he third place, there is a
trait about which doubt is impossible,--a sense in Hamlet that he is in
the hands of Providence. This had, indeed, already shown itself at the
death of Polonius,[64] and perhaps at Hamlet's farewell to the King,[65]
but the idea seems now to be constantly present in his mind. 'There's a
divinity that shapes our ends,' he declares to Horatio in speaking of
the fighting in his heart that would not let him sleep, and of his
rashness in groping his way to the courtiers to find their commission.
How was he able, Horatio asks, to seal the substituted commission?

Why, even in that was heaven ordinant,

Hamlet answers; he had his father's signet in his purse. And though he
has a presentiment of evil about the fencing-match he refuses to yield
to it: 'we defy augury: there is special providence in the fall of a
sparrow ... the readiness is all.'

Though these passages strike us more when put together thus than when
they come upon us at intervals in reading the play, they have a marked
effect on our feeling about Hamlet's character and still more about the
events of the action. But I find it impossible to believe, with some
critics, that they indicate any material change in his general
condition, or the formation of any effective resolution to fulfil the
appointed duty. On the contrary, they seem to express that kind of
religious resignation which, however beautiful in one aspect, really
deserves the name of fatalism rather than that of faith in Providence,
because it is not united to any determination to do what is believed to
be the will of Providence. In place of this determination, the Hamlet of
the Fifth Act shows a kind of sad or indifferent self-abandonment, as if
he secretly despaired of forcing himself to action, and were ready to
leave his duty to some other power than his own. _This_ is really the
main change which appears in him after his return to Denmark, and which
had begun to show itself before he went,--this, and not a determination
to act, nor even an anxiety to do so.

For when he returns he stands in a most perilous position. On one side
of him is the King, whose safety depends on his death, and who has done
his best to murder him; on the other, Laertes, whose father and sister
he has sent to their graves, and of whose behaviour and probable
attitude he must surely be informed by Horatio. What is required of him,
therefore, if he is not to perish with his duty undone, is the