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A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 

 

 I 
 
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 (P 
 
 STUDY OF HAMLET.. 
 
 BY 
 PRANK A. MARSHALL. 
 
 LOKDOK: 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO., PATERNOSTER tlOW. 
 
 1875. 
 
LONDON : 
 M 'GO WAN AKD co., LIMITED, STEAM 
 
 GREAT -\VJNDMILL STREET, W. 
 
 c/J 
 
gebkatioir. 
 
 ON THE TOMB OF II IM, 
 
 WHO WAS AT ONCE 
 ENGLAND'S AND MANKIND'S GREATEST POET, 
 
 I LAY THIS HUMBLE OFFERING : 
 
 WELL KNOWING THAT IT LACKS MUCH IN MERIT, 
 
 BUT HOPING THAT SOME OF ITS FAULTS MAY BE ATONED FOR 
 
 BY THE LQYE AND REVE.RENCE WHICH INSPIRED IT. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 " WHAT ! another book on ' Hamlet !' " I seem to hear many, 
 both critics and students of Shakespeare, exclaim with somewhat 
 of a jaded air. tf What can you have that is new to say about 
 'Hamlet?'" they ask not unreasonably. My answer is that I 
 hope I have something to say which is worth hearing, whether 
 it be quite new, or whether ib be old truths presented in a new 
 guise ; though I must confess I have not hazarded any theories, 
 or indulged in any criticisms, simply because I thought they 
 were new. To those who seek for abstruse verbal commentaries, 
 or for ingenious, but, to my mind, paltry attempts to nibble away 
 our greatest poet's reputation, this book will not be welcome. 
 I leave to others the task of treating our author like a prisoner 
 arrested for felony, of turning his pockets inside out, and stripping 
 him to the skin, in order to see if they can discover a rag or 
 two which might have belonged to some one else. 
 
 Those I would fain have as my readers are those who love 
 Shakespeare as one who has added to the beauty and happiness 
 of life ; who reverence his mind as one of those precious gifts 
 of God to this world, whence beings, bom of Fancy indeed, 
 but none the less real in their nobleness and purity, may spring, 
 to gladden the hearts of those whose earthly lot it is to find 
 few friends save in the realms of imagination, These persons 
 
\iii PREFACE, 
 
 will grudge neither time nor trouble if, by their own efforts, 
 or by the aid of others, they can gain a clearer insight into the 
 beauties of Shakespeare's creations. 
 
 This book had its origin in a lecture which I was asked to give 
 before the Catholic Young Men's Association, I chose " Hamlet" 
 for my subject; but 1 found it impossible to say what I wanted 
 to say in the space even of two lectures. The greater portion of 
 the First and Second Parts of this work formed the matter of 
 those lectures. It was always my ambition to give a series 
 of lectures on Shakespeare, accompanied with readings; but I 
 have learnt to doubt my capacity for such a task. Though I 
 have studied "Hamlet" more or less for the last fourteen years, 
 I never knew, till I began seriously to finish this work, how scanty 
 was my knowledge of the grand subject I had undertaken to illus- 
 trate. One of my principal objects will have been gained, if I 
 can induce any of my readers to study the text of Shakespeare's 
 plays more carefully, and with a higher aim than mere verbal 
 criticism ; they will find that he is himself his best commentator, 
 and that such study will open to them new fields of enjoyment. 
 
 I have made frequent allusions to the acting of three of the 
 most distinguished representatives of Hamlet on the. stage 
 that I have had the pleasure of seeing namely, Tommaso 
 Salvini, Ernesto Eossi, and Henry Irving. I had intended 
 to have entered into a somewhat elaborate comparison of 
 their respective interpretations of the character ; but for many 
 reasons, some of which I will mention, I thought it better 
 not to do so. Signer Salvini has as yet only appeared in 
 a version of the play, so unsatisfactory to an English student 
 of Shakespeare, that it would be scarcely possible to do justice 
 to his great talents as displayed in the part of Hamlet ; 
 the more especially as he intends to give us the privilege 
 of seeing him in a fuller and more faithful translation. 
 Signor Eossi has yet to appear before an English public; he 
 also may be enabled to correct some of the deficiencies of the 
 
PKEFACK. ix 
 
 version, which he uses in Italy, before lie encounters the cri- 
 ticism of Shakespeare's countrymen. Mr. Irving has exchanged 
 Hamlet for another Shakespearian role, after having given 
 the almost incredible ' number of two hundred consecutive 
 representations of the part: it was inevitable that his per- 
 formance should suffer from so fatiguing a persistence in it, 
 and I trust, for the sake of art, such a call may never 
 again bs made im his strength. Acting is an art which can- 
 not be preserved in any perfection, unless the actor has the 
 opportunity of fchanging, not unfrequently, the character which 
 he represents. If a painter were to spend a year in painting 
 the same subject over and over again, he would lose most 
 of whatever skill he ever possessed ; his delicacy of touch 
 would be seriously impaired ; his colouring would be apt to 
 grow coarse and careless; while his artistic perception would 
 be diminished, and his power of execution would be worn 
 away by very weariness. Art must have variety, or it pines 
 and becomes cramped. I have ventured to make these remarks 
 because the opinion I have incidentally expressed, in different 
 parts of this work, of Mr. Irving's Hamlet was formed in 
 the course of his first twenty performances; and, judging by 
 the portion that I saw of his two-hundredth performance, 
 I should say that the prolonged strain on his powers had 
 told prejudicially on his execution of what was, undeniably, 
 a singularly fine conception of the character. The charming 
 grace, and melodious elocution, of Signor Salvini could not 
 be obscured by the fact that he was under the disadvantage 
 of speaking a language, with which but very few of his 
 audience were familiar : he has, by his performance of Othello 
 and Hamlet, won a position among Englishmen, as an in- 
 terpreter of Shakespeare, which few of our own countrymen 
 have gained. Ernesto Rossi, whose style is totally different* 
 
 * A writer in the Times, speaking of Rossi's Othello, as given in Paris, 
 said that the two great Italian actors were as similar in style as Phelps 
 
X PREFACE. 
 
 from that of Salvini, though he is in grace and talent his 
 most worthy rival, will be sure of a generous welcome : his 
 appearance amongst us will stimulate that revived interest in 
 Shakespeare's plays which has been such a marked feature 
 of the last year. As far as regards the Hamlet of the three 
 great actors I have named, I should say that Salvini's inter- 
 pretation was the most tender, Rossi's the .most passionate, 
 and Irving's the most intellectual. 
 
 Now that it has been proved that the plays of Shakespeare 
 can be made to bring money as well as glory to the managers, I 
 live in the hopes of seeing some performances of our greatest 
 dramatist's masterpieces worthy of the honour in which we 
 hold him. I do not mean as regards scenery and dresses, but 
 as regards the representation of the characters themselves ; one 
 good actor cannot make an efficient cast ; and unless the 
 minor characters in Shakespeare's plays are adequately repre- 
 sented, it is impossible to form any just conception of the 
 excellence of his work. This can only be effected by actors, 
 managers, and audiences, uniting together in making greater 
 sacrifices to Art than they have hitherto seemed willing 
 to do. 
 
 The text from which I have quoted throughout is the " Cain- 
 bridge Shakespeare." All the references are to that edition, 
 which I cannot praise too highly. The text of the Quarto 1603, 
 which I have used, is that contained in Allen's Reprint, entitled 
 "The Devonshire 'Hamlets,'" in which the Quartos of 1603 and 
 1604 are exactly reprinted in facsimile side by side. It is a most 
 valuable book. I have exercised all possible care in the revision 
 of the letterpress, especially of the quotations. For what few 
 mistakes have still crept in I crave pardon. 
 
 and Macready. I never saw Macready, but I am sure that all, who 
 have seen Rossi and Salvini in the part, will admit that there could 
 scarcely be two more dissimilar interpretations of Hamlet. 
 
PHEFACE. Xi 
 
 The three first Parts have been in print for some time ; various 
 circumstances prevented my finishing the work, and delayed its 
 publication. I hope I have succeeded in availing myself to some 
 extent of the more important additions that have been made to 
 Shakespearian criticism, especially as regards " Hamlet," since I 
 began my task. I do not profess to have read all, or nearly all, 
 that has been published on the subject ; but I can honestly say 
 that the number of works referred to in the course of this book 
 does not include one half of those I have consulted. 
 
 It only remains for me to thank most sincerely those friends, 
 some of them men whose names are honoured in literature, who 
 have helped me with their advice and encouragement. To Mr. 
 Frederic Broughton, who has given me most valuable and timely 
 'aid in the revision of the work, I owe especial thanks. I also 
 may perhaps be allowed to express my gratitude to my amanuen- 
 sis, Mr. G. J. White, who, though suffering from a long and pain- 
 ful illness, has by his dire and intelligence in verifying quotations 
 and authorities, and in the laborious collation' 1 ' of the first Quarto 
 (1603) with the text of the Cambridge edition, been of invalu- 
 able service to me. 
 
 * See Foot-note, page 163, 
 
CONTENTS, 
 
 PART 1. 
 
 " HAJILET " popular, ; cause of popularity, 9 ; ^Ipye interest " subordinate td 
 Jove for his father, 10^ Hamlet's weakness of^cTioVWflns^yTnTal^for 
 good and contempt of_e^iil.Cl3y fid^IIty r lo~^fpp.ii^^Tpy uncongeniality 
 of his position, 1213. Summary of remarks, 1314 ; reasons for making 
 them, 14. Voltaire's abuse of Shakespeare, 1415. Criticisms on Shake- 
 speare, 15-16. Excellency of Schlegel, 16. Hamlet's first entrance, 16-17; 
 Jfirstjoliloajiy, J8. Entrance of Horatio, Marcellus, and Bernardo, 1819. 
 Hamlet hears of the appearance of the Ghost, 19 ; his meeting with the 
 Ghost, 19 21 ; second soliloquy, 21 ; remarks on it, 22. Coleridge's idea of 
 Hamlet's madness, 22. Time elapsing between 1st and 2nd Acts, 23 ; how 
 Hamlet employed it, 23. Malone's remark on his assumption of madness, 
 23. Hamlet's resolve to break off his affectionate relations with Ophelia, 24 ; 
 her account of the last interview to Polonius, 24 ; remarks on his conduct, 
 ^2526. Was Hamlet guilty of the ruin of Ophelia ? 26 ; Polonius' device 
 to test his love for Ophelia, 27 ; their meeting, 27. Explanation of the 
 scene with Ophelia, 28-29. 
 
 PART II. 
 
 Reception of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern by King and Queen, 31. Polonius a 
 satire on Lord Burleigh, 32. Hamlet's welcome of Rosencrantz and Guil- 
 denstern, 3233 ; he discovers they were " sent for," 33-34 ; his treatment 
 at Court, 34 ; and non-assumption of madness befor* Rosencrantz and 
 Guildenstern, 34. Mischievous raillery against Polonius on announcing the 
 arrival of players, 3135 ; excuses for it, 36; .interview with players, 35. 
 ^ TJiird soliloquy, 36 ;' remarks on itj 37- 39. . Interval between '2nd and 3rd 
 Acts, 39. King's interview with Ruselicrantz and Uuildenstern,39. fTourth 
 soliloquy, o9 40;, remarks on it, 41 -4'J. .Design of sending Hamlet ti- 
 
XIV CONTEXTS. 
 
 __ England great variety of the play, 41 42. Hamlet's speech to Horatio, 
 
 \_tfj Play scene, 42 - 44 ;_its_sueeess,. 44. Insolence of Rosencrantz and 
 
 Guildenstern when summoning Hamlet to his mother, 4445. Next scene 
 
 rarely represented, 45. Servility of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, 45. 
 
 King's soliloquy, 45. >/Hamlet|s _diabolical revenge, 4546. Closet scene, 
 
 46-48. Death of Polonius, -IS - I'.). Queen innocent of hypocrisy, 40, 
 
 y Hamlet's rebuke, 4950. Appearance of Ghost, 50 52; effectiveness of 
 
 it, 52. Hamlet's eloquent appeal (o his mother, 53. Hamlet's conduct to 
 
 his mother discussed, 53 5 The guilt incurred through killing Polonius, 
 
 55. Was the Queen guilty of connivance at, or complicity in, her first 
 
 - husband's death ? 5556. Expansion of this scene from that in the Quarto 
 
 (1603), 5657. Queen's promise that she would not betray Hamlet, 57. 
 
 Hamlet suspicious of the King's design in sending him to England, 57-58. 
 
 PART III. 
 
 Opening of 4th Act, 59. Queen's puzzling speech explained on reference to the 
 Quarto (1603), 59-60. The hypocrisy of Claudius, 60. Inseparability of 
 Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, 61 ; their endeavours to get from Hamlet 
 where he has put the body of Polonius, 6162. Difficulty of the part the 
 King has to play, 6263 ; he informs Hamlet he is to go to England, 63- 64 ; 
 his confession of treachery to the Queen, 64. Hamlet's defence of his 
 conduct towards Rosencrant/ and Guildenstern to Horatio," 6 1-68 ; can his 
 conduct be justified? 68 -6!X Scene 4, Act IV., awkwardly placed as 
 regards time, 70; Well-devised, 71. ^ Fifth soliloquy, 71 - 7- ^remarks on 
 it, 72- 75. 
 
 PART IV. 
 
 Events occurring between Act IV., Scene 4, and Act IV., Scene 5, 77. Popularity 
 of Polonius, 78. Laertes' violent demeanour to Claudius and subsequent 
 moderation, 7881. Horatio visited by some sailors, 81 ; his position, 82. 
 TI I? Tring rmvinnr Sf ni,isfi ft( ] L.pp.rt.P.3, receives news of Hamlet's return, 82 83. 
 Plan of vengeance concn^fpfl hy C| a11 fljug and Laertes, 84 86 ; Contrast 
 between the two characters, 8687. Proportion of guilt assignable to 
 
 - t.ap.rt.p.a, 88 -90T~~Uervmu?lenient view of Laertes censured, 90. Denmark 
 
 -dhi' ** __ 
 
 and Germany, 9091. Grave-diggers' scene, 9195. Arrival of the funeral 
 party, 95. ConduL nf T.na^s anrl fT g ml ft y nfi -im. Queen's beautiful 
 description of her son's state of mind, 101. V Hamlet expresses his sorrow 
 for his passion at Ophelia's grave to Horatio, 102. Scene with Osric, 102 
 103. Entry of King, Queen, and Court, 104. Ijajmlet/s apology to Laertes, 
 and his reception of it, 104 -100. The fencing-bout, 107- Queen dics;107. 
 
 Death of Himlet, 10$ - 109 J remarks on his character, '109 110. Conclusion, 
 ; v\ -. , n I i . 
 
CONTENTS. XV 
 
 PAGES. 
 
 Appendix A. Early life of Hamlet 113123 
 
 _ . f B. First soliloquy 123 127 < 
 
 _ C. On the soliloquy, " all you liost of heaven !" ... 127-128 
 
 D, The character of Ophelia 128151 
 
 E. On the soliloquy, " 0, what a rogue and peasant slave 
 
 am I " 151154 
 
 ^ F. On the soliloquy, "To be or not to be"... 164-157 
 
 ~ ( On the play scene 77. 77. 77. 77. ~ ... 157161 
 
 ,, H. On the soliloquy, "Now might I do it pat" 161-KG 
 
 ,, K. On the two pictures in the closet-scene 166--174 
 
 ,, L. Closet-scene from the Quarto 1603 and the Cambridge 
 
 Shakespeare compared 174 176 
 
 ,, M. Scene between the Queen and Horatio from the Quarto 
 
 1603, omitted in the Cambridge edition 176' 
 
 ,, N. King's speech to the Queen from the Quarto 1603 
 corresponding to his apology in Act IV., Scene 3, of 
 
 the Cambridge edition ,. ... 176 
 
 0, Fortinbras 177150 
 
 P. Hamlet's age ; . 181 
 
 Additional Notes 183-200 
 
 Scheme of Time occupied by the events of the play .< 201 202 
 
 Index . 203205 
 
ERKATA. 
 
 Page 24, Line 26, (in quotation) for " to" read "in" 
 
 'Z4, ,, 42, (do. do. ) dele "and" after "waving" 
 11, ,, 7, fcele comma after " aU'powerful," 
 ,, 63, ,, 42 and 43, for "four first " read ">'^ four." 
 ,, 95, ,', 42, after "ceremony" insert comma. 
 ,, 99, 3, (in quotation) for " splenetive" read "^lenitive" 
 102, ,, 21, for "their" read "those." 
 H5, 3, for " Wittenburg" read " Wittenberg." 
 ,, 115, Foot-note, for do. read do. 
 
 ,, 136, Line 39, after " pa;je" insert "120." 
 ,, 137, 9, for " page S" TeaA "payeVM." 
 
 158, ,, 2, after "transitions" insert comma. 
 ,, 158, ,, 3, after "Hamlet's" insert comma. 
 
 .In the table of " Contents," pagexv, at Appendix M, the words " omitted 
 in the Cambridge Edition" do not mean " omitted only in that edition ; " the scene 
 referred to, as is well known, being omitted in all the Quartos and Folios, except 
 the Quarto 1603. 
 
CALIF 
 
 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 " HAMLET " is perhaps the most popular of all Shakespeare's 
 plays. Nearly all people have either read it, or seen it upon 
 the stage, more than once. I will not say that it is the one 
 most often quoted, yet perhaps the quotations taken from it 
 are the best known of any of those lines of Shakespeare 
 which have become household words. I do not think it is 
 difficult to understand the universal popularity of this play ; 
 if we do not all agree in considering it Shakespeare's greatest 
 work, it certainly is his most human j though less pathetic 
 than " Othello," less sublime than " Macbeth," less touching 
 than " Lear," it is certainly of all his tragedies the one which 
 appeals most widely to human sympathy ; because the charac- 
 ter of Hamlet has more in common with all mankind than any 
 other hero. Hisjvery weakness, which has been so severely 
 censured by some critics, is greatly the cause of this ; for most 
 tragic heroes are endowed with such gigantic- intellect, and 
 monstrous passions, as to place them beyond both the under- 
 standing and the sympathy of ordinary mortals. Deeply as 
 we are moved by the agonising jealousy of Othello, freely as 
 we weep with Lear over the body of the loving Cordelia, in- 
 stinctively as we shudder with Macbeth at the unearthly 
 apparitions which so mysteriously control his fate, few of us 
 ever feel that Othello, or Lear, or Macbeth, might be our 
 very own self; but when Hamlet speaks, it seems as if t 
 thoughts and feelings, long pent up in us, had found their 
 most natural utterance : the least philosophical comprehends 
 his philosophy ; the L;.?t melancholy muses sadly with him 
 over the mysteries of life ; the least humorous of us smiles 
 
 B 
 
10 A STUDY Cft HAMLET. 
 
 with him as odd fancies and playful satire break forth from 
 him in the midst of the most tragic surroundings. 
 
 ]STo doubt the question of _suicide might be debated more 
 learnedly, certainly more sensationally, than in the celebrated 
 soliloquy of Hamlet : but if philosophers arid novelists were 
 to try their very utmost, they never could express more 
 clearly, more vividly, certainly not more beautifully, than 
 Shakespeare has in those few lines, the. struggles of a mind 
 weighed clown by the sense that the burden imposed upon it 
 was too heavy to. bear.. . 
 
 The popularity of " Hamlet " is the more remarkable when 
 we consider how subordinate in it is what we commonly call 
 the " love, interest." Few plays except Shakespeare's have 
 retained their hold upon the popular mind either on the stage 
 or in the study, the principal motive of which has not been, 
 in some form or other, the love of man for woman, or of 
 woman for man. In Hamlet the chief motive is filial affec- 
 ion ; one which I hope will always inspire the deepest and 
 most general sympathy ; but which, it would be idle to deny, 
 exercises a less powerful charm over the vulgar mind than 
 that more selfish, and intrinsically less noble affection which 
 sometimes threatens to monopolise the name of Love. If for 
 no other reason, I should be deeply grieved to see the cha- 
 racter of Hamlet losing any of its hold upon the minds of my 
 contemporaries, and especially of the young ; for if there is 
 any one of the natural affections which the rapidly advancing 
 steam-engine of improvement seems likely to improve off 
 the face of the earth, it is that most holy, unselfish, and 
 noble affection an affection rooted in humility and in a 
 single-minded sense of duty ; incompatible alike with intel- 
 lectual pride, or with enervating self-indulgence the affec- 
 tion of a son for his father. No one can ever hope to appre- 
 ciate Hamlet who does not cherish unsullied within his soul, 
 in youth, in maturity, and in old age, that reverential 
 love of parents which is the foundation-stone of all social 
 virtue. 
 
 The intense love and worship which Hamlet feels for the 
 memory of his father, mark him out, on his very first 
 entrance, as alone in the crowd of courtiers around him ; 
 alone, too, even in the presence of those who should have 
 loved and revered that memory as highly, if not more highly, 
 than Hamlet himself. The noble excess of his love tends, 
 hardly less than the inherent weakness of his character, to 
 paralyse his capacity for action when it is most needed ; of 
 this I shall have to speak more fully, and I will now pass on 
 
A STUDY OP HAMLET. 11 
 
 /to notice briefly those other points in the character of Hamlet 
 
 . which ensure him the sympathy of mankind. 
 \j-' As I have said before, the very weakness of Hamlet makes 
 us love him the more, because it brings him. nearer to our 
 own level. Who has not known what it is to feel life, with 
 its glorious opportunities, slipping away from us day by day,>/ 
 without bringing us any nearer the Mfilment of some great 
 duty, or the execution of some noble purpose, to which either 
 the example, or the exhortation, of others, or the voice of our 
 own'conscien ce has called us ? It may be by the death-bed 
 of some very dear one ; it may be in the wearying discipline 
 of some long illness ; it may be in the close and earnest 
 contemplation of the evils around us, that we hear the first 
 'sound of the voice that calls us to sacrifice our ease, and our 
 pleasures, for the .sake, of righting some wrong, or destroying 
 some abuse, to the full heinousness of which our minds have 
 y roused. Perhaps, like Hamlet, we sit down and con- 
 template the horrid features of the monster, till the very 
 ^cutenes's" of the ftaih and disgust, which such a contemplation 
 inspires, obtaining complete mastery over our feelings, and 
 occupying our thoughts to the exclusion of almost any other 
 ^nbject, gradually wears away our energies, without their 
 
 / tiudinjT vent in 'thai prompt ;uicl decided action which alone, 
 asjvve know, can accomplish the great end we have set before 
 _us.~ Lvj;his state of mind, the desire to act is never lost; it 
 is only" the power lo do so which is _s wallowed up in excess of 
 li-eling. Another state is when we simply content ourselvef 
 with exclaiming against the injustice and wickedness of the 
 world in general, or of some persons in particular, but weakly 
 decline to act, from despair at the magnitude of the labour 
 involved in any attempt to remedy the evils to which we 
 cannot blind ourselves. In such a state of mind we might 
 slightly alter the words of Hamlet 
 
 " The world is out of joint, oh cursed spite ! 
 But /was never born to set it right." 
 
 To this canker of cowardice, which blights the lives of so 
 many in whom great sensibility is coupled with indolence, 
 and in whom the reflective part of the mind is morbidly 
 developed at the expense ot" the executive part it is to this 
 that Hamlet alludes in the words 
 
 That craven scruple 
 Of thinking too precisely on the event, 
 A thought which quartered hath but one part wisdom, 
 And ever three par. 3 coward. 
 
 This weakness may be developed into a worse form, till it 
 
 B 2 
 
12 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 assumes the most repulsive of all shapes, that impotent 
 snarling cynicism, which yaps like a cur at the heels of every 
 wrong-doer, but never attempts to help the wronged. 
 l '^0ne feature in the character of Hamlet, which most attracts 
 7 us, is his keer^ sympathy with all that k-gopd. his_contempt 
 for what is mean aiidjadl ; this he shows withouTTregard of 
 place or person ; and i is more admirable in a prince, whose 
 temptations to acquiesce in things as they are, and to accept 
 the world's standard of right and^^sLmng.-are greater than 
 those of one in a lower station of life. 
 
 ^ The fidelity which Hamlet shows to his friends, few indeed, 
 but chosen for their merit alone ; as well as the dignified 
 courtesy, with which he treats all but those whom he knows 
 to be . practising some treachery towards him, add to the 
 affection with which we regard him. 
 
 I will here allude to one other circumstance of his condi- 
 tion, which appeals to the sympathy of many readers of this 
 tragedy I mean the uncongenial ity from which it is manifest, 
 the moment he enters on the stage, that Hamlet suffers.^ I 
 do so merely to warn the younger amongst you agamst 
 allowing a natural sympathy for one, whose surroundings are 
 most distasteful and antagonistic to his own feelings, *o 
 develope itself into that most mischievous of all morbid 
 fancies a belief that we are superior to all around us ; that 
 we are crushed by want of sympathy in our associates ; that 
 we are wasting our energies and talents on work which is far 
 too dull and insignificant for us ; that, in order to prove our 
 superiority to the persons and circumstances among which 
 our lot is cast, we ought to assume a gloomy dignity of 
 manner ; to shun this uncongenial society, though it be the 
 only society within our reach ; and vent our pent-up feelings 
 in dismal and foolish verses, or in unwholesome and tedious 
 exposition of our own misery ; till we succeed in exalting our 
 wretched selves into as corrupt and mischievous idols as 
 it is in the power of man to create. No doubt it would be 
 very pleasant if we all could live with persons whose tastes 
 were similar to our own ; who never differed with us in 
 opinion ; who never, morally, trod on our corns ; among cir- 
 cumstances which never jarred upon our feelings, and duties, 
 which were no less delightful than obligatory to perform. 
 But the world was not made according to every one's fancy ; 
 and we must accept it as it is, with its sorrows, and its 
 uncongenialities, and its duties, however unpleasant they 
 may be. I do not know any phase of character, short of that 
 of the merest sensualist, into which I would more warn the 
 
A STUDY OF HAMLET. 13 
 
 young against drifting, than that of the interesting victim of 
 uncongeniality. It is bad enough in women, it is worse in 
 men, because it saps all capacity for practical usefulness in 
 life. If your mind, if your tastes, be superior to those of 
 your friends, relations, and companions, show it by an in- 
 crease of courtesy, of amiability, towards them ; and you will 
 find none, or few, to dispute your superiority. If your duties 
 be distasteful, even repulsive to you, so long as they are your 
 duties, fulfil them as perfectly and as cheerfully as you can ; 
 and perhaps in good time you will find yourself raised t^ 
 higher ones more worthy of the talents which you ma^ 
 possess : but to walk about with your nose in the air, and to 
 furnace forth sighs like a self-exhausting wind-bag to 
 despise those about you simply because you imagine yourself 
 better than them, and to neglect your duties because you 
 think yourself too good for them, can end in nothing else 
 but in earning for you the contempt, if not the detestation, of 
 your companions, and in convincing your employers, whoever 
 they may be, that you are not fit for any duties at all. 
 
 Briefly then, I would attribute the popularity of this play 
 not only to the inherent interest of the story and the 
 dramatic skill with which, in spite of many blemishes of' 
 construction, it is developed ; but even more to the sympa- 
 thetic character of Hamlet himself: sympathetic, because he 
 has more in common with mankind than any other tragic, 
 hero ; because the motives of his conduct, the idiosyncrasies , 
 of his nature, the very blemishes which mar his virtues, his 
 strength of feeling, his weakness in action, all alike endear 
 his character to us. The creation of the poet is imbued with 
 the very essence of human nature, while it is beautified 
 by the infusion of so lovable and noble a spirit, that what 
 we instinctively admire we are also able to comprehend, 
 This is the chief difference between real greatness and mere 
 excellence, whether in poet, sculptor, painter, or actor. The 
 great poet appeals not only to the intellect which some men 
 possess, but to the heart which all possess ; eveiyone feels 
 the meaning of his words, though everyone cannot explain 
 it. I do not deny that the most exquisitely finished style 
 in poetry, or in any other art, is perfectly compatible with 
 greatness ; but in work that is not only clever, but great, the 
 style is subordinate to the matter ; regularity of metre and 
 precision of detail are sacrificed to nobility of thought and 
 beauty of subject. The most faultless poems and pictures 
 are rarely the noblest. Genius is impatient of restriction, 
 seeking truth in great, rather than accuracy in little things ; 
 
14 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 and so it happens that talent often exceeds genius in beauty 
 of form, but never in grandeur of imagination. Talent is apt 
 to imitate, genius is sure to create ; but be careful not to 
 fancy yourselves geniuses simply because you are impatient 
 of conventionality : vagueness and inaccuracy are not proofs 
 of genius, though too often the blemishes which detract from 
 its beauty. Cultivate style as carefully as you can ; let it 
 yield, if it must yield, to the force of your subject, not to the 
 weakness of your execution. 
 
 I have been led to make these remarks, because those who 
 detract from the merits of Shakespeare's plays in general, and 
 of " Hamlet" in particular, are especially severe upon the 
 want of regularity in the construction, and of natural sequence 
 in the incidents of this tragedy ; they also delight in pointing 
 out the' ruggedness of metre, and the crudeness of imagery, 
 which are to be found in all Shakespeare's works. There 
 is no doubt that " Cato," for instance, that solemnly elegant 
 tragedy of Addison's, contains far fewer faults in scansion 
 and regularity of metre than " Shakespeare's Hamlet ;" but 
 those persons who derive more pleasure from reading Cato 
 than from studying Hamlet, must be allowed to exist, happy 
 in that world of metrical proprieties which they have 
 chosen to occupy ; for my own part I dare not attempt to 
 follow them. I have patiently read " Cato," some of Eowe's 
 afflicting tragedies, and many others based upon the same 
 models, which adorned the literature of the last century. 
 I have no doubt that every line of these beautiful works 
 contains some very pretty language, and the proper number 
 of feet ; but in very few lines do they contain anything 
 which can touch the heart, charm the imagination, or elevate 
 the soul. 
 
 There is a class of persons by whom Shakespeare is re- 
 garded very much as a young lady regards a black-beetle, or 
 a lizard ; with them the maxim is " omne ignotum pro 
 horribili ;" they have such a horror of Nature, that if they had 
 their own way they would encase the trunks of the trees in 
 petticoats, drape the bare rocks with decent dimity, and 
 throw a veil over the naked verdure of the turf, in the shape 
 of imitation Brussels : their timid aversion to Nature is in 
 exact proportion to their ignorance of her. 
 
 But Shakespeare has been reviled by quite a different order 
 of beings, of whom, perhaps, the chief is Voltaire. I doubt 
 if any worshipper of Shakespeare's genius has ever done so 
 much to exalt his ideal, as the malignant abuse of Voltaire's 
 powerful but cankered mind has done, I would not wish to 
 
A STUDY OF HAMLET. 15 
 
 speak with disrespect of one whom so many great intellects 
 regard with something more than admiration ; but I cannot 
 consent to IOOAV down before a mind, however great in itself, 
 which was degraded by him, to whom it was given as a 
 sacred trust and as a glorious responsibility, to the most foul 
 and ignoble ends which perverted intellect ever sought to 
 accomplish. 
 
 Malone may claim the merit of industry and research, 
 though the application of both is frequently -wrong ; but as 
 a critic he is unsympathetic.* He seems to have criticised 
 " Hamlet " in the same spirit in which he would criticise his 
 grocer's bill, examining all the items to see if they were 
 correct, and insisting that all the articles should be inscribed 
 in clear and legible type. There are many clever men now 
 living who affect to despise Shakespeare ; if they only 
 showed one-tenth part of the industry in trying to compre- 
 hend his many beauties which they parade in ferreting out 
 his faults, they would earn more respect for their capacities 
 than they do at present. They are mostly men of a type too 
 common, alas ! now-a-days, who seem just clever enough to 
 know that they are clever, and who use their minds in such 
 a way as to make the truly wise and good regret that they 
 ever had any. 
 
 The number of commentaries and essays which have been 
 written on the tragedy of " Hamlet " is so great that time will 
 not allow me to do more than mention a very few of those 
 which are best worth your attention. Goethe and Coleridge 
 have both exercised their powers of psychological analysis on 
 the character of Hamlet ; I need scarcely say that every one, 
 wishing to study this play critically, should read every word 
 which those two intellectual giants have written on the sub- 
 ject. The commentaries of Johnson, Steevens, and Malone 
 are very unequal ; whatever is valuable in their annotations 
 will be found in later editions of Shakespeare, especially in 
 that published by Eoutledge, edited by Staunton. Professor 
 Kichardson'sf essay on " Hamlet" shows more correct appre- 
 ciation of the beauties of the character than any other that I 
 have come across, always excepting Coleridge's lecture. A 
 volume containing the plays of " Hamlet " and " As You Like 
 It," published as a specimen of a new edition of Shakespeare, 
 
 * I do not mean to disparage Malone's labours as an annotator ; but as 
 an aesthetic critic of Shakespeare I think he has committed outrages on good 
 taste and good sense which can never be forgiven. Steevens is worse. 
 
 t London : Samuel Bagster. 1818, 
 
16 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 anonymously by Thomas Caldecott,* contains some excellent 
 notes. The best text of Shakespeare is the Cambridge edition, 
 Macmillan, 1866 ; a reprint of the very rare quarto, 1603, 
 the first known edition of " Hamlet," is given by the editors, 
 Messrs. Clark and Wright, to whom all students of Shake- 
 speare owe an enormous debt of gratitude, If I were asked 
 to mention the best criticism, 011 the whole, which has been 
 written on Shakespeare, I am afraid I should have to give 
 you no English name, but that of a German, Schlegel.-f This 
 is something humiliating to our national vanity ; but I do" not 
 think we need fear, now Germany has been swallowed up in 
 Prussia, that Schlegel, any more than Goethe and Schiller, 
 will find any successor. A nation which allows itself to be 
 turned into one large barrack must be content with so glorious 
 an achievement ; it can well aiford to leave more humanizing 
 studies to those who have the leisure to follow them. 
 
 When Hamlet first enters, J it is in company with the King 
 (his uncle), the Queen (his mother), and their Court. Gertrude, 
 Hamlet's mother, has married, within the short space of a 
 month after her husband's death, Claudius, his brother and 
 successor. Why the elder Hamlet was not succeeded, as in 
 due course he should have been, by his only son, is not 
 explained ; but we learn from the King's speech to the Court, 
 that both his. lisurpation of the throne, and his incestuous 
 marriage with his brothers wife, had been sanctioned by the 
 principal lords of his council, whether willingly or under 
 compulsion we do iiot know. Perhaps the comparative youth 
 ofJHamlet, and the fact that the kingdom was at that time 
 threatened by an invasion of the Norwegians under young 
 Fbl-HribrasTwere the reasons which induced the royal council- 
 lors of Denmark to place the sceptre in the hands of Claudius, 
 who might be supposed better able to cope with so formidable 
 ji_foe. 
 
 The figure of Hamlet, dressed in black, his eyes cast on 
 the ground, his whole appearance betraying the utmost dejec- 
 tion, the^onjy_niourner_jn the brilliant Court, at once arrests 
 the attention. We cannot wonder at his melancholy when 
 we consider the position in which he found himself. The 
 news of his father's sudden death would have reached him at 
 the University of Wittenburg : it is most probable that the 
 first parting between him and his father had taken place 
 when he went to that town to complete his education. He 
 hurried back on hearing the dreadful news, and naturally 
 
 * London : John Murray. Second edition, 1833 (first edition, 1819). 
 f See Additional Notes, No. 1. $ See Appendix A. 
 
A STUDY OF HAMLET. 17 
 
 the first person he would seek in his sorrow was his mother. }( 
 We can imagine what a terrible shock it must have been to 
 his feelings when he found her preparing for her welding 
 with her late husbandVbrother, almostTEefore that husland's 
 funeral rites were over ; the revolting features of such an 
 union were intensified by the Indecent Jiaste with which it 
 was completed It is probable that the revulsion of feeling, 
 which such an outrage on his father's memory would cause in 
 a nature like Hamlet's, prevented him from dwelling on the \r 
 mortification which he must have suffered on finding himself A 
 ousted from the throne by his incestuous uncle. It is natural^ 
 that Hamlet should at once have suspected that the death of~ 
 hjs_fatherjw:aajio_accident of nature ; the story of a serpent 
 having stung him in his sleeep was probably believed by very 
 few in the Danish Court, certainly not by Hamlet. At the 
 same time time, the fact of Claudius being supported by the 
 chief lords of_the country, the imminence of war, and the 
 want of any strong party in the State favourable to his own 
 succession, restrained Hamlet from making any attempt to 
 claim his right. 
 
 Claudius, very plausibly and with an assumption of fatherly 
 affection, greets Hamlet as his son and future successor. As 
 t" the suspicion which Hamlet entertained of foul play, he 
 could take no immediate action thereon without some evi- 
 dence ; and his generous nature would be hampered in any 
 such attempt by TEe~colisci6usness that such a suspicion 
 might springas much from wounded "vanity, Ton account of 
 hijbejng^epnve3_^Qds rightsT as from affection for his 
 fatlief! The very first words that he speaks in reply to the 
 King, who has addressed him as " My son " 
 
 a little more than kin and less than kind, 
 
 words probably intended to be spoken half aside, show how 
 impossible was any reconciliation betweeja_5tepfather and 
 stepson? It is to be remarked thatHamlet only once 
 addresses the Xing during this first scene, and that in the 
 sarcastic answer to 
 
 KING. How is it that the clouds still hang on you ? 
 HAM. Not so, my lord, I am too much i' the sun. 
 
 The very fact that the King does not dare to rebuke Hamlet 
 for the marked manner in which he ignores his advice, 
 tendered as it is with affected kindness , shows Jihat he wag 
 conscious_fif his guilt. Short as the scene is which precedes 
 Hamlet's first soliloquy, nothing can be more admirable than 
 the skill with which Shakespeare at once strikes the key-note 
 
18 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 of his hero's character, and seizes hold of the attention of his 
 hearers. It is to be noted that while rebuking his mother, 
 Hamlet never forgets the respect due to her in presence of the 
 Sourr-Tit is not "till he is alone that his pent up feelings, the 
 passionate indignation which he has been forced to conceal, 
 burst forth in this magnificent soliloquy : 
 
 0, that this too too solid flesh would melt, 
 Thaw and resolve itself into a dew ! 
 c >u>tJuJUP r t na t the Everlasting had not fix'd 
 
 His canon 'gainst self slaughter ! God ! God ! 
 How weary, stale, flat and iinprofitable 
 Seem to me all the uses of this world ! 
 Fie on't ! ah fie ! 'tis an unweeded garden, 
 That grows to seed ; things rank and gross in nature 
 Possess it merely. That it should come to this ! 
 But two months dead ! nay, not so much, not two : 
 ' So excellent a king ; that was, to this, 
 
 Hyperion tolTsafyr : so loving to my mother, 
 That he might not beteem the winds of heaven 
 Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth ! 
 Must I remember ? why, she would hang on him, 
 As if increase of appetite had grown 
 By what it fed on : and yet within a month 
 Let me not think on't Frailty, thy name is woman ! 
 A little month, or ere those shoes were old 
 With which she follow'd my poor father's body, 
 Like Niobe, all tears : why she, even she, 
 ^ God ! a beast, that wants discourse of reason, 
 
 Would have mourn'd longer, married with my uncle, 
 
 My father's brother, but no more like my father 
 
 Than I to Hercules : within a month ; 
 
 Ereyet the salt of most unrighteous tears 
 
 Had left the flushing in her galled eyes, 
 
 She married. 0, most wicked speed, to post 
 
 With such dexterity to incestuous sheets ! 
 
 It is not, nor it cannot come to good : 
 
 But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue ! * 
 
 How completely Hamlet is overcome by this torrent of con- 
 flicting emotions is made evident from the facT~tliat offthe 
 entrance of Horatio, his bosom friend, he does not at first 
 recognise his voice ; the words " I am glad to see you well," 
 are spoken half mechanically, with the instinctive courtesy of 
 a well-bred prince ; it is not till he has recovered himself 
 that he greets his friend with all the natural warmth of his 
 heart, " Horatio, or I do forget myself." A little afterwards 
 there is a slight touch which often escapes the actor. Horatio 
 is accompanied by Marcellus and Bernardo, of whom Bernardo 
 is known to Hamlet but slightly ; he answers the greeting of 
 Marcellus less warmly than that of Horatio, but still in such 
 a manner as to show that he is a friend who enjoys his con- 
 fidence, " I am very glad to see you ; " then turning to 
 
 * See Appendix B. 
 
A STUDY OF HAMLET. 19 
 
 Bernardo, who has not ventured to intrude himself upon his 
 prince's notice, he says, " Good even, Sir ;" immediately after 
 having thus satisfied the claims of politeness, he turns eagerly 
 again to Horatio, of whose departure from Wittenburg he was 
 evidently ignorant. Though every line of this scene is worthy 
 of comment, I must not detain you too long at this stage of 
 our story. Hamlet now hears for the first time of the ap- 
 pearance of his father's ghost ; he does not jump at once to 
 the conclusion, as a meaner nature w^ouIcTIFave done, that his 
 suspicion of his uncle is confirmed ; most rigidly, though 
 courteously, he questions Horatio and the others upon the 
 circumstances under which the spectre had appeared ; he 
 binds all three to silence, and when they are gone, there is no 
 vulgar outburst of triumph at the justification of his hatred 
 for his uncle ;Jie speaks a few solemn words ending with 
 that grand expression of confidence in eternal justice, 
 
 Foul deeds will rise, 
 Though all the earbh o'erwhelm them, to meii's eyes. 
 
 In the next scene night has come. On the platform before 
 the castle, Hamlet, accompanied only by Horatio and Mar- 
 cellus, the two friends whom he could most trust, is waiting 
 anxiously for the hour when tliQ ghost is wont to appear ; 
 the solemn silence is rudely broken by the sound of revelry 
 from the castle, within whose walls the gross and sensual 
 Claudius is carrying on his usual revels, attempting, like all 
 low natures, to drown his conscience in drink. Nothing can 
 be stronger than the contrast between the gluttony, and 
 animal brutality, of the murderer, swilling toasts and watch - 
 Ing_" the swaggering up-spring reels " to the din of kettle- 
 drums an 6T trumpets ; and the son, with the only two noble- 
 men whom he could trust of all those who had flattered his 
 father when alive, " and warmed themselves in the bountiful 
 sunshine of his favour," standing, his black cloak, the sign 
 of a heart's mourning, wrapped round him, waiting for the 
 solemn visitation of his father's spirit, whose warning voice 
 was soon to denounce the murderer. Hamlet has scarcely 
 had time to condemn, in most eloquent language, the un- 
 seemly revelry, when the ghost appears ; at first, but for a 
 moment, Hamlet is awe-struck at the supernatural sight ; 
 then all his affection breaks forth in an agonised appeal to 
 the spectre, concluding with those wo'rds which show that 
 his is no mere sentimental grief, "What should we do?" 
 Though Horatio_before had jdared to address_the apparition, 
 h"e~how shows the utmost alarm at the idea of Hamlet fol- 
 lowing" it ; this alarm is utterly unselfish ; it is for his friend 
 
20 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 alone that he fears. The beautiful lines in which Hamlet 
 rebukes this fear are well known ; the passionate sentences, 
 in which he defies their interference, bring this scene to 
 a fitting conclusion. The ghost disappears, closely but 
 reverently followed by Hamlet ; and the friends, shaking 
 off the terror of the supernatural in their apprehension 
 for their beloved prince's safety, follow them after a short 
 delay. 
 
 To a more remote part of the platform, or high ground, 
 upon which the castle stood, sufficiently far away from the 
 sound of the revelry of Claudius and his boon companions 
 to leave the silence of the hour undisturbed, save by the 
 sound of the waves beating against the rocks beneath, the 
 ghost leads Hamlet. " Whither wilt thou lead me ? Speak 
 I'll go no further," Hamlet exclaims, remembering the 
 warning of Horatio. Then the well-known face, stamped 
 with more than kingly majesty of sorrow, is turned towards 
 him, and for the lirslf~TinTe fThe spirit r~of his father speaks. 
 The solemnity of this scene can never be surpassed : one 
 seems to hear in the speeches of the ghost the grand diapason 
 of some supernatural organ echoing from the depths of the 
 unseen world. The rapt attention of Hamlet the expression 
 of pity, "Alas! poor ghosC," instantly checked by the sad 
 rebuke, " Pity me not, but lend thy serious hearing to what I 
 shall unfold ;" the splendid resonance of every line which the 
 ghost utters ; the very apprehension which his first words 
 excite, lest he should be recalTecTlo the " sulphurous and 
 tormenting flames " before he has completed the solemn 
 charge of vengeance all these circumstances and masterly 
 touches of the poet combine together to produce such a vivid 
 impression of the supernatural, as no effort of the painter or 
 the mechanist could ever hope to accomplish. 
 
 The very few words that Hamlet utters during his inter- 
 view with his father's spirit not only serve to intensify the 
 dramatic effect of the scene, but also to illustrate his cha- 
 racter in the most incisive mariner ; they are just like those 
 few magic strokes of li^great artist's pencil which make a 
 face that one knows live before one. He-echoes the word 
 "murder" in a tone half of horror,, half of painful astonish- 
 menffat the justification of his suspicions. The next speech, 
 tlw longest by which he interrupts the ghost, is most re- 
 markable : 
 
 Haste me to know't, that I, with wings as swift 
 As meditation or the thoughts of love, 
 May sweep to my revenge, 
 
A STUDY OF HAMLET. 21 
 
 Shakespeare employs here not by accident, I think as illus- \ 
 trations of that swiftness of.' notion, the want of which becomes 
 afterwards the most prominent defect in Hamlet's character, 
 those two very distinctive features of his disposition which so 
 frequently retarded the execution of the ghost's commands, 
 " meditation " and "the thoughts of love:" an over-indul- 
 genceUfmeditati ng on the innumerable aspects of the wrong 
 which hejiadjtp revenge, and an imperfect power of wiping ) 
 out of his life that love which had been the sweetest part of / 
 it, were, undoubtedly, the two main obstacles in his fulfilment 
 of that purpose which the solemn interview with his father's 
 spirit had made, as he believed, the one motive of his life. 
 The only other words he speaks, " Oh, iny prophetic soul, my 
 uncle," may be regarded less as the expression of gratified 
 vanity, or malice, at finding that he had at once instinctively 
 detgcted the murderer of his father, than as a sigh of relief from 
 a generous hearf, rejoiced to find that he had not wronged one 
 who had given him the greatest cause for resentment. 
 
 The echo of the spirit's sad farewell, " Adieu, adieu, adieu ; 
 remember me," has scarcely died away before the tension of 
 nerves from which Hamlet has suffered during that most 
 pathetic address is relieved by that outburst of passionate 
 emotion, which, singular to state, most of the representatives 
 of Shakespeare's Hamlet, on the stage, have either omitted to 
 a great extent, or have deformed into a mere interjection : 
 
 HAM. O all you host of heaven ! O earth ! what else ? 
 
 And shall I couple hell ? 0, fie ! hold, hold my heart ; 
 
 And you, my sinews, grow not instant old, 
 
 But bear me stiffly up. 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'll wipe away all trivial fond records, 
 
 All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past, 
 
 That youth and observation copied there ; 
 
 And thy commandment all alone shall live 
 
 Within the book and volume of my brain, 
 
 Unmix'd with baser matter : yes, by heaven ! 
 
 most pernicious woman ! - 
 
 villain, villain, smiling, damned villain ! 
 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. ( Writing.) 
 So, uncle, there you are. Now to my word ; 
 It is "Adieu, adieu ! remember me." 
 
 1 have sworn 't.* 
 
 Here we have at once the evidence of Hamlet's titanic 
 strength of feeling, and the foreshadowing of that convulsion 
 
 * See Appendix C. 
 
22 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 of the mind which renders his sj.mulation of madness almost 
 a necessity. He seems to feel that The task imposed upon 
 him is so terrible that he can find no room in his life for any 
 other pursuit, affection, or passion. 
 
 Study, speculation, philosophy, love, must all yield to this 
 one great purpose ; and there is jno doubt that had the guilty 
 Claudius entered at that moment, the murder of King Hamlet 
 would have been instantly avenged. But while his mind is 
 still surging with the agitation into "which the ghost's narra- 
 tive has plunged it, the voices of his friends are suddenly 
 heard ; and the necessity for concealment at once engrosses 
 his faculties, causing him to check himself, when he is on the 
 very point of bestowing upon them that confidence which 
 alone could have relieved his over-charged heart. The con- 
 clusion of this scene has been more misunderstood by the 
 exponents of Hamlet in the theatre, and by the students of 
 his character in the closet, than any other portion of the 
 tragedy, except one the scene with Ophelia. 
 
 Coleridge has expressed in one sentence what seems to me 
 the whole gist of the scene : " For you may perhaps observe 
 that Hamlet's wildness is but half false ; he plays that subtle 
 trick of pretending to act only when he is very near really being 
 what he acts." I cannot agree with Coleridge that the subterra- 
 nean speeches of the ghost "are nearly indefensible;" they seem 
 to me to be absolutely necessary, in order to bring out that 
 feverish anxiety to conceal from all others the solemn revela- 
 tion which he has received ; an anxiety which induces Hamlet 
 to hurry Horatio and Marcellus away from each spot whence* 
 the voice seems to come, forgetting that he alone can hear it; 
 and gives hkn time for maturing hastily, but effectually, that 
 scheme, by which alone he perceives that he can preserve his 
 freedom of action, and give to his over-taxed mind that relief 
 which is absolutely necessary, if it is not utterly to lose its 
 balance, However strange or odd he may bear himself in 
 future, these two trustworthy friends, at least, are secure to 
 him as allies ; for they will not be surprised at those " antic 
 dispositions ;" but will accept, wholly and sincerely, as an 
 assumption that which may be assumed indeed at some times, 
 but at others will be only the inevitable_indulgence of a mind 
 filled with so terrible a purpose, : EKaFthe relief of eccentricity 
 becomes absolutely necessary to its healthy existence. 
 
 Nothing can be^~more affectmg"l:han the~mixture here 
 presented the forced employment of a cunning most repul- 
 
 * See Additional Notes, No, 2 A. 
 
A STUDY OF HAMLET. 23 
 
 sive to his own over-frank character, and those touching 
 appeals to the affection of his friends which would "be the 
 natural relief of his sensitive nature 
 
 So, gentlemen, 
 
 With all my love I do commend me to you : 
 \ And what so poor a man as Hamlet is 
 
 May do, to express his love and friending to you, 
 \ God willing, shall not lack. Let us go in together ; 
 \ And still your fingers on your lips, I pra}*. 
 \yThe time is out of joint : cursed spite ! 
 VThat ever I was born to set it right ! 
 Nay, come, let's go together. 
 
 Between the first and second acts an interval of time occurs, 
 the exact length of which we have no means of ascertaining ;* 
 but that it consisted of several days, at least, is evident from 
 tli e fact that_the_ajmbassadors MbaJSor way liad time to fulfil 
 their mission, and to return ; also that the King and Queen 
 had time, after having observed Hamlet's altered demeanour, 
 to procure the presence of Itosencrantz and Guildenstern, 
 most probably from Witt enburg. How Hamlet employed this in- 
 terval is to us the important question ; lie seems to have taken 
 no stepjtowards the fulfilment of the ghost's charge, except the 
 consistent assumption of that eccentricity and humorous melan- 
 choly, by which he hoped to gain a character for harmless oddity ; 
 ToFwlTcan hardly use such a strong term as madness, though 
 Polonius most wisely expounds the reasons why he is mad. 
 The ingenious Mr. Malone says that nothing could be more 
 foolish than Hamlet's assumption of madness, because that 
 was the very way to provoke the King to place him under 
 restraint, and so prevent his doing anything to revenge his 
 father's death. If Hamlet had counterfeited what doctors 
 call the homicidal mania, this remark would have ueen a very 
 sensible one ; for Mr. Malone-, whose only eccentricity took 
 the perfectly innocent form of very dull criticism, would pro- 
 bably regard such an odd character as Hamlet as a dangerous 
 lunatic ; but King Claudius was not so sensitive on this 
 point as Mr. Malone, and when he saw that his nephew 
 was by turns melancholy and satirical, that he courted soli- 
 tude and shrank from taking part in any of the Court 
 festivities, but that he never attempted to injure himself 
 or anybody else^he could have no pretext for depriving him 
 of his liberty. _ He was~ naturally anxious to conciliate 
 "Hamlet because, after all, the young prince was loved by the 
 people, and^ Claudius dared not show any open animosity 
 
 See Additional Notes, No, 2. 
 
24 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 against him;* it was his object to conceal his crime, which 
 was, as he believed, known only to himself ; though he in- 
 stinctively felt that the son of his murdered brother suspected 
 him. 
 
 The most important step which Hamlet had taken was the 
 resolution to break olf his affectionate relations with Ophelia. 
 The struggle must have been a very severe one. The meddle- 
 some omciousness of Polonius in compelling his daughter to 
 cease all correspondence with the young prince, as being above 
 her sphere, was a piece of diplomacy by which he hoped to 
 obtain an explicit proposal for her hand ; the shallow mean- 
 ness of which device Hamlet most probably saw through. 
 This forcible severance of all communication between Ophelia 
 and himself seemed a plausible reason enough for Hamlet's 
 melancholy ; but we know it had little or nothing to do with 
 it ; and we may be sure that it had less to do with his aban- 
 donment of his love-suit. On the day on which the second 
 act commences we have Ophelia's vivid and beautiful descrip- 
 tion of the last interview, if we may call it so, that took 
 place between them : 
 
 OPH. My lord, as I was sewing in my closet, 
 
 Lord Hamlet, with his doublet all unbraced, 
 
 No hat upon his head, his stockings foul'd, 
 
 Un^aiter'd and down-gyved to his ankle ; 
 
 Pale as his shirt, his knees knocking each other, 
 
 And with a look so piteous to purport 
 
 As if he had been loosed out of hell 
 
 To speak of horrors, he comes before me. 
 POL. Mad for thy love ? 
 OPH. My lord, I do not know, 
 
 But truly 1 do fear it. 
 ; POL. What said he ? 
 
 . '. Ophelia's modest expression of her belief contrasts beauti- 
 fully with the pompous assurance of Polonius. She goes 
 on 
 
 Orir. He took me by the wrist and held me hard ; 
 Then goes he to the length of all his arm. 
 And with his other hand thus o'er his brow, 
 He falls to such perusal of my face 
 As he would draw it. Long stayed he so ; 
 At last a little shaking of mine arm, 
 And thrice his head thus waving and up and down, 
 He raised a sigh so piteous and profound 
 
 See Act IV., Sc. 3 (King's Speech): 
 
 3 strong law c 
 ited multitudi 
 
 Et scq 
 
 Yet must not we put the strong law on him : 
 He's loved of the distracted multitude. 
 
 Also (in same Act) Sc. VII., lines 18-24. 
 
A STUDY OF HA.MLETV '2~> 
 
 As it did seem to shatter all his bulk, 
 And end his being : that done, he lets me go : 
 And with his head over his shoulder turn'd, 
 He seem'd to find his way without his eyes ; 
 For out o' doors he went without their helps, 
 And to the last bended their light on me. 
 
