uted the act to his madness. Hamlet subject to his love for Ophelia is not the same person as Hamlet governed by the command of the Ghost. In her ignorance of the change Ophelia does not comprehend the significance of this denial. Her reply reveals that there was a time when both the action and speech of Hamlet were determined by his love for her. This uncontradicted declaration informs the spectator that at a time prior to the revelations of the Ghost Hamlet's speech and action were dictated and determined by his passion for Ophelia, untrammelled by antagonistic resolution or the mandate of the Ghost. The spectator knows that under the influence of the commission imposed upon him the struggle with this passion had ensued, and he recognizes that he now yields to resolution or principle rather than to his love. The mental operations of Hamlet are what concern and interest the spectator, as the state, condition and operation of his mind are the chief concern of every person in the drama. All the lights of the play are turned upon his mental agitations.

Now, remembering that all the action and every speech and situation in the play are designed to impart the author's thought to the spectator, the ideas next conveyed follow logically from the situation. as shown. We must remember that it is the author who is imparting his thought to the spectator-not Hamlet to Ophelia.

The questions to Ophelia, “Are you honest?" and "Are you fair?" are not to obtain information nor to imply a charge against her. They introduce or impress two ideas in harmony with the argument. Honesty leads to action dictated by resolution or principle, beauty induces action determined by passion. The reasoning which follows. emphasizes the contrast between them.

Ophelia appears to be at a loss to understand the purport of the two inquiries as to her honesty and beauty, and she asks for explanation; and after a little parley of words, Hamlet says, "I did love you once."

That was when he was not dominated by the supernatural command which was above all dictates of passion. It is not the design of the author that Ophelia should appear to comprehend the force of Hamlet's speeches. She, in fact, is made to misinterpret them throughout.

The spectator understands the speech, "I loved you not," to refer to a subsequent time and to his state of mind when he had come under the dominion of his resolution to obey the law from without. Then he was not controlled by this passion, but by principle or resolution.

He then says: "Get thee to a nunnery," etc.

This is a commentary on her surroundings. Ophelia was pure. He had just settled it in his own mind, as shown by the soliloquy, that death was not to be sought as a refuge from the ills of this world; but here was a refuge for her, a resort where she would not be sub

jected to the contaminations of this world or to those by which she was surrounded. That he meant to put the influences of honesty over against those of passion is indicated by his speech, following:

"I am myself indifferent honest, but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me; I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious," etc. The "offences" at his "beck" were inspired by these passions. He saw this lovely creature employed as the tool of a murderer's art playing a part with him, and liable to be contaminated by her surroundings, and a possible, if not probable, victim to the passions inspired and stimulated by her beauty; and so bids her go to a nunnery. The very suggestion was a compliment to her purity and a condemnatory commentary on her environment. As if to justify this commentary, he suddenly pauses in his speech and asks her: "Where's your father?" to call forth, as it does, a falsehood. Ophelia promptly answers that he is at home! Ah! the weakness of even such as she! She knows her father is not at home; and in the business in which she is engaged, even she is tempted to lie, and yields. A nunnery is not a place of punishment. It is a refuge from the contaminations of the world. Hamlet's commentary was upon her surroundings and her purity; and the necessity of a refuge for her to escape contamination is shown by this question and false reply.

The trend of thought which finds expression in this noted interview begins with the soliloquy wherein Shakespeare imparts to the spectator through the vocal thinking of his hero the profound truths that spiritually this life is an unceasing strife; that death is not the end, but through it man enters into a state of existence the conditions of which he cannot anticipate, and that it is not to be sought voluntarily as a refuge from the ills which distract his mind in this world; that the contemplation of the possible experiences of that state arouses feelings that deter him from such action as will initiate the life after death; that here the principles which should govern his conduct are antagonized by his passions, which either counteract the influence of principles over the will and so prevent action, or by overcoming such influence secure action regardless of principle, The result is constant moral conflict within the soul of man. His spiritual environment here is contaminating, and in its influence tends to the destruction of principle and to the domination of lawless, unregulated passions.

Both he who contends that this scene is designed to exhibit the vagaries of an insane man and he who argues that it shows the action of one simulating madness are in error. It is apparent that if either were right they both would be, for the scene would be exactly the same if either purpose were intended. From Ophelia's standpoint the conduct of Hamlet is inexplicable, except upon the theory of his madness, and she so interprets it. Her explanation which follows this interview is no more designed to enlighten the spectator than is that

which Polonius makes, and which he is seeking to impress upon the mind of the King.

But what says the King, who has been a secret spectator of the scene for the very purpose of determining from it whether or not the Prince is insane from his love for Ophelia? He says that what Hamlet spake was not like madness. Would Shakespeare, if he sought by this noted interview to exhibit a mad hero or to make him appear to be simulating madness, allow the King thus to condemn his skill?

The same character summed up the cause of Ophelia's madness. "Oh, this is the poison of deep grief."

That was genuine madness, which any passion persistently triumphant over the will and reason always produces. The subdued and pent-up passion of love allied with anger nearly dethroned Hamlet's reason, and almost overcame his loyalty to the command of his father's ghost. He was bidden by his father's spirit not to taint his own mind, but in the "towering passion," as he called it, aroused by Laertes' brave grief, he nearly lost his balance; and then and there he first confessed his constant love for Ophelia that it was such that the love of forty thousand brothers could not make up his sum.

