"Love! his affections do not that way tend;"
but right when he adds,—
"Nor what he spake, though it lack'd form a little,
Was not like madness."
Of course it was not; and the whole scene with Ophelia is ruined for Shakspeare's purpose by this modern contrivance of the theatre to deprive Hamlet of his spontaneous and uncalculating mood.
Otto Ludwig notices that his madness is "alluded to by Ophelia as having broken out between the first and second acts; and that is another strange thing in Shakspeare. Then, too, the style, if it was dissimulation, is such as to bring to pass the opposite of what he seems to have intended. So far from being disguised by it he is rather betrayed. And what is the use of any feigning when he does things like that of contriving the mock play? For that betrays him to the King more than it does the King to him. It makes the situation all awry, because the King must now know on what footing he is with Hamlet. At all events, the courtiers keep telling how danger is threatened to the King from Hamlet: they have no means of fathoming the King's offence. They merely presage some danger to the King, and they manifest no surprise. Hamlet must be conscious that he would be in great peril if the King knew that he knew every thing; the King would be put on his defence, and he was quite capable of contriving another murder to forestall retribution for the first one. Why, then, does he keep on feigning? Yet we do not observe that he hits upon any expedients to meet this possible case; it does not even occur to him before he concocts the trial-scene."
Ophelia thinks that she sees
"That noble and most sovereign reason,
Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh,"
because she cannot understand his unflattering talk that appears to be disclaiming any regard for her and any desire to marry her. In all those sentences that make such a coarse rupture with love and soil the previous sentiment of their intercourse, there is no trace of a distracted mind. How could we expect this maid to be prepared to entertain such monstrous irony? It was as much Shakspeare's intention to have him misunderstood as to represent him so occupied by the sweeping scepticism that follows the disclosure of villainy. This irony of the most sombre kind, the mental mood that corresponds to such a harsh awakening, was not customary with Hamlet, who was by nature mirthful before this murder happened.
And notice how this ironical tone is kept up by him all through Ophelia's misconception, into which she falls because Hamlet's mood is too overpowering, and she thinks he has a wrecked brain from which she can rescue nothing to enable her to claim the salvage of loving him. When he meets her after many days of unaccountable neglect, she returns the few remembrances which were messengers of the happier hours of his affection, but he casts discredit upon these sacred tokens. He never meant them, in fact he never gave her any thing. But she says, "Yes,"
"And with them words of so sweet breath compos'd,
As made the things more rich."