ness is again implied in Hamlet's advice to Ophelia against marriage; while his own actual transgressions he proceeds to enumerate at length:

"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; with more offences at my beck, than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in! What should such fellows as I do, crawling between earth and heaven?" Act III., sc. I.. 1. 122-130.

Evidently Hamlet had very correct views of the doctrine of human depravity.

The ghost, at least, and doubtless Shakespeare himself holds to the Edwardean view of the will; that it is determined by the strongest motive. In recounting to Hamlet the measures of his uncle, this is the language employed:

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Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast,

With witchcraft of his wit, with trait'rous gifts,
(O wicked wit, and gifts, that have the power
So to seduce!) won to his shameful lust,
The will of my most seeming-virtuous queen."
Act I., sc V.,

1. 41-45.

power

of

There are many illustrations of the office and conscience, in this play. It is conscience that compels Hamlet's uncle to cry out

"O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven!"

Act III., sc. III., 1. 36.

It is conscience that so disturbs him during the play of Gonzago. It is conscience, too, that causes Hamlet's mother to exclaim,

"O Hamlet, speak no more:

Thou turn'st mine eyes into my very soul;
And there I see such black and grained spots,

As will not leave their tinct." Act III., sc. Iv., 1. 88-91.

So, too, it is the same divinely-given power within her that
makes her fear lest the gentle Ophelia, in her derangement,
may drop some hint of something which she would keep con-
cealed. Horatio says:

""T were good she were spoken with; for she may strew
Dang'rous conjectures in ill-breeding minds."

Act IV., sc. v., l. 14, 15.

So full of artless jealousy is guilt,

It spills itself in fearing to be spilt." Ibid. 1. 17-20.

And it is the workings of this faculty beyond the grave, that
prevents Hamlet from that act, which so haunts him as a rem-
edy for the ills of the present life.
As he says,

"Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;"

Act III., sc. I., 1. 83.

though to be cowardly here, is to be truly brave.

In the soliloquy of Hamlet's uncle we have many fundamental doctrines compressed into the smallest space. Hamlet's uncle feels his moral inability.

"Pray can I not,

Though inclination be as sharp as will;

My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent;
And, like a man to double business bound,
I stand in pause where I shall first begin,
And both neglect." Act III., sc. III., 1. 38–43.

Again, in still more explicit phrase;

"What then? what rests?

Try what repentance can: what can it not?
Yet what can it, when one can not repent?
O wretched state! O bosom, black as death!
O limed soul, that, struggling to be free,
Art more engaged." Ibid. 1. 64-69.

In this soliloquy, also, we have the true doctrine of the atonement; the efficacy of the blood of Christ, when applied to the penitent soul; that the degree of sin is no real hindrance to forgiveness.

"What if this cursed hand

Were thicker than itself in brother's blood?
Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens

To wash it white as snow? Whereto serves mercy

But to confront the visage of offence?

And what's in praver, but this twofold force:

To be forestalled ere we come to fall,

Or pardoned, being down? Then I'll look up:

My fault is past." Ibid. 1. 43-51.

And, yet, notwithstanding this cleansing power in the blood of Christ, this great transgressor feels that repentance without "works meet for repentance" is of no avail. He proceeds:

"But, O, what form of prayer

Can serve my turn? Forgive me my foul murder':

That can not be; since I am still possessed

Of those effects for which I did the murder,
My crown, mine own ambition and my queen.

May one be pardoned and retain the offence?" Ibid. 1. 50–55. The doctrine of a future judgment we find in the complaint of Hamlet's father, as to the manner of his death,

“No reckoning made, but sent to my account,

With all my imperfections on my head;" Act I., sc. v., l. 78–79.

in his caution to Hamlet, so touchingly forgiving,

"Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive
Against thy mother aught; leave her to heaven,
And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge,
To prick and sting her;" Ibid. 1. 85–88.

and in Hamlet's own account of his father's death, when medi-
tating that of his uncle, while he is at prayers:

"He took my father grossly, full of bread:

With all his crimes broad-blown, as flush as May,
And how his audit stands, who knows save Heaven?
But in our circumstance and course of thought,

'Tis heavy with him," Act III., sc. III., 1. 80–84.

as well as in his playful rejoinder, when Rosencrantz tells him for news, "the world is grown honest";

"Then is doomsday near;" Act II., sc. II., 1. 242.

which seems to be an allusion to the millennium.

