some time before
(IV. iv. 56):

How stand I then,
That have a father kill'd, a mother stain'd,
Excitements of my reason and my blood,
And let all sleep?

Is it not clear that he is speculating just as vainly now, and that this
question of conscience is but one of his many unconscious excuses for
delay? And, lastly, is it not so that Horatio takes it? He declines to
discuss that unreal question, and answers simply,

It must be shortly known to him from England
What is the issue of the business there.

In other words, 'Enough of this endless procrastination. What is wanted
is not reasons for the deed, but the deed itself.' What can be more
significant?

Perhaps, however, it may be answered: 'Your explanation of this passage
may be correct, and the facts you have mentioned do seem to be fatal to
the theory of conscience in its usual form. But there is another and
subtler theory of conscience. According to it, Hamlet, so far as his
explicit consciousness went, was sure that he ought to obey the Ghost;
but in the depths of his nature, and unknown to himself, there was a
moral repulsion to the deed. The conventional moral ideas of his time,
which he shared with the Ghost, told him plainly that he ought to avenge
his father; but a deeper conscience in him, which was in advance of his
time, contended with these explicit conventional ideas. It is because
this deeper conscience remains below the surface that he fails to
recognise it, and fancies he is hindered by cowardice or sloth or
passion or what not; but it emerges into light in that speech to
Horatio. And it is just because he has this nobler moral nature in him
that we admire and love him.'

Now I at once admit not only that this view is much more attractive and
more truly tragic than the ordinary conscience theory, but that it has
more verisimilitude. But I feel no doubt that it does not answer to
Shakespeare's meaning, and I will simply mention, out of many objections
to it, three which seem to be fatal. (_a_) If it answers to
Shakespeare's meaning, why in the world did he conceal that meaning
until the last Act? The facts adduced above seem to show beyond question
that, on the hypothesis, he did so. That he did so is surely next door
to incredible. In any case, it certainly requires an explanation, and
certainly has not received one. (_b_) Let us test the theory by
reference to a single important passage, th