A perusal of the fifty-sixth chapter of the first Essay of Montaigne
will show with what great reverence he treated ceremonial customs
and hollow formulas; for instance, the sign of the cross, of which he
'continually made use, even if he be but yawning' (_sic_). It is
not a mere coincidence, but a well-calculated trait in the character of
Hamlet, that in his speech he goes through a scale of exclamations and
asseverations such as Shakspere employs in no other of his poetical
creations. Hamlet incessantly mentions God, Heaven, Hell, and the
Devil, the Heavenly Hosts, and the Saints. He claims protection from
the latter at the appearance of the Ghost. He swears 'by St. Patrick,'
by his faith, by God's wounds, by His blood, by His body, by the
Cross, and so forth. [6]

Stubbs, in his 'Anatomy of Abuses' (1583), [7] lays stress, among other
characteristics of the Papists, upon their terrible inclination to
swearing: 'in so muche, as if they speake but three or fower words,
yet must thei needes be interlaced with a bloudie othe or two, to the
great dishonour of God and offence of the hearers.'

An overwhelming grief and mistrust in his own nature filled Hamlet's
bold imagination with the desire of receiving a complete mandate
for his mission from the hands of superior powers. So he enters the
realm of mysticism, where mind wields no authority, and where no
sound fruit of human reason can ripen.

Between the first and the second act there is an interval of a few
months. The poet gives us no other clue to the condition and the
doings of his hero than that, in the words of Polonius, [8] he 'fell
into sadness; then into a fast; thence to a watch; thence into a