When Othello is brooding over the supposed delinquencies of Desdemona, tortured by commingled love and hate, in his wrath he strikes her. Afterwards he demands: "Let me see your eyes; look in my face"; and as she does so, and he searches there for her innocence and finds it not, he bitterly adjures her: "Swear thou art honest," though all the while assured that she is "false as hell." And he weeps and laments over her at the very moment that he determines upon an eternal separation. Othello's interview with Desdemona and this interview of Hamlet's with Ophelia are identical in outline, and they differ in detail only as the character of the two men differ. Shakespeare has told us in words that Othello is jealously suspicious of Desdemona, and with equal faithfulness he has depicted jealous suspicion in the acts of Hamlet. This mute interview between Hamlet and Ophelia reminds one of the "Dumb Shew," which precedes the scene from the drama of 'Gonzago's Murder'; and as in the latter instance the Duke and Duchess afterwards put into words the thoughts which the pantomime foreshadows, so on examination will this be found to be the case in the second interview between Hamlet and Ophelia, which immediately follows upon his great soliloquy. This second interview concludes Scene i of Act III in Quarto II and in the Folios, but in Quarto I it is in Act II, and logically it belongs there. Act I of 'Hamlet' was designed to disclose the relation of the several characters to each other, and the command imposed on Hamlet to avenge his Father's death upon the King; and Act II was originally intended to exhibit Hamlet erratically making ready to obey the Ghost's command, and the various artifices which the King employs to detect his hidden purpose. When Ophelia tells her father of Hamlet's wordless interview with her, Polonius promptly goes to the King with the story of their amours and his termination of them, and with the announcement that Hamlet is mad for his daughter's love; and, after hearing his reasons for this opinion, being impressed by them, naturally the first thought of the King is: "How may we try it further?" To this Polonius replies: "I'll loose my daughter to him" during one of his walks in the gallery here, whilst you and I, unseen but seeing, will witness their encounter. In Quarto I the meeting between Hamlet and Ophelia follows at once, and when it fails Polonius undertakes to board him, and when that fails Rosencrantz and Guildenstern assay him. Afterwards Shakespeare saw fit to change the order of these scenes, but this particular scene may properly be considered now, and before others which it logically precedes.