 Now, the question is, what was in Hamlet's mind when he 
 gave way to this violent agitation ? It has been said by some 
 commentators that he behaved in this extraordinary manner 
 in order to jmjjress_ upon Ophelia's simple nature the belief 
 that lie was mad ; T cannot but think that Shakespeare meant 
 something more than this. Since his interview with the 
 Ghost, Hamlet's mind had been dwelling upon his father's sad 
 fate, and upon his mother's atrocious infidelity. What a fear- 
 ful shock it must havc~eon to hisjiffectionate natuFe~to" know- 
 that the~inolhbr whuin lle^iiaji_sjOavd ami reverenced had 
 been false to a husband so noble, so gentle, so loving, that the 
 abandoned woman inight_Ji^y^__^lrjnin]cJxom diskoiiaiir- 
 ingnin! Tiie revelation of such a hideous fact might have 
 forced alar stronger nature than Hamlet's to abandon all faith 
 in womankind. During those days of mental agony, when 
 he might have looked for the gentle consolation of her he 
 loved, he was left to suffer alone, uncheered, save by the 
 occasional company and the heartfelt sympathy of one true 
 friend, Horatio. At such a time the horrid idea must have 
 been present to his mind that the pure and innocent girl to 
 whom he had given his first and only love might possibly 
 grow up to become most horrible thought ! what his mothav 
 was._ Doubtless, his father had often told him of the perfect y 
 joy and happiness which he had known when he first married 
 his young and virtuous bride ; she had been no less innocent 
 and no less pure, no less single-minded in her devotion to her 
 betrothed than Ophelia ; and yet what had she become ? No 
 wonder that with such a terrible thought ever haunting him, 
 Hamlet forgot to carry out the command which his father's 
 spirit had enjoined. When he escaped from this mental tor- 
 ture, another difficulty stared him in the face ; he knew his 
 weakness, no one better ; could he pursue the sweet course of 
 love and obey the Ghost as \vell ? Could he ask Ophelia to link 
 herself withirTTfeTso insecure, with a heart and mind so pre- 
 occupied, with a nature crushed under the weight of such a 
 terrible responsibility ? He struggled, and not unsuccessfully, 
 against those hideous forebodings as to what Ophelia might 
 become ; he flung away all suspicion of her perfect purity ; 
 but one of the two must be given up, his love or his task oi' 
 vengeance. While the struggle is going on within him, 
 
 c 
 
u 
 
 26 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 while his heart- strings are snapping asunder, pale and trem- 
 bling beneath the tempest of emotion, he bursts into the 
 chamber of his love, like the apparition of some terrible 
 transformation of himself ; he holds her by the wrist ; he 
 gazes into her eyes, as though lie would read the very depth 
 of her nature, as if he would know the full beauty of that 
 heart which he is giving up for ever ; he cannot trust himself 
 to .speak ; his frame is convulsed with a sigh so piteous and 
 profound that it seemed to shatter his very body, a sigh which 
 v/ was the cry of a breaking heart ; without removing his gaze 
 from her, whom he was never to look on again with the eyes 
 of love, he vanishes from the room, unable to utter the awful 
 sentence of death to his love which his heart had pronounced. 
 I must here allude to a question which it would be more 
 pleasant to pass over altogether, were such a course not 
 capable of misconstruction ; some people have held, and other's 
 hold still, the monstrous opinion that Hamlet was guilty of the 
 ruin of Ophelia.* This accusation, which betrays ignorance of 
 this play itself, and an utter inability to comprehend Shake- 
 speare's mode of working, is easily refuted. It rests upon the 
 verses of some idle song, caught up, probably, from her nurse, 
 which Ophelia innocently sings in her madness. Nobody can 
 examine the scenes between Polonius and Ophelia, Laertes 
 and his sister, or that between her and Hamlet, without 
 seeing at once that this accusation is utterly groundless. 
 Shakespeare would not have wantonly introduced such a foul 
 stain upon Hamlet's character without using it for some 
 dramatic purpose. The suggestion of vice is a delicacy of 
 modern date. Hamlet's love for Ophelia was pure and 
 honourable ; and any one who thinks the contrary is not to 
 be envied. For my own part, whatever objection may bo 
 taken to the song alluded to, I cannot but think that it is one 
 of Shakespeare's most delicate touches in the sweetly innocent 
 character of Ophelia, that when her unhappy mind is so dis- 
 traught with grief for her father, and her reason is overthrown, 
 she should repeat, with such simple child-like ignorance of 
 their meaning, the verses which probably she had never heard 
 since she was being dandled on her nurse's knee, and which, 
 in her right senses, she might never have remembered. 
 
 As I am now treating of the relations between Hamlet and 
 Ophelia, it would be better to go at once to that scene at the 
 beginning of the third act, which has caused so many difficul- 
 ties both to actors and critics. It is very necessary for the 
 right understanding of this scene that we should carefully 
 observe what has gone before. ( Polonius, having come to the 
 * See Appendix D. 
 
A STUDY OF HAMLET. 27 
 
 conclusion from what Ophelia has told him, and from letters of 
 Hamlet's to her which he has found, that the cause of Harn- 
 let's madness is simply love for his daughter, proposes that 
 Ophelia should place herself in the gallery, or lobby, in which 
 Hamlet is accustomed to walk for hours together ; and that 
 the King and he should conceal themselves behind the arras 
 and watch the result ; " if," Polonius says, " 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. 
 
 This proposal is carried out ; Ophelia is given a book and 
 told to read it 
 
 That show of such an exercise may colour 
 Your loneliness. 
 
 C~n fact she is made a party, a direct and conscious party to 
 trap set for her lover. 
 
 Hamlet enters, debating \vith^ himself the, question of 
 suicide in that well-known soliloquy, " To be, or not to be," 
 &c., atjhe end of which he turns and sees Ophelia seemingly 
 in prayer. I think _it_ extremely probable that Ophelia is 
 intended really to be praying for the unhappy prince, whose' 
 agitation during the soliloquy she cannot fail to have observed. 
 Hamlet accosts her with serious but kindly courtesy 
 
 Nymph, in thy orisons 
 Be all my sins remember'd. 
 
 Ophelia answers 
 
 Grood, my lord, 
 How does your honour for this many a day ? 
 
 Except in that awful interview which she has described to 
 Polonius, during which, as you remember, Hamlet never 
 spoke, Ophelia has not seen him for some time. Hamlet 
 answers as if wishing to check any inquiry into the cause of 
 his apparent illness, " I humbly thank you : well." 
 
 OPH. My lord, I have remembrances of yours, 
 That I have longed long to re-deliver ; 
 I pray you, now receive them. 
 
 She had probably been instructed by her father to return 
 Hamlet's presents. Hamlet determined to avoid the discus- 
 sion of a very painful question, perhaps also to ignore the 
 fearful state of agitation in which he had been when he last 
 saw Ophelia, and shrinking from definitely breaking off all 
 affectionate relations between them, denies having given 
 these gifts to Ophelia 
 
 No, not I ; 
 
 I never gave you aught. 
 OPH. My honour'd lord, you know right well you did ; 
 
 C 2 
 
28 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 And with them words of so sweet breath composed ; 
 As made the things more rich : their perfume lost, 
 Take these again.; for to the noble mind 
 Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind. 
 There, my lord. 
 
 At this point, just as Ophelia is going Ho force back oil 
 Hamlet the* sweet remembrances of his love, the fussy old 
 Polonius, who has been fidgeting behind the arras, anxious to 
 see the result of his most notable device, pops his head out, and 
 in so doing drops his chamberlain's staff : Hamlet hears the 
 noise, and instantly suspects the truth, that he is being made 
 the object of an artfully devised scheme to entrap him into 
 spnae confession of his secret. His suspicions had been already 
 Caroused by the manifest constraint of Ophelia's manner ; at 
 the same time his heart had been deeply touched at the 
 equally manifest emotion under which she laboured. True, 
 she was acting a part ; but she was speaking from her own 
 heart when she alluded to the sweet words of love which had 
 accompanied Hamlet's presents, when she recalled the happy 
 hours she had spent with him before this mysterious shadow 
 had fallen on his life. We may imagine that, but for his 
 worst suspicions being aroused by the evidence that he was 
 being watched, he would have spoken to Ophelia with the 
 greatest affection ; now, however, it is with a rude revulsion 
 of feeling that he treats her as a party to, indeed as the chief 
 agent of, the deception contrived against him :j all that fol- 
 lows is couched in half enigmatical satire, the sting of which 
 is fully to be comprehended only by the guilty Claudius. 
 Hamlet, who guesses he is one of the parties concealed, speaks 
 at the King, as it were, the threats he dare not utter to his 
 face : at the same time there is a wild incoherence about 
 Hamlet's words which can only serve to bewilder the hearers 
 as to the real cause of his condition. 
 
 After warning Ophelia against believing any man, thereby 
 conveying a delicate rebuke of her deceitfulness, Hamlet is 
 about to leave her with the words 
 
 Go thy ways to a nunnery. 
 
 He is crossing the stage, when his eye falls on that part of 
 the arras whence the noise had proceeded, and he is instantly 
 struck by some such thoughts as these : 
 
 " Have I been right in suspecting this innocent maiden of 
 being, knowingly, a party to such a contemptible trick ? Caii 
 she, whose pure and open nature I so loved, be capable of 
 such paltry disingenuous conduct-? No! before I condemn 
 her I will put her to the plain proof," 
 
A STUDY OF HAMLKT. 29 
 
 He turns round and holds out his hands towards her ; she, 
 forgetting her part, thinking, poor girl, he is going to take 
 her to his breast and forgive her, flies across to him ; lie 
 checks her with his outstretched hand, and holding hers, he 
 looks straight into her eyes, as only one who loves her has a 
 right to look into a maiden's eyes, ard he solemnly asks her 
 the question, " Where is your lather ? " What can she 
 answer ? Once committed to deceit there is no escape from 
 it. She would fain tell the truth, but she dares not ; she ^ 
 thinks it would be disobedience to her father, and unkindness \^ 
 to her poor distracted lover, were she to do so. With down- 
 cast eyes and blushing cheek, with hands relaxing their 
 grasp, escaping from the touch of him she loves so well, she 
 falters out her first lie, " At home, my lord." There is a little 
 pause ; then with a sigh, as his last hope in the truthfulness 
 of one woman at least dies in him, he drops her hand, saying 
 with solemn sternness 
 
 Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the fool nowhere but 
 in's own house. Farewell. 
 
 Ophelia, who sees in this strange answer nothing but the 
 sign of a noble mind o'erthrown, utters the simple prayer 
 
 0, help him, you sweet heavens ! 
 
 But now indignation has taken the place of sorrow with 
 Hamlet, and he bursts into a bitter denunciation of the follies v 
 and petty' deceits of women; lashing those very faults from 
 which Ophelia seemed, and was indeed, freest \\ so that she 
 can feel no pain and anger on her own account, all that she 
 can feel is the agony of grief at seeing her sweetest hope for 
 ever ended, her worst fears too fully confirmed. 
 
 Whether the view of this scene which I have ventured to 
 put forward is, or is not, the correct one, it is at any rate a 
 more consistent one than that which would see in these 
 speeches of Hamlet nothing but brutal outrages on the feelings 
 of her whom, as he afterwards tells us, " he loved," so that 
 
 forty thousand brothers 
 Could not, with all their quantity of love, 
 Make up my sum. 
 

PART II. 
 
 THE consideration of Hamlet's relations to Ophelia 
 caused me, at the end of my last lecture, to diverge from the 
 regular course of the play, which up to that point we had 
 followed pretty closely. Having endeavoured to discover by 
 the simplest inductions what, or rather some of what, had 
 taken place in the interval between the first and second acts, 
 I must now revert almost to the very commencement of the 
 second act, when we first hear of Bosencrantz and Guilden- 
 stern. Hamlet's conduct towards these two plastic noblemen 
 has furnished some of the commentators with a sufficiently 
 plausible text for their denunciations of his moral character. 
 We shall see how far these denunciations are justified. The 
 King, in welcoming Kosencrantz and Guildenstern, addresses 
 them as if they were the two most intimate friends that 
 Hamlet possessed ; his words are 
 
 I entreat you both, 
 
 That, being of so young days brought up with him 
 And sith so neighbour'*! to his youth and haviour, 
 That you vouchsafe your rest here in our court 
 Some little time : so by your companies 
 To draw him on to pleasures, and to gather 
 So much as from occasion you may glean, 
 Whether aught to us unknown afflicts him thus, 
 That open'd lies within our remedy. 
 
 The Queen adds 
 
 Good gentlemen, he hath much talk'd of you, 
 And sure I am. two men there are not living 
 To whom he more adheres. 
 
 I will only remark here that it is evident that Hamlet had 
 taken both his mother and his uncle very incompletely into 
 his confidence, and that neither of them suspected the depth 
 
A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 of the friendship, and the completeness of the intimacy, that 
 existed between him and Horatio. 
 
 The request of both King and Queen is couched in language 
 to which no person of an unsuspicious and courteous disposi- 
 tion could take exception ; an eccentric nature, like Hamlet's, 
 might have found some ground for suspicion, both in the 
 confidence with which the request to watch their friend is 
 preferred, and the readiness with which it is granted. Bosen- 
 crantz and Guildenstern leave the royal presence in search of 
 Hamlet: they find Polonius just coming away from him, 
 after a rather unsatisfactory interview, in which Hamlet has 
 relieved the depression of his spirits by several humorous 
 sallies at the expense of the Lord Chamber]ain. It would 
 seem, by the way, that this functionary, in virtue of his office, 
 inherits the privilege of being the cause of wit in others, 
 especially in playwrights : the respectable successor* to the 
 dignities of Polonius has, in our own day, contrived to earn 
 the splendid distinction of infusing into the ghastly corpse of 
 burlesque some faint spark of life ; having accomplished thus 
 much, he can hardly look back upon his career without some 
 pardonable pride ; for my own part, I wish that worthy 
 nobleman a future of unblemished tranquillity. This little 
 discursion is not quite so irrelevant as it may seem ; for we 
 know that in the character of Polonius, Shakespeare laid the 
 irreverent cudgel__of his satire on the sacred back of no less 
 a personage than Lord Burleigh. I must guard myself, how- 
 ever, from the suspicion of any intention to infer that the 
 ridicule, of which Lord Sydney has been made the object by 
 the facetious writers of our day, is of equal gravity with the 
 satire levelled by Shakespeare against Lord Burleigh ; any 
 more than the office of Lord High Treasurer, in the reign of 
 Queen Elizabeth, can be held to be of equal importance with 
 that of Lord High Chamberlain in the reign of Queen Victoria. 
 
 The tedium which Polonius has inflicted upon Hamlet 
 renders more natural the gleeful satisfaction with which he 
 receives his young friends ; after some pleasantries which 
 were better omitted, Hamlet inquires 
 
 What's the news ? 
 
 He follows up this question with another, in which he 
 strikes the key-nott3 of his own misery ; he talks of Denmark 
 as a prison, and pursuing the same train of thought, finds but 
 little sympathy from the two courtiers ; this awakens his 
 suspicion. It is generally the case, when the mind of any 
 
 * This was written when Lord Sydney was in office. 
 
A STUDY OF HAMLET. .".:'. 
 
 person is dwelling morbidly on one idea, that coldness, if not 
 repugnance, is immediately occasioned towards those from 
 whom he can elicit no fellow-feeling with his dominant idea. 
 The impatience with which Hamlet reiterates his demand 
 for a straightforward answer to the, question, 
 
 what make you at Elsinore ? 
 
 shows how much on the alert is his wounded sensitiveness. 
 The earnestness of his appeal seems almost out of proportion 
 to the matter in hand ; he resents every attempt at equivoca- 
 tion, however polite : 
 
 Were you not sent for ? 
 
 then, getting no direct answer, 
 
 You were sent for 
 I know the good king and queen have sent for you. 
 
 Repulsed again 
 
 But let me conjure you, by the rights of our fellowship, by the con- 
 sonancy of our youth, by the obligation of our ever-preserved love, and by 
 what more dear a better proposer could charge you withal, be even and 
 Direct with me, whether you were sent for, or no. 
 
 At this point Hamlet steps back some little distance from 
 the two, and eyes them with a piercing glance : they are poor 
 actors, these two supple courtiers ; and they look vacantly, 
 one to another, for suine answer to this unpleasantly direct 
 appeal. Straightforwardness is not their forte ; they have the 
 shiftiness of diplomacy, not its cunning. Hamlet's aside, 
 
 ^ Nay, then, I have an eye of you, 
 
 shows that he has read their hearts. To his last appeal, 
 
 If you love me, hold not off 
 
 they are not proof. The shame-faced confession reluctantly 
 oozes from them under the pressure of a single-purposed 
 mind 
 
 My lord, we were sent for. 
 
 Hamlet's object is gained, but his confidence in these two } 
 is gone for ever ; through the rest of the scene he treats them v 
 with a most gracious courtesy ; he seeks to efface the memory 
 of his rude directness, but his demeanour to them lacks that 
 genuine warmth, that ingenuous heartiness, which invari- 
 ably distinguishes his intercourse with Horatio. Whether 
 his sensitiveness and his suspicion were alike morbid 
 and overstrained, results must show. To him the 
 words "He who is not for me is against me" were 
 
k 
 
 .54 A S'lTDY "F HAMLET. 
 
 terribly true; to him there were only two sides to every 
 question only two principles for every action ; every one 
 with whom he came into contact must either side with him 
 in his devotion to his father's memory, or with the King jind 
 Queen in their treason to that memory. It is pretty evident 
 to Hamlet, from this first interview with Eosencrantz and 
 Guildenstern, which side they had chosen. 
 
 There are two things I wish particularly to notice in this 
 scene ; one is that Hamlet makes a distinct allusion to the 
 contempt with which he is treated at Court ; when both his 
 young friends offer to wait upon him, he replies, " I will not 
 sort you with the rest of my servants ; for, to speak to you 
 li^. an honest man, I am most dreadfully attended."* 
 ^Another point is, that during the whole of his conversation 
 with them Hamlet does not assume the madman ; all that he 
 says is full of humour, of satire, and notably in one instance, 
 the speech in which he accounts for his melancholy, it is full 
 of poetry. He hints to them over and over again that the 
 real cause of his estrangement from all the gaieties of the 
 Court is to be found in the conduct of the King and Queen, 
 but he never gets from them the slightest expression of 
 sympathy ; they are consistent courtiers, and the rising sun 
 of to-day blinds them to the glories of the setting one of 
 yesterday. In the last playful speech he addresses to them, 
 before the re-entering of Polonius, he seems to warn them 
 against lending themselves to any system of espionage on the 
 part of the King and Queen : 
 
 my uncle-father and aunt-mother are deceived. 
 
 With an assumption of amiable imbecility, they answer 
 
 In what, my dear lord ? 
 
 answers 
 
 I am but mad north-north-west : when the wind is southerly I know a 
 hawk from a hands aw. t 
 
 Had they taken this kind hint, it would have been better 
 for them. 
 
 Polonius now comes to announce the arrival of the players ; 
 for that we have been prepared, but not for the powerfully 
 dramatic use to which Shakespeare turns them. Shaking off 
 the seriousness, and the -half-gloomy irony, which had distin- 
 guished his -utterances while seeking to probe the sincerity of 
 his two courtier friends, Hamlet gives the reins completely to 
 
 * See Additional Notes, No. 3. t See Additional Notes, No. 4. 
 
A STUDY OK HAMLET. 35 
 
 his spirit of mischievous raillery against the unfortunate Lord 
 Chamberlain. No doubt it strikes one as rather ungenerous 
 in a prince so to treat one of his father's old servants ; but 
 the devotion of Polonius to the usurper is so thorough, and so 
 zealous, that we may forgive Hamlet if he forgets, as the old 
 courtier seems to have forgotten, that he had ever rendered 
 service to, or received benefits ^from, any other master. 
 Another excuse, as Coleridge suggests, may be offered for 
 Hamlet's apparent rudeness to Polonius ; and that is the 
 grudge he would naturally bear against Ophelia's father for 
 interfering so officiously between him and "his love. Add to 
 these that the prosy, pragmatical, self-opinionated, fussy 
 Pplonius, with his conventional ideas, his cowardly . servility 
 to Claudius, his contempt for play-actors as mere vagabonds 
 allowed to exist on sufferance, was the absolute antithesis, 
 not only of Hamlet, but we may venture to say of Shake- 
 speare himself. In no character, except perhaps in that of \ 
 Justice Shallow, is there more evidence of justifiable personal \ 
 
 feeling on the part of the poet ; justifiable, because it is only 
 by strokes of satire like this, in which the personality of the 
 victim is veiled in decent idealism, in. which nothing affecting 
 their more private life and sacred feelings is introduced, that 
 oppressed or insulted genius can avenge itself upon powerful 
 stupidity and titled commonplace. 
 
 Hamlet, after some gracious recognition of his old acquaint- 
 ances, the players, asks one of them to repeat a certain 
 speech which describes the death of Priam after the taking of 
 Troy. ' To this he listens most intently, and the growing 
 thoughtfulness of his expression shows that the words have 
 for him some innerattractioii, deeper than their mere dra- 
 matic merit could give them. He dismisses the players, 
 under the charge of Polonius, cautioning the Lord Cham- 
 berlain 
 
 To use them better than their deserts 
 
 to treat them, in fact, with that generous courtesy with which 
 persons of true honour and dignity ever treat their inferiors, 
 conferring thereby a distinction on themselves which no 
 homage from the recipients of their bounty could ever bestow. 
 Hamlet stops the player who has spoken the speech, to ask 
 him an apparently trivial question, but of which we soon see 
 the importance ; for once alone, and he gives way to the 
 strong emotion which he has so long suppressed ; he reveals 
 to us all the Workings of his thoughts in that speech, which 
 is, perhaps, the most intensely dramatic of all Hamlet's 
 soliloquies. 
 
A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 ACT II. SCENE 2. 
 HAM. Now I am alone. 
 
 0, 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 
 
 That from her working all his visage wann'd ; 
 
 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 teal's 
 
 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 eyes and ears. 
 
 Yet I, 
 
 A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak, 
 
 Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant 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 the nose ? gives me the lie i' the throat, 
 
 As deep as to the lungs ? who does me this ? 
 
 Ha! 
 
 'Swounds, I should take it : for it cannot be 
 
 But I am pigeon livered 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 ! 
 
 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, like a whore, unpack my heart with words, 
 
 And fall a- cursing, like a very drab, 
 
 A scullion ! 
 
 Fie upon't ! foh ! About my brain ! Hum, 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 proclaim'd their malefactions ; 
 
 For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak, 
 
 With most miraculous organ. I'll have these players 
 
 Play something like the murder of my father 
 
 Before mine uncle : I'll observe his looks ; 
 
 I'll tent him to the quick : if he but blench, 
 
 I know my course. The spirit that I have seen 
 
 May be the devil ; and the devil hath power 
 
 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'll have grounds 
 
 More relative than this. The play's the thing 
 
 Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king. [Exit.* 
 
 * JSee Appendix E. 
 
A STUDY OF HAMLET. 37 
 
 Easily and naturally has Shakespeare led up to this 
 soliloquy, which closes an act that might, at first sight, seem 
 to threaten a falling off from the former one ; for in that 
 the interest excited by the appearance of the Grhost was in- 
 tense, and the entire dramatic construction strikingly perfect ; 
 quite as naturally, in this analysis of the workings of no 
 ordinary mind and heart, are the steps and minute gradations 
 of thought portrayed, which lead Hamlet to form the resolu- 
 tion with which the speech concludes. 
 
 First let us observe that, while in his first soliloquy all his 
 indignation] was expended on his mother, it is now princi- 
 pally directed against himself ; at first he was reflecting on 
 her incomprehensible infidelity and on the treachery of his 
 uncle; and though in the last words 
 
 It is not, nor it cannot come to, good- 
 he hinted at the suspicions which he entertained, in the very // 
 ne'xt words he acknowledges that the necessity of silence is 
 imposed upon him 
 
 But break my heart, for I must hold my tongue, 
 
 Now all the circumstances are completely changed. The 
 most^olemnj3harge that could be given to man most solemn 
 because it wmQcl seem that Nature's very laws had been set 
 aside for the purpose of enjoining on him this sacred duty 
 7 had been given to Hamlet by the Spirit of that father at 
 
 whose wrongs he had hitherto been so helplessly indignant - 
 
 i 
 
 JRevenge his foul and most unnatural murder. 
 
 It was imperative on him now, not only to speak, but to act; 
 What had he done? What had he ever said ? Had he 
 denounced the treacherous murderer.? ^ad he taken one 
 step to bring him to justice ? Here was^ a player, called upon 
 at a moment's notice to repeat a speech, describing the suf- 
 ferings of one utterly unknown to him ; of one who had lived 
 so long ago as almost 'to be out of the range of human sym- 
 pathy ; and yet in describing these sorrows, so great was the 
 force of his mimic passion that one of his spectators could 
 scarcely endure the sight of his agitation : if imaginary 
 cruelties, if fictitious wrongs, could in their very recital so 
 move the narrator, what would he feel if he had 
 
 The motive and the cue for passion 
 
 that Hamlet had? It does not affect the subtlety of this 
 touch, on Shakespeare's part, that the argument Hamlet uses 
 was entirely a false one. O'alm reflection would have shown 
 
38 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 him that the actor's passion was the result of practice in his 
 art ; that in the face of real calamity or actual wrong, he 
 might have been as inactive as Hamlet accuses himself of 
 heing. But for this self-accusation there was real ground ; 
 and the extreme sensibility of Hamlet's nature could not but 
 be struck by the reproof which such an admirably acted piece 
 of passion would convey to him; his feelings were touched, 
 not his intellect; to them, not to the latter, was the appeal 
 made. I think this is why Shakespeare selected such danger- 
 ously bombastic language for the player's speech ; had the 
 poetry been more refined, the sentiment might have been less ' 
 forcible ; had the mind been more attracted, the heart might 
 have been less moved. Hamlet contrasts, in language, which 
 seems to have caught something of the reckless vehemence 
 of the speech to which he had been listening, his own 
 impassive silence with the furious passion which he supposes 
 the player would have shown if in his place. 'He is whirled 
 along in such a torrent of words, while denouncing his own 
 cowardice, that when he turns to pour forth a string of 
 abusive epithets against his uncle, the very excess of his 
 violence works its own cure : finding all words exhausted 
 nd his rage reduced to the simple cry 
 
 0, vengeance ! 
 
 ie immediately sees the folly and the uselessness of such 
 nere vocal thunder, and calls upon his intellect once more to 
 resume the sway which extravagance of feeling had over- 
 turned 
 
 About, my brain ! 
 
 Then suddenly, but clearly, he sees the practical use to which 
 the force of mimic passion may be turned ; he sees a chance 
 of testing Iby MtTtfaTlTreans the truth of that supernatural 
 
 , ~ visitation which he has suffered?! It is not too much to say 
 that, without knowing italic snatches at another chance of de- 
 laying the stern action from which his nature has^slmmk ; for 
 whileTie' seemed, most plausibly to himself, to be advancing 
 in the task of vengeance which had been set him, he was 
 
 ^ really delaying to strike that blow which must, in the natural 
 
 course of things, become more difficult to strike every day ; 
 but had Hamlet acted with the decision of a Malone, or the ' 
 relentless common sense of a Steevens, the world would have 
 lost three acts, at least, of this most glorious play ; and I am 
 afraid that the approbation of these terrible judges, however 
 gratifying to the "manes" of the poet, would scarcely have 
 consoled the world at large for that loss, 
 
A STUDY OF HAMLET. 39 
 
 The temporary distrust, which Hamlet expresses with 
 regard to the genuineness of the apparition that he has 
 seen, I look upon as of little importance, except as a symptom 
 of that intermittent scepticism which often infects dispositions 
 similar to that of Hamlet. The personality of the devil was 
 a doctrine more generally accepted in Shakespeare's time than 
 it is now. This distrust is not deep-seated in Hamlet's 
 mind; he is but unconsciously employing arguments with - 
 himself, 'apparently .suggested by prudence, but, in reality, 
 springing from the inherent weakness of his character, which 
 'made him so ready to i'eel but so unready to act. 
 
 Between the second and third acts would seem to be an 
 interval of twenty-four hours, or thereabouts. The very first 
 words of the act, which are spoken by the King, indicate that 
 the terrors of remorse are closing round him; he no longer 
 speaks of Hamlet's state in the same moderate language that 
 he used before : he inquires of Eosencrantz and Guildenstern 
 the result of their mission thus 
 
 And can you., by no drift of circumstance. 
 Get from him why he puts on this confusion, 
 Grating so harshly all his days of quiet 
 With turbulent and dangerous lunacy ? 
 
 He then learns that Hamlet had commanded the players to 
 play that night before him, and with a momentary sense of 
 relief, little thinking what kind of a play he was going to 
 witness, he gives a ready consent to be present at the enter- 
 tainment. Then follows the scene to which I have already 
 referred in my last lecture ; Ophelia is set as the decoy to 
 inveigle Hamlet's secret from him. 
 
 Having treated of this scene most amply, it is only neces- 
 sary for me now to add a few observations on this grand 
 soliloquy, which offers a complete contrast to the one which / * f 
 closed the last act ; the la^t^as^a^biirst of long suppressed (f% \ 
 passion ; this is deep meditation. ^- 
 
 To be, or not to be : that is the question : ^l*x.Ccr 
 
 Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer 
 
 The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, 
 
 Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, 
 
 And by opposing end them ? 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, 'tis 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, 
 
 Must give us pause : there's the respect 
 
J 
 
 40 A .STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 That makes calamity of so long life ; 
 
 For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, 
 
 The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumelyj 
 
 The pangs of despised love, the law's delay, 
 
 The insolence of office, and the spurns 
 
 That patient merit of the unworthy takes, 
 
 When he himself might his quietus make 
 
 With a bare bodkin ? who would fardels bear, 
 
 To grunt and sweat under a weary life, 
 
 But that the dread of something after death, 
 
 The undiscover'd country from whose bourn 
 
 No traveller returns, puzzles the will, 
 
 And makes us rather bear those ills we have 
 
 Than ily to others that we know not of ? 
 
 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, 
 
 And enterprises of great pitch and moment 
 
 With this regard their currents turn awry 
 
 And lose the name of action.* 
 
 Brought, as it would seem, to the brink of decisive action, 
 having most probably resolved, should the experiment of the 
 play confirm be} r ond all doubt the revelation made to him by 
 the Ghost, that he would kill the murderer without any fur- 
 ther delay, the fatal weakness of Hamlet's character proves 
 once more its supremacy over him by tempting him to that 
 most cowardly escape from all earthly trials suicide. 
 
 Although Shakespeare has not hampered himself by any 
 over-delicate dread of ^anachronisms, it would have been too 
 glaringly out of place to have represented Hamlet as 
 restrained from suicide by any deep religious feeling. The 
 uncertainty which the narrowest-minded infidel must feel as 
 to the existence of a future state often serves, in the place of 
 a nobler motive, to restrain him from the crime of taking his 
 own life. Sensitive natures like Homlet's are most exposed 
 to this horrid temptation ; but those very natures should be 
 most open to the highest influences of religion, without which 
 nothing, but what I may call an intelligent fear, could keep 
 them, in many cases, from putting an end to that life the 
 troubles and sorrows of which they cannot but feel more, 
 keenly than others. But we must not forget that in the case 
 of Hamlet it is no guilty weakness on his own part, no con- 
 temptible abandonment to passion, no degraded indulgence 
 of his appetites, that has brought him to feel that strange 
 longing, which many of us at some time may have felt, to 
 " slit the thin -spun thread of life " and so end all our 
 troubles, at least in this world. It is in his case an over- 
 
 See Appendix F. 
 
A STUDY OF HAMLET. 41 
 
 whelming sense of the fearful tas,k imposed on him, of the 
 terribly conflicting affections which agitated him, of the 
 seeming impossibility of revenging his father without cruelty 
 '; jt is^a noble despair at the apparent triumph 
 
 -q p,vi1 nvflr gnorl, not in his own nature but in the world 
 around him ; a despair which might well crush the strongest 
 of. us, did not faith in a God, not only all-powerful, and all- 
 wise, but all-loving, sustain us. 
 
 The result of the interview between Hamlet and Ophelia 
 on the King is remarkable ; his dread of Hamlet, which had 
 been increasing ever since the night of the ghost's appear- 
 ance, now suggests to him that he must at any cost rid 
 himself of his nephew's presence. 
 
 he shall with speei t England. 
 
 The first hint of that treacherous design which afterwards, as 
 we know, he attempted to carry out with such signal failure. 
 Polonius pleads for one more experiment : 
 
 Poi. Let his queen mother all alone entreat him 
 
 To show his grief : let her be round with him ; 
 And I'll be placed, so please you, in the ear 
 Of all their conference. If she find him not, 
 To England send him, or confine him where 
 Your wisdom best shall think. 
 
 KIXG. It shall be so : 
 
 Madness in great ones must not unwatch'd go. 
 
 One of the most distinctive features of this play is the 
 infinite variety of it ; the way in which the sombreness and 
 pathos of tragedy are relieved by scenes not of vulgar farce 
 or forced humour, but by frequent flashes of high comedy, or,' 
 as in the case of the gravedigger scene, natural humours In- 
 deed, it may be said of all Shakespeare's great tragedies, with 
 the sole exception of " Macbeth " in which the incidents are 
 so many and the interest so intense, that no such relief is 
 wanted that he is always careful not to be monotonously 
 gloomy, but to be true to nature, even in this point as in all 
 others ; for in life we rarely find but that the greatest calamity, 
 or the heaviest sorrow, is relieved either by the presence of 
 some element of beauty, or by a gleam of brightness, which 
 extorts our admiration, or forces from us a smile, even at the 
 . supremest moment of fear or grief. This it is which more 
 than anything else distinguishes Shakespeare from all his 
 contemporaries or successors in tragic poetry : the oppressive 
 gloom which crushes us in Ford, Marlowe, or Cyril Tourneur 
 to mention three of his most formidable rivals or the tearful 
 
42 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 tediousness of Otway, Bowe, and their many imitators, never 
 affects us when reading the tragedies of Shakespeare. In 
 accordance with this principle, before we approach the more 
 tragic incidents of this play, Shakespeare affords us a pleasant 
 resting place in the short scene between Hamlet and the 
 players, in which he lays down in most admirable precepts 
 and most perfect language the true principles of acting. 
 This scene bears little upon the character of Hamlet except 
 as it shows the universality of his talents and the liberality 
 of his mind, and helps to establish his claim to be called in 
 the beautiful language of Ophelia, " tjie glass of fashionjind. 
 the mould of form." 
 
 rolonius, with Itosencrantz and Guildenstern, now enter 
 to announce the consent of the King to be present at the play. 
 Hamlet despatches them itll three to hasten the players, in 
 order that he may take Horatio into his confidence more tho- 
 roughly, and benefit by his aid in the experiment upon the 
 King's conscience which he is now about to try. In this 
 speech to Horatio Shakespeare has almost exceeded himself ; 
 a more beautiful epitome of the character of a true friend 
 does not exist, nor a better guide for those who wish to find 
 this treasure ; we have in this speech further evidence of the 
 singular clearness of Hamlet's judgment, and of the marvel- 
 lous beauty of a character, the strength of whose intellect 
 stands out in bolder relief from the very fact that in action 
 he is so weak and undecided. We have here one note for the 
 actor whicTTlie should heed well in the following scene 
 
 For I mine eyes will rivet to his face. 
 
 Were the force of this line more heeded by the representa- 
 tives of Hamlet on the stage, we should not be tormented by 
 those exhibitions of feline agility with which they seem to 
 think it incumbent to favour us in the celebrated play scene. 
 
 King and Court have now arrived. It must be acknow- 
 ledged that Claudius' overtures to his nephew do not meet 
 with much encouragement. Hamlet replies to the courteous 
 inquiry 
 
 KING. How fares our cousin Hamlet ? 
 
 HAM. Excellent, i' faith of the chameleon's dish : I eat the air, promise 
 crammed : 
 
 By which words he means to refer to the fact that his uncle 
 has promised that he should succeed to the throne ; a very 
 generous promise, which restored to him his right when the 
 usurper could no longer enjoy it. The demeanour and Ian- 
 
A STt'DY ()F HAMLKT. 43 
 
 guage of Hamlet to Ophelia in this scene are both repulsive : 
 it is not enough to blame the coarseness of the times for such 
 blemishes in the works of one who, in general, was pure- 
 minded. I think some explanation of Hamlet's revolting 
 language may be found, if we presume that my interpretation 
 of the former scene (Act III, So. 1) was a correct one. Hamlet 
 has ceased to respect Ophelia after detecting her in a delibe- 
 rate lie ; he may exaggerate the disrespect which mortification 
 induced him to show towards her, for the purpose of impressing 
 the King and Queen, and still more the courtiers, with the idea 
 that he was scarcely responsible for his actions ; at any rate 
 this short dialogue serves to enhance the sweet purity and 
 innocence of Ophelia's character; and as all the offensive 
 portion of it can be omitted from representation without any 
 injury to the interest of the play, we need not dwell any 
 further upon it. 
 
 The course of the play represented before the Court is in- 
 terrupted by a few short and striking sentences between 
 Hamlet and the King and Queen. The King begins to sus- 
 pect the gist of the play. 
 
 Is there no offence in't ? 
 
 he asks of Hamlet, to which he^answers 
 
 No, no, they do but jest, poison in jest. 
 
 By a great effort of self-restraint Hamlet preserves the same 
 quiet tone of bitter irony throughout, while his eyes cannot 
 be diverted, even by the beautiful face of Ophelia, from their 
 fixed watchfulness of the King. The poisoner in the play 
 represented is the nephew of the king ; this, I think, is no 
 accident ; by making the relation the same as between him- 
 self and Claudius, Hamlet adds one more to the many strokes 
 of irony directed against his uncle. While the mimic 
 poisoner is in the very act of pouring the poison into the 
 sleeping king's ear on the stage, Hamlet half rises from his 
 recumbent attitude and thus explains the incident : 
 
 He poisons him i' the garden for his estate. His name's Gonzago ; the 
 story is extant, and written in very choice Italian : you shall see anon how 
 the murderer gets the love of Gonzago's wife. 
 
 At this point most of the actors, that I have seen in the 
 part of Hamlet, are wont to execute what I must venture to 
 call the most vulgar piece of melodramatic absurdity which 
 can be conceived. They crawl on their hands and knees from 
 the feet of Ophelia to the King, whilst the poisoner is speaking 
 his short speech on the. stage ; they then scream, or rant, in 
 
44 A -STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 the King's ear these words, in such a manner as to justify any 
 respectable and sane member of the Court of Denmark in con- 
 ducting Hamlet to the nearest dungeon. Tradition, deriving 
 itself from Edmund Kean, is said to justify this astonishing- 
 piece of business (technically so called) ; but not every actor, 
 much less every man, is an Edmund Kean, and what may 
 have appeared natural and effective in him, certainly appears 
 quite the contrary in his imitators. To me it seems an error 
 from the actor's point of view, for surely it would be'fmuch 
 more effective, as well as natural, that Hamlet should not 
 abandon himself to the intensity of hi& excitement until he 
 is alone with Horatio, which he is a few moments afterwards, 
 when he bursts into that wild song of triumph 
 
 Why, let the stricken deer go weep, 
 
 The hart ungalled play ; 
 For some must watch, while some must sleep : 
 
 Thus runs the world away. * 
 
 Any licence may be allowed to the actor now ; exulting in 
 the success of his scheme, Hamlet gives way to an excitement 
 almost hysterical. His satirical humour shows itself in the 
 midst of this exultation, in fact he uses it here, as in many 
 other instances, partly as a veil to conceal the depth of his 
 feelings ; he calls for music because the tension of his nerves 
 is becoming too great to bear ; but before the recorders, or 
 small flutes, can be brought, Eosencrantz and Guildenstern 
 re-enter, and Hamlet speedily regains his self-possession in 
 the presence of the two courtiers, whose demeanour is so 
 much changed as to verge almost on insolence. The dignified 
 sarcasm which Hamlet displays in this scene shows that, when 
 he chose, his self-command was as complete as that of the 
 sanest person ; although he tells them that his wit is diseased, 
 Eosencrantz and Guildenstern must have felt that the rebuke 
 the prince administers to their disrespectful familiarity proves 
 the disease had not affected its vigour. Plausible as are their 
 professions of love, Hamlet's keen insight into character, a 
 quality which we often find coupled with the eccentricity of 
 intellectual natures, at once divines that they are in reality 
 playing him false. -The entry of Polonius gives him an oppor- 
 tunity of indulging in mischievous banter of the unfortunate 
 Lord Chamberlain ; his expression 
 
 They fool me to the top of my bent, 
 
 shows how he enjoys the joke. Directly he is alone, he is 
 again serious, proving that, amidst all the wild humour in 
 which he indulges his overburdened mind, he never entirely 
 
 * See Appendix G. 
 
A STUDY OF HAMLET. 45 
 
 forgets that great purpose which he has in view ; he braces 
 up his nerves for the interview with his mother, and once 
 more he seems on the point of that decisive action which 
 would fulfil the solemn duty that his father's spirit has 
 imposed on him. 
 
 We come now to a scene rarely, if ever, represented on the 
 stage, but which forms a foundation for the most plausible 
 attacks that have been made on the character of Hamlet. 
 The King informs Eosencrantz and Guildenstern that they 
 must prepare for immediate departure to England in company 
 with Hamlet 
 
 The terms of our estate may not endure 
 Hazard so near us as doth hourly grow 
 Out of his lunacies. 
 
 They answer in a most becoming spirit of obedience : to them, 
 who ever wore the crown and kingly robes, let them adorn 
 what villany they might, wore the same title to respect and 
 implicit obedience which the dignity of virtue alone should 
 command. When the King is by himself, he gives expression to 
 that remorse which '\vas secretly preying on his heart. The dis- / 
 tinction between repentance and remorse is most clearly and / 
 beautifully drawn j 
 
 But 0, what form of prayer 
 
 Can serve my turn ? ' Forgive me my foul murder ? ' 
 
 That cannot be, since I am still possess'd 
 
 Of those effects for which I did the murder, 
 
 My crown, mine own ambition, and my queen. 
 
 JSday one be pardon'd and retain the offence ? 
 fin the corrupted currents of this world 
 | Offence's gilded hand may shove by justice, 
 I And oft 'tis .seen the wicked prize itself 
 I Buys out the law : But 'tis not so above ; 
 
 -There is no shuffling, there the action lies 
 
 In his true nature, and we ourselves compell'd 
 
 Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults, 
 
 To give in evidence. What then ? what rests ? 
 
 Try what repentance can : what can it not ? 
 
 Yet what can it when one can not repent ? 
 
 O wretched state ! bosom black as death ! 
 
 O limed soul, that struggling to be free 
 
 Art more engaged ! Help, angels ! make assay ! 
 
 Bow, stubborn knees, and, heart with strings of steel, 
 
 Be soft as sinews of the new-born babe ! 
 
 All may be well." 
 
 While he is kneeling in the agony of prayer which is 
 stifled by the consciousness of rts insincerity, Hamlet enters 
 unseen by the King ; he then speaks the lines which certainly 
 betray a spirit of diabolical revenge. No doubt commen- 
 tators have not ransacked contemporary literature of that 
 day in vain for instances of similar ferocity ; the desire had 
 
40 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 been expressed by more than one vindictive nature to kill the 
 soul us well as the body. I need not point out to you how 
 impotent such malice is; man may slay his fellow-man unpre- 
 pared, or even, as in some instances quoted, with a blasphe- 
 mous denial of God on his lips, extorted from him through fear 
 of death ; but the ultimate fate of the soul is in the hands of 
 God alone. The very extravagance of the idea may have 
 struck Shakespeare, and he may have purposely put these 
 horrible words into Hamlet's mouth to show the excess of 
 vindictiveness to which his thoughts would go, out of defi- 
 ance, as it were, of the timid inertness of his action. Violence 
 of language is not uncommonly found in highly sensitive 
 natures ; but very rarely in such natures, except in the moment 
 of extreme passion, is it supplemented by violent deeds. 
 Complete as his conviction of the King s guilt now must be, 
 in face of the opportunity, in sight of the man himself tor- 
 tured with the agonies of a guilty conscience, Hamlet shrinks 
 from striking the fatal blow. He knows himself, that deli- 
 _ berate murder murder committed, not in the heat and fury 
 
 Qf passion, but with sufficientyleisure to allow of reflection, 
 bough justified, ever so strongly, by what we may call the 
 aturaL laws of vengeance is an act of which he is inca- 
 pable./The ghost's solemn exhortation to revenge may be ring- 
 ing in his ears ; in thought he is more than capable, in deed 
 he is incapable of executing it ; and so he indulges in this dis- 
 cussion with himself, in which, affecting a bloody-mindedness 
 that he could not really feel, he excuses himself for once 
 more putting off the time of action.y The reason which he 
 alleges at the end of his speech probably weighed more 
 strongly with him than he was inclined to allow ; he had yet 
 to try and wake his mother's conscience ; that was a task 
 much more congenial to his nature, much more within his 
 capacity. I do not go so far as to deny that this speech of 
 Hamlet's is revolting to our feelings ; it savours of an age 
 when bloodshed and violence were unhappily familiar ; it is 
 consistent with the state of rude and imperfect civilisation 
 which existed in the time of which this play treats ; it must 
 bo, admitted as one of the blemishes inseparable from all 
 human work ; but I do venture to assert that Shakespeare 
 did not intend us to believe that these horrid sentiments 
 were entertained with any seriousness by the mind of 
 Hamlet.* 
 
 We come now to the scene known as the u closet scene," 
 which concludes the third act, and is, perhaps, for more reasons 
 
 * See Appendix H. 
 
A STUDY OF HAMLET. 47 
 
 than one, the most important in the play. The death of 
 Polonius at the hands of Hamlet leads not only to the mad- 
 ness and suicide of Ophelia, but to the final catastrophe of 
 the tragedy. There are three questions involved in this scene 
 which have occasioned much controversy first, the conduct of 
 Hamlet to his mother ; secondly, the amount of guilt with 
 which he is chargeable for" the accidental murder of Polonius ; 
 and thirdly, how far the Queen was accessory to the murder 
 of her first husband. On all the questions. I hope, by careful 
 examination of the text itself, to throw some light. 
 
 We must imagine the Queen in her closet, or oratory ; be- 
 hind the arras which covers the walls Polonius is concealed, 
 ready to hear how Hamlet answers his mother when she takes 
 him roundly to task for his conduct towards his uncle-father. 
 Polonius, by the way, had probably no suspicion X)f foul play 
 in the case of the elder Hamlet's death ; while, as to Ger- 
 trude's speedy marriage with her brother-in-law, the political 
 reasons alleged for it would have been quite sufficient excuse, 
 in the old courtier's eyes, for the indecent haste, or the dis- 
 regard of consanguinity manifested in such a marriage ; even 
 supposing that, in his eyes, the King could do any wrong. 
 When, therefore, the Lord Chamberlain counsels the Queen 
 thus 
 
 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 
 
 he thinks that he is giving very excellent and highly moral 
 advice ; nor does it occur to him, for one moment, that the 
 eccentric prince, at whose pranks he is so scandalised, may 
 turn the tables upon his august mother. In fact, we may 
 take it for granted that the conduct of Polonius is open to 
 no graver imputations than those of servility and meddlesome- 
 ness, faults for which he is too severely punished. 
 
 The time is night, and the hour very -near that in which 
 his father's ghost first appeared to Hamlet. His first words 
 are those of assumed indifference 
 
 HAM. Now, mother, what's the matter ? 
 
 Qu. Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended. 
 
 He at once shows her that he has not come to be rebuked, 
 but to rebuke. 
 
 HAM. Mother, you have my father much offended. 
 Qu. Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue. 
 
48 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 She attempts to treat him as if he were still a boy. His 
 answer quickly undeceives her 
 
 HAM. Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue. 
 
 She is astonished at the audacity of his manner 
 
 Qu. Why, how now, Hamlet ! 
 
 HAM. What's the matter now ? 
 
 Qu. 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. 
 
 Even the pathetic tone of reproach in which he utters this 
 word finds no echo in her dulled conscience; she answers with 
 affected indignation and attempted menace 
 
 Qu. Nay, then, "I'll set those to you that can speak. 
 
 Hamlet does not seem to suspect that any spy is in conceal- 
 ment ; he stops his mother as she is going towards the King's 
 apartments, and gently forcing her into the chair, speaks to 
 her with a dignity which the consciousness of his solemn 
 mission gives him 
 
 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. 
 
 She mistakes the solemn earnestness of his manner for the 
 dreadful purpose of insanity 
 
 Qu. What wilt thou do ? thou wilt not murder me ? 
 Help, help, ho ! 
 
 Polonius echoes the call for help from behind the arras ; 
 Hamlet springs almost ferociously to the spot whence he has 
 the voice, with the cry 
 
 How now ! a rat ? Dead, for a ducat, dead ! 
 
 
 
 as he plunges the sword through the arras. So excited is he 
 that he fails to recognise the voice of Polonius, and when his* 
 
 t mother exclaims 
 me, what hast thou done ? 
 he answers 
 Nay, I know not : is it the king ? 
 
 The intense eagerness with which he utters this question is 
 the key to the apparent strangeness of his conduct. We have 
 seen him, but a short while ago, gazing on the figure of the 
 King as he knelt in the agony of barren prayer ; we have 
 seen him in the presence of an opportunity, which might 
 
A STUDY OF HAMLET. 49 
 
 never occur again, of revenging his father's death by slaying 
 'his murderer without the chance of interruption ; we have 
 seen him then stop to argue with himself, and to elaborate the 
 most bloodthirsty cruelly in his mind, while his sword lay 
 harmless in his motionless hand ; but now, when the object of 
 his hate is concealed from his sight, he strikes blindly, upon 
 the impulse of the moment ; and the very idea that he has 
 thus, in spite of his own weakness, in spite of his fatal inert- 
 ness, accomplished the deed he had so long contemplated, and 
 fulfilled the solemn charge, for his faithlessness to which lie 
 had so bitterly reproached himself, fills him with a joy which, 
 even in the presence of her whose husband he thinks lie has 
 slain, he cannot conceal. 
 
 The Queen exclaims with genuine horror 
 
 0, what a rash and bloody deed is this ! 
 
 To which Hamlet, who has gone up towards the arras, turning 
 round, answers somewhat sharply, 
 
 A bloody deed 1 almost as bad, good mother, 
 As kill a king, and marry with his brother. 
 
 This, as more than one commentator has observed, is most 
 probably a tentative reproach uttered by Hamlet as an expe- 
 riment on his mother's conscience ; the Queen's answer 
 
 As kill a king ! 
 
 must, I think, be held to be entirely free from any taint of 
 hypocrisy, and should be uttered with simple earnestness. 
 Hamlet now lifts up the arras and discovers Polonius. He is 
 too much engrossed by the great work which he has in hand 
 the awakening of his mother's conscience to a full sense of 
 her guilt all the powers of his mind are too intent upon this 
 purpose to allow of his expressing his sorrow at the fatal 
 mistake which he has made. And I must here remind you 
 of what I have said before, that Hamlet's whole nature is so 
 absorbed by the indignation which he feels at his father's 
 murder, that he regards all persons who in any way counte- 
 nance the murderer, king though he be, and ignorant as they 
 may be of his guilt, as participators in his crime. 
 
 He now comes back to the Queen, who stands wringing her 
 hands in helpless agitation 
 
 Leave wringing of your hands : peace ! sit you down, 
 
 And let me wring your heart : for so 1 shall, 
 
 If it be made of penetrable stuff ; 
 
 If damned custom have not brass'd it so, 
 
 That it be proof and bulwark against sense, 
 
50 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 The answer of the Queen 
 
 What have I done, that thou darest wag thy tongue 
 In noise so rude against me ? 
 
 affords still further proof that she had no guilty consciousness 
 of complicity in the murder of her husband ; but the amazing 
 insensibility which she displays with regard to her scarcely 
 less serious crime, infidelity to that husband, both during his 
 lifetime and after his death, fully justifies the language in 
 which Hamlet addresses her 
 
 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 dicers' oaths. 
 
 Still the blindness of her misplaced passion, or the obstinacy 
 of her woman's vanity, stifles the voice of shame. It is only 
 after Hamlet has drawn in most earnest and poetic words the 
 contrast between her dead husband and her living one ;* it 
 is only when he has relentlessly laid bare the extremity of 
 her degradation, that she cries out in the agony of a tardily 
 awakened conscience 
 
 Hamlet, speak no more : 
 Thou turn'st mine eyes into my very soul, 
 And there I see such black and grained spots v 
 
 As will not leave their tinct. 
 
 His indignation has mastered him, and he cannot stop ; he 
 justly insists upon her having aggravated her guilt by con- 
 tinuance in it. In her renewed cry for mercy she repeats 
 almost the same expression that Hamlet had used before, 
 when preparing himself for this interview^ 
 
 These words like daggers enter in my ears ; 
 No more, sweet Hamlet ! 
 
 But the picture he has conjured up of the successful mur- 
 derer and adulterer lashes him into a fury of invective, in the 
 very midst of which he is interrupted by the entry of the 
 Ghost, clad now, not in complete aimour, but in the ordinary 
 dress of every day, or rather, as the stage direction has it in 
 the first Quarto (1603), " in his night gownc" as if he were 
 going to the bed that his wife had so cruelly dishonoured. 
 
 The appearance of the Ghost in this scene is essentially dif- 
 ferent, in every point, both to its first appearance in the pre- 
 
 * See Appendix K. 
 
 f I will speak daggers to her, but use none. 
 
A STUDY OF HAMLET. 51 
 
 sence of Marcellus, Horatio, and Bernardo, and to its second 
 in the presence of Hamlet, Horatio, and Marcellus. On both 
 these occasions the apparition was visible to every one pre- 
 sent, though it refused to speak until alone with Hamlet. 
 Now the ghost is seen and heard by Hamlet alone. To the 
 Queen both the form of the spectre, and the words it speaks, are 
 but as empty air. In the former scene, as in this, Hamlet, on 
 first seeing the apparition, calls on the angels fur protection ; 
 but whereas before the words of his prayer were 
 
 Angela and ministers of grace defend us ! 
 
 they are now 
 
 Save me, and hover o'er me with your wings, 
 You heavenly guards ! 
 
 The use of the singular number may be accidental ; on the 
 other hand it may show that he was sensible that this visita- 
 tion of his father's spirit was directed to him alone. Hamlet 
 asks, . 
 
 What would your gracious figure ? 
 
 but he does not wait for the answer ; he is too conscious of 
 his weakness and procrastination ; he does not -heed the 
 Queen's exclamation, 
 
 Alas, he's mad ! 
 
 but he continues at once 
 
 Do you not come your tardy son to chide, 
 That, lapsed in time and passion, lets go by 
 The important acting of your dread command ? 
 0, say ! 
 
 The ghost has only one speech, the first part of which is a 
 solemn but gentle rebuke : 
 
 Do not forget : this visitation 
 Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose. 
 
 There is no special command to kill the King ; the anxiety 
 of the noble spirit is directed towards another end : 
 
 But look, amazement on thy mother sits : 
 0, step between her and her fighting soul : 
 Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works : 
 Speak to her, Hamlet. 
 
 We must take " conceit " here to mean " imagination," 
 though this interpretation does not make the gist of the pas- 
 sage very clear to me ; the line 
 
 0, step between her and her fighting soul : 
 
 would certainly seem to support the meaning which I would 
 
52 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 attribute to this portion of the speech namely, that the 
 anxiety of the ghost is mainly directed towards the thorough 
 awakening of the Queen's conscience, so as to bring her to 
 repentance ; but it would be more consistent with this inter- 
 pretation 'if the word " conceit " expressed " caprice," or 
 " vanity," more than " imagination." It may be that Shake- 
 speare intended to represent the spirit of the elder Hamlet as 
 retaining so much of the tenderness of his nature, that it could 
 not bear to witness the terrible alarm, into which Gertrude 
 was thrown by the sight of Hamlet holding discourse with 
 what seemed to be " the incorporal air ;" and that therefore 
 the ghost earnestly bids Hamlet speak to her, in order to con- 
 vince her that this conduct, which seems so inexplicable to 
 her, is not the result of madness. Perhaps both explanations 
 are equally true ; and the intention of this speech mny em- 
 brace both these objects. Certain it is that the immediate 
 result of this second visitation on Hamlet is to make him 
 much more gentle in appealing to his mother's feelings, and 
 more earnest and definite in his repudiation of insanity. ' 
 
 The Queen's next speech shows us that the actor at this 
 point needs all his skill to express the agitation which she 
 describes 
 
 Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep ; 
 And, as the sleeping soldiers in the .alarm, 
 Your bedded hairs, like life in excrements, 
 Start up and stand an end. gentle son, 
 Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper 
 Sprinkle cool patience. 
 
