of the ’Murder of Gonzago,’ and perhaps his conduct during the performance, have shown a spirit of exaggerated hostility against the King which has excited general alarm.  Rosencrantz and Guildenstern discourse to Claudius on the extreme importance of his preserving his invaluable life, as though Hamlet’s insanity had now clearly shown itself to be homicidal.[60] When, then, at the opening of the interview between Hamlet and his mother, the son, instead of listening to her remonstrances, roughly assumes the offensive, she becomes alarmed; and when, on her attempting to leave the room, he takes her by the arm and forces her to sit down, she is terrified, cries out, ‘Thou wilt not murder me?’ and screams for help.  Polonius, behind the arras, echoes her call; and in a moment Hamlet, hoping the concealed person is the King, runs the old man through the body.

Evidently this act is intended to stand in sharp contrast with Hamlet’s sparing of his enemy.  The King would have been just as defenceless behind the arras as he had been on his knees; but here Hamlet is already excited and in action, and the chance comes to him so suddenly that he has no time to ‘scan’ it.  It is a minor consideration, but still for the dramatist not unimportant, that the audience would wholly sympathise with Hamlet’s attempt here, as directed against an enemy who is lurking to entrap him, instead of being engaged in a business which perhaps to the bulk of the audience then, as now, seemed to have a ’relish of salvation in’t.’

We notice in Hamlet, at the opening of this interview, something of the excited levity which followed the denouement of the play-scene.  The death of Polonius sobers him; and in the remainder of the interview he shows, together with some traces of his morbid state, the peculiar beauty and nobility of his nature.  His chief desire is not by any means to ensure his mother’s silent acquiescence in his design of revenge; it is to save her soul.  And while the rough work of vengeance is repugnant to him, he is at home in this higher work.  Here that fatal feeling, ’it is no matter,’ never shows itself.  No father-confessor could be more selflessly set upon his end of redeeming a fellow-creature from degradation, more stern or pitiless in denouncing the sin, or more eager to welcome the first token of repentance.  There is something infinitely beautiful in that sudden sunshine of faith and love which breaks out when, at the Queen’s surrender,

     O Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain,

he answers,

     O throw away the worser part of it,
     And live the purer with the other half.

The truth is that, though Hamlet hates his uncle and acknowledges the duty of vengeance, his whole heart is never in this feeling or this task; but his whole heart is in his horror at his mother’s fall and in his longing to raise her.  The former of these feelings was the inspiration of his first soliloquy; it combines with the second to form the inspiration of his eloquence here.  And Shakespeare never wrote more eloquently than here.