UC-NRLF
B 3 SbM 7Ma
A REVIEW OF HAMLET
MACBETH — A FRAGMENT
By George Henry Miles
Said the Rose, and Other Lyrics
Christine, and Other Poems
Mohammed
Essay on Hamlet
Loretto j OR, The Choice. A Novel
The Truce of God. A Novel
The Governess. A Novel
OEORGE HENRY MILES
A REVIEW
OF
HAMLET
GEORGE HENRY MILES ^^
Late Professor of Literature in Mount St. Mary'' s
College, Maryland
New Edition
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
91 AND 93 FIFTH AVE., NEW YORK
LONDON, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA
1907
f^h^
Copyright, 1870,
By George H. Miles
Copyright, 1907,
By F. B. Miles
All Rights Reserved
THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U.S. A,
PREFACE
This " Review of Shakespeare's Tragedy
of Hamlet" was first published in 1870.
Much attention was attracted to it because
of the striking point of view from which
it is written and its entirely novel and
original interpretation of the character of
Hamlet. Edwin Booth, the great actor,
wrote a letter thanking Miles for this in-
terpretation, which he adopted, and they
became good friends. A great English
critic has lately said of this Review : " But
what strikes us most in the essay is, not
only the intensity of the critic's sympa-
thetic appreciation of the poet's work, but
his penetrative insight into its essence.
Whatever may be thought of its main
thesis and of some of its minor conten-
tions, no more vigorous, subtle, and original
contribution to American Shakespearian
criticism has ever been made."
284510
Preface
Miles was especially adapted to the
work of dramatic criticism, for he was him-
self a practised writer and dramatist. At
the age of twenty-four he had written a
tragedy, " Mohammed," which, against a
hundred competitors, had gained the prize
of one thousand dollars that was offered
by Edwin Forrest, the great actor and
philanthropist, for the best tragedy in five
acts by an American writer. Five years
later his tragedy of " De Soto" was pro-
duced by James E. Murdock, an eminent
tragedian, and was performed in nearly all
parts of the United States. After some
years more of literary v/ork in writing
plays, novels, and poems. Miles accepted
the Professorship of English Literature
at the University of Mount St. Mary's,
Maryland.
The Review was originally intended as
a lecture to be delivered by Edwin Forrest,
and was afterwards amplified and pub-
lished by the author in book form. He
meant it to be used also as a text-book
Preface
for advanced students in English Litera-
ture. As he himself says in writing to
a friend distinguished as an educator, to
whom he had sent a copy of " Hamlet " :
" An experience of seven years' teaching
has convinced me of the value of the mas-
terpieces of the great dramatist as a means
of education. It is my intention to follow
this essay with others on Macbeth, Lear,
Othello, and Henry IV. In my classes
I have found that most collegians are easily
trained to understand and appreciate the
majesty and beauty of the poetry. Even
dull students, of seventeen years or more,
when the finer passages are read to them
by a teacher with only a very limited
power of elocution, can be aroused to a
keen sense of interest in and enjoyment
of the dramas and of their marvellous
literary merit."
Miles was also of the opinion that these
essays would doubtless be welcomed as
agreeable text-books by that very large
class of people who, either from scruples
Preface
of conscience or lack of opportunity, are
debarred from seeing and hearing Shake-
speare's plays at the theatre. It was while
working at this interesting series, and
with the Review of Macbeth half finished,
that death brushed the pen out of his
hands, leaving " Hamlet " as his only fin-
ished Shakespearian essay. The fragment
on Macbeth has been printed at the end
of the book.
I have to thank the Rev. Thomas E.
Cox, of St. Basil's Church, Chicago, for
valuable assistance and suggestion in the
preparation and revision of this volume.
F. B. M.
A REVIEW OF HAMLET
MACBETH — A FRAGMENT
A Review of Hamlet
In all of Shakespeare's finer plays, there
is sure to be, at least, one master mind
among the characters. (Lear, even in gro-
tesque dilapidation, is a master mind,)Iago
is another, Macbeth, or rather his Demon
Lady, is another; but the tragedies them-
selves are far from owing their chief dra-
matic force and interest to this individual
ascendency. In the calm, vindictive envy
of Hgo, in the rage and desolation of
Lear, in the remorse of Macbeth, pas-
sion or plot is the governing motive of
interest; but there is never a storm in
Hamlet over which the * noble and most
sovereign reason ' of the young prince is
not as visibly dominant as the rainbow,
the crowning grace and glory of the scene.
Richard is the mind nearest Hamlet in
scope and power; but It is the jubilant
A Review of Hamlet
wickedness, the transcendent dash and
courage of the last Plantagenet that rivet
his hold on an audience ; whereas, the
most salient phase of Hamlet's character
is his superb ijitellectual _superiority_to all
comers, even to his most dangerous assail-
ant, madness. The fundamental charm of
Hamlet is its amazing eloquence ; its
thoughts are vaster than deeds, its elo-
quence mightier than action. The trag-
edy, in its most imposing aspect, is a series
of intellectual encounters. The Crusader
of Ashby de la Zouche, engaging all the
challengers, is not more picturesque than
this Desdichado of Denmark consecu-
tively overthrowing every antagonist, from
Polonius in the Castle to Laertes in the
grave.
But the difficulty of representing this !
The enormous difficulty of achieving a
true tragic success, less by the passions and
trials than by the pure intellectual splen-
dor of the hero! The almost superhu-
man task of imparting intensest dramatic
A Review oj Hamlet
interest to a long war of words — for
the part of Hamlet is well nigh twice
the length of any other on the stage — the
almost superhuman power whereby the
prince, instead of degenerating into a mere
senior wrangler, is so exalted by the
witchery of speech, that the lit brow
of the young academician for once out-
shines the warrior's crest, for once com-
pels a more than equal homage from the
masses !
Perhaps Shakespeare never asked him-
self the question, never precisely recog-
nized the difficulty. But, as the vision
of the unwritten Drama loomed vaguely
before him, he must have been conscious
of a summons to put forth all his strength.
With a central figure of such subtle spirit-
uality, with a plot subordinating action to
eloquence, or rather substituting eloquence
for action, the great dramatist instinctively
employed a Saracenic richness and variety
of detail. The structure of Macbeth is
Egyptian, massive as the pyramids, or
3
A Review of Hamlet
Thebes; of Othello, unadorned, symmet-
rical, classic ; of Lear, wild, unequal, fan-
tastic, straggling as a Druid Grove ; but
Hamlet resembles some limitless Gothic
Cathedral with its banners and effigies, its
glooms and floods of stained light, and
echoes of unending dirges. I never read
*Act I. Scene i. Elsinore. A platform
before the Castle. Francisco at his post.
Enter to him Bernardo, ' without, somehow,
beholding the myriad-minded poet at his
desk, pale, peaceful, conscientious, yet
pausing as in the Stratford bust, with lips
apart, and pen and eye awhile uplifted, as
organists pause that silence may settle into
a deeper hush, — the longest pause at such
a moment that Shakespeare ever made.
But though not embarrassed by its diffi-
culties, he must surely have been awed by
the immensity of his undertaking. For
the fundamental idea of the tragedy is not
only essentially non-dramatic, but pecu-
liarly liable to misinterpretation; since any
marked predominance of the intellectual
4
A Review of Hamlet
over the animal nature is constantly mis-
taken for weakness.
The difference between a strong man
and a weak one, though indefinable, is
infinite. The prevalent view of Hamlet
is, that he is weak. We hear him spoken
of as the gentle prince, the doomed prince,
the meditative prince, but never as the
strong prince, the great prince, the terri-
ble prince. He is commonly regarded
as more of a dreamer than a doer ; some-
thing of a railer at destiny ; a blighted,
morbid existence, unequal either to for-
giveness or revenge ; delaying action till
action is of no use, and dying the vic-
tim of mere circumstance and accident.
The exquisite metaphor of Goethe's about
the oak tree and the vase predestined for
a rose, crystallizes and perpetuates both the
critical and the popular estimate of Ham-
let. The Wilhelm Meister view is, prac-
tically, the only view ; a hero without a
plan, pushed on by events alone, endowed
more properly with sentiments than with
5
A Review of Hamlet
a character, — in a word, weak. But the
Hamlet of the critics and the Hamlet of
Shakespeare are two different persons. A
close review of the play will show that
Hamlet is strong, not weak, — that the
basis of his character is .^trfingfl i^ illimitable
strength. There is not an act or an utter-
ance of his, from first to last, which is not
a manifestation of power. Slow, cautious,
capricious, he may sometimes be, or seem
to be ; but always strong, always large-
^souled, always resistless.
The care, the awe, with which Shakes-
peare approached his work, are visible in
the opening scene. You cannot advance
three lines without feeling that the poet is
before you in all his majesty, armed for
some vast achievement, winged for the
empyrean. In all that solemn guard relief,
there is not a word too much or too little.
How calm and sad it is ! sadness prefigur-
ing the unearthly theme, — grand synco-
pated minor chords, — the Adagio of the
overture to Don Giovanni ! The super-
6
A Review of Hamlet
human is instantly foreshadowed, and
hardly foreshadowed before revealed. The
dreaded twice-seen sight is scarcely men-
tioned. Bernardo has just begun his
story, —
Last night of all
When yon same star that 's westward from the
pole
Had made his course to illume that part of
Heaven
Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself,
The bell then beating one, —
when, without farther prelude, the sepul-
chral key-note of the plot is struck, and
enter Ghost, dumb, majestic, terrible, defi-
ant, and, above all, rapid. An honest
ghost, a punctual ghost ; no lagging Raw-
head and Bloody-bones, expected indefi-
nitely from curfew to cock-crow. Mark
the pains with which this magnificent
apparition is gradually got up ; observe
how crisply and minutely the actor is
instructed to dress the part. First the
broad outlines :
7
A Revieiv of Hamlet
that fair and warlike form
In which the majesty of buried Denmark
Did sometimes march, —
the very armor he had on
When he the ambitious Norway combated ;
So frown'd he once, when in an angry parle
He smote the sledded Polacks on the ice.
The second touches are more precise
and vivid.
Ham. Arm'd, say you ?
Mar.j Bern. Arm'd, my Lord.
Ham. From top to toe ?
Afar., Bern. My lord from head to foot.
Ham. Then saw you not his face ?
Hor. O yes, my lord, he wore his beaver up.
Ham. What, looked he frowningly ?
Hor. A countenance more in sorrow than in
anger.
Ham. Pale or red ?
Hor. Nay, very pale.
Ham. And fixed his eyes upon you ?
Hor. Most constantly.
******
Ham. Stayed it long ?
A Reviciu of Hamlet
Hor. While one with moderate haste might
tell a hundred.
Mar.^ Bern. Longer, longer.
Hor. Not when I saw it.
Ham. His beard was grizzled ? no !
Hor. It was as I have seen it in his life,
A sable silver'd.
No misconception now, my heavy friend
who plays the ghost ; no room for specu-
lation in the wardrobe now. You cannot
go wrong if you would. 'Armed from top
to toe,' 'his beaver up,' 'frowning,' but
the eyebrows not too bushy, for the frown
is more in sorrow than in anger. Not a
particle of rouge, but pale, very pale ; nor
any roUing of the eyes, sir, either, but a
fixed gaze. The very pace at which you
are to move is measured : count a hun-
dred as you make your martial stalk and
vanish. The delineation is Pre-Raphael-
ite, even to that last consummate touch,
the sable silvered beard. It seems easy,
this slow portraiture of a Phantom, just as
all perfectly executed feats seem easy ; but
9
A Review of Hamlet
it is painting the rainbow. And lest this
honest Ghost should become too human,
with one wave of the wand it is rendered
not only unearthly, but impalpable.
Hor. Stop it, Marcellus !
Mar. Shall I strike it with my partisan ?
Hor. Do if it will not stand.
Bern. 'Tis here !
Hor. 'T is here !
Mar. 'T is gone. ( Exit Ghost )
We do it wrong, being so majestical.
To offer it the show of violence ;
For it is, as the air, invulnerable.
And our vain blows malicious mockery.
Manlike, magnificent, yet ghastly too, —
for our blood is made to curdle by that
start at cock-crow.
Ber. It was about to speak when the cock crew.
Hor. And then it started like a guilty thing
Upon a fearful summons.
What a dark, weird whisper ! How it
goes home to the popular heart, — all that
awful majesty crouching at cock-crow !
A Revieiu of Hamlet
And when the picture is thus marvel-
lously finished, observe how lovingly it is
framed in gold :
Some say, that ever 'gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long :
And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad ;
The nights are wholesome; then no planets
strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm :
So hallowed and so gracious is that time.
Where, save by the pencil of the Paraclete,
has such divine use been made of the
music of the bird 'that is the trumpet to
the morn ! '
There is a loving care, a sedulous finish,
about the whole portraiture, assuring us
that Shakespeare wrote the part for him-
self. We know that he acted it, and that
it was ' the top of his performance/
What a treat to have seen him ! Better
even than listening to Homer chanting
his fiery epics. Perhaps the poet dared
A Revieiv of Hamlet
not trust his Ghost to other hands ; for
the fate of the whole tragedy hinges
upon the masterly rendering of this per-
ilous part. Although Burbage, and other
players of the Blackfriars were more pop-
ular general actors, yet the elaborate im-
personation of a departed soul differs,
almost as much as its conception, from
the coarser eloquence and action by which
mortal passions and emotions are counter-
feited. That awful monotone, that stat-
uesque repose with which the Ghost still
walks the stage, are probably a remi-
niscence of him who gave such immortal
advice to the Players, and who first acted
* the Ghost in his own Hamlet.' But
more than this. Aubrey had heard that
Shakespeare was ' a handsome, well-shaped
man ; ' the Stratford Bust and the engrav-
ing by Martin Dreeshout confirm the
tradition. Connecting this tradition with
our positive knowledge, that, not with-
standing his invincible modesty and pro-
priety, he ventured to undertake a part
A Review of Hamlet
which, although predestined for himself,
he scrupled not, in obedience to the com-
pulsion of the plot, to consecrate for all
time as the supreme type and model of
manly beauty, may we not be permitted to
associate his likeness, in some measure at
least, with that of the majesty of buried
Denmark ?
See what a grace was seated on this brow ;
Hyperion's curls; the front of Jove himself;
An eye like Mars to threaten and command ;
A station like the herald Mercury
New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill ;
A combination and a form, indeed,
Where every god did seem to set his seal,
To give the world assurance of a man.
But prompt as the apparition is to come,
it is slow to speak. That it means to
speak, we know ; that it means to make
some fearful unfolding, we feel ; but it
remains deaf and dumb to all Horatio's
pleading, — more terrible, more significant,
more obstinately mute than the Proph-
13
A Review of Hamlet
etess in the Agamemnon. This superb
visitant, so carefully, so cunningly con-
structed, is not to be fathomed or unriddled
at sight. It does not pay its first visit to
Hamlet and blurt out all at once, as a vul-
gar, unauthenicated phantom would. have
done. We are allowed first to hear of it ;
then to steal a glimpse of it; then to watch
it * while one with moderate haste may tell
a hundred.' But just when expectation
is kindled to the highest pitch, the scene
shifts, and we are consigned by Horatio
Unto young Hamlet •, for, upon my life,
This spirit, dumb to us, will speak to him.
Not only is the interest heightened by this
wise suspense, but it is artistically essential
to the perfect intelligibility and eflfect of
the Ghost's long revelation that we should
have some antecedent acquaintance with
the guilty King and his infatuated Queen.
I And not less important that we should
behold this same young Hamlet and his
attitude at Court before the advent of the
14
A Review of Hamlet
superhuman — a Hamlet uninfluenced by
anything more terrible than his father's
sudden death and mother's sudden mar-
riage, yet most profoundly influenced by
that double woe. How briefly, yet how
completely, this is done.
King. But now my cousin Hamlet and my
son, —
Ham. A little more than kin and less than
kind. (^Jside.)
King. How is it that the clouds still hang on
you ?
Ham. Not so, my lord ; I am too much i' the
sun.
Notice the first keen flashes of this noble
and most sovereign reason sparkling in its
own gloom like polished jet. Disarmed
at the first pass that uncle-father. Nor
does the Queen fare better. —
^ueen. Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted colour
off,
And let thine eye look like a friend on
Denmark.
15
A Review of Hamlet
Do not forever with thy vailed lids
Seek for thy noble father in the dust :
Thou know'st 't is common — all that
^-' live must die,
Passing through nature to eternity.
Ham. Ay, madam ; it is common,
Her maternal platitudes are shivered by
the easy scorn of his reply. But this res-
olute woman, then undergoing perhaps
her first experience in being silenced,
answers very much to the purpose :
<>. If it be.
Why seems it so particular with thee ?
Ham. Seems, madam ! —
It is like *t.he flash and motion ' of Geraint.
No more questionings, but ' we pray you*
* we beseech you, * '/ is sweet and commend-
able in your nature^ * let not thy mother
lose her prayers, ' ' be as ourself in Den-
mark.' And he? — he is hardly listening :
he will, in all his best, obey them : he will
stay at home and not go back to school at
Wittenberg. For let it not be forgotten,
i6
A Review of Hamlet
that this superb intelligence, whose career
has charmed and perplexed mankind for
three centuries, was not too old to go
' back to school in Wittenberg.' This t
immaturity should be carefully remem- ^
bered in the estimate of his character. A '\
Collegian, even of thirty, summoned by
the visible ghost of a murdered sire from
love and life and the fair orchards of rip-
ening manhood, to revenge and ruin, may
exhibit much hesitancy and vacillation,
without being tainted with inherent infirm-
ity of purpose.
That wondrous first soliloquy is the
simultaneous presentation of a plot and of
a character, — of all the tragic antecedents
of the Play, and of Hamlet struggling
through the gloom, the incarnation of
eloquent despair.
O, that this too — too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew !
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter ! O God !
O God!
17
A Review of Hamlet
i fix(
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world ! &c.
Is this a sample of the imputed ' waver-
ing melancholy and soft lamenting ? ' Since
the Psalms of David, and the still deeper
pathos of the Passion, where has mental
agony found such awful utterance ? Nor
is the final line, —
But break, my heart, — for I must hold my
tongue !
any evidence of weakness. For what
cou/d the man say ? The throne was not
hereditary ; his mother was mistress of her
own hand ; he had no proof, not even a
fixed suspicion, of foul play. His tongue
s sealed until the coming of the Ghost.
It is manifest from the King's speech at
the opening of the second scene, that the
royal pair are then giving their Jirst audi-
ence of state. Cornelius and Voltimond
are dispatched to Norway ; the suit of
Laertes is heard and granted; and Ham-
let, who was not to be trusted abroad^
A Revietu of Hamlet
forbidden to return to Wittenberg. Most
assuredly, it is Hamlet's first public reap-
pearance. Since his father's funeral, he
has lived in the strictest seclusion, or he
could not else be ignorant of Horatio's
presence in Elsinore. It may be as well
to remember this ; for the play is so ellip-
tical, that one is apt to marvel why the two
friends have not sooner met. Some hint
of Hamlet's having been summoned to
Court to be publicly warned from re-
entering the University, must have leaked
out, or we should scarcely have Marcellus
saying —
And I this morning know
Where we shall find him most conveniently.
Horatio respected the Prince's privacy
until forced by love and duty to invade it.
But he could scarcely have been prepared
for the sad change in his schoolmate. He,
as well as Ophelia, had only known him as
The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue,
sword ;
19
A Review of Hamlet
The expectancy and Rose of the fair state,
The glass of fashion and the mould of form,
<The observ'd of all observers.
With too much reason, Hamlet had lost
all trust in his mother ; and when we cease
to trust our mothers, we cease to trust hu-
manity. Hamlet belonged to that middle
circle of the Sons of Light, who become
cynics, instead of villains, in adversity.
Characters of perfect sincerity, of exhaust^
less tenderness, of ready trust, when once
deceived by the few that were dearest, be-
come irrevocably mistrustful of all. Your
commonplace neighbor who knows himself
a sham, accepts, perhaps prefers, a society
of shams ; has no idea of being very true
to anybody, or of anybody's being very true
to him ; leads a sham life and dies a sham
death, — as near as the latter achievement
is possible, — leaving a set of sham mourn-
ers behind him. But the heart whose per-
fect insight is blinded only by its perfect
love, once fooled in its tenderest faith.
A Review of Hamlet
must be either saint or cynic ; must belong |
either to God or to doubt forevermore.
A blighted gentleness is as savage in the
expression of its scorn as your born mis-
anthropist or your natural villain ; save
that the hatred of the one is for vice, and
cant, and cunning, of the other for credulity
and virtue ; save that the last is cruel in
word and deed, the first in word alone.
Yet Hamlet is less a cynic than a satir-
ist, and less a satirist than a Nemesis.
Though merciless in plucking the mask
from a knave, a villain, or a fool, yet the
dormant tenderness which underlies his
character, flashes fitfully out through his
int'erviews with his mother, Laertes and
Polonius, as well as being steadily mani-
fest in his unquestioning trust in Horatio
after their reunion. For such a thorough
political change has overshadowed Den-
mark, that their meeting is rather a spirit-
ual reunion than an interview. By the
inexorable logic of events, Hamlet is
ranged against the throne, the conspicuous
A Review of Hamlet
head and front of a moral opposition, an
inevitable, though passive, rebel. If Ho-
ratio is loyal^ no matter what their previous
friendship, they are thenceforth foes. One
must have lived through civil war to ap-
preciate the dexterous nicety with which
Hamlet feels his former friend. And yet
this early association of excessive mistrust
with excessive morbidity, inclines us to sus-
pect that the subsequent shock of the Ghost
was rather an arrest of the slow degener-
ation of fixed melancholy into madness,
than an aggravation of antecedent lunacy.
(Enter Horatio, Marcellus, and Bernardo.)
Hor. Hail to your lordship.
Ham. I am glad to see you :
Horatio, — or I do forget myself.
Hor. The same, my lord, and your poor
servant ever.
Ham. Sir, my good friend, — I '11 change that
name with you :
Jnd what make you from Wittenberg^
Horatio f —
Marcellus ?
A Reviciu of Hamlet
Mar. My good lord —
Ham. 1 am very glad to see you. — Good
even, Sir. —
But whaty in faith ^ make you from
Wittenberg ?
Hor. A truant disposition good my lord.
Ham. I would not hear your enemy say so,
Nor shall you do mine ear that violence,
To make it truster of your ovi^n report
Against yourself. I know you are no
truant.
But what is your affair in Elsinore ?
For the third time. And see the dark
hinting in the next line at the royal ' rouse '
and * wassail ; ' at the orgies of the scan-
dalous wedding — as if Horatio might pos-
sibly have come to share the?n.
We '11 teach you to drink deep ere you depart.
Horatio instantly detects and answers the
inuendo.
My lord, I came to see your father's
funeral.
23
A Review of Hamlet
Ham. I pray thee, do not mock me, fellow-
student ;
I think it was to see my mother's
wedding.
Hor. Indeed^ my lord., it follovf d hard upon.
Even this little, from a man like Horatio,
is enough ; they are on the same side, rebels
both. Quick as lightning the glance is
given and returned ; he can trust Marcel-
lus and Bernardo too, and bares his heart
to them with a fierce sigh of relief.
Thrift, thrift, Horatio ! the funeral
baked meats
Did coldly furnish forth the marriage
tables.
Would I had met my dearest foe in
Heaven
Ere ever I had seen that day, Horatio.
My father, — methinks I see my father.
Hor. O where, my lord ?
Ham. In my mind's eye, Horatio.
Hor. I saw him once; he was a goodly King.
Ham. He was a man, take him for all in all,
I shall not look upon his like again.
24
A Review of Hamlet
This brief introduction to the main theme
is inimitable. How exquisitely the ear
is made to long for Horatio's blunt
transition :
My lord, I think I saw him yesternight.
Ham. Saw ! who ?
Hor. My lord, the King, your father.
Ham. The King, my father !
Hor. Season your admiration for awhile
With an attent ear, till I may deliver.
Upon the witness of these gentlemen,
This marvel to you.
Instead of being unnerved by the story,
the Prince is calm, collected, determined ;
cautious, reticent, and longing for night.
He dismisses them with the stately cour-
tesy which distinguishes him throughout
the play ; enjoining silence and promising
to share their watch betwixt eleven and
twelve.
Once more on the Platform before the
Castle, the poet's verse resumes the awful
minor in which his tragic preludes are so
often conceived.
25
A Review of Harnlet
(Enter Hamlet, Horatio, and Marcellus.)
Ham. The air bites shrewdly ; it is very cold.
Hor. It is a nipping and an eager air.
Ham. What hour now ?
Hor. I think it lacks of twelve.
Mar. No, it is struck.