 Hamlet's appeal to the ghost is most pathetic 
 
 Do not look upon me, 
 Lest with this piteous action you convert 
 My stern effects : then what I have to do 
 Will want true colour ; tears perchance for blood. 
 
 These words point to the fact that he had already developed 
 in his mind a distinct counterplot to that treacherous device 
 of the King, the sending him away to England, as we shall 
 see towards the end of this scene. 
 
 Brief as is the space for which the ghost appears, the effect 
 produced by his appearance is no less solemn than in the 
 first act ; and the opportunities afforded the actor are greater 
 than on that occasion. Hamlet follows with his eyes the 
 supernatural figure, and when it has passed through the 
 door, breaks away from his mother's hold, and throws him- 
 self on his knees at the spot where the spirit disappears, 
 as if he would try to catch at its robe and detain it. Still 
 
A STUDY OF HAMLET. , 53 
 
 Gertrude does not believe any the more in the reality of the 
 apparition 
 
 Qu. This is the very coinage of your brain : 
 This bodiless creation ecstasy 
 Is very cunning in. 
 
 The word " ecstasy " (which means alienation of the mind) 
 recalls Hamlet to himself; he at once undeceives her 
 
 1 1 is not madness 
 
 That I have utter'd : . . . 
 
 . ' . . Mother, for love of grace, 
 
 Lay not that flattering unction to your soul, 
 That not your trespass but ray madness speaks : 
 It will but skin and film the ulcerous place, 
 Whiles rank corruption, mining all within, 
 Infects unseen. Confess yourself to heaven ; 
 Repent what's past, avoid what is to come, 
 And do not spread the compost on the weeds, 
 To make them ranker. 
 
 She cannot resist the earnest eloquence of this appeal 
 
 Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain. 
 HAM. 0, throw away the worser part of it, 
 
 And live the purer with the other half. 
 
 , Never was a nobler sermon preached than is embodied in 
 these speeches ; they are instinct with the truest and purest 
 i morality that knows of no compromise with evil : the repen- 
 tance to which Hamlet urges his mother is not that weak 
 substitute for repentance which the frailty of our nature is 
 too ready to adopt : tears, and sighs, and groans, expressions 
 of sorrow, however deeply felt, are 110 atonement for sin ; the 
 penitence which Hamlet preaches is that summed up in those 
 sacred words, " Go and sin no more." 
 
 Once more, good night : 
 And when you are desirous to be blest, 
 I'll blessing beg of you. 
 
 And after a solemn expression of sorrow for the violent death 
 of Polonius 
 
 So again, good night. 
 I must be cruel, only to be kind : 
 Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind. 
 
 In the representation of the play this scene is very wisely 
 concluded here ; what follows is an anti-climax of the worst 
 description, so far as the stage is concerned, though contain- 
 ing most interesting matter for the student. 
 
 As regards the first of the three questions involved in this 
 scene, that of Hamlet's conduct to his mother, however 
 lacking in respect it may be, we inust remember both the 
 
54 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 revolting nature of her crime and the utter want of con- 
 trition which, hitherto, she had displayed. Hamlet had, 
 until now, refrained from reproaching her ; though he was 
 certainly justified in doing so, both in respect of the ordinary 
 duty of a son to a father a duty which renders any outrage 
 the father's honour equally an outrage on that of the son 
 and in respect of the solemn charge imposed upon him by 
 the supernatural visitation which he had received. It is 
 probable, although he does not mention such intention, that 
 Hamlet contemplated producing a strong effect upon his 
 mother's feelings in the play-scene ; and when he found that 
 she had sent for him only to rebuke him for his conduct to 
 his uncle, his indignation would very naturally be roused to 
 such an extent as to overpower his courtesy. It is evident, 
 both from the manner and the matter of his speech, that he 
 considers himself, in thus vividly representing to Gertrude the 
 nature of her guilt, to be fulfilling a mission with which he 
 had been charged, indirectly, by the Deity. He has pre- 
 viously, in the scene with Ophelia, assumed the same lofty 
 position, in those words 
 
 I say we will have no more marriages : those that are married already, 
 all but one, shall live ; the rest shall keep as they are. 
 
 This is the language of one who believes himself charged 
 with a power and authority greater than those of an ordi- 
 nary mortal. But we have a stronger proof of this in the 
 words which he uses in expressing his repentance for the 
 death of Polonius 
 
 . For this same lord (pointiwj to Polonius) 
 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. 
 
 It accords with the earnest character of Hamlet, no less 
 than with the nature of such a sacred mission as lie claims, 
 to show no scruple or delicacy in laying bare the hideousness 
 of the double crime committed against his father, to one part 
 of which his mother was more than accessory. The utter 
 , 'indifference to all sense of right and wrong exhibited by those 
 who surrounded Claudius and his Queen ; the despicable 
 servility with which they acquiesced in his reaping the fruits 
 of his brother's sudden death granting they did not suspect 
 him of having caused it and in her shameless disregard of 
 what, even in that time of imperfect civilisation, may be called 
 the ordinary decencies of conduct, must have exasperated so 
 loving and loyal a son as Hamlet, even had he been of a dis- 
 
A STUDY OF HAMLET. 55 
 
 position less sensitive. When we consider, then, the circum- 
 stances of the case, and the character of Hamlet, we cannot 
 call his conduct unnatural, because, in his endeavours to wake 
 his mother's torpid conscience to a sense of her guilt, he uses 
 language at once so plain and so vehement that it left no 
 room for prevarication, or affected misunderstanding. There 
 is nothing selfish, or paltry, in Hamlet's indignation ; he 
 barely alludes to the usurpation of which he has been the 
 victim ; it is the outrage on his father's love and honour that 
 he resents so fiercely, the shameless impenitence of his mother 
 he rebukes so sternly. 
 
 With regard to the second question, the amount of guilt 
 incurred by Hamlet through killing Poionius in mistake for 
 the King, there can be no doubt that the mistake was a 
 genuine one ; the rash haste, displayed by Hamlet, was the 
 result of that feverish desire for vengeance which was inten- 
 sified by the consciousness of his inability to execute such 
 vengeance deliberately ; therefore, as I have before implied, 
 he snatches at the opportunity, which seems to offer itself, of 
 killing Claudius on the impulse of the moment, and, as it 
 were, in the dark. Nor is the fate of Poionius so undeserved 
 as at first sight it appears ; we well might wonder did not 
 the history of every age and every nation multiply instance 
 upon instance of such selfish cowardice we well might 
 pronounce incredible and impossible the utter indifference 
 shown by Poionius and the whole court to the crimes of 
 Claudius. We must remember .that his usurpation was 
 successful ; having stolen the crown, he contrived to keep 
 it, and so long as he kept it, and 110 longer, would his 
 incestuous marriage, his treachery to his brother, his in- 
 justice to his nephew, be alike endorsed and encouraged 
 by those who could profit by his favour, or suffer from his 
 anger. Fidelity to our allegiance is only a virtue as long as 
 he who claims such allegiance is glorified by the sun of pros- 
 perity ; let rebellion grow to revolution and be crowned by 
 success, and the ruler, before whom all bowed the knee with 
 ready subservience, becomes the object of our derision, if not 
 of our violence ; then the adherence to him, or to his de- 
 scendants, which once was loyalty, deserving of the highest 
 rewards that the State could bestow, becomes the plotting, or 
 the treason which, in the eyes of the successful rebels now 
 exalted into high-minded patriots, merit? only the prison or 
 the halter. 
 
 Thirdly, as to the question of Gertrude's connivance at, or 
 complicity in, the murder of her first husband, I think we may 
 
56 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 . safely come to the conclusion that she can be charged with 
 neither. Certainly her language in this scene, unless we 
 suppose her to be guilty of almost superhuman hypocrisy, 
 tends most decidedly to acquit her of such a charge ; but we 
 have more direct evidence on this point in the 14th scene 
 of the Quarto (1603*), no vestige of which is found in the 
 later editions ; the Queen, speaking of the King to Horatio, 
 says, 
 
 Then I perceiue there's treason in his lookes 
 That seem'd to sugar o're his villanie : 
 But I will soothe and please him for a time, 
 For murderous mindes are always jealous, 
 
 and still more strongly in this very scene in the same edition, 
 when the Queen speaks thus, after the disappearance of the 
 ghost, 
 
 But as I haue a soule, I sweare by heauen, 
 I neuer knew of this most horride murder : 
 
 A little further, in answer to Hamlet's appeal, 
 
 And mother, but assist mee in reuenge, 
 And in his death your infamy shall die, 
 
 The Queen answers 
 
 Hamlet, I vow by that maiesty, 
 
 That knowes our thoughts, and lookes into our hearts, 
 
 I will conceale, consent, and doe my best, 
 
 What stratagem soe're thou shalt deuise.t 
 
 From these passages, supported as they are by the prose his- 
 tory of Hamlet on which the play was founded, and never 
 contradicted by any passage in the play as afterwards revised 
 by Shakespeare himself, no less than from the character of the 
 Queen as it is developed in the following scenes, we may con- 
 fidently acquit her alike of guilty knowledge or of wilful 
 ignorance of the vile crime committed by Claudius against 
 his brother's life, though in that against his honour she was 
 the weak and shameless accomplice. 
 
 The latter portion of this scene, which is never represented 
 on the stage, is very much expanded from its original form in 
 the Quarto of 1603 ; I give in the Appendix,} side by side, 
 the two versions of this scene from the point of the ghost's 
 
 * The play in this, its earliest and imperfect form, is not divided into 
 acts. 
 
 t In the play as it now stands, the Queen pledges herself not to reveal 
 to the King that Hamlet's madness is feigned, in the following words 
 QUEEN. Be thou assured, if words be made of breath 
 And breath of life, I have no life to breathe 
 What thou hast said to me. 
 | See Appendix L. 
 
A STUDY OF HAMLET. 57 
 
 entrance, in order that comparison between them may be 
 easier. The passage relating to the body of Polonius 
 
 This man shall set me packing : 
 I'll lug the guts into the neighbour room. 
 Mother, good night. 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 
 
 has been much censured for its coarseness, and even for the 
 affected brutality with which Hamlet speaks of the corpse of 
 hirn for whose death he has, a short time before, expressed 
 what seemed to be genuine contrition. I confess I do not under- 
 stand why Shakespeare thought it necessary to add anything 
 here to what he had originally written ; but we must remem- 
 ber, as has been pointed out by the commentators, that the 
 word " guts " was not in Shakespeare's time the abominable 
 vulgarism that it is now ; and that the rude stage appoint- 
 ments, and limited numbers of the company, necessitated the 
 removal of the body by one of the characters on the stage. 
 Numerous instances of this will be found in the Notes to 
 Staunton's edition of Shakespeare. 
 
 There are two points of much greater importance which 
 must be noticed : the first is the promise given by the Queen, 
 which I have already quoted, that she would not betray 
 Hamlet's secret to the King, a promise which she moat faith- 
 fully kept. The second point is the remarkable language in 
 which Hamlet speaks of his coming journey to England. 
 
 HAM. I must to England ; you know that ? 
 
 Qu. Alack, 
 
 I had forgot : 'tis so concluded on. 
 
 HAM. There's letters seal'd : and my two schoolfellows, 
 Whom I will trust as I will adders fang'd, 
 They bear the mandate ; they must sweep my way, 
 And marshal me to knavery. Let it work ; 
 For 'tis the sport to have the enginer 
 Hoist with his own petar : and't shall go hard 
 But I will delve one yard below their mines, 
 And blow them at the moon : 
 
 /It would certainly seem that Hamlet, suspecting that this 
 mission to England concealed some treachery on the part of 
 the King, had already determined to defeat that treachery by 
 cunning and to visit upon the heads of Eosencrantz and 
 Guildenstern their complicity, conscious or unconscious, in 
 the scheme. The words, " They bear the mandate," would 
 seem to anticipate the discovery which Hamlet afterwards 
 made regarding the nature of the commission with which they 
 were charged ; whether we are to take this as an oversight on 
 
 E 
 
58 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 Shakespeare's part, or whether we should understand Hamlet 
 to be speaking of suspicion as if it were certainty, I cannot 
 myself determine ; nor do I find the slightest notice of this 
 passage in any of the numerous commentaries which I have 
 examined.* The next words 
 
 they must sweep my way, 
 And marshal me to knavery, 
 
 are difficult to interpret. They may mean that Hamlet was 
 so certain that his suspicion of Eosencrantz and Guildenstern 
 was well-founded, that he determined to be revenged upon 
 them ; and, by this act of severity, to strengthen his mind for 
 the more impoitant purpose he had in hand, namely the kill- 
 ing of the King. If he could conquer his weakness, and subdue 
 his scruples of conscience sufficiently to work upon these two 
 false-hearted courtiers a most signal act of vengeance ; and ' 
 granting that he should, before doing so, be able to assure 
 himself that Claudius, in sending him to England, \\as send- 
 ing him to a treacherous death ; he might naturally hope, 
 should he succeed in returning \ safe to Denmark, to find 
 himself no longer hesitating forj one moment to fulfil, to 
 the uttermost point, the ghost's cMarge of vengeance. 
 
 The whole effect of this scene, apart from its intrinsic 
 beauty of language and grandeur of conception, is to raise 
 our interest to a much higher point ; and I cannot agree with 
 those who consider that at this point the play ought to have 
 ended ; however elaborate may be the episodes, which some- 
 what check the progress of the main action in the two last 
 acts, our curiosity, as to what is to follow, is so skilfully 
 whetted in this scene, that a more abrupt conclusion' to the 
 play would be as ineffective as it would be inartistic. 
 
 * See Additional Notes, No. 5, 
 
PART III. 
 
 THE fourth act opens with a short but significant scene : 
 the persons present are the King, the Queen, Eosencrantz, 
 and Guidenstern. The Queen has evidently just returned 
 from her interview with Hamlet. In fact, the action at this 
 point of the play is continuous. The King speaks first : 
 
 KING. There's matter in these sighs, these profound heaves : 
 You must translate : 'tis fit we understand them. 
 Where is your son ? 
 
 QUEEN. Bestow this place on us a little while. 
 
 [Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN. 
 
 What the Queen has to reveal is for the King's ears alone ; 
 not even the supple fidelity of the two courtiers entitles them 
 to the privilege of being admitted into the royal confidence. 
 When they are gone the Queen continues : - 
 
 Ah, mine own lord, what have I seen to-night ! 
 KING. What, Gertrude ? How does Hamlet ? 
 QUEEN, Mad as the sea and wind, when both contend 
 
 Which is the mightier : in his lawless fit, 
 
 Behind the arras hearing something stir, 
 
 Whips out his rapier, cries " a rat, a rat 1" 
 
 And in this brainish apprehension kills 
 
 The unseen good old man. 
 
 This speech is certainly, at first sight, a most puzzling one ; 
 we have just heard Gertrude give her son the most solemn 
 assurance that she will not reveal to his uncle the fact that 
 his madness is assumed ; therefore we must understand that 
 she is now deliberately, deceiving Claudius, and affecting to 
 believe in the reality of Hamlet's madness. Otherwise it 
 would seem that the Queen had only pretended to believe 
 her son was not mad, and that she was now giving his uncle 
 fresh cause to put some restraint on him. The meaning of 
 her conduct becomes much more intelligible on reference to 
 the Quarto of 1603. 
 
60 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 In that edition a subsequent scene between the Queen and 
 Horatio,* to which I have before alluded, makes it clear that 
 the author's intention was to represent the Queen now as 
 helping Hamlet's counterplots against the treachery of Clau- 
 dius. In order to do this, she could adopt no better device 
 than to pretend a most thorough belief in the genuineness of 
 her son's madness, knowing, as we have seen, from the latter 
 part of the preceding act, she did, that Hamlet had deter- 
 mined to go to England agreeably to the advice, or rather the 
 command, of Claudius. 
 
 As doubts and fears of discovery thicken around the guilty 
 Claudius, his sententious bursts of plausible hypocrisy become 
 more and more specious. He overflows with nice morality. 
 It would seem as if, not content with treacherously robbing 
 his brother of his crown, his Queen, and his life, he had also 
 pilfered his philosophy. Listen to his exquisite and pathetic 
 complaint : 
 
 Alas, how shall this bloody deed be answer'd ! 
 It will be laid to us, whose providence 
 Should have kept short, restrain'd and out of haunt, 
 This mad young man : bat so much was our love, 
 We would not understand what was most fit, 
 But, like the owner of a foul disease, 
 To keep it from divulging, let it feed 
 Even on the j.ith of life. 
 
 We almost feel inclined to bring out our handkerchiefs and 
 weep for this poor injured uncle, whose impracticable nephew 
 was always trying his angelic patience, till at last even its 
 limit was reached, and it could endure no more, The first 
 actor who has the courage to represent Claudius as the plau- 
 sible smiling villain he really was, with features so expanded 
 by conviviality that even the pangs he suffered from the in- 
 gratitude of his dear brother's son, whom he loved with such 
 a disinterested love, " could grave no wrinkle there ;" who 
 attempts to realise Shakespeare's conception, so exquisitely 
 sarcastic, yet so true to nature, instead of representing the 
 seducer of Gertrude as a beetle-browed villain, on whose brain 
 and shoulders all the melodramas for the last fifty years seem 
 to have left their fearful weight the first actor who has 
 courage to effect this innovation will, I venture to predict, 
 create at once a great sensation and a greater success. 
 
 The Queen's next speech contains a beautiful touch ; in 
 answer to the inquiry of Claudius, where Hamlet is gone, she 
 says : 
 
 * See Appendix M. 
 
A STUDY OF HAMLET. Gl 
 
 -. 
 
 To draw apart the body he hath kill'd : 
 'er whom his very madness, like some ore 
 Among a mineral of metals base, 
 Shows itself pure ; he weeps for what is done. 
 
 This shows that Hamlet's affectation of something which 
 seemed like brutality, at the end of the last scene, was not 
 long sustained ; and that the suffering of his gentle nature, 
 when the excitement under which he had committed this 
 misdirected deed of violence had passed away, was greater 
 than he cared to show before those whom he wished to be- 
 lieve in his assumption of insanity. Claudius has not yet 
 exhausted his vein of moral indignation 
 
 this vile deed 
 
 We must, with all our majesty and skill, 
 Both countenance and excuse. 
 
 The two courtiers are summoned back 
 
 Ho, Guildenstern ! 
 
 It is a remarkable fact, that the inseparability of these two 
 charming young men is so great, that it is only necessary to 
 call one for both to appear. They remind us of nothing so 
 much as of a well-fed pair of lap-dogs, each so jealous of the 
 other that neither will let his companion out of his sight, in 
 case he should receive a greater share of caresses and food 
 from their master's hand. They are commissioned to seek 
 Hamlet out, to find where he has put the body, and bring it 
 into the chapel. The King's last words in this scene, ad- 
 dressed to Gertrude, foreshadow the tragic events that are 
 near at hand 
 
 O, come away ! 
 My soul is full of discord and dismay. [Exeunt. 
 
 The next scene, a very short one, commences with Hamlet's 
 entrance from the lobby where he has placed the body of 
 Pplonius, with the words 
 
 Safely stowed. 
 
 The voices of the two concordant courtiers are heard from 
 within, calling 
 
 Hamlet ! Lord Hamlet ! 
 
 Hamlet hears, but apparently does not recognise them. It 
 is not very clear what Shakespeare's intention is in this 
 'scene, to which we find no parallel in the earliest edition of 
 the play (4to, 1603), the greater portion of the dialogue which 
 follows being embodied in that edition with the second scene 
 of the third act. Hamlet could never have believed that by 
 hiding the body of Polonius he could conceal the circurn- 
 
62 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 stances of the hapless Lord Chamberlain's death ; it is more 
 probable that his conduct, at this point, is regulated by the 
 desire to keep up the assumption of madness than by any 
 other purpose. Certain it is that on the entrance of Eosen- 
 crantz and Guildenstern he assumes towards them an ironical 
 incoherence, very different from the rational sarcasm with 
 which he had hitherto treated them. 
 
 Ros. What have you done, my lord, with the dead body ? 
 
 HAM. Compounded it with dust, whereto 'tis kin. 
 
 Ros, Tell us where 'tis, 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 countenance, 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 swal- 
 lowed : when he needs what you have gleaned, it is but squeezing you, and, 
 sponge, you shall be dry again. 
 
 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 
 
 GUIL. A thing, my lord ? 
 
 HAM. Of nothing : bring me to him. Hide fox, and all after. [Exeunt. 
 
 We need only compare the above with Hamlet's language 
 to these same courtiers immediately after the play scene, to 
 see that he gives rein to his eccentric humour more com- 
 pletely than he has yet done in the presence of any one, 
 except Polonius. 
 
 In the next scene the King enters, attended. The speech, 
 which he addresses to those about him, is a kind of apology 
 for the leniency which he has shown towards Hamlet, f The 
 King has a very difficult part to play ; he dares not leave 
 unpunished such a deed of violence as Hamlet has committed 
 in killing Polonius ; at the same time he dares not openly 
 punish Hamlet on account of his popularity : so he remains 
 between two dilemmas, and though the course which he takes 
 is, in his position, the safest one, he does not succeed, as we 
 shall see further on, in exonerating himself from the suspicion 
 
 * The comparison of courtiers to a sponge is found in other works of this 
 period. See Additional Note, No. 5 A. 
 
 ^ In the Quarto, 1603, this speech, or, rather, the speech which corre- 
 sponds to it, is addressed to the Queen alone. See Appendix N. 
 
A STUDY OF HAMLET. 03 
 
 gf complicity in the killing of Polonius. Had his con- 
 science been free as regarded his late brother, had his 
 assumption of the throne been the consequence of a legal 
 vote on the part of the people, and not a half-condoned usur- 
 pation, his course would have been very simple ; he would 
 have commanded Hamlet to be tried before a proper 
 court, and the circumstances of the Lord Chamberlain's death 
 would have been fully investigated ; but this he could not 
 do, because no inquiry could take place without subjecting 
 him to the danger of discovery with regard to that crime, of 
 which he now must have known that Hamlet more than 
 suspected him. Under all these circumstances the device of 
 sending Hamlet to England was the most ingenious that 
 Claudius could adopt. He made it appear to the courtiers, on 
 the one hand, as a measure taken for the safety of the State, 
 and to Hamlet, on the other hand, as one taken for his indi- 
 vidual safety 
 
 KING. Hamlet, this deed, for thine especial safety, 
 Which we do tender, as we dearly grieve 
 For that which thou hast done, 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. 
 
 Hamlet's answer here is worthy of remark, as taken in con- 
 nection with that declaration of his purpose with regard to 
 this expedition to England, which he had made to his mother 
 at the end of the scene which concludes the last act 
 
 HAM. I see a cherub that sees them. But, come; for England! Fare- 
 well, dear mother. 
 
 KING. Thy loving father, Hamlet. 
 
 HAM. My mother : father and mother is man and wife ; man and wife 
 is one flesh, and so, my mother. Come, for England ! [Exit. 
 
 Hamlet cannot carry his hypocrisy so far as to pretend 
 any cordiality towards Claudius. However slow his arm 
 may be, his tongue at least is quick to wound the murderer 
 of his father. 
 
 The last speech of the King in this scene, of which the four 
 first lines are addressed to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, is 
 of considerable importance as bearing on the question, 
 whether they had any guilty knowledge of the purport of the 
 despatches which they were taking from Claudius to the 
 
64 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 Government of England;* the words addressed to them 
 are 
 
 Follow him at foot ; tempt him with speed aboard ; 
 Delay it not ; I'll have him hence to-night : 
 Away ! for everything is seal'd and done 
 That else leans on the affair : pray you, make haste. 
 
 It is not till they are gone, and he is alone, that the King 
 confesses his treacherous purpose, and that the commission 
 given to the two courtiers contained "an exact command," 
 as Hamlet afterwards calls it, that his nephew's head should 
 be instantly struck off. I do not see how Eosencrantz and 
 Criiildenstern can be supposed to have known for certain the 
 purpose on which they were sent ; but had they been true to 
 their early friendship for Hamlet, and loyal to the young 
 prince, who should have been their king, and was, by the 
 acknowledgment of his usurping uncle, the heir to the 
 crown ; if they had not been false to the nobler duties of 
 friend and subject alike, they would never have undertaken 
 the mission at all. It is impossible they could have be- 
 lieved that, in sanding Hamlet to England, the King was 
 really consulting anything but his own safety. 
 
 It will be more convenient to examine, at this point, such 
 defence of his conduct towards Eosencrantz and Guildenstern 
 as Hamlet makes when narrating his adventures to Horatio 
 in Act V., Scene '2. The scene commences thus : 
 
 HAM. So much for this, sir : now shall you see the other. 
 
 Of what Hamlet had been previously speaking we do not 
 know exactly; most probably, judging from the letter to 
 Horatio (see Act IV., Scene 6), he had been giving his friend 
 a more detailed account of his adventure with, and capture 
 by, the pirates. The letter ends thus : 
 
 " I have words to speak in thine ear will make thee dumb ; yet are they 
 
 much too light for the bore of the matter Kosencrantz and 
 
 Guildenstern hold their course for England : of them I have much to tell 
 thee." 
 
 It is evident that Hamlet attached great importance to the 
 news which he had to tell, and that, although he had all along 
 suspected the King of some treacherous purpose in sending 
 him to England, and had resolved to run the risk of going 
 there with a hope of discovering that same treachery, yet, 
 when his suspicions were so completely confirmed, he 'felt the 
 same kind of painful satisfaction, and half-delighted agitation, 
 which he displayed after the revelation made to him by his 
 
 * See Additional Notes, No. 6. 
 
A STUDY OF HAMLET. G5 
 
 father's ghost, though, in that case, those feelings were then 
 .mingled with a horror, which is lacking here. We may, how- 
 ever, note this feature in Hamlet's character, that while he is 
 very ready to suspect -some evil purpose in the minds of those 
 about him, and though these suspicions are in most cases 
 justified by the event, he receives the confirmation of them 
 with as much astonishment as if he had never had any sus- 
 picion at all. There is something of childish exultation at 
 the proofs of his shrewdness ; there is also that which shows 
 us that his cynicism was of the mind and not of the heart 
 that however ill he thought of the world in general, his 
 indignation against particular instances of evil-doing was in 
 no degree blunted. 
 Hamlet continues 
 
 You do remember all the circumstance ? 
 
 To which Horatio replies, as if the very suspicion of forget- 
 fulness on this subject was intolerable 
 
 Remember it, my lord ! 
 
 What was the circumstance, or, as we should say, what 
 were the circumstances, to which Hamlet alludes ? I suppose 
 they were the circumstances under which he left Denmark ; 
 that is to say, just after the accidental killing of Polonius, 
 the agitating interview with his mother, the reappearance of 
 the ghost " to whet his blunted purpose ;" add to these the 
 increased fear and suspicion with which the King evidently 
 regarded him, and the small chance which, at the time of his 
 departure, there seemed to be that Hamlet would ever accom- 
 plish the task of revenge which had been set him. All these 
 circumstances would naturally agitate his mind, and heighten 
 the apprehension of treachery which he felt. Hamlet thus 
 continues his narrative : 
 
 Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting 
 
 That would not let me sleep : methought I lay 
 
 Worse than the mutines in the bilboes. Rashly,* 
 
 And praised be rashness for it, let us know, 
 
 Our indiscretion sometime serves us well 
 
 When our deep plots do pall ; and that ^ould learn us 
 
 There's a divinity that shapes our ends,^'* 
 
 Rough-hew them how we will. 
 
 jti-GE. That is most certain. 
 
 HAM. Up from my cabin, 
 
 My sea-gown scarf'd about me, in the dark 
 
 Groped I to find out them ;f had my desire, 
 
 * The long parenthesis here will be observed by the careful reader. The 
 sentence would run, " Rashly, up from my cabin," &c., or the parenthesis 
 may begin, as suggested by Seymour (" Remarks," &c., Vol. II., p. 200), at 
 the words, "let us know." 
 
 f See Additional Notes, No. 7, 
 
66 A STUDY OF HAMLET, 
 
 Finger'd their packet, and in fine withdrew 
 
 To mine own room again ; making so bold, 
 
 My fears forgetting manners, to unseal 
 
 Their grand commission ; where I found, Horatio, 
 
 royal knavery ! an exact command, 
 Larded with many several sorts of reasons, 
 Importing Denmark's health and England's too, 
 With, ho ! such bugs and goblins in my life, 
 That, on the supervise, no leisure bated, 
 
 No, not to stay the grinding of the axe, 
 My head should be struck off. 
 
 The toue in which Hamlet speaks of the treacherous plot 
 against his life, which he had so opportunely discovered, is 
 throughout one of gleeful irony ; it would seem he had never 
 communicated his suspicions to Horatio, who receives his 
 narrative with expressions of unaffected astonishment. 
 Hamlet thus continues the account of his proceedings : 
 
 Being thus be-netted round with villanies, 
 Or I could make a prologue to my brains,* 
 They had begun the play, I sat me down ; 
 Devised a new commission ; wrote it fair : 
 
 1 once did hold it, as our statists do, 
 
 A baseness to write fair, and labour'd much 
 
 How to forget that learning ; but, sir, now 
 
 It did me yeoman's service : wilt thou know 
 
 The effect of what 1 wrote ? 
 
 Holt. Ay, good my lord. 
 
 HAM. An earnest conjuration from the king, 
 
 As England was his faithful tributary, 
 
 As love between them like the palm might flourish, 
 
 As peace should still her wheaten garland wear 
 
 And stand a comma 'tween their amities, 
 
 And many such-like ' As 'es of great charge, 
 
 That, on the view and knowing of these contents, 
 
 Without debatement further, more or less, 
 
 He should the bearers put to sudden death,, 
 
 Not shriving-time allow'd. 
 
 HUK. How was this seal'd ? 
 
 HAM. Why, even in that was heaven ordinant. 
 
 I had my father's signet in my purse, 
 
 Which was the model of that Danish seal : 
 
 Folded the writ up in the form of the other ; 
 
 Subscribed it ; gave't the impression ; placed it safely, 
 
 The changeling never known. Now. the next day 
 
 Was our sea-fight ; and what to this was sequent 
 
 Thou know'st already. 
 
 The language of Hamlet indicates great excitement, and,, 
 as I have said before, it is characterised by a childisl^ exulta- 
 tion in the success of his strategy. That he should have 
 thus craftily obtained, at the same time, such strong proofs of 
 the King's treachery, and so ready a means of avenging him- 
 self on the two time-serving courtiers who had been so faith- 
 
 * Sec Additional Notes, No. 8. 
 
A STUDY OF HAMLET. 67 
 
 less to their professed friendship for him, seems to have pro- 
 duced no other impression on his mind than one of delighted 
 self-satisfaction; no gratitude to Providence for his almost 
 miraculous escape from so imminent a danger finds a place in 
 his heart; and we feel almost disgusted for the moment at 
 what strikes us, at first sight, as a mixture of malice and 
 vanity. But let us read a little further on : 
 
 Hon. Why, what a king is this ! 
 
 HAM. Does it not, thinks't thee, stand me now upon 
 
 He that hath kill'd my king, and whored my mother ; 
 
 Popp'd in between the election and my hopes ; 
 
 Thrown out his angle for my proper life, 
 
 And with such cozenage js't not perfect conscience, 
 , 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 ? 
 HOR. It must be shortly known to him from England 
 
 What is the issue of the business there. 
 HAM. It will be short : the interim is mine ; 
 
 And a man's life's no more than to say " One." 
 
 We see now that Hamlet is really trying to justify to his 
 own conscience the revenge which he has never been able to 
 accomplish. As I have pointed out before, his great difficulty 
 is' to bring himself to commit an open act of Jhomicide ; he 
 could kill the King on the spur of the moment, when he 
 thought he was hid behind the arras, but not when he was 
 kneeling before his eyes. He professes to regard the task of 
 revenging his father's murder as a sacred duty imposed on 
 him by a supernatural visitation, and justified by the corrobo- 
 rating evidence of the murderer's demeanour during the play 
 scene. If there could be anything wanting to remove all 
 merciful scruples from his mind, and to make the life of 
 Claudius more justly forfeit to him, it was this treacherous 
 attempt on Hamlet's own life; the motive of self-defence 
 was now added to all the others, urging him to lose no time 
 in seizing the sword of justice and striking the decisive blow 
 which should rid the world of such a monster of guilt. But 
 instead of doing so, he still debates the matter over and over 
 again with himself; still wastes his ingenuity in devising 
 more urgent incitements to action while he does nothing ; 
 still spends his energy in bitter satire and vigorous denuncia- 
 tions of the murderer ; until accident brings the opportunity, 
 until the impulse of passion lends the necessary resolution. 
 
 Strange, indeed, is the contrast between his endless self- 
 vindications, as far as the King is concerned, and his utter 
 indifference at the sudden and fearful end he has contrived 
 for the two courtiers. Is it that, because the sea is between 
 
68 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 him and his victims, his conscience sees but dimly at such a 
 distance ? Some powerful associations with his uncle, dating 
 back, perhaps, to a happy childhood, must have exercised an 
 influence -n one the less strong because he would not acknow- 
 ledge it to himself over Hamlet's mind. The very pains he 
 takes to add fuel to his hate show that he knew how difficult 
 it was to keep the fire burning. 
 
 But I must return to the main point in question ; I mean 
 to what extent can we admit Hamlet's narrative as a justifi- 
 cation of his conduct towards Rosencrantz and Guildenstern ? 
 The malignant misrepresentation of Hamlet's character, for 
 which Steevens^is responsible, has drawaforth many able and 
 indignant vindications of Shakespeare's favourite hero ; but 
 while unable to agree, with any of Steevens' deductions, I 
 must confess that he seems right in refusing to judge Hamlet 
 by any other evidence than that afforded by the tragedy itself. 
 If we were to admit any circumstances, found only in the 
 original story of Saxo Grammatictis, as exculpating the dra- 
 matist from any blemishes in the delineation of his characters, 
 we could not in justice decline to hold him responsible for 
 other circumstances, derived from the same source, which 
 might tell against him ; and thus we should be led into all 
 kinds of errors, and should be utterly unable to form any true 
 estimate of Shakespeare's work. . 
 
 It is useless to deny that in the play of " Hamlet " there ja 
 not one lino \vliieli can be fairly said to prove that Rosen- 
 crantz and (iuildenstern knew what were the contents of the 
 paTxKet committed to their care. Hamlet himself does not 
 say they knewHT,' lie expresses his distrust of them in the 
 strongest language to his mother (see Act III., Scene 4, lines 
 202 to 210 inclusive), but all that he says to Horatio now is 
 
 Why, man, they did make love to this employment ; 
 
 their defeat 
 Does by their own insinuation grow : 
 
 and he seems to justify the terrible punishment he had in- 
 flicted on them by the very fact that their conduct throughout 
 had been so underhand; and so cunningly false to him as 
 their friend and prince, that although their treachery was 
 undoubted, they had not been openly guilty of any design 
 against his life. Hamlet declares 
 
 They are not near my conscience ; 
 
 because he considered that by kying_them selves out to serve 
 the King's ends from the yeryHrst Inoment they arrived at 
 T/ourt; by their lack j^f frankness towards him, their old 
 
A STUDY OF HAMLET. 69 
 
 schoolfellow,_at their first meeting ; by their steadily blinding 
 their eyes to. the state oiL affairs, at Court, and by denying to 
 the griefs, qf .their friend any sympathy ; by readily accepting 
 the theory of his madness without trying to account for his 
 melancholy and retirement from Court in any other manner; 
 by accepting an embassy which their own common sense 
 must have told them could not mean any good to Hamlet, 
 they had been so false to the_(lutics of friendship and to the 
 honour of gentlemen, thg^Jfrgy dftaprYfld thvM^ath rF trmtor 
 If niusT be rememberef'that in Hamlet's character Shake- 
 speare intended to protest against conventionality of all 
 kinds. As to what the world might think right or wrong, 
 Hamlet cared little : public opinion might justify the usurp- 
 ation and marriage of Claudius ; respectable members of the 
 Court might overlook the indecent haste with which that 
 marriage, really incestuous, was concluded ; worthy men of 
 the world might hold it honourable as well as expedient to 
 do the bidding of such a man as Claudius, seeing he was a 
 king ; these two well-behaved young gentlemen, who passed 
 for his two most intimate friends, might wonder why Hamlet 
 was so odd and so out of spirits, might choose to forget how 
 he loved his father, might assume that he acquiesced in the 
 dishonour of his mother and in his own disinheritance ; 
 others might see nothing to blame in their conduct ; but this 
 brave, accomplished, eccentric prince was unlike others in 
 this, that he judged conduct by a higher standard than that 
 of courts, or of ttiB-fasitronable ~ World. ; he loved good for its 
 own sake, not for what could be got by it ; and in his indig- 
 nation at the despicable weakness of these two courtiers, in 
 the scorn which he felt for their time-serving cowardice, he 
 allowed himself to be hurried into the commission of an act 
 of cruelty, because, at the time, it wore an appearance of an 
 exquisitely ironical punishment. It is possible that Shake- 
 speare meant to mark, as strongly as he could, the hatred of 
 aoioble. honest nature for that complicity in crime which is 
 the result of wilful blindness and self-interested negligence. 
 The lesson is one which in this age we may all take to heart ; 
 and while we shrink from the cruelty which is inseparable 
 from all acts of vengeance, while we are pained to see the 
 treachery of Claudius retorted on his agents with such ter- 
 rible exactness, we cannot help feeling how dangerous it is to 
 side with evil against good, however high the wages ; to shut 
 our eyes to the truth, however unpleasant ; to do wrong be- 
 cause the world cries out loudly it is right, and drowns the 
 voice of conscience in the roar of its applause. 
 
70 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 The next scene we come to (Act IV., Scene 4), following 
 the regular order of the play, is one which has been omitted 
 almost invariably on the stage. I find that Betterton cer- 
 tainly never attempted it.* Whether his predecessors did 
 we do not know ; but the majority of his successors have fol- 
 lowed his example. There are, I admit, grave reasons for 
 its omission, though no great actor can study the part of 
 Hamlet without longing to deliver the grand and charac- 
 teristic soliloquy which it contains. In the first place, the 
 scene is very awkwardly placed as regards time ; it comes in 
 the middle of an act, although it is evident that some con- 
 siderable interval of time must elapse between this and the 
 following scene.'!' In the second place, the soliloquy makes 
 a very serious demand on the strength of the actor at a time 
 when the most powerful of Hamlets must feel the need of 
 rest; but I cannot help thinking that the latter objection 
 would have been oftener overcome had the speech been of a 
 more " effective " nature from the actor's point of view. An- 
 4 other difficulty is that the scene necessitates the introduction 
 I of Fortinbras, who has been mercilessly suppressed in all 
 recent acting editions of the play. The omission of the soli- 
 
 (loquy, which seems to me absolutely necessary to the perfect" 
 comprehension and appreciation of Hamlet's character) is jo" 
 much to be deplored, that I would advise the restoration of this 
 scene even at the risk, of ending the fourth act here, and of 
 so adding another act to the conventional five, into which, by 
 a most arbitrary system, all tragedies are divided. The sub- 
 division of long acts in operas is constantly practised with 
 great advantage to the audience and to the actors : I confess 
 I cannot see why such a convenient practice should not be 
 extended to the dramatic works of Shakespeare. 
 
 Hamlet, accompanied by Rosen crantz and Guildenstern, is 
 on his way to the ship which is to bear him to England, there 
 to die by the foulest treachery, of which he has strong sus- 
 picions but no certain knowledge. On his way to the place 
 of embarkation he encounters the soldiers of Fortinbras on 
 their march through the dominions of his uncle to the " little 
 patch of ground " which it is their object to conquer from the 
 Poles. Hamlet thus questions a Captain whom Fortinbras 
 has despatched on an embassy to Claudius : 
 
 HAM. Good sir, whose powers are these ? 
 CAP. They are of Norway, sir. 
 HAM. How purposed, sir, I pray you ? 
 CAP. Against some part of Jfoland. 
 
 * See Additional Notes, No. 9. 
 f See Additional Notes, No. 10. 
 
A STUDY OF HAMLET. 71 
 
 HAM. Who commands them, sir ? 
 
 CAP. The nephew to old Norway, Fortinbras.* 
 
 HAM. Goes it against the main of Poland, sir, 
 
 Or for some frontier ? 
 CAP. Truly to speak, and with no addition, 
 
 We go to gain a little patch of ground t 
 
 That hath in it no profit but the name. 
 
 To pay five ducats, five, I would not farm it ; 
 
 Nor will it yield to Norway or the Pole 
 
 A ranker rate, should it be sold in fee. 
 HAM. Why, then the Polack never will defend it. 
 CAP. Yes, it is already garrison'd. 
 HAM. Two thousand souls and twenty thousand ducats 
 
 Will not debate the question of this straw : 
 
 This is the imposthume of much wealth and peace, 
 
 That inward breaks, and shows no cause without 
 
 Why the man dies. I humbly thank you, sir. 
 CAP. God be wi' you, sir. [Exit. 
 
 Ros. Will't please you go, my lord ? 
 
 HAM. I'll be with you straight. Go a little before. 
 
 I think this scene is devised with the moat admirable art. \ 
 Hamlet is here brought into contact with an extravagant j 
 instance of that capacity for action in which he is so painfully 
 deficient : as before, in the case of the player, he was witness 
 of the most violent emotions excited by a fictitious sorrow, so 
 is" he now the witness of the most restless activity directed 
 against an object so insignificant in itself, that the most prac^ 
 tical and active mind might well ask cui bono ? Here -is the 
 art of the dramatist ; for if the object of this expedition lee 
 by Fortinbras had been the conquest of some vast and wealthy 
 territory, or the punishment of some gross outrage, or th 
 vindication of some great principle of national honour, th 
 self-reproach excited in Hamlet's soul, the contrast with his 
 own cowardly inertness, would have been less strong.^ The 
 analytical powers of his mind detect at once the moral o 
 such an incident, as it affects his own character ; the morbid 
 soli-consciousness which lies at the root of that very inca- 
 pacity for action, so bitterly, yet so vainly censured by hirn- 
 _selfc-- an incapacity which he is ever confessing but never 
 correcting finds in this rash aggression of the fiery young 
 Fortinbras new food tor cynical reflection. He philosophises 
 admirably, resolves most daringly ; but carries out his philo- 
 sophy and executes his resolve most feebly. Let us examine 
 the soliloquy, and we shall see how masterly is the delinea- 
 tion of Hamlet's character, how subtly the workings of such 
 a mind are laid bare before us : 
 
 How all occasions do inform against me, 
 And spur my dull revenge ! What is a man, 
 
 * See Appendix 0. 
 
 t See Additional Notes, No. 11. 
 
72 
 
 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 If his chief good and market of his time 
 
 Be but to sleep and feed ? a beast, no more. 
 
 Sure, he that made us with such large discourse, 
 
 Looking before and after, gave us not 
 
 That capability and god-like reason 
 
 To fust in us unused. Now, whether it be 
 
 Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple 
 
 Of thinking too precisely on the event, 
 
 A thought which, quarter'd, hath but one part wisdom 
 
 And ever three parts coward, I do not know 
 
 Why yet I live to say ' this thing's to do,' 
 
 Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and means, 
 
 To do't, Examples gross as earth exhort me : 
 
 Witness this army, of such mass and charge, 
 
 Led by a delicate and tender prince, 
 
 Whose spirit with divine ambition piiff'd 
 
 Makes mouths at the invisible event, 
 
 Exposing what is mortal and unsure 
 
 To all that fortune, death, and danger dare, 
 
 Even for an egg-shell. Rightly to be great, 
 
 Is not to stir without great argument, 
 
 But greatly to find quarrel in a straw 
 
 When honour's atr the stake. How stand I then, 
 
 That have a father kill'd, a mother stain'd, 
 
 Excitements of my reason and my blood, 
 
 And let all sleep, while to my shame I see 
 
 The imminent death of twenty thousand men, 
 
 That for a fantasy and trick of fame 
 
 Go to their graves like beds, light for a plot 
 
 Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause, 
 
 Which is not tomb enflugh and continent 
 
 To hide the slain ? Q. from this time forth. 
 
 My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth"! 
 
 That wonderful inconsistency, which is "the essence of 
 human nature, was never more forcibly pictured than in this 
 grand speech. When we read these words we are astonished 
 at the shrewdness^_the__incisive criticism, the stupendous 
 Qc^n^wn5eus^iLthe-iaan-wha could utter them ; all thatjias. 
 passed before, surely, was a dream'; all hesitation, all pro- 
 crastination, all scruples _()f_c()_nsc_iejice ; all tenderness of nature, 
 alTTigrror-tiff^ioIence. all over-sensitiveness as to the justice 
 pFrevertge, all shrinking .from the sternest severity of punish*- 
 inent, must disappear, and the reflective hero will now prove 
 himself trTe~herb > oTjction^l _ Beginning with the two servile 
 and cowardly knaves, the bearers of the treacherous mandate, 
 of whom he will make a terrible example, he will at once go 
 on to the arch-murderer himself, and will expiate with un- 
 relenting vengeance the death and dishonour .of his beloved 
 and honoured father, fulfilling to the letter the solemn charge 
 of the perturbed and tortured spirit, and so procuring for it 
 that rest which, while its commands were unheeded, it could 
 never know. We have already seen how such expectation is 
 partly realised ; we have yet to see how faithfully Shakespeare 
 
A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 73 
 
 follows out the grand problem of inconsistency which he has 
 set himself. The most tragic element which exists in the 
 world, that irony of events which sets at nought all human 
 purposes, even while it seems to carry out their ends, was 
 never more vividly exemplified than in the catastrophe of this 
 tragedy. 
 
 How grand are the opening words of this soliloquy ! 
 
 How all occasions do inform against me, 
 And spur my dull revenge 1 
 
 The word " all " should be slightly emphasised here. The 
 striking accident of his meeting these forces, and learning the 
 object of their march, makes him exaggerate the universality 
 with which all events' seem Io"IeacTr him the^saineTeson. 
 Then follows an epigrammatic condemnation of the mere 
 animal life of leading which Hamlet could not justly accuse 
 himself. He puts before himself the two alternatives of 
 " bestial oblivion " on one hand, and on the other 
 
 some craven scruple 
 
 Of thinking top precisely on the event, 
 A thought which, quarter'd, hath but one part "wisdom 
 And ever three parts coward, 
 
 from which he may choose the cause of his inaction. There 
 ia a wonderful force in these lines 
 
 I do not know 
 
 Why yet I live to say ' this thing's to do,' 
 Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and means, 
 To do't. 
 
 There is a relentless insisture in his enumeration of all the 
 requisites and advantages, all the motives and the materials, 
 which he possessed for carrying out the vengeance enjoined 
 him. 
 Note the contrast in these lines 
 
 Witness this army, of such mass and charge , 
 Led by a delicate and tender prince. 
 
 Hamlet pictures Fortinbras as no hardy and brawny warrior, 
 rude of speech and vigorous of frame, but as " a delicate and 
 tender prince," no more richly gifted with the physical 
 qualities which generally distinguish bold and active men 
 than himself. So far as their forms, their nature, their 
 education, are concerned, they are alike ; but in their deeds 
 how unlike ! Hamlet with every motive that can urge him 
 to swift and forcible action, his father murdered, his mother 
 dishonoured, with the sad reproachful face of that father's 
 
 F 
 
A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 spirit still stamped upon his mind, with the solemn reproaches 
 of that supernatural visitation still sounding in his ears, 
 stands weighing with scrupulous exactness every possible 
 consequence of that which is to be done at once and yet 
 remains undone ; while Fortinbras, his 
 
 spirit with divine ambition puff 'd, 
 Makes mouths at the invisible event, 
 
 mockingly defies the future; exposing life, wealth, honour, 
 everything that when exposed to clanger is most perishable, to 
 the powers of chance and death, to the countless perils of war ; 
 and for what ? 
 
 Even for an egg-shell. 
 
 Here is the same thought as in that other great soliloquy : 
 
 / What would he do, 
 
 / Had he the motive and the cue for passion 
 (/That I have? 
 
 It was r as I have said, onlya simulated emotion which 
 raicod thftt-bitter reflection ; nowtFlajreal, -positive, action. 
 
 The beautiful lines which follow are Well known ; they 
 ought to be written on every man's heart, for they are the 
 perfect epitome of a noble nature : 
 
 Rightly to be great 
 Is not to stir without great argument, 
 But greatly to find quarrel in a straw 
 When honour's at the stake. 
 
 What follows has already entered into the paraphrase which 
 I have rashly attempted for volumes of words could not ex- 
 press more clearly or more forcibly the working of a man's 
 mind than these but it is worth one's while to observe the 
 intensity of these lines : 
 
 while to my shame I see 
 
 The imminent death of twenty thousand men, 
 That for a fantasy and trick of fame 
 Go to their graves like beds. 
 
 This last expression is beyond all praise ; and the amplifica- 
 tion of what the Captain had told him is almost equally fine : 
 
 which is not tomb enough and continent 
 To hide the slain ? 
 
 There is in this speech, as it were, a whirlwind of intellec- 
 tual action which sweeps one along with it intellectual action 
 I have, said, for what is the resolution with which Hamlet con- 
 cludes ? 
 
 0, from this time forth, 
 My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth ! 
 
A STUDY OF HAMLET, (Q 
 
 Not " My deeds be bloody," as we should have expected ; just 
 as before, in the soliloquy already quoted, we had " About my 
 brain!" instead of " About, my hands" or "arm!"* In fact 
 Hamlet is so completely a man of mind, that he acts only 
 with his mind, confusing the source of action with the means 
 of executing it. The first " bloody thought" which he carries 
 out is the putting to death of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, 
 and this he procures to be done rather than does, 
 We might have expected that, on discovering the nature of 
 the royal commission of which they were the bearers, he 
 would have denounced their treachery before the crew of the 
 ship, and have killed them himself ; but this was far too simple 
 a course for Hamlet to pursue. He might have, not without 
 reason, dreaded the interference of the officers and men on 
 board the ship, who would be more likely to side with Claudius 
 than with Hamlet ; but such a direct plan of action probably 
 never even occurred to him, for he was .fascinated by the 
 ingenuity, and intellectual vindictiveness, of the device which 
 he adopted. But upon this subject I have already remarked 
 at considerable length. I have only reverted to it here, in 
 order to show how the aversion of Hamlet's nature to direct 
 and plain action is admirably maintained by Shakespeare, even 
 when he seems to have begun to act and ceased to reflect. 
 
 For a time we leave Hamlet, embarked on a dangerous 
 journey, surrounded by treachery, from which chance, more 
 than any effort of his own, delivers him, and brings him back 
 again to Elsinore at a most critical moment. The story now 
 follows the hapless fate of Ophelia, and we witness the first 
 of a long series of tragic events which spring from the violent 
 death of Polonius. 
 
 * See Garvlnus' admirable criticism 011 that soliloquy (at end of Act II.), 
 in which he enlarges on this point (vol. ii. f page 136, Bunnett's Authorised 
 .Translation), though, as I have observed in Appendix E, the expression is 
 not so out of place as, at first sight, it seenjs. 
 
 F 2 
 
PAET IV. 
 
 WE may take the interval, which elapses between the 
 scene we are now considering (Act IV., Scene 5) and the one 
 before it, as at least one month, and probably mor0. 
 
 During this time the hurried and secret funeral of Polonius 
 had taken place : Hamlet had sailed with Rosencrantz and - 
 Guildenstern for England; Ophelia, crushed by the terrible 
 blows, coining at the same moment, of her father's sudden and 
 mysterious death and her lover's equally sudden departure 
 without a word of explanation, had, while yet her mind 
 remained sufficiently clear, at once despatched a messenger 
 to her brother to summon him -from France; the people^ 
 meanwhile, from whom the tragic end of Polonius and the 
 virtual banishment of Hamlet could not long be concealed,- 
 had begun to murmur strange suspicions and to lend a ready, 
 ear to vague and disquieting rumours ; this uneasy and dis- 
 contented frame of mind was aggravated by the madness of 
 Ophelia, and fanned into open revolt by the arrival of 
 Laertes, furious with rage, and crying loud for vengeance 
 against those who were responsible for his father's violent 
 death and hasty, disrespectful, interment. I have spoken of 
 the first part of this scene elsewhere,* so that it is only 
 necessary to notice here first, how the Queen seems to treat 
 Horatio with more respect and confidence, because she has 
 become aware with how much trust and love he was regarded 
 by Hamlet ; next, that her son's reproaches had effectually 
 awakened her conscience, as is evident from the words that 
 she utters to herself 
 
 (Aside.) To my sick soul, as sin's true nature is, 
 Each toy seems prologue to some great amiss : 
 So full of artless jealousy is guilt, 
 It spills itself in fearing to be spilt. 
 
 * See Appendix D. 
 
78 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 This is the first instance of self-reproach that we find in her. 
 Claudius seems, for the moment, somewhat humanised by the 
 sorrows that have come so thick upon both of them, and 
 shows signs of tenderness in the presence of the wretched, 
 distracted, Ophelia. But there is no sign of genuine repentance. 
 With marvellously placid hypocrisy he speaks of Hamlet's re- 
 moval from the country as if he had not given the treacherous 
 mandate for his death ; he laments his short-sightedness in 
 yielding to the first impulse of fear and causing the body of 
 Polonius to be interred in "hugger-mugger;" but he does not 
 hint at the real cause of such imprudent haste, namely, the 
 danger that any inquiry into the circumstances of the old 
 courtier's death might lead to very inconvenient disclosures, 
 and might betray the nature of the mistake through which 
 that death had taken place. It may be noted here that Polo- 
 nius would seem to have been popular : for the people resented 
 his " obscure funeral " as well as his unexplained death ; 
 they seem to have felt no anger against Hamlet, but rather 
 to have believed that Claudius, for his own ends, had got rid 
 of the minister who was most regarded by them, and to whose 
 hearty support it was very probably owing that the succes- 
 sion of that king to the throne had been so little disputed. 
 The last words of this speech of Claudius 
 
 my dear Gertrude, this, 
 Like to a murderiug-piece, in many places 
 Gives me superfluous death 
 
 seem to indicate that he is nearly breaking down under the 
 burden of his guilt and its consequences ; but the entry of 
 one of the attendants of the Court, with the news of the 
 rebellion in favour of Laertes* having actually broken out, 
 immediately rouses him into action, and calls forth that dig- 
 nity and self-possession which it is evident he knew well how 
 to assume. Gertrude is no less ready in throwing off her dejec- 
 tion, and in putting on that calmnesss and courage which 
 become a Queen. 
 
 Every one is familiar with the fine lines, in which the 
 King rebukes Gertrude's fear for his personal safety 
 
 Let him go, Gertrude ; do not fear our person : 
 There's such divinity doth hedge a king, 
 That treason can but peep to what it would, 
 Acts little of his will. 
 
 One can hardly repress a smile at the idea of any divinity 
 hedging such a remarkably valueless piece of ground (morally 
 
 I * Additional Notes, No. 12. ' 
 
A STUDY OF HAMLET. 79 
 
 speaking) as Claudius was ; but there is no denying that if 
 the respect he claimed was due to his office more than to 
 himself, he acts the part of His Majesty to perfection ; and no 
 doubt, on the score of morality, he was not very far behind 
 many of his royal prototypes in History. 
 
 From the questions, which Laertes puts, it is evident he 
 could have received but a very -confused account of his 
 father's death, while he would seem to be entirely ignorant of 
 his sister's madness. It is very difficult to reconcile this with 
 the King's words in his speech 
 
 Her brother is in secret come from France, 
 Feeds on his wonder, keeps himself in clouds, 
 And wants not buzzers to infect his ear 
 With pestilent speeches of his father's death. 
 
 Where was Laertes when these buzzers were infecting his 
 ear ? How long had he been in Denmark without coming to 
 Elsinore ? I am afraid we must leave these points in doubt, 
 and be content with supposing that he had, for his own 
 reasons, kept himself in concealment at some distance from 
 Elsinore, and had not held any communication with Ophelia. 
 It may be that on his arrival in Denmark he wrote at once 
 to her, but that she could return no answer to his letters 
 owing to her unhappy state of mind. 
 
