[Footnote 56:  The present position of the ‘To be or not to be’ soliloquy, and of the interview with Ophelia, appears to have been due to an after-thought of Shakespeare’s; for in the First Quarto they precede, instead of following, the arrival of the players, and consequently the arrangement for the play-scene.  This is a notable instance of the truth that ‘inspiration’ is by no means confined to a poet’s first conceptions.]

[Footnote 57:  Cf. again the scene at Ophelia’s grave, where a strong strain of aesthetic disgust is traceable in Hamlet’s ‘towering passion’ with Laertes:  ‘Nay, an thou’lt mouth, I’ll rant as well as thou’ (V. i. 306).]

[Footnote 58: 

     O heart, lose not thy nature; let not ever
     The soul of Nero enter this firm bosom: 

Nero, who put to death his mother who had poisoned her husband.  This passage is surely remarkable.  And so are the later words (III. iv. 28): 

     A bloody deed! almost as bad, good mother,
     As kill a king, and marry with his brother.

Are we to understand that at this time he really suspected her of complicity in the murder?  We must remember that the Ghost had not told him she was innocent of that.]

[Footnote 59:  I am inclined to think that the note of interrogation put after ‘revenged’ in a late Quarto is right.]

[Footnote 60:  III. iii. 1-26.  The state of affairs at Court at this time, though I have not seen it noticed by critics, seems to me puzzling.  It is quite clear from III. ii. 310 ff., from the passage just cited, and from IV. vii. 1-5 and 30 ff., that everyone sees in the play-scene a gross and menacing insult to the King.  Yet no one shows any sign of perceiving in it also an accusation of murder.  Surely that is strange.  Are we perhaps meant to understand that they do perceive this, but out of subservience choose to ignore the fact?  If that were Shakespeare’s meaning, the actors could easily indicate it by their looks.  And if it were so, any sympathy we may feel for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in their fate would be much diminished.  But the mere text does not suffice to decide either this question or the question whether the two courtiers were aware of the contents of the commission they bore to England.]

[Footnote 61:  This passage in Hamlet seems to have been in Heywood’s mind when, in The Second Part of the Iron Age (Pearson’s reprint, vol. iii., p. 423), he makes the Ghost of Agamemnon appear in order to satisfy the doubts of Orestes as to his mother’s guilt.  No reader could possibly think that this Ghost was meant to be an hallucination; yet Clytemnestra cannot see it.  The Ghost of King Hamlet, I may add, goes further than that of Agamemnon, for he is audible, as well as visible, to the privileged person.]

[Footnote 62:  I think it is clear that it is this fear which stands in the way of the obvious plan of bringing Hamlet to trial and getting him shut up or executed.  It is much safer to hurry him off to his doom in England before he can say anything about the murder which he has somehow discovered.  Perhaps the Queen’s resistance, and probably Hamlet’s great popularity with the people, are additional reasons. (It should be observed that as early as III. i. 194 we hear of the idea of ‘confining’ Hamlet as an alternative to sending him to England.)]