Not the faintest streak of Humor appears in this tragedy to reconcile us with the drift of it. Polonius belongs to comedy, because he is an old counsellor who was once valuable, whose wits have grown seedy on purpose to delight us with his notion that he fathoms and circumvents the Prince. When a man's feeling of importance has outlived his value, so that his common-sense trickles feebly over the lees of maxims, and his policies are absurd attempts to appear as shrewd as ever before persons who are in better preservation, he belongs to the comic side of life. We cannot help smiling at his most respectable recommendations; for they are like hats lingering in fashion, but destitute of nap. He wears one of these, and goes about conceiting that his head mounts a gloss. There is not enough of Polonius left to tide him through this tragedy, unless it might have been in dumb show: he must lurk behind an arras to get himself mistaken for a king; and, as he does this after sending a spy into France to watch his son's habits, we have not a tear to spare. And we only think how delightfully bewildered he will be if his ghost gets out of the body, escaping a politic convocation of worms, in time to help receive the other ghost, and to understand then, if any wit is left over in him, that his king was murdered and Hamlet is harping on something besides his daughter. But his absurdity survives, and is voiced by Hamlet in the scenes where the King tries to discover what has become of the body.
The theories which undertake to explain the nature of the "antic disposition" which Hamlet hinted that he might assume do not satisfy me that the heart of that mystery has been plucked out. But the key to it may be read engrossed upon his tablets. The subsequent behavior of Hamlet is the exact counterpart in Irony of the conviction that was so suddenly thrust upon him, and terribly emphasized by his father, that a man may smile and be a villain. To this point let a few pages of explanation be accorded.
In the first place, I notice that the behavior of Hamlet, which has the reputation of being feigned, is a genuine exercise of Irony, and consequently covers a feeling and purpose that are directly opposite to its tone of lightness; but it results organically from Hamlet's new experience, and does not require to be premeditated as madness would be. We see his vigorous and subtle mind set open by the revelations of the ghost; but it is too well hung to be slamming to and fro in gusts of real madness, and its normal movement shuts out the need of feigning. When his father first tells that he has been murdered, we find that Hamlet thinks himself quite capable of decision: there is no infirmity of purpose in that early mood to sweep to his revenge "with wings as swift as meditation or the thoughts of love." What is it that converts this mood into an irresoluteness which contrives the whole suspense, and in fact gives us the whole tragedy? First, partly, that his father tells Hamlet he was murdered by his own brother. Then the question of revenge becomes more difficult to settle, especially as it involves widowing his mother; and it is noticeable that the father himself, who afterwards deplored Hamlet's irresolution, had previously made suggestions to him which hampered his action by constraining him to feel how complicated the situation was. The father's caution runs thus:--