 The language of Laertes is more passionate than dignified, 
 and Claudius has certainly the advantage over him in this 
 respect. 
 
 thou vile king, 
 Give me niy father ! 
 
 is a somewhat abrupt manner of addressing one's sovereign. 
 But Claudius meets him with such self-possession and such 
 well-acted nobility of demeanour, that the rage of Laertes is 
 soon reduced to less formidable and more rational dimensions^ 
 But first he has his say 
 
 How came he dead ? I'll not be juggled with : 
 To hell, allegiance ! vows, to the blackest devil ! 
 Conscience and grace, to the profoundest pit ! 
 I dare damnation : to this point I stand, 
 That both the worlds T give to negligence, 
 Let come what comes ; only I'll be revenged 
 Most throughly for my father. 
 
 These be " brave words ;" but I cannot join Gervinus * in his 
 panegyric on the conduct or language of Laertes ; nor can I 
 accept such violent rant as the equivalent of daring action, 
 
 S'ee Authorised Translation (First Edition, vol. ii., pp. 119-20)* 
 
80 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 It seems to me that all this fine talk about giving " both the 
 worlds to negligence," and sending "allegiance, conscience, &c., 
 to hell," only ends in this noble-minded young man making 
 himself the instrument of as mean, an act of cowardly assas- 
 sination as ever was planned by two cut-throats. It is a 
 beautiful touch, on the part of Shakespeare, that the dis- 
 cussion between Laertes and Claudius should be interrupted 
 by the entrance of Ophelia, whose pitiable condition not only 
 serves to rekindle the fury of Laertes, but calls forth from him 
 such expressions of anguish, and creates for him so much sym- 
 pathy in the hearts of the audience, that they are prepared to 
 look on him with so favourable an eye, as to be somewhat 
 blind to the hideous treachery of that scheme of vengeance 
 which he afterwards, with the assistance of Claudius, 
 contrives. 
 
 The exclamation of Laertes when Ophelia quits the scene 
 is, indeed, so full of simple pathos that our sympathies, 
 chilled, if not alienated, by his bombastic language on his 
 first entry, return to him 
 
 Do you sec this, God ? 
 
 Nothing can be more touching than this cry of grief. Laertes 
 is so genuinely affected by the sight of his sister's madness 
 that his passion is moderated into a rational anger ; he 
 listens patiently enough to the King's promise to explain the 
 circumstances of Polonius' death, and accepts his well-timed 
 offer to submit the question of his share in it to the arbi- 
 tration of Laertes' own friends. The language of Claudius is 
 singularly judicious : 
 
 Laertes, I must commune with your grief, 
 
 Or you deny me right. Co but apart, 
 
 Make choice of whom your wisest friends you will, 
 
 And they shall hear and judge 'twixt you and me : 
 
 If by direct or by collateral hand 
 
 They find us touch'd, we will our kingdom give, 
 
 Our crown, our life, and all that we call ours, 
 
 To you in satisfaction ; but if not, 
 
 Be you content to lend your patience to us, 
 
 And we shall jointly labour with your soul 
 
 To give it due content. 
 
 Laertes could not but be impressed by such well-assumed 
 generosity; his answer is just and temperate 
 
 Let this be so 5 
 
 His means of death, his obscure funeral, 
 No trophy, sword, nor hatchment o'er his bones, 
 No noble rite nor formal ostentation, 
 Cry to be heard, as 'twere from heaven to earth, 
 That I must call't in question. 
 
A STUDY OF HAMLET. 81 
 
 The omission of all the proper ceremonies, and of the honours 
 usually paid to the noble dead, evidently had much to do with 
 the violent indignation of Laertes. His pride and the honour 
 of his family were touched. This speech is one of the addi- 
 tions in "the true and perfect coppie " of 1004? ; in the earlier 
 edition Laertes' speech is very different 
 
 You haue preuail'd my Lord, a while I'le striue, 
 To bury griefe within a tombe of wrath, 
 Which once vnhearsed, then the world shall heare 
 Leartes had a father he held deere. 
 
 The whole scene between Claudius and Laertes has been 
 much elaborated from the original bald sketch found in the 
 first quarto. Shakespeare seems to have spent great care on 
 the character of the latter ; and the mention of the " obscure 
 funerals," &c., is evidently meant to impress on our minds how 
 much the " honour " of Laertes was of that conventional and 
 fashionable type, which suffers more from the neglect of that 
 ceremony demanded by etiquette than from the commission 
 of a dishonourable action provided it is not likely to be 
 found out. 
 
 While Claudius is relating to Laertes the way in which 
 Polonius met his death, the stage is occupied by a scene 
 (Act IV., Scene 6) replacing that one in the earlier play, 
 between Horatio and the Queen, which I have transcribed in 
 the Appendix.* Horatio is visited by some sailors, who bring 
 him letters from Hamlet, announcing his capture by the 
 pirates, &c. There are two or three points to notice in this 
 scene. Horatio says : 
 
 1 do not know from what part of the world 
 1 should be greeted, if not from Lord Hamlet. 
 
 This passage seems to imply, what the rest of the play con- 
 firms, that Horatio's was a singularly lonely position. Who 
 or what he was we can only conjecture : all we know is 
 that he was a fellow-student of Hamlet's, but of what rank in 
 life we are not told.f His fortune, we know from Samlet's 
 own words, was very small 
 
 For what advancement may I hope from thee, 
 That no revenue hast but thy good spirits, 
 To feed and clothe thee ? 
 
 and it would seem that he was equally poor in friends, since 
 he knew of no one who was likely to send any letter to him 
 
 * See Appendix M. 
 
 t See Additional Note, No. 13, 
 
 j Act III., Scene 2, lines 52-54. 
 
82 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 but Hamlet. This very loneliness was probably one of the 
 causes which first drew the young prince towards Horatio. 
 
 Another point in this scene worth noticing is that the 
 sailor who delivers the letters alludes to Hamlet as 
 
 The ambassador that was bound for England ; 
 
 which shows that Hamlet had preserved his incognito to all 
 but the chiefs of the pirates, perhaps even to them ; though 
 he must have told them he was a person of great influence 
 at Court, as they treated him well because he was " to do a 
 good turn for them." It is not difficult to believe that 
 Hamlet fraternised with these rough sailors just as he did 
 with the actors, and probably enjoyed his stay among them 
 well enough. 
 
 Horatio loses no time in setting out with the sailors to join 
 Hamlet, whereby he would be prevented from hearing of 
 Ophelia's death till, in company with his friend, he witnesses 
 the " maimed rites " of her burial. 
 
 In the next scene (Act IV., Scene 7) we find that the King 
 has completely satisfied Laertes not only that he was innocent 
 of Polonius' death, but that he stood in great danger himself 
 from the violence of Hamlet. "What was the exact account 
 which Claudius gave of the affair we do not know ; but pro- 
 bably he contented himself with very much the same account 
 as that given by the Queen (Act IV., Scene 1, lines 8-12) : 
 
 in his lawless fit, 
 
 Behind the arras hearing something stir, 
 Whips out his rapier, cries ' a rat, a rat ! ' 
 And in this brainish apprehension kills 
 The unseen good old man. 
 
 It will be "remembered that then he expressed his fears for 
 his own life, 
 
 It had been so with us, had we been there : 
 
 but the story is incomplete in one very important point 
 Claudius, naturally, withholds Hamlet's reason for seeking 
 his life from Laertes an omission which makes him ask 
 with much reason : 
 
 but tell me 
 
 Why you proceeded not against these feats, 
 So cnmeful and so capital in nature, 
 As by your safety, wisdom, all things else, 
 You mainly were stirr 'd up. 
 
 The King's answer is plausible enough ; his devotion to the 
 Queen made him unwilling to punish the son whom she 
 loved so much, and Hamlet's popularity was so great that 
 
A STUDY OF HAMLET. 83 
 
 any public proceedings against him would have been likely 
 to have led to a revolution. Laertes is obliged to accept this 
 explanation ; " but," he adds, 
 
 my revenge will come. 
 
 KING. Break not your sleeps for that ; you must not think 
 That we are made of stuff so flat and dull 
 That we can let our beard be shook with danger 
 And think it pastime. You shortly shall hear more : 
 I loved your father, and we love ourself ; 
 And that, I hope, will teach you to imagine 
 
 ft is evident that Claudius refers to the letter he had sent/ 
 by Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, to England ordering the 
 instant execution of Hamlet; indeed, he probably would 
 have given Laertes a very broad hint as to what was the 
 revenge he might speedily expect, had he not been interrupted 
 by the entry of the messenger bringing letters from Hamlet 
 himself, announcing his " sudden and more strange return." 
 One is rather apt to overlook the dramatic nature of this 
 situation (to use a technical term) when one finds fault with 
 the construction of the last two acts of this play. A more 
 complete surprise, as far as Clauclms was concerned, could 
 scarcely have been devised, or one which more thoroughly 
 defeated all his plans. 
 
 That Claudius is thoroughly puzzled at the strange turn of 
 events, and that, at first, he is quite at a loss what to do, his 
 words show. He even appeals to Laertes for advice 
 
 Can you advise me ? 
 
 and his next speech is, as it stands in the text, hopelessly 
 obscure;* though it is clear enough that he is unable to 
 account satisfactorily to himself for this sudden return of 
 Hamlet, and that his mind is harassed by the possible dangers 
 to himself that such a return suggests. Laertes, on the con* 
 trary, rejoices at the idea of meeting Hamlet 
 
 It warms the very sickness in my heart, 
 That I shall live and tell him to his teeth, 
 'Thusdidestthou.'f 
 
 He has the advantage over the King of being single-minded 
 in his purpose ; he needs no tortuous means to his end, though, 
 ultimately, he weakly consents to use such. It would have 
 
 * See Additional Note, No. 1-1. 
 
 t The Quarto 1603 reads 
 
 That I shall liue to tell him, thus he dies, 
 
 which suggests that we might read here " Thus diest thou ;" but all the other 
 quartos and folios concur in reading * ' didst " and " diddest." 
 
84 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 been well for his own honour had he adhered to the frank 
 declaration of vengeance which he here makes, had he 
 reproached Hamlet to his face, and openly challenged him 
 to fight. 
 
 But to the wily mind of Claudius any straightforward 
 revenge, such as could be obtained by a fair fight between 
 Laertes and Hamlet, was utterly distasteful ; besides, such a 
 revenge would be at best uncertain, and might fail in the 
 end to rid him of his hated nephew. Once embarked upon 
 the ocean of crime, one must sail on through all the rocks 
 and quicksands ; a straight course is impossible. Already 
 in his fertile brain and treacherous heart a scheme of 
 cruel and underhand vengeance . is being planned ; his only 
 doubt is whether this generous, and seemingly noble-minded, 
 youth will consent to be his instrument in carrying it out. 
 So much more tractable is Laertes now than when, but a 
 little while since, he rudely burst in upon the royal presence 
 at the head of a riotous mob, that he consents to be ruled 
 by the King so long as he does not " overrule " him " to a 
 peace." The scheme, which in so short a time has grown 
 " ripe " in the ft device " of Claudius, answers every end re- 
 quired it is sure, it is safe, involving no clanger or blame 
 to those who execute it : 
 
 But even his mother shall uncharge the practice, 
 And call it accident. 
 
 Laertes gives the other his cue when he says 
 
 My lord, I will be ruled ; 
 The rather, if you could devise it so 
 That I might be the organ. 
 KINO, It falls right. 
 
 You have been talk'd of since your travel much, 
 And that in Hamlet's hearing, for a quality 
 Wherein, they say, you shine : your sum of parts, 
 Did not together pluck such envy from him, 
 As did that one> and that in my regard 
 Of the unworthiest siege. 
 
 Observe the cunning with which Claudius manages bis 
 flattery ; Laertes has so many good qualities, and of these 
 the " least worthy," according to this good King's thinking, 
 has excited Hamlet's envy; but this quality is depreciated by 
 the artful tempter only to be extolled the next moment as 
 
 A very riband in the cap of youth, 
 
 then, after tantalising him with some laboured and senten- 
 tious phrases, he lets him know that this high report of his 
 qualites comes from one, .himself a pattern of manly skill 
 
A STUDY OF HAMLET. 85 
 
 and courage, for whose opinion, as Claudius probably 
 knew, Laertes had the utmost respect, and to be praised by 
 whom was alone enough to excite his vanity in the highest 
 degree. At last it turns out that the quality, so especially 
 praised by this great authority, w r as skill at fencing ; the very 
 art in which Hamlet and Laertes had doubtless, in their early 
 youth, been friendly but keen rivals. The feverish anxiety 
 of the former to meet again his old antagonist, of whose 
 praises he is madly jealous, is dwelt upon ; and then says the 
 tempter 
 
 Now, out of this 
 LAER. What out of this, my lord ? 
 
 He has not discovered yet to what all this is leading. Clau- 
 dius having sufficiently aroused his vanity, now proceeds to 
 kindle his auger : 
 
 KING. Laertes, was your father dear to you ? 
 
 Or are you like the painting of a sorrow, 
 
 A face without a heart ? 
 LAEK. Why ask you this ? 
 
 The simpler nature of the youth is becoming slightly im- 
 patient at the elder's prolixity ; still the latter persists in 
 trying his patience. It is not till after another long discur- 
 sion that he comes to the point : 
 
 But, to the quick o' the ulcer : 
 Hamlet comes back : what would you undertake, 
 To show yourself your father's son in deed 
 More than in words ? 
 
 Laertes' answer is brief, but there is no mistaking its ear- 
 nestness 
 
 To cut his throat i' the church. 
 
 The tempter's object is gained ; the young man's passion, 
 aggravated by the trial his patience has had to endure, is now 
 at such a height that his reason, and sense of honour, will 
 not be heard if they protest against the treacherous proposal 
 which is now to be made to him. 
 
 The only fear, which Claudius now feels, is that his eager- 
 ness for action should betray Laertes into some hasty step ; 
 for the challenge must be made to come from Hamlet, and 
 the other must keep close within his chamber. 
 
 This scheme of Claudius is not so elaborate as we might 
 have expected after such a long preamble; perhaps he 
 purposely moderates its atrocity, being not quite sure how 
 far he might go. He u soon reassured as to any doubts he 
 
.Si) A STUDY OF HAMLKT. 
 
 might have felt regarding the willingness of such a pattern 
 of chivalry, as Laertes, to stoop to any treachery ; for to the 
 tempter's comparatively simple plan of using an " unbated " 
 foil, the tempted adds the complex villany of anointing its 
 point with a poison so deadly that the slightest scratch from 
 it would be fatal. 
 
 It is now the game of Claudius to check the vindictive 
 ardour of Laertes ; at the same time he feels he may go to 
 any length in atrocity. This notable device may fail, may 
 be detected ; so to make doubly sure, if Hamlet escapes the 
 envenomed rapier, there shall be a poisoned cup, prepared in 
 all loving amity, for his refreshment. These two worthy 
 characters having thus brought their plots to perfection, they 
 are interrupted in their further communing by the entrance 
 of the Queen, with the news of Ophelia's death news which 
 seems to keep Laertes from reflecting on the baseness of the 
 crime which he has just promised to execute ; fanning, at the 
 same time, his just wrath against the man whom he supposes 
 to be the murderer of his father, and the indirect cause of his 
 sister's death. Claudius expresses his hypocritical fear that 
 the rage which he had calmed may now start forth again ; 
 what he really feared was, lest this new aggravation of his 
 suffering might not render Laertes incapable of the coolness, 
 and patience, necessary for the success of their scheme. 
 
 I have dwelt thus at length upon this scene both because 
 it is of the greatest importance to follow it carefully before 
 attempting to form any judgment of the character ^i^JLaertes, 
 and because I believe it to be one of the most carefully 
 elaborated scenes, as far as Shakespeare is concerned, in the 
 whole play. The bare skeleton of it in the Quarto 1603 shows 
 us what great pains he has taken in the revision of it ; and 
 there is one important alteration which I cannot but think 
 shows, more than anything else, what judgment Shakespeare 
 intended us to form of Laertes. In the older version the 
 King makes his proposal thus : 
 
 When you are hot in midst of all your play, 
 Among the foyles shall a keene rapier lie, 
 Steeped in a mixture of deadly poyson, 
 That if it drawes but the least dramme of blood, 
 In any part of him, he cannot Hue ; 
 
 so that the idea of the poison does not come from Laertes, a 
 circumstance which lessens his guilt in no little degree. 
 
 As a psychological study, I think this scene, as it now 
 stands, one of Shakespeare's greatest efforts. The contrast 
 between the two natures is admirable. On the one side we 
 
// \\ 
 
 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 87 
 
 have th older and hardened criminal, an adept at treachery, 
 and incapable of denying himself the pleasure of doling out 
 his stores of iniquity slowly, and with subtle relish of their 
 super-excellent quality ; so enamoured of hypocrisy that he 
 must smother every word of his murderous proposal with a 
 pile of moral platitudes ; so inured to juggling with his con- 
 science that it comes natural to him to regale the youth, 
 whom he is inviting to a vile crime, with unctuous lectures 
 on the heavenly nature of filial love, and of " goodness " in 
 general. Opposed to this highly polished gem of villany, we 
 have the passionate, violent, unreflecting youth, full of genet 
 rous impulses and high courage ; naturally averse to any but 
 the directest road to whatever might be his object ; ready to 
 " cut his enemy's throat in the church" without a thought of 
 the consequences ; who would have fought by the hour, am 
 as long as he could hold a sword, if anyone had dared to 
 call him a coward ; and yet was so devoid of any true am 
 stable principle of courage or honour, that he could listen to 
 a proposal to stab an unarmed man under cover of a friendly 
 trial of skill, and could aggravate such a proposal by the 
 addition of a subtle and deadly poison to the weapon of 
 assassination^ This contest, so skilfully preserved in all the 
 finest details, ceasing only when, in accordance with the great 
 moral truth which the poet is instilling, their perfect resem- 
 blance is shown in their common want of that vigilant ai 
 incorruptible virtue which is the result of fixed and un- 
 alterable principles, and alone can preserve us from crime - 
 such a study of character shows the hand of a master who 
 kuew human nature, not by the reading of books, but by the 
 observation of mankind, less from laboured research than 
 from that instinctive knowledge which is only given to the 
 few who are born to the imperishable heritage of genius. 
 
 The character of Laertes is one of which we are tempted s 
 to form a higher opinion than, on close examination, it will 
 be seen to deserve ; because we cannot help sympathising / 
 with him under the terrible calamities which befall his father 
 and sister. A writer, quoted in Malone's " Shakespeare," 
 remarks very justly : 
 
 " Laertes' character is a very odd one ; it is not easy to say whether it is 
 good or bad : but his consenting to the villanous contrivance of the 
 usurper's to murder Hamlet makes him much more a bad man than a good 
 one." Ed. 1821, vol. vii., page 522. 
 
 Gervimis* seems to me to take far too favourable a view 
 
 * Burnett's Authorised Translation, First Edition. 1863, vol. ii., pages 
 118-120 and 123. 
 
88 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 of this " subordinate hero's " character. I have already (in 
 Appendix D) explained the light in which, as it appears to 
 me, we ought to regard his conduct towards Ophelia in the 
 earlier scenes of the play ; it only remains to consider what 
 proportion of guilt we must assign to him in this plot against 
 Hamlet's life, to which he so readily lends his aid. 
 
 We must remember that the relations between the young 
 prince and Laertes had been very intimate from their earliest 
 childhood. Hamlet says in the midst of his rage 
 
 What is the reason that you use me thus ? 
 I loved you ever : 
 
 Act V., Scene ], lines 277-278. 
 
 And again, when he is begging pardon of Laertes for his 
 violent conduct 
 
 Let my disclaiming from a purposed evil 
 Free me so far in your most generous thoughts, 
 That I have shot mine arrow o'er the house, 
 And hurt my brother. 
 
 Act V., Scene 2, lines 228-231. 
 
 But it was not only against the friend, but the prince, that 
 Laertes consents to practise such perfidious treason. It is 
 evident that, whatever might be the feeling of the rest of the 
 Court, Laertes thoroughly believed Hamlet to be the lieir- 
 apparent to the throne. In warning Ophelia against setting 
 her affections on Hamlet, he says- 
 but you must fear, 
 
 His greatness weigh'd, his will is not his own ; 
 For he himself is subject to his birth : 
 He may not, as unvalued persons do, 
 Carve for himself, for on his choice depends 
 The safety and health of this whole state, 
 And therefore must his choice be circumscribed 
 Unto the voice and yielding of that body 
 Whereof he is the head. Then if he says he loves you, 
 It fits your wisdom so far to believe it 
 As he in his particular act and place 
 May give his saying deed ; which is no further 
 Than the main voice of Denmark goes withal. 
 
 Act I., Scene 3, lines 16-28. 
 
 Such language could be used only of one who was recog- 
 nised by the speaker at least as occupying that high 
 position in the State, second only to the Sovereign, which 
 belongs to a Crown Prince, to whom the duty of every loyal 
 knight and gentleman was to render the utmost respect and 
 honour. To assassinate Hamlet was, on the part of Laertes, 
 an act of high treason, as well as of private treachery. 
 
 And what was the character of him against whose life lie 
 was plotting ? Claudius, in proposing the crime, is forced to 
 
A STUDY OF HAMLET. 89 
 
 pay a tribute to the noble, frank, and unsuspicious nature 
 of his nephew : 
 
 he, being remiss, 
 
 Most generous and free from all contriving, 
 Will not peruse the foils. [Act IV., Scene 7, lines 135-137. 
 
 Surely, had Laertes possessed one spark of true chivalry^ 
 these words would have made him pause : he would, even in / 
 the midst of his natural rage and furious desire to avenge his ( 
 father's death, have exclaimed, from an irresistible impulse 1 
 of honour, "JSTo! I cannot pursue any but an open and( 
 manly vengeance against such a foe : I cannot degrade myself \ 
 by stooping to artifice against one whose generous nature ) 
 renders such artifice the most cowardly treachery." The real' 
 character of Hamlet must have been known to the brother of 
 Ophelia ; he must have seen enough of the young prince to 
 feel sure, that if he went boldly to him and demanded of him 
 an account of his conduct, he would have at least as good a 
 chance of arriving at the truth, as he had by taking counsel 
 with one whose only idea of vengeance was a mean arid 
 dastardly assassination. 
 
 Base enough was the plan of revenge as Claudius proposes 
 it ; but unspeakably baser was the embellishment which 
 ingenuity of this chivalrous young man added to it. Lae 
 agrees to entrap the friend of his youth, his generous rival in 
 many an honourable contest, into a challenge at their 
 favourite game of skill. In this game he is to have the 
 advantage of a real weapon instead of a sham one ; and, as 
 if this were not enough, he is to call to his aid that most 
 cowardly weapon even of murderers poison. Should his 
 antagonist, by any chance, escape this twofold danger, under 
 the pretence of a refreshing draught he is to be disposed of 
 by another and more potent poison. In this precious scheme 
 of manly vengeance the daring young warrior perseveres, 
 even after his antagonist has apologised most humbly for what 
 offence he is conscious of having committed, and has shown 
 clearly enough that he could, if called upon, explain the 
 unhappy death of Laertes' father ;* but it never occurs to 
 this pattern knight that he might have paused, even at that 
 point, and in a private conference with Hamlet have learnt 
 the truth of what, to the most inflamed mind, could not but 
 have seemed something of a mystery. No, l^Lgoes on with 
 his foul task, and, in spite of such scruples\j^as even the 
 
 * See Act V., Scene 2, lines 215-231. 
 t See Act V., Scene^lines 282-283 : 
 
 LAER. MyTord, m hit him now. 
 
 KING. I do not think 't. 
 
 LAEB. (aside). And yet it is almost against my conscience. 
 
 G 
 
90 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 most hardened criminal must have felt, he stabs the unsus- 
 pecting Hamlet with the envenomed point. At the last, it is 
 true, he repents; or rather, he expresses remorse; though even 
 then he puts more of the blame than was just on Claudius. 
 His last words are his best : 
 
 Exchange forgiveness with me, noble Hamlet : 
 Thine and my father's death come not upon thee, 
 Nor thine on me ! 
 
 Act V., Scene 2, lines 316-318. 
 
 It is of this cowardly assassin that Gervinus thus writes*: 
 
 44 Laertes goes so far as to poison his sword, that in single combat (!) with 
 Hamlet he may more surely obtain his end. He sullies by this his knightly 
 honour, although he treats his revenge rather as a matter of honour, while, 
 for Hamlet it is a heavy matter of conscience. But in the midst of this 
 passion, strained even to unscrupulousness, he is strictly confined to the one 
 object of his revenge, whilst by Hamlet's loitering steps the guiltless ,. 
 Polonius falls, Ophelia becomes crazed, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are 
 made a sacrifice, and himself and his mother perish. " (Authorised Trans* 
 lation, 1st ed., vol. ii., pp. 119-120.) 
 
 This is but one fragment of the indirect panegyric which 
 this great German critic pronounces on Laertes : one would 
 certainly think that the passage was prophetic,! and intended 
 to glorify the great man who has subdued German culture 
 beneath his iron iiile. A " combat " (according to Gervinus) 
 is a fencing-bout between one man armed with a foil and the 
 other with a sharp rapier ! To use an " unbated " weapon in 
 such a trial of skill, having previously anointed that weapon 
 with a deadly poison, is merely to "" sully your knightly 
 honour ! " I hope those Danes who are at present rejoicing 
 under the amenities of the German rule will read this pas- 
 sage for their edification ; it may perhaps reconcile them to 
 that conscientious but slightly unscrupulous system of pro- 
 cedure, which they may have been tempted to characterise as 
 callous perfidy and mean brutality. 
 
 Amazing, indeed, is the moral obliquity which can permit 
 a great and learned man to be fascinated, by the superficial 
 energy of such a character as Laertes, .into glossing over the 
 most detestable crimes with hearty approbation masquing 
 under the guise of feeble censure. Gervinus wrote in 1850, 
 and we are now in 1875 ; those of us who are not blinded by 
 bigotry, or muzzled by time-serving cowardice, have been able 
 to recognise, in the grand spectacle of an united Germany 
 
 * The italics are mine. 
 
 t Gervinus's Lectures were first published in 1850. 
 
4 STUDY OF HAMLET/, 91 
 
 extinguished under a Prussian helmet, the same moral 
 obliquity which dictated such a passage as that I have 
 quoted. The " dreamers " have become the " men of action," 
 and they are now as strong as any nation can be, of whose, 
 armour the chains of tyranny furnish no little part ; let them 
 rejoice while they may ; let them exalt bloodshed above 
 courage, and grasping avarice above honest industry ; let 
 them miscall the meanest and cruellest * system of reli- 
 gious persecution ever undertaken, even by the most ignorant 
 barbarians, a struggle for civil liberty ; let them continue, 
 conscious of their own strength in a monstrousl^ over- 
 grown army, which drains the life-blood of the country, 
 to defy treaties and violate their plighted word as a nation : 
 now is their brief day of triumph ; but the time will come 
 when they will awake too late to a sense of their own degra- 
 dation, when they will find that, in fighting against a 
 phantom of religious tyranny, they have flung away the safe- 
 guards of civil liberty and given themselves over, bound hand 
 and foot, into the power of a monster of political tyranny ; 
 when, perchance, the cry of "This is I, Hamlet the Pane!" 
 may ring through Germany with a somewhat different echo 
 than when it could only speak, to the nation's conscience, 
 of the dangerous similarity of their own character to the 
 over-reflective and too scrupulous young prince, ever prone 
 to speculation and averse to action ; f when there may be no 
 Laertes and Claudius at hand to concoct the treacherous 
 assassination of the unwelcome intruder ; and when the 
 spectre of a national crime, which bayonets could not bury 
 for ever, shall rise from the grave to demand, it may be to 
 exact, a just vengeance. 
 
 The fifth act commences with the well-known scene be- 
 tween the two " Clowns," or " Grave-diggers." This scene 
 has been much censured by some critics, on the ground that 
 its broad humour is out of place in a tragic work. But here 
 is the very excellence of Shakespeare's genius that he does 
 not shrink from mingling the humorous with the pathetic ; in 
 fact, he does not shrink from portraying human life as it 
 really is.J He knew mankind in general as well as he knew 
 that portion of it which forms the audience of a theatre ; 
 
 * Most cruel, because the Gerinaa persecution is directed against the 
 soul, and not the body. A true Catholic would rather perish at the stake 
 than live, as he is compelled to live in most parts of the German Empire, 
 without the Sacraments. 
 
 t See Gervinus's eloquent parallel between Hamlet and the German 
 nation. (Authorised Translation, 1st edition, vol. ii,, pp. 145-149.) 
 
 $ See above, Part II., page 41. 
 
 G2 
 
92 A STUDY OF HAMLET, 
 
 he knew that if his plays were to attract spectators they 
 must be varied, and not monotonous : we may admire such 
 tragedies as Voltaire's in the closet, but on the stage they 
 crush us under their massive weight of lugubriousness. But 
 this system of brightening up tragedy, by an infusion of the 
 comic element, is contrary to all canons of foreign criticism. 
 Any one who has seen " Hamlet " played on the Italian stage 
 will have observed the preternatural gravity of Polonius, for 
 instance, and generally how careful all the actors were, includ- 
 ing even Hamlet himself, to divest the play as much as 
 possible of any taint of humour. In this very scene we are 
 now considering, when I saw it played at Naples, there was 
 only one grave-digger (he was necessary for Hamlet), and he 
 sang quite a pretty little song in place of the humorous 
 ballad of which "The First Clown" in Shakespeare gives us 
 such an odd version. 
 
 Who that has seen the tragedy of Hamlet represented, 
 whether well or ill, has not felt that this scene comes as a 
 welcome relief, just at that point when the strain which has 
 been put upon -OJir sadder -and more .pathetic feelings has 
 been greater than we well could bear. The madness and 
 death "of Ophelia, the revolting treachery of Claudius, the 
 miserable weakness of Laertes, have plunged us into a state 
 of mind which is likely to render us impatient of anything 
 but the briefest termination of the story, unless it be relieved 
 by some gleam of cheerfulness. We are invited by the author 
 to assist at the making of the grave which is to receive the 
 pure body of Ophelia : an ordinary dramatist would treat us 
 to nothing more refreshing than a series of dreary and solemn 
 platitudes on death ; but Shakespeare extorts from us invo- 
 luntary smiles at the humours of two simple clowns, who are 
 portrayed, not as unnatural vehicles of dismal santiments, 
 but as natural sources of genuine amusement. They go to 
 their work with just as much sense of its solemn import as 
 such men would, in real life, feel ; they bandy grim jests, and 
 the one who, by virtue of being less ignorant than his 
 assistant, is able to assume all the superiority of learning, 
 tickles our sense of humour by his absurd and unconscious 
 blunders no less than by his placid self-conceit. This 
 Clown belongs to the same class of characters as Bottom 
 and Dogberry ; men who, having picked up some scraps of 
 learning and long words, of which they know neither the 
 proper use nor meaning, so thoroughly believe in their own 
 intellectual superiority over their fellows that we cannot help 
 laughing with them, rather than at them, for their ridiculous 
 
A STUDY OF HAMLET* 93 
 
 vanity. The whole essence of the humour in these characters 
 lies in their utter unconsciousness of their own errors ; 
 immediately the actor tries to emphasise their absurd mis- 
 takes, as if he knew he was saying something amusing, 
 all that humour vanishes. I have myself met with such 
 characters, in real life, more than once, and I have been im- 
 mensely impressed by the perfect self-complacency with which 
 they gave forth their grandiloquent mispronunciations." 
 
 With regard to this scene, there seems to be little doubt 
 that Shakespeare had in his mind the case of Sir James 
 Hales,f of which he could only " have heard in conversa- 
 tion," as Malone points out ; this is but another instance of 
 the observant nature of our great dramatist ; his ears as well 
 as his eyes were always open. 
 
 When Hamlet enters with Horatio we find him more 
 than ever disposed to avail himself of any temporary' 
 distraction which may offer itself. How the two friends ^ 
 contrive to find themselves in the churchyard at this oppor- 
 tune moment we must not inquire too closely. This is, 
 surely, one of those cases in which the dramatist may be 
 allowed some licence in the arrangement of his incidents. It 
 is more important to observe that the character of Hamlet is 
 here most admirably sustained, and that as he approaches, 
 unconsciously, nearer to the fulfilment of his long delayed 
 task, he becomes more prone to reflect and moralise on_ every 
 circumstance i_ whiqiueemes under his notice 7 He is wander- 
 ing about in a purposeless manner, while his work of vengeance 
 remains undone, while the solemn command of the Ghost, 
 and the promptings of just self-defence, alike remain neg- 
 lected, while tjio maiden that he loved so devotedly is lying 
 on her bier he does not know of her sad fate, it is true ; Hora- 
 tio, who had seen her in her pitiful distraction, but who was 
 ignorant of her death, had, perhaps, scrupled to tell him the 
 painful news; still, it would have been only natural that he 
 should have made all the haste he could to gain some tidings 
 
 * I may, perhaps, be excused for mentioning one instance of the many 
 which have fallen under my personal observation. It was at the Zoological 
 Gardens, on a certain Whit-Monday, when the heat was excessive, that I 
 happened to be taking my htnch at. a table next to a worthy middle-aged 
 couple, whose faces bore witness to the exertions they had made in the 
 pursuit of zoological knowledge. " Mary, my dear," remarked the gentle- 
 man, "it's awful 'ot." " 'Ot, James !" answered the lady, while fanning 
 herself with a newspaper; "I'm perfectly prostituted with the 'eat." 1 
 never shall forget the expression of placid self-satisfaction which overspread 
 her ample countenance as she gave utterance to this unhappy sentence. 1 
 
 was prostrated with suppressed laughter, if not with the heat. 
 t o't-s Notes in Malone's Shakespeare (edition 
 
 1821), vol. vii., page 463. 
 
A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 of his beloved ; yet lie lingers in this churchyard, and is lost 
 in wonder because the vulgar sexton can find heart to sing- 
 while he is digging a grave. It is evident that Hamlet is 
 now in that condition into which sensitive natures, when 
 oppressed by calamity, are very apt to sink he is in a state 
 of mental disturbance which in its very anxiety to escape 
 from the subject which most weighs upon the mind is apt to 
 confound itself, as far as unthinking observers are concerned, 
 with heartless apathy. Alas ! how little they know the 
 terrible oppression which, in such unhappy men, wraps the 
 heart round, like a leaden shroud ; it is to this Hamlet after- 
 wards alludes when he says to Horatio 
 
 But tliou wouldst not think how ill all's here about my heart : 
 
 Act V., Sc. 2, line 119. 
 
 , All the time that he is moralising on the skulls which the 
 unfeeling grave-digger " jowls on the ground ;" while politi- 
 * cian, courtier, lawyer, fine lady, jester, all in turn are the 
 subjects of his cynical sermons ; while he bandies jests with 
 the rude but ready sexton ; not for one moment is he able to 
 escape from the cloud that hangs over him : he may smile at 
 the pragmatical impertinence of the " absolute knave " who 
 answers his questions with so little respect, but the heavy 
 weight at his heart grows none the lighter. '^ There is some- 
 thing infinitely more tragic in these vain attempts to escape, 
 though by means of the most trivial distractions, from the 
 oppressive shadow of the rapidly approaching catastrophe, 
 than in all the grand sonorous groanings of heroic tragedy. 
 
 There are one or two points worth remarking in this scene : 
 one is that the grave-digger, although he had been so long 
 employed near Elsinore, evidently does not recognise 
 Hamlet ; we may conclude that his cloak would partially 
 conceal him, and that as he would probably be in the same 
 dress as that which he wore when taken by the pirates, his 
 
 ! appearance would not show many signs of his princely rank. 
 
 ( Another point is that from the words which this " clown " 
 
 , uses in speaking of Hamlet 
 
 He that is mad and sent into England 
 
 it would seem that the common people knew nothing more 
 ( of the reason why he had been sent out of Denmark but that 
 it was on account of his madness. 
 
 Another point, which I should have thought would have 
 attracted the attention, at least of the more modern commen- 
 tators, is that we have here the^same_ joke about the mad- 
 ness of all Englishmen, which has so long been a cardinal 
 
A STUDY OF ItAMLET. 95 
 
 point of most foreigners' creeds with regard to us, and which 
 the eccentricity of some of our fellow-countrymen, when tra- 
 velling, has helped to confirm. It would be curious to know 
 whether the same opinion of us prevailed generally in Shake- 
 speare's time, and what was the origin of it.* 
 
 The remaining point of importance in this scene is the 
 allusion to Hamlet's age, from which it appears, according to 
 the grave-digger, that he was born on the very day his father 
 defeated Fortinbras (lines 139, 140) ; that also on that day 
 this rustic wit " came to" the trade of grave-maker (lines 135, 
 136) ; finally, that he had "been sexton, man and boy, thirty 
 years" (lines 152, 153). This would seem to put it beyond 
 doubt that Hamlet was thirty years old. Besides this evi- . 
 dence we have the corroborative circumstance that Yorick's ^ 
 skull had lain in the earth three-and-twenty years (line 163). , 
 As Hamlet tells Horatio that he knew Yorick, who had ' 
 borne him " on his back a thousand times," and whose lips 1 
 he had kissed " he knew not how oft" (lines 173-176), inj 
 fact, that Yorick had been the constant companion of his 
 early childhood, the age of Hamlet could not have been pos- 
 sibly much less than thirty years. I have thought it better j 
 to discuss in the Appendixf the question how much we . 
 ought to rely upon the figures in the passages referred to 
 above. 
 
 Hamlet's moralisings are interrupted by the entrance of a 
 funeral procession, in which are the King, Queen, and the 
 courtiers. Here is another distraction to occupy his restless 
 mind. It seeins to me hard to conceive a more dramatic 
 " situation," or a more pathetic incident than this : he has 
 no idea whose the funeral is ; even Laertes' presence does 
 not suggest to him that it may be Ophelia's body which 
 they follow *' with such maimed rites." As I have pointed 
 out before, Horatio could not have known of Ophelia's death 
 any more than Hamlet ; but he had seen her in her pitiable, 
 distracted state, and it would certainly seem that, if he had 
 spoken of her at all to Hamlet, he had concealed the gravity of 
 her affliction ; otherwise the latter would surely have sus- 
 pected that the funeral was hers. How deep a pathos there 
 is in the perfect unconsciousness of Hamlet that every detail 
 of this sad ceremony at which he was looking as an unin- 
 terested spectator, touched so nearly the tenderest feelings 
 of his heart 
 
 Sec Additional Note, No. 
 Sec Appendix P. 
 
96 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 This doth betoken 
 
 The corse they follow did with desperate hand 
 Fordo its own life : 'twas of some estate. 
 Couch we awhile, and mark. 
 
 Lines 208210. 
 
 The way in which he mentions Laertes has, to the audience 
 who know what has happened, something in it of satire which 
 the speaker never intended 
 
 That is Laertes a very noble youth. 
 
 It seems to me that at this point the actor generally loses an 
 opportunity for the display of facial acting of the highest 
 order. Hamlet and Horatio have retired out of sight of those 
 who are taking part in the funeral ceremony, but not out of 
 sight of the audience. Some actors I have seen cover their 
 face with their cloaks, while others almost go off the stage ; 
 but surely Hamlet, immediately he hears the words, " Her 
 obsequies," &c., in answer to the demand of Laertes 
 
 What ceremony else ? 
 
 would begin to listen with the closes^ attention ; the fact 
 that it was a woman's funeral would strike him. A little 
 further, when he hears the words- 
 Yet here she is allow 'd her maiden crants, 
 Her maiden strewments, &c., 
 
 suspicion of the terrible truth would begin to dawn on him ; 
 his eyes would glance rapidly from face to face with a 
 piercing look, his grasp of Horatio's hand would tighten, his 
 breathing become quicker and quicker, till at Laertes' words * 
 
 A ministering angel shall my sister be, 
 
 the dreadful certainty would burst upon him it was his 
 love's half-honoured grave that lay open there before him, it 
 was her sweet body on which that sad rain of flowers was 
 falling ; with a sob, half-suppressed, he would throw himself 
 on Horatio's breast, as the words come from him in a low 
 moan of despair 
 
 What, the fair Ophelia 1 
 
 the name he seemed to have loved best to call her. Perhaps 
 these few words were the first full confession of his love ho 
 had ever made to this true and single-hearted friend ; for even 
 to him he never seems to have told the secret of this love, 
 which, under the cruel repression that he exercised over it, 
 was silently eating away his heart. It is but for a moment 
 that he suffers himself to be overcome ; the sound of Laertes' 
 voice, invoking curses on the head of him, " whose wicked 
 
A STUDY OF HAMLET. . 97 
 
 deed " had deprived the sweet maid of her " ingenious sense," 
 rouses him ; and as he sees the brother, half-mad with pas- 
 sion, leap into the grave ; as he listens to that bombastic dis- 
 play of grief 
 
 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. 
 
 when Hamlet sees and hears all this ; he who loved this 
 fair and sweet maiden with a love which was all the fiercer 
 because it had to be crushed ; he who had sacrificed this love 
 and its object on the altar of a great purpose which was not, 
 for all that cruel sacrifice, a whit nearer fulfilment ; he who 
 had torn the tender strings of his own heart, had broken hers, 
 and shook her reason from its throne, and had done all this 
 in vain ; what wonder is it that his soul is filled with bitter- 
 ness, that the sight and sound of this brother's outrageous 
 grief maddens him, and that he too leaps into the grave with 
 the cry 
 
 This is I, 
 Hamlet the Dane. 
 
 In these few words Hamlet would seem to say : " This is I 
 whom you execrate as the wretch who has killed your father 
 and driven your sister into madness. I confess I did this, 
 but I did it unwittingly. Revile me, curse me, use me as 
 you will. I can bear anything but the mockery of your pre- 
 tending that your grief is greater than mine." Surely in 
 this case the circumstances would excuse in any man, even 
 in one who, unlike Hamlet, was, by habit and nature, en- 
 dowed with the utmost self-command, an outburst of furious 
 passion. The torture of self-suppression had become greater 
 than human nature could bear. In vain had he tried to burn 
 all tenderness out of his heart, to force himself into a deed 
 of just vengeance ; ' through his weakness he had failed jv 
 failed utterly to strike one blow against the guilty murderer, 
 while by the irony of fate two innocent lives, one that of 
 her whom he loved best on earth, had been sacrificed through 
 his unwilling agency. Brought, as it seemed, by the cruel 
 caprice of the same relentless fate, without any warning, to 
 the grave of his love, when it was too late to speak one 
 tender word to her, or to beg her forgiveness for his harsh- 
 ness, he hears her brother, who he knew never loved her with 
 the same tenderness that he did, calling clown " full ten times 
 treble woe " on his head as if there could be greater woe 
 than what he was enduring then and demanding to be 
 
98 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 buried with Ophelia, as if there were no one else in the world 
 who would die for her ! Why, Hamlet must have felt that 
 he would gladly die, ten thousand times, the most agonising 
 death, if he could only call her back to life. 
 " The malignant way in which Steevens has misrepresented 
 Hamlet's conduct in this scene is pretty well known, chiefly 
 from the indignant remonstrances it has called forth. But it 
 may be as well to give- the passage here : 
 
 " He interrupts the funeral designed in honour of this lady (Ophelia), 
 at which both the King and Queen were present ; and by such an outrage 
 to decency, renders it still more necessary for the usurper to lay a second 
 stratagem for his life, though the first had proved abortive. He insults the 
 brother of the dead, and boasts of an affection for his sister, which before 
 he had denied to her face, and yet at this very time must be considered as 
 desirous of supporting the character of a madman, so that the openness of 
 his confession is not to be imputed to him as a virtue. " 
 
 Poor Hamlet ! Had you been standing in the Old Bailey 
 dock, and George Steevens counsel for the prosecution, you 
 would have scarce escaped hanging ! For good taste and 
 veracity this venomous indictment reminds one of the Old 
 Bailey in its worst days. It was, perhaps, well for Mr. 
 Steevens that no usurper was at hand to punish outrages to 
 decency, on the part of critics, in his day with the same 
 sternness which Claudius found necessary in Hamlet's case. 
 Seriously speaking, it is hard to believe that the man who 
 wrote the above criticism had ever road Shakespeare's 
 " Hamlet." One would think it referred to the conduct of 
 some misguided young man who had rudely interrupted the 
 funeral " designed in honour" of some distinguished person in 
 Westminster Abbey. The whole circumstances of the case, 
 the character, situation, and calamities of Hamlet in fact, 
 all that has happened, or lias been told us, in the former part 
 of the play, is ignored. It is sufficient to observe here that 
 when Hamlet told Ophelia " he loved her not," he was speak- 
 ing in the character of a madman ; while, in this case, it is 
 real passion which completely overcomes his self-control. 
 
 Maddened as Hamlet is by the sight of Laertes' grief, he 
 still retains sufficient command of himself to remonstrate 
 with him. Immediately on his leaping into the grave, 
 Laertes seizes him by the throat, exclaiming 
 
 The devil take thy soul ! 
 
 Hamlet forbears, at first, to repel violence with violence* 
 There is dignity as well as self-command in his answer 
 
A STUDY OF HAMLE1\ 00 
 
 HAM. Thou pray'st not well. 
 
 I prithee, take thy lingers from my throat ; 
 For, though I am not splenetive and rash, 
 Yet have I in me something dangerous, 
 Which let thy wisdom fear. Hold off thy hand. 
 
 He does not forget that Laertes is, after all, her brother ; 
 he does not at first struggle with him ; he begs him to take 
 his hand off him ; for though he is not prone to violence, he 
 has " something dangerous " in him now. It would seem that 
 Laertes, forgetting all but his hatred of Hamlet, would then 
 and there have taken his revenge. The latter is driven to 
 defend himself, and some of the courtiers are obliged to part 
 the two. Hamlet's blood is now up, and lie flings away all 
 concealment : 
 
 HAM. Why, I will fight with him upon this theme 
 
 Until my eyelids will no longer wag. 
 QUEEN. my son, what theme ? 
 HAM. I loved Ophelia : forty thousand brothers 
 
 Could not, with all their quantity of love, 
 
 Makeup my sum. 
 
 It is impossible for me to describe the effect which that 
 cry of agony, " I loved Ophelia," has upon me. I never 
 heard it yet spoken on the stage with one-thousandth part of 
 the force that rightly belongs to it. Is it not the key to much 
 of the mystery which Hamlet has been to all around him, 
 and, in some degree, even to himself ? It is the cry of a 
 love which has been cruelly beaten down, which has been 
 kept, as it were, chained and gagged in the farthest corner of 
 his sorrow-darkened heart ; it has never ceased to struggle 
 against its fetters ; and now at last, in the anguish of death, 
 its bonds are burst and its voice can be stifled no longer. 
 AVhatever the consequences, in the presence even of his uncle, 
 before whom he would have shrunk from showing any glimpse 
 of his real feelings, Hamlet is obliged to lay bare his heart's 
 wounds. Precisely in proportion to the sincerity and depth 
 of his love for Ophelia has been the difficulty which he 
 experienced in fulfilling a task involving the abandonment 
 of that love. Much of his bitterness to her and others is 
 now explained ; for he was trying to kill an affection which 
 would not die. 
 
 It is remarkable that in his fury Hamlet makes action 
 the test of sincerity : 
 
 What wilt thou do for her ? 
 And again : 
 
 HAM. 'S wounds, show me what thou'lt do : 
 
 Woo't weep ? woo't fight ? woo't fast 2 woo't tear thyself 
 
100 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 Woo't drink up eisel ? eat a crocodile ? 
 I'll do't. Dost thou come here to whine ? 
 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'lt mouth, 
 I'll rant as well as thou. 
 
 It is evident that Hamlet speaks these words with the 
 utmost vehemence ; he is in that state of excitement in 
 which such temperaments as his crave the outlet of action ; 
 at this moment he would do any of the things that he men- 
 tions. Whether, finding himself carried away by his rage 
 into a declaration of his love for Ophelia, he has sufficient 
 presence of mind to exaggerate his language wilfully, in 
 order that he may lessen the importance of such a confession, 
 may be a matter for conjecture. I believe myself that this 
 outburst is one of those uncontrollable paroxysms of excite- 
 ment which persons who, like Hamlet, are on the verge of 
 madness, must occasionally suffer if they are to preserve 
 their reason at all. It is possible that Hamlet's fury was 
 aggravated by the recollection that he, like Laertes, was 
 prone to threaten much and to perform comparatively little. 
 For Laertes is by no means the man of action that he at first 
 sight appears to be. The catastrophe which overtook Ophelia 
 might have been prevented, had he, instead of discussing 
 schemes of vengeance with Claudius, have followed his sister 
 out, when he saw her unhappy condition, and not have left 
 her till he had placed her in some trustworthy hands. It 
 was in more than one respect that Hamlet might have seen 
 in the circumstances of Laertes some reflection of his own ; 
 for in both of them strong feeling and enthusiasm \vere 
 wrongly directed. 
 
 The Queen's description of Hamlet's mental condition is 
 very beautiful, and no doubt it is also true ; in fact, this is 
 one of the speeches which, like that in which she describes 
 her son's grief over the body of Polonius,* is intended to 
 admit us behind the scenes, and to reveal to us those phases 
 of Hamlet's character which could not be exhibited on the 
 stage : 
 
 See Act IV., Scene 1, lines 23-27. 
 
 Ki?s 7 G. Where is lie gohe ? 
 
 QUEEN. To draw apart the body he hath kill'd : 
 
 O'er whom his very madness, like some ore 
 
 Among a mineral of metals base, 
 
 Shows itself pure ; he weeps for what is doile. 
 
A STUDY OF HAMLET. 101 
 
 This is mere madness : 
 And thus awhile the fit will work on him ; 
 Anon, as patient as the female dove 
 When that her golden couplets are disclosed,* 
 His silence will sit drooping. 
 
 Hamlet almost justifies this description by the sudden 
 change in his tone from passionate invective to gentle ex- 
 postulation 
 
 Hear you, sir ; 
 
 What is the reason that you use me thus ? 
 I loved you ever. 
 
 Had he been able to restrain himself and to argue calmly 
 with Laertes, he might well have asked him why he execrated 
 the friend of his youth for an act which was committed un^ 
 intentionally, and which had been bitterly repented, without 
 giving that friend any chance of explaining his conduct. It 
 seems as if Hamlet now felt the effects of reaction after his 
 vehement outburst of rage, and was inclined to yield to that 
 spirit of fatalism which every now and then got possession 
 of him. This is the only explanation which I can see of 
 the somewhat enigmatical words 'with which he concludes 
 this speech 
 
 but it is no matter ; 
 Let Hercules himself do what he may, 
 The cat will mew, and dog will have his day. [Exit. 
 
 The commentators have not exerted their ingenuity on this 
 passage, which is rather unintelligible : the meaning would 
 seem to be, " Not even the strength of Hercules can change 
 the disposition which Nature implants in us ; it is not in 
 your nature t.o understand my motives ; and do whatever I 
 will, you will persist in misunderstanding them." 
 
 Hamlet goes away in such a state of agitation that he for- 
 gets the presence of Horatio, whom the King wisely bids to 
 wait on him. The last three lines which Claudius speaks are 
 addressed to Laertes, and the speech should thus be marked : 
 
 (To Laertes). Strengthen your patience in our last night'sf speech ; 
 We'll put the matter to the present push. 
 
 * This is a curious instance of Shakespeare's accuracy in those illustrative 
 details which he is so fond of introducing. The dove lays only two eggs, 
 and when the young are first hatched they are covered with a yellow down, 
 which affords so slight a protection from the cold that the mother is obliged 
 to sib on them for three days. (See Steevens' and Heath's Notes, Malone's 
 " Shakespeare," edition 1821, vol. vii., p. 482.) 
 
 t This would seem to imply that the conversation between the King and 
 Laertes in the last act took place on the previous night. But this could not 
 have been so, as will be seen by reference to that scene (Act IV., Scene 7) ; 
 neither is it possible that Ophelia could have died at night or in the 
 
102' A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 (To the QUEEN). Good Gertrude, set some watch over your son. 
 (To LAERTES). This grave shall have a living monument : 
 An hour of quiet shortly shall we see ; 
 Till then, in patience our proceedings be. 
 
 By " a living monument " Claudius means that a living 
 man shall be sacrificed to the memory of the dead. Laertes 
 could not but be confirmed in his purpose by what had 
 passed ; everything is most ingeniously contrived by Shake- 
 speare to fan the flame of his resentment against Hamlet. 
 
 I have already* treated of the first part of this next scene 
 (Act Y., Scene 2), when discussing the question of Hamlet's 
 conduct to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. It only remains 
 to notice the words in which he expresses to Horatio his 
 sorrow for his outburst of passion over the grave of Ophelia. 
 Not that he alludes to Ophelia in any way either directly or 
 indirectly ; he carefully avoids doing so, which confirms what 
 I have suggested as regards his reticence, even to Horatio, on 
 the subject of his love. 
 
 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'll court his favours : 
 
 But, sure, the bravery of his grief did put me 
 
 Into a towering passion. 
 
 Nothing can be more becoming than the tone of this speech ; 
 he is the more sorry for his display of passion, because, now 
 that he is calm, he can understand, from his own feelings 
 with regard to his father, what those of Laertes must have 
 been : but it was the " bravery " or " ostentation " of the 
 latter's grief which enraged him. Hamlet is very probably 
 going to say something more, when they are interrupted by 
 the entrance of Osric. 
 
 The next scene is one of the most charming pieces of high 
 comedy which Shakespeare has left us : and those are very 
 superficial critics who talk of the slovenliness of the last act, 
 for the elaborate finish of this scene, at least, cannot be 
 denied. It barely exists in the first version of 1603. Shake- 
 speare was too great an artist not to know that any interrup- 
 tion to the action at this point would not be tolerated, unless 
 it were of so interesting a nature as to reconcile the audience 
 to the delay. Some pause is necessary before the scheme of 
 
 evening and have been buried the next day. The 2nd Clown says (Act V., 
 Scene 1, line 4) " that the crowner hath sat on her ;" and though this may 
 be an anachronism, it is probable there would have been some inquiry into 
 her death. 
 * See Part III., pp. 64-67. 
 
A STUDY OF HAMLET. 103 
 
 the King and Laertes can be carried out. Nowhere is the 
 irony, which pervades this great work, more remarkable than 
 in the contrivance of introducing what the spectators know 
 is a treacherous design to assassinate Hamlet with a genuinely 
 comic prelude. Affectation was never more happily ridiculed 
 than it is in this mincing periphrastic courtier ; nor was satire 
 ever more effective and good-humoured than is that of 
 Hamlet, whose wit shines now witli greater brilliancy than 
 ever, though he is heavy at heart and is standing uncon- 
 sciously on the brink of his own grave. 
 
 There are two passages in this scene which have occasioned 
 much difference of opinion on the part of the critics ; one is 
 that in which Osric gives the details of the wager that the 
 King had made on the contest between Laertes and Hamlet ; 
 the other is that in which Hamlet describes the character of 
 Osric to Horatio, after that elegant gentleman has taken his 
 leave of them. The comments that I have ventured to make 
 on these passages will be found in the Additional Notes.* 
 
 Osric has left them but a very short time when " a Lord " 
 enters with a message from the King, who sends to know if it 
 be Hamlet's pleasure to play with Laertes at once, or if he 
 prefers to wait. The first sentence of Hamlet's answer sounds 
 oddly in his mouth : 
 
 HAM. I am constant to my purposes ; they follow the King's pleasure : if 
 his fitness speaks, mine is ready ; now or whensoever, provided I be so able 
 as now. 
 
 How different the tone of this answer to that in which he 
 replied to Eosencrantz and Guildenstern when they were act- 
 ing as the King's ambassadors (Act IV., Scene 2, lines 24-30). 
 Hamlet seems anxious to atone for his outbreak of temper at 
 Ophelia's grave in every way ; and it is as much from this 
 motive, as from the spirit of emulation which was strong in 
 him, that he accepts Laertes' challenge. All his answers are 
 courteous, and even submissive : 
 
 LOKI). The king and queen and all are coining down. 
 HAM. In happy time. 
 
