"Why, what should be the fear? I do not set my life at a pin's fee; And, for my soul, what can it do to that, Being a thing immortal as itself?" Yes, we--already the ghosts--are a match for any ghost. Self-poised and self-sufficing, his ambition is to occupy the kingdom of a mind. "O God! I could be bounded in a nut-shell, and count myself a king of infinite space." And, in the midst of the torrent that bursts from him to overwhelm his mother, there is that smooth, still eddy, "Forgive me this my virtue," and all the stars of his soul look down into it. Shakspeare plainly meant us to infer that Hamlet had inherited the traits of a noble father: for who but such a son could describe with impetuous remembrance the kingly qualities which had given birth to him? In his mind's eye, he could always see this father:-- "Look here, upon this picture, and on this: See what a grace was seated on this brow! A combination and a form, indeed, Where every god did seem to set his seal, To give the world assurance of a man. This was your husband." He is that man's son, and not his mother's. "Ha! have you eyes?" What devil was it that made you seize upon this other man in a game of blindfold? "A slave, that is not twentieth part the tithe Of your precedent lord; a vice of kings! A cutpurse of the empire and the rule, That from a shelf the precious diadem stole And put it in his pocket." Look there! The dear hallucination of fatherhood! "What would you, gracious figure?" The ghost has come to put this sketch of memory into italics; as if filial appreciation had projected it upon the midnight, in the intensity of recalling his majestic soul. Only a son who was in all respects worthy to be born of Nature's nobleman could pay this debt of being nobly born, and give Imagination's birth to such a sire. See there, he is born! the son is father and mother: inbred posterity conceives its ancestor. Thus I venture to suppose that, when Hamlet came to his mother, Shakspeare had not deliberated that the ghost would join the party. But his brain kindled with the midnight passion, streamed over down into the pen, and the ink exhaled under the heat of Hamlet's reminiscence into the vaporous outline, which always startles us because it startled Shakspeare,--a sudden whiteness running high along the edge of Hamlet's swelling heart. The scene then shudders with deference to this unexpected presence, which only the son who conceived it can observe. Afterward the verse seems to become merely a coast to help the great wave fall back and subside. It is possible to have Hamlet played in a style so greatly absorbed as to obliterate our knowledge that the father's custom is to take his cue from the climax of his son's speech and to appear. Then we reproduce the thrill that Shakspeare felt when he sat alone with awe and silence, and they suddenly drew him to their ghost.