[Footnote 63:  I am inferring from IV. vii., 129, 130, and the last words of the scene.]

[Footnote 64:  III. iv. 172: 

                         For this same lord,
     I do repent:  but heaven hath pleased it so,
     To punish me with this and this with me,
     That I must be their scourge and minister: 

i.e. the scourge and minister of ‘heaven,’ which has a plural sense elsewhere also in Shakespeare.]

[Footnote 65:  IV. iii. 48: 

     Ham. For England!

     King. Ay, Hamlet.

     Ham. Good.

     King. So is it, if thou knew’st our purposes.

     Ham. I see a cherub that sees them.]

[Footnote 66:  On this passage see p. 98.  Hamlet’s reply to Horatio’s warning sounds, no doubt, determined; but so did ‘I know my course.’  And is it not significant that, having given it, he abruptly changes the subject?]

[Footnote 67:  P. 102.]

[Footnote 68:  It should be observed also that many of Hamlet’s repetitions can hardly be said to occur at moments of great emotion, like Cordelia’s ‘And so I am, I am,’ and ‘No cause, no cause.’

Of course, a habit of repetition quite as marked as Hamlet’s may be found in comic persons, e.g. Justice Shallow in 2 Henry IV.]

[Footnote 69:  Perhaps it is from noticing this trait that I find something characteristic too in this coincidence of phrase:  ’Alas, poor ghost!’ (I. v. 4), ‘Alas, poor Yorick!’ (V. i. 202).]

[Footnote 70:  This letter, of course, was written before the time when the action of the drama begins, for we know that Ophelia, after her father’s commands in I. iii., received no more letters (II. i. 109).]

[Footnote 71:  ‘Frailty, thy name is woman!’ he had exclaimed in the first soliloquy.  Cf. what he says of his mother’s act (III. iv. 40): 

                               Such an act
     That blurs the grace and blush of modesty,
     Calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the rose
     From the fair forehead of an innocent love
     And sets a blister there.]

[Footnote 72:  There are signs that Hamlet was haunted by the horrible idea that he had been deceived in Ophelia as he had been in his mother; that she was shallow and artificial, and even that what had seemed simple and affectionate love might really have been something very different.  The grossness of his language at the play-scene, and some lines in the Nunnery-scene, suggest this; and, considering the state of his mind, there is nothing unnatural in his suffering from such a suspicion.  I do not suggest that he believed in it, and in the Nunnery-scene it is clear that his healthy perception of her innocence is in conflict with it.

He seems to have divined that Polonius suspected him of dishonourable intentions towards Ophelia; and there are also traces of the idea that Polonius had been quite ready to let his daughter run the risk as long as Hamlet was prosperous.  But it is dangerous, of course, to lay stress on inferences drawn from his conversations with Polonius.]