‘But she does more than obey,’ we are told; ’she runs off frightened to report to her father Hamlet’s strange visit and behaviour; she shows to her father one of Hamlet’s letters, and tells him[77] the whole story of the courtship; and she joins in a plot to win Hamlet’s secret from him.’  One must remember, however, that she had never read the tragedy.  Consider for a moment how matters looked to her.  She knows nothing about the Ghost and its disclosures.  She has undergone for some time the pain of repelling her lover and appearing to have turned against him.  She sees him, or hears of him, sinking daily into deeper gloom, and so transformed from what he was that he is considered to be out of his mind.  She hears the question constantly discussed what the cause of this sad change can be; and her heart tells her—­how can it fail to tell her?—­that her unkindness is the chief cause.  Suddenly Hamlet forces his way into her chamber; and his appearance and his behaviour are those of a man crazed with love.  She is frightened—­why not?  She is not Lady Macbeth.  Rosalind would have been frightened.  Which of her censors would be wholly unmoved if his room were invaded by a lunatic?  She is frightened, then; frightened, if you will, like a child.  Yes, but, observe, her one idea is to help Hamlet.  She goes, therefore, at once to her father.  To whom else should she go?  Her brother is away.  Her father, whom she saw with her own eyes and not with Shakespeare’s, is kind, and the wisest of men, and concerned about Hamlet’s state.  Her father finds, in her report, the solution of the mystery:  Hamlet is mad because she has repulsed him.  Why should she not tell her father the whole story and give him an old letter which may help to convince the King and the Queen?  Nay, why should she not allow herself to be used as a ‘decoy’ to settle the question why Hamlet is mad?  It is all-important that it should be settled, in order that he may be cured; all her seniors are simply and solely anxious for his welfare; and, if her unkindness is the cause of his sad state, they will permit her to restore him by kindness (III. i. 40).  Was she to refuse to play a part just because it would be painful to her to do so?  I find in her joining the ‘plot’ (as it is absurdly called) a sign not of weakness, but of unselfishness and strength.

’But she practised deception; she even told a lie.  Hamlet asked her where her father was, and she said he was at home, when he was really listening behind a curtain.’  Poor Ophelia!  It is considered angelic in Desdemona to say untruly that she killed herself, but most immoral or pusillanimous in Ophelia to tell her lie.  I will not discuss these casuistical problems; but, if ever an angry lunatic asks me a question which I cannot answer truly without great danger to him and to one of my relations, I hope that grace may be given me to imitate Ophelia.  Seriously, at such a terrible moment was it weak, was it not rather heroic, in a simple girl not to lose her presence of mind and not to flinch, but to go through her task for Hamlet’s sake and her father’s?  And, finally, is it really a thing to be taken as matter of course, and no matter for admiration, in this girl that, from beginning to end, and after a storm of utterly unjust reproach, not a thought of resentment should even cross her mind?