may

Folio. Heminge and Condell were at least as familiar with this scene as we are. Minor errors in abundance have crept into the First Folio; minor omissions and additions may disfigure its text: it may be, as Horne Tooke says, 'the only edition worth regarding'; and, as Mr. Knight says, 'the most correctly printed book on record'; or it may have been, as Mr. Dyce believes, 'dismissed from the press with less care and attention than any book of any extent and reputation in the whole annals of English typography.' But the certainty still remains that Heminge and Condell, 'sober, earnest critics,' would never have dared to repudiate a long soliloquy that had a place in the standard acting copy the standard ultimately fixed. by Shakespeare himself, or with his distinct approval. A jest or two in Richard, an indecisive scene in Lear, might escape them; but not, of all things on earth, a soliloquy of Hamlet's the final soliloquy

Unquestionably, all that stately dialogue with the Captain is Shakespeare's: possibly he wrote the whole soliloquy, every line of it, just as it stands. Even in that age of giants 'sturdy but unclean,' there may have been no second touch to equal the felicity of

Now whether it be

Bestial oblivion or some craven scruple

Of thinking too precisely on the event,—

A thought, which, quartered, hath but one part wisdom,

And ever three parts coward.

It may have been written to strengthen the Acts, or to please Burbage or whoever played the part: written, tried, and abandoned. For though a leading tragedian might cling to so tempting a bit of declamation, the house, the company, and the author, would be sure to reject it in the end. It is most awkwardly introducedlugged in by the head and heels like a dead afterthought. It is the one speech too many that palsies both actor and audience;

that fails alike on the stage or in the closet; that superficially countenances the imputation of weakness and needlessly complicates the character. We can imagine the more than half-created Hamlet, statue-like uplifting his hand in sublime protest against the threatened malformation. After the other noble monologues, it is weak as water. But the supreme reason for its rejection is that it is false.

I do not know

Why yet I live to say, 'This thing's to do'; Sith I have cause and will and strength and means To do it.

He had not strength and means to do it, and could not have, until rescued from captivity and impending death by that well-appointed pirate. So, apart from its comparative feebleness, apart from its superfluity, apart from its being most lamely and discordantly introduced, 'I'll be with you straight - go a little before,' — there is a positive necessity for its rejection it is

FALSE ! False and unnatural! For however happily his counterplot may terminate, it is surely not as a prisoner on the brink of exile, environed by the royal guards, that such a motive for self-reproach would occur. Though no one could now have the temerity to reject the scene, were it not rejected by the Folio; yet consciously and deliberately repudiated there, we may well feel at liberty to prefer the professional and disinterested verdict of Heminge and Condell, who certainly give no intimation in their preface that the original papers 'received from him' with scarce a blot, were destroyed as Mr. Dyce supposes, when the Globe Theatre was burned down in 1613. This ill-timed monologue though weak itself does not really make Hamlet essentially weaker; but there is no reason why the discarded superfluities of genius should be perpetuated only to obscure the pure gold of its priceless bequests. One thing however is clear: unless Hamlet planned the subsequent piratical capture,

the Soliloquy is not only superfluous and contradictory, but absurd. Unhappy as it is in all other respects, it serves to demonstrate conclusively that in Shakespeare's own mind, the piratical capture was a premeditated certainty.

next.

With its present Fifth Scene, the Fourth Act properly begins. One victim has already fallen - Polonius: Ophelia is the The shock of her father's death by the hand of her lover, has crazed her. It would have suited most artists to exhibit the first crash of the tragical fact; but Shakespeare mercifully spares us the sight of the blow descending on that vestal forehead. Her mind is murdered off the stage. The grand master will not overcharge his canvas with details which a lesser soul would grasp at. The spiritual transformation is complete before she reappears. Instead of horror heaped on horror, the very madness of this Rose of May is turned 'to favor and to prettiness.' She softens the gloom and terror of the play into over