Evening comes.  The approach of the play-scene raises Hamlet’s spirits.  He is in his element.  He feels that he is doing something towards his end, striking a stroke, but a stroke of intellect.  In his instructions to the actor on the delivery of the inserted speech, and again in his conversation with Horatio just before the entry of the Court, we see the true Hamlet, the Hamlet of the days before his father’s death.  But how characteristic it is that he appears quite as anxious that his speech should not be ranted as that Horatio should observe its effect upon the King!  This trait appears again even at that thrilling moment when the actor is just going to deliver the speech.  Hamlet sees him beginning to frown and glare like the conventional stage-murderer, and calls to him impatiently, ’Leave thy damnable faces and begin!’[57]

Hamlet’s device proves a triumph far more complete than he had dared to expect.  He had thought the King might ‘blench,’ but he does much more.  When only six of the ‘dozen or sixteen lines’ have been spoken he starts to his feet and rushes from the hall, followed by the whole dismayed Court.  In the elation of success—­an elation at first almost hysterical—­Hamlet treats Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who are sent to him, with undisguised contempt.  Left to himself, he declares that now he could

                   drink hot blood,
     And do such bitter business as the day
     Would quake to look on.

He has been sent for by his mother, and is going to her chamber; and so vehement and revengeful is his mood that he actually fancies himself in danger of using daggers to her as well as speaking them.[58]

In this mood, on his way to his mother’s chamber, he comes upon the King, alone, kneeling, conscience-stricken and attempting to pray.  His enemy is delivered into his hands.

     Now might I do it pat, now he is praying: 
     And now I’ll do it:  and so he goes to heaven: 
     And so am I revenged.[59] That would be scanned.

He scans it; and the sword that he drew at the words, ’And now I’ll do it,’ is thrust back into its sheath.  If he killed the villain now he would send his soul to heaven; and he would fain kill soul as well as body.

That this again is an unconscious excuse for delay is now pretty generally agreed, and it is needless to describe again the state of mind which, on the view explained in our last lecture, is the real cause of Hamlet’s failure here.  The first five words he utters, ’Now might I do it,’ show that he has no effective desire to ‘do it’; and in the little sentences that follow, and the long pauses between them, the endeavour at a resolution, and the sickening return of melancholic paralysis, however difficult a task they set to the actor, are plain enough to a reader.  And any reader who may retain a doubt should observe the fact that, when the Ghost reappears, Hamlet does not think