Hor. Indeed ? I heard it not : then it draws
near the season
Wherein the spirit held his wont to
walk.
(Ajlourish of trumpets^ and ordnance shot off within.)
What does this mean, my lord ?
Ham. The King doth wake to-night, and takes
his rouse.
Keeps wassail, and the swaggering up-
spring reels ;
And as he drains his draughts of Rhenish
down.
This kettle-drum and trumpet thus bray
out
The triumph of his pledge.
Hor. Is it a custom ?
Ham. Ay, marry is it :
But to my mind, — though I am native
here,
26
A Revteiv of Htnnlet
And to the manner born — it is a custom
More honoured in the breach than the
observance.
We have quoted the whole scene up to
this pouit, because just here occurs the
first serious conflict between the Quarto
of 1604 and the Folio. The twenty-two
lines that follow in the modern text on
the authority of the Quarto, are wanting
in the Folio. As the Folio afterward
omits nearly the whole Fourth Scene of
the Fourth Act ; and as the larger omis-
sion involves almost essentially the charac-
ter of Hamlet himself, we propose to
inquire in advance whether these large
omissions on the part of the Folio are
deliberate or accidental.
* Previous to the publication of the
Folio edition of Shakespeare's dramatic
works in 1623, under the auspices of his
fellow-actors, Heminge and Condell,' says
Mr. Dyce in his Preface, * seventeen of
his plays had appeared in Quarto at
various dates. The Folio of 1623 in-
27
A Review of Hamlet
eludes, with the exception of Pericles, the
plays which had previously appeared in
quarto, and twenty others, which till then
had remained in manuscript. Though
these quartos — the Hamlet of 1604
amongst them — found their way to the
press without either the consent of the author
or of the managers, it is certain that nearly
all of them were printed, with more or less
correctness and completeness, from tran-
scripts of the theatre.' It must be con-
ceded, that the Quarto of 1 604 is especially
correct ; but still the original, or standard,
from which it was taken, remained, of
course, in the hands of Heminge and
Condell, who represented the management.
Now, it cannot be doubted, that Heminge
and Condell must have been perfectly
familiar with a 'stolen and surreptitious
copy * published right under their eyes in
Fleet street, at the very time they were
acting the Play. They must not only
have been conversant with a copy which
they specifically denounce, but, as old
28
A Review of Hamlet
' fellows of the Blackfriars,' they must
have had the true version at their fingers'
ends. So that if the Folio fail to repro-
duce a conspicuous passage of length
contained in a previous Quarto, the fair-
est inference would seem to be, that the
passage is either spurious or subsequently
condemned and erased by their associate
Shakespeare himself, or at his instance.
For it is inconceivable that two friends
and fellow-actors of Shakespeare's honor-
ably distinguished in his will^ however guilty
of minor inaccuracies, could have been so
inconceivably negligent as to overlook, or
so unconscientious as to suppress, without
the author's warrant, any genuine, accepted,
standard, salient portion of a leading part
— least of all, the leading part of Hamlet.
The temptation was all the other way —
to expansion, not contraction. The title
page of the Quarto of 1 604 professes to
give the play ' enlarged to almost as much
again as it was, according to the true and
perfect Coppie.' The editors of the
29
A Review of Hamlet
Folio were quite as anxious to exhibit the
writings of their departed friend, ' cured
and perfect of their limbs ' and * absolute
in their numbers.' Even the 'unex-
ampled carelessness' of Blount, the sup-
posed supervisor of the press copy
'handed over to him by Heminge and
Condell,' dared not wilfully ignore a
striking scene made still more memorable
by a long Soliloquy. The twenty-two
lines in question, as well as the scene in
the Fourth Act, although introduced at
the earlier rehearsals, must therefore have
been silenced in the standard copy. And
by the standard copy, we mean the acting
copy matured under Shakespeare's own
eye, and consecrated by his final imprim-
atur. At all events, the stolen Quarto
of 1604 cannot possibly dictate the final
aspect of a drama whose author lived
twelve years after its first surreptitious
publication. We must look to the Folio
for the latest phase of Shakespeare's
manuscripts ; and, faulty as it may be in
30
A Review of Hamlet
minor matters, we cannot but regard a
significant and palpably deliberate omis-
sion conclusive against the Quarto, in the
absence of direct proof, or the very
strongest intrinsic evidence to the con-
trary.
But in the case before us, and in the
vastly more important omission in the
Fourth Act, the intrinsic evidence sustains
the Folio. After
— it is a custom
More honoured in the breach than the obser-
vance,
the following lines are omitted in the
Folio :
This heavy-headed revel east and west
Makes us traduc'd and tax'd of other nations :
They clepe us drunkards, and with swinish
phrase
Soil our addition; and, indeed, it takes
From our achievements, though perform'd at
height,
The pith and marrow of our attribute.
3»
A Review of Hamlet
So, oft it chances in particular men,
That, for some vicious mole of nature in them,
As in their birth (wherein they are not guilty.
Since nature cannot choose his origin,)
By their o'ergrowth of some complexion.
Oft breaking down the pales and forts of
reason ;
Or by some habit that too much o'erleavens
The form of plausive manners ; — that these
men —
Carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect.
Being nature's livery or fortune's star, —
Their virtues else, (be they as pure as grace.
As infinite as man may undergo)
Shall in the general censure take corruption
From that particular fault : the dram of eale
Doth all the noble substance often doubt
To his own scandal.
' The dram of ;//
Doth all the noble substance throw in doubt,*
seems to be the meaning of the line.
Possibly the passage is genuine : an
overflow of Shakespeare's boundless wealth
of thought and imagery. But it is asking
too much, even of Hamlet, to moralize
32
A Review of Hamlet
at such length at such a moment. Moral-
izing to such little purpose, too, in a
feeble disquisition that soon degenerates
from parenthetical confusion into hopeless
bewilderment. It may indeed be urged
in support of the disquisition, that it pro-
longs the suspense; that it gives the three
watchers better opportunities of action ;
that Hamlet does not expect to be listened
to, in fact, is not half listening to himself,
— and hence, in the gradual entanglement
of the discourse, we have only another
miracle of Shakespeare's genius ; that, all
the while, Horatio and Marcellus can be
glancing back into the midnight for the
ghostly confirmation of their story ; that
Hamlet himself, with eye aslant, dimly
perceived the coming apparition while
stammering out that impotent conclusion ;
that Horatio's '' Look^ my lord^ it comes!'
besides being the rhythmical complement
of ' To his own scandal,' is too bald and
abrupt, and cannot directly follow * More
honoured in the breach than the observ-
3 33
A Review of Hamlet
ance^ without violating the very soul of
verse.
But strong as this plea is for the passage,
there is a stronger one against it : it is
weak. Not, by any means, that the youth
who could so calmly moralize at such a
crisis is weak, but that the disquisition
itself, good as it may be, is not good
enough for Hamlet — that the staple
thought is not up to the mark of that
divine intellect ; that it gives an undue
preponderance to the meditative element
in that complicated character; that it
begets a vague impression of feebleness at
variance with the radical conception of the
part; that it is clearly unequal to the rest
of the scene, and a blot on the magnifi-
cent sphere of thought and action by
which it is followed : that, although per-
mitting a little side play, which could
have been better attained, were it worth
while, by a brief hurried dialogue, it
darkens the coming splendor, and hovers
like a pall over that radiant afterflash —
34
A Review of Hamlet
Angels and ministers of grace, defend us !^
In fact there is almost an intrinsic certainty
that the poet cut out the passage without
ferfectly reuniting the broken thread. And
the wonder is, not that this small neglect
should occur — not that in the develop-
ment of a character so intricate, so refined,
so subtle, an incongruity should arise, —
but that one or two bold erasures should
leave the portraiture symmetrical and
complete.
In reply to Hamlet's invocation, the
Ghost merely beckons. Grand, deathless
words — much fearful, passionate striving
must ensue before the mighty phantom is
permitted to speak.
Hor. It beckons you to go away with it,
As if it some impartment did desire
To you alone.
Mar. Look, with what courteous action
It waves you to a more removed ground ;
But do not go with it.
Hor. No, by no means.
35
A Review of Hamlet
Ham. It will not speak ; then will I follow it.
Hor. Do not, my lord.
Ham. Why, what should be the fear ?
I do not set my life at a pin's fee ;
And for my soul, what can it do to that,
Being a thing immortal as itself?
How the two soldiers at his side — how
even the beckoning majesty of buried
Denmark — are dwarfed by this sublime
challenge flashed from the living to the
dead.
Ham. It waves me still. —
Go on ; I '11 follow thee.
Mar. You shall not go, my lord.
Ham. Hold off your hands.
Hor. Be rul'd; you shall not go.
Hain. My fate cries out.
And makes each petty artery in this body
As hardy as the Nemean lion's nerve.
(^Ghost beckons.')
Still am 1 call'd; unhand me, gentle-
men, — (^Breaking from them.)
By heaven, I '11 make a ghost of him
that lets me : —
I say, away ! — Go on ; I '11 follow thee.
36
A Revietv of Hamlet
The friendly grasp Is paralyzed less by an
exertion of the Nemean lion's nerve than
by the superhuman fitness and intellec-
tual glare of the threat. It is a spiritual
thunderbolt.
The scene shifts. Deeper gloom,
deeper horror: a place to put toys of
desperation into every brain. Once more
the Ghost — Hamlet following, haggard,
breathless: young life taxed to the utter-
most in its proud grapple with the
walking grave ; matchless intellect well
nigh strained to utter overthrow by the
terrors of this phantom chase; that voice-
less, armed spirit, the still, unpeopled
midnight, and the doomed boy of
Wittenberg !
After such profound elaboration and sus-
pense, the great difficulty, now that the
Ghost must speak, is to find adequate words
for him ; to make his language as effective
and unearthly as his bearing ; to give him
voice without damaging or destroying the
Illusion. This Is so perfectly managed,
37
A Review of Hamlet
however, that the spectre, instead of losing
in effect, becomes still more spectral by its
long revelation. The instant the figure
advances into broader light, the back-
ground deepens into darker mystery.
Ham. Where wilt thou lead me ? Speak; I'll
go no further.
Ghost. Mark me.
Ham. I will.
Ghost. My hour is almost come,
When I to sulphurous and tormenting
flames
Must render up myself.
Ham. Alas, poor ghost !
Ghost. Pity me not, but lend thy serious hearing
To what I shall unfold.
Ham. Speak ; I am bound
to hear.
Ghost. So art thou to revenge, when thou shalt
hear.
But that I am forbid
To tell the secrets of my prison-house,
I could a tale unfold, whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul ; freeze thy
young blood,
38
A Reviezu of Hamlet
Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from
their spheres ;
Thy knotted and combined locks to part.
And each particular hair to stand on end
Like quills upon the fretful porcupine.
But this eternal blazon must not be
To ears of flesh and blood.
Observe with what oracular antithesis the
climax of the story is put :
But know, thou noble youth,
The serpent that did sting thy father's life
Now wears his crown.
Observe the sepulchral iteration :
and again, —
Revenge his foul and most unnatural
murder.
Ham. Murder !
Ghost. Murder most foul, as in the best it is :
But this most foul, strange, and unnatural.
and again, —
O horrible ! O horrible ! most horrible !
39
A Review of Hamlet
and still again, —
Adieu, adieu ! Hamlet, remember me.
Observe, too, how, just when the language
mellows into mortal music, and the phan-
tom threatens to become too intensely
human, the torchlight of the supernatural
comes slanting in:
Hamlet, what a falling off was there !
From me whose love was of the dignity,
That it went hand in hand even with the
vow
1 made to her in marriage ; and to decline
Upon a wretch whose natural gifts were
poor
To those of mine.
But virtue, as it never will be mov'd.
Though lewdness court it in a shape of
heaven ;
So lust, though to a radiant angel link'd.
Will sate itself in a celestial bed,
And prey on garbage.
But soft ! methinks I scent the morning
air.
40
A Review of Hamlet
And still more exquisitely, —
Fare thee well at once !
The glow-worm shows the matin to be
near
And 'gins to pale his uneffectual fire.
Observe, too, — and this is the most won-
derful feature in all this wonderful business,
— how true the spirit keeps to both its
past and its present existence ; how doubly
faithful to the world and to the grave :
No reckoning made, but sent to my
account
With all my imperfections on my head.
If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not.
Let not the royal bed of Denmark be
A couch for luxury and damned incest.
But, howsoever thou pursu'st this act.
Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul
contrive
Against thy mother aught : leave her to
heaven,
41
A Review of Hamlet
And to those thorns that in her bosom
lodge,
To prick and sting her. Fare thee well
at once.
How piteous, this chivalrous tenderness
clinging even in the tomb to a lost, worth-
less idol !
Amidst all the emotions with which
Hamlet is simultaneously overwhelmed by
the interview, the first to assert itself defi-
nitely is pity. One brief appeal to heaven,
earth, and hell, — one call on heart and
sinews to bear him stifily up, — then pity,
pure and profound. And, at such a mo-
ment, the capacity to pity reveals an almost
infinite strength.
Remember thee !
Ay, thou poor ghost^ while memory holds a seat
In this distracted globe — Remember thee !
Yea, from the table of my memory
I '11 wipe away all trivial fond records
That youth and observation copied there ;
And thy commandment all alone shall live
Within the book and volume of my brain,
Unmixed with baser matter; yes, by heaven.
42
A Review of Hamlet
Up to this point nothing can be saner.
But just here, for a single second, his ' dis-
tracted ' brain gives way, as the vision of
the ' smiling, damned villain ' replaces that
of the vanished ghost.
. . ^
O most pernicious woman ! '^-— ^
villain, villain, smiling, damn6d villain.
J My tables, — meet it is I set it down.
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain ;
At least I 'm sure it may be so in Denmark :
So, uncle, there you are. Now to my word ;
It is, "Adieu, adieu ! remember me :"
1 have sworn 't.
Whatever may be thought of the words,
the action — that doomed figure, crouching
over its tables in the dim midnight, — is
a flash of positive madness, brief as light-
ning, but as terrible too. In this moment
of supreme trial, his mind gives way : the
remainder of the act is a struggle to restore
the lost equilibrium. And in all the annals
of tragedy, there is nothing half so fright-
ful as this tremendous conflict of a godlike
43
A Revietu of Hamlet
reason battling for its throne against Titanic
terror and despair, Lear is comparatively
an easy victim. The transition from se-
nility to dotage, from dotage to frenzy,
owing to its milder contrasts cannot be as
appalling as the sharp conflict between
mind in its morning splendor, and the
hurricane eclipse of sudden lunacy. The
first soliloquy revealed a predisposition to
madness ; but here the man actually goes
mad before our eyes — just as Lear goes
mad before our eyes, save that instead of
lapsing into fixed insanity like the old King,
^Hamlet emerges from the storm, radiant,
'calm, convalescent, victorious, but with a
jscar which he carries to his dying day.
But will you call him weak because his
reason sinks awhile beneath the double
pressure of natural anguish and supernatu-
ral terror ? Was Macbeth weak ? Yet,
in his own lighted halls, how quite un-
manned in folly one glimpse of the blood-
boltered Banquo makes him. Not till the
horrible shadow is gone, is Macbeth a man
4+
A Review of Hamlet
again ; not till tlie questionable shape that
makes night hideous departs, does the
braver soul of Hamlet betray its exhaus-
tion ; and then only after a long sigh of
pity! Was Richard weak? Yet in the
milder midnight of his tent, how ' the cold,
fearful drops stand on his trembling flesh,'
before those phantoms of a dream.
By the apostle Paul, shadows to-night
Have struck more terror to the soul of Richard,
Than can the substance of ten thousand soldiers
Armed in proof, and led by shallow Richmond.
Yet the shapes that awed those men of
steel were but coinage of the brain ; unreal
mockeries, all ; while Hamlet confronts,
and confronts unappalled, a well-authenti-
cated ghost — a ghost as visible to Horatio,
Marcellus, and Bernardo, as to himself.
Nor should his comparative sinlessness
affect our estimate of their relative courage.
The walking ghost of a murdered king,
fresh from the glare of penal fires, swear-
ing an only son to vengeance, must be
45
A Review of Hamlet
quite as trying to the soul of innocence,
as the chimeras of remorse to the nerves of
guilt. If Hamlet's reason is momentarily
dethroned, it is only to reassert its suprem-
acy — only to pass triumphantly through
the ordeal of delirious reaction. For that
moment of madness has its sure sequel of
delirium, — a delirium that could only
have flowed from an antecedent moment
of madness. The exhibition of this deli-
rium is the crowning achievement of the
Act, of the Play, — of all dramatic art. See
how he staggers back with ' wild and whirl-
ing words ' from the perilous edges of
madness ; see how dexterously, yet gro-
tesquely, he baffles the pardonable curios-
ity of his companions ; see how he jests
and laughs over the sepulchral * Swear ! '
of the fellow in the cellarage, lest sheer
horror should compel his friends to di-
vulge their ghastly secret.
Hor. My lord, my lord, —
Mnr. Lord Hamlet, —
Hor. (^IVithin.') Heaven secure him !
46
A Revietv of Hamlet
Mar. {JVithin.) So be it!
Hor. {IFithin.) Illo, ho, ho, my lord !
Ham. Hillo, ho, ho, boy ! come, bird, come.
Enter Horatio and Marcellus.
Mar. How is 't my noble lord ?
Hor. What news, my lord ?
Ham. O wonderful !
Hor. Good my lord, tell it.
Ham. No ; you '11 reveal it.
Hor. Not I, my lord, by heaven.
Mar. Nor I, my lord.
Ham. How say you, then ; would heart of man
once think it ?
But you '11 be secret.
Hor. Mar. Ay, by heaven, my lord.
Ham. There's ne'er a villain dwelling in all
Denmark
But he 's an arrant knave.
Hor. There needs no ghost, my lord, come from
the grave
To tell us this.
Ham. Why right ; you are i' the
right ;
And so, without more circumstance at all,
I hold it fit that we shake hands and part :
47
A Review of Hamlet
quite as trying to the soul of innocence,
as the chimeras of remorse to the nerves of
guilt. If Hamlet's reason is momentarily
dethroned, it is only to reassert its suprem-
acy — only to pass triumphantly through
the ordeal of delirious reaction. For that
moment of madness has its sure sequel of
delirium, — a delirium that could only
have flowed from an antecedent moment
of madness. The exhibition of this deli-
rium is the crowning achievement of the
Act, of the Play, — of all dramatic art. See
how he staggers back with * wild and whirl-
ing words ' from the perilous edges of
madness ; see how dexterously, yet gro-
tesquely, he baffles the pardonable curios-
ity of his companions ; see how he jests
and laughs over the sepulchral ^ Swear ! '
of the fellow in the cellarage, lest sheer
horror should compel his friends to di-
vulge their ghastly secret.
Hor. My lord, my lord, —
Mar. Lord Hamlet, —
Hor. (^IVithin.') Heaven secure him !
46
A Review of Hamlet
Mar. (/r///^/«.) Sobe it!
Hor. {IFithin.) Illo, ho, ho, my lord !
Ham. Hillo, ho, ho, boy ! come, bird, come.
Enter Horatio and Marcellus.
Mar. How is 't my noble lord ?
Hor. What news, my lord ?
Ham. O wonderful !
Hor. Good my lord, tell it.
Ham. No ; you '11 reveal it.
Hor. Not I, my lord, by heaven.
Mar. Nor I, my lord.
Ham. How say you, then ; would heart of man
once think it ?
But you '11 be secret.
Hor. Alar. Ay, by heaven, my lord.
Ham. There's ne'er a villain dwelling in all
Denmark
But he 's an arrant knave.
Hor. There needs no ghost, my lord, come from
the grave
To tell us this.
Ham. Why right ; you are i' the
right ;
And so, without more circumstance at all,
I hold it fit that we shake hands and part :
47
A Review of Hamlet
You, as your business and desire shall
point you,
For every man has business and desire,
Such as it is : and for mine own poor part,
Look you, I '11 go pray.
Hor. These are but wild and whirling words,
my lord.
Ham. I 'm sorry they offend you, heartily ;
Yes, faith, heartily.
Hor. There 's no offence, my
lord.
Ham. Yes, by Saint Patrick, but there is,
Horatio,
And much offence too. Touching this
\ vision here.
It is an honest ghost, that let me tell you :
For your desire to know what is between
us,
O'ermaster't as you may. And now,
good friends.
As you are friends, scholars and soldiers.
Give me one poor request.
Hor. What is 't, my lord ? We
will.
Ham. Never make known what you have seen
to-night.
48
A Review of Hamlet
Hor. Mar. My lord, we will not.
Ham. Nay, but swear 't.
Hor. In faith,
My lord, not I.
Mar. Nor I, my lord, in faith.
Ham. Upon my sword.
Alar. We have sworn, my lord,
already.
Ham. Indeed upon my sword, indeed.
Ghost. (Beneath.') Swear !
Ham. Ah, ha, boy ! say'st thou so ? art thou
there, truepenny.
Come on, — you hear this fellow in the
cellarage. —
Consent to swear.
Hor. Propose the oath, my lord.
Ham. Never to speak of this that you have seen.
Swear by my sword.
Ghost. {Beneath.) Swear.
Ha?n. Hie et ubique F then we '11 shift our
ground. —
Come hither, gentlemen.
And lay your hands again upon my sword.
Never to speak of this that you have
heard,
Swear by my sword.
4 49
A Review of Hamlet
Ghost. (^Beneath. ^ Swear.
Ham. Well said, old Mole ! canst work i' the
earth so fast ? —
A worthy pioneer ! — Once more re-
move, good friends.
Hor. O day and night, but this is wondrous
strange !
Ham. And therefore as a stranger give it wel-
come.
There are more things in heaven and
earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
But come : —
Here, as before, never, so help you
mercy,
How strange or odd soe'er I bear my-
self, —
As I, perchance, hereafter shall think
meet
To put an antic disposition on, —
That you, at such times seeing me, never
shall,
With arms encumbered thus, or this
head-shake,
Or by pronouncing of some doubtful
phrase,
50
A Review of Hamlet
As " Well, well, we know " : or " We
could an if we would ";
Or "If we list to speak"; or "There
be, an if they might " ;
Or such ambiguous giving out, to note
That you know aught of me : — this not
to do.
So grace and mercy at your most need
help you.
Swear.
Ghost. (^Beneath.') Swear.
There is a purpose in all this minute
precaution. One unwary syllable, one in-
discreet hint of the apparition, and instead
of becoming an avenger, the chances are
that he will become a victim. As for now
sweeping to revenge on wings as swift as
meditation, or the thoughts of love, it is
simply absurd. His mission is too vast
and complicated to be solved in one fiery
second ; his life is no longer merely conse-
crated to woe, but summoned to a perilous
and unwelcome duty. That grim, ocular
demonstration of the existence of penal
51
A Revieiv of Harnlet
fires, has clogged the impulse of human
revenge with a salutary appreciation of
eternal justice. The future is vague and
hopeless, but, come what may, he means
to be master of the situation. His man-
ner must necessarily change, but he will
mask the change with madness — an easy
mask for one whose whole life is spent in
holding real madness at bay, — whose rea-
son would be lost in dark abysses of
despair, but for the quenchless truth and
splendor of an imagination which encircles
and upholds him like an outstretched
angel's wing. As if that one instant of
aberration were providentially suggestive,
*he plays,' as Coleridge observes, 'that
subtle trick of pretending to act the lunatic
only when he is very near being what he
pretends to act.' It is not the past, but a
clear vision of the future, that extorts that
prophetic sigh.
The time is out of joint; O cursed spite
That ever I was born to set it right.
52
A Review of Hamlet
The inspiration of that sigh is Ophelia ;
for, as we shall see, the gloom of that first
soliloquy is not without its solitary ray
of light.
Now mark with what consummate art
it happens, that on the very eve of that
fearful midnight, — precisely as Hamlet
is about to undergo the most appalling
ordeal that ever man sustained, the tragic
muse foreshadows another crowning sor-
row for the doomed scion of Denmark.
The fair Ophelia is made to flit before
us, graceful, reticent, tender, — saying the
very word that's wanted and nothing more;
witty, high-bred, resolute — just such a lady
as such a prince might love,
— ' whose worth
Stood challenger on mount of all the age
For her perfections : '
a * Rose of May ' that turned
* to favour and to prettiness '
* Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself.'
53
A Review of Hamlet
What a lady she is ! How archly she
turns the tables on her light-headed, loud-
mouthed brother, in words as memorable
as any in the play :
But good my brother,
Do not as some ungracious pastors do,
Show me the steep and thorny way to
heaven ;
Whilst, like a pufFd and reckless liber-
tine,
Himself the primrose path of dalliance
treads.
And recks not his own read.
Laer. O fear me not,
I stay too long.
