Unmixed with baser matter—
— — — —
"My tables, my tables,—meet it is I set it down!"
Set it down, in order that the exact words of the commandment—subsequently quoted to the very letter—may be preserved.
To suppose that Hamlet gets forth his tables for the purpose of setting down a common-place truism, because he has reserved no place for such matters in the table of his memory, is surely to materialise a fine poetical image by contrasting it with a substantial matter of fact operation.
And to suppose, with Coleridge, that the very absurdness of the act is a subtle indication of incipient madness, is an over refinement in criticism, as intenable as it is unnecessary.
Hamlet evinces no semblance of unsettled mind, real or assumed, until joined by Horatio and Marcellus; and, even then, his apparently misplaced jocularity does not commence until he has finally determined to withhold the secret he had twice been on the point of disclosing:
"How say you then, would the heart of man once think it?— But you'll be secret."
Again:
"There's ne'er a villain dwelling in all Denmark— But he's an arrant knave."