IS 



Sh a kespearia n Crit icism . 



this and other passages, that our dramatist himself was fond of chil- 

 dren. The play does not disclose whether the Xurse's husband was 

 also a father at the time of the events dramatized. I suspect he was 

 not. Although not conclusive, yet the fact that his wife was a nurse 

 in the family of another, is presumptive evidence that they themselves 

 had no family. It appears that they had lost a child, and I judge it to 

 have been their only one. If they had had any children of their own 

 at this' time, the garrulous mother would have been pretty certain to 

 refer to them, as well as to the lost one. This, I admit, is not con- 

 clusive, for women now-a-days are much more apt to talk of dress and 

 other vanities than of their children, and speak as little of their dead 

 children as of last year's fashions. But there is one thing that leads 

 me to be almost certain that this gentleman then had no children. If 

 he had then been a father, he would not have been so moved by 

 Juliet's misfortune, and so swift to rescue her, because such accideuts 

 are common among children and their frequency hardens parents to 

 their effects. They let their children pick themselves up, and then 

 scold them for spoiling their clothes. But when the children and 

 clothes belong to others, and thus the accident causes the custodians 

 no expense or trouble, they give their sympathies play. If this had 

 been his own child, with all his love of children, Mr. Nurse would not 

 have been so merry. He would have regarded the stumble as a fault 

 to be tolerated in other people's imperfect children, but not in his 

 immaculate offspring." 



But to relapse into sobriety in conclusion. Conjecture has been 

 usefully employed in endeavoring to determine whether Hamlet's 

 madness was real or feigned. Books have been written on this point, 

 and some strong arguments may be adduced on either side. Indeed, 

 a great Shakespearian actor believed that his madness was partly 

 actual and parly pretended. My own impression is that he com- 

 menced with simulating and ended with reality. " Seneca, the rhet- 

 orician, tells us of one Gallus, a rhetorician, who imagined that the 

 transports of madness, well represented in dialogue, would charm his 

 audience, and took so much pains to play the madman in jest, that 

 he became so in earnest." All are familiar with the internal evidences 

 cited to prove the hypothesis of real madness, of which Hamlet's pro- 

 crastination seems to us the most convincing. But the principal rea- 

 son for my belief, and one that I have not seen adduced, is that on no 

 other hypothesis can any adequate motive be assigned for the play. A 

 pretended madness, assumed to gratify revenge, is a crude and 

 commonplace idea on which to base the far-reaching consequences, 

 and out of which to develop the sublime philosophy, which stamps this 



