but they remained thoughts. The play is to be the thing to decide him, but when it is over and he has the clearest proofs, he does not act, but consents to leave Denmark and returns by accident. Had he obeyed the Ghost’s promptings and killed the King at the end of the play in the third act, Polonius, Ophelia, the Queen, Laertes, and Hamlet himself might have been saved. * * * * * _Troilus and Cressida_ is an inexplicable play. It is a justification of those critics who obstinately, but without external evidence, refuse to believe that much which is attributed to Shakespeare really belongs to him. It is absolutely impossible that the man who put these words into the mouth of Achilles: ‘I have a woman’s longing, An appetite that I am sick withal, To see great Hector in his weeds of peace; To talk with him, and to behold his visage, Even to my full of view.’ could have adapted from the _Recuyell_ the shocking ignominy of the ninth scene in the fifth act in which Achilles calls on his myrmidons to slay Hector unarmed, and then triumphs in these lines: ‘My half-supp’d sword, that frankly would have fed, Pleas’d with this dainty bit, thus goes to bed. [_Sheathes his sword_. Come, tie his body to my horse’s tail; Along the field I will the Trojan trail.’ * * * * * _Measure for Measure_ as a play is hateful to me, although there are passages in it as truly Shakespeare as anything to be found in all his works. The chief objection to it is that justice, to use Coleridge’s word, is ‘baffled.’ There are other objections almost as great. From beginning to end almost everybody is base, foolish, or uninteresting. The Duke’s temporary withdrawal is stupid and contemptible, considering that he is the governor of the state; the condemnation of Claudio is wildly unnatural; the substitution of Mariana loathsome; the treachery of Angelo in not reprieving Claudio inconceivable, notwithstanding what we already know of the deputy’s hypocrisy and villainy. The lowest depth of scoundrelism is reached when, face to face with Mariana and publicly at the city gate before the Duke and all the company assembled, he excuses himself from marrying her because ‘her reputation was disvalued In levity.’ And yet he is let off scot-free, and Mariana marries him! Isabella’s apology, ‘I partly think, A due sincerity govern’d his deeds, Till he did look on me,’ might be sufficient for an outbreak of his lust but not for his lying, and Mariana’s is still worse: ‘Best men are moulded out of faults.’ Not out of such faults as Angelo’s are the best men moulded. The punishment inflicted on the poor wretch Lucio is horrible. _Lucio_. ‘I beseech your highness, do not marry me to a whore! . . . Marrying a punk, my lord, is pressing to death, whipping and hanging. _Duke_. Slandering a prince deserves it.’