father when she is forbidden to receive Hamlet’s visits and letters. If we remember not what we know but what she knows of her lover and her father; if we remember that she had not, like Juliet, confessed her love; and if we remember that she was much below her suitor in station, her compliance surely must seem perfectly natural, apart from the fact that the standard of obedience to a father was in Shakespeare’s day higher than in ours.
‘But she does more than obey,’ we are told; ‘she runs off frightened to report to her father Hamlet’s strange visit and behaviour; she shows to her father one of Hamlet’s letters, and tells him[1] the whole story of the courtship; and she joins in a plot to win Hamlet’s secret from him.’ One must remember, however, that she had never read the tragedy. Consider for a moment how matters looked to her. She knows nothing about the Ghost and its disclosures. She has undergone for some time the pain of repelling her lover and appearing to have turned against him. She sees him, or hears of him, sinking daily into deeper gloom, and so transformed from what he was that he is considered to be out of his mind. She hears the question constantly discussed what the cause of this sad change can be; and her heart tells her—how can it fail to tell her?—that her unkindness is the chief cause. Suddenly Hamlet forces his way into her chamber; and his appearance and his behaviour are those of a man crazed with love. She is frightened—why not? She is not Lady Macbeth. Rosalind would have been frightened. Which of her censors would be wholly unmoved if his room were invaded by a lunatic? She is frightened, then; frightened, if you will, like a child. Yes, but, observe, her one idea is to help Hamlet. She goes, therefore,
- ↑ Polonius says so, and it may be true.
