"See you now; Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth: And thus do we of wisdom and of reach, With windlasses, and with assays of bias, By indirections find directions out."
No wonder that Hamlet in the churchyard, kicking the pate of a politician, called it something "that would circumvent God." The state-craft of old Polonius has lived so long without a change that its garments are dropping from its limbs. Now see what an indecent forked radish it is. But the scene is eminently in its place, and has nothing incongruous with what transpires before or after; for the incident is cunningly contrived to prepare us to find him applying his principle of the windlass and indirect purchase to the relation of Hamlet with his daughter; and it breeds in us a contempt for the notion that the Prince has been made mad by love.
"Oh, my lord, my lord! I have been so affrighted!"
Then she describes Lord Hamlet entering with garments all disordered,
"And with a look so piteous in purport, As if he had been loosed out of hell, To speak of horrors.... He took me by the wrist, and held me hard; Then goes he to the length of all his arm; And, with his other hand thus o'er his brow, He falls to such perusal of my face, As he would draw it. Long stay'd he so; At last,--a little shaking of mine arm, And thrice his head thus waving up and down,-- He rais'd a sigh so piteous and profound, That it did seem to shatter all his bulk, And end his being. That done, he lets me go: And, with his head over his shoulder turn'd, He seem'd to find his way without his eyes; For out of doors he went without their help, And, to the last, bended their light on me."
Polonius decides that it is the very ecstasy of love. Yes, it is, but ecstasy that has made an assignation with despair. The two feelings meet at the rendezvous of Ophelia's description, where they display to us the yearning scrutiny that a man throws into the eyes of an expiring love: it is too passionately dear to be surrendered into the inane; it is too selfishly personal to be consistent with his future purpose. For he had married a bride at midnight who is still expecting him. It is the consummation of one murder by another. For such a bridal as that, to leave her cheeks on which the color comes and goes between her love and his renunciation, "like heralds 'twixt two dreadful battles set," seems to shatter and end his being. But let him fall to such perusal of her face as he may, he sees the complexion of the ghost through each warm feature; and its pallor stands even there to wave him apart to an interview in which all seeming becomes debatable, for rascally things may smile. He shades his brow, and his eyes are two magnets which he detaches from her heart, as he surrenders his last confidence in a stale and unprofitable world.