Perhaps the strongest proof of Hamlet's sanity lies in the fact that he manifested no actual impairment of the faculty of attention, a symptom which experts declare to be com mon to all forms of insanity. When first introduced in the play, the deepest melan choly overshadowed him, yet his pointed re plies show a careful hearing of what had been said to him by Claudius and the Queen. He greeted Horatio rationally and though for a moment he was led to speak somewhat ab sently of his dead father, his attention was quickly recalled and he listened intently to the story of his father's ghost, and asked most pertinent questions in regard to the when, the where and the how; his reason then demanded the minutest details for its satisfaction. He was naturally much excited at the appearance of the ghost; he called it father and followed it as if impelled by an irresistible impulse, or power. He regarded it, however, not as if it was really his father speaking, but rather as a third person who had come to tell him of his father's fate. There is a strange and indescribable indi viduality in this supernatural being, a some thing distinct from, or beyond, its connection with the dead King which impresses the stu dent in the way it may be considered to have impressed Hamlet. He listened to it at tentively and was visibly affected far more by its words than by its presence; and, because he looked upon it chiefly as the bearer of a message from his father rather than as the spirit of his father, we are able to excuse in some degree the irreverent and seemingly unnatural ejaculations of the Prince after the ghost's repetition of the word " swear." As has been said before, Hamlet in his conversation with Polonais uttered many strange things, yet there was evidently a pur pose in his speeches and a peculiar pertinence as well, which the old courtier dimly felt. Hamlet greeted Rosencrantz and Guildenstern sensibly and with some degree of cor diality. He exchanged a few sportive words with them while he believed them to be true
friends and at the same time gave some vent to the melancholy by which he was so deeply oppressed. But his suspicions were soon aroused and he discovered by searching and persistent questioning that their friendship was not disinterested. He then sought to protect himself and to mislead these spies, also, by. words, by a seeming frankness and a poetical description of his melancholy, and by a disquisition on man which, while it puzzled them, gave relief to his own heart, wounded again, disappointed in its hope for sympathy. There was still another and perhaps stronger cause for this same digressive speech; that is, Hamlet's tendency to poetize and philos ophize, as others moralize, upon every possi ble provocation. But he readily recalled his thoughts, questioned interestedly, talked calmly and intelligently concerning the play ers. He gave the latter, when they pre sently arrived, a natural and characteristic welcome, greeting each with a jocose and relevant remark. Later he invited them to play, criticized certain faults in actors, and instructed them after the manner of a con noisseur in the details of their art; his rea son must then have been as clear as his judg ment was perfect. When a little later he bewildered Rosen crantz and Guildenstern with his whimsical replies and declared his wits diseased he was, as it were, laughing in his sleeve at these sycophants whose intent to lead him to selfbetrayal he so easily circumvented. "Though you fret me you cannot play upon me." This constant necessity under which Ham let labored to protect himself from spies and to conceal his secret had a most irritating effect upon his naturally ingenuous disposi tion. Then "the contempt which he felt for these weak, unprincipled men with whom he was surrounded, increased his newly aroused bitterness towards men, which, reacting upon himself, weakened his character. After the murder of Polonius he grew reckless yet his intellect kept on the alert; his former scarcely