Too long, decidedly ; that home-thrust
was sharper than the sword of Saladin.
But observe how differently she encoun-
ters her father; though infinitely more
insulted and nettled by the broad sar-
casms of the Premier, she never permits
herself to be stirred an inch from maidenly
dignity, or to violate the completest filial
respect and obedience.
54
A Review of Hamlet
Pol. What is 't Ophelia, he {Laertes) hath said
to you ?
Oph. So please you, something touching the
Lord Hamlet.
Pol. Marry, well bethought :
'T is told me, he hath very oft of late
Given private time to you ; and you your-
self
Have of our audience been most free and
bounteous ;
What is between you ? give me up the
truth.
Oph. He hath, my lord, of late, made many
tenders
Of his affection for me.
Pol. Affection ! pooh ! you speak like a green
girl,
Unsifted in such perilous circumstance.
Do you believe his tenders as you call
them ! —
Opho I do not know my lord what I should
think.
Pol. Marry, I '11 teach you ; think yourself a
baby ;
55
A Review of Hamlet
That you have ta'en these tenders for
true pay,
Which are not sterling. Tender your-
self more dearly ;
Or you '11 tender me a fool.
Oph. My lord, he hath importuned me with
love
In honourable fashion.
Pol. Ay, fashion you may call it ; go to, go to.
Oph. And hath given countenance to his speech,
my lord.
With almost all the holy vows of heaven.
Pol. Ay, springes to catch woodcocks —
— From this time
Be somewhat scanter of your maiden
presence ;
Set your entreatments at a higher rate —
Than a command to parley.
This is for all.
I would not., in plain terms., from this time
forth.
Have you so slander any moments leisure.^
As to give words or talk with the Lord
Hamlet.
Look to '/, / charge you : come your ways.
Oph. I shall obey., my lord.
56
A Revieiv of Hamlet
Observe that it is of late he hath given
private time to her ; of late he hath made
many tenders of his affection ; so that in
spite of the first soliloquy, in spite of his
wish to return to Wittenberg, it may fairly
be inferred that elastic youth was striving
to repair its first great sorrow, with its
first great love, — that the * O cursed spite ! '
is not the lament of a laggard, but of a
lover. And, as he proudly rallies from
the agonies of that eventful midnight,
asserting a quiet mastery, not only over
his two friends, but over the impatient
Ghost, our hearts bleed for him, as we
think of the blow that Polonius is stealthily
preparing.
So much has been said about the vacil-
lation and procrastination of this much
misrepresented Prince, that one would
suppose the action of the Play consumed
a year or two. Let us endeavor to fix
the extent of his loitering.
The First Act occupies exactly twenty-
four hours. The interval between the
57
A Review of Hamlet
First and Second Acts is less easily deter-
mined. Hamlet himself is scarcely an au-
thority as to time; his indignant rhetoric
openly disclaims fidelity to arithmetic.
First, his father had been * two months
dead ' when his mother re-married, then
* not two,' then * within a month,' * a little
month — ' and finally less than ' two hours.'
But the reiteration of the same numeral is
something ; and OpheUa lets us know, in
the Third Act, that it is then just * Twice
two months ' since the regicide. So, allow-
ing a two months' widowhood to the
Queen, and counting some weeks or days
between the second marriage and the first
appearance of the spectre, we have less
than two months, as the interval between
the Acts and the measure of Hamlet's de-
lay — the only delay with which he can be
rationally reproached, since after the killing
of Polonius he was a State prisoner.
The First and Second Acts, however,
are so inseparably linked in horror by
Ophelia's terrible picture of her interview
58
A Review of Hamlet
with her discarded lover, that it is difficult
to escape the impression that Hamlet
stalked straight from the haunted plat-
form into her chamber.
Pol. How now, Ophelia ! What 's the matter ?
Oph. Alas, my lord, I have been so affrighted !
Pol. With what, i' the name of God ?
Oph. My lord, as I was sewing in my chamber.
Lord Hamlet, — with his doublet all un-
brac'd, —
No hat upon his head ; his stockings
foul'd,
Ungarter'd and down-gyved to his ankle ;
Pale as his shirt; his knees knocking each
other ;
And with a look so piteous in purport
As if he had been loosed out from hell
To speak of horrors, — he comes before
me.
Pol. Mad for thy love ?
Oph. My lord, I do not know ;
But truly I do fear it.
Pol. What said he ?
Oph. He took me by the wrist and held me hard ;
Then goes he to the length of all his arm;
59
A Revieiu of Hamlet
And with his other hand thus o'er his brow,
He falls to such perusal of my face
As he would draw it. Long stay'd he so ;
At last, — a little shaking of mine arm,
And thrice his head thus waving up and
down, —
He rais'd a sigh so piteous and profound
That it did seem to shatter all his bulk,
And end his being : that done, he lets me
go
And, with his head over his shoulders
turn'd,
' He seem'd to find his way without his
eyes.
For out o' doors he went without their
help,
And, to the last, bended their light on me.
We are not permitted to see Hamlet in
this * ecstacy of love.' But what a picture !
What vivid detail ! What awful light and
shade ! How he must have loved her,
that love should bring him to such a pass ?
his knees knocking each other? — knees
that had firmly followed a beckoning ghost,
now scarce able to bear him to his Mistress'
60
A Revinu of Hamlet
chamber ! There is more than the love
of forty thousand brothers in that hard
grasp of the wrist — - in that long gaze at
arms' length — in the force that might, but
wi/i not, draw her nearer ! And never a
word from this king of words ! His ^rsf
great silence — the second is death ! They
may meet again — meet a thousand times
— meet to-morrow, or next day, or the
day after ; but with the open grave of their
dead love between them forevermore !
The cause of this despair is palpable:
Pol. What ! have you given him any hard words
of late ?
Oph. No, my good lord ; but, as you did com-
mand,
I did repel his letters and denied
His access to me.
So that in the interval between those acts,
he has sought her more than once ; she
has repelled his letters — plural. Yet he
could only have sought her to whisper
some sad parting, for he knew that he was
6i
A Review of Hamlet
doomed ! Perhaps he may have dreamed
of finding counsel in her eyes — of resting
that tormented forehead for the last time
on her knees ! Instead of this, the doors
are closed against him ! Dismissed, for-
saken, just as the glance of a fond woman's
eye, the touch of a true woman's hand,
was most needed ! Was it not enough
to madden him ? Was it not enough to
turn him mercilessly against the sly old
trimmer whose finger he detected in the
transaction — whom he must always have
detested as his uncle's Premier, had he
not been Ophelia's father? Would he
have been mortal, would he have been a
lover, had he not hated Polonius ? And
yet when they next meet, we are startled
by the savage flash of a scorn, for which
we are unprepared only because the grand
Master has not deigned to re-state the
provocation.
This is one of the most amusing of
Hamlet's engagements. How confidently
the veteran sails into action I —
62
A Review of Hamlet
Pol. At such a time I '11 loose my daughter to
him :
Be you and I behind an arras then ;
Mark the encounter ; if he love her not,
And be not from his reason fall'n thereon,
Let me be no assistant for a state.
But keep a farm and carters.
King. We will try it.
^teen. But look where sadly the poor wretch
comes reading.
Pol. Away, I do beseech you, both away :
I '11 board him presently : — O, give me
leave.
{Exeunt King., ^een and Attendants.)
Enter Hamlet reading.
How does my good Lord Hamlet ?
Ham. Well, God-a-mercy.
Pol. Do you know me, my lord ?
Ham. Excellent, excellent well ; you are a fish-
monger.
Pol. Not I, my lord.
Ham. Then I would you were so honest a man.
Pol. Honest, my lord !
Ham. Ay, sir ; to be honest, as this world goes,
is to be one man picked out of ten
thousand.
63
A Review of Hamlet
This is pitiless. But there is nothing so
insufferable to a lofty and morbidly acute
ir^telligence in its prime, as the devices of
a wi4y, aggressive old age — - the ' slyness
blinking through the watery eye of super-
annuation.' Yet, with all his drivel, the
ancient diplomat is no despicable antago-
nist: he is still an overmatch for most men.
Though on a false trail now, there is no
telling when he may strike the true one.
He is ' too busy, and that alone is * some
danger.' Still, we could hardly forgive
the grim delight with which Hamlet lashes
the bewildered and discomfited politician,
were it not for that triple wail, ' except my
life, except my life, except my life ! ' This
arrests our sympathy just as it is about to
side with Polonius, by reminding us of the
insignificance of the pain the prince inflicts
when weighed against the torture he en-
dures. The Premier's advance of Rosen-
crantz and Guildenstern to cover his own
retreat, is exceedingly humorous.
66
A Revieiu of Hamlet
Enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
Pol. You go to seek the Lord Hamlet ; there
he is: — [accented just as if he had
said.
You go to seek the devil ; there he is /] —
{Exit POLONIUS.)
Through Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
Hamlet is presented to us under his sub-
tlest intellectual aspects. These two young
gentlemen have been summoned to Court,
and delicately commissioned to * draw out *
Hamlet, and gather the secret cause of his
affliction ; in consideration whereof they
are to receive such thanks as Jits a King s
remembrance. They had been brought up
with him, ' neighbour'd to his youth and
humour,' old schoolmates and friends ; yet,
at the first intimation of their royal mas-
ter, they cheerfully sink into paid spies.
\n their very first interview at Court, they
display a talent for self-abasement.
Thanks, Rosencrantz and gentle Guildenstern.
Thanks, Guildenstern and gentle Rosencrantz.
67
A Review of Hamlet
They are bought up, body and soul, and
the Queen says amen to the bargain.
Hamlet, though entirely ignorant of the
transaction, is instinctively on his guard,
and divines their mission at sight.
The best and most characteristic por-
tion of the scene, one of the finest in the
Play, is omitted in the Quarto — another
indication, we think, that the Quarto was
from an earlier version, and that we must
regard the Folio as the standard. For, in
this omitted passage, two essential points
are introduced ; namely, Hamlet's total
lack of ambition, and the circumstance of
his having servants of his own ; which lat-
ter fact would facilitate his fitting out or
engaging a privateer, or negotiating with
Fortinbras to intercept his voyage to Eng-
land — a point to be considered presently.
Guild. Mine honour'd lord.
Ros. My most dear lord.
Ham. My excellent good friends! How dost
thou, Guildenstern ? Ah, Rozencrantz !
Good lads, how do ye both ?
68
A Review of Hamlet
Very genial in expression ; but instead of
giving them his hand, he institutes a cross-
examination.
Ham. What 's the matter ?
Ros. Nothing, my lord, but that the world 's
grown honest.
Ham. Then is doom's-day near : but your news
is not true.
The Ouarto is silent here ; the Folio pro-
ceeds, —
Let me question more in particular :
What have you, my good friends, de-
served at the hands of fortune that
she sends you to prison hither ?
Guild. Prison, my lord ?
Ham. Denmark's a prison.
Ros. Then is the world one.
Ham. A goodly one; in which there are many
confines, wards and dungeons, Den-
mark being one o' the worst.
Ros. We think not so, my lord.
Ham. Why then 't is none to you ; for there is
nothing either good or bad, but think-
ing makes it so : to me it is a prison.
69
A Review of Hamlet
Ros. Why then your ambition makes it one ;
'tis too narrow for your mind.
Ham. O God, I could be bounded in a nut-
shell, and count myself a king of infi-
nite space, were it not that I have had
bad dreams.
Guild. Which dreams indeed are ambition ; for
the very substance of the ambitious is
merely the shadow of a dream.
Ham. A dream itself is but a shadow.
Ros. Truly, and I hold ambition of so airy
and light a quality, that it is but a
shadow's shadow.
Ham. Then are our beggars bodies, and our
monarchs and outstretch'd heroes the
beggars' shadows. Shall we go to the
Court ? for by my fay, I cannot
reason.
Ros.., Guild. We '11 wait upon you.
Ham. No such matter : I will not sort you
with the rest of my servants ; for, to
speak to you like an honest man, I
am most dreadfully attended.
How vainly, yet how persistently, they en-
deavor to convict him of ambition ! How
70
A Revie%u of Hamlet
superbly he disclaims ! He is King already !
King wherever reason may clamber, wher-
ever imagination may soar ! Monarch of
all the realms of earth, and air, and ocean !
Emperor of infinite space ! What cares
he for the crown of Denmark ? He never
once alludes to its loss, save in that final
summing up against his uncle; and then
only as an item on the side of * perfect
conscience ' : —
He that hath
Popped in between the election and my hopes.
His insecure, uninfluential, beggared posi-
tion at Court, is only glanced at in excuse
for not being better able to serve his
friends : once at the end of the First Act,
And what so poor a man as Hamlet is
May do to express his love and friending to you
God willing, shall not lack : —
and twice in the scene we are now examin-
ing.
Hamlet's reply to Rosencrantz, ' Then
71
A Review of Hamlet
are our beggars bodies,' etc., is far from
clear ; but it seems to mean, ' Then are our
beggars ' {who have no ambition) ' bodies,
and our monarchs and outstretched heroes *
{who having ambition^ are therefore nobodies)
* but the beggars' shadows.'
The Quarto and Folio now proceed in
unison. How finely the Prince plucks
out the heart of their mystery ! How
they blush, and quail, and stammer, be-
neath his eye !
Ham. But in the beaten way of friendship, what
make you at Elsinore ?
Ros. To visit jott, my lord : no other occasion.
Ham. Beggar that I am, I am even poor in
thanks ; but I thank you : and sure,
dear friends, my thanks are too dear, a
halfpenny. Were you not sent for ?
is it your own inclining ? Is it a free
visitation ? Come, deal justly with
me : come, come ; nay, speak.
Guild. What should we say, my lord ?
Ham. Anything — but to the purpose. You
were sent for ; and there is a kind
of confession in your looks, which
72
A Review of Hamlet
your modesties have not craft enough
to colour : I know, the good king and
queen have sent for you.
Ros. To what end, my lord ?
Ham. That you must teach me. But let me
conjure you, by the rights of our fel-
lowship, by the consonancy of our
youth, by the obligation of our ever
preserv'd love, and by what more dear
a better purposer could charge you
withal, be even and direct with me,
whether you were sent for, or no ?
Ros. What say you ? (To Guildenstern.)
Ham. Nay then I have an eye of you j {aside)
if you love me, hold not off.
Guild. My lord, we were sent for.
Ham. I will tell you why ; so shall my antici-
pation prevent your discovery, and
your secrecy to the king and queen
moult no feather. I have of late (but
wherefore I know not) lost all my
mirth, foregone all custom of ex-
ercises : and indeed it goes so heavily
with my disposition, that this goodly
frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile
promontory ; this most excellent can-
73
A Review of Ha ml 6
opy, the air, look you, this brave o'er-
hanging firmament, this majestical roof
fretted with golden fire, why, it ap-
pears no other thing to me, than a
foul and pestilent congregation of va-
pours. What a piece of work is man!
How noble in reason ! how infinite in
faculties ! in form and moving, how
express and admirable ! in action how
like an angel ! in appearance, how like
a god ! the beauty of the world ! the
paragon of animals ! And yet, to me,
what is this quintesscence of dust ?
Man delights not me, nor woman
neither ; though by your smiling you
seem to say so.
Ros. My lord, there is no such stuff in my
thoughts.
Ham. Why did you laugh, then, when I said,
Man delights not me ?
Ros. To think, my lord, if you delight not in
man, what lenten entertainment the
players shall receive from you : we
coted them on the way ; and hither
are they coming to offer you service.
Ham. He that plays the king shall be welcome ;
74
A Review of Hamlet
his majesty shall have tribute of me:
the adventurous knight shall use his
foil and target : the lover shall not
sigh gratis ; the humorous man shall
end his part in peace; the clown
shall make those laugh whose lungs
are tickled o' the sere ; and the lady
shall say her mind freely, or the blank
verse shall halt for't. What players
are thev ?
Ros. Even those you were wont to take de-
light in, the tragedians of the city.
Ham. How chances it they travel ? Their
residence both in reputation and profit
was better, both ways.
Ros. I think their inhibition comes by means
of the late innovation.
Ham. Do they hold the same estimation they
did, when I was in the city ? Are
they so followed ?
Ros. No, indeed, they are not
Ham. It is not strange ; for mine uncle is King
of Denmark;, and those that would
make mowes at him while my father
lived, give twenty, forty, fifty, an hun-
dred ducats a-piece, for his picture in
75
A Review of Hamlet
little. 'Sblood, there is something in
this more than natural, if philosophy
could find it out.
{^Flourish of trumpets within.')
Observe that it is only under protest,
and the compulsion of etiquette, that Ham-
let finally offers his hand.
Guild. There are the players.
Ham. Gentlemen, you are welcome to Elsi-
nore. Your hands, come. The ap-
purtenance of welcome is fashion and
ceremony, let me comply with you in
this garb, lest my extent to the play-
ers, which I tell you, must show
fairly outward, should appear more
like entertainment than yours. You
are welcome, but my uncle-father and
aunt-mother are deceived.
Guild. In what, my dear lord ?
Ham. I am but mad north-northwest : when
the wind is southerly I know a hawk
from a handsaw.
What a fine mixture of scorn and humor,
and old academic tenderness ! It suggests
76
A Revieiv of Hamlet
Ivanhoe's raising his lance to De Grant-
mesnil. He has already practically for-
given them. They are schoolmates again,
for the nonce, as he leans between them
— ' at each ear a hearer,' with his back to
Polonius.
Pol. Well be with you, gentlemen.
Ham. Hark you, Guildenstern ; and you too,
at each ear a hearer. That great
baby you see there, is not yet out of
his swathing-clouts.
Ros. Haply, he's the second time come to
them ; for they say an old man is
twice a child.
Ham. I will prophesy he comes to tell me of
the players ; mark it. You say right,
sir : Monday morning ; 't was so,
indeed.
Pol. My lord, I have news to tell you.
Ham. My lord, I have news to tell you.
When Roscius was an actor at Rome, —
Pol. The actors have come hither, my lord.
Ham. Buz, buz !
Pol. Upon my honour, —
Ham. Then came each actor on his ass, —
77
A Review of Hamlet
Pol. The best actors in the world, either for
tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral-
comical, historical-pastoral, scene in-
dividable, or poem unlimited : Seneca
cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus too
light. For the law of writ, and the
liberty, these are the only men.
Ham. O Jephthah, Judge of Israel, — what a
treasure hadst thou !
Pol. What a treasure had he my lord ?
Ham. Why — one fair daughter and no more,
The which he loved passing well.
Pol. Still on my daughter. (^Aside.)
Ham. Am I not i' the right, old Jephthah ?
This ominous Insinuation was going a step
too far ; and a twinge of self-reproach may
have prompted the warning to the First
Player, * Follow that lord ; and look you mock
him not.' No unnecessary warning, for that
First Player's eye had been on Polonius
with malice aforethought ever since the
Premier's
' That 's good : mobled queen is good f '
78
A Review of Hamlet
But all this while Hamlet has been
silently planning his Mousetrap.
Ham. Can you play the murder of Gon-
zago ?
First Player. Ay, my lord.
Ham. We'll ha't to-morrow night. You
could, for a need, study a speech
of some dozen or sixteen lines,
which I would set down and
insert in 't, could you not ?
First Player. Ay, my lord. {Exit First Player.)
{Exeunt Ros. and Guild.)
Ham. Now I am alone !
With what fierce delight he hails the mo-
ment ! His fingers are itching for his
sword hilt! His rage must have vent,
or it will kill him. Maddened by the
forced delay, he turns on himself like a
scorpion walled with fire.
O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I !
Is it not monstrous that this Player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit,
79
A Review of Hamlet
That, from her working, all his visage warm'd j
Tears in his eyes, distraction in 's aspect,
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting.
With forms, to his conceit ? and all for nothing ?
For Hecuba ?
What 's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
That he should weep for her ? What would
he do.
Had he the motive and the cue for passion.
That I have ? He would drown the stage with
tears,
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech,
Make mad the guilty and appal the free ;
Confound the ignorant, and amaze, indeed.
The very faculties of ears and eyes.
Yet I,
A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak.
Like John-a-dreams, impregnant of my cause.
And can say nothing. No, not for a King,
Upon whose property and most dear life
A damn'd defeat was made. Am I a coward ?
Who calls me villain, breaks my pate across.
Plucks off my beard, and blows it in my face ?
Tweaks me by th' nose, gives me th' lie i' th'
throat.
As deep as to the lungs ? Who does me this ?
80
A Review of Hamlet
Yet I should take it — for it cannot be,
But I am pigeon-liver'd, and lack gall
To make oppression bitter ; or, ere this,
I should have fatted all the region kites
With this slave's ofFal. Bloody, bawdy villain !
Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless
villain !
O vengeance !
The instant the fit is over, he despises his
frenzy.
Why, what an ass am I ? This is most brave,
That I, the son of a dear father murder'd.
Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,
Must
fall a-cursing, like a very drab,
A scullion !
Fie upon 't ! fob !
It is true, that Hamlet is constitutionally-
averse to violence ; that he is not ^splenitive
and rash ; ' that he * lacks gall to make
oppression bitter ; ' that his weakness and
his melancholy * have increased his apathy
to all things, even to revenge ; ' that he
6 8i
A Reviezu of Hamlet
habitually exhibits that chronic antipathy
to action which accompanies extreme ner-
vous depression. But as for cowardice ? —
from such cowards defend us heaven ! Once
roused, he never sets his life at a pin's fee :
the * something dangerous ' becomes some-
thing terrible. There is not a hero in
Shakespeare — - Macbeth, with harness on
his back, — Lear, with his good, biting fal-
chion, — Othello, with that little arm up-
lifted, — ay, even Richard, when a thousand
hearts are great within his bosom — who
would not quail before the Berserker wrath
of this Viking's son I — while, in the blaze
of his dazzling irony, Falstaff himself
would shrivel up into Slender?
'^' But it is time to explain the true causes
of Hamlet's delay. He is not merely the
heir of a swift revenge but the princely
representative of a ' cause and a name,'
which must be reported, aright to the un-
satisfied. How could he then kill the King
without passing for a common cutthroat?
Shall the annals of Denmark be allowed
82
A Review of Hamlet
to perpetuate his uncle as a martyr and
himself as an assassin ? He more than
half believed the Ghost's story, and hence
his vehement self-accusal ; but to proceed
to extremities, without corroborate testi-
mony, would have been both a crime and
a blunder. IVe want no farther proof:
we are initiated spectators, and have full
faith in the word of the majestic apparition.
But were we called upon to act as Hamlet
was, we should think twice before we as-
tonished our friends in particular and man-
kind in general by exterminating a royal
uncle at the special private request of the
ghost of a defunct Paterfamilias. What-
ever may have been Hamlet's shortcom-
ings, he was distinctly no t a fn^ l. And it
is impossible to conceive any better, swifter
or surer way of accomplishing his compli-
cated mission than by that very assumption
of lunacy on the one hand, and the expedi-
ent of the Interlude on the other. The
first would mitigate the verdict of posterity
if sudden fury should goad him into pre-
83
A Review of Hamlet
mature assault, as happened once and nearly
twice ; the second, by startling the King
into some word or gesture of self-betrayal,
would serve to justify or palliate a more
deliberate revenge. Public verification —
human testimony to the truth — of that
ghostly charge was not to be obtained in a
day or an hour. Hamlet seized the very
first opportunity that ofi^ered : and it re-
quired both consummate ingenuity and
consummate daring to devise and carry out
the expedient. Away with idle words and
cursing like a scullion !
About my brain! I have heard
That guilty creatures sitting at a play,
Have by the very cunning of the scene
Been struck so to the soul, that presently
They have proclaimed their malefactions ;
For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak
With most miraculous organ. I '11 have these
players
Play something like the murder of my father
Before mine uncle: I '11 observe his looks ;
I '11 tent him to the quick : if he but blench,
. 84
A Revieiv of Hamlet
I know my course. The spirit that I have seen
May be the devil : and the devil hath pouter
To assume a pleasing shape ; yea, and perhaps
Out of my weakness and my melancholy
(As he is very potent with such spirits,)
Abuses me to damn me : I '11 have grounds
More relative than this : — the play 's the thing
Wherein I '11 catch the conscience of the king.
But there is a spiritual necessity for re-
tarded instead of precipitate action. That
smiling damned villain is a fascination : it
would be a mistake to slay him out of hand :
the joy of one sharp second is nothing to
the delight of watching him, day by day,
unconsciously moving nearer to his doom.
Had the King a thousand lives, to take
them one by one were less enjoyment
than the revelry of deepening hatred, the
luxury of listening to the far music of the
forging bolt. Who has not recognized, in
some degree, the charm of the suspended
claw, or comprehended the stern joy of the
lion in his lair? The crimes of this scep-
tered fratricide are stale : the murdered
85
A Review of Hamlet
man is dust : his widow old in incest : there
is no fresh, living horror to clamor for
instant retribution. Indeed there is no
adequate retribution possible, except such
as the soul of the Avenger can find in sat-
urating itself with the spectacle of its victim.
