left inconsistencies in his exhibition of the character which must prevent us from being certain of his ultimate meaning.  Or, possibly, we may be baffled because he has illustrated in it certain strange facts of human nature, which he had noticed but of which we are ignorant.  But then all this would apply in some measure to other characters in Shakespeare, and it is not this that is meant by the statement that Hamlet is unintelligible.  What is meant is that Shakespeare intended him to be so, because he himself was feeling strongly, and wished his audience to feel strongly, what a mystery life is, and how impossible it is for us to understand it.  Now here, surely, we have mere confusion of mind.  The mysteriousness of life is one thing, the psychological unintelligibility of a dramatic character is quite another; and the second does not show the first, it shows only the incapacity or folly of the dramatist.  If it did show the first, it would be very easy to surpass Shakespeare in producing a sense of mystery:  we should simply have to portray an absolutely nonsensical character.  Of course Hamlet appeals powerfully to our sense of the mystery of life, but so does every good tragedy; and it does so not because the hero is an enigma to us, but because, having a fair understanding of him, we feel how strange it is that strength and weakness should be so mingled in one soul, and that this soul should be doomed to such misery and apparent failure.

(1) To come, then, to our typical views, we may lay it down, first, that no theory will hold water which finds the cause of Hamlet’s delay merely, or mainly, or even to any considerable extent, in external difficulties.  Nothing is easier than to spin a plausible theory of this kind.  What, it may be asked,[33] was Hamlet to do when the Ghost had left him with its commission of vengeance?  The King was surrounded not merely by courtiers but by a Swiss body-guard:  how was Hamlet to get at him?  Was he then to accuse him publicly of the murder?  If he did, what would happen?  How would he prove the charge?  All that he had to offer in proof was—­a ghost-story!  Others, to be sure, had seen the Ghost, but no one else had heard its revelations.  Obviously, then, even if the court had been honest, instead of subservient and corrupt, it would have voted Hamlet mad, or worse, and would have shut him up out of harm’s way.  He could not see what to do, therefore, and so he waited.  Then came the actors, and at once with admirable promptness he arranged for the play-scene, hoping that the King would betray his guilt to the whole court.  Unfortunately the King did not.  It is true that immediately afterwards Hamlet got his chance; for he found the King defenceless on his knees.  But what Hamlet wanted was not a private revenge, to be followed by his own imprisonment or execution; it was public justice.  So he spared the King; and, as he unluckily killed Polonius just afterwards, he had to consent to be