 LORD. The queen desires you to use some gentle entertainment to Laertes 
 before you fall to play. 
 HAM. She well instructs me. [Exit Lord. 
 
 There is no bitterness, no affectation of madness ; no rebel-.. 
 Jion_jigainsj^his mother's aSEEority. .He is confident of win- 
 ning the wager ; yet about his heart " all is ill." Horatio 
 tries to persuade him to abandon the match, even at the last 
 
 * See Additional Note No. 16. 
 
104 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 moment, but he will not listen to his suggestions ; the very 
 misgivings that he feels only serve to strengthen his resolu- 
 tion ; a strange fitful obstinacy, not uncommon in those whose 
 indecision is the result of over-much reflection. Such per- 
 sons seem often to find a kind of relief in acting on sudden 
 impulses, or in spite of strong forebodings. Hamlet's last 
 speech to Horatio points to the fact that his fatalism has been 
 growing upon him until it has entirely usurped the place of 
 any other faith. True that it is not a pagan fatalism, but 
 neither is it the resignation of a Christian, in spite of the 
 allusion to the New Testament. It is at best the negative 
 courage of a conscientious doubter, who Imows^tliatL -death 
 must come, but is content to leave the hereafter in uncer- 
 
 we defy augury : there is special providence in the fall of a sparrow. 
 If it be now, 'tis not to come ; if it be to come, it will be now ; if it be 
 not now, yet it will come : the readiness is all ; since no man has aught 
 of what he leaves, what is't to leave betimes ? Let be. 
 
 On the stage a change of scene now occurs, but it appears 
 that originally there was none, the conversation with Horatio 
 and Osric taking place in the same hall in which the fencing 
 match occurs. The King, Queen, Laertes, and Court enter, 
 the flagons of wine are set on the table, and the first part of 
 the treacherous plot against Hamlet's life commences with 
 the placing of Laertes' hand in Hamlet's by his pious Majesty 
 King Claudius. What must be the feelings of Laertes at this 
 moment, as he suffers himself to go through this monstrous 
 hypocrisy ? He has need of a courage such as few murderers 
 have ever shown, if he is not to tremble as he takes, in solemn 
 reconciliation, the hand of the man whom he is about to 
 assassinate in the most perfidious manner. 
 
 I transcribe the whole of Hamlet's speech here, as it has 
 been made the grounds for an attack on his good faith and 
 truthfulness by Johnson, whose note on the passage is 
 
 I wish Hamlet had made some other defence ; it is unsuitable to the cha- 
 racter of a good or a brave man, to shelter himsslf in falsehood. 
 
 Malone's "Shakespeare" (edit. 1821), vol.-vii., p. 505. 
 
 Of course, Steevens greedily seizes on this accusation, and 
 adds it to his long list of charges against Hamlet; but I 
 believe it to be utterly unjust, and founded on a total miscon- 
 ception of this particular passage, and of Hamlet's character. 
 Let us see what it is that Hamlet says, and under what cir- 
 cumstances he says it : 
 
 Give me your pardon, sir : I've done you wrong ; 
 But pardon't, as you are a gentleman. 
 
A STUDY OF HAMLET. 105 
 
 This presence knows, 
 
 And you must needs have hoard, how I arn punish'd 
 
 With sore distraction. What I have done, 
 
 That might your nature, honour, and exception 
 
 Roughly awake, I here proclaim was madness. 
 
 Was't Hamlet wrong'd Laertes ? Never Hamlet : 
 
 If Hamlet from himself be ta'en away, 
 
 And when he's not himself does wrong Laertes, 
 
 Then Hamlet does it not, Hamlet denies it. 
 
 Who does it then ? His madness : if't be so, 
 
 Hamlet is of the faction that is wrong'd ; 
 
 His madness is poor Hamlet's enemy. 
 
 Sir, in this audience, 
 
 Let my disclaiming from a purposed evil 
 
 Free me so far in your most generous thoughts, 
 
 That I have shot mine arrow o'er the house, 
 
 And hurt my brother. 
 
 Now tliis apology, and I maintain that it is a most generous 
 and frank apology, has to be made in the presence of Claudius, 
 and of the courtiers before whom Hamlet had, for his own 
 purposes, assumed madness. He could not have ignored this 
 assumption ; he could not have said " The King and Queen 
 and all about the court have thought me mad, but I am not 
 mad at all ; I have been only pretending to be so ; I killed 
 your father by mistake," &c. &c., entering, in fact, into a long 
 explanation of that which it was imperatively necessary ho 
 should keep concealed. The madness which he alleges, as his 
 excuse, before Claudius and the others is the madness which 
 he had assumed ; but there was another madness, the " sore 
 distraction" into which the tragic calamities that had darkened 
 his young life had driven him, the terrible anguish of mind 
 which .he felt on hearing with such awful suddenness of his 
 beloved Ophelia's death. It was not untruthful of him to 
 say that he had killed Polonius, and had raved against Laertes 
 by the side of his' sister's grave, when in such a state of 
 mental agitation as might well be held .to excuse him from 
 any guilty intention. I do not see how Hamlet could pos- 
 sibly make a more open confession, under the circumstances, 
 than he does in the last four lines. It was such a confession 
 as might have induced Laertes to question him further when 
 alone ; but it was not a deliberate piece of falsehood, nor was 
 it so wanting in thoroughness and magnanimity but it should 
 have forced the most relentless spirit, however greatly 
 wronged, to pause in its work of vengeance. 
 
 The answer of Laertes is a perfect marvel of hypocrisy ; 
 one can hardly comprehend how any man could speak such 
 words to a friend whom he was about to murder : 
 
 LA.ER. I am satisfied in nature, 
 
 Whose motive, in this case, should stir me most 
 
 H 
 
106 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 To my revenge : but in my terms of honour 
 I stand aloof, and will no reconcilement, 
 Till by some elder masters of known honour 
 I have a voice and precedent of peace, 
 To keep my name ungored. But till that time 
 I do receive your offer'd love like love 
 And will not wrong it. 
 HAM. I embrace it freely, 
 
 And will this brother's wager frankly play. 
 
 It would really seem from the second sentence of this 
 speech that Laertes had forgotten the double treachery which 
 lie and Claudius had planned ; for it was, humanly speaking, 
 impossible that Hamlet could escape with his life, and yet 
 Laertes talks seriously here of appealing to a court of honour. 
 It was hardly worth his while to invent such a piece of 
 wanton duplicity ; and I cannot help thinking that this is 
 either an oversight of the poet's, or that he means us to 1111- 
 derstand that Laertes had in his rage consented to this 
 treachery, but that in his inmost mind he never had realised 
 its execution. This speech, if intentionally untrue, shows a 
 depth of falsehood almost incredible in one so young as 
 Laertes ; it is just what, had his better nature prevailed, we 
 should have expected him to say to Hamlet, and I believe 
 that we must suppose him to have forgotten, at the time he 
 spoke it, how base a part he was about to play. 
 
 Hamlet is full of gracious courtesy and elegant compli- 
 ment, as if endeavouring to efface from the minds of all who 
 had witnessed it his violent behaviour in the churchyard. 
 Kven for Claudius he has a gentle and polite answer : 
 
 HAM, Very well, my lord ; 
 
 Your grace has laid the odds* o' the weaker side. 
 
 There is a wonderful skill and power in the tragic touches 
 of this last scene which we, who know what is going to 
 happen, are apt to overlook. What can be more pathetic 
 than to see this noble-hearted, generous, youth falling with 
 such unsuspicious readiness into the treacherous plot, and by 
 his very fairness and courtesy making the guilt of his mur- 
 derers appear so much greater ? As unconsciously he goes 
 to his death all that is most amiable in his nature seems to 
 
 put forth itself : t.liP graf-ino- irflny, f.lin CQirinro vi^f) ]>[.!' yArrngg 
 
 t-hn letter contempt for the inferior natures 
 
 * This expression has given rise to much needless comment and ingenious 
 explanation. All that Hamlet means is that the King has "backed" the 
 weaker side in "backing " him. la betting language Hamlet should have 
 said " taken the odds. " The King sets the matter right in his answer, 
 telling Hamlet that, because Laertes had improved so much, therefore he 
 (the King) had got odds instead of an even bet. 
 
A STUDY OT 1 HAMLET. 107 
 
 around himJiave all disappeared in the Hamlet we have now 
 before us L and as we conlmsrtdnr- with the Hamlet of the 
 grave scene, we are forcibly reminded of the Queen's beau- 
 tiful description already quoted.* 
 
 Laertes would really seem to deserve the playful reproach 
 of Hamlet 
 
 you but dally ; 
 
 I pray you, pass with your best violence ; 
 I am afearcl you make a wanton of me 
 
 for he scruples, now it is in his hand, to use the treacherous 
 weapon. It may be, if he had not committed himself so 
 deeply with Claudius, in whose presence he felt an ignoble 
 shame at the idea of seeming to flinch from his deadly pur- 
 pose, Laertes' better feelings might even now have prevailed. 
 But it is too late : he rouses himself to action, attacks his 
 antagonist with the utmost vigour, meeting with a more 
 obstinate and skilful defence than he had anticipated. At last 
 he breaks down Hamlet's guard and wounds him ; both had 
 already become somewhat heated in the struggle, and the 
 slight pain which Hamlet would feel, though he does not 
 notice it, would serve to aggravate his excitement : their play 
 becomes wild, and in the scuffle Hamlet changes foils with 
 Laertesf and wounds him in turn. So completely absorbed 
 is he in this trial of skill that he seems to have forgotten for 
 the moment everything else, and does not even feel the wound, 
 or see the blood to which Horatio draws attention. But he 
 is soon brought back to a horrible consciousness of his tragic 
 surroundings, no less than of his own fate. His mother falls 
 on the ground in agony : Hamlet's first anxiety is for her ; 
 he does not even answer Horatio's imjuiry as to himself. The 
 Titanic hypocrisy of Claudius does not even now fail him ; 
 he cannot resist the temptation to lie, however useless it 
 may be : 
 
 KING. She s wounds to see them bleed. 
 
 Perhaps he thought Gertrude's love would even now be 
 stronger than aught else, and that she would with her dying 
 breath seek to conceal his infamy. But he is mistaken : 
 
 Qt'JiEN. No, no, the drink, the drink, my dear Hamlet, 
 The drink, the drink ! I am po;ao:i'd. 
 
 It is fit that the first denunciation of his treachery, which 
 was his death-warrant, should come from her who was at once 
 the cause, and the victim, of his heaviest crime. 
 
 * Sec Act V,, Scene 1 (lines 272-275). 
 f ftre Additional Notes, No. 17. 
 
108 A STUDY OFJUMLET. 
 
 Laertes makes all the atonement now in his power, and it 
 is remarkable that against him Hamlet neither expresses, nor 
 feels, any resentment. In the few moments that are left to 
 him of life he is all action ; the excitement sustains his 
 strength, even under the deadly effects of the poison, suffi- 
 ciently to enable him to stab the King, and, heedless of the 
 cry of "treason"* and the appeal for help which the wounded 
 wretch makes, to pour the poison, " temper' d by himself," 
 down the murderer's throat. The entreaty of Laertes 
 
 Exchange forgiveness with me, noble Hamlet : 
 Mine and my father's death come not upon thee, 
 Nor thine on me ! 
 
 is frankly and generously answered. It may be observed 
 that Laertes makes no allusion to Ophelia, and that Hamlet 
 does not stop to consider the difference in degree of their 
 respective guilt before he exchanges forgiveness with his 
 assassin. Though life is fast ebbing away, he yet has strength 
 to snatch the poisoned cup from Horatio, who could not bear 
 the idea of being parted from his friend even in death, and 
 to charge him with the solemn duty of vindicating his good 
 name ; the well-known lines in which with touching anxiety 
 he makes this last request are so beautiful that I cannot 
 refrain from quoting them : 
 
 good Horatio, what a wounded namo, 
 
 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. 
 
 The approach of the victorious Fortinbras, the sight of 
 whose energetic action had so keenly rebuked Hamlet's indo- 
 lent procrastination, and the arrival of the ambassadors from 
 England with the news of the success of his deadly stratagem 
 against Rosen crantz and Guildenstern, add to the dramatic 
 force of this closing scene. 
 
 Almost the last syllables he can utter are devoted to prac- 
 tical ends : there is no moralising now ; anxious as he is to 
 hear the fate of those false friends on whom he had taken so 
 terrible a revenge, he leaves the subject to urge with his 
 dying voice the claim of Fortinbras to the crown that should 
 
 * The courtiers seem inclined to defend the King ; but they are paralysed 
 with horror at the rapidly succeeding tragedies which arc being enacted 
 around them, and cowed by the resistless impetuosity of Hamlet. That 
 Claudius should be slain before the eyes of those whose servility he had 
 dfcne so much to gain, and not a hand be raised in his defence, is a just 
 retribution. 
 
A STUDY OF HAMLET. 109 
 
 have beeiijiis_own. Death overmasters him before he can 
 complete his directions to tloratio, and he expires with the 
 strange and pithy dogma in which his doubting creed is 
 summed up 
 
 The rest is silence. 
 
 Neitlierjiope, nor despair, as to the future, possesses his depart- 
 ing soul : his religion is a resigned uncertainty better than a 
 fretful doubt, but infinitely below the sweet hope, and humble 
 trust, of a true Christian. 
 
 With the death of Hamlet the play virtually ends. Hora- 
 tio's farewell 
 
 Good night, sweet prince, 
 And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest ! 
 
 recalls Hamlet's own words, " to die, to sleep." The entry of 
 Fortinbras and the ambassadors is necessary merely to com- 
 plete the story, We may, perhaps, regret that Shakespeare 
 never felt impelled to write the speech of Horatio over the 
 bodies of Hamlet and the others. Had he done so, it would 
 have formed a splendid parallel to that of Antony over the 
 body of Csesar. 
 
 " The rest is silence." These are the very words that rise 
 to our lips as we look back upon the mighty work which we 
 have thus followed, step by step, from its solemn beginning 
 to its tragical end. Through what scenes of infinite variety 
 have we travelled ; what marvellous insight into human 
 nature have we attained ! Admiration may well be dumb, 
 for such creative power as that which called these characters 
 into existence seems to us almost more than human. The 
 mind may well ponder in silence on the great problems which 
 the history of Hamlet presents ; the soul_magjjHl 
 
 ' 
 
 _ 
 
 in awej,s.siaJiDiiteniplates thoselnysteries' whicji have wrung 
 this noble heart with such agony of incertitude! Tt"he contest 
 betweeii~doub~E~find faith is finished : and in the boundless 
 ocean of eternity this storm-tossed spirit, let us trust, has 
 found rest and peace at last. 
 
 We have traced his faltering steps from the day when the 
 eager energy, and hungry love, of his youth were paralysed 
 and blighted by the crime which robbed one parent of life, 
 and the other of that sacred right to love and honour, with* 
 out which a mother's name is to her son but . a terrible 
 inheritance of infamy. We have seen him, while scarcely able 
 to sustain the burden of this groat sorrow, yet laden in addi- 
 tion with a charge of vengeance, which he gladly embraces 
 as a sacred duty, but perpetually scruples to fulfil. In spite 
 of his constant hesitation, of his overstrained conscientious- 
 
110 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 ness, of Ins fitful aiid fruitless energy, of liis misplaced tender- 
 ness and his equally misplaced bitterness in spite of the 
 painful contrast between the vigour of his words and the 
 feebleness of his actions, we have seen so much that is noble, 
 and generous, and grand in. his character, that, in spite of all 
 his weakness, we honour him as much as we love him. When 
 we analyse this feeling, we find that our admiration for 
 Hamlet is chiefly excited by the strong love of virtue and 
 hatred of vice which never fail to distinguish him.^and from 
 the excess_o| ^vhio.h hia vp.ry worst faults arise. Nor is his 
 standard of right and wrong based on that comfortable com- 
 promise with Heaven, which is the foundation of the world's 
 morality. Every character in the play, with the exception of 
 Horatio and Ophelia, represents some type of such morality, 
 from the plausible murderer, Claudius, to the harmless but 
 ridiculous " waterfly," Osric. With all these Hamlet is in a 
 state of antagonism. It matters nothing that we ourselves 
 may not have the courage to do 'anything but swim with the 
 stream, and bow our heads gracefully b,efore the wind of 
 popular opinion ; our own pliability in no way interferes 
 with the admiration that we feel for the uncompromising scorn 
 with which Hamlet ridicules, exposes, and denounces, the 
 falseness and baseness of those around him. 
 
 What, then, is the chief moral defect of Hamlet's character ? 
 " L'Amleto ce il dubbio," says Signor Salvini,* in his musical 
 voice, and witli that charming manner which almost carries 
 conviction with it. " Doubt " or " hesitation " is certainly 
 one main characteristic of Hamlet's nature, and it may arise, 
 in great part, from his over-reflective habit of mind. But the 
 " diagnosis," so to speak, of this mental disease of " hesita- 
 tion " it is difficult to determine. It seems to me that the 
 principal flaw in Hamlet's character is the want of humility, 
 and consequently of faith. I do not mean that humility 
 which is the brightest jewel in the martyr's crown, that 
 patient and cheerful submission to every provocation, that 
 glorious self-abasement which our Saviour first taught and 
 practised ; but rather that humility -which is the backbone 
 of enthusiasm, which consists of a complete subordination of 
 one's own prejudicesjmd desires and~wlll to some great pur- 
 
 * In a conversation which I had the privilege of enjoying with the great 
 1 taliaii actor, he drew an eloquent comparison between Hamlet and Orestes, 
 whose circumstances present so much similarity, while their characters form 
 BO great a contrast. It would be interesting to know if reading the story 
 of Orestes suggested to Shakespeare the creation of Hamlet's character. 
 Horatio, the "Pylades" of Hamlet, has no parallel in the old history of 
 Saxo Orammaticus. 
 
A STL'DY <)F HAMLET. Ill 
 
 pose, and_oL a belief, so thorough and unquestioning in the 
 justice of that purpose, as torender any hesitation, in one's 
 efforts to accomplish it, impossible. Had Hamlet possessed 
 this humility ho would never have doubted for one moment 
 that the Ghost's charge of vengeance was to be fulfilled at 
 any cost; he would never have thought of the consequences 
 to his body or" to his soul; but wnnld havp. npp.nly slain 
 ClaudjusTand would have stood before tliejeople with the 
 blooTTTfesh on his hands, indifferent as to their judgment and 
 fearless of their punishment. Such humility does not always 
 lend itself to the accomplishment of great or good ends; the 
 fanatic shares it with the enthusiast, the assassin with the 
 liberator. 
 
 Thp.jvn.Tit-. nf_fm't,h in Ha.in1pt.'a p.1in.yap.f.gv is very remarkable. 
 It is true he believes the Ghost at first, the more readily 
 because its revelation confirms his suspicion ; but he puts, off 
 acting on his belief from clay, to day, and ultimately reveals 
 the fact that he has been harassed by doubts as to the iden- 
 tity of the Spirit which assumed his " noble father's person;" 
 not beingjiontent till he had confirmed its statement by a 
 device of his own contrivance, sufficiently ingenious, but not 
 infallible, and whiclranyrmrey who had real faith in the super- 
 natural messenger, would have thought it neither necessary, 
 nor becoming, to employ. In many other instances does 
 Hamlet show how little certainty there was in his faith even 
 on the most solemn subjects; he does not disbelieve, but 
 neither does he believe ; he wishes to do -^Jinlhjs mi ml p.nn , 
 not refrain from questioning everything which is not capable 
 (Dfjabs^lute^roof.^ I do not for one moment believe that 
 Shakespeare intended to. represent Hamlet as an infidel, but 
 rather as one of those men, whom we meet not unfrequently 
 in real life, who are deficient in that intellectual humility 
 which is content to receive supernatural truths on some 
 grounds other than natural evidence. The moral natures of 
 such men are frequently of the noblest and purest type ; but 
 their practical power for good, in this world, is fettered by a 
 constant tendency to doubt the principles of their faith just 
 at the very moment when that prompt action, which can only 
 spring from perfect trust and entire conviction, is necessary. 
 
 The metaphysical theories which have been put forward as 
 explanations of the problem which Hamlet's character pre- 
 sents are numberless. Some of them are ridiculously far- 
 fetched, while others are evolved more from the writer's own 
 mind than from the text of Shakespeare. I do not wish to 
 wrest a moral from this play, which its contents do not justify, 
 
A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 merely because it may accord with my own moral or religious 
 opinions. But I think an unprejudiced mind cannot fail to 
 be struck by the coincidence that this wonderful psycholo- 
 gical work, which seems to bear more strongly than any the 
 impress of the author's own mind, should have been written 
 tit a time when this country had just broken away from the 
 old Faith, and had abandoned unquestioning obedience to the 
 Church's authority for a partial submission to private judg- 
 ment. The Catholic religion still represented, to many who 
 had separated from Koine, all that was definite in their faith ; 
 their hearts still yearned towards that communion, and they 
 were trying to reconcile their consciences to a compromise 
 which was morally impossible. They could not see, or they 
 would not acknowledge, that imperfection is a necessary 
 quality of humanity ; and therefore that abuses and scandals 
 must exist as long as the ministers and disciples of religion 
 are men ; but that the way to get rid of these evils was not 
 to break away from the Church, but to conform more rigidly 
 to her Divine precepts. These men wished to preserve most 
 of the dogmas of Catholicism, while they reserved to them- 
 selves the right to reject the authority on which their dogmas 
 rested. The consequence was that they involved themselves 
 in a moral dilemma ; they began by asserting that each indi- 
 vidual was bound to question the grounds of his faith by the 
 aid of his own reason, and that thus he would arrive at truth ; 
 but having once admitted this power of questioning what 
 claimed to be revelation, it was impossible to limit the exer- 
 cise of that power ; so that many minds were tossed about 
 upon a fathomless sea of doubt, hopelessly uncertain which 
 way to steer, no longer believing in their compass, and dis- 
 trustful of the very stars by which otherwise they might 
 have directed their course. Truth after truth, which men 
 had long cherished as Divine, was condemned before a self- 
 constituted court of human judges, till to some minds nothing 
 in this world seemed certain or secure ; and the very founda- 
 tions of Christianity were shaken beyond repair by the same 
 storm that had shattered the pinnacles of the edifice. 
 
 Of such minds Hamlet's is a striking type, and the creation 
 of his character might well be the outcome of an intellect 
 perplexed and agitated by such doubts as I have described, 
 with a yearning desire to be convinced, but with its powers 
 of conviction hopelessly debilitated. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 APPENDIX A. 
 
 THE EARLY LIFE OF HAMLET. 
 
 IN order that we may understand more clearly the exact position 
 in which Hamlet was placed, and the state of mind in which we 
 find him when first introduced upon the scene, I have ventured to 
 construct a brief ideal sketch of the events which preceded the 
 death of Hamlet's father. The materials for this sketch I have 
 derived partly from a study of the play itself, and partly by 
 endeavouring, to the best of my power, to bring my imagination 
 into harmony with the various characters and events described by 
 Shakespeare. Following the example of Shakespeare, I have not 
 attempted any strict accuracy with regard to the characteristics of 
 the exact period at which Hamlet may be supposed to have lived. 
 The manners and customs as portrayed by Shakespeare in this 
 play, though not copied from those of his own time, are modernised 
 sufficiently to ensure the sympathy of his auditors, without losing 
 the picturesqueness which belongs to antiquity. 
 
 It was about twenty-five years" before the time when the play 
 opens, that Hamlet the elder, having been challenged to single 
 combat by Fortinbras,| a Prince of Norway, defeated and slew his 
 challenger ; thereby gaining the whole of Fortinbras' territory, which 
 he had staked 011 the result of this combat, against an equal part of 
 the territory of Denmark. On the very day when his father achieved 
 this victory, Hamlet was born; if the lands won by the valour of 
 King Hamlet remained in the undisputed 'possession of Denmark 
 
 * The ago of Hamlet is generally held to have been thirty, chiefly on the 
 authority of the passage in Act V. , Scene 1 , where the First Gravediggcr 
 says that he had been sexton " man and boy thiity years," and that he tirst 
 came to the trade the day Hamlet was born. But in the Appendix 
 I have discussed the question as to how far that passage is to be 
 relied on as an authoritative statement of Hamlet's age. I believe Shake 
 speare intended him to be about twenty-five years old, certainly not more. 
 * t Sec Appendix N. + See Act V., Scene 1, lines 135-140. 
 
 I 
 
114 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 until the son of Fortinbras, at the date when the play commences, 
 set out on an expedition, the object of which, though not openly 
 declared, was the forcible recovery of these same lands. 
 
 It does not appear that the peace of Denmark was threatened by 
 any foe during the remainder of the reign of King Hamlet. The 
 proof which he had given of high personal courage endeared him 
 to all his subjects ; and it would seem that, content with the repu- 
 tation for military valour which he had thus gained, he devoted 
 himself to the education of his only son, and to pursuits of a more 
 contemplative and philosophical nature, than those in favour with 
 the majority of his court.' 1 ' If his marriage with Gertrude was 
 blessed by any more offspring, we do not know ; but as no mention is 
 ever made by young Hamlet of any brother or sister, we may presume 
 that he remained the sole object of his parent's aifection : that he 
 was, in the strongest sense of the term, his father's son, is evident ; 
 and, from the moment when he began to speak, we may imagine 
 that father and son were nearly inseparable. King Hamlet doubt- 
 less infused into the mind of his darling boy that tendency to 
 dreamy speculation which we find so strongly developed in him ; 
 we may be sure that the father's energies were concentrated 
 on the education of him who daily became a more and more con- 
 genial companion ; whose mind, expanding under the loving care 
 bestowed upon it, might even have ventured on more ambitious 
 nights, and penetrated further into that dim region of fascinating 
 mystery, which then enshrouded the phenomena of nature, than 
 that of his teacher. Few indeed were the writers whom they could 
 study together : some ancient Christian writings ; some manu- 
 scripts of the classics j the wild legends of the various Norse 
 tribes; the sagas banded down by tradition from one half- 
 savage sea-king to another ; a score or so of rude plays, chiefly 
 known only in fragments and by memory ; some few books 
 of crude philosophy, deeply tinged with the romantic credulity and 
 legendary mysticism of the semi-barbarous authors ; such, unless 
 we stretch anachronism to its furthest limit, must have been the 
 chief food which nourished the eagerly acquisitive mind of the 
 young Prince. We may add some old chansons and ballads, which 
 
 * That he did not abandon military exercises or habits might be surmised 
 from the fact that his ghost appears in full armour ; but it is evident that 
 Shakespeare intended him to appear in the same guise as he wore when he 
 overcame Fortinbras (see Act I., Scene 1, lines 58 61). 
 MAR. Is it not like the king ? 
 
 Hon. As thou art to thyself : 
 
 Such was the very armour he had on 
 When he the ambitious Norway combated ; 
 
 Surely this passage places beyond all doubt the fact that when the Ghost 
 reappears in Act III., Scene 4, he should wear, not the warrior's suit of 
 mail that he wore before, but some other more peaceful dress : for this 
 reason Hamlet says with such, emphasis 
 
 My father, in his habit as he lived ! 
 
 (See Park II., page 50, where I have insisted on this point.) 
 1 
 
APPENDIX. 115 
 
 were preserved from mouth to mouth, and few, if any, of which 
 would exist in writing. It would not be safe to speculate on the 
 curriculum of the University of Wittenbiug,* but we may safely 
 conjecture that it was not so complete as the more celebrated one 
 of Gottenburg. It must be remembered that we are dealing, not 
 with that hopelessly obscure shadow, the Hamlet of Saxo-Gramma- 
 ticus, but with Shakespeare's complex creation, the chronology of 
 which is vague and fanciful. 
 
 As to the religion of Hamlet, Shakespeare has wisely abstained 
 from any definite, details on tin ; poir.t : there are some expression;-, 
 such as those of the ghost, " uiiliouscrd " and " miand'cl," plainly 
 borrowed from Catholic ritual ; Shakespeare uses these by poetical 
 license ; he probably intended us to understand some rude form o' 
 Christianity as i-:.isting in Denmark at the time.t Hamlet uses th-.: 
 expression " I will go pray;" and although the poet has wisely 
 abstained from putting any dogmatic expressions into the mouth 
 of his hero, it is evident that Hamlet was deeply imbued with the 
 spirit of reverence for the Divine Creator, and with a love of virtue 
 and a hatred of vice far beyond most of his compeers. 
 
 Let us imagine Hamlet, now grown into a handsome and 
 graceful youth, the idol of his father, the pride of his mother, in 
 Ophelia's beautiful words 
 
 The expectancy and rose of the fair state, 
 The glass of fashion and the mould of form- 
 let us picture how his days were passed at that grand old castle 
 of Elsinore. Horatio and Laertes were his two most loved com- 
 panions, with whom he would engage in feats of activity or trials 
 of skill, generally coming off the victor, except when his dreamy 
 nature got the better of him ; and then he would be roused by 
 some sudden ignominious defeat, in a bout with the rapiers, or a 
 tilt at the quintain, and would put forth all his energy, wringing 
 victory from his worthy competitors, who would be the first to join 
 in the hearty applause which greeted the efforts of their darling 
 prince. "We can picture Ophelia looking on, drinking deeply of 
 that sweet poison of love, dreaming happy dreams which were 
 never to be realised. Later in the day Hamlet might be wandering 
 by his father's side along the edge of those grand rugged cliffs on 
 which the castle stood ; the two, sitting down and gazing into the 
 blue depths beneath them, recalling some wild legend of syrens or 
 mermaids, or of those weird monsters with which the rude 
 imagination of our forefathers peopled the sea ; sitting, perhaps, on 
 that very spot to which, but a few years afterwards, the armed 
 
 * The University of Wittenburg was not founded till 1502 ; but in this 
 passage I am supposing that such an university existed in the time of Hamlet. 
 t See the speech of Marcellus, Act I., Scene 1 
 
 Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes 
 Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated, 
 And also the churchyard scene, Act V., Scene 1. 
 
 I '2 
 
116 A -STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 phantom of the father, " clad in complete steel," led the awe-struck 
 son to listen to that solemn legacy of vengeance beneath the 
 burden of which he sank. 
 
 Meanwhile, slowly but surely, the seeds of misery and crime were 
 being sown in that household ; spite of that reverential fondness for 
 his wife, that noble love which went " hand-iii-hand even with the 
 vow he made .to her in marriage ; " spite of his god-like beauty of 
 person, his sweet gentleness of heart, Gertrude was becoming day 
 by day estranged from her husband. She could not enter into the 
 dreamy philosophy which was the charm of his own and of his son's 
 life ; and, not unnaturally, she would be thrown more and more into 
 the society of Claudius, whose coarse and sensuous nature fitted 
 him, much more than his brother, to preside over the rude hospi- 
 talities which were a necessity of royal households in .those days.* 
 Claudius loved barbaric splendour and show ; while King Hamlet 
 was nothing loth often to resign to him his seat at the head of 
 the well-spread board ; especially when flagon after flagon of wine 
 had to be drained to the health of the noble guests, or in honour 
 of some of the reigning beauties. Gertrude, woman-like, lovect 
 pageantry and revelry ; to her it was dull to sit and listen to war- 
 like sagas, or wild legends, such as her husband loved to hear 
 recited ; she grew day by day to look on the King as a being far 
 above her, and to feel more and more sympathy with the showy 
 qualities, the animal spirits, and the plausible gallantry of Claudius, 
 who saw, in the growing neglect by his brother of the more orna- 
 mental duties of his royal office, a channel by which he might 
 creep into popular favour, to court which he spared no labour. 
 
 The contrast between the two brothers grew stronger with every 
 year of the elder's reign. The qualities of King Hamlet were pre- 
 cisely those which courtiers and mob would least comprehend, or 
 value, in the time of peace. When there was any heroic deed of 
 valour to be, done, the nobility of his nature would show forth 
 itself with such splendour as completely to dazzle the eyes of all 
 the uncliscerning, no less than of the discerning. Ihit as long as 
 there were only State ceremonies, royal banquets, or military dis- 
 
 * It has occurred to me that it is just possible Shakespeare might have 
 glanced obliquely at Henry VIII. in the character of Claudius. It may be 
 said .that any disrespectful allusion to her father's marriage with his 
 brother's widow would not have been tolerated by Elizabeth ; but by 
 insisting on the incestuous nature of such an union Shakespeare might well 
 have expected to please the daughter of Anno Boleyn, who with all her 
 pride in her father could scarcely have forgot the humiliation to which she 
 had been subjected in her youth. 1 do not for one moment intend to 
 suggest any parallel between Gertrude and the virtuous Catherine of 
 Arragon. Shakespeare has done that much- wronged Queen full justice in 
 another play. The question as to when Henry VIII. was first represented 
 would have to be determined before the conjecture I have hazarded could 
 he discussed. But the main features of Claudius's character are sufficiently 
 like those of the Great Tudor King's to render it at least as plausible as 
 many other conjectures in connection, with the prototype? of Shakespeare's 
 characters. 
 
A1TKND1X. 117 
 
 plays, to vary the monotony of court life, Claudius could easily out- 
 shine him, and could win the admiration of the vulgar ; the many 
 virtues of King Hamlet, the lofty dignity of his presence, the noble 
 grace of his manner, were eclipsed by the supple condescension, 
 the smiling familiarity, the plausible good humour, of Claudius. 
 We can imagine the two brothers taking part in some royal pro- 
 cession ; the King riding by, with his darling son by his side, bow- 
 ing graciously in. acknowledgment of the salutations of the crowd ; 
 but on his beautiful face a far-off expression, as if he were ab- 
 sorbed in some region of thought higher than the scene around him ; 
 smiling rarely, save when he turned towards the young prince : 
 the crowd greeted him, as he ptissed, with reverence, some with 
 love j but their heartiest cheers were for the gorgeously dressed 
 Claudius, who followed, lavishing on all around him smiles that 
 seemed full of cordiality and kind-heartedness*; going out of his way 
 to recognise some slight acquaintance, or to kiss his hand in com- 
 plimentary admiration of some pretty face : full of rude but good- 
 humoured jests ; in short, brimming over with those coarse -animal 
 spirits which are so attractive to common-place minds. Many a 
 sturdy Danish citizen might turn round to his companion and 
 whisper some such words as these : " The King's all very well in 
 his way, but he's too solemn for me ; give me Claudius, jovial 
 Claudius ; " and then would come a shout of " Bravo, Claudius !". 
 
 At court the eiforts of this amiable brother to gain popularity 
 were neither less strenuous nor less successful. He flattered and 
 cajoled everyone, from the Lord Chamberlain downwards, making 
 it his business to humour all their weaknesses and vanities, as well 
 as to gratify their senses with grand banquets and lavish entertain- 
 ments. The growing unfitness of Hamlet the elder for the task of 
 government, his neglect of ceremonies and outward shows, his pas- 
 sion for retirement, and his absorption in philosophical studies, 
 were all brought into prominence : while the eccentric disposition of 
 the young prince was good-naturedly ridiculed ; his irresolution, 
 his spasmodic activity, his impulsive generosity, his reckless uncon- 
 ventionality, were subjects of court gossip ; his amiability, his 
 noble and lovable nature were artfully praised ; while his talent for 
 practical administration, his fitness for the duties of a king, espe- 
 cially in any crisis of the State, were denied. Before he 
 ventured to take his brother's life, Claudius had made sure of 
 securing his crown with the consent of the majority of the servile 
 unprincipled creatures who surrounded the throne. 
 
 How long the intrigue between this double -traitor and the Queen 
 had been going on before the murder of King Hamlet we have no 
 means of ascertaining. No doubt passion had less to do with the 
 crime of Claudius than ambition ; he saw that an intrigue with his 
 brother's Queen would secure for him a very important ally in his 
 designs on the throne ; her manifest partiality for him suggested 
 the idea of compromising her so far as to render his pretension to 
 
118 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 her husband's place on the throne, as well as in her heart, one 
 which she at least could never oppose. It is likely that as their 
 intimacy became closer, and they became bound by the almost in- 
 dissoluble tie of mutual guilt, Claudius came to conceive as much 
 affection for Gertrude as his selfish and debased nature could enter- 
 tain for any human being ;* but his love was never so absorbing or 
 self-devoted as to offer any excuse for his crime. 
 
 Having secured the affection, or the caprice, or the passion of 
 Gertrude by whichever term we may choose to designate that 
 vicious impulse which teaches women but too often to betray a 
 generous and loving husband for the sake of a mean and selfish 
 lover and having laid the foundations of a popularity, both with 
 the common people and the courtiers, sufficient to warrant his 
 usurpation-j- of the crown in the event of the King's death, it only 
 remained for Claudius to bring about that event in such a manner 
 
 * If we are to believe his own words to Laertes, he was completely en- 
 thralled by his love (Aob IV., Scene 7). Laertes has asked why Claudius 
 did not proceed against Hamlet for having attempted his life, to which the 
 King answers 
 
 O, for two special reasons, 
 
 "Which may to you perhaps seem much unsinew'd, 
 
 But yet to me they're strong. The queen his mother* 
 
 Lives almost by his looks ; and for myself 
 
 My virtue or my plague, be it either which 
 
 She's so conjunctive to my life and soul, 
 
 That, as the star moves not but in his sphere, 
 
 I could not but by her. 
 
 But as he had already taken the mosfe treacherous steps to procure the death 
 of Hamlet, it is evident that his tender dread of wounding Gertrude's feel- 
 ings on that point was not so strong but that prudential reasons might 
 overcome it ; and, as he goes on to allege another reason why he shrank 
 from punishing Hamlet, namely, the affection entertained for him by the 
 people, we shall not be doing Claudius a great injustice if we believe that 
 the latter reason was the more cogent one of the two. We have another 
 incident in the play by which we can test the strength of the love which 
 Claudius bore to Gertrude : in the last scene of all, when the Queen takes up 
 the poisoned cup, surely a man who loved her so passionately and devotedly, 
 as from the above declaration to Laertes we should expect to find Claudius 
 did, would have dashed the cup out of her hand, before she could drink from 
 it, at any risk : but he contents himself with exclaiming 
 
 Gertrude, do not drink. 
 
 It may be said that dramatic exigency is responsible for this, as the Queen 
 was to be killed somehow or other, and this was the easiest way ; but I do 
 not believe the end of this play to be careless or haphazard work on Shake- 
 speare's part ; I believe it to be carefully planned and consistent, and that 
 we must regard Claudius as being so intent upon his treacherous design 
 against the life of Hamlet that he cares for little else. 
 
 ^ I have used the word usurpation, though the crown of Denmark might, 
 as Steevens and others maintain, have been an elective one ; yet I cannot 
 but think that Shakespeare intended to represent the kingdom of Denmark 
 as possessing the same legalised custom which existed in most other 
 countries namely, that the eldest son, failing any actual disqualification, 
 should succeed to the crown. The coronation of Claudius might have been 
 sanctioned by the Council only on condition that Hamlet should be recog- 
 nised as his successor. 
 
APPENDIX, 11'.) 
 
 as not to excite the suspicions of the most influential persons 
 around the throne. 
 
 In order to carry out the last part of his scheme, the absence of 
 Prince Hamlet was necessary ; whether that was effected at the in- 
 stigation of Claudius, or by the voluntary act of the Prince himself, 
 does not appear. It is possible that he had been at Wittenberg some 
 time when he received the news of his father's death, but it is more 
 probable that he had returned there after a short stay at Elsinore,* 
 during which his love for Ophelia had taken more definite shape, 
 and had even been allowed to grow insensibly into an engagement 
 by which, though no troth had been absolutely pledged by either, 
 each felt silently bound to the other. As yet there had been 110 
 interference with their love, but during this last stay of Hamlet's 
 at Elsinore the suspicions of Polonius had been aroused, -j- The 
 letter | which he reads to the King (Act II., Scene 2), if not 
 written from Wittenberg, was sent to Ophelia by Hamlet shortly 
 
 * This may seem at variance with what f have said in the text (page 16 
 near the bottom of page), but I only intended there to express my belief 
 that Hamlet's boyhood and youth, up to the time of his going to the Uni* 
 versity, were passed in his father's palace, 
 f Polonius says, Act L, Scene 3, lines 91*95-^- 
 
 'Tis told me, he hath very oft of late 
 
 Given private time to you, and you yourself 
 
 Have of your audience been most free and bounteous : 
 
 If it be so as so 'tis put on me, 
 
 And that in way of caution 
 
 which would seem to be at variance with what he says to the King, Act II., 
 Scene 2, lines 131-133 
 
 When I had seen this hot love on the wing, 
 
 As I perceived it, I must tell you that, 
 
 Before my daughter told me, 
 
 It may be that Hamlet's attachment to Ophelia seemed of little importance 
 to the courtiers and others during the life of the King his father, but 
 assumed greater importance now that the young prince was acknowledged 
 by all parties to be in the position of heir- apparent to the throne. The 
 expression, ' of late, ' cannot be held to refer to the very short period which 
 had elapsed since the death of the King ; for it is not probable that being 
 in the state of dejection in which we iind him, Hamlet would have found 
 time to pay such marked attentions to Ophelia as to arouse suspicions, for 
 the iirst time, of his relations towards her. 
 I This letter, it may be remembered, runs thus : 
 
 'To the celestial, and my soul's idol, the most beautified Ophelia,' . 
 
 ' In her excellent white bosom, these,' &c. 
 
 t ....* 
 
 ' Doubt thou the stars are fire ; 
 Doubt that the sun doth move ; 
 Doubt truth to be a liar ; 
 But never doubt I love. 
 
 ' dear Ophelia, I am ill at these numbers ; I have not art to reckon my 
 groans : but that I love thee best, most best, believe it. Adieu. 
 
 ' Thine evermore, most dear lady, whilst this 
 machine is to him, HAMLET. ' 
 
120 A STUXY OF HAMLET. 
 
 after the period at which the piay opens ; ana was probably 
 given to Polonius by her in the interval between Act II., Scene 1, 
 and the subsequent Scene. It is the only letter which Ophelia 
 seems to have shown to her father, and considering its affected 
 style and brevity, we may conclude that she made less 
 objection to showing it than she would have made, if it had 
 been expressed in more natural language. This letter, indeed, pre- 
 sents many difficulties :"" it would almost seem, at first sight, to be 
 written purposely to puzzle those into whose hands it might fall, 
 and impress them with an idea of the writer's being out of his 
 mind ; but a much more probable explanation is, that it was 
 written in answer to some self-reproach or remonstrance from 
 Ophelia on account of his apparent neglect of her, and under the con- 
 straint of the great shock his mind had received, when he could 
 not even turn his thoughts towards the object of his love without 
 great effort. It is plain, from Ophelia's language, Act II., Scene 1 
 
 as you did command, 
 I did repel his letters and denied 
 His access to me 
 
 that Hamlet, after the letter, did not abandon his suit ;-j- so that all 
 question as to the sincerity of this letter, whatever be its date, is 
 set at rest. Of the effect likely to be produced upon Hamlet's mind 
 by this enforced coldness of Ophelia at such a time, I have spoken 
 in the text (page 25). 
 
 But let us revert to the condition of affairs when Hamlet left for 
 Wittenberg. The parting between father and son was, doubtless, 
 a most sad one*; in the mind of the younger there might be some 
 strange foreboding, indefinite in shape, never uttered, but centred 
 in the person of that uncle whose plausible cordiality was less likely 
 to deceive a keen-witted young man, and one who had such a de- 
 testation of insincerity as Hamlet had : but this suspicion was con- 
 
 * See Appendix D. In the Quarto, 1603, Polonius distinctly says that 
 it was owing to the discovery of this letter that he forbade Ophelia 
 to hold anymore intercourse with Hamlet. Sec Allen's Reprint of "The 
 Devonshire Hamlets," p. 33 : 
 
 CORAMBLS (i.e. POLONIUS). Now when I saw this letter, thus I bespake 
 my maiden : 
 
 Lord Hamlet is a prince out of your starre, 
 And one that is unequall for your love : 
 Therefore I did command her refuse his letters, 
 Deny his tokens, and to absent herself e,' 1 &c. 
 
 This difference is very striking, and cannot have arisen from any mere 
 carelessness in transcription. 
 
 t The ' letters ' mentioned by Ophelia probably contained appeals to her 
 sympathy and remonstrances with her on account of her coldness to him : 
 it is only fair, in estimating Hamlet's conduct to Ophelia, to remember how 
 inexplicable to him must have appeared her obstinate silence at such a time. 
 Ophelia's implicit obedience to her father is a most important point in her 
 character. 
 
AITKNDIX. ^ 
 
 fined to Claudius ; not the shadow of a cloud besmirched the 
 lustre of his mother's purity. 
 
 His darling boy gone, the lonely father, surrounded by uncon- 
 genial minds, turned back with a heavy heart to the home which 
 had lost its dearest charm. True, his queen was there ; but 
 while his manner to her was always tender, gentle, and full 
 of that dignified courtesy which noble natures ever display towards 
 women, he could not but feel there was something lacking. Medi- 
 tative natures are not the least selfish : philosophy, ' divine con- 
 templation/ mystic dreaminess, usurped more and more of his 
 time ; his thoughts soared farther and farther away from that narrow 
 spot of earth where such a terrible tragedy was preparing, of which 
 he himself was to be the first victim. Gertrude found it easier to 
 silence the voice of conscience the more she was left to the two 
 alternatives, solitude, or the companionship of Claudius ; passion 
 makes but short work of idle hours ; where the mind lacks resources 
 the devil's work is easy : the treacherous brother left her no time 
 to think ; the slightest sigh of remorse, the slightest tremor of 
 guilt, was smothered with fervid kisses, or crushed by the pressure 
 of a devoted hand. The time was come to destroy the only ob- 
 stacle to his ambition and to his passion the opportunity was 
 easily found. llegularly, after his frugal meal was finished, the 
 King would steal away from the table, glad to escape from the 
 revelry which he detested, and snatch an hour's repose in the 
 privacy of his orchard : to follow him unobserved was easy ; the 
 poison is poured into the ear of the unsuspecting sleeper ; the mur- 
 derer repairs to the banqueting room, and the carouse is prolonged, 
 so that as much time may elapse as possible before any search may 
 be made for the King : his absence would not be observed till 
 evening came ; the body is found : no mark of violence is visible ; 
 from some quiet corner the rumour is set about that poisonpus 
 snakes have been seen in the orchard ; that the King has received 
 his death-wound from one ; the superstitious horror, attaching to 
 those reptiles, makes this suggestion readily received ; due lamen- 
 tation is made by the living ; due honours are paid to the dead. 
 '. Claudius receives the Court with a well-compounded expression of 
 grief and patriotic anxiety on his features, and a large mourning- 
 cloak wrapped round his form a pattern of brotherly affliction ; 
 while the widow at home keeps her waiting- women well employed 
 as spectators of, and ministers to, her passionate lamentation. 
 
 But little now remains to be done to bring the excellent Clau- 
 dius' plans to perfection. The young prince is away at college ; 
 the times are troublous ; danger threatens the State ; a firm hand 
 is needed to guide the helm : the young Hamlet is amiable, clever, 
 no one has a word to say against his character, but is he the 
 man for the hour ] What if Claudius would act as regent ? or, 
 could he be persuaded to step in, and save the throne threatened 
 by the attack of the fiery young Fortinbras 1 The heart-broken 
 
122 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 brother lays aside his heavy mourning-cloak, and listens graciously 
 to the entreaties of the patriotic courtiers; he loves his nephew de- 
 votedly, as he loved his dear lost brother but he loves his country 
 more still he fears the cares the burdens of royalty just now 
 might be too heavy for him. If the widowed Queen would but let 
 him try and fill his brother's place ! if she would consent to a marriage 
 with her son's natural guardian ! the succession would be secured 
 to that son, and the throne saved from all dangers. But no time 
 must be lost Fortinbras and his desperate levies are on the point 
 of embarking ; instant preparation for war must be made. The 
 people have no time to think. The nobles of the court are so 
 bewildered with cajoleries and gorged with bribes, small wonder if 
 their respectable consciences are caught napping. In the bustle of 
 fitting out men and ships, and forging implements of war,* busy 
 natures find their immediate and safest employment ; Claudius is 
 crowned king ; the hasty wedding takes place, so hastily that there 
 is no leisure to reflect upon its propriety ; and when Hamlet 
 arrives in sorrowful haste from Wittenberg, -|- yearning to throw 
 himself into his mother's arms, and weep upon her sympathising 
 breast, he finds that breast palpitating with the emotions of 
 an affianced bride ; he finds the father's brother has proved a 
 more effectual comforter than the father's son can ever hope to be. 
 
 * See Act I., Scene 1, Marcellus' speech, lines 7078: 
 
 tell me, he that knows, 
 
 Why this same strict and most observant watch 
 So nightly toils the subject of the land, 
 And why such daily cast of brazen cannon, 
 And foreign mart for implements of war ; 
 Why such impress of shipwrights, whose sore task 
 Does not divide the Sunday from the week ; 
 What might be toward, that this sweaty haste 
 Doth make the night joint-labourer with the day : 
 
 t That Hamlet was absent from Elsinore at the time of his father's 
 murder we cannot doubt ; for he could not have been so ignorant of the 
 alleged circumstances of his father's death as he appears to have been from 
 the care with which the Ghost impresses them upon him in their solemn 
 interview. Nor can we conceive that Claudius' plot could have met with 
 the success it did had not the young Prince been absent : the King's allusion 
 to his desire to return to Wittenberg (Act I., Scene 2, lines 112-113) points 
 to the same conclusion. But that he must have arrived in time for the 
 funeral would appear from his allusion in the first soliloquy to Gertrude's 
 demeanour (Act I., Scene 2, lines 147-149) 
 
 or ere those shoes were old 
 With which she follow'd my poor father's body, 
 Like Niobe, all tears : 
 
 and still more from the lines in Hamlet's speech to the Ghost (Act I., 
 Scene 4, lines 47-48) 
 
 why the sepulchre, 
 Wherein ire saw thee quietly inurn'd, 
 
 which would seem to set the question at rest. The use of the word ' cere- 
 ments ' shows that the body was embalmed, so that the funeral need not 
 have taken place till some days after the death. 
 
APPENDIX. 1 23 
 
 AVlio can contemplate unmoved tho agony of this generous 
 young heart ? the very faintest portraiture thereof fills us with 
 sympathetic grief as we gaze on it. It ' was not that hence- 
 forth he was pareiitless, nay, worse ; it was not that he had 
 suddenly lost one who had been to him friend, brother, father, 
 almost a god; it was not the miserable regret, so vain, yet 
 so gnawing, that the last farewell had never been spoken; it 
 was not that where he might have hoped to find the gentlest 
 consolation, he found the cruellest aggravation of his sorrow : it 
 was that in her who should have been the spotless mirror on 
 which he might behold his grief reflected with a grandeur and a 
 purity, the very first glimpse of which would transform him from 
 the heart-broken, despairing mourner into the courageous and hope- 
 ful comforter it was that in the widowed mother, standing before 
 him, decked in bridal robes, with wanton smiles glaring on. the 
 scarce-dried traces of hypocritical tears, he saw every feeling that 
 man should hold most dear and most sacred, he saw every idea of 
 goodness, of fidelity, of purity, of love, that should nourish the life-- 
 blood of man's heart all these he saw deformed, blasphemed, 
 drenched in such a torrent of filthy associations, that few could 
 blame the son if he rushed from the presence of that incestuous 
 wife and infamous mother, a very fiend ; without hope, without 
 mercy, without belief in aught good or pure, ripe for every crime 
 and dead to every virtue. 
 
 It is necessary to realise the fearful shock which Hamlet's moral 
 nature has sustained, before the play opens, in order thoroughly 
 to comprehend, much more to represent, his character. 
 
 APPENDIX B. 
 
 ON HAMLET'S FIRST SOLILOQUY. 
 
 I have thought it better to relegate to the Appendix, for the 
 most part, siich observations on the various soliloquies as I may 
 desire to make, the more especially as I shall attempt to give some 
 hints as to the manner in which they should be delivered. 
 
 The soliloquy is one of the finest tests of the genius of a dra- 
 matic writer. Imagination may devise ingenious plots ; Wit or 
 Pathos may produce brilliant or moving dialogue ; Talent may 
 construct good plays ; but Genius alone can create character 
 Genius alone can dissect the inner workings of a man's mind ; and 
 this is what a soliloquy, to be worth anything, must do. If we 
 compare the best of his contemporaries, or of succeeding dramatists, 
 with Shakespeare in this respect, we shall see at once his immense 
 superiority. Perhaps the soliloquies of Hamlet are finer than even 
 those of Macbeth and Othello ; certainly the character is one 
 which lends itself more readily. to that form of dramatic treatment. 
 But if to write a soliloquy is difficult, to deliver it is no less so ; 
 
124 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 and it is in this point that most actors who attempt the role of 
 Hamlet most utterly fail. The impression produced on me by 
 nearly all the Hamlets I have seen on the stage, when they com- 
 menced a soliloquy, has been that they were going to " speak a 
 piece," as the Americans say ; that they had composed an harangue 
 which was to be delivered at, and to, the audience ; not that they 
 were in any way giving utterance to the perplexities of their mind 
 or to the feelings of their heart.* Nor in many tragedies, especially 
 modern ones, is the actor to blame, for the words he has to speak 
 in soliloquy are too often set orations, and not thoughts uttered 
 aloud ; but in representing Hamlet no one can urge this excuse. 
 
 In this very soliloquy how natural are the sentiments, how 
 spontaneous and unstudied the words, how unforced are the transi- 
 tions ! And so it is with all the subsequent ones in this play the 
 language is such a correct and life-like transcription of Hamlet's 
 thoughts that we almost forget that the character is fictitious. 
 
 It is a matter for the actor's own choice whether he should be 
 seated or standing at the commencement of this soliloquy. If 
 Hamlet has been sitting, as he naturally would be, during the 
 preceding portion of the scene, he might remain so without any 
 discourtesy to the King and Court, or to the Queen and her ladies ; 
 indeed, it would be more consonant with his absorption in sorrow 
 that he should forget to rise when the others do. 
 
 As Claudius passes out, with Gertrude by his side, he stops for a 
 moment and looks, half curiously, half angrily, at the unmoved 
 figure of Hamlet. He stands between him and his mother, as -if 
 fearful lest she, in an outburst of tenderness, should draw from 
 him a confession of his secret thoughts some dangerous suspicion, 
 perhaps, of that " foul play " which haunts the guilty conscience of 
 Claudius ; then follow the courtiers, laughing and talking to .one 
 another, utterly indifferent to Hamlet's grief or to the tragic cir- 
 cumstances which caused it ; Ophelia,t who has been watching the 
 dejected visage of her lover with tender anxiety, lingers behind the 
 rest, and is about to lay her hand upon his shoulder when Laertes 
 checks her and, with a look of kindly remonstrance, leads her out 
 of the audience-chamber. Hamlet, unconscious of all that is pass- 
 ing, remains wrapped in his melancholy thoughts till the last 
 footfall has died away. Then with a deep sigh he raises his head, 
 and in a subdued but earnest voice he utters that prayer for 
 annihilation 'O^o^o^- 
 
 0, that this too too solid flesh would melt, 
 Thaw and resolve itself into a dew ! 
 
 * This was written before I had the pleasure of seeing Mr. Irving, whose 
 treatment of the soliloquies is one of the most remarkable features of a 
 marvellously intellectual performance. 
 
 f Was Ophelia meant to be present during this scene ? In the second, 
 third, and fourth Folios her name is inserted ; in the Quartos (except 1603) 
 it might be included in " Cum Aliis." It would certainly add to the interest 
 of the scene if she were present, and I can see no objection to such an 
 arrangement as the one I have sketched out. 
 
.V1TKNDIX. 1^5 
 
 Truly to him the body is the prison of the soul, and the walls 
 which enclose her seem terribly solid. Hamlet's is not one of 
 those frail bodies which grief sometimes inhabits ; in which " the 
 soul seems," as Fuller says, " to peep through the chinks of her 
 prison-house."* 
 
 The solemn words that follow 
 
 Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd 
 His canon 'gainst self -slaughter ! 
 
 show that Hamlet was no infidel, though his faith was enervated 
 by doubts. There is deep pathos in that cry 
 
 God 1 God ! 
 