The naked fact of killing the King would
be poor revenge save as the climax of ante-
cedent torture, — not physical, but mental
and spiritual torture. For when mind and
heart are outraged, they seek to be avenged
in kind. To haunt that guilty court like
a spectre ; to hang destruction by a hair
above the throne ; to wean his mother from
her low cleaving ; to vex the state with
turbulent and dangerous lunacy ; to make
that sleek usurper quail and cower in every
conflict ; to lash him with unsparing scorn ;
to foil him at every turn ; to sting him to
a new crime ; to drag him from his throne,
a self-convicted felon, and, ultimately, with
one crowning sword-thrust to make all even,
— this is the nearest approach to atonement
of which the case is susceptible.
86
A Review of Haiulct
But the impulse of conscience, as well
as of nature, was against a precipitate, head-
long assault. Hamlet is represented not
only as a prince and a man, but as a Chris-
tian ; and as a Christian he may be par- \
doned, even at this day^ for being partially
influenced by his faith. The manifest
Christian duty under the circumstance was
forgiveness : there is no such word as
revenge in the lexicon of Calvary. Tried
by the Christian standard, the very poor-
est revenge he could take would be to send
his own soul helplessly after his sire's just
for the sake of shortening the life and
accelerating the perdition of one who was
pretty sure in due season to damn himself.
The classics have so profoundly pagan-
ized our tastes, that our secret wish is, not
that he should shut both ears to the vin-
dictive whispers of a questionable shape, but
that he should finish up the matter like a
man and play the executioner with less
mouthing. But Hamlet is not * the passion
puppet of fate^ but the representative of an
87
A Review of Hamlet
august will' {De ^incey). Free will and
conscience both rebel at this dictation of
the grave, this super-position of destiny.
The soul immortal as itself consents to
follow the phantom so far, but no farther;
and although sorely tempted to aggression,
remains virtually defensive to the end, ex-
pectant of the mediation of Providence
but disdaining the compulsion of destiny.
There 's a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we may.
The power referred to is God, not fate.
Even before that glance beyond the grave,
that verification of penal fire, he respects
the * canon 'gainst self-slaughter.' On
meeting the ghost, his first ejaculation is a
prayer,
Angels and ministers of grace defend us,
just as afterward in the interview with the
Queen,
Save me and hover o'er me with your wings,
You heavenly guards !
A Review of Hamlet
The surmise that the spirit he has seen
may be the devil, and that the devil hath
power to assume a pleasing shape, so far
from being an overnice after-scruple, is his
first misgiving.
Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn'd,
Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from
hell;
Be thy intents wicked or charitable,
Thou com'st in such a questionable shape
That I will speak to thee.
^lestionable from the first. And even
after his love and pity are fully enlisted,
he cannot banish that grim suspicion of
diablerie,
O all you host of heaven ! O earth ! What else ?
And shall I couple hell?
* So art thou to revenge when thou
shalt hear,' is hardly the language of a soul
in Purgatory, the sphere to which the
spirit professes to belong. He cannot
divest himself of the darker supposal :
89
A Review of Hamlet
He took my father grossly, full of bread ;
With all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May ;
And how his audit stands, who knows saw,
heav'n i
But, in our circumstance and course of thought
'Tis heavy with him.
So that although the fear of the worst
deepens and intensifies his wrath, he can-
not, without more or less misgiving,
wholly abandon himself to a revenge
prompted, as he says, by hell as well as
heaven.
It is precisely this influence of faith, and
this consequent confusion of purpose, that
lends such a deep, uncertain, unfathomable
interest to the Play. The human, at its
best, is beautiful, as well as the divine ; and
most especially attractive when enriched
with just so much of the divine as enters
into the composition of your average Chris-
tian. A Christian rarely presents the same
harmonious front to fate which the antique
not only permitted, but exacted. When
the grave is the consummation, the absolute
90
A Review of Hamlet
finale of existence, except as a dim shade,
it is comparatively easy to round the heroic
evenly and symmetrically up to that mar-
gin. But when death is the door to vaster
spheres and wider experiences, when this
little life is but the prelude to unending
futurities of infinite bliss or infinite despair,
the deeper faith should find its echo in
deeper art. In Hamlet, as in Faust, more
grandly, though less avowedly, the immor-
tal weal or woe of a human soul is at stake ;
and we catch ourselves listening for the
spirit voices at the end,
' He is judged ! ' — * He is saved ! '
It is precisely here that he explains him-
self in that marvellous monologue which
fills the heart of this troubled symphony
with an Adagio of calm, infinite, unearthly
beauty. From the first, Hamlet neither
cared for nor expected to survive his re-
ryenge. * To be or not to be,* is not a ques-
tion of suicide, but of sacrifice. He must
perish with his victim ; there is no escape.
91
A Review of Hamlet
He is ready ! For his body he recks not ;
better thaw and resolve itself into a dew.
But his mind ? Life had still one delight
for this * fellow of Wittenberg ' — the in-
exhaustible splendor of his own »?/W, the
glory and majesty of thought, the ecstasy
of perfect expression. It was his vocation,
his genius, his supreme happiness, to
think, to speak, to imagine. He enjoys
the play of his sovereign reason, as the
horse of the desert enjoys the play of its
arching neck and flying mane, — as the
eagle enjoys its pinions while fanning the
sun, — as all things divinely beautiful enjoy
their own manifestations. Love itself,
though his nature is exceptionally tender,
is but a secondary transport to the rapture
of eloquence. What wonder that he clings
to the lighted torch of such an intelligence !
What wonder that he strives to bear it un-
extinguished through the whirlwinds that
sweep the dark passes between time and
eternity! And yet he would gladly sur-
render this beautiful mind to the quietus
92
A Revieiv of Hamlet
i
of final and complete extinction : it is only
the distortion of the dreams that haunt the
sleep of death that gives him pause.
To die, — to sleep, —
' No more ; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, — 't is a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, — to sleep ; —
To sleep ! perchance to dream : ay, there 's the
rub ;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
1 Must give us pause.
Still less will he force a lawless passage into
that
' undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns,'
even for an enterprise of great pith and
moment. * The dread of something after
death'
puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of,
93
A Review of Hamlet
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all ;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought.
But apart from all these motives and rea-
sons for delay, Hamlet could afford to wait.
In the first place, he was personally safe in
waiting :
' He 's lov'd of the distracted multitude,'
to such an extent that the King dare not
' put the strong law on him :'
' The queen, his mother,
Lives almost by his looks : '
' the great love the general gender bear
him '
is such that the royal arrows,
'Too lightly timber'd for so loud a mind
Would have reverted to the bow again
And not where they were aimed.'
There is a vulgar impression, owing
perhaps to the usual insignificance of stage
royalty, that the King was constantly at
94
A Revieiv of Hamlet
Hamlet's mercy : whereas, but for Hamlet's
personal prowess and popularity, the case
must have been exactly the reverse. As it
is, he haunts that guilty palace, pacing the
lobby four hours together : as it is, ever
since Laertes went into France, he has
been in continual practice with his rapier. If
suddenly assailed, he is sure of a chance to
use it — once at least. Always on guard,
always vigilant, always armed ; reckless
and irresistible in his wrath ; masked by
lunacy and shielded by popular and mater-
nal affection, he felt more than a match for
the utmost cunning of the King. Young,
unadvised, inexperienced; the representa-
tive of the better genius of Denmark ; with
national interests to regard as well as indi-
vidual wrongs to redress ; watched by an
intriguing statesman ; worried by a brace
of friends turned spies ; discarded by the
lady of his love ; bent on the reformation
of his mother as well as on the chastisement
of her wretched spouse ; passive because
uncertain whether his mission is from de-
95
A Review of Hamlet
mon or divinity, yet equal to all odds and
any emergency ; there is no grander figure
in fable or history than Hamlet, Prince of
Denmark.
The Second Act was a lull, after the
storm of the First : the Third Act, begin-
ning only one day later, is an unin-
terrupted procession of events, moving
swiftly and sternly on to their terrible
consummation. Polonius is setting an-
other snare, and baiting it with Ophelia.
Hamlet has been '^ sent for' to 'affront
her,* as 't were * by accident ; ' Ophelia is
* loosed,' book in hand, to receive him ;
the King and his minister so bestowed
that, * seeing unseen,' they may frankly
judge and gather.
If 't be the affliction of his love or no
That thus he suffers for.
That Ophelia is not aware of the lawful
espials is distinctly intimated by Polonius
himself after the interview : —
96
A Review of Hamlet
How now Ophelia !
You need not tell us what Lord Hamlet said ;
We heard it all.
The King's speech to the Queen, 'Sweet
Gertrude, leave us too,' &c., as well as the
Premier's
Gracious, so please you,
We will bestow ourselves,
must therefore be delivered apart, or aside,
from Ophelia, who accepts the proposed
encounter, simply as an opportunity of
reconciliation. But her woman's wit and
maiden love suggest a much better apol-
ogy for the interview, than the old states-
man's rather weak invention,
Read on this book ;
That show of such an exercise may colour
Your loneliness.
Infinitely better her own honest, proud,
instinctive action : —
My lord, I have remembrances of yours
That I have longed to re-deliver;
I pray you now receive them
7 97
A Review of Hamlet
She ignores their last dumb meeting :
How does your honour for th'is many a day f
And yet, womanlike, although she had
repelled his letters and declined his visits
without receiving a single provocation or
vouchsafing a single explanation, she now
immediately assumes the attitude of in-
jured innocence :
Take these again ; for to the noble mind
Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.
There^ my lord.
Alas, she knew not with whom she was
dealing. The delicious feminine insin-
cerity, which makes a sound man smile
in fancied superiority, was gall and worm-
wood to this morbid lover of truth. The
wound she had dealt his soul was mortal ;
she had silenced the last hope of his heart;
and yet she undertakes to invent unkind-
ness on his part to excuse severity on her
own ! The whole plot flashes on him at
once. He sees the two spies behind the
98
A Review of Hamlet
scenes, as plainly as if they stood before
him. He sees in her only a puppet or a
decoy. The tenderness which deepened
his voice into richer music when he first
perceived her —
Soft, you now !
The fair Ophelia. Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remembered —
all this is gone ; and instead of it, harsh
bewildering laughter: — 'Ha, ha! are you
honest ? Are you fair ? — Get thee to a
nunnery ! ' How significant that fierce,
sudden question, ' Where 's your father ? '
Oph. At home my lord.
Ham. Let the doors be shut upon him, that he
may play the fool nowhere but in 's
own house.
Sure that Polonius is a listener, and with
her connivance^ he cannot help believing
her answer, a direct falsehood, — a false-
hood that brings down upon her the cruel
levity occurring just before the interlude,
and that now embitters and corrodes his
99
A Review of Hamlet
passionate but well-considered and well-
meant warning.
Oph. O help him, you sweet heavens !
Ham. If thou dost marry, I '11 give thee this
plague for thy dowry, — be thou as
chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou
shalt not escape calumny. Get thee
to a nunnery : farewell. Or if thou
wilt needs marry, marry a fool ; for
wise men know well enough what
monsters you make of them. To a
nunnery go, and quickly too, farewell.
Oph. O heavenly powers, restore him !
Ham. I have heard of your paintings too, well
enough ; God hath given you one face,
and you make yourselves another : you
jig, you amble, and you lisp, and nick-
name God's creatures, and make your
wantonness your ignorance. Go to,
I '11 no more on 't ; it hath made me
mad. I say we will have no more
marriages ; those that are married al-
ready, all but one^ shall live; the rest
shall keep as they are. To a nun-
nery, go !
A Review of Hamlet
Harsh as this sounds to us, the madness
which he chose to throw into it, and the
love which could not help shining through
it, prevent its seeming intentionally harsh
to her.
She laments it as grotesque, insane, la-
mentable, but not unkind. She is not
hurt, but sympathetic; her prayers and
fears are for him, not for herself; it is
only as a mourner over his supposed
mental ruin, that she suffers at all. —
His glance, voice, manner, have so quali-
fied his words that ^e acquits him, on the
spot, of the unkftidness with which she
had previously taxed him. His whole
bearing is so mercifully regulated, that her
soul is absorbed in pity,
O heavenly powers, restore him ! —
O what a noble mind is here o'erthrown ! —
That unmatch'd form and feature of blown youth
Blasted with ecstacy : O woe is me.
To have seen what I have seen, see what I see ! i
She is most deject and wretched, but
without even a suspicion of being badly
A Review of Hamlet
treated. Nor is she badly treated. The
resentment of neglected love may inflame
his dazzling satire, but under the circum-
stance, * Get thee to a nunnery ' was the
best and only advice he could give her.
A nunnery was her best and only refuge
from the impending storm. Destruction
for himself and all else around him ; but,
for her the cloisters' timely shelter. There
is no telling when the fierce wrath may
seize him : when he may shake down the
pillars of that guilty palace. But not if
he can help it, on her fair head shall the
ruin fall ! Since the grave is opening for
him^ let the Convent open for her. Not
his, but never another's ! O wonderful
poet ! Could she not guess, had she not
some shadowy perception of the jealous,
selfish, masculine love, which despite their
fell divorce, would wall her from the world,
and mark her with the seal of God, to save
her from the violation of man } I
More appropriately here, tHan on the
knocking at the gate in Macbeth^ might
A Reviezu of Hamlet
De Quincey exclaim, 'O mighty poet?
thy works are not as those of other men,
simply and merely great works of art ; but
are also like the phenomena of nature;
like the sun and the sea, the stars and the
flowers ; like frost and snow, rain and dew,
hailstorm and thunder; which are to be
studied with entire submission of our own
faculties, and in perfect faith, that in them
there can be no too much or too little ;
nothing useless or inert ; but that the fur-
ther we press in our discoveries, the more
we shall see proofs of design and self-
supporting arrangement, where the care-
less eye had seen nothing but accident ! '
The King has gained nothing by play-
ing the spy ; he detects too much method
in his nephew's madness ; that wicked
parting threat is ringing in his ears, '^41/
but one shall live ! ' His soul is on the
rack ; restless, apprehensive, overawed.
The weaker mind already quails before
the stronger; the executioner of the father
begins to tremble before the son. —
103
A Review of Harnlet
There 's something in his soul,
O'er which his melancholy sits on brood ;
And I do doubt the hatch and the disclose
Will be some danger ; which for to prevent
I have in quick determination
Thus set it down ; he shall with speed to
England.
But the pliant monster, overruled as
usual by his minister, concludes to post-
pone the threatened banishment until the
Queen mother has a chance to be * round
with him,* after the play. Meanwhile the
play within the play is preparing ; and
those wooden strollers, who in other hands
would have proved clumsy or unmanage-
able, are here the occasion of a quiet elo-
quence, more effective than most dramatic
action. ' Speak the speech, I pray you,'
is a lesson for all time to all humanity.
The facility with which Hamlet coun-
terfeits madness, is strikingly instanced in
the sudden transition from his pre-emi-
nently sane discourse with Horatio, to his
outrageous behavior before the royal pair
104
A Review of Hamlet
and their attendants. How calm, how
measured, those solemn words to his
friend, as if designed to anticipate any
misconstruction in that quarter. For it
sometimes happens we play the madman
so very perfectly, that our best friends are
precisely those who are the first to pro-
nounce our sanity counterfeit, and our
lunacy natural. But what a superb com-
pliment he pays Horatio; how dearly hei
loves to praise where praise is due, — that!
rarest human grace : i
Horatio, thou art e'en as just a man '
As e'er my conversation cop'd withal.
— Dost thou hear ?
Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice,
And could of men distinguish, her election
Hath seal'd thee for herself. —
— Give me that man
Tha* is not passion's slave, and I will wear him
In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of hearts,
As I do thee. —
This is the friend whom he now com-
missions to watch the one scene that
comes near the circumstance,
IDS
A Review of Hamlet
Which I have told thee, of my father's death :
I prithee, when thou see'st that act a-foot,
Even with the very comment of thy soul
Observe mine uncle ; if his occulted guilt
Do not itself unkennel in one speech,
It is a damned ghost that we have seen ;
And my imaginations are as foul
As Vulcan's stithy. Give him heedful note,
For I mine eyes will rivet to his face ;
And, after, we will both our judgments join
In censure of his seeming.
Then, as the first notes of the Danish
March announce the coming of the King
and court, he plunges instantaneously and
without effort, into the reckless, impene-
trable, frightful levity, that carries him
through the scene. King, Oueen, Polo-
nius, Ophelia, are one by one impaled on
his savage irony.
King. How fares our cousin Hamlet ?
Ham. Excellent, i' faith ; of the chameleon's
dish : I eat the air, promise-cramm'd ;
you cannot feed capons so.
King. I have nothing with this answer, Ham-
let ; these words are not mine,
1 06
A Reviezu of Hamlet
Ham. No, nor mine, now. — My lord, you
play'd once i' the University, you say.
(To Polonius.)
Pol. That I did, my lord ; and was accounted
a good actor.
Ham. And what did you enact ?
Pol. I did enact Julius Caesar, I was kill'd i'
the Capitol 5 Brutus killed me. —
Ham. It was a brute part of him to kill so cap-
ital a calf there. — Be the players
ready ?
Ros. Ay, my lord, they stay upon your pa-
tience.
^een. Come hither, my dear Hamlet, sit by
me.
Ham. No, good mother, here 's metal more
attractive.
Pol. O ho ! do you mark that ? (To the King.)
Ham. Lady, shall I lie in your lap ? —
(Lying down at Ophelia's feet.)
Oph. You are merry, my lord. * * =1=
Ham. What should a man do, but be merry ?
for look you how cheerfully my
mother looks, and my father died
within these two hours. —
Oph. Nay, 't is twice two months, my lord. —
107
A Review of Hamlet
Ham. So long ? Nay, then, let the devil wear
black, for I '11 have a suit of sables.
O heavens ! died two months ago,
and not forgotten yet ? Then there 's
hope a great man's memory may out-
live his life half a year. —
(Hautboys play. The Dumb Show enters.)
Oph. What means this, my lord ?
Ham. Marry, this is miching mallecho;^ it
means mischief. —
(Enter Prologue.)
Pro. For us and for our tragedy,
Here stooping to your clemency,
We beg your hearing patiently.
Ham. Is this a prologue, or the posy of a ring ?
Oph. 'T is brief, my lord.
Ham. As woman's love.
What a volume of pathos in that whis-
pered word ! his last serious word to her
— the sole reproach he ever makes her !
Puppet ^ueen. Nor earth to me give food, nor
heaven light — * * *
If once a widow,ever I be wife! —
1 Probably a corruption of Spanish, " mucho malhecho," i. e.,
much ill done, or very ill done.
io8
A Review of Hamlet
Ham. Madam, how like you this play ?
^een. The lady doth protest too much, me-
thinks.
Ham. O, but she '11 keep her word.
King. Have you heard the argument ? Is
there no ofFence in 't ?
Ham. No, no, they do but jest, poison in jest ;
no ofFence i' the world.
King. What do you call the play ?
Ham. The Mouse-trap. Marry, how ? Trop-
ically. This play is the image of a
murder done in Vienna; Gonzago is
the duke's name; his wife, Baptista:
you shall see anon ; 't is a knavish
piece of work ; but what of that ?
Your majesty and we that have free
souls ; it touches us not ; let the galled
jade wince, our withers are unrung.
{Enter Lucianus.)
This is one Lucianus, nephew to the
King.—
Oph. You are as good as a chorus, my lord. —
{Lucianus pours poison into the
sleeper s ear,)
109
A Review of Hamlet
Ham. He poisons him i' the garden for 's estate.
His name 's Gonzago : the story is ex-
tant and written in very choice Italian :
You shall see anon how the murderer
gets the love of Gonzago's wife.
Oph. The King rises.
Ham. What frightened with false fire ?
^ueen. How fares my lord ?
Pol. Give o'er the play.
King. Give me some light ; away !
Jll. Lights, lights, lights.
{^Exeunt all except Hamlet and
Horatio.)
Any other poet would have been con-
tent to fix the climax of the scene, in the
disordered flight of the palsied murderer ;
but in Shakespeare, it is only a stepping
stone to loftier achievements. The rest of
the act is a tour de force y a torrent of elo-
quence, passion and power ; a stream of
intellectual glory. The dramatic work-
manship is inimitable. After the signal
triumph of this scheme, after this con-
clusive confirmation of the ghostly tale,
A Keview of H millet
Plamlet abandons himself to the capricious
impulse of the moment, as a strong swim-
mer abandons himself to a current, only to
breast it with recovered strength. What-
ever is uppermost in his mind, is the first
to find expression. Half remembered frag-
ments of verse, whether applicable or not;
tumultuous raillery, in which Horatio is
swept along, like a leaf in a whirlwind ;
swift serious questions ; sharp yearnings
for music ; are all blended together, with
unparalleled power and truth.
Ham. Why let the stricken deer go weep,
The hart ungalled play ;
For some must watch, while
some must sleep ;
Thus runs the world away. —
Would not this, Sir, and a forest of
feathers (if the rest of my fortunes
turn Turk with me,) with two Provin-
cial Roses on my razed shoes, get me
a fellowship in a cry of players, Sir ?
Hor. Half a share.
Ham. A whole one, I.
Ill
A Review of Hamlet
For dost thou know, O Damon
dear,
This realm dismantled was
Of Jove himself J and now reigns
here
A very, very peacock.
Hor. You might have rhymed.
Ham. O good Horatio, I '11 take the ghost's
word for a thousand pound. Did 'st
perceive ?
Hor. Very well, my lord.
Ham. Upon the talk of poisoning ?
Hor. I did very well note him.
Ham. Ah, ha ! — Come, some music ! come, the
recorders !
For if the King like not the comedy.
Why, then, belike, — he likes it not,
perdy. —
Come, some music ! —
Re-enter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
The instant he perceives them, his hysterical
mirth curdles into deadly scorn. With
princely reserve and measured disdain, he
beats back their joint attack, trampling ahke
A Revie%v of Hamlet
on them and on the royalty they represent.
This trialogue is one of the most mem-
orable portions of the play. Every speech
of Hamlet's has the flash and sweep of an
archangel's sword.
Guild. Good my lord, vouchsafe me a word
with you.
Ham. Sir, a whole history.
Guild. The King^ Sir, —
Ham. Ay, Sir, what of him ?
Guild. Is in his retirement, marvellous dis-
tempered.
Ham. With drink. Sir ?
Guild. No, my lord, with choler.
Ham. Your wisdom would show itself more
richer to signify this to his doctor ; for
me to put him to his purgation, would
perhaps plunge him into more choler.
Guild. Good my lord, put your discourse into
some frame, and start not so wildly
from my affair.
Ham. I 'm tame, sir ; — pronounce.
Guild. The Queen, your mother, in most great
affliction of spirit, hath sent me to you.
Ham. You are welcome.
5 113
A Review of Hamlet
Guild. Nay, good my lord, this courtesy is not
of the right breed. If it shall please
you to make me a wholesome answer,
I will do your mother's command-
ment ; if not, your pardon, and my
return, shall be the end of my business.
Ham. Sir, I cannot.
Guild. What, my lord ?
Ham. Make you a wholesome answer ; my
wit 's diseased : but. Sir, such answer
as I can make, you shall command : or
rather, as you say, my mother : there-
fore no more, but to the matter : my
mother, you say, —
Guildenstern thus staggered and silenced,
Rosencrantz hastens to the rescue.
Ros. Then thus she says ; your behaviour
hath struck her into amazement and
admiration.
Ham. O wonderful son that can so astonish a
mother ! — But is there no sequel, at
the heels of this mother's admiration ?
Ros. She desires to speak with you in her closet
ere you go to bed.
114
A Review of Hamlet
Ham. We shall obey were she ten times our
mother. Have you any further trade
with us ? —
The music for which he has been longing,
enters at last, and the recorder's silent pipe
is made immortal as the harp of Orpheus.
Ham. Will you play upon this pipe ?
Guild. My lord, I cannot.
Ham. I pray you.
Guild. Believe me, I cannot.
Ham. I do beseech you.
Guild. I know no touch of it, my lord. —
Ham. 'T is as easy as lying : govern these
ventages with your fingers and thumb,
give it breath with your mouth ; and
it will discourse most eloquent music.
Look you, these are stops.
Guild. But these cannot I command to any utter-
ance of harmony ; I have not the skill.
Ham. Why, look you now, how unworthy a
thing you make of me I You would
play upon me; you would seem to
know my stops ; you would pluck out
the heart of my mystery ; you would
115
A Review of Hamlet
sound me, from my lowest note, to the
top of my compass ; and there is much
music, excellent voice in this little
organ, yet cannot you make it speak.
