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,