 How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable 
 Seem to me all the uses of this world ! 
 
 It is a cry that many of us have uttered in the agonising perplexity 
 caused by the apparent triumph of Evil around us. It is to be 
 noted how the words here echo the sense. Too much pains cannot 
 be bestowed on the utterance of these lines. I have heard them 
 spoken with such a deep thrill of despair in the voice as to be 
 indeed awful. The exclamation 
 
 Fie on't ! .ah fie ! 
 
 has been variously interpreted. Edmund Kean applied them to 
 the conduct of Gertrude ; but they seem more naturally to be 
 directed against the world. The actor might rise here from his 
 seat, and after the words 
 
 Possess it merely. 
 
 pause a little ; then, taking one or two paces to and fro, as a man 
 will do when the mind is on the rack, he exclaims 
 That it should come to this ! 
 
 That all the love and tenderness which his father had lavished On 
 Gertrude should be so rewarded ! that her fond caresses should 
 come to be such bitter mockeries ! that all the honour, the happi- 
 ness, the peace, the pride of his home, should be thus rudely 
 shattered ! What art, and what nature, in that hasty correction of 
 his own words 
 
 nay, not so much, not two : 
 
 followed by the outburst of praise of his father's qualities, first as 
 king, then as husband 
 
 so loving to my mother, 
 
 That he might not beteem the winds of heaven 
 
 Visit her face too roiighly . 
 
 There never was a more beautiful picture of conjugal tenderness 
 than this. I would caution the actor here against showing any 
 tenderness in his voice at the word " mother "; Hamlet so loathes 
 the conduct of his mother, he is overpowered by the disgust 
 which her base treason to his father's memory inspires in him that 
 
 ;; I am bound to say that I have not been able to verify this quotation. 
 
120 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 he can hardly bear to mention her name. Even when he has 
 received the strongest injunction from his father's spirit to treat 
 her with gentle consideration he finds it very difficult to obey. 
 The exclamation 
 
 Heaven and earth ! 
 Must I remember ? 
 
 is one of the most impassioned in the whole range of tragedy. 
 Hamlet breaks off in his description of his father's tenderness ; the 
 picture is more than he can bear ; he would raze out of his mind 
 all record of the past, but the tyranny of memory cannot be 
 shaken off: 
 
 why, she would hang on him, 
 As if increase of appetite had grown 
 By what it fed on : and yet, within a month 
 
 It was not alone the perfection of his father's love to her, the 
 sweet solicitude, the ever-watchful protection with which he 
 cherished her but her demonstrative affection for him, her cling- 
 ing dependence on the husband, who has been dead only a month, 
 
 and she Hamlet cannot bring himself to give a name to her 
 
 deed. Once more, in vain, he tries to put the fact away from him 
 he tries in a general sarcasm to dismiss the very thought of it 
 Frailty, thy name is woman ! 
 
 but his mind returns to it, and his indignation is heightened by a 
 fresh detail 
 
 ere those shoes were old 
 
 With which she follow' d my poor father's body, 
 
 Like Niobe, all tears : 
 
 a most beautiful detail it is probably the result of Hamlet's own 
 observation at the funeral. Again he breaks off with a stronger 
 expression of indignation against his mother's conduct : 
 
 God ! a beast, that wants discourse of reason, 
 Would have mourn' d longer, 
 
 Then, with the utmost contempt, he at last gives a name to her 
 crime 
 
 married with my uncle, 
 
 My father's brother, but no more like my father 
 
 Than I to Hercules : 
 
 The contrast between the tenderness with which he pronounces the 
 name of " father," and the loathing with which he utters that of 
 " uncle,' ; is most marked, and there is a noble scorn in the last words 
 repudiating any resemblance between them. It adds greatly to the 
 effect of this passage, if the actor gives to the simile, used here by 
 Hamlet, an air of natural spontaneity by a slight hesitation after the 
 words " Than I to ," as if the speaker were trying to think of 
 what he was most unlike; then adding " Hercules" with an emphasis, 
 as much as to say, " There could be no two persons more dissimilar 
 than I, the sensitive, hesitating, meditative Hamlet, and Hercules, 
 the ideal of physical strength and ^perseverance in overcoming 
 
APPENDIX. 127 
 
 tremendous obstacles." On the stage the next four lines are generally 
 omitted; but with no little injury to the completeness of the speech, 
 as indignation and scorn begin here to give way to that pathos 
 which culminates in the last two lines. How fine is the expression 
 
 the salt of most unrighteous tears. 
 With a righteous awe of such an infamy Hamlet exclaims 
 
 0, most wicked speed, to post 
 With Such dexterity to incestuous sheets ! 
 
 He is exhausted with the vehemence of his feelings, and gloomy 
 forebodings as to the future once more fill his mind : 
 
 It is not, nor it cannot come to good : 
 
 then, sinking into his chair, as he feels at once the mightiness of 
 Evil around him, and his own powerlessness to crush it, he utters 
 that touching lamentation 
 
 But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue ! 
 
 APPENDIX C. ' 
 
 ON THE SOLILOQUY, " ALL YOU HOST O$ HEAVEN ! " 
 
 This soliloquy is not a long one ; but it is a very important one. 
 It is the key-note to that wild perturbaiaon of mind in which Hamlet 
 remains during the rest of this act. The vehement aspiration with 
 which it commences 
 
 all you host of heaven ! earth ! what else ? 
 And shall I couple hell ? 
 
 is succeeded by the expression - (* t 
 
 0, fie ! *,0*U V^A 
 
 which recalls to our memories the words in the former soliloquy 
 
 Fie on't ! ah fie ! 
 
 Here the exclamation may be taken in two ways ; either as a self- 
 rebuke for the mention of hell, or as a reproach directed against his }( 
 own weakness on the part of Hamlet. I think the latter the best 
 interpretation, especially if we consider the words which follow 
 immediately 
 
 Hold, hold, my heart ; 
 And you, my sinews, grow not instant old, 
 But bear me stiffly up. 
 
 The next words 
 
 Remember thee ! 
 
 are spoken with intense pathos, and the repetition of them with still 
 greater intensity. From this moment Hamlet wishes to become a 
 man of one idea only ; self-indulgence, ambition, love, must have no 
 longer any place in his mind 
 
 And thy commandment all alone shall live 
 Within the book and volume of my brain, 
 Unmix'd with baser matter : 
 
ll'S A STUDY OF IIAMLKT. 
 
 Then comes the climax of the oatli 
 
 yes, by heaven ! 
 
 After this there is a pause ; first the baseness of his mother's con- 
 duct recurs to his agitated mind ; then we have an outburst against 
 the King, his uncle, which contains a key to the character of that 
 villain a key which no manager, or actor, or commentator ever 
 seems to have seized namely, the fact that the distinguishing- 
 feature of Claudius was his bland and amiable plausibility 
 
 0, villain, villain, smiling, damned villain ! 
 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. 
 
 The stage direction (Writiiuj), which follows here, shows that 
 Hamlet was intended to record something of what preceded on his 
 tablets, and the very fact of his doing so is a proof of the nervous 
 agitation under which he laboured ; his furious indignation against 
 his uncle found vent in . this mere act of writing him down a 
 " smiling villain." The words 
 
 So, uncle, there you are, 
 
 are spoken as hi- puts the tablets up ; then recovering, by a gn\it 
 effort, command over himself, he speaks with solemn emphasis the 
 lines 
 
 Now to my word ; 
 
 It is 'Adieu, adieu ! remember me.' 
 
 I have sworn't. 
 
 drawing his sword at the last words, and devoutly kissing the cross 
 which forms the handle. 
 
 APPENDIX D. 
 
 ON THE CHARACTER OF OPHELIA. 
 
 I SHOULD have thought that the slight allusion I have made in 
 the text to the question of Ophelia's purity was more than sufficient, 
 but I am astonished to find that persons, whose intellect at any rate 
 entitles them to respect, have held, and do still hold, that she was 
 Hamlet's mistress. I cannot imagine that they have studied the text 
 of the play with any care or reverence ; but it is the characteristic 
 of our enlightened age to be sceptical of good and credulous of evil. 
 In such an age it is an easier task to make men believe that Ophelia 
 was unchaste, because in her distraction she sings some verses of an 
 impure song, than to prove to them from a close study of what she 
 says, and what is said about her, when in her right senses, that she 
 was chaste. We shall be told that we know so many women are 
 bad, but can only believe that many arc good. Faith in any tiling, 
 
APPENDIX. 129 
 
 except onr own wisdom, is one of those superstitions which it is the 
 mission of philosophy, as nineteenth-century philosophers understand 
 it, to crush. The views of Ophelia's character, adverse to her purity, 
 vary from the uncompromising assertion of her having yielded to 
 Hamlet's solicitations, to the sensuo-romantic portrait of her drawn 
 by Goethe, and, to a certain extent, approved by Gerviuus. As an 
 instance of the first opinion I may mention the answer of a great 
 French actor the son of a greater, whose name is associated with 
 one of the finest representations of Hamlet ever given in a foreign 
 tongue who, when asked if he believed that Ophelia had been 
 seduced by Hamlet, replied, " Out, je crois qu'il e'tait heureux dans 
 ses amours." This is so characteristic of the Parisian in contra- 
 distinction to the Frenchman who believes that the final cause of 
 every woman's creation, whether single or married, is to sacrifice 
 her honour to the fascinations of some ' clier cjarcon ' himself, of 
 course, if he tries. It is only when the theory is practically illus- 
 trated by the wives of their own vanity that these irrepressible 
 creatures object to the practice. 
 
 The best way to treat this question will be to give, first, the 
 passages from Gervinus and Goethe which bear upon it ; secondly, 
 the passages, in the play itself, on which I rely for the complete 
 vindication of Ophelia's purity. 
 
 This is the passage in Gervinus,* a very beautiful passage, with 
 the latter part of which I thoroughly agree, but some of the con- 1 
 elusions in which I think quite unjustifiable : 
 
 " Still more reproachable does Hamlet appear to us in his relation to his 
 beloved one. Goethe said of Hamlet's feeling for Ophelia, that it was without 
 conspicuous passion. The poet has at any rate not exhibited him to us in a 
 position in which this passion appears pre-eminent. When he casts his love 
 in the scale with that of forty thousand brothers, the exaggeration of the 
 tone affords no standard. Beyond this passage, Shakespeare has only once 
 allowed him a direct opportunity, in a few aside-spoken words, to give us 
 the key to his feeling for Ophelia, in those words which precede his conver- 
 sation with her 'Nymph, in thy orisons be all my sins remembered ! ' 
 words which we have heard uttered by famous actors strangely enough in a 
 tone of comical or facetious address. On the other hand, this very conver- 
 sation affords the actor scope sufficient to intimate indirectly the nature of 
 Hamlet's feelings for Ophelia. If the actor does not here 'tear the passion 
 to tatters,' he will bring the spectator in this scene into a heavy and 
 profound sadness, the very mood in which the conversation leaves Ophelia ; 
 it is the farewell of an unhappy heart to a connection broken by fate ; it is 
 the serious advice of a self-interested lover, who sends his beloved to a 
 nunnery because he grudges her to another, and sees the path of his own 
 future lie in hopeless darkness. All that in his treatment of Ophelia's 
 father, in his disregard of her brother, in his coldness and indifference 
 
 * "Shakespeare Commentaries." By Dr. G. G. Gervinus. Translated 
 by F. E. Bunnett. New edition, revised by the translator. Smith and 
 Elder. 1875. Pages 579-580. 
 
 K 
 
130 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 towards Polonius, aye, even in her own death, may appear heartless and 
 inconsiderate, is consistent even with a predominant passion for Ophelia in 
 this strange-natured man. His mother regarded this connection as serious 
 in spite of the inequality of station between the two lovers ; his oaths to 
 Ophelia we cannot indeed consider in Hamlet as incipient deception. As a 
 son he loved his father with enthusiastic reverence, without being able to do 
 anything for him for the sake of love, and his mother also, without being 
 able to adhere to his father's exhortation not to torment the weak and 
 deluded woman. Thus he may also have loved Ophelia with a warm heart, 
 without contradicting the apparently most contradictory quality of his 
 nature, that cold egotism with which he torments her first with his madness, 
 then leaves her, and after the unhappy death of her father, devoid of 
 sympathy and sensible to nothing but his own misery, abandons her to 
 despair and insanity. We must seek the counterpart to these traits of 
 character in the history of the affections of equally gifted beings, in whose 
 unfortified souls we shall not unfrequently meet with this blending of the 
 most sensitive feeling and cold hard-heartedness. These very traits will afford 
 us moreover the key-note for Hamlet's intercourse with Ophelia. At his 
 first approach, inexperienced and unsuspicious, she has given him her heart ; 
 she has been free in her audience with him, so that neighbours perceiving it 
 have warned the family, and the family have warned herself ; his conver- 
 sation with her is equivocal, and not as Romeo, Bassanio, or even Proteus 
 have spoken with their beloved ones. This has infected her imagination 
 with sensual images, and inspired her in her quiet modesty with amorous 
 passions ; this is apparent in the songs she sings in her delirium, and in the 
 significant flowers she distributes, as clearly as anything so hidden in its 
 nature can and may be unveiled. Further than this we would not venture 
 to go with Goethe's apprehension of this character. Far less can we accept 
 those other views, which returned to the rude legend in ' Saxo Grammaticus,' 
 regarding Ophelia as a fallen innocent. It would not have been in accordance 
 with the fine feeling of Shakespeare to have made the brother utter those 
 sublime words over the corpse of such a fallen one, when the priest would 
 fain refuse her ' sanctified ground ' 
 
 A ministering angel shall my sister be, 
 
 When thou liest howling. 
 It would not have been like the poet to say expressly over her grave : 
 
 From her fair and unpolluted flesh 
 
 May violets spring ! 
 
 It would indeed have been a frivolous insult to innocence in the most solemn 
 place and moment." 
 
 Goethe's theory of the character of Ophelia and of her relations to 
 Hamlet is found in the following passages of " Wilhelm Meister," * 
 which I give in their entirety : 
 
 * Goethe's "Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship." Translated by R. 
 Dillon Boylau, Esq. 1872. Bohn's Standard Library. I have quoted 
 from this translation as being more generally accessible than Carlyle's, 
 though the latter undoubtedly more faithfully represents the original. 
 Where there is any important difference between the two I have given 
 Carlyle's version in the footnotes. 
 
APPENDIX. 131 
 
 Aurelia exclaimed, "You owe us the conclusion of Hamlet. I do not 
 wish to press you, for I am anxious that my brother should hear you as 
 well as myself, but pray let me hear your thoughts about Ophelia." 
 
 " There is not much to be said about her," replied Wilhelm, "for her 
 character is drawn by a few master-strokes. Her whole existence flows in 
 sweet and ripe sensation. Her attachment to the prince, to whose hand 
 she may aspire, flows so spontaneously, her affectionate heart yields so 
 completely to its impulse, that both her father and brother are afraid, and 
 both give her plain and direct warning of her danger. Decorum, like the 
 thin crape upon her bosom, cannot conceal the motions of her heart, but 
 on the contrary it betrays them. Her imagination is engaged, her silent 
 modesty breathes a sweet desire, and if the convenient goddess Opportunity 
 should shake the tree, the fruit would quickly fall." * 
 
 "And then," said Aurelia, "when she sees herself forsaken, rejected 
 and despised, when everything is overturned in the soul of her distracted 
 lover, and he offers her the bitter goblet of sorrow in place of the sweet 
 cup of affection " 
 
 "Her heart breaks," Wilhelm, "the entire edifice of her being is 
 loosened from its hold, the death of her father knocks fearfully against it, 
 and the whole structure is overturned." (Book IV., Chapter XIV.) 
 
 And 
 
 "Permit me to ask you a question," said Aurelia. "I have again 
 examined Ophelia's part, and I am pleased with it, and feel sure that upon 
 certain conditions I should be able to act it. But tell me, is it not your 
 opinion that the poet ought to hare written songs of a different kind for the 
 insane maiden ? And might we not for this purpose even select a few 
 fragments from some of our own melancholy ballads ? Expressions of 
 double meaning and indelicate allusionsf do not become the pure lipa of a 
 noble-minded girl." 
 
 "My good friend," said Wilhelm, "even upon this point, I cannot 
 coincide with you. A deep meaning is concealed in these peculiarities and 
 in this impropriety. Have we not an intimation from the very beginning 
 of the play of the subject with which the thoughts of the maiden are 
 engaged ? She pursues her course in silent secrecy, but without being able 
 wholly to conceal her wishes and her longing. The voice of desire has 
 echoed within her soul, and she has often tried like an unskilful nurse to 
 lull her senses to repose with ballads, which have only kept her more 
 awake. But at length when all self-control is at an end, and the secrets of 
 her heart appear upon her tongue, that tongue betrays her, and in the 
 innocence of her madness, even in the presence of royalty she takes delight 
 in the echo of her loose but dearly-loved songs of ' The maiden whose heart 
 
 * Carlyle thus renders this passage: "Her fancy is smit ; a silent 
 modesty breathes amiable* desire ; and if the friendly goddess Opportunity 
 should shake the tree, its fruit would fall. 
 
 t " Lascivious insipidities " (Carlyle). 
 
 J " The tones of desire were in secret ringing through her soul " (Carlyle). 
 
 K2 
 
132 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 was won, 1 'The maid who stole to meet the youth,' and so forth." 
 (Book IV., Chapter XVI.) 
 
 Now let us see what Shakespeare makes the various characters 
 jn the play say to, and of, Ophelia. 
 
 This is how her brother speaks to her. (Act I, Scene 3, lines 5-10) : 
 
 JjAEii. For Hainlet, and the trifling of his favour, 
 Jlold it a fashion, and a toy in blood, 
 A violet in the youth of primy nature, 
 forward, not permanent, sweet, not lasting, 
 The perfume and suppliance of a minute ; 
 No more. 
 OPH, No more but so ? 
 
 Mark here the sweet simplicity of. her words. She does not fly 
 into a passion with her brother for the low estimate he takes of 
 her lover's constancy and of her own worthiness. There is a quiet 
 confidence in her own belief, a gentle rebuke to his worldly 
 scepticism, which Laertes does not perceive, in this truly virginal 
 remonstrance. 
 
 LjiER. Think it no more : 
 
 For nature crescent does not grow alone 
 In thews and bulk ; but, as this temple waxes, 
 The inward service of the mind and soul 
 Grows wide withal. Perhaps he loves you now ; 
 And now no soil nor cautel doth besmirch 
 The virtue of his will : but you must fear, 
 His greatness weigh'd, his will is not his own ; 
 For he himself is subject to his birth : 
 He may not, as unvalued persons do, 
 Carve for himself, for on his choice depends 
 The safety and health of this whole state, 
 And therefore must his choice be circumscribed 
 Unto the voice and yielding of that body 
 Whereof he is the head. Then if he says he loves you, 
 It fits your wisdom so far to believe it 
 As he in his particular act and place 
 May give his saying deed ; which is no further 
 Than the main voice of Denmark goes withal. 
 Then weigh what loss your honour may sustain, 
 If with too credent ear you list his songs, 
 Or lose your heart, or your chaste treasure open 
 To his unmaster'd importunity. 
 Fear it, Ophelia, fear it, my dear sister, 
 And keep you in the rear of your affection, 
 Out of the shot and danger of desire. 
 The chariest maid is prodigal enough, 
 ]f she unmask her beauty to the moon : 
 Virtue itself 'scapes not calumnious strokes : 
 The canker galls the infants of the spring 
 Too oft before their buttons be disclosed, 
 And in the morn and liquid dew of youth 
 Contagious blastments are most imminent* 
 Be wary then ; best safety lies in fear : 
 Youth to itself rebels, though none else near. 
 
 Now the whole of this speech is accepted by Gervinus and 
 
APPENDIX. 133 
 
 Goethe, in perfect gftod faith, as the wise counsel given, not before 
 it was needed, to a sister who had been too free in her intercourse 
 with a young prince, his friend. They entirely miss the exquisite 
 satire of Shakespeare who, in this speech, makes the chivalrous but 
 worldly son imitate his pragmatical and time-serving father. The 
 impudence of such a speech, the contemptible narrowness of mind 
 which it exhibits, the low view of women, all consistent with the 
 character of Laertes, a high-spirited but unprincipled young man, 
 who spent most of his time in France then as now the country 
 of pleasure and the head-quarters of philosophical libertinism 
 quite escape them. Let us listen to the gracious dignity of 
 Ophelia's answer : 
 
 OPII. I shall the effect of this good lesson keep, 
 
 As watchman to my heart. But, good my brother, 
 Bo not, as some ungracious pastors do, 
 Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven, 
 Whilst, like a puff'd and reckless libertine, 
 Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads 
 And recks not his own rede. 
 
 What can be more nobly pure than the character of this maiden? 
 With what true modesty she sets aside the ignoble suspicions of 
 her chastity which her brother had uttered ! Critics have failed to 
 see the art with which Shakespeare here delineates the self -conceited, 
 shallow-principled character of Laertes, preparing us for the con- 
 summate treachery to which he deliberately lends himself at the 
 end of the play. Surely, if this man had possessed one grain of 
 true nobility of character, he must have taken his sister to his arms, 
 or, not feeling himself worthy of such familiarity, must have knelt 
 at her feet and thanked her for such a loving rebuke. What 
 does he answer ? In the true spirit of intolerant self-conceit he 
 puts her sweet counsel aside with these arrogant and careless 
 words 
 
 LAER. 0, fear me not. 
 
 I stay too long : 
 
 As he is going he reverts with astounding insensibility to his 
 former speech : 
 
 LAER, Farewell, Ophelia, and remember well 
 What I have said to you. 
 
 Her answer is full of nothing but the tenderest humility : 
 
 OPH. 'Tis in my memory lock'd, 
 
 And you yourself shall keep the key of it. 
 
 Now we come to the all-wise Polonius' advice to his daughter 
 the man who was fresh from bowing before an incestuous usurper : 
 POL. What is't, Ophelia, he hath said to you ? 
 OPH. So please you, something touching the Lord Hamlet. 
 Marry, well bethought : 
 'Tis told me, he hath very oft of late 
 Given private time to you, and you yourself 
 Have of your audience been most free and bounteous : 
 
134 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 . . If it be so as so 'tis put on me, 
 
 And that in way of caution I must tell you, 
 
 You do not understand yourself so clearly 
 
 As it behoves my daughter and your honour. 
 
 What is between you ? give me up the truth. 
 OPH. He hath, my lord, of late made many tenders 
 
 Of his affection to me. 
 POL. Affection ! pooh ! you speak like a green girl, 
 
 Unsifted in such perilous circumstance. 
 
 Do you believe his tenders, as you call them ? 
 OPH. I do not know, my lord, what I should think. 
 POL. Marry, I'll teach you : think yourself a baby, 
 
 That you have ta'en these tenders for true pay, 
 
 Which are not sterling. Tender yourself more dearly ; 
 
 Or not to crack the wind of the poor phrase, 
 
 Running it thus you'll tender me a fool. 
 OPH. My lord, he hath importuned me with love 
 
 In honourable fashion. 
 
 The same sweet patience, the same heavenly humility, distin- 
 guishes all her answers, till, at last, tried beyond all bearing by 
 the silly coarseness of her ridiculously self-complacent father, she 
 looks up, and checks his ribaldry by a dignified vindication "of her 
 lover's conduct. It would seem that even the triple armour of 
 Polonius 1 vanity was not proof against this ; for he can only reply 
 with a very commonplace observation, being a little checked in 
 his flow of worldly-wise oratory : 
 
 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. - 
 
 6 
 
 Ophelia will not be stopped in her defence of her lover. To 
 her the fact that Hamlet had used " almost all the holy vows of 
 heaven" meant rather more than it did to the wise old counsellor 
 who had taken the same oath of allegiance to Claudius, without the 
 slightest scruple, as he had to the dead King, and that in spite of 
 the suspicious circumstances of his old master's death, and the more 
 than suspicious marriage of Claudius with his brother's widow. 
 However, the plausible old proser has soon taken breath, and is off 
 again, careering among his fine-sounding platitudes : 
 
 POL. Ay, springes to catch woodcocks. I do know, 
 When the blood burns, how prodigal the soul 
 Lends the tongue vows ; these blazes, daughter, 
 Giving more light than heat, extinct in both, 
 Even in their promise, as it is a-making, 
 You must not take for fire. From this time 
 Be something scanter of your maiden presence j 
 Set your entreatments at a higher rate 
 Than a command to parley. For Lord Hamlet, 
 Believe so much in him, that he is young, 
 And with a larger tether may he walk 
 Than may be given you : in few, Ophelia, 
 Do not believe his vows ; for they are brokers, 
 Not o that dye which their investments 
 But mere implorators of unholy suits, 
 
APPENDIX. 135 
 
 Breathing like sanctified and pious bawds, 
 The better to beguile. This is for all : 
 I would not, in plain terms, from this time forth, 
 Have you so slander any moment leisure, 
 As to give words or talk with the Lord Hamlet. 
 Look to't, I charge you : come your ways. 
 OPII. I shall obey, my lord, [Exeunt. 
 
 No bitter word, no thought or threat of rebellion he is her 
 father, ' tedious old fool' though he be and she knows nothing 
 which can justify her disobedience to him. 
 
 The object of this scene seems to be this; to show how completely 
 Hamlet's character was misunderstood by those who should have , 
 known him best, and how completely uncongenial must have been 
 liis surroundings at the Court of Denmark, even if the terrible 
 events of the last two months had not taken place. The conven- 
 tional standard of virtue which Polonius and Laertes held, and 
 which was the only standard of right and wrong they knew, is 
 here clearly expressed. What a contrast between their speeches 
 and Hamlet's soliloquy in the former scene ! what an irreconcilable 
 antagonism between the son, whose heart and mind are both 
 absorbed in his dead father, and these two, whose only thought is of 
 their own pleasure and advancement, who cannot too soon forget 
 their late benefactor that they may learn to flatter and win the 
 favour of his treacherous successor ! The next scene, in which we 
 see Ophelia, is that in which she gives the well-known description 
 of Hamlet's singular intrusion on her privacy in such a condition 
 as to make her fear he was mad. It is not necessary to repeat her 
 words here, as they have been given in the text ; * I may remark 
 that to reconcile such words with the idea of a maiden full of 
 voluptuous ideas and impure desires, prepared to sacrifice her vir- 
 ginity if she has not already done so, is a task worthy of the inge- 
 nuity of a German critic. 
 
 Polonius does not seem quite so self-confident now, and begins 
 to think that possibly after all Hamlet might have been something 
 better than a fickle profligate, though he was a prince. (Act II,, 
 Scene 1, lines 101-110.) 
 
 POL. Come, go with me : 1 will go seek the King. 
 
 This is the very ecstasy of love ; 
 
 Whose violent property fordoes itself 
 
 And leads the will to desperate undertakings 
 
 As oft as any passion under heaven 
 
 That does afflict our natures. I am sorry, 
 
 What, have you given him any hard words of late ? 
 OPH. No, my good lord,t but, as you did command, 
 
 * See Pages 24-25. 
 
 f It may be noted that Laerf es and Ophelia both address their father as 
 ' my lord.' Ophelia uses the term in every speech of hers with only one 
 exception. This may be attributed partly to the ceremonious custom of l^ 
 Shakespeare's time : but I am inclined to believe that it is also intended 
 to show how formal and precise Polonius was towards his children, and 
 that they looked upon him with no little awe. 
 
136 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 I did repel his letters and denied 
 His access to me. 
 
 Ib is almost impossible to imagine these words to be spoken by 
 one who had any consciousness of having compromised her virgin 
 purity, or her woman's dignity, with her lover, either in thought or 
 deed. 
 
 Pol. That hath made him mad. 
 
 I am sorry that with better heed and judgment 
 
 I had not quoted him : I fear'd he did but trifle 
 
 And meant to wreck thee ; but beshrew my jealousy ! 
 
 By heaven, it is as proper to our age 
 
 To cast beyond ourselves in our opinions 
 
 As it is common for the younger sort 
 
 To lack discretion. Come, go we to the king : 
 
 This must be known ; which, being kept close, might move 
 
 More grief to hide than hate to utter love. 
 
 Come. [Exeunt. 
 
 The prudent father and all-wise counsellor has now entirely 
 abandoned all suspicions of Hamlet's good faith. Though Ophelia 
 says nothing, it may fairly be supposed that her face shows the joy 
 which she feels at her father's change of sentiments ; and that the 
 hope of attaining the happiness, which she had dreamt of, in an 
 union with the object of her love, sanctioned by her father and by 
 his mother, springs up afresh in her heart. For this reason she may 
 the more readily, in perfect good faith, lend herself to the decep- 
 tion which is afterwards practised on Hamlet. 
 
 When Polonius informs the King and Queen of the great 
 discovery he has made as to the cause of Hamlet's madness, he says, 
 speaking of the letter (Act II, Scene 2, lines 107 and 108), that 
 Ophelia had given it him " in her duty and obedience." 
 
 I have spoken of this letter (Appendix A, page 7) as presenting 
 considerable difficulty, and the more one tries to ascertain its 
 history, the more perplexing it becomes. Polonius makes no 
 allusion to it in the scene from which I have already quoted 
 (Act L, Scene 3) so that it is perhaps safest to suppose that, after 
 the agitated account which she had given her father of Hamlet's 
 strange conduct, he had asked her if she had any letters of his ; 
 that she had then given him this one, both for the reason which I 
 have suggested before (Appendix A, page ), namely, that there 
 was nothing in it which she could object to show to others, and also 
 because the strange tone of it would seem, in some measure, to con- 
 firm the supposition that Hamlet was mad. I do not believe that 
 Polonius had, after his warning to Ophelia (Act I., Scene 3), required 
 her to give up all Hamlet's letters, and that she had been guilty of 
 the deceit of keeping back all save this one. It is a more probable 
 conjecture that Ophelia, who was sincerely alarmed on Hamlet's 
 account, and very much distressed, would ,say to her father that 
 
APPENDIX. 137 
 
 she would rather he went alone to the King, as she could not bear 
 the idea of being questioned about Hamlet ; but that if her father 
 wanted any proof of his love for her, he might take this letter ; 
 this seems to me the likeliest explanation of the way in which 
 Polonius became possessed of it. But this does not help us to 
 discover when it was written ; whether before or after Polonius had 
 forbidden his daughter to hold any communication with Hamlet 
 (Act I., Scene 3, lines 133-135) ; I am inclined to think ' before ' 
 (see Appendix A, page 8), the more so because the expression of 
 Ophelia (Act II., Scene 1, line 109), 'I did repel his letters/ would 
 seem to imply that she had refused to receive them. The chief 
 object in reverting to this letter now is to illustrate the perfect 
 sincerity of Ophelia's character ; her first act of deceit was yet to 
 come, and dearly did she pay for it. 
 
 Prom Polonius' own words immediately after reading the letter 
 we see that Ophelia had treated him Avith filial confidence 
 
 This in obedience hath my daughter shown me ; 
 And more above, hath his solioitings, 
 As they fell out by time, by means and place, 
 All given to mine ear. 
 
 It is to be noted that both the King and Queen seem to place the 
 most implicit trust in Ophelia's goodness ; not a word is said by 
 them implying any suspicion of her perfect modesty and truth. It 
 may also be observed that, although at the beginning of this scene, 
 when Claudius tells Gertrude that Polonius had found ' the source 
 of Hamlet's distemper,' her reply is 
 
 I doubt it is no other but the main ; 
 His father's death and our o'erhasty marriage- 
 she is now inclined to believe Polonius' explanation, while Claudius 
 seems to doubt it ; he had a guilty self-consciousness which made 
 him suspect the real cause ; nor was he the sort of inan to believe 
 in a young Prince going mad for the sake of love. Gertrude had, 
 doubtless, in happier times, been her son's confidant on the subject 
 of his attachment, of which she certainly did not disapprove (see 
 Act V,, Scene 1, lines 232 ard 233). 
 
 Polonius now discloses his plan, which is carried out in the next 
 Act j the approach of Hamlet puts an end to all other discussion, 
 and Polonius is left to try his skill on ' the poor wretch/ 
 
 Only one point need be mentioned as affecting the main question 
 under discussion, and that is Hamlet's indelicate allusion to Ophelia 
 (lines 185 and 186). This is evidently part of his affectation of 
 madness. He says the very thing he would have been least likely 
 to say in his own proper character, and what he never would have 
 said if there had been any intrigue between him and Ophelia. 
 Indeed this passage would suffice to convince me that the relations 
 between the two had never been of a sensual character. As we find 
 
138 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 that Hamlet generally uses his assumed madness as a cover for satire, 
 there is little doubt but that he intends to ridicule Polonius for the 
 extraordinary care he had taken of his daughter's virtue by forbid- 
 ding her to hold any intercourse with him, conscious as he was that 
 the thought of wounding her honour had never crossed his mind. 
 
 It is the next day that Ophelia, in company with her father, 
 presents herself before the King and Queen to play her part in the 
 notable scheme which was at once to discover the cause of, and to 
 find a cure for, the supposed madness of Hamlet. Rosencrantz and 
 Guildenstern were there, to report the result of their first day's work 
 as spies ; Ophelia, in her innocence, listens to every word they let 
 ^fall with simple faith, and is chilled with despair, or flushed with 
 / hope, as their relation dwells upon the signs of a brooding melan- 
 choly he had shown, or upon the awakened interest which he had 
 manifested at mention of the players. "When the spaniels have 
 gone, Claudius explains the plan of action ; Hamlet has been ' sent 
 for' 
 
 That he, as 'twere by accident, may here 
 
 Affront Ophelia. (Act III., Scene 1, lines 30 and 31.) 
 
 Tho King and Polonius, 'lawful espials' (a phrase which might 
 assist in removing any scruples Ophelia had to play her part in the 
 deception), were to hide themselves in such a position that they 
 might hear all which passed ; the Queen was to go away. Her 
 assent to this scheme is given in such terms as to show that her 
 opinion of Ophelia was a very high one. 
 
 QUEEN. I shall obey you : 
 
 And for your part, Ophelia, I do wish 
 That your good beauties be the happy cause 
 Of Hamlet's wildneas : so shall I hope your virtues 
 Will bring him to his wonted way again, 
 To both your honours. 
 
 Ophelia's answer is what a maiden's should be, simple and modest- 
 Madam, I wish it may. 
 
 Polonius' directions to Ophelia are worth observing, as they are 
 generally ignored on the stage. 
 
 POL. Ophelia, walk you here 
 
 . . . Read on this book ; 
 
 That show of such an exercise may colour 
 Your loneliness. 
 
 The next words show that this book was one of devotion^ and 
 render more probable my conjecture that, towards the end of 
 Hamlet's soliloquy, Ophelia has sunk on her knees and is 
 really praying for her distracted lover (see Part I., page 27). I have 
 quoted most of the scene in the text, but as far as it bears on the 
 character of Ophelia, I may be allowed to revert to it. How touch- 
 ingly simple are her words, even when she is playing a part, even 
 when she is consciously lending her aid to a deception but to one, 
 
APPENDIX. 139 
 
 be it remembered, which she honestly believes to be an innocent 
 one, and likely to lead to the restoration of her beloved Prince to 
 his right mind, and of herself to that place in his heart which she 
 once so proudly, so lovingly held. 
 
 Some persons, whose ingenious minds have despoiled Ophelia of 
 her purity, profess to see in Hamlet's words 
 
 Nymph, in thy orisons 
 Be all my sins remember' d 
 
 a confirmation of their opinion. I suppose they would paraphrase 
 these words thus : " Sweet creature, I have done you the greatest 
 wrong man can do to woman ; don't forget me in your prayers ! " 
 Is this part of Hamlet's affected madness, or is he really out of his 
 senses when he is supposed to utter such a piece of consummate 
 cold-blooded hypocrisy ? But this foul distortion of Hamlet's words 
 may be left for those whose minds delight in feats of indelicate 
 gymnastics. 
 
 Hamlet's words, as well as his manner, are such as to give Ophelia 
 confidence ; as I have pointed out in the text (Part I., page 27), 
 she has not seen Hamlet for some time ; she probably seeks to 
 express her sorrow at their separation ; and, with the sweet incon- 
 sistency of woman, to rebuke him tenderly for taking her ' denial ' 
 of ' his access ' to her as serious, and for not making her disobey her 
 father's commands. Hamlet's answer is somewhat formal 
 
 I Humbly thank you : well, well, well. 
 
 *The repetition of the latter word three times is said to be part of 
 his affectation of madness, one of the symptoms of insanity being 
 the repetition of words j but I cannot think it is anything more 
 than a natural accident of Hamlet's melancholy. 
 
 The step which Ophelia now takes, that of offering to give back 
 to Hamlet the presents which he had made her, I have attributed 
 in the text (Part I., page 27) to the instigation of her father ; but 
 it is quite possible that it was entirely her own idea, and that she 
 hoped, by thus seeming to recognise formally the severance of all 
 affectionate relations between them, to draw from Hamlet a renewal 
 
 * See Staunton's Note. Illustrated edition, 1861, vol. iii,, p. 366. 
 " To us it is evident that here, as in other places, the iteration a well- 
 known symptom of intellectual derangement is purposely adopted by 
 Hamlet to encourage the belief of his insanity. He never indulges in this 
 cuckoo-note unless with those whom he distrusts." (Note a, on the words, 
 " Except my life, except my life, except my life" Act II., Scene 2, lines 
 216-217.) That this iteration or repetition is "a well-known symptom of 
 intellectual derangement," I am not so sure ; it certainly is a common habit 
 of men who are preoccupied with some great sorrow, or who are of a melan- 
 choly temperament. As to the other places in which Hamlet adopts this 
 ' iteration,' except the one on which Mr. Staunton's note is written, and the 
 present one in the scene with Ophelia, I can find no other but that in the 
 scene with Osric (Act V., Scene 2, line 172) " Yours, yours ; " this is not 
 exactly a similar instance. I think Mr. Staunton has been led to generalise 
 here on insufficient grounds. 
 
140 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 of those < tenders of honourable affection/ those ' holy vows ' to 
 which she had before listened with such delight. But she is niet 
 by a blank denial on Hamlet's part, as if he had completely for- 
 gotten all the past ; this rouses her to an earnest vindication of her 
 own truthfulness, which is full of sweet maidenly dignity ; she is 
 not acting a part now, and she insists 011 returning the gifts of which 
 the giver had so cruelly denied all knowledge. I have already 
 carefully analysed this scene up to the point when Hamlet leaves 
 her ; it is only necessary to point out that except in the one false- 
 hood which she is forced to tell, all that Ophelia utters in this 
 trying crisis is distinguished by the purest simplicity and the most 
 unselfish love. I cannot myself conceive any man in the possession 
 of his senses, reading this scene, and especially the beautiful speech 
 of Ophelia after Hamlet's exit, without feeling that he is in the 
 presence of one of the noblest and purest creations of a poet, who 
 has shown in the characters of the women with which he has 
 adorned his plays, that he knew, what so many critics have never 
 been able to conceive, the true ' beauty of holiness.' Let anyone 
 ponder over this exquisite outburst of unselfish sorrow, and then say 
 if she who uttered it was likely to have been unchaste or lascivious : 
 
 OPH. O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown ! 
 
 The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, sword : 
 
 The expectancy and rose of the fair state, 
 
 The glass of fashion and the mould of form, 
 
 The observed of all observers, quite, quite down ! 
 
 And I, of ladies most deject and wretched, 
 
 That suck'd the honey of his music vows, 
 
 Now see that noble and most sovereign reason, 
 
 Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh ; 
 
 That unmatch'd form and feature of blown youth 
 
 Blasted with ecstacy : 0, woe is me, 
 
 To have seen what I have seen, see what I see ! 
 
 Some feeling of respect for such noble grief might have restrained 
 Polonius and the King from entering sooner ; at any rate, no one 
 will quarrel with the poet who kept them in the background, since 
 their presence must have deprived us of one of the most beautiful 
 passages to be found in Shakespeare. 
 
 It is to be noted that Ophelia's agitation does not permit of her 
 speaking again. I take the expression of Polonius 
 
 How now, Ophelia I 
 
 to be occasioned by the violence of the emotion which she strives 
 in vain to hide. The next words should, then, be spoken kindly ; 
 for even the pragmatical Polonius must have been touched by her 
 sorrow 
 
 You need not tell us what Lord Hamlet said 5 
 
 We heard it all. 
 
 te wishes to spare her the pain of such a recital. 
 
 I come now to the examination of that part of the l tlay Scene '' 
 
APPENDIX. 141 
 
 which bears upon the character of Ophelia ; and I must apologise 
 for the unavoidable necessity of drawing attention to such passages 
 as must be admitted to form a serious blemish in this otherwise 
 noble work. 
 
 Between Scenes 1 and 2 of this Act there is an interval of some 
 hours. When Hamlet parted from Ophelia it was morning ; now 
 it is night, and the promised play to which Hamlet has invited the 
 King and Queen is going to be represented. Hamlet has deter- 
 mined to cover his serious purpose by the assumption of a more 
 extravagant demeanour than ever ; he has escaped with flying 
 colours, as he considers, from the trap laid for him ; he is conscious 
 of having filled the King's mind with vague alarm, while he has 
 succeeded in puzzling him more than ever as to the cause of his 
 nephew's madness. Terribly anxious as to the result of that 
 bold experiment which he is about to try, which must, if successful 
 in betraying the King into an indirect confession of his guilt, at 
 once confirm the solemn revelation made to him by his father's 
 spirit, and leave him no excuse for delaying the fulfilment of ' that 
 dread command,' Hamlet's nerves are strung to the highest pitch, 
 and the eccentricities in which he indulges are but the safety- 
 valves for an excitement which, if totally suppressed, might over- 
 power his senses. His resentment against Ophelia for what he 
 considers her duplicity towards him, which is still working in his 
 mind, coupled with the mischievous pleasure he takes in misleading 
 his uncle, induces him to take his place at her feet. From the 
 first entry of the King, Queen, Polonius, Ophelia and the court, 
 Hamlet has appeared to be in the highest spirits ; when he answers 
 to his mother's invitation to sit by her side 
 
 No, good mother, here's metal more attractive 
 
 at the same time approaching Ophelia with a gay air, it is natural 
 that she should be alarmed at the change which has coine over 
 him since she last saw him. He commences in a tone of cruel 
 banter 
 
 Lady, shall I lie in your lap ? 
 
 Her answer is in a tone of outraged modesty, but simple as a 
 maiden's should be. He continues in a manner which must have 
 increased her alarm. The belief that he is inad enables her to 
 suppress her indignation ; the only resemblance of a reproach that 
 escapes her lips is contained in that pathetic remonstrance 
 You are merry, my lord. 
 
 The pleasure of having him near her overcomes her timidity, and 
 she tries to seem at her ease with him. She asks him to explain 
 the dumb show which precedes the play, but Hamlet's answer is so 
 brutally filthy that even his assumed madness can be no excuse for 
 such an outrage on decency.* Ophelia's gentle nature is roused to 
 
 * I should like to be able to prove that some of the most offensive lines 
 were inserted by the players to suit the depraved taste of their audience, 
 
142 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 some show of resentment ; for a moment she turns .away from him 
 with the simple rebuke 
 
 You are naught, you are naught : I'll mark the play. 
 But he does not leave her long to herself : 
 
 HAM. Is this is a prologue, or the posy of a ring ? 
 OPH. 'Tis brief, my lord. 
 HAM. As woman's love. 
 
 ' This last sentence is spoken looking at the Queen, though 
 undoubtedly Hamlet means it as a satire on the fickleness which 
 he thinks Ophelia has shown towards him. His next observation, 
 after the speech of the Player Queen, in which she vows fidelity 
 to her husband's memory, ought not to be addressed to Ophelia 
 (as it is according to the stage direction in Staunton's Edition), but 
 should be spoken aloud at the Queen, on whom, as well as on 
 Claudius, Hamlet's eyes are riveted. 
 
 In spite of the cruel insults he has addressed to her, which she 
 excuses to herself on the ground of his distraction, Ophelia cannot 
 refrain from the attempt to win one look of love or one tender 
 word from Hamlet, But he is merciless ; to her playful remark 
 
 You are as good as a chorus, my lord 
 he answers only with a morose sarcasm 
 
 I could interpret between you and your love, if I could see the puppets 
 dallying. 
 
 She cannot conceal her bitter pain ; at any other time he must 
 have felt stung by her reproach 
 
 You are keen, my lord, you are keen. 
 
 But his intense excitement makes him like one under a demoniacal 
 possession; his only answer is again a brutal insult: the last 
 words she speaks are these somewhat enigmatical ones 
 
 OPH, Still better, and worse. 
 
 HAM. So you must take your husbands. 
 
 Thus do these two, who once had been so happy in their mutual 
 loves, virtually take leave of one another : he who was once so 
 gentle and so affectionate to her, so * full of tender and refined 
 homage to her beauty and to her virtues, upon the " honey of whose 
 music vows " her soul had rapturously fed he will never more 
 speak one word to her no, not to tell her how harshly he had 
 misj adged her, and to ask her forgiveness. She will hear nothing 
 
 but I am afraid that they must be acknowledged to have been permitted, if 
 not approved, by Shakespeare, in common with some equally repulsive 
 passages in other plays. I have no wish to see Shakespeare universally 
 Bowdlerised, but I think the text, as published in the Clarendon Press Series, 
 might be generally adopted for the purposes of the library. These objec- 
 tionable passages were erased in Collier's annotated copy, and I believe 
 they were very rarely spoken in representation, even during the seventeenth 
 entury. 
 
APPENDIX. 143 
 
 more of him until she is told that her father died by his hand, 
 and that he is sent away, half in pity, half in punishment, to a 
 distant land ; and he, what would he not give to recal these cruel 
 taunts, these ferocious insults, which, in his half-assumed, half-real 
 madness, he has now uttered, when he sees the body of his beloved 
 being^lowered into a dishonoured grave '? 
 
 There is a terrible pathos in this love story of Hamlet and 
 Ophelia, though Shakespeare has only permitted us to snatch a 
 hasty glance at it. 
 
 Every word uttered by Ophelia in this scene seems to strengthen 
 the view of her character which I have taken, and to render 
 impossible, except in distorted natures, the slightest suspicion of 
 her purity. Every impure allusion, every foul inuendo, which is 
 aimed at her in this scene, seems to drop harmless from the armour 
 of her spotless chastity. Compare for a moment the rich volup- 
 tuousness of Juliet, the reckless banter of Beatrice, the mischievous 
 double entendres of Portia, with the crystal simplicity of Ophelia's 
 language, and one cannot fail to see which is the purest creation. 
 She is Shakespeare's most perfect portrait of virginity, as Desdemona 
 and Imogen are his most faultless pictures of true wifehood. 
 
 It only remains now to examine the two scenes in which 
 Ophelia is shown to us in her madness. I think I shall find no 
 difficulty in proving that these do not afford the slightest ground 
 for the more modified aspersions of Goethe, or of Gervinus, on her 
 character, any more than for the direct accusation of unchastity. 
 
 I now proceed to Act IV., Scene 5, between which and the 
 preceding scene it must not be forgotten that a considerable interval 
 of time elapses. (See Additional Note 10.) I must, at the risk 
 of being tedious, insist upon this fact, for unless the reader bears 
 it in mind, he will not be able to follow much of my argument. 
 During this interval of time Ophelia has heard the news of her 
 father's death ; at first the accounts were vague ; then the fact that 
 her lover had killed him would become known to her ; next she 
 would hear how, on this last most terrible proof of his madness, 
 that lover had been sent away to England ; she would then 
 begin to realise these two facts first, that Hamlet, for whom her 
 heart yearned, in spite of his late cruel conduct to hbr,* had gone 
 without being able, even had he so desired, to say one word of 
 farewell; next that her father (for whom she had an affection 
 reverential in the extreme, partaking much of awe, but still like 
 every feeling of her sweet nature, most tender) had suffered a violent 
 and sudden death at the hands of Hamlet ; she might also have 
 heard how the author of this deed of violence had wept over the 
 victim of his rash fury ; the motive which had caused this fatal 
 mistake she could not know : her mind, already bewildered by the 
 remembrance of his fantastic harshness and brutality towards her, 
 
 * During the representation of the play of Gonzago. 
 
144 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 
 
 would have brooded over the calamities of which she might well 
 consider herself the indirect cause was it not Hamlet's love for 
 / her, so cruelly repulsed by her, acting under her father's command, 
 which had driven him into this madness ? ^ Of the great crime from 
 which all these woes had their origin she knew nothing ; her 
 brother was away, she had none to comfort her. Small wonder if 
 her brain gave way under this load of misery. Gertrude has been 
 too much occupied with the anxieties surrounding her and her 
 husband to think of Ophelia ; the stings of remorse have been 
 roused to activity in her soul by the eloquent denunciations of her 
 unhappy son ; she shrinks from looking on the ruin of which her 
 guilt has been the primal cause ; her mind is racked by the vague 
 but terrible apprehension of some new calamity. Horatio, for 
 whom, as her son's trusted friend, she has great respect, has 
 accompanied a Gentleman of the Court, who conies to announce 
 that Ophelia, in a distracted state, seeks an interview with her : 
 
 QUEEN. I will not speak with her. 
 
 GENT. She is importunate, indeed distract : 
 Her mood will needs be pitied. 
 
 QUEEN. What would she have ? 
 
 GENT. She speaks much of her father, says she hears 
 
 There's tricks i' the world, and hems and beats her heart, 
 Spurns enviously at straws ; speaks things in doubt, 
 That carry but half sense : her speech is nothing, 
 Yet the unshaped use of it doth move 
 The hearers to collection ; they aim at it, 
 And botch the words up fit to their own thoughts ; 
 Which, as her winks and nods and gestures yield them, 
 Indeed would make one think there might be thought, 
 Though nothing sure, yet much unhappily. 
 
 This description of Ophelia's state shows us clearly what was the 
 cause of her madness, and on what subject her distracted mind 
 dwelt most persistently. It is perfectly natural that she might 
 have suspected some foul play on the part of the King, as the 
 circumstances of Polonius' death were never explained to anyone 
 but to Laertes ; and even from him the real reason why Hamlet 
 sought to kill the King, for whom he had mistaken Polonius, was 
 carefully concealed. 
 
 Ophelia enters, as the Quarto 1603 has it, "playing on a Lute, 
 and her haire downe singing ; " she asks 
 
 Where is the beauteous majesty of Denmark ? 
 
 referring, of course, to the Queen, who addresses her with a mixture 
 of surprise and pity 
 
 How now, Ophelia ! . 
 
 The distracted maiden immediately bursts into a song : 
 
 How should I your true love know 
 
 From another one ? 
 By his cockle hat and staff 
 
 And his sandal shoon, 
 
APPENDIX. 145 
 
 Ophelia was not in love with a pilgrim ; and the irrelevancy of 
 the words are so obvious that the Queen may well ask, " What 
 imports this song \ " The next verse she sings is suggested by her 
 father's death : 
 
 OPH. Say you, nay, pray you, mark. 
 (Sings) He is dead and gone, lady, 
 
 He is dead and gone ; 
 At his head a grass-green turf, 
 
 At his heels a stone. 
 Ob, oh ! 
 
 This is a cry of grief, so natural that the Queen thinks it may not 
 be hopeless to try and reason with her : 
 
 QUEEN. Nay, but, Ophelia, 
 
 She, however, continues the song 
 
 OPH. Pray you, mark. 
 
 (Sings) White his shroud as the mountain snow, 
 
 Enter KIKO. 
 QUEEN. Alas, look here, my lord. 
 
 Ophelia does not heed the interruption, but without looking up 
 sings on 
 
 Larded with sweet flowers ; 
 Which bewept to the grave did go 
 
 With true-love showers. 
 
 It is a striking feature in madness how the mind follows one clue 
 of thought up to a certain point, and then drops it, changing 
 suddenly to another ; but the dominant idea which was the first 
 cause of the aberration is sure to return. This verse ended, Ophelia 
 lets the lute drop by her side, and from her answer to the King it 
 is evident that her fancy has wandered on quite a new track : 
 
 KINO. How do you, pretty lady ? 
 
 OPH. Well, God 'ild you ! They say the owl was a baker's daughter. 
 
 Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be. 
 
 God be at your table ! 
 
 This story of the baker's daughter was one she had probably been 
 told in her childhood. The King's remark 
 
 Conceit upon her father 
 
 refers to the last verse she had sung. By a rapid transition she 
 passes now into a merry vein, and taking up the lute again, sings 
 the ballad which has occasioned such unfavourable views to be 
 taken of her character. It is not necessary to quote it, The words 
 with which she introduces it, I believe, ought to be spoken with an 
 exaggerated gaiety 
 
 Pray you, let's have no words of this ; but when they ask you what it 
 means, say you this : 
 
 I must take exception to any attempt, on the part of the actress, 
 to give a pathetic turn to whatever portion she may choose to 
 
 L 
 
140 A STUDY 0F HAMLET. 
 
 sing of it. The contrast between this and the other verses Ophelia 
 sings, which are all melancholy, and on the subject of death,* is 
 meant to be most marked. As I have said in the text (Part I., 
 page 26), I believe this ballad to have been one which had been 
 - sung by her nurse to Ophelia ; it is just such a kind of composition 
 as a person in that class of life would have sung. The character 
 of the nurse in Borneo and Juliet, as drawn by Shakespeare, shows 
 us that these good women were not over delicate as to the kind of 
 jests with which they amused their young charges. . Seeing that 
 this ballad seems to have been recalled to her distraught mind by 
 the tale about the baker's daughter being changed into an owl, 
 just such a popular tale as a nurse would tell to a child, I think 
 the explanation I have suggested is the most probable. That the 
 ballad could by any means be supposed to refer to Ophelia's 
 relations with Hamlet I cannot understand; it is not a tale of 
 seduction by a man of a woman, but the story of a girl who, 
 without any modesty, deliberately throws herself in the way of 
 temptation. No one who has studied cases of mental alienation is 
 ignorant of the fact that persons, when delirious, accuse themselves 
 of crimes the very reverse of those to which their dispositions 
 were prone. Sit by the side of a patient in delirium, and you will 
 find their mind running on most trivial incidents, which they 
 distort and exaggerate in their madness : If, as I have said, the 
 brain has given way under some great sorrow, the dominant idea 
 of that sorrow will return again and again, in different shapes, but 
 substantially the same. In most cases, however, just as we dream, 
 for the most part, of the least significant events in the past day, 
 so do our minds, in delirium, generally run on matters which, in 
 our senses, we should hardly remember. 
 
 It is also to be observed that Ophelia never says another word 
 which could be tortured into any allusion to her having surrendered , 
 her virginity to Hamlet's solicitations, much less of her having had 
 any sensual passion for him. 
 
 The merry mood of Ophelia does not last long, as her next 
 speech, immediately after she has finished the ballad, shows. It is 
 one of her most pathetic utterances : 
 
 OPH. I hope all will be well. We must be patient : but T cannot choose 
 but weep, to think they should lay him i' the cold ground. My 
 brother shall know of it : and so I thank you for your good counsel. 
 
 She goes out, fancying, poor wretch ! that she is leaving some 
 festivity, In the interim between this and her next entrance she 
 gathers the flowers with which she returns. These flowers she had 
 evidently picked with the intention of decking her father's bier. 
 Twice during this scene she breaks off suddenly the thread of her 
 Wanderings first, when she says, "' It is the false steward that stole 
 
 * Except the one line she sinss of <( Bomry sweet Robin is all inv iov " 
 (line 182), 
 
APPENDIX. 147 
 
 his master's daughter ; " next, when she "bursts into the song " Donny 
 sweet Robin/' of which she only sings one line. 
 