'Sblood, do you think that I am easier
to be played on than a pipe ? Call
me what instrument you will, though
you can fret me, you cannot play upon
me.
The breach between them is widening ; a
dead friendship is rapidly developing into
an active hatred. Throughout the inter-
view, Hamlet preserves a frozen calm
which they can neither penetrate nor dis-
turb, though all the while his blood is boil-
ing. With masterly self-control, he bids
Polonius ' God bless you, sir ! ' little
knowing what immediate need there was
for such blessing. There is even a pale
evanescent tenderness glimmering through
that too palpably counterfeit lunacy, as if
the Premier's superannuated slyness were
a relief, after the baseness of the two ado-
lescent spies.
ii6
A Review of Hamlet
Pol. My lord, the queen would speak with
you, and presently.
Ham. Do you see yonder cloud that 's almost
in shape of a camel ?
Pol. By the mass, and 't is like a camel, indeed.
Ham. Methinks it is like a weasel.
Pol. It is backed like a weasel.
Ham. Or like a whale.
Pol. Very like a whale.
Ham. Then will I come to my mother by-and
by. — They fool me to the top of my
bent. — I will come by-and-by. —
Leave me, friends.
He has hardly time to hurry them from his
presence, before the dark thought underly-
ing all this mirth betrays itself: he is trem-
bling on the verge of matricide.
'T is now the very witching time of night.
When churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes
out
Contagion to this world ; now could I drink hot
bloody
And do such bitter business as the day
Would quake to look on. Soft ! now to my
mother. —
117
A Review of Haynlet
heart lose not thy nature ; let not ever
The soul of Nero enter this firm bosom :
Let me be cruel, not unnatural :
1 will speak daggers to her, but use none ;
My tongue and soul in this be hypocrites, —
How in my words soever she be shent.
To give them seals, never, my soul, consent !
In this mood he seeks the Queen's closet,
and in this mood encounters the King at
prayer. He must have overheard, on his
way there, the interview between the King
and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern ; he
must have witnessed or overheard them
'making love' to their pitiful employ-
ment. For scarcely in any other way
could he have foreknown the royal de-
termination, which he immediately after
refers to.
Ham. I must to England : you know that ?
^een. Alack,
I had forgot : 't is so concluded on.
That ominous interlude has not improved
the King's repose.
A Revieiu of Hamlet
King. I like him not, nor stands it safe with us
To let his madness range. —
The terms of our estate may not endure
Hazard so dangerous, as doth hourly grow
Out of his lunacies. —
Arm you, I pray you, to this speedy
voyage :
For we will fetters put upon this fear
Which now goes too free-footed.
Ros.^ Guild. We will hasten us —
Remorse, instilled by bodily fear, has
driven the drunkard murderer to attempt
repentance.
Help, angels, make assay :
Bow, stubborn knees ; and, heart with
strings of steel.
Be soft as sinews of the new-born babe !
(^Retires and kneeh.\
{Enter Hamlet^
Ham. Now might I do it pat, now he is praying ;
And now I '11 do it ; — and so he goes to
Heaven ;
And so am I revenged; — that would
be scanned :
119
A Review of Hajnlet
A villain kills my father; and for that,
I, his sole son, do this same villain send
To Heaven.
Why, this is hire and salary, not revenge.
He took my father grossly, full of bread ;
With all his crimes broad blown, as
flush as May :
And how his audit stands, who knows
save Heaven :
But in our circumstance, and course of
thought,
'T is heavy with him : and am I, then,
revenged
To take him in the purging of his soul.
When he is fit, and season'd for his
passage ?
No.
Up, sword ; and know thou a more horrid
hent.
When he is drunk, asleep, or in his rage :
At gaming, swearing ; or about some act
That has no relish of salvation in it ; —
Then trip him, that his heels may kick
at heaven;
And that his soul may be as damn'd and
black
As hell, whereto it goes.
120
A Revieiu of Hamlet
Hazlitt calls this ghastly, livid wrath, * a
refinement in malice, to excuse his own
want of resolution.' A shallow plausi-
bility, demolished by that resolute pass
through the arras, aimed an instant later,
at this same King of shreds and patches!
And besides, there is the drama to consider.
To kill the King then, would have been
an anticlimax and the play have been cut
short, as it would also had the King, and
not Polonius, been behind the arras! In
both these instances the plot required that
the King should live, but Hamlet showed
himself perfectly willing to kill him out
of hand if caught eavesdropping.
The main sorrow of the Ghost is the
manner of his taking off:
Cut off even in the blossom of my sin,
sent to my account
With all my imperfections on my head.
Hamlet's main sorrow is less his father's
sudden death, than eternal doom. Once
fully abandoned to the terrible temptation
A Revieiu of Hamlet
)
which besets him, once mad enough to
* dare damnation,' he is not going to sell
his soul for a song ; not going to kill the
King at his -prayers : he will give measure
for measure, eternal doom, for eternal
doom. The depths of faith are revealing
darker possibilities of revenge ; but the
whole frightful passage is a fiendish sug-
gestion, vividly presented, rather than
deliberately embraced. It is the first wild,
natural imprecation of a son for the first
time SURE that his uncle is the assassin of
his father. This bitter certainty trans-
forms him for the moment almost into a
demon ; and though his conscience re-
asserts its sway, this is clearly the mood
in which he afterwards meets his mother.
Had the Prmce known that the King, far
from being truly repentant, was sending
him to his death in England, he would
assuredly have slain the wretch upon the
spot and the play would have had a totally
different ending. Shakespeare's art avoided
the anticlimax in both these situations.
A Review of Hamlet
Polonius is playing the eavesdropper
once too often : how dexterous, sly, and
busy he is : —
Pol. Look you, lay home to him :
Tell him his pranks have been too broad
to bear with.
And that your grace hath screen'd and
stood between
Much heat and him. I '11 sconce me
even here.
Pray you be round with him.
She jneans to ' be round with him,' to ' lay
home to him.' ' I '11 warrant you,' she
says ; * Fear not me.^ She is very bold
and confident and self-contained. She is
used to conquest. Her dominion over
both her royal husbands was supreme :
the first is true and tender to her, even in
that sulphurous prison-house to which her
fickle beauty helped to doom him : the
second quotes her, though she must then
be near fifty, as the central sun round
which he circles.
123
A Review of Hamlet
She 's so conjunctive to my life and soul,
That, as the star moves not but in its sphere,
I could not but by her.
She is morally weak, but otherwise strong:
fascinated by a brute, but not cognizant
of his crime: the slave of one sin, yet the
mistress of more than one virtue. The
character is not an uncommon one. Her
prostitution cannot be sufficiently detested;
but there is not the shadow of a ground
to suppose her conscious of the fratricide.
As often happens with these magnetic
unfortunates, her tender-heartedness sur-
vives her personal degradation. She has
a kind word for everybody, and it flows
unaffectedly from her heart : but, once
roused, she displays the spirit of an Ama-
zon. When the mutineers overbear the
officers and break the doors, she strides
between the armed rabble and the craven
King, with a flash of the same fierce wrath
which her son inherits.
How cheerfully on the false trail they cry!
O this is counter, you false Danish dogs. —
124
A Revieiu of Hamlet
Not easily crushed, this fair, false, haughty-
matron : — not easily shaken off, with one
wave of the lion's mane, like Polonius
and Guildenstern. The encounter is stern
from the start.
Ham. Now, mother, what 's the matter ?
^ueen. Hamlet, thou hast thy father much of-
fended.
Ham. Mother, you have my father much of-
fended.
^een. Come, come, you answer with an idle
tongue.
Ham. Go, go, you question with a wicked
tongue.
^een. Why, how now, Hamlet !
Ham. — What 's the matter now ?
^een. Have you forgot me ?
Ham. — No, by the rood not so :
You are the Queen, your husband's
brother's wife ;
And — would it were not so ! you are
my mother.
^een. Nay, then, I '11 set those to you that can
speak.
125
A Review of Hamlet
Ham. Come, come, and sit you down •, you
shall not budge.
You go not till I set you up a glass
Where you may see the inmost part of
you.
^ueen. What wilt thou do ? thou wilt not mur-
der me !
Help, help, ho!
Pol {Behind.) What, ho ! help, help, help !
Ham. How now, a rat ? {Draws.) Dead for
a ducat, dead !
{Makes a pass through the arras.)
Pol. {Behind.) O, I am slain. {Falls and
dies.)
Observe three things : the instantaneous
assumption of lunacy, the sharp, unhesi-
tating lunge, — the perfect nerve and com-
posure after the deed is done. Weak ?
why, action is even easier than words to
this terrible son of the sea-kings.
But the Queen-mother, unsubdued
even by this frightful proof of Hamlet's
determination to carry his point, is still
every inch a Queen.
126
A Reviciv of Hamlet
^een. O me, what hast thou done?
Ham. — Nay, I know not.
Is it the king ?
^een. O what a rash and bloody deed is this !
Ham. A bloody deed ! — almost as bad, good
mother.
As kill a King, and marry luith his brother,
^een. As kill a King !
Ham. Ay, lady, 't was my word, —
Had she flinched beneath that sudden
test, had she faltered beneath the long
and searching gaze with which these de-
cisive words were accompanied, he might
have slain her in his fury on the spot.
There was no escaping that infallible
ordeal : guilt or innocence was written
unmistakably in. her face; and it needs
not the weak assurance of the Quarto of
1603 to convince us of her innocence.
^een. But as I have a soul, I swear by heaven,
I never knew of this most horrid murder.
The stronger assurance is in her face, in
her whole behavior. That question and
that gaze have satisfied him : his denuncia-
127
A Review of Hamlet
tions are henceforth restricted to her in-
fidelity.
Ham. Leave wringing of hands; peace, sit you
down,
And let me wring your heart ; for so I
shall,
If it be made of penetrable stuff;
If damned custom have not brazed it so
That it is proof and bulwark against
sense.
^een. What have I done, that thou dar'st wag
thy tongue
In noise so rude against me ?
Ham. Such an act
That blurs the grace and blush of
modesty ;
Calls virtue hypocrite ; takes off the rose
From the fair forehead of an innocent
love,
And sets a blister there ; makes marriage
vows
As false as dicer's oaths.
^een. Ay me, what act
That roars so loud, and thunders in the
index ?
Ham. Look here upon this picture, and on this.
128
A Revieiu of Hamlet
It requires all the tremendous sequel of
the speech, to humble her thoroughly :
but beneath the blast of that resistless
invective, she melts away at his feet. ' O
Hamlet, speak no more ! ' But his brain
and heart are on fire ; his words flow like
lava, fiercer, faster, hotter, till stayed in
mid career by the fancied or real re-
appearance of the Ghost. Its speech to
Hamlet implies its reality ; its invisibility
to the Queen, its unreality. To the audi-
ence, it should be as visible as when it
swept the platform before the Castle. Its
invisibility to the Queen may be accounted
for by supposing a merciful forbearance in
the royal spectre and thus ascribing an-
other grace to the proud, tender shade of
the buried majesty of Denmark. Indeed,
the brief visitation is more like an errand
of love than of revenge. After a rapid,
causeless admonition, the phantom's sole
anxiety centres on the Queen, about whose
ultimate fate he is a thousandfold more
solicitous than about his victim son's.
9 129
A Review of Hamlet
Here, as well as earlier in the Play, Ham-
let may have felt this ghostly neglect — felt
the little more of earth than Heaven in
this jealous eagerness to cleanse ' the royal
bed of Denmark,' of ' luxury and damned
incest'; — felt, amidst all his vast pity,
that his own spirituality, his own welfare,
were slighted by this ' negotio in node per-
ambulanteJ Nothing short of the jealous
impatience of indestructible love could
have imputed to Hamlet * an almost
blunted purpose,' while Polonius, slain for
the King, was still lying in his blood;
unless, indeed, the Ghost were singularly
ignorant of that unhappy transaction. It
was a signally sharp purpose that slew the
Premier. Hotspur himself, in Hamlet's
place, could not well have gone through
this terrible scene with more dash, de-
cision, and reckless scorn of consequences,
while all that lurid eloquence, all those
frozen tears, would be missing ! Measure-
less conjugal love makes the apparition
real, and explains its being both invisible
130
A Review of Hamlet
and inaudible to the Queen. Hamlet's
heated imagination and filial piety, dor-
mant as to her, could never have invented
a speech of such heroic doting. At all
events, the reappearance of the Ghost, so
far as the audience and the part itself are
concerned, is a dramatic necessity. But
do not let us allow the impatient re-
proaches made by a questionable shape
to blind us to the fatal vigor of that pass
behind the arras.
Hamlet's attitude towards his mother is
that of an inspired prophet. He moulds
her like wax to his better will by the mi-
raculous energy of his expressions. He
labors giant-like to save her ' fighting '
soul ; reaching down a redeeming hand
through the darkness of deep abysses ;
dragging her half willing, half reluctant,
bruised, trembling, bleeding, into the full
daylight of God's holy summits.
Ham. Mother, for love of grace,
Lay not that flattering unction to your
soul,
131
A Review of Hamlet
That not your trespass, but my mad-
ness, speaks;
Confess yourself to heaven ;
Repent what 's past ; avoid what is to
come;
Forgive me this my virtue :
For in the fatness of these pursy times
Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg.
Precisely what he himself must do to
most of his readers, for not being more
bloodthirsty and vindictive. His irony
assumes a momentary plaintiveness :
Once more, good night :
And when you are desirous to be blest,
I '11 blessing beg of you.
He can afford to be tender: his barbed
invective has apparently exterminated the
sin at which it is aimed : shaft has fol-
lowed shaft, until the air is darkened.
But one temptation still survives ; and
the quiver of. this young Apollo is inex-
haustible. By a fine climax of sarcasm,
intermixed with a grotesque but signifi-
cant menace, he contrives to diminish the
132
A Review of Hamlet
novel danger to which her infatuation
exposes her ; namely, the allurements oc-
casioned by the vivid recital of the details
of her guilt :
'T were good you let him know ;
For who, that 's but a Queen, fair, sober, wise.
Would from a paddock, from a bat, a gib,
Such dear concernings hide ? who would do so ?
No, in despite of sense and secrecy.
Unpeg the basket on the house's top :
Let the birds fly, and like the famous ape,
To try conclusions, in the basket creep,
And break your own neck down.
It is terrible to hear a son thus threat-
ening a mother, face to face: but, taken
all in all, his bearing is not entirely un-
warranted. And this brings us to what
is, perhaps, the very deepest problem in
the play.
A mission, inaugurated by what may be
called a miracle, can hardly fail to furnish
its own opportunities. Chance, in Ham-
let's case, will be unseen direction. Since
his life is manacled to one issue by preter-
133
A Review of Hamlet
natural interposition, let the same dread
agency also indicate the manner of arriv-
ing at that issue. In the frenzy inspired
by the conviction that the Ghost's word
is ' true for a thousand pound,' he would
have slain the King, had he been sure of
thus dealing out eternal as well as tem-
poral ruin. But ever after and before
that horrible impulse, he is steadily on the
defensive. Even that swift pass through
the arras is defensive ; he does not strike
until his own safety has been compro-
mised by his mother's cry for help. From
the moment that he has satisfied himself of
the Ghost's veracity, he is eager to obey
its behests. There is but an hour or two,
at most, between the self-betrayal of the
King at the interlude, and the killing of
Polonius, — a mistake which he regrets
rather as a misfortune than as a crime ;
For this same lord
I do repent ; but heaven hath pleased it so
To punish me with this, and this with me,
That I must be their scourge and minister.
134
A Review of Hamlet
With men of Hamlet's mould, intellec-
tual scorn is as unchangeable as truth
itself. And it may be added that his
exquisitely truthful nature constantly ex-
hibits a stern unforgivingness of calcu-
lated, persistent insincerity and fraud ; an
unforgivingness which, but for vast, won-
drous, inexplicable miracles of mercy, must
belong to supreme Truth itself A deed,
a sight, that might well dismay the warrior
of a hundred fields, makes no perceptible
impression upon the nerves of this pre-
mature veteran in woe.
Indeed, this Counsellor
Is now most still, most secret, and most grave,
Who was in life a foolish, prating knave.
Come, Sir, to draw toward an end with you —
Good night, mother.
Yet beneath this desperate apathy lurks
the silent grace of tears. If the Queen
may be believed, he is weeping while he
speaks.
We do not know by what or whose
135
A Review of Hamlet
authority the Act is made to end here ;
certainly not by Shakespeare's. The text
of the Quarto runs straight on from be-
ginning to end, without numbering a single
Act or Scene. The Folio numbers them
only so far as the Second Scene of the
Second Act. Instead of * Exeunt sever-
ally/ as the stage direction now stands, it
is '■Exit' in the Quarto, and 'Exit Hamlet,
lugging in Polonius^ in the Folio. In both,
the Queen remains on the stage; the King
enters, and the action proceeds uninter-
ruptedly. The present arrangement not
only ruins the Fourth Act, but confuses
and enfeebles the whole play. For rea-
sons presently given, we shall review the
Third Act to its legitimate conclusion.
True to her vow, the Queen represents
Hamlet to the King as
Mad as the sea and wind when both contend
Which is the mightier.
And observe how admirably that rapid
assumption of lunacy now serves his turn:
136
A Revieiu of Hamlet
He whips his rapier out and cries, 'A rat, a rat!'
And in this brainish apprehension, kills
The unseen good old man.
The King is in a most unroyal panic.
King. O heavy deed !
It had been so with wj, had we been
there :
His liberty is full of threats to all ;
To you yourself, to us, to every one.
The sun no sooner shall the mountains
touch
But we will ship him hence. —
Ho, Guildenstern ! —
Go seek him out. — Come, Gertrude ! —
come away !
My soul is full of discord and dismay.
(Exeunt.)
The next scene is the arrest. Hamlet's
unmitigated, open contempt of the inevi-
table pair, so different from his former
constrained courtesy, reassures us that he
overheard their pitiful willingness to su-
perintend his exile. Guildenstern was
peacefully silenced; but the more inquisi-
137
A Review of Hamlet
tive and less manly Rosencrantz is spurned
and abolished, as Geraint's sword would
have abolished the angry dwarf.
Ros. What have you done, my lord, with the
dead body ?
Ham. Compounded it with dust, whereto 't is kin.
Ros. Tell us where 't is, that we may take it
thence
And bear it to the chapel.
Ham. Do not believe it.
Ros. Believe what ?
Ham. That I can keep your counsel and not
mine own. Besides^ to be demanded of
a sponge ! — what replication should be
made^ by the son of a King?
Ros. Take you me for a sponge, my lord ?
Ham. Ay, sir ; that soaks up the King's counte-
nance, his rewards, his authorities.
But such officers do the King best
service in the end ; he keeps them,
like an ape, in the corner of his jaw,
first mouthed, to be last swallowed ;
when he needs what you have gleaned,
it is but squeezing you, and, sponge,
you shall be dry again.
138
A Review of Hamlet
Ros. I understand you not, my lord.
Ham. I am glad of it ; a knavish speech sleeps
in a foolish ear.
Ros. My lord, you must tell us where the body
is and go with us to the King.
Ham. The body is with the King, but the King
is not with the body.
The King is a thing —
Guild. A thing, my lord !
Ham. Of nothing; bring me to him. Hide
fox, and all after.
That the arrest is a literal military ar-
rest, see a few lines later.
King. But where is he ?
Ros. Without, my lord, guarded^ to know your
pleasure.
King. Bring him before us.
Ros. Ho, Guildenstern ! bring in my lord.
The haughty questioning of the King
is pitilessly demolished by the sublime
ferocity of an attack, rapid and resistless
as lightning. The spear of Lancelot o'er-
threw whate'er it smote : Hamlet's elec-
trical scorn withers and annihilates.
139
A Review of Hamlet
King. Now Hamlet, where 's Polonius !
Ham. At supper.
King. At supper ! where ?
Ham. Not where he eats, but where he is
eaten : a certain convocation of politic
worms are e'en at him. Your worm
is your only emperor for diet ; we fat
all creatures else to fat us, and we fat
ourselves for maggots ; your fat king
and your lean beggar is but variable
service, — two dishes but to one table :
that 's the end.
King. Alas, alas !
Ham. A man may fish with the worm that
hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish
that hath fed of that worm.
King. What dost thou mean by this ? ^
Ham. Nothing but to show you how a king
may go a progress through the guts
of a beggar.
King. Where is Polonius ?
Ham. In heaven ; send hither to see : if your
messenger find him not there, seek him
i' the other place yourself. But in-
deed if you find him not within this
month, you shall nose him as you go
upstairs into the lobby.
140
A Rcvieiu of Hamlet
King. Go seek him there. ( To some of the
attendants^
Ham. He will stay till ye come.
King. Hamlet, this deed must send thee hence
With fiery quickness : therefore prepare
thyself;
The bark is ready, and the wind at help.
The associates tend, and everything is
bent
For England.
Ham. For England ?
King. Ay, Hamlet.
Ham. Good.
King, So is it, if thou knew'st our purposes.
Ham. I see a cherub that sees them. — But come,
for England !
Does not this point, In its beautiful way
— like a star at sea — toward the pirate of
very warlike appointment.? But of this
hereafter. The King is all aghast :
Follow him at foot ; tempt him with speed
aboard ;
Delay it not ; I '11 have him hence to-night :
Away ; for everything is sealed and done
141
A Review of Hamlet
That else leans on the aiFair : pray you, make
haste.
(^Exeunt Rosencrantz. and Guildenstern^
And, England, if my love thou hold'st at aught,
(As my great power thereof may give thee sense.
Since yet thy cicatrice looks raw and red
After the Danish sword, and thy free awe
Pays homage to us,) thou may'st not coldly set
Our Sovereign process ; which imports at full.
By letters conjuring to that effect.
The present death of Hamlet. Do it, England :
For like the hectic in my blood he rages.
And thou must cure : till I know 't is done,
Howe'er my haps, my joys were ne'er begun.
All the might of Denmark, and her
dependencies arrayed against the exiled
Prince ! But just then, the martial figure
of Fortinbras emerges from the distance
and flits by in the foreground. * Enter
Fortinbrasse with his army over the stage:
Enter Fortinbrasse^ Drumme and Soldiers ; '
as the old copies have it. And in this
pomp and circumstance of a rival power,
we recognize the hope on which Hamlet
is silently but securely building. With
142
A Review of Hamlet
this significant array of benignant strength,
with this flash of a better fortune for Den-
mark athwart the deepening drama, the
act should end. Ending here, the inter-
val consumed by the voyage to England,
the return of Laertes from Paris, and the
expedition of Fortinbras to Poland and
back, is thrown between the Acts, — its
natural place. Greek tragedy, restricted
by its organic law to the culmination of
events, was necessarily an unbroken march
from its first chorus to its catastrophe.
Modern tragedy aiming rather at the de-
velopment of character, through a series
of events, has wisely divided these events
into groups separated from each other by
the interposition of a curtain. By this brief
but total eclipse of the fictitious world,
the mind is prepared for intervals of time
or space. A year elapsed, or an ocean
crossed, during the fall of that mysterious
screen, does less violence to the imagina-
tion than the supposition of a month be-
tween consecutive scenes. In fact, the
H3
A Review of Hamlet
fancy is almost as free, save to conse-
quences, at the second rise of the curtain as
at the first. We accept Claude Melnotte as
a recruit in one act, and a Colonel in the
next : but when looking dead into the
open heart of a spectacle, we are asked to
believe that the Prince who embarked for
England under our eyes, is back again in
five minutes, after a sea fight, and a week's
cruise, the imagination rebels. The pro-
posed extension of the Third Act, would
make this greatest of tragedies the most
symmetrical too ; while the Fourth Act,
relieved of a confusion which is now mis-
taken for an anticlimax, would be devoted
with a single purpose to its two superb
contrasts — the revenge of Laertes with
the revenge of Hamlet, and the utter mad-
ness of Ophelia with the semi-counterfeit
lunacy of her lover. A gain almost as
great for the closet, as for the stage.
And what a tremendous Act that Third
one is ! unrivalled in wealth of imagery,
in exhaustless variety and steadily culmi-
144
A Review of Hamlet
nating power, by anything in creative art,
unless it be the almost equally marvellous
Festival Act of Don Giovanni. Mozart,
like Shakespeare, had the faculty of per-
fect articulation ; and hence the intense
self-delight they constantly exhibit. They
alone, and Raphael, have the faculty of
projecting the whole shy and ever reluctant
idea from the dim chambers of conception,
into full, unclouded sunlight. Like all
perfect embodiments, the works of Mo-
zart, Raphael and Shakespeare cast their
own shadows : the works of others — Bee-
thoven, Goethe, Angelo — are shadows of
the master's selves. It is a common vice
to prefer the second chiar-oscuro to the first.
