The psychology of Hamlet : read at the meeting of the Psychological Society of Great Britain, May 1, 1879 / by Mr. Serjeant Cox.

  • Cox, Edward W. (Edward William), 1809-1879.
Date:
[1878]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The psychology of Hamlet : read at the meeting of the Psychological Society of Great Britain, May 1, 1879 / by Mr. Serjeant Cox. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    * The appearance of the Players suggests to him the device of setting a trap for the King. He will have a play that shall tell over again, in the presence of the suspected murderers, the story told him by the Ghost. • Polonius and the King continue their espials. Ophelia is still the bait employed. On his approach in one of his most melancholy and most meditative moods—when his reasoning powers were most active and his faculty of hope in its most extreme depression—again they hide and listen. At first he is not aware that spies are near him and his marvellous soliloquy marks surely not the madman but the philosopher. It is not until he has risen to greet Ophelia that he sees or hears the spies. Then, and therefore, he instantly resumes, and abruptly, the “antic disposition” he had put on for a purpose. Then follows the extraordinary scene which has been so persistently advanced as conclusive proof that Hamlet was really insane, and this, in spite of his sudden assumption of apparent insanity and the obvious motive for it. We are indebted to Mr. Henry Irving for having rightly interpreted this much misrepresented scene. Other actors have made of it an incoherent raving. He has given to it its true meaning and expression — a mingling of deep love for the girl with the conscious need for sustaining before the hidden witnesses the character he had assumed. The conflict was hard to bear, the work hard to do, and he tries to stifle the emotions of his love by the affectation of a passion he does not feel. He is conscious of inflicting a terrible agony upon her by those “ wild and whirl- ing words •/’ but the consciousness of the ears that were open behind the arras to catch every syllable that fell from his lips compelled him to a harshness he was far from feeling. At times his affection almost betrays him. But it is exhibited in tone, not in language. Mr. Irving’s expression [272]