 As to the flowers which. she gives to Laertes, to Gertrude, and to 
 Claudius, I am at a loss to understand how Gervinus could ever 
 have made such an utterly unwarrantable allusion to them as he 
 has. Her " imagination infected with sensual images," " her quiet 
 modesty inspired with amorous passions " all this " is apparent 
 in the songs she sings in her delirium, and in the significant 
 flowers she distributes, as clearly as anything so hidden in its 
 nature can and may be unveiled." I do not envy any man the 
 pruriency of mind which can discover the justification of such a 
 statement in the flowers which Ophelia distributes. Rosemary is 
 for ' remembrance,' which she gives to Laertes, as well as pansies for 
 ' thoughts ; ' there is no ' significance ' in these, any more than in 
 rue, in daisies, in violets, or in columbine, of anything but a pure 
 nature. Fennel is said to be an emblem of ' lust,' but it was much 
 more commonly used as significant of ' flattery,' in which sense it 
 is undoubtedly used here. To the plausible Claudius ' fennel ' was 
 not an inappropriate gift. As I have already showed, there is only 
 one song out of the four or five that Ophelia sings which contains 
 any impure allusions. Such criticism as this of Gervinus reminds 
 one of the story of the young lady, who was so refined that she 
 declined to hold any more conversation with one who had been 
 guilty of such indelicacy as to talk of " the naked eye." 
 
 The last song of Ophelia is one in which it would puzzle the 
 luminous eye of a German critic to perceive any sensual image : 
 
 And will a' not come again ? 
 And will a' not come again ? 
 
 No, no, he is dead, 
 
 Go to thy death-bed, 
 He never will come again. 
 
 His beard was as 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 ! 
 
 And of all Christian souls, I pray God. God be wi' you. [Exit. 
 
 With these words she departs, never having even recognised her 
 brother. They are the last words for us she speaks ; we see 
 nothing more of this most gentle and pure creation of Shakespeare's 
 genius, till we stand with her sorrowing brother and heart-broken, 
 lover by the side of her grave. Her ' virgin crants ' are laid upon 
 her body that had been the stainless temple of an unblemished soul. 
 We read Laertes' beautiful words as something more than pity's 
 homage to an unhappy fate ; they are the just tribute to a purity 
 which no breath of posthumous calumny can sully 
 
 And from her fair and unpolluted flesh 
 May violets spring ! 
 
 L 2 
 
148 . A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 Words which would indeed have been a mockery if spoken over 
 the grave of Hamlet's concubine, and none the less a mockery, with 
 due respect to Dr. Gervinus, if spoken over the body of one whose 
 'imagination had been infected with sensual images,' or whose 
 modesty had been tainted with ' amorous passion.' 
 
 There is another circumstance which renders the theory that 
 Hamlet had seduced Ophelia quite untenable. Neither Claudius 
 nor Laertes in any way hint at the possibility of such a thing ; 
 but surely if this very strong ground of quarrel with Hamlet 
 existed, Laertes would gladly have availed himself of such a fair 
 justification of any vengeance he might choose to exact ; and 
 Claudius would not have failed to use such a powerful means of 
 exasperating the anger of Laertes against Hamlet, if there had 
 been the shadow of a suspicion that Ophelia had been dishonoured 
 by the young prince. But however harsh or even cruel Hamlet's 
 words to Ophelia may seem to us, and might have seemed to 
 Claudius and her father, who overheard them, there was no doubt 
 that he had never offered any real insult to her honour. The 
 relations between them had been broken off by the positive 
 commands of Polonius himself, and Laertes had, as we have seen, 
 warned Ophelia against an intimacy which might end for her in 
 disgrace ; we cannot therefore conceive that any delicacy, or scruple 
 as to the honour of his family, would have restrained Laertes from 
 making the very most of any conduct on the part of Hamlet which 
 might have sufficed to justify his, or his father's, warning to Ophelia. 
 Nothing would have been so likely to alienate the sympathies of 
 the people from Hamlet, as a plausible story to the effect that he 
 had first seduced the daughter and then killed the father in a 
 quarrel. But little as Claudius respected the truth, or readily as 
 the chivalrous Laertes lent himself to an act of the blackest treachery, 
 they both knew that such an accusation against Hamlet would never 
 have been entertained by those who were at all acquainted with his 
 character. 
 
 With regard to the criticisms on Ophelia which I have quoted 
 above, I may remark that Gervinus, of his own individual self, seems 
 to incline to a very just view of the relations between Hamlet and 
 Ophelia. With the first part of his remarks no one could quarrel; 
 but, unfortunately, he seems suddenly to have fallen under the 
 spell of Goethe's enervating sensualism, and the result is the 
 passage on which I have already commented. That Hamlet 
 1 abandons ' Ophelia to despair and insanity cannot fairly be said ; 
 Gervinus has fallen into this mistake through failing to observe the 
 interval which elapses between Scene 4 and Scene 5 of Act IV. 
 
 " His conversation with her is equivocal, and not as Borneo, 
 Bassanio, or even Proteus have spoken with their beloved ones." 
 This seems to me a very grave misrepresentation. Shakespeare has 
 not given us any of Hamlet's conversation with Ophelia before he 
 assumed madness ; we may only surmise from the first words he 
 
APPENDIX. 149 
 
 speaks to her (Act III., Scene 1, lines 89-90) that, had his suspi- 
 cions of being -watched by the King not been excited, he would 
 have talked to her with modesty and tender reverence. To judge 
 of his usual conversation with her by the specimens we have in tho 
 Play Scene would be absurd ; for there ho is evidently exaggerating 
 the insanity which he was avowedly counterfeiting. Ophelia's 
 description of Hamlet's demeanour towards her (Act L, Scene 3) 
 justifies us in supposing that ho might compare favourably with 
 Romeo and Bassanio as far as purity of heart goes ; while to talk of 
 him in the same breath as of that abject liar and traitor, Proteus, is 
 an insult. In any case it would be gross injustice to attempt to infect 
 Ophelia's nature with the coarse indecencies which Hamlet utters 
 in his assumed character of a bitter-tongued madman. It would be 
 more to the point to compare her language when sane with that of 
 Juliet, Portia, and Julia ; I do not think her purity would be 
 dimmed by such a comparison. 
 
 "With regard to Goethe's conceptions of Ophelia, it is to me 
 one of the most unpleasant features in a work which is the most 
 utterly disappointing I have evec read ; and which I humbly venture 
 to assert has been endowed with an exaggerated amount of merit by 
 enthusiastic critics. " Wilhelm Meister " is a work written by one 
 advanced in years, in which we find all the cynicism and selfishness 
 of old age coupled with an amount of animal passion which youth 
 alone could excuse. The gem of the work, Mignon, is marred by 
 tho intrusion of the same element with which Goethe seeks to taint 
 Ophelia's character, and the grateful, loving, child dies in a paroxysm 
 of sensual desire. But this is not the place for a criticism of 
 " Wilhelm Meister." Few who have carefully read that work will 
 deny that there runs through it a strong flavour of sensuousness if 
 not of sensuality. 
 
 Let us examine the description of Ophelia which I have extracted. 
 " Her whole existence flows in sweet and ripe sensation." This 
 seems to be the description of a juicy peach. .... 
 " Decorum, like the thin crape upon her bosom, cannot conceal the 
 motions of her heart, but on the contrary, it betrays them." Here 
 we have the key to the mystery. To Goethe's eyes Ophelia pre- 
 sented herself as a voluptuous girl, with richly-moulded form, the 
 charms of which (for the benefit of elderly gentlemen with an eye 
 for beauty) she was by no means chary of revealing. Her moral 
 nature suited admirably with her physical. " Her imagination is 
 engaged, her silent modesty breathes a sweet desire, and if the con- 
 venient goddess Opportunity should shake the tree, the fruit would 
 quickly fall." That is to say, she was only chaste, because she had 
 not been tempted to be otherwise. 
 
 It is quite consistent with this luscious conception of Goethe's that 
 she should try to lull her excited appetites to rest with indecent 
 ballads. But I should very much like to know & what justification 
 Goethe would have offered for this passage : " Have we not an inti- 
 
150 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 niation from the very beginning of the play of the subject with 
 which the thoughts of the maiden are engaged ? She pursues her 
 course in silent secrecy, but without being able wholly to conceal 
 her wishes and her longings." I maintain that we have no such 
 intimation ; on the contrary, that every word Ophelia utters shows 
 that she was a gem of modesty, who worshipped, with the purest and 
 most unsensual love, a young prinoe of great intellect, refined 
 accomplishments, and such a nobleness cf character as might well 
 attract something more than the animal desire of a less virtuous girl 
 than Ophelia. I have no doubt Goethe's description may seem very 
 poetical, not to say delicious, especially to those who are accustomed 
 to look upon every maiden as chaste only by compulsion ; but 
 an Englishman, in whose ears Milton's glorious description of 
 Chastity, the Queen of Virtues, is still ringing, may be excused for 
 thanking Heaven that Shakespeare's Ophelia was not Goethe's. 
 
 One more passage, and I leave a question which it is painful to 
 be compelled to argue. This is Goethe's description of Ophelia in 
 her madness. " But at length when all self-control is at an end, 
 and the secrets of her heart appear upon her tongue, that tongue 
 betrays her, and in the innocence of her madness, even in the pre- 
 sence of royalty, she takes delight in the echo of her loose but dearly- 
 loved songs of ' The Maiden whose Heart was Won,' ' The Maid 
 who stole to meet the Youth,' and so forth."* I think the idea, 
 expressed by the sentence which I have underlined, passes all other 
 instances I know of what some might call by a harsher name, but 
 which may be more politely described as theinstincts of cour- 
 tierdorn.-j- Conceive the wretched, distracted maid that Shakespeare 
 has represented, pausing to think whether she was in the august 
 presence of royalty or not ! 
 
 It matters little after this touch that the next sentence gives the 
 
 * The passage runs thus in Carlyle's translation : 
 
 "But at last, when her self-command is altogether gone, when the secrets 
 or her heart are hovering on her tongue, that tongue betrays her, and in 
 the innocence of insanity, she solaces herself, unmindful of king or queen, 
 with the echo of her loose and well-beloved song, To-morrow is Saint 
 Valentine's Day, and By Gis and by Saint Charity" The titles given 
 hsre are certainly recognisable as lines occurring in the songs in question, 
 bit those given in Mr. Boylan's translation fairly puzzled me, until I turned 
 to the original and found that they were literal translations of the lines 
 given by Goethe " Vom Madchen das gewonnen ward, vorn Madchen das 
 zum Knaben schleicht, und so weiter." I suppose Goethe evolved these 
 ballads from his inner consciousness. 
 
 t Carlyle's translation is the more correct. The words in the original 
 are " Und in der Unschiild des Wahnsinns ergetzt^ie sich vor Konig und 
 Kb'nigin an dem Nachklange ihrer geliebten losen lieder, &c." I hope I 
 have not stretched these words beyond their legitimate meaning. It 
 certainly seems to me that they may fairly be made to bear the construc- 
 tion put upon them ; and that the omission of the article before ' Konig ' 
 and ' Konigin ' shows that Goethe intended to mark the fact that Ophelia 
 enjoyed the echo of her loose songs before Claudius and Gertrude, not as 
 individuals, but as King and Queen a, circumstance which Ophelia, in her 
 condition, could not be expected to regard. 
 
APPENDIX. 151 
 
 very false impression that Ophelia sang more than one indecent song 
 in her madness, and that she did so with evident enjoyment. Such 
 a distortion of what Shakespeare has written is on a piece with the 
 whole libel on Ophelia, so lamentable as coming from a writer who 
 was one of the first to grasp the inner meaning of Hamlet's character, 
 
 APPENDIX E. 
 
 ON THE SOLILOQUY 
 (( O, WHAT A ROGUE AND PEASANT SLAVE AM I." 
 
 THE first words of this soliloquy, " Now I am alone," sometimes 
 omitted on the stage, give the key to the interpretation of this 
 outburst for such it is and therefore a complete contrast to that 
 passionate piece of calm, reflective self-communing on the question 
 of suicide, which comes in the next Act.* 
 
 It is a well-known fact that in the Quarto of 1G03 this soliloquy 
 occurs after, and not before, the one beginning " To be, or not to 
 be," which (together with the scene between Hamlet and Ophelia) 
 is placed in that edition before his scene with Polonius, and that 
 with Eosencrantz and Guildenstern in fact, the first words that 
 Hamlet speaks after his interview with the Ghost are, " To be, or 
 not to be." Some people prefer this arrangement, because they 
 consider that it lends greater force to Hamlet's self-communings on 
 the subject of suicide. Ernesto Kossi, the Italian actor, omits this 
 soliloquy, " 0, what a rogue, &c.," altogether, and substitutes for it, 
 " To be, or not to be." This appears to me quite indefensible. 
 Other representatives of Hamlet omit or mutilate this soliloquy ; 
 but whether they do it from modesty or presumption I cannot take 
 upon me to decide. 
 
 Hamlet had longed to be alone from the moment that the strong 
 emotion of the player, while reciting the speech about Hecuba, 
 awoke in his conscience the pangs of self-reproach for the remiss- 
 ness which he had shown in fulfilling the solemn duty imposed oiT 
 him, ;uul suggested to him the idea of taking an important step 
 1o wards the fulfilment of that duty. By a supernatural visitation 
 he had been informed of his uncle's guilt, and directed to punish 
 him ; now he saw his way to obtaining a material proof of that 
 guilt, which would make the punishment a task less repugnant to 
 his over-scrupulous conscience. He wanted to be alone that he 
 might give way to his self-reproach, and might at the same time 
 arrange the plan which had occurred to him. TTni* tthfi rnnrrmnt 
 he becomes a manof action ; with few words he dismisses the 
 
 * I have referred to this contrast again in the text, page 39. 
 
152 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 players, the tedious old courtier, and the two double-faced friends 
 of whose insincerity he has convinced himself. It is with an 
 enormous sense of relief that he exclaims 
 
 Now I am alone. 
 The next words 
 
 0, what a rogue and peasant slave am I ! 
 
 should not, it seems to me, be spoken with calm self-contempt, but 
 with a bitterness almost furious. Hamlet, as a prince and a man of 
 courage and honesty, nseaMjie most injurious expressions that he 
 can find with which to reproach his own apathy and indolence. 
 In speaking to himself of his own faults he spares no term, however 
 opprobrious ; and the indignation he feels against his own defects 
 is too real to be uttered with anything but the most impassioned 
 vehemence. As he recalls the emotion of the player, emphasising 
 and amplifying every detail, his indignation gathers force ; till it 
 culminates in the eloquent contrast which he draws between the 
 fictitious wrong which excited such emotion in the player, and the 
 terribly real injury which failed to rouse himself, the son of a 
 murdered father, and that father a king, to any action or even to 
 any expression of indignation. 
 
 . I have pointed out in the text how Hamlet virtually refutes 
 himself ; it is sufficient to remark here that the actor should not be 
 deterred by the paltry fear of an anti-climax from abandoning 
 himself thoroughly to the passion of the speech up to the 
 words 
 
 0, vengeance 1 
 
 at which point Hamlet's better sense triumphs, and he regains his 
 self-command. 
 The expression 
 
 About, my brain ! 
 
 has been commented on by Gervinus* and others, who point out 
 that we should naturally expect " About my hands," or " arm." 
 But I do not think it is really so significant of Hamlet's averseness 
 to action as at first sight it appears ; it is by an exertion of his brain, 
 not of his arm, that he hopes to entrap Claudius into a virtual con- 
 fession of his guilt. It seems to me that Shakespeare intended here 
 to represent Hamlet as having been so transported by passion, that 
 a few moments' rest was necessary before the effects of the excite- 
 ment would allow of his mind resuming the idea which had been 
 suggested to him during the actor's speech. The word " Hum " 
 which we find in the text, seems to prove this. The actor might 
 pause here, as if, for a moment, he had lost the clue to the plan 
 which the next lines develope. So far from weakening the effect 
 
 \f See foot-note, page 75. 
 
APPENDIX. 153 
 
 of this speech, it is much increased by the change at this point to 
 a calm but intense reflection. Hamlet's intellect has regained its 
 sway. Nothing could be more clear and vigorous than the manner 
 in which he sketches out his plan of action. At the words 
 
 The spirit that I^have seen, &c., 
 and more markedly the line 
 
 Out of my weakness and my melancholy, 
 
 a great opportunity occurs for the expression of that gentle sadness* \ 
 and pathetic self-distrust which are remarkable features in the j 
 complex character of Hamlet. 
 
 I cannot refrain here from referring to the new force given 
 to the conclusion of this speech by Mr. Irving, the more par- 
 ticularly as his critics do not seem to have quite appreciated its 
 full significance. He takes his tablets out of his pocket before 
 speaking the words 
 
 I'll have grounds 
 More relative than this. 
 
 The precise meaning of the word " this" and what it refers to never 
 seemed very clear : but this action explains it. In the first Act, 
 after the Ghost has left him, it will be remembered that Hamlet 
 has written down in his tablets that Claudius was a villain.* These 
 same tablets he holds now in his hand ; in them he is going to put 
 down some ideas for the speech which he intends to introduce into 
 the play to be performed before Claudius, with the object of 
 making 
 
 his occulted guilt 
 .... itself unkennel .... 
 
 (Act III, Scene 2, lines 75 and 76.) 
 
 Can there be any more natural action than this, that he should 
 touch these tablets with the other hand while he says 
 
 I'll have grounds 
 More relative than this. 
 
 i.e., "than this record of my uncle's guilt which I made after the 
 interview with my father's spirit T' 
 
 It is astonishing that the significance of Mr. Irving's action in 
 bringing out his tablets before these words seems to have escaped 
 all the critics. The fact is that the greater part of the soliloquy 
 in the first Act, from which I have quoted, has generally been 
 omitted by the representatives of Hamlet, so that the critics 
 had been accustomed to pay little attention to it. Mr. Irving 
 spoke it in its entirety, and did not forget that he had spoken 
 
 * See Appendix C. 
 
154 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 it. It is on sucli minute points as this that a true artist 
 does not neglect to bestow thought ; with such an one ever)- 
 movement and gesture has its meaning, and is the result of 
 a prolonged study of the character he is enacting ; such pains- 
 taking must often be its own reward, for the audience of a 
 theatre, as a rule, do not think at all of the entirety either of the 
 play or of the characters, but look more at particular scenes and 
 speeches, in which they are accustomed [to see certain effects 
 produced without any regard to the harmony of the whole con- 
 ception, 
 
 APPENDIX F. 
 
 ON THE SOLILOQUY 
 
 THIS soliloquy has suffered, more than any other in the play, from 
 the treatment it has received at the hands of the actors. Happily 
 the old-fashioned Hamlet (whose oppressively gloomy appearance 
 was enough to give one an indigestion), stalking down to the foot- 
 lights with his arms folded, solemnly wagging his plume-laden head 
 (which reminded one not a little of undertakers and hearses), and 
 after more than a decent pause, delivering the well-known soliloquy 
 in a sepulchral voice happily this portentous ornament of the 
 stage is rapidly becoming merely a nightmare of one's boyhood. 
 But there is still much to be desired in the " Hamlet " of most 
 leading actors with regard to this soliloquy, which demands the 
 most natural ease and studied unconventionality in 8 its delivery. 
 The audience should be made to feel that they really are watching 
 the workings of a human mind crushed under the burden of a life 
 from which all joy, and hope, and peace, have departed ; of one 
 tempted to seize the terribly easy escape from such a life which 
 self-destruction offers. The self-consciousness of the actor must be 
 sternly suppressed ; indeed, I should strongly advise his passing 
 the interval between Acts II. and III. in perfect quiet, alone in his 
 room, trying to bring his mind into as close sympathy as possible 
 with that of Hamlet's ; so that when he steps on the scene he may 
 wear a pre-occupied and solemn air, as if he had really been debat- 
 ing with himself this awful question. We do not require a super- 
 ficial and ponderous gloominess, but a tender, thoughtful melan- 
 choly, both in the expression of the face and in the carriage of the 
 body. Weary and sad, Hamlet sinks into a chair ; then, leaning 
 his face on his hand, he seems trying to pierce with his eyes the 
 veil which divides us from the unseen world. 
 
 At the first utterance of the words " To die," he pauses, as if he 
 were asking himself what death really was ; then he continues, in 
 
APPENDIX. 155 
 
 a less solemn tone, as if his mind had been relieved of. a great 
 "burden by the answer which his self-communing had suggested ; 
 
 To sleep ; 
 
 No more ; and by a sleep to say we end 
 The heartache and the thousand natural shocks 
 That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation 
 Devoutly to be wish'd. 
 
 The picture he draws is of something too happy to be easily realised. 
 He feels that such a peaceful escape from all the troubles which 
 harass our minds, and wound our hearts, in this world cannot be so 
 easy or complete as it seems. Then he repeats, as if once more 
 seeking to find the real meaning of the awful words, " To die," 
 putting in juxtaposition the synonym he has chosen for them, " to 
 sleep " then as if his mind had only just awakened to the full 
 meaning of sleep he repeats in a solemn tone. " to sleep :" sleep 
 after all is not the perfect oblivion and peace that we love to believe 
 it is 
 
 Perchance to dream : 
 
 He has found out the reason for that awe with which we approach 
 the idea of death, the source of the mysterious power which makes 
 us withhold our hand when one blow might seem to promise escape 
 from all our sufferings. 
 
 For in that sleep of death what dreams may come 
 When we have shuffled off this mortal coil 
 Must give us pause. 
 
 Note the contrast between the " may " and the " must " the mere 
 possibility that we shall dream during the sleep of death is so tre- 
 mendous, that it cannot but check the readiness with which the 
 grief-laden sufferer would fain free his soul from her prison-house. 
 
 There's the respect 
 That makes calamity of so long life. 
 
 (The word " long " should be emphasized.) Hamlet starts up from 
 his reverie ; for this doubt, at least the hesitation which paralyses 
 his action on this point, holding him back from that practical escape 
 from his troubles which suicide seems to offer this much at least of 
 his weakness is explained to ,his perfect justification. He enume- 
 rates in forcible, picturesque, language the many sorrows and tor- 
 ments which life has for all of us ; and his reason is assured that no 
 one would spare that one thrust of the dagger which might at once 
 end these sorrows, if death were not but the threshold of a new 
 life, the possibilities and capabilities of which are hidden entirely 
 from that same Reason's eye. Of that blessed security which the 
 eye of Faith alone can behold beyond the darkness of death, Ham- 
 let says not a word ; he is debating the question of suicide from 
 the merely philosophical point of view ; his religious conscience was 
 well aware that the peace and joy, from which Christianity knows 
 that Death divides us, can be reached only by those who patiently 
 await the summons ; we may not invade the haven of rest j it is 
 
156 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 only when the good ship has bravely battled against the storms, 
 has done the work on the great ocean of life appointed her to do, 
 that she may enjoy such a peaceful refuge. 
 
 It is remarkable that all the sophistry of the ancients is com- 
 pletely annihilated in this purely rationalistic speech ; and it is 
 impossible to rate too highly the skill and power with which 
 Shakespeare has here confuted the most enlightened heathenism 
 from the exact standpoint of an enlightened heathen. The slightest 
 allusion to the beliefs of Christianity, the employment of any 
 Christian expression, would have marred all. 
 
 There are several verbal expressions in this soliloquy which are 
 worthy of comment. The simile of taking arms " against a sea of 
 troubles " has often been brought forward as an instance of Shake- 
 speare's carelessness and confusion of images. But I do not think 
 the two emendations of Theobald, " a siege " and " the assay," are 
 required. The sense is perfectly clear, and the idea of multitude is 
 conveyed better by " a sea " than by " a siege." The common ex- 
 pression " a sea of faces " will occur to everybody in connection 
 with this passage. " Slings and arrows " certainly suggest t{ siege " 
 rather than " sea," and justify the adoption of Theobald's conjec- 
 ture by those whose minds are troubled by the inaccuracy of the 
 metaphor. It may be as well to note that the words " quietus " 
 and " sicklied " are not found in any other passage of Shakespeare's 
 plays. " Bodkin," f in the sense of a dagger, seems to belong more 
 to Chaucer's than to Shakespeare's language. " To grunt " occurs 
 only in " Midsummer Night's Dream," Act III., Scene 1, where it is 
 used in its more proper sense of the noise made by a hog ; here it 
 means " to groan," and there seems no reason why Shakespeare 
 should not have employed the more elegant word. These and other 
 verbal peculiarities of this soliloquy incline us to believe that 
 Shakespeare founded it on some passage in an early-printed work 
 which he had come across in the course of his miscellaneous read- 
 ings : the similarities pointed out between Hamlet's words here and 
 the book entitled " Cardanus' Comforte " may not be very strong, 
 but they are sufficiently remarkable to justify the conjecture that 
 Shakespeare had that work in his mind when writing this speech. 
 (See Hunter's " Illustrations/' vol. ii., pages 243 and 244.) I do not 
 despair of yet finding some other passage in old English literature 
 
 * "Quietus" occurs in the Sonnets (cxxvi.). It is a purely legal .term, 
 and was no doubt suggested by " the law's delay." (See Hunter's " Illus- 
 trations," vol. ii., page 241.) The Italians still write " per quietanza " in 
 giving the receipt for a bill. 
 
 + I am very much inclined to agree with Hunter, that "bodkin" here 
 does not mean dagger, but a woman's bodkin, or perhaps a "writing-steel," 
 or " stylus." (See the passage quoted in Richardson's Dictionary sub ' ' Bod- 
 kin," from Holland's translation of Suetonius " doe nothing else but catch 
 flies, and with the sharp point of a bodkin or writing-steel prick them 
 through.") I think there is no doubt that Hamlet wishes to mention the 
 most contemptible instrument which could take away life. 
 
APPENDIX. 157 
 
 which may have suggested to Shakespeare the train of reasoning 
 as well as some of the more peculiar expressions here employed. 
 
 How very different was the original conception of this remarkable 
 soliloquy may be seen by comparing the text of the Quarto (1603) 
 with that of the play in its present shape. Of the different 
 position which it occupies in the play T have already spoken : but 
 that is comparatively unimportant ; not so the very different treat- 
 ment of the subject shown in this passage : 
 
 For in that dreame of death, when wee awake 
 
 And borne before an everlasting judge, 
 
 From whence no passenger ever return'd, 
 
 The undiscovered country, at whose sight 
 
 The happy smile, and the accursed damn'd. 
 
 But for this, the joyful hope of this, 
 
 Whol'd bear the scornes and flattery of the world, &c. &c. 
 
 ****** w j lo wou i(j this indure, 
 But for a hope of something after death. 
 
 Here it is not the dread of " something after death," but the joyful 
 hope of it, which makes a man bear the ills of life rather than 
 escape from them by self-destruction. The difference is very 
 remarkable. 
 
 APPENDIX G. 
 
 ON THE PLAY SCENE. 
 
 IT was probably intended by Shakespeare that Hamlet should 
 burst out into snatches of song ; but as many representatives of the 
 character may not be able to sing, it would not do to insist on this 
 point. It is more important to note that the state of Hamlet's 
 mind is here almost precisely similar to what it was at the end 
 of Act I. after his interview with the Ghost. Then his first 
 vague suspicion of his uncle's guilt had been confirmed by the 
 supernatural evidence of his father's spirit ; now it has been ren- 
 dered a positive certainty by the natural evidence of a guilty con- 
 science, which Claudius has displayed when witnessing the mimic 
 representation of the crime which he had committed. On both 
 occasions the tension of Hamlet's nerves is so great that the excite- 
 ment of his brain reaches almost to the verge of madness. It is a 
 gieat pity that here, as at the end of the Act I., no representative 
 of Hamlet on the stage ventures to speak the words as they are set 
 down ; some omit one portion, some another, while Signer Salvini 
 gets rid of the difficulty by omitting all,* and simply falling on 
 
 * Mr. Irving speaks only the lines beginning ' ' For thou dost know, 
 Damon dear," &c., giving a new force to the word "pa jock" or "peacock," 
 which Hamlet substitutes for the manifest rhyme " ass " by looking at the 
 fan of peacock's feathers which he had borrowed from Ophelia, and held in 
 his hand during the representation of the play, as if that had suggested to 
 him the substitution. 
 
158 . A STUDY OP HAMLET. 
 
 Horatio's neck. The subtlety with which Shakespeare has here 
 portrayed the rapid transitions which characterise nervous excite- 
 ment in a nature like that of Hamlet's is much obscured and weak- 
 ened by any omission. Mark the words which follow those given 
 in the text : 
 
 Would not this, sir, and a forest of feathers if the rest of my fortunes 
 turn Turk with me with two Provincial roses on my razed shoes, get me a 
 fellowship in a cry of players, sir ? 
 
 How strongly they display that childish exultation at the success of 
 his scheme, which I have elsewhere noticed as so characteristic of 
 Hamlet. Horatio falls into his humour, and answers : 
 
 Half a share ; 
 to which Hamlet rejoins - 
 
 A whole one, I ; 
 
 and then, putting one hand on Horatio's shoulder, bursts out into 
 the verse : - 
 
 For thou dost know, Damon dear, 
 
 This realm dismantled was 
 Of Jove himself ; and now reigns here 
 
 A very, very pajock. 
 Hon. You might have rhymed. 
 
 Hanilet now becomes for a moment more serious : 
 
 good Horatio, I'll take the Ghost's word for a thousand pound. Didst 
 perceive ? 
 
 HOE. Very well, my lord. 
 
 HAM. Upon the talk of the poisoning ? 
 
 HOE. I did very well note him. 
 
 Then, as if he did not dare to allow his mind to dwell upon the 
 subject, Hamlet cries out 
 
 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 ! 
 
 This seeking the distraction of music is very remarkable, and tends 
 to support the theory of those who hold that at this point Hamlet 
 is virtually mad. I do not myself go so far as that, but it is certain 
 that he here feels the strain upon his mind greater than he can 
 bear, and that no one is more acutely sensible, than he himself is, 
 how near he is to that boundary which separates excitement from 
 insanity. 
 
 What I have said above as to the conduct of actors in this scene 
 does not apply either to Mr. Irving or to Signer Salvini, but gene- 
 rally, when represented on the stage, Shakespeare's meaning seems 
 to me so much obscured, that I have ventured to insert here some 
 stage directions derived from a careful study of the text, which may 
 facilitate a student of " Hamlet " in understanding the meaning of 
 
APPENDIX. 159 
 
 the speeches here set down for him. There are two objects which 
 Hamlet has especially in view the iirst is to seem to be in very 
 high spirits, the next is, under cover of assumed gaiety, to watch 
 most closely the demeanour of Claudius. When the King, Queen, 
 and Court enter, they come prepared to witness an entertainment 
 especially provided for them by Hamlet ; the very fact that he 
 should have turned his attention to such a subject has naturally 
 caused much delight to his uncle and to his mother ; to the former, 
 because it seemed to relieve him from the vague fear that his 
 nephew's brooding melancholy arose from his suspecting the true 
 cause of his father's death ; to the latter, because, with all her faults, 
 she loved her son, and was glad of his taking pleasure in anything. 
 Hamlet avails himself of his privileges, as a supposed madman, 
 to a considerable extent, making his apparently gay sallies of 
 humour as bitter as possible to the feelings of those to whom they 
 were addressed ; but the actor should beware of allowing this bitter- 
 ness to affect the tone of his voice for instance, the speech to 
 Ophelia 
 
 What should a man do but be merry ? for, look you, how cheerfully my 
 mother looks, and my father died within' s two hours 
 
 should be uttered with perfect unconsciousness, as well as the fol- 
 lowing one ; in fact, he should display an exaggerated levity, in 
 which the exaggeration should be just sufficiently marked to show 
 that it is the cloak which he purposely assumes to conceal his 
 nervous agitation. Again, the words 
 
 As woman's love 
 
 should be spoken in a light tone of satire, with a rapid glance at 
 Ophelia, which is instantly diverted to the stage, on which the 
 Players now appear. 
 
 It has always been the custom for the representative of Hamlet 
 to hold something in his hand, with which to conceal the workings 
 of his countenance as he watches the King ; generally the actor 
 takes Ophelia's fan ; but I think Fechter and Salvini are right in 
 substituting a manuscript, supposed to contain the speeches as 
 altered and added to by Hamlet. It is to be noted that Hamlet 
 does not interrupt the Players for some time, except with the one 
 exclamation 
 
 Wormwood, wormwood. 
 
 Shakespeare has, like a true artist, given time for the mimic 
 representation to work upon the conscience of Claudius, whose 
 attention, at first carelessly bestowed upon the Players, grows ab- 
 sorbed as he gradually perceives the drift of what they are repre- 
 senting. The force of this scene would be much increased if the 
 actor who plays the part of Claudius would observe more carefully 
 this subtle touch of Shakespeare's, and would pass gradually from 
 unforced gaiety at the beginning of the scene to indifference assumed 
 
160 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 with, effort, and finally, to agitation which he can no longer conceal. 
 After the exit of the Player Queen, Hamlet turns to his mother ; 
 with an affectation of easy politeness he asks her 
 
 Madam, how like you this play ? 
 y doth protest too much, 
 HAM. 0, hut she'll keep her word. 
 
 QUEEN. The lady doth protest too much, methinks. 
 
 In saying this he turns away from the Queen and looks at Claudius, 
 who has recovered self-possession enough to trust himself to speak. 
 
 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. 
 
 This is said with light irony. The King, mastering his agitation, 
 asks with assumed indifference 
 
 KINO. What do you call the play ? 
 
 HAM. The Mouse-trap. Marry, how ? Tropically. This play is the 
 image of a murder done in Vienna : Gonzago is the duke's name ; 
 his wife, Baptista : you shall see anon ; 'tis a knavish piece of 
 work : hut what o' that ? your Majesty and we that have free 
 aouls, it touches us not : lee the galled jade wince, our withers 
 are unwrung. 
 
 I have often heard this speech spoken with far too manifest in- 
 tention ; it seems to me that Hamlet is anxious rather to remove 
 any suspicion of his real purpose in causing this play to be repre- 
 sented : it is with great difficulty that he restrains himself, but he 
 does do so, remembering that the representation of his father's 
 murder, on which he mainly relied in his attempt to make the 
 occulted guilt of Claudius unkennel itself, was yet to come. The 
 murderer now enters on the scene ; Hamlet announces his name 
 
 This is one Lucianus, nephew to the king. 
 OPH. You are as good as a chorus, my lord. 
 
 HAM. I could interpret between you and your love, if I. could see the 
 puppets dallying. 
 
 In speaking this line Hamlet should not look at Ophelia, but keep 
 his eyes on the Player. We are coming now to the most impor- 
 tant speech which he had inserted, and he is feverishly anxious 
 that the actor should speak the speech correctly : 
 
 Begin, murderer, leave thy damnable faces, and begin. Come: "The 
 croaking raven doth bellow for revenge." 
 
 It is with the greatest difficulty that he now represses his* excite- 
 ment, and is obliged to give himself the vent of exaggerated lan- 
 guage. During the speech of Lucianus, who is in the act of pouring 
 the poison into the sleeper's ear, he watches the King's face with 
 the most intense eagerness. The next speech is the one to the ordi- 
 nary interpretation of which I have so strongly objected : 
 
 HAM. He poisons him i' the garden for his estate. His name's Gonzago : 
 the story is extant, and written in very choice Italian : you shall 
 see anon how the murderer gets the love of Gonzago's wife. 
 
APPENDIX. 1G1 
 
 It seems to me that the excitement of Hamlet should be here vio- 
 lently suppressed, and that he should not give way to it until the 
 King and Court have all left. Claudius does not rise till the end 
 of this speech, and for a moment he is unable to speak. The Queen 
 evidently thinks that he is going to swoon, which very likely was 
 not far from the truth ; but he recovers himself by a great effort, 
 and, calling for lights, hurries away : now Hamlet can let loose his 
 pent-up excitement, which he does in the lines on which I have 
 already commented at the beginning of this Appendix. 
 
 APPENDIX H. 
 
 ON THE SOLILOQUY, *" NOW MIGHT I DO IT PAT," ETC. 
 
 Now might I do it pat, now he is praying, 
 
 And now I'll do't : and so he goes to heaven : 
 
 And so am I revenged. That would be scann'd : 
 
 A villain kills my father ; and for that, 
 
 I, his sole son, do this same villain send 
 
 To heaven. 
 
 0, 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, 
 
 'Tis 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, 
 
 Or in the incestuous pleasure of his bed ; 
 
 At game, a-swearing, or about some act 
 
 That has no relish of salvation in't ; 
 
 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. My mother stays : 
 
 This physic but prolongs thy sickly days. 
 
 I give here the words of this soliloquy as I have not given them 
 in the text. It is very interesting to compare this scene carefully 
 with the version given of it in the first Quarto (1603), in which it 
 stands thus :* 
 
 Enter the KING. 
 KINO. that this wet that falles vpon my face 
 
 Would wash the crime cleere from my conscience ! 
 When I looke vp to heaven, I see my trespasse, 
 The earth doth still crie out vpon my fact, 
 Pay me the murder of a brother and a king, 
 And the adulterous fault I haue committed : 
 O these are shines that are vnpardonable : 
 Why say thy sinnes were blacker then is ieat, 
 Yet may contrition make them as white as snowe : 
 
 * See Allen's Reprint of "The Devonshire Hamlets" (i., pp. 68, 59), 
 London : Sampson and Low, 1860. 
 
 M 
 
102 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 I but still to perseuer in a siune, 
 
 It is an act gainst the vniuersall power, 
 
 Most wretched man, stoope, bend thee to thy prayer, 
 
 Aske grace of heauen to keepe thee from despaire. 
 
 (He knccles. Enters HAMLET. ) 
 HAM. I so, come forth and worke thy last, 
 
 And thus hee dies : and so am I revenged : 
 
 No, not so : he tooke my father sleeping, his sins brim full, 
 
 And how his soule stoode to the state of heauen 
 
 Who knowes, saue the immortall powres, 
 
 And shall I kill him now, 
 
 When he is purging of his soule ? 
 
 Making his way for heausn, this is a benefit, 
 
 And not reuenge : no, get thee vp agen, 
 
 When hee v s at game swaring, taking his carowse, drinking drunke, 
 
 Or in the incestuous pleasure of his bed, 
 
 Or at some act that hath no relish 
 
 Of saluation in't, then trip him 
 
 That his heeles may kicke at heauen, 
 
 And fall as lowe as hel : my mother stayes, 
 
 This phisicke but prolongs thy weary dayes. [Exit HAM. 
 
 KING. My 'wordes fly vp, my sinnes remaine below. 
 
 No King on earth is safe, if Gods his foe. [Exit KING. 
 
 If Shakespeare founded his " Hamlet " on an older play with the 
 same title or treating of the same subject, I think that in this scene 
 we have a very decided instance of the influence of the older work. 
 The elaborate ferocity of this speech of Hamlet's is more in " King 
 Cambyses " vein ; it reminds me more of King Hieronimo than 
 any other passage in Shakespeare's works.* True it is that in 
 " Othello " we find almost as great ferocity of revenge, but there it 
 is more in place, both as regards the character and nationality of 
 Othello, no less than the subject of the tragedy ; on Hamlet's lips 
 such language seems forced and unnatural ; indeed, its only justifi- 
 cation is that it is intended to be so. 
 
 If we suppose that the Quarto of 1603 was not a mutilated ver- 
 sion, but a rude transcript of the play as acted (in fact, a careless 
 duplicate of the Prompter's copy), and that it contains much more 
 of the older play unaltered than Shakespeare afterwards thought fit 
 to retain, how we must wonder at the exquisite transformation 
 which the first rude outline of the King's speech has undergone 
 into what a luminous and majestic form is the dark and flimsy 
 shadow expanded ! 
 
 The King's speech in the earlier version ends with a rhymed 
 couplet , this would seem to point to an older play as the source 
 whence it was borrowed ; so in the final couplet of the scene, in 
 which Shakespeare has retained the rhyme, though he has altered 
 the language with great effect. The original is bald and common- 
 place 
 
 My wordes fly vp, my sinnes remaine below. 
 No King on earth is safe, if God's his foe. 
 
 * I do not include that revolting play " Titus Andronictts " among Shake" 
 speare's works ; he may have touched it, but not enough to wash away its 
 original brutality, much less to claim it as his own. 
 
APPENDIX. ] 63 
 
 How much lucre forcible and poetical is Shakespeare's finished 
 version 
 
 My words fly up, my thoughts remain below : 
 Words without thoughts never to heaven go. 
 
 The last line is a most beautiful and true thought elegantly and 
 succinctly expressed. It would be out of place here to enter on 
 the question as to how far we are enabled to form any idea of 
 Shakespeare's mode of working, by carefully comparing the compa- 
 ratively meagre version of the Quarto 1603 with the more elaborate, 
 and avowedly authentic, copy of 1604; but I have no doubt that 
 a patient analysis of the two versions will yield the most important 
 results.* 
 
 I must now return to the consideration of Hamlet's soliloquy. 
 .From the version in the Quarto 1603 it is evident that Hamlet is 
 intended either to enter with his sword drawn or to draw it imme- 
 diately he sees the King ; in the speech, as it stands now, the 
 sword should not be drawn till the words 
 
 And now I'll do't : 
 
 It was, therefore, I think, an unnecessary exercise of ingenuity on 
 the part of Mr. Collier's " Old Corrector " to insert the stage direc- 
 tion " his sword drawn." Mr. Collier adds " ready to kill the 
 King if his resolution had held ;" but Hamlet had made no resolu- 
 tion to kill the King at this moment ; on the contrary, he was on 
 his Avay to his mother's closet, and comes upon the King unex- 
 pectedly. Ernesto Rossi's entrance in this scene is more effective 
 than that of either Salvini or Irving. He enters with his head 
 down, as if deep in thought, revolving in his mind what he should 
 say to his mother that might rouse her to a sense of her guilt ; on 
 seeing the King he starts and draws back ; then the idea of killing 
 the kneeling man strikes him suddenly, and he speaks the first 
 line 
 
 "Now might I do it pat, now he is praying ; 
 
 It is evidently the mention of the word " praying " which causes 
 Hamlet to pause ; the meaning of the first line I take to be " Now 
 might I do it at once, now he is on his knees unable to defend 
 himself, and so absorbed in his prayers that he is not even aware 
 of my presence." Hamlet continues, drawing his sword 
 
 And now I'll do't : 
 
 making a step towards the King at the same time ; then the sight 
 of the kneeling figure and the associations of the word " praying," 
 which he cannot forget, make him pause. What Hamlet really 
 felt, but what he would not admit to himself that he did feel, was 
 
 * I may perhaps mention that I have had the Quarto 1603 collated with ths 
 text of the complete " Hamlet" verbatim and literatim; and that I hope to 
 be able to publish the results of the analysis I have made of the differences 
 between the two, which are much more important than is usually supposed. 
 
 M2 
 
164 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 shame at the idea of killing a man so defenceless, and so occupied, 
 as Claudius then was. Even to men less religious than Hamlet 
 was, there is a kind of awe which, insensibly perhaps, associates 
 itself with any one engaged in devotion ; at that moment the most 
 violent rage and hatred may well pause before striking their victim. 
 Hamlet is throughout this speech playing a part ; the feeling is 
 not real, it is forced, and therefore the strained, exaggerated, lan- 
 guage is justifiable. I do not mean to say that Hamlet does not 
 hate Claudius, but he does not really feel the malignant vindictive- 
 ness which his language expresses ; he is trying to deceive himself, 
 and, it may be, like some of us who try to accomplish that end, he 
 half succeeds ; he may half believe at the end of this ferocious 
 soliloquy that he has spared the life of Claudius, not because his 
 nature shrank from Avhat would really have been an act of cowardly 
 assassination, but because his vengeance was so fiendish that he 
 sought to kill the soul, as well as the body, of his father's murderer. 
 The words 
 
 and so lie goes to heaven : 
 
 are uttered after a pause, as I have said above ; a pause during 
 which Hamlet may have caught sight of the effects of Ids pro- 
 posed act of vengeance, not only on his victim's soul, but on his 
 own; the corollary to this proposition, which may have passed 
 through his head, is " and I (go) to helL" But though his actions 
 may betray his doubts as to his right to exact, by his own individual 
 act, a life for a life, or as to the justice of the principle that one 
 murder can justify another, his words, spoken to himself, must 
 contain no such admission. The Ghost's accusation has been con- 
 firmed by strong indirect evidence ; and the vengeance enjoined on 
 him must be executed but not at this moment. It is remarkable, 
 if my theory of this speech be true, that Shakespeare has elaborated 
 the plausible, if detestable, arguments by which Hamlet escapes 
 from the necessity of immediately killing Claudius. It may be 
 said that the dramatist only wanted to prolong his play, but I 
 think, even if that were his purpose, he would try and reach it by 
 means not inconsistent with the psyshological problem which he 
 has set himself in the character of his hero. 
 
 The whole argument on which Hamlet proceeds to abstain from 
 action is ridiculously false it is based upon the barbarous assump- 
 tion (quite consistent with the rude and vague religion which 
 Hamlet seems to profess) that any man, however wicked his life 
 may have been, if killed in the act of prayer, whether he be pray- 
 ing from his heart or no, must go to heaven ; while a man whose 
 life has been noble and pure, if killed after eating, without prepa- 
 ration, through no fault of his own, must go to hell. This is 
 simply the meanest superstition. A Catholic is bound to believe 
 that any person dying in mortal sin is in danger of eternal dam- 
 nation ; also that any sinner truly penitent, who dies fortified by the 
 rites of the Church, after severe contrition for and full confession 
 
APPENDIX. 165 
 
 of his crimes, will, by the mercy of God, obtain everlasting happi- 
 ness : but the sentence may, in the first case, according to the 
 strictest Catholic doctrine, be remitted by the same mercy that is 
 extended to the latter case ; moreover, of the sincerity of the con- 
 trition God alone can judge. The priest must (to a certain extent) 
 take it for granted that the penitent is sincere in his sorrow, 110 less 
 than that he is honest in his confession. However, it is not just to 
 expect from any dramatic poet accuracy on such a subject. The 
 belief which Hamlet here virtually professes was quite general 
 enough among semi-barbarous Christians, oven in Shakespeare's 
 own time, to justify its employment, as a motive, in Hamlet's case. 
 The language used by Hamlet in this passage with regard to his 
 father is inconsistent with all that we are told of the elder Hamlet's 
 character elsewhere, and at direct variance with the tone in which 
 his son speaks of him on other occasions. 
 
 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 ? 
 
 I cannot see any justification of these words in anything that we 
 are told in Shakespeare's " Hamlet " about the murdered King ; they 
 can only be explained on the theory I have ventured to lay down, 
 that all the language of this speech is wilful exaggeration on the 
 part of the poet. 
 
 The expression 
 
 Then trip him, that his heels may kick at haaven, 
 
 recalls very forcibly some of those painfully realistic representations 
 of the torments of the damned, which are to be found in various 
 illustrated books of the sixteenth and seventeenth centurios. 
 
 As I have hinted in the text, the real explanation of Hamlet's 
 conduct may be found in the words- 
 My mother stays : 
 
 His interview with his mother was the subject on which his mind 
 was really intent. 
 
 The last line should be spoken with bitterness, no doubt, but 
 surely not with that air of mocking banter with which Salvini 
 
 * Malone has pointed out that this singular expression is derived from 
 Ezekiel xvi. 49 : " This was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom ; pride, ful- 
 ness of breai." In this scene there is another obvious referenca to Scrip, 
 ture in the King's speech : 
 
 Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens 
 To wash it white as snow ? 
 
 Perhaps to Psalm li. 7 (see "Clarendon" Hamlet, p. 183); but from the 
 passage in the Quarto 1603 
 
 Why say thy sinnes were blacker then is ieat, 
 Yet may contrition mike them white as snow- - 
 
 I should say the reference was to Isaiah i. 18 : "Though your sins be as 
 scarlet they shall be as white as snow," &c, 
 
166 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 spoke it. Of the three representatives of Hamlet, Irving, Salvini, 
 and Ernesto Rossi (who alone of those that I have seen give this 
 speech), Rossi is the only one that, as far as my judgment goes, 
 produces any effect in it. With Irving it fell undeniably flat, and 
 little less so with Salvini ; but the measure of success that Rossi 
 obtains in it does not, to my mind, justify its delivery. Explain it 
 how you may, the speech is odious, and I do not see that it is 
 necessary on the stage when some portion of the text, at any rate, 
 must be omitted. If the virtue of selection is to be exercised, I 
 should think this the very first speech that might be selected for 
 omission. 
 
 The beautiful soliloquy beginning- 
 How all occasions do inform against me, 
 
 is ruthlessly sacrificed by all these three great actors. 4 * If one is to 
 choose between the two, I do not think there ought to bo any 
 hesitation either on the part of actor or of audience. 
 
 APPENDIX K. 
 
 ON THE TWO PICTURES IN THE CLOSET SCENE. 
 
 THE question as to how the two pictures alluded to by Hamlet 
 in the speech beginning 
 
 Look here upon this picture, and on this 
 
 should be represented on the stage has given rise to much discus- 
 sion, and to the most ingenious conjectures. The fact that both 
 Mr. Irving and Signor Salvini, the two greatest representatives of 
 Hamlet we have lately seen, have treated this passage as if the 
 pictures existed only in the imagination of Hamlet, has inclined 
 many persons, including some of our best critics, to adopt this view 
 without, as it seems to me, sufficient consideration. 
 
 I propose to give as complete an account as I can of the various 
 ways in which these two pictures have been arranged by different 
 actors in the part of Hamlet, and then to examine, by the light of 
 such evidence as the text presents, what Shakespeare's intention 
 probably was. 
 
 Of the " business " (to use a technical term) of Burbage and 
 Taylor in this scene we have no account ; the following passage in 
 Davies' tf Dramatic Miscellanies " probably embodies the earliest 
 
 * Salvini gives a few lines of it but without any of the circumstances 
 (such as the passage of Fortinbras and his army) which occasion it : and the 
 mutilated version he gives of it is quite unintelligible. 
 
AITENDIX. 107 
 
 authentic information that we have as to the way in which the 
 two pictures were represented (vol. iii., pages 106, 107) : 
 
 " It has been the constant practice of the stage, ever since the Restora- 
 tion, for Hamlet, in this scene, to produce from his pocket two pictures in 
 little, of his father and uncle, not much bigger than two large coins or 
 medallions. How the graceful attitude of a man could be given in a minia- 
 ture I cannot conceive. In the infancy of the stage, we know that our 
 theatres had no moving scenes ; nor were they acquainted with them till 
 Betterton brought some from Paris, 1662. In our author's time they made 
 use of tapestry ; and the figures in tapestry might be of service to the 
 action of the player in the scene between Hamlet and the Queen. 'But, 1 
 says Downs, ' Sir William Davenant taught the players the representation of 
 Hamlet as he had seen it before the civil wars.' But, if the scantiness of 
 decorations compelled the old actors to have recourse to miniature pictures, 
 why should the playhouse continue the practice when it is no longer neces- 
 sary ; and when the scene might be shown to more advantage by two por- 
 traits, at length, in different panels of the Queen's closet ? Dr. Armstrong, 
 in his sketches, long ago pointed out the supposed absurdity of these hand- 
 pictures. The other mode, of large portraits, would add to the graceful 
 action of the player, in pointing at the figures in the wainscot. He might 
 resume the chair immediately after he had done with the subject, and go on 
 with the expostulation. However, this is only a conjecture which I throw 
 out for the consideration of the actors." 
 
 It will he observed that Davies does not actually say that Bet- 
 terton himself used the miniatures, though lie implies it. In the 
 accounts which Colley Gibber and Steele have left us of that great 
 actor, in the part of Hamlet, there is no information on this point, 
 Steevens' .Note is as follows :- 
 
 " It is evident from the following words, 
 
 ' A station, like the herald Mercury,' &o. 
 
 that these pictures, which are introduced as miniatures on the stage, were 
 meant for whole lengths, being part of the furniture of the Queen's closet f 
 
 1 like Maia's son he stood, 
 
 ' And shook his plumes.' 
 
 ' Paradise Lost,' Book V. 
 
 Hamlet, who, in a former scene, had censured those who gave, ' forty, 
 fifty, a hundred ducats apiece' for his uncle's 'picture in little,' would 
 hardly have condescended to carry such a thing in his pocket." 
 
 To which Malone adds (vol. vii., pages 391, 392, edit. 1811) : 
 
 " The introduction of miniatures in this place appears to be a modern in- 
 novation. A print prefixed to Howe's edition of 'Hamlet,' published in 
 1709, proves thh. There the two royal portraits are exhibited as half- 
 lengths, hanging in the Queen's closet ; and either thus, or as whole lengths, 
 they probably were exhibited from the time of the original performance of 
 this tragedy to the death of Betterton. To half-lengths, however, the same 
 objection lies, as to miniatures." 
 
168 A. STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 I may add that of this edition (1709) I had a copy, and that the 
 pictures Avere there represented as hung on different sides of the 
 stage ; but I do not know that such illustr itions are to be taken as 
 very accurate. Seymour, in his " Kemarks," is strongly against the 
 miniatures, and in favour of full-length portraits (vol. ii., page 185): 
 
 " It is, I think, an egregious misconception, and a wretched device to make 
 Hamlet come prepared with a couple of miniature pictures, for the purpose 
 of expressing his reproaches at the Queen's conduct, and to utter these re- 
 proaches while he is seated on a chair : the pictures pointed at are, surely, 
 the portraits at length of the late king and of the usurper, the latter, Ger- 
 trude might naturally enough have introduced into her closet, while pru- 
 dence and decency still retained the former there : and this representation 
 would materially improve the action of the scene." 
 
 He quotes Lord Chedworth* : 
 
 "These pictures should, certainly, be whole lengths, hanging in the 
 Queen's closet." 
 
 In Hunter's " New Illustrations of Shakspeare " there is the fol- 
 lowing note (vol. ii., pages 256, 257) : 
 
 ' ' It appears from the notes that when this play is represented two minia- 
 tures are produced by the actor, but that formerly, as we see in Howe's 
 print, the two pictures were half-lengths hung up in the closet. Perhaps 
 Holman's t way of representing this part of the scene was better than 
 either. The picture of the then King hung up in the lady's closet, but the 
 miniature of the King who was dead was produced by Hamlet from his 
 bosom." 
 
 Caldecott refers to Malone's note, and adds (note 85, pages 89, 
 90): 
 
 ' ' There can be little doubt that such was the furniture of the stage in 
 our author's day, and that the respective portraits were pointed out by the 
 finger in representation : and such, probably, continued to be the course 
 down to the death of Betterton. In modern practice miniatures are pro- 
 duced from the neck and pocket. The " pictures in little " of that age, of 
 which, in common with his contemporaries, our author speaks in ii., 2 
 
 * John, fouith Lord Chedworth, was the grandson of John Howe, of 
 Stowell, made Baron of Chedworth in 1741. He "was a man of most 
 recluse habits and eccentric character, but of some minor pretensions to 
 literature." (See "Collins" Extinct Peerage," by Sir E. Brydges, vol. viii. 
 p. 341.) 
 
 NOTE. I am indebted for this excerpt and reference to the courtesy of 
 Mr. Harrison, the Librarian of the London Library. I failed to find any 
 account of Lord Chedworth in several books to which I referred. 
 
 t Holman was Joseph George Holman, son of an officer in the British 
 army, descended from a very good family, educated at Oxford, where he 
 was not undistinguished. It is remarkable as showing the liberality of the 
 then University authorities that he was allowed to keep a term after having 
 appeared on the stage. (See " Biographia Dramatica," vol. i., part i., page 
 357.) 
 
APPENDIX. 169 
 
 (Haml. to Rosencr.), might have been as commodiously used for this 
 purpose as modern miniatures ; but by this process the audience are not 
 permitted to judge of what they hear, to make any estimate of the compa 
 rative defects and excellencies even of the features : and as to the " station " 
 or imposing attitude, " the combination and the form," it is impossible, in so 
 confined a space, that these could be presented to each other ; that of these, 
 even the parties themselves should be able to form any adequate idea." 
 
 In Mr. Fitzgerald's " Life of David Garrick " I find the following 
 paragraph in the account there given of Garrick's Hamlet (vol. ii., 
 page 65) : 
 
 "It was a pity he did not break through the stale old tradition of Ham- 
 let's pulling out the two miniatures, instead of the finer notion suggested by 
 Davies, of having them on the tapestry or the better idea still, of seeing 
 them with his mind's eye only." 
 
