had accused him of neglecting to avenge his
murder, and thus censured and instructed him:

     Is it enough thy tears should wet my dust?
     Go! take the urn wherein my bones are thrust,
     Then seize thy poniard, strike! thy steps retrace,
     And, smoking still, my ashes then replace.

To digress a moment on this matter of the
urn. Is it not a question whether the Unities,
in correcting the anachronisms of Shakespeare,
have not themselves committed a greater one,
seeing it is not historically proven that the
Danes were in the habit of burning their dead
relatives, and of potting them in this way? The
idea is so classical that I suppose it must be
accepted without a murmur; or perhaps it was
an exceptional proceeding adopted by the
cunning Claudius to efface the traces of poison;
in which supposition, what a pity it is the case
never came to be tried at the Old Bailey, that
the analytical chemists might have come out in
full feather! What uninteresting chapter in
the Causes Célèbres of the Newgate Calendar
would it have afforded!

Norceste, like a sensible man, pooh-poohs the
notion of the spiritual visitation of the feu roi,
which he imputes to the heated imagination of
Hamlet, acted upon by the story of the death
of the King of England, who had just then,
conveniently enough, been found stabbed in his bed.
The ghost, in the dream of Hamlet, had accused
his "perfidious mother" and the "infamous
Claudius" of being the joint murderers of his
body; and the idea now occurs to Hamlet that
the recital of the murder of the King of
England to the guilty pair, by Norceste, may
awaken such remorse in their consciences as to
betray them by some visible emotion. And this
is how the Unities dispose of the grand episode
of the play! To them the play is not "the
thing," as being out of time, and the players out
of place as a troublesome mob. Hamlet imposes
another task upon Norceste. He is anxious for
the possession of the urn:

     I would that here before the poisoners' eyes
     My father's ashes should accusing rise;
     And of thy faithful love the kindness bless
     That to my heart his sacred urn I press.

In the meantime the two vulgar conspirators,
Claudius and Polonius, are becoming seriously
alarmed lest their plots should, by the inopportune
arrival of Norceste, and the éclat of the
coronation, become impossible of execution.
They resolve, therefore, to watch the one and
interrupt the other. Polonius is for action.
The attempt to surprise Claudius and the queen
into an implied confession of their guilt by the
narration of the murder of the King of England,
turns out a complete failure, so far as Claudius
is concerned, who keeps his countenance like a
consummate hypocrite as he is, and has only a
partial success with the queen. This troubles
Hamlet, and we then have a speech in which,
after some difficulty, we discover a faint trace of
the soliloquy on death, but oh, how faint!
Ophelia here appears for the first time on tho
stage. As she is the daughter of Claudius, and,
not of Polonius, the garrulous old chamberlain
of Shakespeare; as she never goes mad; never
sings sweet melancholy songs; is never drowned,
and, consequently, never buried, all resemblance
between her and the original is entirely lost;
and the Unities, by this means, dispose at once
of Laertes, of the grave, the skulls, and the
gravediggers; and the heavy drama groans on
its dreary methodical course to the end.

In the fifth act Norceste appears with the
urn. It is blue, and of a dropsical shape. He
commends it to the tears and embraces of
Hamlet. The latter thus addresses it:

    Thou pledge of all my vows, urn terrible, yet dear,
     Thee, weeping, I invoke, and yet embrace with fear.

Ophelia, in this scene, endeavours to soften
the heart of Hamlet by appealing to his love for
her, but failing in the attempt, she assumes the
tragedy-queen tone, and exclaims:

     My duty from this hour is parallel to thine,
     Thou wouldst avenge thy father—I must succour
           mine.

Hamlet, still doubtful of the queen's guilt,
and of the credibility of the spectre's story, is
resolved to "swear" his mother on the urn.
This scene is very impressive, and the best in
the play. Gertrude is unequal to the ordeal,
and faints at the foot of the urn when about
falsely to attest her innocence. In this scene,
and in one other, Hamlet is supposed to see the
ghost of his father, and even speaks to it, but
the spectre forms no part of the dramatis
personæ, and is no more than an "air-drawn
dagger," invisible to the audience. The climax
approaches. Claudius attacks the palace with
his conspirators, and forces his way upon the
scene, restrained only by Norceste and his
faithful followers. Norceste plants himself,
sword in hand, before Hamlet:

    Norceste. Save Hamlet, people!
    Claudius.                           Soldiers, seize your prize
    Hamlet. Thou comest, monster, here thyself to
           sacrifice!
Behold this urn!
     Claudius. What then?
     Hamlet. "Within there lie
The ashes of thy king. Thou, his assassin!
     Claudius.                                              I!
      Hamlet. Yes, thou, barbarian! Prepare thy
             thoughts to die.

The Unities are too proper in behaviour to
state distinctly that Hamlet stabs Claudius, but
"he draws a dagger," and we are left to imagine
the use he makes of it when we read immediately
afterwards, "Exit Voltimand with the
body of Claudius; surrounded by Polonius and
some others of the conspirators." Gertrude,
the queen-mother, unable to support the sense
of her crime, and the degradation of its
discovery, kills herself; and Hamlet, after a
suitable expression of grief at her loss, concludes
the play with the following tag:
   Within this fatal hall deprived of all my line,
   My cup of grief is full; my virtue still is mine.
    I still am man and King, reserved by Him on high,
    I'll live to suffer still, and so do more than die.