To his cruel words Ophelia is impenetrable—from the conviction that not he but his madness speaks.
The moment he leaves her, she breaks out in such phrase as a young girl would hardly have used had she known that the king and her father were listening. I grant, however, the speech may be taken as a soliloquy audible to the spectators only, who to the persons of a play are but the spiritual presences.]
[Footnote 4: 'The hope and flower'—The rose is not unfrequently used in English literature as the type of perfection.]
[Footnote 5: 'he by whom Fashion dressed herself'—he who set the fashion. His great and small virtues taken together, Hamlet makes us think of Sir Philip Sidney—ten years older than Shakspere, and dead sixteen years before Hamlet was written.]
[Footnote 6: 'he after whose ways, or modes of behaviour, men shaped theirs'—therefore the mould in which their forms were cast;—the object of universal imitation.]
[Footnote 7: I do not know whether this means—the peal rung without regard to tune or time—or—the single bell so handled that the tongue checks and jars the vibration. In some country places, I understand, they go about ringing a set of hand-bells.]
[Footnote 8: youth in full blossom.]
[Footnote 9: madness 177.]
[Footnote 10: 'to see now such a change from what I saw then.']
[Footnote 11: The king's conscience makes him keen. He is, all through, doubtful of the madness.]