[Footnote 62: I think it is clear that it is this fear which stands in the way of the obvious plan of bringing Hamlet to trial and getting him shut up or executed. It is much safer to hurry him off to his doom in England before he can say anything about the murder which he has somehow discovered. Perhaps the Queen's resistance, and probably Hamlet's great popularity with the people, are additional reasons. (It should be observed that as early as III. i. 194 we hear of the idea of 'confining' Hamlet as an alternative to sending him to England.)] [Footnote 63: I am inferring from IV. vii., 129, 130, and the last words of the scene.] [Footnote 64: III. iv. 172: For this same lord, I do repent: but heaven hath pleased it so, To punish me with this and this with me, That I must be their scourge and minister: _i.e._ the scourge and minister of 'heaven,' which has a plural sense elsewhere also in Shakespeare.] [Footnote 65: IV. iii. 48: _Ham._ For England! _King._ Ay, Hamlet. _Ham._ Good. _King._ So is it, if thou knew'st our purposes. _Ham._ I see a cherub that sees them.] [Footnote 66: On this passage see p. 98. Hamlet's reply to Horatio's warning sounds, no doubt, determined; but so did 'I know my course.' And is it not significant that, having given it, he abruptly changes the subject?] [Footnote 67: P. 102.] [Footnote 68: It should be observed also that many of Hamlet's repetitions can hardly be said to occur at moments of great emotion, like Cordelia's 'And so I am, I am,' and 'No cause, no cause.' Of course, a habit of repetition quite as marked as Hamlet's may be found in comic persons, _e.g._ Justice Shallow in _2 Henry IV._] [Footnote 69: Perhaps it is from noticing this trait that I find something characteristic too in this coincidence of phrase: 'Alas, poor ghost!' (I. v. 4), 'Alas, poor Yorick!' (V. i. 202).] [Footnote 70: This letter, of course, was written before the time when the action of the drama begins, for we know that Ophelia, after her father's commands in I. iii., received no more letters (II. i. 109).] [Footnote 71: 'Frailty, thy name is woman!' he had exclaimed in the first soliloquy. Cf. what he says of his mother's act (III. iv. 40): Such an act That blurs the grace and blush of modesty, Calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the rose From the fair forehead of an innocent love And sets a blister there.]