It was with such a passion that he had struggled, and had his will been weak or other than giant-like, we might have had a raving Hamlet. His passions and his will and all that constituted Hamlet were the creation of Shakespeare's brain. He was an instrument that scorned to be played upon by the euphuistic courtiers; but in the hands of his creator and master, the most charming musician of the ages, he did discourse most excellent music, that will enchant and possibly mystify his listeners till the millennium.

MARTIN W. COOKE.

BYRON'S APPRECIATION OF SHAKESPEARE.
"There is a flower called Love and Idleness,'

For which see Shakespeare's ever-blooming garden;

I will not make his great description less,

And beg his British godship's humble pardon,

If, in my extremity of rhyme's distress,

I touch a single leaf where he is warden."

THERE is a prevalent notion that Byron did not appreciate Shakespeare. Leigh Hunt is originally answerable for this mistaken belief. Thomas Moore assisted in the deception, and at a later day Lord Macaulay adopted the same mistaken impression as true, and gave the weight of his ponderous judgment and forcible sentences to perpetuate the double libel on both authors.

It is undoubtedly true that Lord Byron may have said many things to lead both Hunt and Moore to believe that he thought Pope a greater writer than the author of Hamlet. But Byron's remarks, let fall to either Hunt or Moore, disclose but little of his real thoughts. There are two phases of Byron's character that must be kept always in mind in determining how much, or how little, he meant of what he said. There was always with him the love of a joke, and we suspect that when Mr. Hunt attempted to point out to him the beauties of Shakespeare, it caused him no little amusement, perhaps, sometimes, irritation. We are afraid, too, that Byron's nature often caused him to stand up against the received opinions of mankind, and that occasionally he liked to shock people by pretended opinions that were very far from what he actually believed.

That he did appreciate to the full the works of the great bard, his own writings, which, after all, are the best evidence, amply prove. The way in his own poetry he utilized the thoughts and expressions of Shakespeare, shows that he was deeply imbued with them. I have lately made what I believe to be, to some extent, a departure from the usual direction in the study of Shakespeare, and have spent considerable time in what may possibly be as profitable as it has been interesting, if it should succeed in turning others in the same direction. Heretofore, the study of Shakespeare, outside of obtaining the meaning of the text and the right reading thereof, has been chiefly directed (very profitably, it is true) to ascertain where the great poet obtained his materials, and what, in the authors that preceded him, suggested his mighty thoughts. A study of how his successors have utilized what he accomplished has at least put into my hands the materials to refute the aspersions that Hunt, Moore and Macaulay cast upon an immortal name, which, if true, would belittle the genius of the one and cast a doubt on that of the other. I could not love Shakespeare as I

do, if Byron, whom I love only less, did not also love and appreciate him.

It is impossible in this place to set down all or even a considerable number of the thoughts which Shakespeare suggested to Byron, or the quotations which Byron so aptly made use of from Shakespeare, or even the expressions which Byron so reverently used, when he addressed the public, in speaking of his great predecessor.

While still a boy, recalling "the scenes of his childhood-the village and the school of Harrow," he wrote how

"As Lear I poured forth the deep imprecation,

By my daughters of kingdom and reason deprived

Till fired by loud plaudits of self-adulation,

I regarded myself as a Garrick revived."

Later in life, describing Venice in that "deathless fourth Canto of Childe Harold," he wrote, "I loved her from my boyhood," concluding with the climax-because "Otway, Radcliffe, Schiller, Shakespeare's art had stamped her image in me.”

When in the anger of his heart he sneers against the "Scotch Reviewers," ,"that they may feel they too are 'penetrable stuff,' he complains that Shakespeare was forgot," quotes in preface and poem eight times from him, and decorates his title-page with Hotspur's fling at the "metre ballad-mongers." In the "Hints from Horace," of which it is reported that Byron himself thought very highly, Shakespeare is made the model for writers, and the author alludes to or quotes from him twelve times, though it is only a short poem. But it is in "Don Juan," "that greatest repository of wit in any language,” that the evidence of his familiarity with Shakespeare is most abundant. Everywhere here, where the plan of the work permitted him to ramble in any paths, or in no paths at all, a word, a phrase, a situation or suggestion from "his British godship" was ever at the end of his "grey goose quill." In all of Byron's works there are, of references and quotations for which he is indebted to Shakespeare, one hundred and forty-eight.

Whether he was "at his old lunes '-digression," or "building the lofty rhyme," or where his "sere fancy falls into the yellow leaf' and turns what was once romantic to burlesque," describing "the ranks and squadrons and right forms of war" where "the eagle towered in pride of place" and then "tore with bloody talon the rent plain" of Waterloo, or writing of "sheets for rich men and their brides," "white as what bards call driven snow,'" picturing the rage of Gulbeyaz, "who did not want to reach the moon like moderate Hotspur on the immortal page," or the shudders of Don Juan at the supposed ghost of the Black Friar, because "a single hobgoblin's nonentity could cause more fear than a whole host's identity," " gilding refined gold or painting the lily" fair skin of Haidee with henna, al