The two future worlds, as places of happiness and misery, are very forcibly described in Hamlet's address to his father's spirit:

"Be thou a spirit of health, or goblin damned,

Bring with thee airs from heaven, or blasts from hell,

Be thy intents wicked or charitable,

Thou com'st in such a questionable shape

That I will speak to thee." Act I., sc. Iv., 1. 40–44.

And this is just what he had threatened to do in a passage which contains a similar allusion to one of these worlds:

If it assume my noble father's person,

I'll speak to it, though hell itself should gape

And bid me hold my peace." Act I., sc. II., 1. 244–246.

Ophelia, also, in describing Hamlet's strange appearance, as she sat sewing in her closet, alludes to the same dwellingplace of torment:

"Pale as his shirt; his knees knocking each other;
And with a look so piteous in purport,

As if he had been loosed out of hell

To speak of horrors, he comes before me."

Act II., Sc. I., 1, 81–84.

And Laertes, when challenging the king as to his father's death, adopts the violent language which follows:"

"How came he dead? I'll not be juggled with:
To hell, allegiance! vows, to the blackest devil!
Conscience and grace, to the profoundest pit!
I dare damnation. To this point I stand,
That both the worlds I give to negligence,
Let come what comes; only I'll be revenged

Most throughly for my father." Act IV., sc. V., 1. 129-135. The spiritual nature of future punishment Hamlet intimates in his celebrated soliloquy in Act third:

"To die; to sleep

To sleep! perchance to dream; ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil

Must give us pause: there's the respect

That makes calamity of so long life;

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,

The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th' unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,

And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of?”

Sc. 1., 1. 60.

The nature, too, of the joys of the better world, may be inferred also from Hamlet's wish:

"Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven

Or ever I had seen that day, Horatio." Act I., sc. II., l. 182–183. And, then, in the last Scene of the last Act of the play, Hamlet implores Horatio,

"If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart,

Absent thee from felicity awhile,

And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain,

To tell my story." Act v., se. II., 1. 357–360.

The characters in this play believe in the personality of good and evil spirits. When he first sees his father's ghost, Hamlet exclaims

"Angels and ministers of grace defend us!" Act I., sc. IV., Ophelia thus ejaculates for Hamlet's recovery :

1. 39.

"O heavenly powers, restore him!" Act. III., sc. I., l. 147. Hamlet's uncle, when he finds how hard his heart is, thus apostrophizes:

"Help, angels! make assay!" Act III., sc. III., 1. 68.

Hamlet's fears, on the other hand, lest he may he mocked by a lying spirit, he discloses in this passage:

"The spirit that I have seen

May be the devil; and 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." Act II., sc. II., 1. 627-632.

Again, while he upbraids his mother for her unfaithfulness, he asks this question,

"What devil was't

That thus hath cozened you at hoodman-blind ?”

Act III., sc. Iv., 1.76.

And Laertes thus imprecates on him the woes of the lost, when he leaps after him into Ophelia's grave:

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The devil take thy soul!" Act v., sc. 1., l. 281.

In this play, the Scriptural allusions are quite frequent. For example, to the Sabbath in the lines:

'Why such impress of shipwrights, whose sure task
Does not divide the Sunday from the week;"

Act 1, sc. I., 1. 75, 76.

and in Ophelia's talk about rue, calling it "herb of grace, o'Sundays;" to Christmas, in the lines:

"Some say, that ever 'gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,

The bird of dawning singeth all night long;"