The present Fourth Scene of the Fourth
Act, except the nine opening lines, is omit-
ted in the Folio. It is needless to re-
capitulate the argument already advanced.
With the Quarto before them and every
temptation to expand, the long pendant to
the entry of Fortinbras, must have been
advisedly rejected by the editors of the
lo 145
A Review of Hamlet
Folio. Heminge and Condell were at
least as familiar with this scene as we are.
Minor errors in abundance may have crept
into the First Folio ; minor omissions and
additions may disfigure its text : it may be,
as Home Tooke says, 'the only edition
worth regarding'; and, as Mr. Knight
says, ' the most correctly printed book on
record*; or it may have been, as Mr.
Dyce believes, ' dismissed from the press
with less care and attention than any book
of any extent and reputation in the whole
annals of English typography.' But the
certainty still remains that Heminge and
Condell, * sober, earnest critics ,' would
never have dared to repudiate a long solil-
oquy that had a place in the stayidard act-
ing copy — the standard ultimately fixed
by Shakespeare himself, or with his dis-
tinct approval. A jest or two in Richard,
an indecisive scene in Lear, might escape
them ; but not, of all things on earth, a
soliloquy of Hamlet's — the final soliloquy
too !
146
A Review of Hamlet
Unquestionably, all that stately dialogue
with the Captain is Shakespeare's : possibly
he wrote the whole soliloquy, every line
of it, just as it stands. Even in that age
of giants ' sturdy but unclean,' there may
have been no second touch to equal the
felicity of
Now whether it be
Bestial oblivion or some craven scruple
Of thinking too precisely on the event, —
A thought, which, quartered, hath but one part
wisdom.
And ever three parts coward,
It may have been written to strengthen
the Acts, or to please Burbage or whoever
played the part : written, tried^ and aban-
doned. For though a leading tragedian
might cling to so tempting a bit of decla-
mation, the house, the company, and the
author, would be sure to reject it in the
end. It is most awkwardly introduced —
lugged in by the head and heels like a dead
afterthought. It is the one speech too
many that palsies both actor and audience ;
A Review of Hamlet
that fails alike on the stage or in the closet ;
that superficially countenances the impu-
tation of weakness and needlessly compli-
cates the character. We can imagine the
more than half-created Hamlet, statue-like
uplifting his hand in sublime protest against
the threatened malformation. After the
other noble monologues, it is weak as
water. But the supreme reason for its
rejection is that it is false. —
1 do not know
Why yet I live to say, ' This thing 's to do ' ;
Sith / have cause and will and strength and means
To do it.
He had not strength and means to do it,
and could not have, until rescued from
captivity and impending death by that
well-appointed pirate. So, apart from its
comparative feebleness, apart from its su-
perfluity, apart from its being most lamely
and discordantly introduced, 4 Ml be with
you straight — go a little before,' — there
is a positive necessity for its rejection : it is
148
A Rcvieiu of Haynlet
FALSE ! False and unnatural ! For how-
ever happily his counterplot may terminate,
it is surely not as a prisoner on the brink
of exile, environed by the royal guards,
that such a motive for self-reproach would
occur. Though no one could now have
the temerity to reject the scene, were it not
rejected by the Folio ; yet consciously and
deliberately repudiated there, we may well
feel at liberty to prefer the professional and
disinterested verdict of Heminge and Con-
dell, who certainly give no intimation in
their preface that the original papers * re-
ceived from him' with scarce a blot, were
destroyed as Mr. Dyce supposes, when
the Globe Theatre was burned down in
1 6 13. This ill-timed monologue though
weak itself does not really make Hamlet
essentially weaker ; but there is no reason
why the discarded superfluities of genius
should be perpetuated only to obscure the
pure gold of its priceless bequests. One
thing however is clear: unless Hamlet
planned the subsequent piratical capture,
149
A Review of Hamlet
the Soliloquy is not only superfluous and
contradictory, but absurd. Unhappy as it
is in all other respects, it serves to demon-
strate conclusively that in Shakespeare's
own mind, the piratical capture was a pre-
meditated certainty.
With its present Fifth Scene, the Fourth
Act properly begins. One victim has al-
ready fallen — Polonius : Ophelia is the
next. The shock of her father's death by
the hand of her lover, has crazed her. It
would have suited most artists to exhibit
the first crash of the tragical fact; but
Shakespeare mercifully spares us the sight
of the blow descending on that vestal
forehead. Her mind is murdered off the
stage. The grand master will not over-
charge his canvas with details which a lesser
soul would grasp at. The spiritual trans-
formation is complete before she reappears.
Instead of horror heaped on horror, the
very madness of this Rose of May is turned
* to favor and to prettiness.' She softens
the gloom and terror of the play into over-
150
A Review of Hamlet
powering pathos. Though her character
has been only sketched, as if by the finger
of a god, in snow, what a vast dramatic
purpose it serves ! Her madness is the
pivot of one Act, her burial of another ; her
maiden beauty the inspiration of both ;
while, over the whole tragic expanse, her
image flits like the dove that followed the
raven ! What can be sadder than her story !
But a little while ago, she was bewailing
the overthrow of ' that noble and most
sovereign reason,' and now the sweet bells
of her own mind are not only jangled out
of tune, but ruined, broken ! One tithe of
the woe that Hamlet carries, suffices to
crush her. As if in rebuke of that impa-
tient Ghost, the first attempt at revenge
involves the sacrifice of this' unblemished
innocent. But Hamlet escapes the spec-
tacle. By an inspired fitness of events, his
banishment just precedes her madness.
His self-contained lunacy could never have
endured the test of her hopeless, absolute
madness. The side by side contrast of real
151
A Revieiu of Hamlet
with simulated insanity, though sustained
to advantage in Lear, between a young
noble and an old king, would be a ghastly
impossibility between lovers.
Ophelia is stark mad. The only gleam
of a purpose left is in the brief threat that
Laertes will avenge her father : * My
brother shall know of it' : her only mem-
ories are dim, distracted impressions of the
events that crazed her ; songs of Polonius —
dead and gone,
At his head a grass green turf,
At his feet a stone.
White his shroud, as the mountain snow
Larded with sweet flowers.
Which bewept to the grave did go
With true-love showers.
And again :
And will he not come again ?
And will he not come again ?
No, no, he is dead.
Go to thy death bed.
He never will come again.
152
A Revieiu of Hamlet
His beard was white as snow,
All flaxen was his poll :
He is gone, he is gone.
And we cast away moan :
God ha' mercy on his soul !
Songs of Hamlet too : * To-morrow is St.
Valentine's day.' The whole ditty is but
the reflex of her discarded lover's passion-
ate jesting, the dark shadow of masculine
yearning projected athwart the snows of
virgin purity, deeper and distincter in this
intellectual eclipse ; the wild echo of his
own fierce raillery resounding from the
living sepulchre wherein her maiden mind
lies buried.
And sometimes too, the twin ideas to
which her bewildered brain is feebly cling-
ing, her love and her grief, run incoher-
ently together :
They bore him barefaced on the bier;
Hey non nonny nonny, hey nonny ;
And on his grave rain'd many a tear,
Fare you well, my dove !
153
A Review of Hamlet
And again :
There 's a daisy : — I would give you some vio-
lets, but they withered all
When my father died : they say he made a good
end. —
For bonny sweet Robin is all my joy.
Ah, how true, how mournful, but
above all, how marvellous this inspired
imagination in whose imperishable mirror
humanity seems more tangible, more in-
telligible, than even in its own bodily
substance ! Seeing nature with Shake-
speare's eyes, is like reading the heavens
with a glass of infinite range and power ;
wonder on wonder rolls into view; systems,
dependencies, mysteries, relations, never
before divined; tokens of other atmos-
pheres, gleams of erratic luminaries that
seem to spurn all law yet move obedient
to one complex impulse ; glimpses of fresh
courier light cleaving the vast immensity
on its way to our yet un visited world,
and all the while, the soul, uplifted by
154
A Review of Harnlct
the vision, is flooded with the very music
of the spheres.
If aught were wanting to render this play
the supreme masterpiece of human genius,
it is found in the contrast between Hamlet
and Laertes, each with a father murdered,
and each impatient for revenge. Laertes
is a hero after the popular heart ; gallant,
passionate, resolute ; moving as level to his
aim * as the cannon to his blank.' He
hardly hears of his father's death, before
he is in Denmark ; hardly in Denmark,
before he storms the Palace. Unscrupu-
lous, unconscientious, irreligious, he drives
madly on where Hamlet is compelled to
halt.
To hell allegiance ! vows to the blackest devil !
Conscience and grace to the profoundest pit !
/ dare damnation : to this point I stand,
That both the worlds I give to negligence.
Let come what comes ; only I '11 be revenged
Most thoroughly for my father.
With inimitable skill the mighty dramatist
details precisely the forfeiture of soul from
155
A Review of Hamlet
which Hamlet, except in one wild tumult
of delirious wrath, steadily recoils.
^^amlet's hands are tied by conscience
and faith : Laertes has, practically, neither;
has a talent for blasphemy ; delights in
daring the gods to do their worst ; would
be glad to cut a throat in the Church. Yet
how pitifully dwarfed is the son of Poloni-
us, beside the son of the Sea-King ! How
he quails before the royal pair that in
Hamlet's grasp were powerless as sparrows
in the clutches of an eagle ! It seems as if
Shakespeare had anticipated the demand
for more dash in his hero, and presented
this type of a fast young soldier only to
exalt the grandeur of the much miscon-
strued prince. Those who point to Laertes'
prompt action to revenge his father's
death, in contrast to Hamlet's delay, forget
that Hamlet's father was thought to have
died a natural death. Hamlet had no proof
to verify his suspicions ; — his only witness
was the Ghost ! Beside the measured, prin-
cipled retribution of Hamlet, the revenge
156
A Rcviciv of Hamlet
of Laertes is vulgar, cowardly and criminal ;
his anathemas but the coarse mouthing of
a school-boy. Imagine for a moment that
' Cutpurse of the Empire' venturing to
say to Hamlet, —
Why now you speak
Like a good child, and a true gentleman.
Or conceive, in Hamlet's mouth, that rant
about ' the life-rendering pelican.'
Midway between these two extremes, —
the unreflecting braggart and the self-
accuser ' thinking too precisely on the
event,' — lie the classical hero and the
Christian saint. Either would have dis-
posed of the case in a more summary way ;
the saint by unhesitating and complete
forgiveness ; the hero proper by a revenge
less dilatory than Hamlet's and less treach-
erous than Laertes'. That the patience
of a saint may be rendered as sublimely
dramatic as the vindictiveness of a sinner,
is proved by Calderon in his Principe Con-
stante. But Shakespeare has not chosen
157
A Review of Hamlet
to represent a saint, but to show how even
a fair infusion of Christian faith must
modify the ancient heroic model. The
hero in whom religion dominates, would
be a higher ideal ; the hero in whom un-
hesitating and unsullied valor dominates,
a greater personal favorite : but neither
perhaps would have such a hold on the
wide heart of humanity, or prove such a
permanent joy and wonder, as this pro-
longed uncertain struggle of matchless
intellect and bewildered conscience with
madness and despair.
' Hamlet is exalted over the mere man
of animal courage and passion, not only
intellectually and physically, but morally
too. The reckless ' darer of damnation '
is unfortunately ready to dare dishonor
too. The King might have spared him-
self the pains of feeling his way so hicely
how far in villainy he could venture \^ith-
out shocking his man. They are both of
a mind, although the master villain islthe
King:
/ 158 \
A Review of Hamlet
King. With ease,
Or with a little shuffling, you may
choose
A sword unbaited, and, in a pass of
practice.
Requite him for your father.
Laertes. I will do it :
And for that purpose, I '11 anoint my
sword.
King. I '11 have proffer'd him
A chalice for the nonce ; whereon but
sipping.
If he by chance escape your venom'd
stuck.
Our purpose may hold there.
Thus thickens the plot : in the fore-
ground, the two conspirators, vindictive,
eager, aggressive; in the distance, with
Horatio, the great defensive avenger, mov-
ing ghostlike to his doom and theirs !
The King has been driven to these des-
perate measures by the news of Hamlet's
escape and return : —
Mess. Letters, my lord, from Hamlet. —
King. From Hamlet ! (reads) ' High and mighty,
159
A Review of Hamlet
— you shall know I am set naked on
your kingdom. To-morrow shall I beg
leave to see your kingly eyes.' —
' High and mighty ! ' What grim sardonic
scorn ! How it smites him between the
brows, as if with an axe ! 'High and mighty ! '
How the outmanoeuvred assassin starts
and staggers beneath the blow.
What should this mean ? Are all the rest come
back ?
Or is it some abuse, and no such thing ?
Can you advise jne ?
He is stretched on a prelusory rack, to
which instant death were mercy.
The letter to Horatio is longer :
Ere we were two days old at sea, a pirate of
very warlike appointment gave us chase :
Finding ourselves too slow of sail, we put
on a compelled valour, etc.
Before discussing the rest of the letter, let
us examine this perpetually misunderstood
piratical capture. We have already noticed
1 60
A Review of Hamlet
Hamlet's first glance at it, ^ I see a cherub
that sees them.' But there is a previous
most positive and most specific allusion to
it, at the close of the interview with his
mother :
O 't is most sweet
Where in one line two crafts directly meet.
If the word crafts had its present maritime
significance in Shakespeare's time, the
double meaning is suggestive of a prear-
ranged capture. How arranged, is neither
here nor there; but opportunities of char-
tering a free cruiser could not have been
wanting to a prince of Denmark ; and what
is more significant, the fleet of Fortinbras
was then in port at Elsinore. There is an
understanding, just ever so vaguely glanced
at, between the two young princes. But
the following lines admit of but one Inter-
pretation ; especially In connection with
his perfect willingness to go :
There 's letters sealed : and my two school-
fellows, —
Whom I will trust as I will adders fang'd, —
II 161
A Review of Hamlet
They bear the mandate : they must sweep my
way,
And marshal me to knavery. Let it work ;
For '/ is the sport to have the enginer
Hoist with his own petard; and '/ shall go hard
But I WILL DELVE ONE YARD BELOW THEIR
MINES
And blow them to the moon !
One would think it required a miraculous
allowance of critical obtuseness to ignore
a counterplot so strikingly pre-announced.
Yet, opening Coleridge, you find ' Ham-
let's capture by the pirates: how judi-
ciously in keeping with the character of
the over-meditative Hamlet, ever at last
determined by accident or by a fit of pas-
sion ! ' And opening Ulrici you find,
* He cheerfully obeys the command to visit
England, evidently with the view, and in
the hope, of there obtaining the means and
opportunity (perhaps the support of Eng-
land, and a supply of money and men, for
an open quarrel with his uncle) to set
about the work in a manner worthy both
162
A Reviciu of Haynlet
of himself and its own importance.' God
save the mark ! ' Accident frustrates his
plans. Captured by pirates, he is set on
shore in Denmark against his will,' etc.
And, opening Wilhelm Meister you find
Hamlet's * capture by pirates, and the death
of the two courtiers by the letter which
they carried,' regarded as ' injuring ex-
ceedingly the unity of the piece, particu-
larly as the hero has no plan.' After such
obvious, amazing misconception, one may
be pardoned for believing he sees
'Two points in Hamlet's soul
Unseized by the Germans yet.'
To make assurance doubly sure, comes
the letter to Horatio, 'In the grapple, /
boarded them ; on ihe instant they got clear
of our ship : so I alone became their pris-
oner. They have dealt with me like
thieves of mercy; but they knew what
THEY DID.' Can circumstantial proof go
farther? Could any twelve men of sense,
on such a record, acquit Hamlet of being
163
A Review of Hamlet
an accessory before, as well as after, the
fact?
The act ends with the Queen's narration
of Ophelia's death, swanlike, singing her
soul away under the willow aslant the
brook. But before passing to the Fifth
Act, notice how the Grand Master has
summed up and defined in one word the
exact amount of disease in Hamlet's mind :
That I essentially am not in madness,
But mad in craft.
With this flashing line of light, the great
poet marks the precise limits of Hamlet's
melancholy so sharply, that any attempt
at a clearer statement is but to gild refined
gold, or paint the lily. If the text is ab-
struse, any comment must be more so.
Up to the end of the Third Act, the
material was so superabundant that the
story of Hamlet may be said to have thus
far written itself. But the most consum-
mate art was required to furnish incident
enough for the two remaining Acts, and
164
A Review of Hatnlet
invent a catastrophe that should prove an
adequate solution of all this tangled skein
of action, thought and agony.
We have seen how perfectly the Fourth
Act manages to connect the past and future
of the drama by a present which, although
replete with a tragic interest of its own, is
also in an eminent degree both retro-
spective and prophetic. But the develop-
ment of the Fifth Act was inconceivably
more difficult : it is the creation of a world,
not out of mental chaos, but out of nothing.
In this wonderful Act, paltry accessories,
small side-bits of detail, are so exalted,
transfigured and divinely illuminated, that
they assume the dignity of events. Here,
in marked perfection we see —
'The grace and versatility of the man.'
' His power and consciousness and self-delight.'
We accept as matters of course, — we
make no marvel now over those wonder-
ful clowns, and Yorick's skull ; the funeral
procession, the grapple in the grave, and
i6s
A Review of Hamlet
Osric : but viewed solely as dramatic con-
trivances, they are miracles of construction.
The deep funereal gloom, the weird sepul-
chral torch-light, which was thrown around
the first three acts by means of the Ghost,
is extended over the last two by means of
Ophelia.
Hamlet's tilt with the sexton is not the
least enjoyable of his encounters, or the
easiest of his victories. In a trial of wit
between prince and clown, as in a battle
between a lion and a fly, insignificance is
apt to have the best of it. But even at
this disadvantage, Hamlet's patient cour-
tesy is eventually an overmatch for the
sexton's shrewd and superhumanly aggra-
vating incivility. The caustic old curmud-
geon absolutely grows genial beneath the
calm unruffled smile of him that was mad
and sent into England.
Clown. Here 's a skull now ; this skull hath lain
far in the earth three-and-twenty years.
Ham. Whose was it ?
1 66
A Review of Hamlet
Clown. A whoreson mad fellow's it was ; whose
do you think it was ?
Ham. Nay, I know not.
Clown. A pestilence on him for a mad rogue !
' a poured a flagon of Rhenish on my
head once. This same skull, sir, was
Yorick's skull, the King's jester,
Ham. This ?
Clown. E'en that.
Ham. Let me see. Alas ! poor Yorick !
And at the first full cadence of that
divine voice, the sexton is mute forever !
(Enter Priests., ^c.^ in procession ; the
corpse of Ophelia, Laertes and
Mourners following; King., ^ueen.,
their trains., &€.)
Ham. But soft ! but soft ! aside ; here comes
the King.
The Queen, the courtiers : who is it
that they follow
And with such maimed rites ?
Horatio is silent : apprehensive of mis-
chief should Hamlet and Laertes meet:
unable to tell his friend that Ophelia is
dead.
167
A Review of Hamlet
Laer. What ceremony else!
Ham. That is Laertes,
A very noble youth : mark.
Laer. What ceremony else ?
Priest. Her obsequies have been as far enlarged
As we have w^arranty ; her death was
doubtful :
And that but great command o'ersways
the order.
She should in ground unsanctified have
lodg'd
Till the last trumpet.
Laer. Must there no more be done ?
Priest. No more be done :
We should profane the service of the dead
To sing a requiem and such rest to her
As to peace-parted souls.
Laer. Lay her i' the earth,
And from her fair and unpolluted flesh
May violets spring ! I tell thee, churlish
priest,
A ministering angel shall my sister be
When thou liest howling.
Ham. What, the fair Ophelia !
^een. Sweets to the sweet : farewell !
(Scattering fiowers.)
i68
A Review of Ha??ilet
I hop'd thou shouldst have been my
Hamlet's wife:
I thought thy bride-bed to have decked,
sweet maid,
And not to have strew'd thy grave.
How different this high-bred, graceful
hinient from the low wailing of Laertes.
This choleric stripling, whose heart was
in Paris ; who cowers before a * King of
shreds and patches,' yet bullies an irrespon-
sible and discretionless priest ; who had
even more than the full fraternal indiffer-
ence to his sister until she lost her reason
and her life; this small Hector must now
make a scene over her dead body. And
such a scene ! His plunge into the open
grave is unworthy of the mountebank
from whom he bought the mortal unction ;
his invocation enough to madden any
honest onlooker. All that palpable rant,
all that sham despair, all that base mortal
thunder, in the holy grave of the un-
polluted girl !
169
A Review of Hamlet
O treble woe
Fall ten times treble on that cursed head
Whose wicked deed thy most ingenious sense
Deprived thee of! Hold off the earth awhile,
Till I have caught her once more in mine arms :
(Leaps into the grave.)
Now pile your dust upon the quick and dead,
Till of this flat, a mountain you have made.
To o'ertop old Pelion, or the skyish head
Of blue Olympus.
Hamlet's instant advance is like the
swoop of an eagle, the charge of a squad-
ron, the levelled curse of a prophet.
What is he whose grief
Bears such an emphasis ? whose phrase of
sorrow
Conjures the wandering stars, and makes them
stand
Like wonder-wounded hearers ? This is I,
Hamlet, the Dane. (Leaps into the grave.)
Laer. The devil take thy soul !
(GrappliJig with him.)
Ham. Thou prayest not well.
I prithee, take thy fingers from my
throat ;
170
A Review of Hamlet
For, though I am not splenetive and
rash,
Yet have I in me something dangerous,
Which let thy wisdom fear; hold off
thy hand !
King. Pluck them asunder. —
^een. Hamlet, Hamlet !
Jll. Gentlemen. —
Hor. Good my lord, be quiet
( The attendants part them and they come out
of the grave.)
Ham. Why, I will fight with him upon this
theme
Until my eyelids will no longer wag.
^ueen. O my son ! What theme ?
Ham. I lov'd Ophelia ; forty thousand brothers
Could not with all their quantity of
love.
Make up my sum. — What wilt thou do
for her ?
King. O he is mad, Laertes.
^een. For love of God forbear him.
Ham. 'Swounds, show me what thou 'It do;
Woo't weep ? woo't fight ? woo't fast ?
woo't tear thyself?
Woo't drink up eisel ? eat a crocodile ?
171
A Review of Hamlet
ril do't. — Dost thou come here to
whine F
To outface me with leaping in her grave ?
Be buried quick with her, and so will I :
And, if thou prate of mountains, let
them throw
Millions of acres on us, till our ground.
Singeing his pate against the burning
zone,
Make Ossa like a wart ! Nay^ an
thou It mouth.
I '11 rant as well as thou.
What can be juster, what can be grander !
Mortal love and manly scorn were never
strung before or since to such sublime
intensity. The foot of true love lies on
the prostrate sham love, like the foot of
Michael on Lucifer; though here the an-
gelic brow is flushed and ruffled with the
rage of combat. The ' living monument'
promised by the King is already in posi-
tion : over the dead maiden stands the
doomed lover, proclaiming his full faith
before assembled Denmark in tones, whose
172
A Review of Hamlet
echoes ringing down the aisles of death,
must have conveyed to her ransomed soul
and reillumined mind the dearest trib-
ute of mortality to perfect the chalice of
spiritual bliss. (That sweet face on the
threshold of another sphere, must have
turned earthward awhile to catch those
noble, jealous words." Yet this superb
and well-merited rebuke has been criticised
as a mere * yielding to passion,' as a * sud-
den fall, from the calm height of philo-
sophical reflection on the frailty of human
life, into the degrading depths of youthful
passion and inconsiderateness ; ' while the
whole scene has been charged with * medi-
tative excess,' and with impeding the
proper march of the action, forgetting that
it is pardonable, and natural, under the
terrible shock of this first sudden knowl-
edge of Ophelia's death while standing
by her open grave ! Heaven help us^
how we grumble over God's best manna
in the desert ! Time, place, and circum-
stance considered, that annihilation of
'73
A Review of Hamlet
Laertes Is one of the sublimest assertions
of moral and intellectual supremacy in all
Shakespeare.
Minds of surpassing reach, hearts of
love, souls of truth, enjoy the lordly right
to acquit others and blame themselves.
And when, as in Hamlet's case, this mag-
nanimity is accompanied by refined ideal-
ism and morbid delicacy, the smallest
approach to violence, however pardonable,
is apt to furnish a ground for self-reproach.
Even before leaving the grave-yard he
attempts a reconciliation, —
Hear you, Sir ;
What is the reason that you use me thus ?
I loved you ever.
His subsequent regret is but another
grace of his * most generous ' nature.
But I am very sorry, good Horatio,
That to Laertes I forgot myself;
For, by the image of my cause, I see
The portraiture of his : I 'II court his favours.
