false account of Polonius's death, and is silent about the appearance of
the Ghost. She becomes miserable;

To her sick soul, as sin's true nature is,
Each toy seems prologue to some great amiss.

She shows spirit when Laertes raises the mob, and one respects her for
standing up for her husband when she can do nothing to help her son. If
she had sense to realise Hamlet's purpose, or the probability of the
King's taking some desperate step to foil it, she must have suffered
torture in those days. But perhaps she was too dull.

The last we see of her, at the fencing-match, is most characteristic.
She is perfectly serene. Things have slipped back into their groove, and
she has no apprehensions. She is, however, disturbed and full of
sympathy for her son, who is out of condition and pants and perspires.
These are afflictions she can thoroughly feel for, though they are even
more common than the death of a father. But then she meets her death
because she cannot resist the wish to please her son by drinking to his
success. And more: when she falls dying, and the King tries to make out
that she is merely swooning at the sight of blood, she collects her
energies to deny it and to warn Hamlet:

No, no, the drink, the drink,--O my dear Hamlet,--
The drink, the drink! I am poison'd. [_Dies._

Was ever any other writer at once so pitiless and so just as
Shakespeare? Did ever any other mingle the grotesque and the pathetic
with a realism so daring and yet so true to 'the modesty of nature'?