of justifying his delay by the plea that he was waiting for a more perfect vengeance.  But in one point the great majority of critics, I think, go astray.  The feeling of intense hatred which Hamlet expresses is not the cause of his sparing the King, and in his heart he knows this; but it does not at all follow that this feeling is unreal.  All the evidence afforded by the play goes to show that it is perfectly genuine, and I see no reason whatever to doubt that Hamlet would have been very sorry to send his father’s murderer to heaven, nor much to doubt that he would have been glad to send him to perdition.  The reason for refusing to accept his own version of his motive in sparing Claudius is not that his sentiments are horrible, but that elsewhere, and also in the opening of his speech here, we can see that his reluctance to act is due to other causes.

The incident of the sparing of the King is contrived with extraordinary dramatic insight.  On the one side we feel that the opportunity was perfect.  Hamlet could not possibly any longer tell himself that he had no certainty as to his uncle’s guilt.  And the external conditions were most favourable; for the King’s remarkable behaviour at the play-scene would have supplied a damning confirmation of the story Hamlet had to tell about the Ghost.  Even now, probably, in a Court so corrupt as that of Elsinore, he could not with perfect security have begun by charging the King with the murder; but he could quite safely have killed him first and given his justification afterwards, especially as he would certainly have had on his side the people, who loved him and despised Claudius.  On the other hand, Shakespeare has taken care to give this perfect opportunity so repulsive a character that we can hardly bring ourselves to wish that the hero should accept it.  One of his minor difficulties, we have seen, probably was that he seemed to be required to attack a defenceless man; and here this difficulty is at its maximum.

This incident is, again, the turning-point of the tragedy.  So far, Hamlet’s delay, though it is endangering his freedom and his life, has done no irreparable harm; but his failure here is the cause of all the disasters that follow.  In sparing the King, he sacrifices Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Laertes, the Queen and himself.  This central significance of the passage is dramatically indicated in the following scene by the reappearance of the Ghost and the repetition of its charge.

Polonius is the first to fall.  The old courtier, whose vanity would not allow him to confess that his diagnosis of Hamlet’s lunacy was mistaken, had suggested that, after the theatricals, the Queen should endeavour in a private interview with her son to penetrate the mystery, while he himself would repeat his favourite part of eaves-dropper (III. i. 184 ff.).  It has now become quite imperative that the Prince should be brought to disclose his secret; for his choice