He has then had time for reflection :
time for conversation with his invaluable
174
A Review of Ha??jlet
friend ; time to realize the heart-rending
fact that Ophelia must have believed him
the wilful murderer of her father, and that
Laertes and all the world, except his
mother, were justified in so regarding him.
It was under the spell of conscious inno-
cence and ignorant or forgetful of this con-
structive guilt that he leaped into the
grave. He now comprehends and pardons
the indignation of Laertes ; but his own
conduct was far less influenced by the
violence of the son, than by the exagger-
ated ranting of the brother. For he can-
not help adding, with a glow of reanimated
disdain :
But, sure, the bravery of his grief did put me
Into a towering passion.
Just as Hamlet's exact mental condition
was determined by the line of light.
That I essentially am not in madness |
But mad in craft : — '
so in this scene, the essence of his charac-
i75
A Review of Hamlet
ter is revealed by another flash of dis-
criminating genius :
For though I am not splenetive and rash,
Yet have I in me something dangerous.
Yet the King, relying on the double
death prepared by himself and Laertes, is
singularly tranquil.
Good Gertrude, set some watch over your son,
An hour of quiet shortly shall we see;
Till then, in patience, our proceeding be.
That hour of quiet never arrives. In
the conversation with Horatio, that opens
the last scene, there is more about the
voyage to England. Hamlet knew well
enough that his conductors were marshal-
ling him to knavery ; but the unsealing of
their grand commission, and the device of
a new one, was a sudden inspiration.
There 's a divinity that shapes our ends
Rough-hew them how we will. —
Much follows from this unpremeditated
176
A Review of Hamlet
and most legitimate theft : it is as fertile
of results as the dropping of the handker-
chief in Othello. In the first place, besides
ascertaining the full extent of the royal
knavery, he obtains full proof, under the
royal seal, of the King's villainy. In the
second place, this royal commission, which,
in the presentiment or rather in the assur-
ance of speedy death, he entrusts to Hora-
tio, will be a justification before the world
of the blow which must soon be delivered ;
will shield the princely name, about which
he is so solicitous, from posthumous ob-
loquy, and assist in consigning the seeming-
virtuous wearer of the precious diadem to
everlasting infamy. In the third place,
Rosecrantz and Guildenstern, those supple
traitors to all the rights of fellowship, to
all the consonancy of youth, to all the
obligations of ever preserved love, are
finally though most cruelly disposed of
by this de jure King of Denmark, who
carries his father's signet in his purse.
They are not even near his conscience ;
12 ,77
A Review of Hamlet
their defeat
Does from their own insinuation grow :
'Tis dangerous when the baser nature comes
Between the pass and fell incensed points
Of mighty opposites.
What perfect nerve, what ready wit,
what jubilant power, in sitting calmly
down and writing fairly out that earnest
conjuration from the King. Nor is that
earnest conjuration dictated by malice
against his former friends, but purely in
self-defense. It is the only second hope
on which he can count ; for if the chances
of the sea prevent the contemplated rescue,
he is infallibly lost without that earnest
conjuration.
The whole * rash ' undertaking is a sup-
plemented plot ; a reserved escape ; an
* indiscretion ' only meant to serve in case
his pirate plot should fail. For, two days
at sea without sign of the friendly pirate,
it was not unnatural that his fears should
forget his manners. Besides, there was
more than a chance, in the event of his
178
A Review of Hamlet
escape, of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
returning to Denmark, as they should have
done when they lost Hamlet, instead of
keeping on to England. What determined
them to ' hold their course,' could only-
have been either the fear of facing their
royal master after Hamlet's escape, or an
absurd supposal that Hamlet would follow
them, if released, rather than risk a return
to Elsinore. Be that as it may, Hamlet's
measures are strictly defensive and strictly
justifiable; their doom is exclusively the
result of their own obtrusiveness and folly.
Still, we cannot acquit the Prince of the
same cold cruelty that he showed at the
death of Polonius. He might have made
prison their doom instead of death, though
it is true that in Shakespeare's time cruelty
and torture were terribly prevalent and
men were callous. Horatio's ignorance
of the capture is no argument against its
being premeditated. It would have been
very unlike Hamlet, either to compromise
his friend, who remained at court in ser-
179
A Review of Hamlet
vice of the King, or to extend his secret
needlessly.
Indeed it is only after hearing all the
details of the royal knavery, that Horatio,
true liegeman to the Dane, although be-
longing to the party of the future, ex-
claims, '■Why, what a king is this?' —
And it is only then that Hamlet ventures
far enough to say to this noble, single-
minded soldier, whom he never could or
would have tempted into treason, whose
good opinion is the only human verdict
he cares for, — it is only then he ventures
on that fearful summing up :
Does it not, think'st thee, stand me now upon ?
He that hath kill'd my king,
Popp'd in between the election and my hopes,
Thrown out his angle for my proper life,
And with such cozenage ; is 't not perfect con-
science^
To quit him with this arm ? and is 't not to be
damn'd,
To let this canker of our nature come
In further evil ?
1 80
A Review of Hamlet
The honorable officer and gentleman is
silent ; but the fast friend and wary man
of action answers :
It must be shortly known to him from England
What is the issue of the business there.
Hamlet's reply includes all that need be
said between them ; two such men soon
understand each other :
It will he short : the interim is mine ;
And a man's life no more than to say — one ?
After that the conversation instantly
changes.
It must have been observed that Ham-
let is the most elliptical, as well as the
profoundest, of the tragedies. Here, es-
pecially, Shakespeare unrolls his grand,
mysterious panorama, without vouchsafing
a word of explanation; here, especially,
he imitates the great Creator, in permit-
ting us the inexhaustible delight of pene-
trating the veiled secrets of his mighty
works ; here, especially, he arrays his tragic
events as they occur in real life, leaving
A Review of Hamlet
great gaps to be filled by inference or
conjecture ; here, especially, although far
from aiming at the significant obscurity
which Goethe constantly affected, he seems
to disdain wearing his secret on his sleeve :
and instead of tying his reader down to a
single view, allows him a standpoint and
speculations of his own. We are left to
infer the interval, and objects of delay ; to
infer the reasons of all that singular be-
havior to Ophelia; to infer th.Q. piratical
capture ; to infer a thousand subtle things
everywhere beneath the surface. The
farther the play progresses, the more ellip-
tical it becomes. The last scene is the
most elliptical of all : it begins with an
ellipsis. You never suspect the errand
Hamlet is on, until you happen to hear
that little word * The interim is mine ! '
It means more mischief than all the mono-
logues ! No threats, no imprecations ;- no
more mention of smiling, damned villain ;
no more self-accusal ; but solely and
briefly —
A Review of Hamlet
It will be short : the interim is mine !
Then, for the first time, we recognize the
extent of the change that has been wrought
in Hamlet; then, for the first time, we
perfectly comprehend his quiet jesting
with the clown, his tranquil musings with
Horatio, his humorous recital of the events
of the night aboard the vessel, when the
fighting in his heart would not let him
sleep. The man is transformed by a' great
resolve: his mind is made up I He has
now placed in the safe possession of
Horatio the Royal Commission contain-
ing the full proof of the King's villainy.
The return of the vessel from England
will be the signal for his own execution
and therefore the moral problem is solved :
the only chance of saving his life from a
lawless murderer, is to slay him ; it has
become an act of self-defense : he can do
it with -perfect conscience. He has calcu-
lated the return voyage ; he has allowed
the longest duration to his own existence
and the King's ; he has waited to the very
183
A Review of Hamlet
last moment for the intervention of a
special providence. * Now or never must
the blow be struck ! '
All this and more is revealed by that
one word, * The interim is mine ! ' At
the very moment he encounters the clown
in the churchyard, he is on his death
march to the Palace at * Elsinore.' The
only interruption of the calm resolve by
which he is now possessed, is the affair
with Laertes, to which he turns the con-
versation in princely care of Horatio's
spotless honor. Is not all this indirectly
but unerringly conveyed.^ And yet how
curiously our standard criticism ignores it.
Horatio starts at the coming footstep, as
if he had been listening to treason : 'Peace!
who comes here ? ' As the vexed stream
of Hamlet's life approaches the abyss, the
foam and anguish of the rapids subside ;
and just over the level brink of calm and
light that edges the fall, hovers the ' water-
fly,' Osric. Hamlet is patient with him
— almost as patient as with the sexton —
184
A Reviczu of Hamlet
although constitutionally merciless to a
fool ; whether a fool circuitous like Polo-
nius, a fool rampant like Laertes, or a
fool positive like Osric. It is the last
of his intellectual engagements, this sin-
gular duel between a dunce on the thresh-
old of existence, and the stately gentleman
but three steps from the grave. All forms
and degrees of intellect have been dwarfed
beside this most sovereign reason : the
final contrast is between godlike appre-
hension and sheer fatuity. The King's
' Give them the foils, young Osric,' in-
clines us to think that Osric was even more
knave than fool. The creature appointed
to shuffle those unequal foils could hardly
have failed to detect the one unbated point.
But he is too slight for dissection.
With the extinction of this water-fly,
the great catastrophe approaches. Only
once, and for a moment, the shadow of
the coming death depresses him.
Hor. You will lose this wager, my lord.
Ham. I do not think so ; since he went into
i8s
A Review of Hamlet
France, I have been in continual prac-
tice ; I shall win at the odds. Thou
would'st not think how ill all 's here
about my heart; but it is no matter.
Hor. Nay, good my lord.
Ham. It is but foolery ; but it is such a kind
of gain-giving, as would perhaps trouble
a woman.
Hor. If your mind dislike anything, obey it;
I will forestall their repair hither and
say you are not fit.
Ham. Not a whit; we defy augury; there's
a special providence in the fall of a
sparrow. If it be now, 't is not to
come ; if it be not now, yet it will
come ; the readiness is all : since no
man of aught he leaves, knows what
is 't to leave betimes ? —
After this last inevitable sigh, there is
no more repining. His smile is that of
the tnorituri te salutant ! He longs to be
at peace with all mankind but one ; most
of all with Ophelia s brother. The Quarto
ruins his whole exquisite apology, by
making it a suggestion of the Queen's ;
1 86
A Rei'ieiv of Hamlet
the Folio, by another masterly omission,
leaves it his own free, spontaneous offer-
ing. His superabundant penitence com-
pletes itself in this acme of courtesy.
Alas Laertes ! —
I do receive your offered love like love,
And will not wrong it :
his fingers itching, as he speaks, for that
unbated and envenomed foil. What a
refined tenderness in the remote sugges-
tion of Ophelia that lurks in. Hamlet's
answer :
Ham. I embrace it freely,
And will this brother s wager frankly
play,
Give us the foils. — Come on.
The ocular pathos of the scene is terrible ;
yonder skipping water-fly ; the King less
patient with the chalice for the nonce,
than Laertes with his anointed steel ;
trumpets and cannon without; Lords
and attendants within : and, circled by
187
A Review of Hamlet
this pageant of death, supported only by
Horatio and the sympathy of his unsus-
pecting mother, the chosen victim of the
holiday, passionless, fearless, and seem-
ingly powerless ; without a fixed ' plan for
the execution of his just revenge,' to quote
the words of Mr. Strachey, * but what is
much better, the faith that an opportunity
will present itself, and the resolution to
seize it instantly.' Let the Embassy from
England enter ! He is face to face with
his foe, sure of his man, even were the
smiling villain twice a king !
Hamlet justifies the sinister calculation
on his innate nobility of soul.
he, being remiss,
Most generous and free from all contriving,
Will not peruse the foils.
He asks but one matter of course
question :
Ham. These foils have all a length ?
Osric. Ay, my good lord. ( They prepare to
play.)
A Review of Hamlet
King. Come, begin ;
And you the judges bear a wary eye. —
Ham. Come on, Sir.
Come, my lord. (^They play.)
Ham, One. —
Laer. No.
Ham. Judgment.
Osric. A hit, a very palpable hit. —
Laer. Well ; again.
The King cannot kill him fast enough.
The first bout is hardly over before he
orders up the supplemental bowl. But
memories of the *juice of cursed Heba-
non ' may have crossed Hamlet's mind ;
he will not touch the leperous distilment:
King. Give him the cup. —
Ham. I '11 play this bout first ; set it by
awhile. —
Come another hit, what say you ? ( They
play.)
Laer. A touch, a touch, I do confess.
King. Our son shall win.
^een. He's fat and scant of breath. —
Here, Hamlet, take my napkin, rub thy
brows :
' 189
A Review of Hamlet
The Queen carouses to thy fortune,
Hamlet.
Ham. Good, madam !
King. Gertrude, do not drink.
^een. I w'lll^ my lord ; I pray you pardon me.
King. It is the poison'd cup ; it is too late.
(^Aside.)
Ham. I dare not drink yet, madam ; by and by.
^ueen. Come let me wipe thy face.
How characteristic of the Queen ! doting
on her son, dictating to her husband to
the last ! Woe and confinement have
left their mark on the outward as well as
the inward Hamlet: the * mould of form '
has lost its earlier grace, his breath is
short, the sweat stands on his brow ; but
at the first visitation of that Berserker
wrath, he is terrible, as resistless as ever.
Laer. My lord, I '11 hit him now.
King. I do not think 't.
Laer. And yet 't is almost 'gainst my con-
science. {Aside.)
Ham. Come, for the third, Laertes, you but
dally :
190
A Review of Hamlet
I pray you pass with your best violence ;
I am afeard you make a wanton of me.
Laer. Say you so! Come on. {They play.)
Osric. Nothing, neither way.
Laer. Have at you now !
Laertes wounds Hamlet : then in scuf-
fling, they change rapiers, and Hamlet
wounds Laertes. No accidental exchange,
for Laertes would only have surrendered
his unbated foil to the sternest compul-
sion of superior force ; nor could Hamlet
well have been unaware of that venomed
stuck and the warm blood that followed
it.
King. Part them ; they are incens'd.
Ham. Nay, come again.
{The ^ue en falls. ^
Osric. Look to the Queen there, ho ! —
Hor. They bleed on both sides — How is it,
my lord ?
Osric. How is 't Laertes ? —
Laer. Why as a woodcock to mine own springe,
Osric ;
I am justly killed with mine own
treachery.
191
A Review of Hamlet
What a fearful triumph in Hamlet's ' Nayj
come again I ' His wound is older, — the
poison longer in his veins, than in his
murderer's ; yet, statue-like he stands at
bay, erect, alert, defiant, comprehending
all at a glance, absolute master of the
situation ! The mutes and audience to
the act are less awed by the terror of the
spectacle, than spell-bound, by the majes-
tic attitude of the avenger
Ham. How does the Queen ? —
King. She swoons to see them bleed.
^een. No, no, the drink, the drink, — O my
dear Hamlet, —
The drink, the drink ! — I am poison'd.
{Dies.)
Ham. O villainy ! — Ho ! let the door be
locked;
Treachery ! seek it out.
Laer. It is here, Hamlet : Hamlet thou art
slain ;
No medicine in the world can do thee
good,
In thee there is not half an hour of life ;
192
A Revieiv of Hamlet
The treacherous instrument is in thy
hand,
Unbated and envenom'd ; the foul prac-
tice
Hath turned itself on me ; lo, here I lie,
Never to rise again : thy mother 's
poison'd :
I can no more : the King, the King 's to
blame.
Ham. The point envenom'd too ?
Its being unbated wiis a superfluous rev-
elation. Without pause, or with such
pause as the panther makes when crouch-
ing for the leap, the final blow is delivered
at last :
Then venom to thy work ! — (^Stabs the
King.)
All. Treason ! treason !
They find their voices at last, these
lords, attendants, guards and soldiers.
But to what purpose ? They dare not
cross the path of that solitary champion
of the grave, — not though invoked by
'3 193
A Review of Hamlet
the piteous appeal of their bleeding
King ! —
O, yet defend me, friends ; I am but hurt.
An instant more, and the hand of Hamlet
is on his throat. If the archangel of
judgment stood amongst them, they could
not crouch more helplessly paralyzed be-
neath the lifted sword of fire, than before
this awful incarnation of doom !
Here, thou incestuous, murderous, damned Dane,
Drink of this poison : — is thy union here f
Follow my mother ! —
O the awful irony of that fell interroga-
tive ! deadlier, bitterer than steel or bowl !
The last lightning of that departing in-
telligence ! With one outstretched arm
he plucks their monarch from their midst,
drags him to the ground, pinions him be-
tween his feet ; with the other, forces the
* potent poison ' down the reluctant throat,
— overwhelming, in one tremendous sec-
ond, the prostrate villain with a thousand
deaths.
194
A Review of Hamlet
The King is ground to dust in that
lurid hurricane of passion ! mind, soul,
and body shrivel up in that furnace of
wrath ! And so it might have been, at
almost any moment, since that night on
the platform. The Prince was conscious
of this latent, immeasurable force ; it
never yet failed him at need ; at the
right moment, it was ever sure to come
at his call. An avenger so justly confi-
dent of his strength may safely await the
hour when retribution is so righteous and
complete that it resembles less a human
intervention than a divine dispensation.
The last prayer, even more than the
last confession, of Laertes, extorts our
compassion :
Exchange forgiveness with me, noble
Hamlet :
Mine and my father's death come not
upon thee,
Nor thine on me. (Z)/Vj.)
Ham. Heaven make thee free of it ! I follow
thee.
195
A Review of Hamlet
There is nothing so pathetic, nothing
so heroic in literature, as the last moments
of this superb young Prince, — pierced
with an envenomed wound, bleeding, reel-
ing, dying, yet making that unbated and
thrice ensanguined foil, the unquestioned
sceptre of the moment for friend and
foe; wrestling with Horatio for the bowl,
as fiercely as with Laertes in Ophelia's
grave ; triumphant up to the very gates
of death. He has more the flash and
motion of a Homeric god than of a
man.
I am dead, Horatio. — Wretched Queen,
adieu! —
You that look pale and tremble at this
chance,
That are but mutes or audience to this
act,
Had I but time, (as this fell sergeant,
death.
Is strict in his arrest,) O I could tell
you.
But let it be — Horatio, I am dead ;
196
A Review of Hamlet
Thou liv'st ; report me and my cause
aright
To the unsatisfied.
Hor. Never believe it :
I am more an antique Roman than a
Dane :
Here 's yet some liquor left.
Ham. As thou 'rt a man,
Give me the cup : let go, by heaven
I '11 have it. —
O good Horatio, what a wounded name.
Things standing thus unknown, shall
live behind me !
If thou didst ever hold me in thy
heart.
Absent thee from felicity awhile.
And in this harsh world draw thy breath
in pain,
To tell my story. (^March afar off^ and
shot within.^
What warlike noise is this ?
Osric. Young Fortinbras, with conquest come
from Poland,
To the ambassadors of England gives
This warlike volley.
Ham. O, I die, Horatio ;
197
A Review of Hamlet
The potent poison quite o'ercrows my
spirit :
I cannot live to hear the news from
England ;
But I do prophesy the election lights
On Fortinbras : he has my dying voice :
So tell him, with the occurrents, more
and less,
Which have solicited. — The rest is
silence. (Z)/«.)
In this supreme hour, his mission ac-
complished ; ' winning, not losing, the
cause for which he dies ; ' sure, through
Horatio, of the verdict of posterity, and
calmly fronting the dread tribunals of
eternity with a radically inviolate con-
science ; he says, half reproachfully, to
death, as though it were his sole regret
at leaving life, ' The rest is silence ! ' Alas,
for us as well as for him, the rest is si-
lence ! Silence for the lips whose music
has had no equal since the birth of time ;
silence for the voice whose least recorded
utterance remains an inspiration for all the
198
A Revieiu of Hamlet
ages ! The solution is complete. The
wide repose of a perfect catastrophe ex-
tends to the remotest fibres of the plot.
In the masterly lines assigned to Osric,
the simultaneous arrival of Fortinbras and
England is announced in one breath. Ro-
sencrantz and Guildenstern have fallen :
once more the princely Norwegian, who
represents the future, marches broadly
into view, irradiating all that scene of
havoc with the promise of a better day
for Denmark. Nothing remains but for
Horatio to tell
the yet unknowing world
How these things came about :
to sustain Fortinbras in claiming his van-
tage.
And from his mouth whose voice will draw no
more !
How beautiful that passing tribute to
the eloquence of his dead friend !
In the sad, soldierly orders and martial
199
A Review of Hamlet
praise of Fortinbras the play finds its per-
fect consummation.
Let four captains
Bear Hamlet, like a soldier, to the stage;
For he was likely, had he been put on.
To have prov'd most royally ; and, for his
passage.
The soldier's music and the rites of war
Speak loudly for him. —
Take up the bodies ; such a sight as this
Becomes the field, but here shows much amiss.
Go, bid the soldiers shoot.
(A dead march. Exeunt^ hearing off" the dead
bodies^ after which a peal of ordnance is shot
of')
This is the only play of Shakespeare's
in which our interest in the central figure
is compelled to extend itself beyond the
grave. When Lear, Macbeth, or Othello
die, our connection with them is dissolved:
their mortality is the only thing that con-
cerns us. Whereas, in Hamlet, we find
ourselves gazing after him into that un-
discovered country from whose bourne
A Review of Hamlet
no traveller returns, uniting in Horatio's
exquisite adieu.
Good night, sweet prince :
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest !
Hamlet is not directly on trial for his
soul, but the question of eternal loss or
gain is constantly suggested. It is the
management of this deep shadow of the
world to come ; this complicated war be-
tween conscience and passion ; this sharp
contrast between providence and fate; this
final appeal from time to eternity, that
gives the drama such universal, indestruc-
tible interest. Its felicities of diction, mir-
acles of invention, exhaustless variety of
character ; its splendor of imagery, con-
structive symmetry, and pre-eminent glory
of thought, would abundantly account for
the critical admiration it inspires ; but the
critical awe and popular love it never fails
to awaken can only be attributed to that
rare but sovereign charm with which the
highest human genius can sometimes in-
A Review of Hamlet
vest a religious mystery. There is a
poetic compulsion that after the fatal de-
feat of so blameless a youth, after a career
of such unexampled, unprovoked agony,
there should be in distinct perspective the
ineffable amends of the hereafter. In
Hamlet, Shakespeare has not only created
a character but a soul. The deep spiritu-
ality of the part not only fills the play
itself, but, acting as a centre of light, dif-
fuses an ethereal lustre over all his works,
and supplies the most imperishable ele-
ment of his immortality. Strike any other
single play from the list, and though the
loss would be irreparable, yet the main
characteristics of the entire fabric would
remain radically the same. Strike out
Hamlet, and the aspect of the whole
structure is hopelessly altered.
Macbeth
{A Fragment. Left unfinished by the death of
the author.)
Macbeth is one of the twenty plays
which first appeared in print in the Folio
of 1623. It was probably written in 1605,
perhaps two or three years after Hamlet;
acted probably in 1606, certainly in 16 10,
at the Globe Theatre. With the excep-
tion perhaps of Lear, it is the latest of
the four tragedies.
Macbeth himself is one of Shake-
speare's great criminal characters. In
Hamlet, intellect, individual force, and
courage were on the side of innocence :
in Macbeth, intellect, energy, and daring
are on the side of guilt. In Hamlet, the
villain of the piece is a cunning, cowardly
voluptuary of small intelligence and
smaller will ; unscrupulous, unconsci-
entious, unredeemed by a single approxi-
203
Macbeth
matlon to virtue unless it be implied
fidelity to an incestuous love. In Mac-
beth, the hero is bold, ambitious, daunt-
less, dangerous ; with a mind of vast
undisciplined power : striding from guilt
to deeper guilt with a speed accelerated
by remorseful self-abhorrence. The
" King of shreds and patches " is a self-
impelled, instinctively and elaborately
hyprocritical assassin, who takes his rouse,
keeps midnight wassail, drains his draughts
of Rhenish down ; who clings compla-
cently to his crown, his own ambition,
and his queen ; a smiling Cain, who, with
but one faint effort at remorse, finds life a
joy till Hamlet teaches him to fear.
The Thane of Cawdor is driven half
reluctantly to crime by a spell of " Magic
sleight" and the horrible compulsion of a
fiend-like woman. When he murders
Duncan he murders sleep ; puts rancours
in the vessel of his peace ; eats his daily
meal in fear and shakes nightly in the
affliction of terrible dreams : sees a gory
204
Macbeth
shadow at his banquets, begins to be
a-weary of the sun, and instead of being
sleeker for his sinning, is scared and
roughened by a fierce despair. Instead
of the academic gentleness of a prince of
thirty, we have herethe matured manhood
of a veteran soldier : instead of ellipsis,
complexity and oblique suggestiveness,
all is plain and direct ; the plot ascends
with great broad pyramidal steps which
there is no mistaking, you cannot miscon-
ceive the purport and direction ; the only
difficulty is in keeping up with the gigantic
stride of the action. The very versifica-
tion reflects this essential contrast: it is
bolder, rougher, compacter than Hamlet,
although, more than once, it softens into
riper harmony as if longer use had
enriched the instrument in the master's
hand.
