(_c_) Again, why does Shakespeare exhibit Laertes quite easily raising
the people against the King? Why but to show how much more easily
Hamlet, whom the people loved, could have done the same thing, if that
was the plan he preferred?

(_d_) Again, Hamlet did _not_ plan the play-scene in the hope that the
King would betray his guilt to the court. He planned it, according to
his own account, in order to convince _himself_ by the King's agitation
that the Ghost had spoken the truth. This is perfectly clear from II.
ii. 625 ff. and from III. ii. 80 ff. Some readers are misled by the
words in the latter passage:

if his occulted guilt
Do not itself unkennel in one speech,
It is a damned ghost that we have seen.

The meaning obviously is, as the context shows, 'if his hidden guilt do
not betray itself _on occasion of_ one speech,' viz., the 'dozen or
sixteen lines' with which Hamlet has furnished the player, and of which
only six are delivered, because the King does not merely show his guilt
in his face (which was all Hamlet had hoped, III. ii. 90) but
rushes from the room.

It may be as well to add that, although Hamlet's own account of his
reason for arranging the play-scene may be questioned, it is impossible
to suppose that, if his real design had been to provoke an open
confession of guilt, he could have been unconscious of this design.

(_e_) Again, Hamlet never once talks, or shows a sign of thinking, of