what act,

That roars so loud and thunders in the index!"

A CONTRAST

Stirred by her obstinacy and pretended ignorance, Hamlet grows more indignant, and proceeds to particulars. His action accompanying the words, "Look here, upon this pic ture, and on this," has been diversely described. Some annotators suppose that the pictures are seen by the mind's eye only; others, that Hamlet wears a miniature of his father, and the Queen one of the present King. The common practice of the stage, however, since the Restoration, affirms Davies, has been for Hamlet to draw two miniatures or medallions from his pocket. But such action seems objectionable; since it is most improbable that the Prince carried about with him a pie ture of the hated criminal. Again, it is thought that from the time of the original performance, two royal portraits at half length were hung in the Queen's closet, as is shown in the illus trated frontispiece of Rowe's edition of Hamlet of 1709. Another opinion, the most common and the most probable, is that Hamlet draws a miniature of his father from his pocket, and then turns to point to a picture of Claudius exposed upon the wall.

Inspired by filial affection, Hamlet proceeds in glowing hyperbole to picture his father as a paragon, on whom Jup iter, supreme in intellect; Apollo, in beauty; Mars, in valor; and Mercury, in swiftness and despatch, had each "set his

a

seal," in order "to give the world assurance of a man. From this hyperion, he turns to the picture of the satyr, whe "like a mildewed ear has blasted his wholesome brother.""""

The contrast heightens his indignation, and in sentiments of inexpressible disgust, he queries how she could have left this "fair mountain" of perfection, "to batten' on a quaggy moorland. Hers is not the impulsive, blinding love of youth; for at her stage of life, love waits upon the judgment. Her reason must be wholly "apoplexed;" even the senseless and insane retain, unlike to her, some power of choice. Inspired by the Christian doctrine that fallen angels, or evil spirits in their hatred of God, tempt mortals to rebellion against the Creator and his moral laws, he demands "what devil" has hoodwinked and defrauded her of all feeling,, save one sickly passion, and left her witlessly "to mope" in delusion. Where is her blush of shame? If "rebellious hell" can thus mutiny in a matron's heart, and make reason subservient to lustful passion, then youth can find no safety, unless it be aflame with the sense of moral beauty, and glow with an enthusiastic and passionate love of virtue.

The foregoing portraits of the elder Hamlet and of Claudius, contain, it is reasonable to suppose, some elements of exaggeration. The Prince's high eulogium of his father, as well as his low debasement of his uncle, are both tinted by opposing passions: the one by extreme love, and the other by extreme hate. To be powerfully and oppositely swayed by love and hatred is a characteristic of human nature; when love dominates the heart, its kindly eye sees the virtues of the object beloved loom bright in the sheen of white light, which obscures vice by its shadows; when hatred, on the contrary, rages in the heart, its hostile eye, blind to the good, sees only what is

20 An evident allusion to Pharao's dream: "Seven ears of corn came up upon one stalk full and fair; then seven other ears sprung up thin and blasted, and devoured all the beauty of the former''. Gen. 41, 6.