"It is licentiousness only that hath made
you deface out of your miiide the memory of
the valor and vertues of the good king, your
husband and my father: it was an unbridled
desire that guided the daughter of Roderick
to imbrace the tyrant Fengon, and not to
remember Horvendile (unworthy of so
strange intertainment), neither that he killed
his brother traitorously, and that shee, being
his father's wife, betrayed him, although he
so well favoured and loved her, that for her
sake he utterly bereaved Norway of her
riches and valiant souldiers to augment the
treasures of Roderick, and make Geruthe wife
to the hardyest prince of Europe; it is not
the part of a woman, much lesse of a
princesse, in whome all modesty, curtesse,
compassion, and love, ought to abound, thus to
leave her deare child to fortune in the bloody
and murtherous hands of a villain and
traytor. Bruite beasts do not so, for lyons,
tygers, ounces, and leopards fight for the
safety and defence of their whelpes; and
birds that have beakes, claws, and wings,
resist such as would ravish them of their
young ones; but you, to the contrary, expose
and deliver mee to death, whereas ye should
defend me. Is not this as much as if you
should betray me, when you, knowing the
perverseness of the tyrant and his intents,
ful of deadly counsell as touching the race
and image of his brother, have not once
sought, nor desired to finde the meanes to
save your child (and only son) by sending
him into Swethland, Norway, or England,
rather than to leave him as a pray to youre
infamous adulterer ? Bee not offended, I
praye you, Madame, if transported with
dolour and grief, I speake so boldely unto
you, and that I respect you lesse then duetie
requireth! for you, having forgotten mee,
and wholy rejected the memorye of the
deceased king, my father, must not be
abashed if I also surpasse the bounds and
limits of due consideration."

The queen's reply to all this is not without
a certain dignity. She assures her son
that she had not once "consented to the
death and murther of her husband;" and
Shakspeare credits her with this assurance in
the second draught of his tragedy. Further,
she complots with Hamlet in his purposes of
revenge.

The story of Hamlet's voyage to England;
his behaviour there, and his return, with the
other matters to the end of his story, is much
the same in both accounts: that, I mean, of
Saxo-Grammaticus, and Belleforest. But
one thing must be especially noted. The
melancholy of Hamlet is in the novel-historie
treated of by name, and the philosophical
cause of it assigned—namely, his inclination
for the supernatural. "For that in those
dayes, the north parts of the worlde, living
as then under Sathan's lawes, were full of
inchanters, so that there was not any yong
gentleman whatsoever that knew not something
therein sufficient to serve his turne, if
need required: as yet in those days in
Gothland and Biarmy, there are many that knew
not what the Christian religion permitteth,
as by reading the histories of Norway and
Gothland, you maie easilie perceive; and so,
Hamlet, while his father lived, had bin
instructed in that devilish art, whereby the
wicked spirite abuseth mankind, and
advertiseth him (as he can) of things past. "Here
is, manifestly, the suggestion of the ghost,
and of the hero's suspicion, that

"The devil hath power
To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and, perhaps,
Out of my weakness, and my melancholy,
As he is very potent with such spirits,
Abuses me to damn me."

The following is the passage that cites his
melancholy:—

''It toucheth not the matter herein to
discover the parts of devination in man, and
whether this prince, by reason of his over
great melancholy, had received those impressions,
devining that, which never any but
himself had before declared, like the
philosophers, who, discoursing of divers deep
points of philosophy, attribute the force of
those divinations to such as are saturnists
by complection, who oftentimes speake of
things which, their fury ceasing, they then
alreadye can hardly understand who are the
pronouncers," &c.

Here we have the melancholy and
philosophical prince and supernaturalist depicted
to the life; and, furthermore, in passages
which we have no room to cite, the subject
enlarged upon and enforced by extended
reasonings, and historical examples in
reference to magical operations. Here, too, is
drawn out at full, what Shakspeare only
hints at in the matter of Ophelia; that is,
the want of self-control in Hamlet with
regard to women. "This fault," adds the
novel-historian, "was in the great Hercules,
Sampson, and the wisest man that ever
lived upon the earth, following this traine,
therein impaired his wit; and the most
noble, wise, valiant, and discreet personages
of our time, following the same course, have
left us many notable examples of their
worthy and notable vertues."  In a word,
the tragedy of Hamlet is written in the very
spirit of the Hystorie; the events being
restricted within dramatic limits, and the
action sublimated by the working of the
poetic genius dealing with prosaic and merely
didactic materials, extracting their essence,
and re-embodying it in a new and artistic
form, of which beauty was the principal and
a necessary feature.

It may thus appear that it was not at a
leap that the author of the tragedy of Hamlet
effected his transit from the chronicle of
Saxo-Grammaticus, but that there were
intermediate stages, by which rude history
became purified into philosophy, and was
prepared for the high poetic purpose for which