her for
standing up for her husband when she can do nothing to help her son. If
she had sense to realise Hamlet's purpose, or the probability of the
King's taking some desperate step to foil it, she must have suffered
torture in those days. But perhaps she was too dull.

The last we see of her, at the fencing-match, is most characteristic.
She is perfectly serene. Things have slipped back into their groove, and
she has no apprehensions. She is, however, disturbed and full of
sympathy for her son, who is out of condition and pants and perspires.
These are afflictions she can thoroughly feel for, though they are even
more common than the death of a father. But then she meets her death
because she cannot resist the wish to please her son by drinking to his
success. And more: when she falls dying, and the King tries to make out
that she is merely swooning at the sight of blood, she collects her
energies to deny it and to warn Hamlet:

No, no, the drink, the drink,--O my dear Hamlet,--
The drink, the drink! I am poison'd. [_Dies._

Was ever any other writer at once so pitiless and so just as
Shakespeare? Did ever any other mingle the grotesque and the pathetic
with a realism so daring and yet so true to 'the modesty of nature'?

* * * * *

King Claudius rarely gets from the reader the attention he deserves. But
he is very interesting, both psychologically and dramatically. On the
one hand, he is not without respectable qualities. As a king he is
courteous and never undignified; he performs his ceremonial duties
efficiently; and he takes good care of the national interests. He
nowhere shows cowardice, and when Laertes and the mob force their way
into the palace, he confronts a dangerous situation with coolness and
address. His love for his ill-gotten wife seems to be quite genuine, and
there is no ground for suspecting him of having used her as a mere means
to the crown.[81] His conscience, though ineffective, is far from being
dead. In spite of its reproaches he plots new crimes to ensure the prize
of the old one; but still it makes him unhappy (III. i. 49 f., III. iii.
35 f.). Nor is he cruel or malevolent.

On the other hand, he is no tragic character. He had a small nature. If
Hamlet may be trusted, he was a man of mean appearance--a mildewed ear,
a toad, a bat; and he was also bloated by excess in drinking. People
made mouths at him in contempt while his brot