This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1916 Excerpt: ...as in the very next scene he goes about to do it, slaying Polonius by mistake? He has now no doubt of the guilt of Claudius: the disclosure at the play has verified for him the allegation of the Ghost. Here, then, was just the turn of circumstance at which a moody procrastinator, inflamed with anger, might be expected ...
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1916 Excerpt: ...as in the very next scene he goes about to do it, slaying Polonius by mistake? He has now no doubt of the guilt of Claudius: the disclosure at the play has verified for him the allegation of the Ghost. Here, then, was just the turn of circumstance at which a moody procrastinator, inflamed with anger, might be expected to wreak his belated vengeance. There is but one reason which adequately explains his abstention. It is the reason I have urged throughout: that still his cause could never be explained aright "to the unsatisfied" if he were thus to kill the King. The fact that Claudius had risen in confusion from the play was susceptible of many other explanations than that which Hamlet naturally applied to it. By the uninitiated it would never have been taken as conclusive proof that he was guilty of precisely such a murder as had been enacted before him. But Hamlet's speech on this occasion is neither that of a resolute man, who for valid reasons decides to defer the fatal act, nor yet that of a perplexed philosopher given to overmuch brooding on the riddle of the painful earth. It is that of a superstitious barbarian. It is out of key, in style as well as in thought, with the rest of the play. It is incomparably inferior to the soliloquy of the King, which immediately precedes it. I find it much more suggestive of Titus Andronicus than of the general run of Shakespeare's work at the period of the great tragedies; and for this reason I incline to the conjecture that the passage is a survival from the old play, and is not Shakespeare's work at all. Its retention is one more evidence of his carelessness, or else an extreme concession to the taste of the groundlings;--unless, indeed, it is due to the fact of bad editing in the Folio, and the absence ...
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Seller's Description:
Good (covers bright with small bit of discoloration top of front cover, few small creases spine; the top edge of pages 224-255 have some damage: like creases, tiny tears).
