we smiled to think, if you delight not in man, what lenten entertainment the players shall receive from you, whom we met on the way":—­as if while Hamlet was making this speech, his two old schoolfellows from Wittenberg had been really standing by, and he had seen them smiling by stealth, at the idea of the players crossing their minds.  It is not “a combination and a form” of words, a set speech or two, a preconcerted theory of a character, that will do this:  but all the persons concerned must have been present in the poet’s imagination, as at a kind of rehearsal; and whatever would have passed through their minds on the occasion, and have been observed by others, passed through his, and is made known to the reader.—­I may add in passing, that Shakspeare always gives the best directions for the costume and carriage of his heroes.  Thus to take one example, Ophelia gives the following account of Hamlet; and as Ophelia had seen Hamlet, I should think her word ought to be taken against that of any modern authority.

          “Ophelia.  My lord, as I was reading in my closet,
      Prince Hamlet, with his doublet all unbrac’d,
      No hat upon his head, his stockings loose,
      Ungartred, and down-gyved to his ancle,
      Pale as his shirt, his knees knocking each other,
      And with a look so piteous,
      As if he had been sent from hell
      To speak of horrors, thus he comes before me.
          Polonius.  Mad for thy love!
          Oph.  My lord, I do not know,
      But truly I do fear it.
          Pol.  What said he?
          Oph.  He took me by the wrist, and held me hard,
      Then goes he to the length of all his arm;
      And with his other hand thus o’er his brow,
      He falls to such perusal of my face,
      As he would draw it:  long staid he so;
      At last, a little shaking of my arm,
      And thrice his head thus waving up and down,
      He rais’d a sigh so piteous and profound,
      As it did seem to shatter all his bulk,
      And end his being.  That done, he lets me go,
      And with his head over his shoulder turn’d,
      He seem’d to find his way without his eyes;
      For out of doors he went without their help,
      And to the last bended their light on me.”
                                                Act.  II.  Scene 1.

How after this airy, fantastic idea of irregular grace and bewildered melancholy any one can play Hamlet, as we have seen it played, with strut, and stare, and antic right-angled sharp-pointed gestures, it is difficult to say, unless it be that Hamlet is not bound, by the prompter’s cue, to study the part of Ophelia.  The account of Ophelia’s death begins thus: 

      “There is a willow hanging o’er a brook,
      That shows its hoary leaves in the glassy stream.”—­