powers of observation, but brings Horatio in as witness. And when he is certain he wavers still. He slays Polonius through error, and passively agrees to go to England instead of acting at once and resolutely.
We cannot tell what he seeks at sea: perhaps merely another pretext to delay action. And when he returns, after he has sent the two courtiers to die in his place, he philosophizes in cemeteries instead of digging the grave of the only man he has a right to strike. Only at the last, when he has killed his friend and sees his mother and himself in the death agony, does he, with his dying arm, take the one life the savage spectre had demanded.
No less incomprehensible is his behavior toward Ophelia, whom his feigned madness brings to real madness and to piteous death in the indifferent stream. He loves Ophelia truly, and his love continues even after her death. Might he not have spared her in his tragic comedy? Might he not have given her some word that would have enabled her to wait and understand? “I cannot now be yours nor think of tenderness. When I have fulfilled my duty I will come to you again; and if I then can smile, my first smile shall be for your white face, for your maidenly blushes. Marvel not though I seem strange in word and deed. Another Hamlet has perforce entered life; but the Hamlet that you knew is
