]
NOTE G.
HAMLET'S APOLOGY TO LAERTES.
Johnson, in commenting on the passage (V. ii. 237-255), says: 'I wish
Hamlet had made some other defence; it is unsuitable to the character of
a good or a brave man to shelter himself in falsehood.' And Seymour
(according to Furness) thought the falsehood so ignoble that he rejected
lines 239-250 as an interpolation!
I wish first to remark that we are mistaken when we suppose that Hamlet
is here apologising specially for his behaviour to Laertes at Ophelia's
grave. We naturally suppose this because he has told Horatio that he is
sorry he 'forgot himself' on that occasion, and that he will court
Laertes' favours (V. ii. 75 ff.). But what he says in that very passage
shows that he is thinking chiefly of the greater wrong he has done
Laertes by depriving him of his father:
For, by the image of my cause, I see
The portraiture of his.
And it is also evident in the last words of the apology itself that he
is referring in it to the deaths of Polonius and Ophelia:
Sir, in this audience,
Let my disclaiming from a purposed evil
Free me so far in your most generous thoughts,
_That I have shot mine arrow o'er the house,
And hurt my brother._
But now, as to the falsehood.
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