The one point of resemblance between
the two characters is imaginativeness.
Paradoxical as it sounds at first, Macbeth
is more imaginative and less courageous
205
Macbeth
than Hamlet. The one point of re-
semblance between the two plays is the
introduction of the supernatural ; and
with this all likeness ends.
The remarks I have made on Hamlet
may be considered little better than a
running commentary on the text. I shall
venture, however, to treat Macbeth in the
same way, for I am persuaded that any
satisfactory analysis of these wonderful
plays must be mainly out of the poet's
own mouth. Scholars and men of the
world interpret Shakespeare in their own
way or in obedience to established criti-
cism ; nor can 1 reasonably hope to make
these Lectures of any great value to
them, although, in Hamlet, this very
object was perhaps too presumptuously
undertaken. Every educated man has
his own view of Shakespeare just as he
has his own view of nature. It is almost
as difficult to revolutionize his perception
of one as of the other. Yet these fixed
ideas admit of partial modification and
206
Macbeth
expansion : something may be gained by
the suggestions and even by the errors of
the commonest apprehension. It would
be a curious infehcity if any discussion of
the Four Tragedies, however imperfect
in itself, were entirely devoid of general
interest.
But to a very large class, Shakespeare
has to be taught^ — patiently and minutely
expounded. This class embraces those
debarred, — either by scruples of con-
science or by want of opportunity, —
from witnessing theatrical representations.
In the higher collegiate classes gener-
ally, my professional experience of eight
years has taught me that Shakespeare, in
a schoolboy's hands, was apt to be a dead
letter, — little relished and less under-
stood ; whereas when interpreted to them
even with the faintest approach to proper
elocution, it was both felt and enjoyed.
Nor do I think that the importance of
thoroughly educating our college gradu-
ates in this greatest English author can
207
Macbeth
easily be overestimated. It is a mental
and psychological enlargement which no
other single work, and not every library,
can bestow. In the exhaustless galleries
of beauty, humor, pathos, passion, and
power, through which the young mind is
there conducted, a robust manly taste
may be generated, that in after life will
be sure to rebel against a literature which
tends to degenerate from feminine grace
into effeminate insipidity. There is many
a bright fellow in school and college to
whom Shakespeare, pure and simple in
the silence of the study-room, would
prove a bore ; but there is scarcely a
dunce past sixteen whose appreciation
cannot be aroused, in an intelligently
conducted class, as if scales had dropped
from his eyes.
It would be well too if girls were ju-
diciously familiarized with this mighty
master. Our modern imaginative litera-
ture is so exclusively devoted to the
portraiture of a single passion, — love, in
208
Macbeth
all its forms and deformities, delicacies
and brutalities, old love and young love,
good love and bad love, true love and
false love, love heroic, love bucolic, love
Platonic and love Satanic, — that it would
really be a service to convince them early
in life that there are other passions and
emotions of which even the feminine
heart is susceptible ; that there are other
things worth chronicling besides the de-
velopment of personal attachment ; that
Lear may be entertaining although the
hero is eighty, and Hamlet tolerable
although agony has made the hero fat
and scant of breath instead of thin ; that
Macbeth is interesting although the hero
is marred and bruised and bronzed and
middle aged.
It is for the large class above referred
to, that the remainder of this course of
Lectures is principally designed; and here,
as in Hamlet, the quotations from the
text will be fuller than if a maturer
audience were more directly addressed.
14 209
Macbeth
The curtain rises on an open place,
thunder and lightning, and the three
witches — weird incarnations of diabolical
temptation, semi-diabolical agents, semi-
prescient of futurity, flitting an instant
before the coming procession of horror
like the advanced oriflame of hell, — then
vanishing.
Fiyst IVitch. When shall we three meet again
In thunder, lightning, or in rain ?
Sec. IVitch. When the hurly burly 's done,
When the battle 's lost and won.
Third Witch. That will be ere set of sun.
First Witch. Where the place ?
Sec. Witch. Upon the heath.
There to meet with Macbeth.
First Witch. I come, Graymalkin !
AIL Paddock calls : — Anon ! —
Fair is foul and foul is fair :
Hover through the fog and filthy
air. {J V itches vanish.)
The story of the battle and Macbeth's
prowess are told by a wounded sergeant;
— the treason and death-sentence of Caw-
Macbeth
dor briefly announced; and then once more,
amid the muttering thunder of the blasted
heath, re-enter the ghastly three. Observe
how wondrously they are sketched In ; not
with minute personal details like the soli-
tary phantom in Hamlet, a treatment they
could not endure, but with broad, vague
characteristic touches. The enormous
difficulty of inventing an appropriate lan-
guage for such nondescripts is inconceivable
to one who has not tried it. Yet how
easily it flows ! with what facility the same
lips that catch the accents of humanity in
its nearest approaches to deity, can also
find a voice for the jargon of debased
mortality in its lowest association with
demonism.
First Witch. Where hast thou been, sister ?
Sec. Witch. Killing swine.
Third Witch. Sister, where thou ?
First Witch. A sailor's wife had chestnuts in
her lap.
And munch'd, and munch'd, and
munch'd ; —
zi I
Macbeth
" Give me," quoth I :
"Aroint thee, witch! the rump-
fed ronyon cries.
Her husband 's to Aleppo gone,
master o' the Tiger.
But in a sieve I '11 thither sail,
And, like a rat without a tail,
I '11 do, I '11 do, and I '11 do.
I'll give thee a wind.
Thou art kind.
And I another.
I myself have all the other. —
Though his bark cannot be lost,
Yet it shall be tempest-tost.
Look what I have.
Show me, show me.
Here I have a pilot's thumb,
Wreck'd as homeward he did
come. {Drum within.)
A drum, a drum !
Macbeth doth come.
The weird sisters, hand in hand.
Posters of the sea and land.
Thus do go about, about :
Thrice to thine, and thrice to
mine
212
Sec. Witch.
First Witch.
Third Witch.
First Witch.
Sec. Witch.
First Witch.
Third Witch.
AIL
Macbeth
And thrice again, to make up nine.
Peace ! — the charm 's wound up.
{Enter Macbeth and Banquo.)
The roll of the Scottish drum breaking
gradually in on this fantastical incantation,
the entry of Macbeth and Banquo glittering
in victorious armor, suddenly face to face
with these crouching, malignant shapes, is
brilliantly effective. The poorest pair of
actors that ever trod the boards are sure of
applause if only for the very power of the
contrast. Observe how with one sweep
of the brush these * posters of the sea and
land ' are colored, the characters of the
two conquerors discriminated, and the
whole plot darkly foreshadowed. The
chieftains do not at once perceive the
ambushed witches : time is wisely allowed
for the martial entry to take full effect :
but as soon as the Three are seen how the
startled thanes recoil from the incarnation
of a dream with which neither was entirely
unfamiliar. And mark how, as soon as
addressed, the witches forsake their whis-
213
Macbeth
pering, crouching, mumbling diablerie and
assume a dignity fitting the mistresses of
the elements and oracles of the future.
Macb. So foul and fair a day I have not
seen.
Banquo How far is 't called to Forres ? —
What are these
So wither'd and so wild in their
attire,
That look not like the inhabitants
o' the earth,
And yet are on 't ? — Live you ?
or are you aught
That man may question ? You
seem to understand me,
By each at once her choppy finger
laying
Upon her skinny lips : — you
should be women.
And yet your beards forbid me to
interpret
That you are so.
Macb. Speak if you can : —
what are you ?
First Witch. All hail, Macbeth ! hail to thee,
thane of Glamis !
214
Macbeth
Sec. Witch. All hail, Macbeth ! hail to thee,
thane of Cawdor !
Third Witch. All hail, Macbeth ! that shalt be
King hereafter !
Ban. Good sir, why do you start and
seem to fear
Things that do sound so fair ? —
r the name of truth,
Are ye fantastical, or that indeed
Which outwardly ye show ? My
noble partner
You greet with present grace and
great prediction
Of noble having and of royal hope,
That he seems rapt withal : — to
me you speak not :
If you can look into the seeds of
time,
And say which grain will grow,
and which will not.
Speak, then, to me, who neither
beg nor fear
Your favours nor your hate.
First Witch. Hail !
Sec. Witch. Hail !
Third Witch. Hail !
215
Macbeth
First Witch. Lesser than Macbeth and greater.
Sec. Witch. Not so happy, yet much happier.
Third Witch. Thou shalt get kings, though thou
be none :
So all hail, Macbeth and Banquo.
First Witch. Banquo and Macbeth, all hail !
Macb. Stay, you imperfect speakers, tell
me more :
By Sinel's death I know I am
thane of Glamis ;
But how of Cawdor ? the thane of
Cawdor lives,
A prosperous gentleman ; and to
be King
Stands not within the prospect of
belief.
No more than to be Cawdor. Say
from whence
You owe this strange intelligence ?
or why
Upon this blasted heath you stop
our way
With such prophetic greeting ?
Speak, I charge you.
(^TFitches vanish.)
Ban. The earth hath bubbles, as the
water has,
216
Macbeth
And these are of them : — whither
are they vanish'd ?
Mach. Into the air; and what seem'd cor-
poral melted
As breath into the wind. — Would
they had stay'd !
Ban. Were such things here as we do
speak about ?
Or have we eaten on the insane
root
That takes the reason prisoner ?
Macb. Your children shall be kings.
Ban. You shall be king.
Macb. And thane of Cawdor too, — went
it not so ?
Ban. To the selfsame tune and words.
— who 's there ?
(J£.nter Ross and Angus.)
Both these men are ambitious, both not
unfamiliar with a royal hope, yet while
Banquo loftily repels the temptation, Mac-
beth is already a murderer at heart : * My
thought, whose murder yet is but fantas-
tical.' His subsequent hesitation is chiefly
timidity, his subsequent remorse an excess
217
Macbeth
of superstitious imagination. How he
gloats over the partial fulfilment of the
weird prediction :
Glamis and thane of Cawdor :
The greatest is behind !
How instantly envious of Banquo :
Do you not hope your children shall be kings,
When those that gave the thane of Cawdor to
me
Promis'd no less to them ?
How rapt and how exultant :
Two truths are told,
As happy prologues to the swelling act
Of the imperial theme.
It is but the poorest self-deception to plead
If chance will have me King, why, chance may
crow^n me
Without my stir.
His guilty purpose is already busied with
details :
218
Macbeth
The Prince of Cumberland ! that is a step
(steep ?)
On which I must fall down, or else o'erleap,
For in my way it lies. Stars, hide your fires ;
Let not light see my black and deep desires :
The eye wink at the hand ; yet let that be,
Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see.
All this fell determination in the face of
the meek King who had just rewarded his
valor with all the grace and guerdon a
monarch can bestow ; and who means to
crown his bounty by a visit to his ' peer-
less kinsman.' It would only be repeat-
ing Coleridge to dwell upon this first fine
contrast between Macbeth and Banquo.
And, although collegians are chiefly here
addressed, I do not feel at liberty con-
sciously to detail views which have been
already elaborated.
Macbeth's guilt is rendered infernal by
the combined meekness, magnanimity, in-
firmities and lovingness of his victim.
Duncan absolutely dotes on him, with but
219
Macbeth
a halting afterthought for the no less
deserving Banquo. Lady Macbeth's esti-
mate of her husband's character must not
mislead us. It is just such an analysis of
a human heart as a fiend might make from
some lonely pinnacle of hell. She has
abandoned herself, body and soul to am-
bition, — determined to be Queen though
damned for it ; her will and courage are
so perfect, her demoniac logic so consistent,
that his manly recoil from murder strikes
her as coward benevolence, his scruples as
so much piety misplaced. There is not
much of the milk of human kindness in
this man's bosom — it only seems so to
her ; his ambition is as criminal as human
ambition can be,- — her complaint of its
being * without the illness should attend
it' proceeds from a full diabolical posses-
sion. His character brightens only when
laid side by side with hers, as a villain
might look a little whiter arm in arm with
a fiend. She longs to infect him with her
infernal malice:
Macbeth
Hie thee hither,
That I may pour my spirits in thine ear ;
And chastise with the valour of my tongue
All that impedes thee from the golden round,
Which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem
To have thee crown'd withal.
Her dedication of herself to the powers of
darkness, her invocation of night and hell
and all the sightless substances that wait
on nature's mischief, bind her more irrevo-
cably, more sublimely, more distinctly to
the arch-fiend's service than if the bond
of blood and parchment had passed
between them ; the most dauntless, de-
liberate self-damnation ever perpetrated, —
a positive wooing of eternal perdition, —
a deadly, passionate appeal flashed into
the very heart of hell. She is not simply
fiendish, but palpably fiend like. A
woman who acts this should have the lurid
halo of the damned coiled visibly about
her brows. What inborn demon in the
man ever wedded him to such a wife ?
What a ghastly courtship it must have
Macbeth
been ! Could she ever have loved ? loved
with all that reigning devil in her soul?
Yet out of all womanhood, he singled her
to be his own — and calls her ' dearest
chuck,' and loves and fondles her ! The
surrender of feminine innocence to ser-
pentine allurement is but the hard condi-
tion of Eden; the surrender of all manly
honor to feminine solicitation is an absolute
divorce between heaven and earth ! The
ruling grace of manhood is power, of
womanhood submission. A woman may
yield to the fascination of superior strength
or subtlety, in slavish obedience to a
mysterious instinct, without being radically
influenced either by the virtues or the vices
of her idol. But a cruel man so thoroughly
bad hearted as to ignore all the redeeming
influences of existence by loving a woman
crueller than himself, may be said to excel
her in guilt by the bare enormity of lov-
ing her. At bottom, Macbeth was worse
than his wife. With half her undaunted
mettle he would have ventured on twice
Macbeth
her crimes ; for as soon as his courage is
bolstered by despair, he outstrips her in
guilt and leaves her fainting, distanced,
dying in his gory pathway. The stalwart
regicide hurrying from murder to murder,
vet puttering with witches and quailing
before the painted devil of his imagination,
is in every way more despicable than the
lost woman sublimely invoking the fiend
she serves to avert the truer remorse by
which she ultimately perishes.
Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here ;
And fill me from the crown to the toe, top-full
Of direst cruelty ! make thick my blood.
Stop up the access and passage to remorse ;
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep pace between
The effect and it ! Come to my woman's
breasts
And take my milk for gall, you murdering
ministers.
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on nature's mischief! Come, thick
night,
223
Macbeth
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it
makes,
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the
dark.
To cry " Hold, hold ! "
She is even happy in the completeness of
her fierce intent, in the total extinguish-
ment of human tenderness, in the passion-
ate revelry of fully accepted sin. She is
literally enamoured of guilt, intoxicated
with demoniac desire. She springs to
meet her coming lord with the exultant
bound of a tigress to her mate when the
scent of blood is on the night wind.
Great Glamis ! worthy Cawdor !
Greater than both, by the all-hail hereafter!
Thy letters have transported me beyond
This ignorant present, and I feel now
The future in the instant.
Macb. My dearest love,
Duncan comes here to-night.
Lady M. And when goes hence ?
Macb. To-morrow as he purposes.
224
Macbeth
Lady M. O never
Shall sun that morrow see !
Your face, my thane, is as a book
where men
May read strange matters : — to be-
guile the time.
Look like the time; bear welcome in
your eye,
Your hand, your tongue : look like
the innocent flower.
But be the serpent under 't.
Macb. We will speak further.
Lady M. Only look up clear;
To alter favour ever is to fear ;
Leave all the rest to me.
The great ruined man with all the gloom
and agony of guilt in his face, — the woman
smiling, happy, collected, tranquil as inno-
cence. How her soul hisses out in those
four words, ' And when goes hence ? '
Yet how colloquially Ristori glided over
it ! * E quando si parte ? ' With just as
little force and significance as if she were
putting the question to a hackman on the
15 225
Macbeth
Lung' Arno. Ah, could we only have
heard Rachel give the equivalent of that
terrible question !
In fearful contrast with all this is the
bland security of the venerable King.
He enjoys the pleasant site of the castle
and its nimble air; enjoys Banquo's nice
dissertation about the temple-haunting
martlet. His heart and lips are overflow-
ing with royal courtesy : an ancient grace
sparkles in all he says and does.
Give me your hand ;
Conduct me to mine host: we love him highly,
And shall continue our graces towards him.
By your leave, hostess.
At that very instant, in a lobby in the
castle, that same host is musing :
If it were done when 't is done, then 't were well
It were done quickly : if the assassination
Could trammel up the consequence, and catch,
With his surcease, success ; that but this blow
Might be the be-all and the end-all here^
But here^ upon this bank and shoal of time, —
We 'd jump the life to come.
226
Macbeth
But for certain temporal retribution, the
life to come might be left out of the calcu-
lation, ignored, jumped. Observe how
pointedly this is in contrast with Hamlet,
who does not set his life at a pin's fee,
who is only deterred by the dread of some-
thing after death. Macbeth would relin-
quish all hope of heaven were temporal
success the sure consequence of assassina-
tion : he is daunted only by the impo-
tence of murder to secure its ends even on
this bank and shoal of time ; only by the
inevitable temporal atonement.
But in these cases,
We still have judgment here ; that we but teach
Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return
To plague the inventor ; this even-handed justice
Commends the ingredients of our poison'd chalice
To our own lips.
It may seem gratuitous to dwell upon a
soliloquy which, although somewhat ob-
scure in its opening by reason of its mas-
sive thought, must be perfectly intelligible
227
Macbeth
to most readers. Yet as a sample of Shake-
spearean criticism, I may mention that
Schlegel gravely cites, ^ We'd jump the life
to come ' as evidence * that Macbeth dreads
the prospect of the life to come ; ' precisely
the opposite of its first obvious meaning.
The whole point of the lament is not that
the eternal jewel of his soul is given to
the common enemy of man, but (to
blend two monologues) that rancours put
poison in the chalice of his peace. The
double dishonor of the meditated deed,
the meek unprovokingness of the spotless
King, are recited not in compassion but
in regret that the sides of his intent have
no other spur than vaulting ambition which
o'erleaps itself His recoil is but a cow-
ardly, selfish calculation of the chances
against him : he will proceed no further
in the business solely because he has been
honored of late; because it would be a
pity to cast aside the golden opinions of
all sorts of people while in their newest
gloss. Some flash of generous martial
228
Macbeth
repugnance may have visited him, but not
articulately. His great fear is the fear of
failure : his great regret the want of a
satisfactory stimulant. His fear abates the
instant his wife details the practicability of
averting suspicion. A stimulant is sup-
plied not only by the drink she furnishes
but by her frightful, impetuous scorn.
How she fastens on all the covert guilt
lurking beneath his coy excuses ; how she
drags it bare and shivering to the surface ;
how she forces him with her terrible logic
into open confession that the only dif-
ference between them is his inveterate,
essential preliminary cowardice ; not the
conscience-made cowardice of Hamlet, but
the prudential ' dare not ' waiting on ' I
would.' Fiend as she is, her compact
demoniac eloquence is but the expression
of the smothered thunder then filling
the heart of the sullen, far-sighted man.
There is a certain lurid glory in this un-
daunted challenge from womanhood to
guarded royalty, — in this exaltation of
229
Macbeth
feminine weakness over masculine strength.
Mingled with all its demonism there is
still the human luxury of triumph. But
what triumph for a brawny soldier, in his
own castle, to slay a gray-haired guest
asleep between two drugged and drunken
grooms ? What prostitution of the last
remnant of manhood before that warrior
dagger can be driven home to a dreaming,
defenceless, loving heart ?
The whole dialogue is unparalleled as an
exhibition of human ferocity and exultant
animal power. The damnable consistency
of her guilt lends an intellectual majesty to
her most horrible utterances. The uncon-
querable archangel of Paradise Lost is
dwarfed side by side with this rapt high
priestess of murder. ' She hath a demon;
and that is the next thing to being full of
the God.' But let the scene speak for
itself: it cannot be read too closely or too
often.
Macb. We will proceed no further in this busi-
230
Macbeth
He hath honour'd me of late ; and I
have bought
Golden opinions from all sorts of
people,
Which would be worn now in their
newest gloss,
Not cast aside so soon.
Lady M. Was the hope drunk
Wherein you dress'd yourself? hath it
slept since ?
And wakes it new, to look so green and
pale
At what it did so freely ? From this
time
Such I account thy love. Art thou
afeared
To be the same in thine own act and
valour
As thou art in desire ? Wouldst thou
have that
Which thou esteems't the ornament of
life,
And live a coward in thine own esteem,
Letting " I dare not " wait upon " I
would,"
Like the poor cat i' the adage ?
231
Macbeth
Macb. Prithee, peace :
I dare do all that may become a man ;
Who dares do more is none.
Lady M. What heart was't, then,
That made you break this enterprise to
me ?
When you durst do it, then you were a
man;
And to be more than what you were,
you would
Be so much more the man. Nor time
nor place
Did then adhere, and yet you made
them both :
They have made themselves, and that
their fitness now
Does unmake you. I have given suck,
and know
How tender 't is to love the babe that
milks me :
I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have pluck'd my nipple from his bone-
less gums.
And dash'd the brains out, had I so
sworn as you
Have done to this.
232
Macbeth
Macb. If we should fail ?
Lady M. We fail !
But screw your courage to the sticlcing-
place,
And we'll not fail. When Duncan is
asleep
(Whereto the rather shall his day's hard
journey
Soundly invite him), his two chamber-
lains
Will I with wine and wassail so con-
vince,
That memory, the warder of the brain.
Shall be a fume, and the receipt of reason
A limbeck only ; when in swinish sleep
Their drenched natures lie as in a death,
What cannot j(7tt and /perform upon
The unguarded Duncan ? what not put
upon
His spongy officers, who shall bear the
guilt
Of our great quell ?
Macb. Bring forth men-children only ;
For thy undaunted mettle should com-
pose
Nothing but males. —
233
Macbeth
I am settled, and bend up
Each corporal agent to this terrible feat.
Away, and mock the time with fairest
show :
False face must hide what the false
heart doth know.
The opening of the Second Act resem-
bles the opening of Hamlet, — the same
muffled minor, the same terse picturesque-
ness, the same unearthly resonance.
Scene I. — Inverness. Court of Macbeth's
castle. Enter Ba7iquo^ preceded by Fleance
with a torch.
Ban. How goes the night, boy ?
Fie. The moon is down ; I have not heard
the clock.
Ban. And she goes down at twelve.
Fie. I take 't, 't is later, sir.
Ban. Hold, take my sword : — there 's hus-
bandry in heaven.
Their candles are all out : — take thee
that, too. —
A heavy summons lies like lead upon me,
234
Macbeth
And yet I would not sleep: — merciful
powers
Restrain in me the cursed thoughts that
nature
Gives way to in repose ! — Give me my
sword. —
Who 's there ?
{Enter Macbeth and a servant with a torch.')
Banquo's whole demeanor indicates mis-
trust. He could scarcely have divined
Macbeth's desperate purpose, but he
plainly distrusts him. Something in his
own bosom tells him the man is not to
be trusted :
merciful powers,
Restrain in me the cursed thoughts that
nature
Gives way to in repose !
If the " all hail " of the weird sisters is
the temptation of a dream to him, the
father of a line of kings, what must it
not be to the darker nature of one who
is first himself to wear the crown ? The
tempted but unseduced gentleman would
235
Macbeth
have watched all night but for the leaden
summons of the banquet or the drugged
possets of his hostess. He is sad, ner-
vous, weighed down with a dark presenti-
ment of woe, ill at ease about his own
personal safety. The torchlight meeting
of the two chieftains . . .
[Here the fragment ends.]
The University Press, Cambridge, U. S. A.
— a3«—
14 DAY USE
RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED
LOAN DEPT.
RENEWALS ONLY— TEL NO. 642-3405
This book is due on the last date stamped below, or
on the date to which renewed.
Renewed books are subject to immediate recall.
RECD LD I
iEC2 4'69
-ttPIT
' \f\H 1 (\ WR !i
1
'1 198^
t^^- CtK.J';! It '/b
fit, 1-
^^ 1 6 me
\«EpB.«j.37.j,g
r r ■'"' -■ -',
1
V':'. ■■ injOV 1 i: l^v
TOV20 1981?
J LD21A-60to-6,'69
(J9096sl0)476-A-32
General Library
University of California
Berkeley
f
U.C, BERKELEY LIBRARIES
iiiiiliiiiiiiiiii
CD35315Dfib
/ r .«
2.^^uri c
^1^
l ^
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY