' He has no doubt that this design covers some
villainous plot against himself, but neither does he doubt that he will
succeed in defeating it; and, as we saw, he looks forward with pleasure
to this conflict of wits. The idea of refusing to go appears not to
occur to him. Perhaps (for here we are left to conjecture) he feels that
he could not refuse unless at the same time he openly accused the King
of his father's murder (a course which he seems at no time to
contemplate); for by the slaughter of Polonius he has supplied his enemy
with the best possible excuse for getting him out of the country.
Besides, he has so effectually warned this enemy that, after the death
of Polonius is discovered, he is kept under guard (IV. iii. 14). He
consents, then, to go. But on his way to the shore he meets the army of
Fortinbras on its march to Poland; and the sight of these men going
cheerfully to risk death 'for an egg-shell,' and 'making mouths at the
invisible event,' strikes him with shame as he remembers how he, with so
much greater cause for action, 'lets all sleep;' and he breaks out into
the soliloquy, 'How all occasions do inform against me!'
This great speech, in itself not inferior to the famous 'To be or not to
be,' is absent not only from the First Quarto but from the Folio.
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