 This is the only passage I have been able to find in any book on 
 the subject of " Hamlet " in which this suggestion is made, and I 
 am inclined to believe that Salvini had already introduced this inno- 
 vation, in which case Mr. Fitzgerald's idea might not be so original 
 as, at first sight, it appears. 
 
 The annotators of the Clarendon Series " Hamlet " adopt the 
 full-length figures. 
 
 Mr. Fechter was, I believe, the first to avail himself of the two 
 miniatures in a manner which, whether justifiable or not, was cer- 
 tainly very effective. In his arrangement of this scene, the Queen 
 wore the miniature of Claudius round her neck, while Hamlet wore 
 that of his father ; at the end of the eloquent description of the 
 two portraits, Mr. Fechter tore the miniature of Claudius from off 
 his mother's neck and flung it away from him, while he subse- 
 quently made use of that of his father, which he wore himself, at 
 the last " good night " which Hamlet says to his mother, by point- 
 ing to it with pathetic earnestness, as if to enforce the. remonstrance 
 " go not to my uncle's bed." 
 
 Ernesto Rossi, when I saw him at Naples, had much the same 
 arrangement, but he went further, and not oaly tore the portrait of 
 Claudius from Gertrude's neck, but broke it into pieces and trampled 
 on the fragments. 
 
 I have here collected all the evidence I can find as to the practice 
 of the old actors in this scene, and I have mentioned that of some 
 of the more celebrated living representatives of Hamlet. I have also 
 given the opinions of some of the most- able commentators on 
 the point in question, and it will be seen that both practice and 
 opinion are decidedly in favour of the actual representation of the 
 two portraits on the stage. But the course adopted by Mr. Irving 
 and Signor Salvini has found favour with so many of our critics, for 
 whose judgment and taste I have the greatest respect and admira- 
 tion, that I cannot but feel some hesitation in differing from them ; 
 
170 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 yet the more I examine the language of Shakespeare in this speech 
 of Hamlet's, the more I am convinced that he intended the actor to 
 draw his illustrations from real and visible portraits. 
 The very first line 
 
 Look here upon this picture, and on this 
 
 seems to me totally inconsistent with anything but two actual pic* 
 tures then before the Queen's eyes. If the portraits existed but in 
 " the mind's eye " of Hamlet, what sense is there in his using the 
 two demonstrative pronouns 1 how could he point out any contrast 
 between two portraits which he had not yet drawn 1 He might 
 have said, " Look upon this picture -that I am now going to dra\v 
 in imagination," but he could not say, " Compare it with this 
 which I am going to draw afterwards." The word " counterfeit " 
 seems to me inapplicable to a mere ideal representation ; it is 
 always used by Shakespeare of some actual imitation. We have, 
 too, as every reader will remember, the same word used of a portrait 
 in the well-known passage beginning 
 
 Fair Portia's counterfeit ! What demi-god 
 Hath come so near creation ? 
 
 There Bassanio is describing a portrait, and a portrait of remarkable 
 excellence and accuracy. The beautiful details in Hamlet's descrip- 
 tion are naturally suggested by a visible picture ; and it seems to 
 me they- would lose all their force, as far as Gertrude is concerned, 
 if they were not actually represented before her eyes. We may 
 gather that no two men could be a greater contrast, physically and 
 morally, than were Claudius and the elder Hamlet ; and that 
 contrast, even allowing for the proverbial flattery of painters, must 
 have existed in their portraits : the eloquent description of Hamlet, 
 aided by the actual pictures before her, would impress that contrast 
 so forcibly on the Queen as to make her ashamed of her infidelity 
 to her husband, even on Tzeiely physical grounds. This is what 
 Hamlet aims at in the first part of his speech ; he has to deal with 
 a woman of hot passions, of fickle nature, of little depth of 
 character, and certainly not possessed of a vivid imagination : how 
 could he break down more effectively the barriers of self-deceit and 
 shameless lust than by showing her that, even in outward and 
 physical charms, her paramour was glaringly inferior to him whom 
 she had betrayed ? Having thus derided the personal appearance 
 of Claudius, Hamlet proceeds to lay bare the deformities of his soul. 
 Her idol has been subjected to a rude process of disenchantment ; 
 the mind of Gertrude is* the more ready to listen to the vehement 
 denunciation of his crimes which her son now pours forth. 
 
 It must not be forgotten that the essence of dramatic writing 
 consists in the writer being able to place himself in the same posi- 
 tion and under the same circumstances, to feel the same passions, to 
 be influenced by the sam3 motives, as the characters of his play ; the 
 moment that he begins to address his dialogue more to tha audience 
 
APPENDIX. 171 
 
 than to the characters on the stage, he ceases to be dramatic. No 
 dramatist has ever preserved the individuality of his characters with 
 so much care as Shakespeare ; nobody has ever made them act and 
 react upon one another in a more natural way. With very few 
 exceptions, and those only in his inferior works, do we find that 
 Shakespeare ever makes his characters obviously talk at the spec- 
 tators, and not to one another; his poetry, his pathos, and his 
 humour very rarely, if ever, jar upon one's sense of fitness ; they 
 belong essentially to the characters in whose mouth ho puts them. 
 Now it seems to me that it would be eminently un-iramatic to 
 make Hamlet appeal solely to the imaginative power of Gertrude 
 with regard to the " presentment " of these two pictures : a woman 
 who is so deficient in idealistic and imaginative power, whose 
 fancy is so little impressionable as not to be able to imagine 
 that she sees anything, when Hamlet is making his earnest appeal 
 to the Ghost, would scarcely be able to realise the pictures in the 
 air, which, if we follow Irving and Salvini, are the only pictures 
 by which Hamlet illustrates his eloquent description. I must not 
 be understood for one moment as complaining that the Queen does 
 not pretend to see a Ghost which she cannot really see ; I am only 
 insisting on this evidence of the unimpressionable nature of her 
 ideal faculties, as a reason why Shakespeare should not have repre- 
 sented Hamlet as appealing, unnecessarily, to those faculties when he 
 might so easily appeal to her senses. There is no reason why the 
 pictures should not ba there ; and there are very many reasons why 
 they should. I cannot agree with those critics who see something 
 intensely artistic and poetical in making these pictures exist only 
 in the mind's eye of Hamlet : the real poetic beauty of the passage 
 lies in the language used by him in describing his father's picture ; 
 and this beauty is no more lessened by the fact that the pictures 
 are absolutely visible on the scene, than is the magnificent descrip- 
 tion of Cleopatra in her barge, given by Enobarbus, to be depreciated 
 because he had absolutely seen what he so exquisitely describes.* 
 
 As far as concerns the actor himself, I think that he loses much 
 in effect by the absence of the pictures. 
 
 We have, then, the choice of several ways in which the pictures 
 might be arranged ; if they are miniatures, Hamlet could either 
 produce them both from his pocket, as Davies mentions was the 
 custom of the stage since the Restoration ; or he could produce the 
 one of his father from his own breast, while that of Claudius might 
 be hanging round the neck of the Queen ; or both might be on the 
 Queen's table. The mention by Hamlet of the fact that pictures 
 
 * This must not be taken as expressing any partiality on my part for 
 that practice of presenting to the audience pageantry only referred to in 
 Shakespeare's plays ; a practice begun, I believe, by Charles Kean. What 
 I mean to insist upon is that no poetic description is less poetic because the 
 poet himself, or the character through whose mouth he speaks, has actually 
 seen what he describes. 
 
172 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 in little * .(i.e., miniatures) of his uncle were being sold (Act II., 
 Scene 2, line 349) would account for his possessing one. I have 
 often thought that most of the objections to the use of tho 
 miniatures might be got over by having two full-length miniatures, 
 such as were not uncommon in the time of Shakespeare, on the 
 table at which Gertrude would be in the habit of sitting. If the 
 pictures are represented on the walls they should not be half- 
 lengths ; nor should they be opposite, but close to one another. 
 This arrangement would seem to be indicated by the line where 
 Hamlet speaks of the portrait of Claudius 
 
 Like a mildew'd ear, 
 Blasting his wholesome brother. 
 
 He could hardly say this of two pictures at a long distance from 
 one another ; indeed, this line tells very much in favour of the use 
 of miniatures, as with them it is very easy for Hamlet to place the 
 two pictures close to one another, and so most forcibly to illustrate 
 the simile which he uses. 
 
 On the whole, I myself should prefer the portraits to be repre- 
 sented as full-lengths, fixed on two adjacent panels of the wall. 
 In Mr. Drake's " Shakespeare and his Times " (vol. ii., page 119) 
 I find the following passage : 
 
 i 1 Pictures constituted a frequent decoration in the rooms of the wealthy, 
 and there are numerous instances to prove that those which were estimated 
 as valuable were covered by curtains. Olivia, addressing Viola in Twelfth 
 Night, says : ' We will draw the curtain, and show you the picture. ' The 
 same imagery occurs in Troilus and Cressida, where Pandarus, unveiling 
 Cressida, uses almost the same words : ' Gome, draw this curtain and let us 
 833 your picture.' The passage, however, which Mr. Douce has quoted in 
 illustration of this subject, as it decides the point, will supersede all further 
 reference : 'In Deloney's Pleasant History of Jack of New'xry, printed before 
 1597, it is recorded,' he remarks, ' that in a faire large parlour which was 
 wainscotted round about, Jacke of Newbery had fifteene faire pictures 
 hanging, which ware covered with curtaines of greeue silke, fringed with gold, 
 which he would often shew to his friends.'" 
 
 This passage has suggested to me the idea that the pictures in 
 
 * The passage (Act II., Scene 2) 
 
 It is not very strange ; for my uncle is King of Denmark, and those that 
 would make mows at him while my father lived, give twenty, forty, fifty, 
 a hundred ducats a-piece, for his picture in little 
 
 has puzzled me much, and I have often been tempted to think that the right 
 sense of it has been missed, and that what Hamlet really means is that 
 now his uncle is King of Denmark the people give " twenty, forty, fifty, a 
 hundred ducats a-piece " for his picture on gold coins. If the sums named 
 could be proved to be of the same value as of coins current at the time, I 
 should be bold enough to advance this theory : at present I only offer it' 
 as a conjecture. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 the Queen's closet might be fitted with curtains ; and that while the 
 curtain belonging to the portrait of Claudius might be drawn aside 
 so as to show the whole of the picture, that belonging to the 
 portrait of the elder Hamlet might be drawn across so as to conceal 
 the picture. When the Queen asks of Hamlet 
 
 What act, 
 That roars so loud, and thunders in the index ? 
 
 Hamlet might take hold of her hand and lead her up the stage, or, 
 at any rate, turn her round so as to place her face to face with the 
 portrait of her late husband. He might then go up to the portrait, 
 and, drawing the curtain aside with a grand and dignified gesture, 
 begin the speech 
 
 Look here upon this picture, and on this. 
 
 It seems to me that this business (to use a technical term) \vould 
 give the actor an opportunity for displaying much more grace and 
 dignity than he can, if, as Irving and Salvini, he remains seated in 
 the chair and merely points to two imaginary portraits. After the 
 words 
 
 What judgment 
 Would step from this to this ? 
 
 he would return to his mother, who would by this time have 
 begun to feel the shame which, at last, overwhelms her. This 
 arrangement, while it gives variety to the attitudes of the actor, 
 seems to me to lend force to the striking contrast which Hamlet 
 draws between the two brothers. 
 
 It is probable that, though Claudius, as I have said, was more 
 jovial and voluptuous in appearance than King Hamlet, he was 
 much inferior to his brother in grace and dignity : the contrast 
 between the two portraits might well be such as to justify Hamlet's 
 language, if his father were represented as standing dressed in full 
 armour, in an attitude of defiance, while his uncle was represented 
 as seated, in his state robes, on the throne, or at the banquet- table, 
 presenting an exact antithesis, in his realisation of mere sensual 
 splendour, to the god-like majesty of his predecessor. 
 
174 
 
 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 APPENDIX L. 
 
 Quarto, 1603. 
 HAM. ******* 
 
 Enter the ghost in Ms niykt gowne. 
 Saue me, sane me, you gratious 
 Powers aboue, and houer oner mee, 
 With your celestiall wings. 
 
 Doe you not came your tardy sonne to chide, 
 That I thus long haue let reuenge slippe by ? 
 do not glare with looltes so pittifull ! 
 Lest that my heart of stone yeelde to compassion, 
 And euery part that should assist reuenge, 
 Forgoe their proper powers, and fall to pitty. 
 
 GHOST. Hamlet, 1 once againe appeare to thee, 
 To put thee in remembrance of my death : 
 Doe not neglect, nor long time put it off. 
 But I perceiue by thy distracted lookes, 
 Thy mother's fearefull, and she stands amazde : 
 Speake to her Hamlet, for her sex is weake, 
 Comfort thy mother, Hamlet, thinke on me. 
 
 HAM. How i'st with you Lady ? 
 ^ QUEENE. Nay, how i'st with you 
 That thus you bend your eyes on vacancie, 
 And holde discourse with nothing but with ayre ? 
 
 HAM. Why doe you nothing heare ? 
 
 QUEENE. Not I. 
 
 HAM. Nor dee you nothing see ? 
 
 QUEENE. No neither. [father, in the habite 
 
 HAM. No, why see the king my father, my 
 As he liued, look you how pale he lookes, 
 See how he steales away out of the Portall, 
 Looke, there he goes. 
 
 exit rjhost. 
 
 QUEENE. Alas, it is the weaknesse of thy braine, 
 Which makes thy tongue to blazon thy heart's 
 But as I have a soule, I swearc by heauen, [griefe : 
 I neuer knew of this most horride murder : 
 But Hamlet, this is onely fantasie, 
 And for my loue forgtt these idle fits. 
 
 HAM. Idle, no mother, my pulse doth beate 
 
 [like yours, 
 It is not madnesse that possesseth Hamlet. 
 
 Cambridge Edn. Shakespeare's Works, li 
 HAM. * 
 
 Enter GHOST. 
 
 Save me, and hover o'er me Avith your wing; 
 You heavenly guards ! What would your gra 
 
 [fig 
 
 QUEEN. Alas, he's mad ! 
 HAM. Do you not come your tardy son to c 
 That, lapsed in time and passion, lets go by 
 The important acting of your dread comman 
 0,say! 
 
 GHOST. Do not forget : this visitation 
 Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose. 
 
 But look, amazement on thy mother sits : 
 0, step between her and her fighting soul : 
 Conceit in Aveakest bodies strongest Avorks : 
 Speak to her, Hamlet. 
 HAM. How is it with you, lad 
 
 QUEEN. Alas, IIOAV is't Avith you, 
 That you do bend your eye on vacancy 
 And with the incorporal air do hold discours 
 Forth at your eyes your spirits Avildly peep ; 
 And, as the sleeping soldiers in the alarm, 
 Your bedded hairs, like life in excrements, 
 Start up and stand on end. gentle son, 
 Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper 
 Sprinkle cool patience. Whereon do you loc 
 HAM. On him, on him ! Look you, how pa! 
 
 [gla 
 
 His form and cause conjoin'd, preaching to stc 
 Would make them capable. Do not look upon 
 Lest with this piteous action you convert 
 My stern effects : then Avhat I have to do 
 Will want true colour ; tears perchance for bl 
 QUEEN. To whom do you speak this ? 
 HAM. Do you see nothing the 
 
 QUEEN. Nothing at all ; yet all that is I s< 
 HAM. Nor did you nothing hear ? 
 QUEEN. No, nothing but ourselve 
 
 HAM. Why, look you there ! look, how it si 
 My father, in his habit as he lived ! [av 
 
 Look, Avhere he goes, even now, out at the poi 
 
 Exit Gl 
 
 QUEEN. This is the very coinage of your bn 
 This bodiless creation ecstacy 
 Is very cunning in. 
 
 HAM. Ecstacy ! 
 
 My pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep ti 
 And makes as healthful music : it is not mad; 
 That I have utter'd : bring me to the test, 
 And I the matter will re-Avord, which madne; 
 Would gambol from. Mother, for love of gr 
 Lay not that flattering unction to your soul. 
 That not your trespass but my madness spea 
 It will but skin and film the ulcerous place, 
 Whiles rank corruption, mining all within, 
 Infects unseen. Confess yourself to heaven ; 
 Repent AA'hat's past, avoid Avhat is to come, 
 And do not spread the compost on the weeds 
 To make them ranker. Forgive me this my vii 
 For in the fatness of these pursy times 
 Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg, 
 Yea, curb and AVOO for leave to do him good. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 other, if euer you did my deare father lone, 
 beare the adulterous bed to night, 
 
 . win your selfe by little as you may, 
 ime it may be you wil lothe him quite 
 
 mother, but assist mee in revenge, 
 , in his death your infamy shall die. 
 
 QUEEN. Hamlet, thou has cleft my heart in 
 
 [twain. 
 
 HAM. 0, throw away the worser part of it, 
 And live the purer with the other halft 
 Good night : but go not to my uncle's bed ; 
 
 Assume a virtue, if you have it not. 
 
 That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat, 
 
 Of habits devil, is angel yet in this, 
 
 That to the use of actions fair and good 
 
 He likewise gives a frock or livery, 
 
 That aptly is put on. Refrain to-night, 
 
 And that shall lend a kind of easiness 
 
 To the next abstinence ; the next more easy ; 
 
 For use almost can change the stamp of nature, 
 
 And either .... the devil, or throw him out 
 
 With wondrous potency. 
 
 Once more, good night ; 
 And when you are desirous to be blest, 
 I'll blessing beg of you, For this same lord, 
 
 (Pointing to Poloniue) 
 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. 
 I will bestow him, and will answer well 
 The death I gave him. So, again, good nig'ut. 
 I must be cruel, only to be kind : 
 Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind, 
 One word more, good lady. 
 
 QUEEN. What shall 1 do ? 
 
 HAM. Not this, by no means, that I bid you do : 
 Let the bloat king tempt you again to bed ; 
 Pinch wanton on your cheek, call you his mo use ; 
 
 >UEENE. Hamlet, I vow by that maiesty, 
 t knowes our thoughts, and lookes into our 
 
 [hearts, 
 
 ill conceale, consent, and doe my best, 
 at stratagem soe're thou shalt deuise. 
 
 SAM. It is enough, mother good night : 
 me sir, Tie prouide for you a graue, 
 ho was in life a foolish prating knaue. 
 
 it Hamlet with ike dead loJy. 
 
 kisses 
 
 And let him, for a pair of reechy '. 
 Or paddling in your neck with his damn'd fingers, 
 Make you to ravel all this matter out, 
 That I essentially am not in madness, 
 But mad in craft. 'Twere 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. [breith 
 
 QUEEN. Be thou assured, if words be made of 
 And breath of life, I have no life to breathe 
 
 What thoxi hast said to me. 
 
 HAM. I must to England ; you know that ? 
 
 QUEEN. Alack, 
 
 I had forgot : 'tis so concluded on. [fellows, 
 
 HAM, There's letters seal'd ; and my two school- 
 Whoni I will trust as I will adders fang'd, 
 They bear the mandate ; they must sweep my way, 
 And marshal me to knavery. Let it work ; 
 For 'tis the sport to have the enginer 
 Hoist with his own petar : and 't shall go hard 
 But I will delve one yard below their mines, 
 And blow them at the mcon : 0, 'tis most sweet 
 When in one line two crafts directly meet. 
 This man shall set me packing : 
 I'll lug the guts into the neighbour room. 
 Mother, good night. 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. 
 (Exeunt severally; Hamlet dragging in Polonias.) 
 
176 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 APPENDIX M. 
 
 Enter HORATIO and the QUEEXE. 
 
 Hon. Madame, your sonne is safe arriv'de in Denmarkc, 
 This letter 1 euen now receiv'd of him, 
 Whereas he writes how he escap't the danger, 
 And subtle treason that the king had plotted, 
 Being crossed by the contention of the windes, 
 He found the Packet sent to the king of England, 
 "Wherein he saw himself e betray 'd to death, 
 As at his next conuersion with your grace, 
 He will relate the circumstance at full. 
 
 QUEENE. Then I perceiue there's treason in his lookes 
 That seem'd to sugar o're his villanie : 
 But T will soothe and please him for a time, 
 For murderous mindes are alwayes jealous, 
 But know not you Horatio where he is ? 
 
 Hoi;. Yes, Madame, and he hath appoynted me 
 To meete him on the east side of the Cittie 
 To-morrow morning. 
 
 QUEENE. faile not, good Horatio and withall, commend me 
 A mothers care to him, bid him a while 
 Be wary of his presence, lest that he 
 Faile in that he goes about. 
 
 Hon. Madam, neuer make doubt of that : 
 
 I thinke by this the news be come to courb : 
 He is arriv'de, obserue the king, and you shall 
 Quickely finde, Hamlet being here, 
 Things fell not to his minde. 
 
 QUEEXE. But what became of Gilderstone and Rossencraft ? 
 
 Hon. He being set ashore, they went for England, 
 
 And in the Packet there writ down that doome 
 To be perform 'd on them poynted for him : 
 And by great chance he had his father's Scale, 
 So all was done without discouerie. 
 
 QUEEXE. Thankes be to Heauen for blessing of the prince, 
 Horatio once againe I take my leaue, 
 With thowsand mothers blessings to my sonne. 
 
 Hon. Madam adue. 
 
 
 APPENDIX N, 
 
 KING. Why this his madnesse will undoe our state. 
 
 Lordes goe to him, inquire the body out. 
 
 GIL. We will, my Lord. [Exeunt Lordes. 
 
 KINO. Gertred, your son shall presently to England, 
 
 His shipping is already furnished, 
 
 And we have sent by Eossencraft and GilderstonCj 
 
 Our letters to our deare brother of England, 
 
 For Hamlet's welfare and his happinesse : 
 
 Happly the aire and climate of the country 
 
 May please him better than his native home : 
 
 See where he comes. 
 

 177 
 
 APPENDIX 0. 
 
 FOETINBRAS. 
 
 WHO was Fortinbras ? This question does not seoin to have 
 been asked by any of the best known commentators on this play. 
 He is described in the list of characters as " Prince of Norway," 
 but whether this means that he was the heir to the throne of Nor- 
 way, or only one of the chief noblemen in the country, we do not 
 know. The passage in which Horatio alludes to " young Fortin- 
 bras," the character introduced in this play, and to his father, is as 
 follows (Act I., Scene 1, lines 80101) : 
 
 Our last king, 
 
 Whose image even but now appear'd to us, 
 Was, as you know, by Fortinbras of Norway, 
 Thereto prick'd on by a most emulate pride, 
 Dared to the combat ; in which our valiant Hamlet 
 For so this side of our known world esteem'd him 
 Did slay this Fortinbras ; who by a seal'd compact, 
 Well ratified by law and heraldry, 
 Did forfeit, with his life, all those his lands 
 Which he stood seized of, to the conqueror : 
 Against the which, a moiety competent 
 Was gaged by our king ; which had return'd 
 To the inheritance of Fortinbras, 
 Had he been vanquisher ; as, by the same covenant 
 A.nd carriage of the article designed, 
 His fell to Hamlet. Now, sir, young Fortinbras, 
 Of unimproved mettle hot and full, 
 Hath in the skirts of Norway here and there 
 Shark'd up a list of lawless resolutes, 
 For food and diet, to some enterprise 
 That hath a stomach in't : which is no other 
 As it doth well appear unto our state 
 But to recover of us, by strong hand 
 And terms compulsatory, those foresaid landa 
 So by his father lost : 
 
 Now, it would seem from the linos 
 
 Hath in the skirts of Norway here and there 
 Shark'd up a list of lawless resolutes, 
 
 that young Fortinbras was not " Crown Prince " of Norway, or he 
 would hardly have been driven to recruit his army from such 
 sources. In Scene II. of this act, Claudius speaks thus of young 
 Fortinbras' preparations lines 17 33 : 
 
 Now follows, that you know, young Fortinbras, 
 Holding a weak supposal of our worth, 
 Or thinking by our late dear brother's death 
 Our state to be disjoint and out of frame, 
 Colleagued with this dream of his advantage, 
 He hath not fail'd to pester us with message, 
 Importing the surrender of those lands 
 
 N 
 
178 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 Lost by his father, with all bonds of law. 
 To our most valiant brother. So much for him. 
 Now for ourself , and for this time of meeting : 
 Thus much the business is : we have here writ 
 To Norway, uncle of young Fortinbras, 
 Who, impotent and bed-rid, scarcely hears 
 Of this his nephew's purpose, to suppress 
 Bis further gait herein ; in that the levies, 
 The lists and full proportions, are all made 
 Out of his subject. 
 
 In Act II., Scene 2, Voltimand, the ambassador, reports to King 
 Claudius the results of the embassage : 
 
 Upon our first, he sent out to suppress 
 
 His nephew's levies, which to him appear'd 
 
 To be a preparation 'gainst the Polack, 
 
 But better look'd into, he truly found 
 
 It was against your highness : whereat grieved, 
 
 That so his sickness, age and impotence 
 
 Was falsely borne in hand, sends out arrests 
 
 On Fortinbras ; which he, in brief, obeys, 
 
 Receives rebuke from Norway, and in fine 
 
 Makes vow before his uncle never more 
 
 To give the assay of arms against your majesty. 
 
 Whereon old Norway, overcome with joy, 
 
 Gives him three thousand crowns in annual fee 
 
 And his commission to employ those soldiers, 
 
 So levied as before, against the Polack : 
 
 With an entreaty, herein further shown, (Giving a paper) 
 
 That it might please you to give quiet pass 
 
 Through your dominions for this enterprise, 
 
 On such regards of safety and allowance 
 
 As therein are set down. 
 
 From this it is plain that Fortinbras owed allegiance to the King 
 of Norway ; but that he was very near, if not next, to the royal 
 dignity. 
 
 This scene (Act IV. Scene 4), the first in which Fortinbras 
 appears, throws little light upon the question now under discussion. 
 It may be as well to transcribe here the speech of Fortinbras, which 
 I have not given in the text : 
 
 FOR. Go, captain, from me greet the Danish king ; 
 
 Tell him that by his license Fortinbras 
 
 Craves the conveyance of a promised march 
 
 Over his kingdom. You know the rendezvous. 
 
 If that his majesty would aught with us, 
 
 We shall express our duty in his e} r e ; 
 
 And let him know so. 
 
 CAP. I will do't, my lord. 
 
 FOR. Go softly on. [Exeunt Fortinbras and Soldiers. 
 
 We must now go to the end of the play (Act V., Scene 2), when 
 Fortinbras reappears, and is designated by Hamlet as the probable 
 euccessor to the throne of Denmark : 
 
 OSB. Young Fortinbras, with conquest come from Poland, 
 To the ambassadors of England gives 
 This warlike volley. 
 
 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 HAJf, 0, I die, Horatio ; 
 
 The potent poison quite o'ercrows my spirit j 
 
 I cannot live to hear the news from England ; 
 
 But T do prophesy the election lights 
 
 On Fortinbras : he has my dying voice ; 
 
 So tell him, with the occurrents, more and less, 
 
 Which have solicited. .... 
 HOK 
 
 Why does the drum come hither ? 
 
 Enter FORTINBRAS and the English Ambassadors, with drum, colours, and 
 Attendants. 
 
 HOR 
 
 But since, so jump upon this bloody question, 
 
 You from the Polack wars, and you from England, 
 
 Are here arrived, give order that these bodies 
 
 High on a stage be placed to the view ; 
 
 And let me speak to the yet unknowing world 
 
 How these things came about : so shall you hear 
 
 Of carnal, bloody and unnatural acts, 
 
 Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters, 
 
 Of deaths put on by cunning and forced cause, 
 
 And, in this upshot, purposes mistook 
 
 Fall'n on the inventors' heads : all this can I 
 
 Truly deliver. 
 
 FORT. Let us haste to hear it, 
 
 And call the noblest to the audience. 
 For me, with sorrow I embrace my fortune : 
 I have some rights of memory in this kingdom, 
 Which now to claim my vantage doth invite me. 
 
 Hon. Of that I shall have also cause to speak, 
 
 And from his mouth whose voice will draw on more : 
 But let this same be presently perform'd, 
 Even while men's minds are wild ; lest more mischance 
 On plot and errors happen, 
 
 FORT. Let four captains 
 
 Bear Hamlet, like a soldier, to the stage ; 
 For he was likely, had he been put on, 
 To have proved most royally ; and, for his passage, 
 The soldiers' 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. 
 
 The above extracts include every passage in the play which can 
 in any way enable us to answer the question, "Who was Fortin- 
 bras ?" The prose " Hystorie of Harablet " does not help us much ; 
 there the elder Fortinbras is represented by " Collere, King of Nor- 
 way," who was vanquished and slain by Horvendile (chap, i., 
 page 132, vol. i., Collier's Shakespeare's Library), the father of 
 Harnlet, who was not king of Denmark, but only co-governor of 
 Jutie (Jutland) with his brother Fengon.* To the younger Fortin- 
 bras there is 110 parallel in the " Hystorie." 
 
 * It would seem that the Government consisted of two provinces, as we 
 find afterwards that Hamlet was proclaimed king of " Jutie and Cherson- 
 nese, at this present the proper country of Denmarke "(chap, vi., p. 171). 
 But Wiglerus, the brother of Hamlet's mother, and son of King Roderick, 
 seizes the royal treasure and the kingdom, on the plea that Horvendile had 
 only been a tributary and holder in fief under King Roderick. 
 
 N2 
 
180 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 I had thought, at one time, to have been able to prove that For- 
 tinbras was king of Norway, and that on his death at the hands of 
 Hamlet the elder, his brother had seized the kingdom, in the same 
 manner as Claudius had seized that of Denmark ; so that Fortinbras 
 the younger would have presented a singular parallel to Hamlet, at 
 least as far as his disinheritance was concerned. But T think that 
 the passages I have quoted will not bear this interpretation. We 
 must conclude, therefore, that Fortinbras the elder was a chief of 
 Norway, nearly related to the king by blood or marriage, perhaps 
 his brother (if not by blood, at least by marriage), and that he held 
 territories in Denmark, which he staked in the single combat with 
 Hamlet the elder, and lost : thus Fortinbras the younger's claim* to 
 the throne after the death of all the direct heirs may be explained. 
 It is to this that he refers in the lines 
 
 I have some rights of memory in this kingdom, 
 Which now to claim my vantage doth invite me. 
 
 Hamlet's reason for prophesying that the popular voice would be 
 in favour of Fortinbras is not clear. The lines 
 
 So tell him, with the occurrents, more and less, 
 Which have solicited, 
 
 may refer to nothing more than the various tragic events which 
 led to the extinction of the royal family of Denmark, and to the 
 death of Laertes, leaving no one with sufficient pretensions to op- 
 pose Fortinbras' claim. But doubtless the great admiration, which 
 Hamlet expresses (Act IV., Scene 4) for the character of Fortinbras, 
 made him anxious to see the sceptre of his father in such worthy 
 hands. 
 
 * ULRICI, in his chapter on Hamlet, has the following passage : " For- 
 tinbras, in whose favour Hamlet gives his dying voice, possesses an ancient 
 claim and hereditary right to the throne of Denmark. Some deed of vio- 
 lence or injustice, by which his family were dispossessed of their just claims, 
 hung in the dark background over the head of that royal house which has 
 now become extinct. Of this crime its last successors have now paid ths 
 penalty." (" Shakespeare's Dramatic Art," &c., translated from the German 
 of Dr. HERMANN ULRICI. London, 1846, page 220.) I do not find anything 
 in the text of "Hamlet" to justify this statement. The challenge seems 
 to have come from Fortinbras (see Act L, Scene 1, lines 8084, quoted 
 above), and the elder Hamlet seems to have 'gaged ' a perfectly fair equiva- 
 lent to those lands that he so won. The only words which seem to imply 
 that Fortinbras or his ancestors had originally been the lords of Hamlet's 
 territory are those in lines 9193 in the same scene 
 
 Which had return'd 
 
 To the inheritance of Fortinbraa 
 
 Had he been vanquisher. 
 
 But this is hardly enough to warrant Ulrici in such a positive charge against 
 Hamlet's family. 
 
APPENDIX. 181 
 
 APPENDIX P. 
 
 HAMLET'S AGE. 
 
 THE question of Hamlet's age is one which has often puzzled the 
 critics no less than the students of Shakespeare. A writer in the 
 Examiner* signing himself " W. Minto," in a review of Professor 
 Uowdeii's "Essays on Shakespeare," drew attention to the injury 
 done to the significance of the play by the prevailing belief that 
 Hamlet was thirty years old. I do not agree with him that it is 
 necessary to believe Hamlet to have been a youth of seventeen, but 
 I certainly think that Shakespeare intended him to be nearer twenty 
 than thirty. Not only are the general features of his character 
 those of youth, but there are so many allusions to the fact that he 
 was very young, scattered throughout the play, that we cannot 
 bring ourselves to believe that he was really thirty years old. 
 
 I here subjoin some of these passages In Act I., Scene 1, lines 
 169-170, Horatio says- 
 Let us impart what we have seen to-night 
 Unto young Harnlet. 
 
 This might be an expression which Horatio would have been accus- 
 tomed to use in order to distinguish Hamlet from his father ; but 
 the language of Laertes and Polonius is much stronger : 
 
 LAER. For Hamlet, and the trifling of his favour, 
 Hold it a fashion and a toy in blood, 
 A violet in the youth of primy nature. 
 
 Act I., Scene 2, lines 5 8. 
 
 This language, and much else that Laertes says, seems inapplicable 
 to a man of thirty. 
 
 POL. For Lord Hamlet 
 
 Believe so much of him that he is young. 
 
 Act I., Scene 2, lines 123-124. 
 
 The Ghost says 
 
 I could a tale unfold whose lightest word 
 
 AVould harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood. 
 
 Act I., Scene 5, lines 15-16. 
 
 And again (line 38) 
 
 Bat know, thou noble youth. 
 
 The tone in which the Queen speaks to her son in the closet scene 
 is not such as a mother could well employ to a man of thirty : 
 
 Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended. 
 
 Act I Q., Scene 4, line 9. 
 
 And 
 
 Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue. (Line 11.) 
 
 * See Examiner, March 6th, 1875. 
 
182 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 These are the principal references to Hamlet's youth which seem, 
 especially those littered by Laertes and Polonius, to be irreconcil- 
 able with the supposition that lie was thirty years old. 
 
 With regard to the evidence afforded by this scene with the 
 Gravedigger, I do not think it decisive as to the fact that Hamlet 
 was thirty years old. The words 
 
 I have been sexton here, man and boy, for thirty years 
 
 may mean that he had begun to serve his apprenticeship thirty 
 years ago ; but he may not have come to the trade of gravemaker 
 till some years later : so that it does not necessarily follow that the 
 clay when King Hamlet overcame Fortinbras was thirty years ago. 
 
 The most difficult point to get over in this scene is the statement 
 that Yorick's skull had lain in the grave twenty-three years. In 
 the first quarto (1603) the time is a dozen years, and there is no 
 mention made of the thirty years. The lines are 
 
 Looke you, here's a scull hath bin here these dozen yeare, 
 Let me see, I ever since our last King Hamlet 
 Slew Fortenbrasse in combat, yong Hamlets father, 
 
 Allen's Reprint, p. 86. 
 
 It would appear that Shakespeare added these details, which tend 
 to prove Hamlet to have been thirty years old, for much the 
 same reason as he inserted the line 
 
 He's fat and scant of breath 
 
 namely, in order to render Hamlet's age and personal appearance 
 more in accordance with those of the great actor, Burbage, who per- 
 sonated him. If all that is said of Burbage by some of his con- 
 temporaries is true, he was worth such a slight sacrifice on the port 
 of the poet. 
 
 The most material objection against Hamlet being more than 
 twenty to twenty-three years of age is that, if he were older, his 
 mother could scarcely have been the object of a passion such as 
 that of Claudius. Gertrude could hardly have been more than 
 forty years old ; so that if Hamlet was thirty, she must have been 
 married at a very tender age. 
 
 I do not think this question of so much importance on the stage 
 as it is in the study. The. actor should try and look as young as 
 he can, without having recourse to much paint. But it would be a 
 sad mistake to exclude a great artist from the role of Hamlet 
 because he could not look twenty years old. Still it is quite as 
 well to remember that Hamlet was in the prime of his youth, for 
 much of his eccentricity may bo easier accounted for if this fact is 
 borne in mind. 
 
ADDITIONAL NOTES. 
 
 NOTE 1. 
 
 I HAVE said the best criticism " on the whole;" T do not moan to 
 say that there are not many criticisms on individu d plays, which are 
 better than those of Schlegel. The work of P: :os r Gervinus, in 
 two vols., which has been translated into Eugli^ ':., is on*, of the most 
 valuable additions to the Shakes 'iiiiuu Hv-'atu 'j of modern times ; 
 it was originally published in 18 JO, and ti Knglish translation in 
 1863 ; I have alluded more fully to il-.is Kilt -v's essay on " ILimlct " 
 in another part of this v.'ork. Ulrie ; nl." merits Hie ^vmncst 
 .praise, liom every lover of Shakespeare, for bis voliiiu-.' of <i -liglitfnl 
 and learn I essays on our great poet's dramatic genius. In assign- 
 ing to Schlegel the fk.st place among the critics of Shakespeare, I 
 do not wish to be guilty of any iDJust->e to the numer -us English 
 and German writers who have made our author ihe subject of so 
 many valuabl ) essays : I do not pretend to express anything more 
 than my opinion, which is that, for practical purposes, Schlegel's 
 estimate of Shakespeare's plays, is on the whole, the best guide to 
 any would-be student of our greatest dramatist. 
 
 NOTE IA. 
 
 I AM afraid that few critics will agree with me on this point ; 
 indeed, the fact that Hamlet says (line 151) 
 
 Come on : you hear this fellow in the cellarage : 
 
 Would seem to settle the question. Still more decisive would bo 
 line 161, it' we admit the reading of the Quarto 1604 (which is 
 followed by the other quartos) 
 
 GHOST (beneath). Swear by his sword. 
 
184 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 True the Quarto 1603 and the Folios all read simply--* 
 GHOST (beneath). Swear. 
 
 But if Shakespeare deliberately added the words " by his sword " 
 when he revised the piece it would certainly seem that he meant 
 Horatio and Marcellus to hear the subterranean voice. 
 
 The reason why I have always believed that Horatio and Mar- 
 cellus were not supposed to hear the Ghost is, that Shakespeare 
 had so carefully prevented the Ghost from uttering a single word 
 in their hearing before, and that the Queen certainly cannot hear 
 its voice in the closet-scene. But in the latter case she cannot see 
 the Ghost either ; and, as to the former point, the silence of the 
 apparition might arise from, the fact that it had not yet commu- 
 nicated to Hamlet its solemn charge. It is remarkable that Ham- 
 let, in proposing the oath to Horatio and Marcellus, twice insists 
 on their not revealing what they had seen first (line 144) 
 
 Never make known what you have seen to-night. 
 
 The Ghost had not yet spoken from beneath ; but after he has done 
 so, Hamlet still says (line 153) 
 
 Never to speak of this that you have seen, 
 Swear by my sword. 
 
 It is not till the next time that he says (line 159) 
 
 Never to speak of this that you have heard, 
 Swear by my sword. 
 
 But I do not think that either this line or even the words which I 
 have quoted above 
 
 You hear this fellow in the cellarage 
 
 exclude the possibility of my supposition ; they are both consistent 
 with the fact that Hamlet is afraid they may have heard the Ghoat, 
 but is not sure ; certain it is that he is very anxious they should 
 not hear it, either from fear that it might reveal the secret of his 
 father's death, or that the sound might so unnerve the others that 
 they would be unable to take the proposed oath. Hamlet, as we 
 know,* did afterwards confide what the Ghost had told him to 
 Horatio : it is Marcellus whom he distrusts. 
 
 Hamlet cannot mean by " what you have heard " only the sub- 
 terranean utterances of the Ghost he must have referred to the 
 half-revelation which he had made immediately on the re-entrance 
 of his friends after his interview with the Ghost, the exact extent 
 of which, in his agitated state of mind, he probably did not know, 
 but which he feared might be sufficient to guide them to some con- 
 clusion near the truth, and to furnish them with materials for 
 
 * See Act III., Scene 2, lines 71, 72 
 
 One scene of it comes near the circumstance 
 Which I have told thce of my father's death* 
 
 
 
ADDITIONAL NOTES. 185 
 
 gossip with the courtiers ; if such gossip reached the ears of 
 Claudius it would serve to put him on his guard, the very thing 
 which Hamlet was so anxious to avoid. It may be remarked here 
 that both seem to have kept their oath most religiously, for wo 
 do not find that any other person about the Court had the slightest 
 knowledge of the Ghost's appearance. 
 
 It seems to me that this scene would gain in solemnity if the 
 voice of the Ghost were supposed to be heard by Hamlet alone. 
 The fact of his hurrying Horatio and Marcellus from one part of 
 the scene to another, in obedience to a voice which they could not 
 hear, a voice to whose utterances he made mysterious references 
 and gave mysterious answers, would quite account for the awe- 
 struck words of Horatio 
 
 day and night, but this is wondrous strange ! 
 
 NOTE 
 
 IN Act III., Scene 2, there is a line spoken by Ophelia which 
 may help us to decide the exact length of the interval which 
 elapsed. In answer to Hamlet's speech 
 
 . . . . What should a man do but be merry ? for, look you, how 
 cheerfully my mother looks, and my father died within's two hours 
 
 Ophelia says, 
 Kay, 'tis twice two months, my lord. 
 
 , we know from Hamlet's first soliloquy, in Act L, that at 
 that period his father had not been dead two months, but only a 
 little more than one. If we may take Ophelia's expression as being 
 accurate, a period of at least two months and a-half must have 
 elapsed ; but Hamlet in his reply, 
 
 . . . . heavens ! die two months ago, and not forgotten yet ? 
 
 seems to ignore the important word " twice," though the word 
 twice is found in every early edition of the play, including the 
 Quarto 1603. But, for his purpose, Hamlet did not want to be 
 very accurate as to the time ; therefore we may take it, as far 
 as Shakespeare has cared to inform us, that from two to three 
 months intervened at this point of the story. 
 
186 A STUDY ilAMLET. 
 
 NOTE 3. 
 
 I am most dreadfully attended. 
 
 I CANNOT find any commentary on this passage, which seems to 
 me to "be a very important one. It is the only complaint which 
 Hamlet utters as to the neglect with which he was treated at court. 
 We never find him attended by anybody but his chosen confidant 
 Horatio, or by those two courtiers whose presence was, from time 
 to time, forced upon him by the King, and could not be, after this 
 scene, anything but very unwelcome to him. As heir-apparent to 
 the throne, Hamlet might expect to have some more ceremonious 
 attendance ; but though he here complains of the little state with 
 which he was surrounded, his comparative solitude in the Court 
 was, we cannot doubt, of his own choosing. After the appearance 
 of the Ghost he seems to have withdrawn himself more and more 
 from any society but that of Horatio ; even Marcellus is never 
 found again in his company ; he holds little or no conversation 
 with anybody but Horatio. 
 
 It would not be uninteresting to follow out the parallel between 
 Hamlet and Prince Henry which Gervinus commences ; both princes 
 seem to have, more or less voluntarily, abandoned that state which 
 naturally belonged to them, but from very different reasons. Hamlet 
 assumes the retirement, and want of ceremony, which belong to a 
 private individual, because only two persons in the Court can rise, in 
 any way, to his moral level ; Prince Henry assumes the licence of 
 a private individual because none in his father's court can be found 
 to sink to his moral level ; the one throws off the prince to assume 
 the rSIe of a low brawler and reveller, the other surrenders the 
 privileges of his position from affection for his father's memory, and 
 from all-absorbing sorrow for his death. 
 
 It is quite consistent with Hamlet's character, and with human 
 nature generally, that he should, at one and the same time, 
 studiously avoid any intercourse with the natural associates of a 
 man in his position, and yet complain of a lack of that proper 
 attendance, that sort of court within a court, which generally 
 surrounds the heir-apparent to the throne. Nor was this complaint 
 so unreasonable as it may seem ; putting aside the fact that by 
 right the throne was his, it is evident that Claudius's professions of 
 regard for Hamlet as his son and natural successor were nothing 
 but professions ; and that the courtiers who surrounded him were 
 quite capable of appreciating the worth of these professions, and of 
 giving practical expression to the dislike and disrespect~which the 
 King himself dared not openly show towards Hamlet. 
 
 It may be observed that just before this passage Hamlet says 
 that he has bad dreams. The many instances of playing upon words, 
 found in the course of this play, mny warrant the suspicion that 
 
ADDITIONAL NOTES. 187 
 
 the sentence " I am most dreadfully attended " contains a double 
 meaning ; and that Hamlet may refer to the visitation of the 
 Ghost, and to those haunting thoughts and images created by its 
 appearance, which attended him both sleeping and waking. 
 
 NOTE 4. 
 
 I am but mad north-north-west : when the wind is southerly I know a 
 hawk from a handsaw. 
 
 No adequate explanation of this passage appears to me to be 
 offered by any of the commentators ; the proverb " he doesn't know 
 a hawk from a hernshaw," that is, from a heron, is said to have 
 been a common one, and is found in Eay's Proverbs, p. 196, and in 
 other collections ; but the only passage quoted is from Langston's 
 " Lusus Poeticus," 1675 (see Pennant's "British Zoology," " The 
 Heron," quoted in Richardson's Dictionary sub voce Heron). The cor- 
 ruption of " hernsliaw " into " handsaw " may have originated in 
 a vulgar mistake, or in a stupid attempt to be funny on the part of 
 some person.* 
 
 Of the first part of this, in all the old commentators, I can find 
 no explanation ,f and yet I cannot help thinking that the words 
 I am but mad north-north-west 
 
 must have had some inner meaning, or conveyed a reference to 
 some well-known expression. The only attempt to throw any 
 light on this obscure passage is to be found in the Notes to the 
 "Clarendon" Hamlet (Oxford, 1873); and for this explanation 
 the editors acknowledge their indebtedness to Mr. J. C. Heath, 
 formerly Fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge. I take leave to insert 
 it here : 
 
 "The expression obviously refers to the sport of hawking. Most birds, 
 especially one of heavy flight, like the heron, when roused by the falconer 
 or his dog, would fly down or with the wind, in order to escape. When 
 the wind is from the north the heron flies towards the south, and the spec- 
 
 * This corruption, Nares says, had taken place before the time of 
 Shakespeare. " Herneshaw " is explained by Cotgrave as a " shaw of 
 wood where hernes breed," " Haironniere ; " so that Dr. Johnson had 
 better authority for giving this interpretation than Nares supposed. Shaw 
 is an old Saxon word for " shady place." 
 
 t The quotation given by Steevens does not help us much : 
 " But I perceive now, either the winde is at the south, 
 Or else your tongue cleaveth to the roofe of your mouth." 
 
 "Damon and Pythias," 1582. 
 He might just aa well have quoted the proverb 
 1 When the wind is in the south, 
 It blows the bait into the fishes' mouth." 
 
188 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 tator may be dazzled by the sun, and be unable to distinguish the hawk 
 from the heron. On the other hand, when the wind is southerly, the heron 
 flies towards the north, and it and the pursuing hawk are clearly seen by 
 the sportsman, who then has his back to the sun, and without difficulty 
 knows the hawk from the hernsew. A curious reader may further observe 
 that a wind from the precise point north-north-west would be in the eye of 
 the sun at half-past tan in the forenoon, a likely time for hawking, whereas 
 'southerly' includes a wider range of wind for a good view." 
 
 This explanation is very ingenious ; but I should like to have 
 seen it supported by some passages from any of the books on Fal- 
 conry to which Shakespeare might have had access. I have always 
 thought that Hamlet here meant to intimate to Rosencrautz and 
 C uildenstern that he was only mad in one direction (i.e., before the 
 King and Court), and that possibly by some gesture he may have 
 indicated his meaning. 
 
 The hawk and heron are certainly as unlike as any two birds can 
 be ; the only point of resemblance between them being that they 
 are both mischievous, for the heron is quite as destructive to fish 
 as the hawk is to game. In the proverb the sense undoubtedly is, 
 " he does nbt know a hawk from its prey ;" and Hamlet's meaning 
 may be thus expressed " I am not so mad but I know a knave 
 from a fool, even if that fool be a mischievous one." 
 
 NOTE 5. 
 
 MALONE has the following note (vol. vii., page 405, note 3, 
 ed. 1821) on the words " I must to England": 
 
 " Shakespeare does not inform us how Hamlet came to know that he 
 was to be sent to England. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were made 
 acquainted with the King's intentions for the first time in the very last 
 scene ; and they do not appear to have had any communication with the 
 Prince since that time. Add to this, that in a subsequent scene, when the 
 King, after the death of Polonius, informs Hamlet he was to go to England, 
 he expresses great surprise, as if he had not heard anything of it before. 
 This last, however, may, perhaps, be accounted for, as contributing to his 
 design of passing for a madman." 
 
 The first mention of the scheme of sending Hamlet to England 
 occurs in Act III., Scene 1, lines 1G8 175 : 
 
 I have in quick determination 
 
 Thus set it down : -he shall with speed to England, 
 
 For the demand of our neglected tribute : 
 
 Haply the seas and countries different 
 
 With variable objects shall expel 
 
 This something-settled matter in his heart, 
 
 Whereon his brains still beating puts him thus 
 
 From fashion of himself. 
 
 The Queen apparently was not present, only Polonius (see ante, 
 page 41) : the next allusion to it is in the third scene of the same 
 
ADDITIONAL NOTES, 189 
 
 act, when the King broaches the plan to Kosencrantz and Guil den- 
 stern. The action would seem to be continuous, at any rate to the 
 end of Scene 1, if not to the end of the act. We must mark the 
 Queen's answer : Hamlet's words are : 
 
 I must to England ; you know that ? 
 
 To which his mother replies 
 
 Alack, 
 I had forgot ; 'tis so concluded on 
 
 showing that she had heard of the proposed embassy to England. 
 Unless we suppose that an interval of time* is intended to elapse 
 between the first and second scenes of this act, she must have been 
 informed of his intention by Claudius, when they retired so 
 abruptly in the middle of the play represented before the Court. 
 Hamlet could only have heard of the project in the short interval 
 which elapsed between his leaving the King kneeling in his closet 
 (Scene 3) and his interview with his mother (Scene 4). It is quite 
 possible that Shakespeare meant us to suppose that, while Hamlet 
 passed through the corridors of the palace, some of the courtiers, 
 if not liosencrantz and Guildenstern themselves, had told him of 
 the King's intention. I cannot conceive that it was a mere over- 
 sight on Shakespeare's part ; for we must not forget that he revised 
 the whole play, and this very scene in particular. Surely Malone 
 is not justified in saying, as far as the text is concerned, that 
 Hamlet expresses any surprise when (Act IV. t Scene 3, lines 44, 45) 
 the King tells him that everything is ready for his journey to 
 England; he merely repeats the words, "For England;" and 
 twice afterwards, " Come, for England " (line 47 and line 52) ; this 
 very repetition might have warned the King that Hamlet was not 
 without suspicion of his design ; but he seems to have had no 
 apprehension on this point. It is very likely that, by repeating 
 these words, Hamlet desired to remind his mother of what he had 
 said to her ; and to assure her that she need have no fear of his 
 incurring any danger from over-trusting the companions which the 
 King had chosen for him. 
 
 I may notice here Ulrici's plausible conjecture that Hamlet 
 visited England in order to obtain the support of that power in a 
 quarrel with his country : 
 
 " He cheerfully obeys the command to visit England, evidently with the 
 view and in the hopes of there obtaining the means and opportunity (per- 
 haps the support of England, and a supply of money and men, for an open 
 quarrel with his uncle) to set about the work in a manner worthy both of 
 himself and its own importance. This hope he is evidently alluding to 
 when he says, "Tis the sport to have the enginer,' &c. "(&? "Shake- 
 speare'a Dramatic Art," by H. Ulrici, p. 220.) 
 
 I do not think this conjecture as justifiable as it is ingenious. 
 
 See " Scheme of Time, &c.," page 201, 
 
190 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 NOTE 5A. 
 
 IN Caldecott's Edition (1819), p. 98, the following passages are 
 given : 
 
 "When princes (as the toy takes them in the head) have used courtiers 
 as sponges to drinke what juice they can from the poore people, they take 
 pleasure afterwards to wringe them out into their owne cisternes." R. C.'s 
 "Henr. Steph. Apology for Herodotus," Fo. 1608, p. 81. 
 
 "Vespasian, when reproached for bestowing high office upon persons 
 most rapacious, answered, ' that he served his turne with such officers as 
 with spunyes, which, when they had drunke their fill, were then fittest to 
 be pressed.' " Barnabe Rich's "Faultes, faults and nothing else but faults," 
 4to, 1606, p. 44b. (See Suetonius, Vespas., c. 16.) 
 
 This last passage bears such a remarkable similarity to the lines 
 in the play, that it is almost certain Shakespeare, or the author of 
 the older play of " Hamlet," must have borrowed the idea from the 
 same source to which Barnabe Eich was indebted viz., Suetonius. 
 
 This speech about the sponge, &c., was restored by Mr. Irving ; 
 the first time, I believe, it has been given on the stage : he spoke 
 it in Act IV., Scene 2, where, as I have said in the text, it is 
 placed in the Quarto 1603. 
 
 NOTE 6. 
 
 IT is a curious fact that neither in this passage nor in Scene 2, 
 Act V., in which Hamlet relates to Horatio the counterplot by 
 which he had defeated the King's treachery, does Shakespeare give 
 any clue to the precise nature of the government which he intended 
 to represent as existing in England at the time of this play; but 
 from the expression here used by the King, it would seem to have 
 been a monarchy, paying tribute to Denmark. (See also Hamlet's 
 words, Scene 2, Act V., line 39 
 
 As England was his faithful tributary.) 
 
 It may be remarked that in the speech of the King we have one 
 of the very few allusions which would tend to fix the historical 
 period of the play : 
 
 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 
 
ADDITIONAL NOTES. 191 
 
 The first invasion of the Danes was in 783, the last in 1074; the first 
 historical King of Denmark was Sigurd Snogoje, whose reign was 
 from. 794 to 803 ; his immediate predecessor was Kagnor Lodbrog, 
 who was said to have been killed in an attempt to invade England 
 in 794. The period of Hamlet's existence in Saxo Grammaticus is 
 placed about the second century before .Christ; but the chronology of 
 Saxo is utterly worthless. As after 794 we have the names of all 
 the kings of Denmark preserved, Hamlet must have existed, if ho 
 ever really did exist, before then ; aiul as England could not have 
 paid tribute to Denmark before 783, the number of years, arguing 
 from the allusion in the text, within which Hamlet could have 
 existed, is very limited. The fact is, that it is utterly impossible 
 to ascertain the exact period of the events in this play, and there- 
 fore all the attempts that have been made from time to time to 
 secure historical accuracy in the costumes are mere waste of inge- 
 nuity ; any time during the ninth or tenth centuries might be 
 taken, according to fancy ; but the spirit of the principal character, 
 and many trifling allusions that occur in the play, would even then 
 strike us as anachronisms. 
 
 NOTE 7. 
 
 Up from my cabin, 
 
 My sea-gown scarf'd about me, 
 
 THIS passage seems to me worthy of notice, but I cannot find 
 any commentary on it : the details given in it are very character- 
 istic ; the expression " Up from my cabin " is remarkable. We 
 should expect that Hamlet's cabin would have been either in 
 the poop, or stern, of the vessel ; or on the first deck at any 
 rate, below deck. Unless Eosencrantz and Guildenstern slept on 
 the deck, Hamlet would not go up from the cabin to search for 
 their papers ; but it may be that the vessel, being a small one, the 
 only cabin was given up to him ; or it may be simply an oversight 
 on Shakespeare's part. The word " sea-gown " occurs only in this 
 passage in Shakespeare, and is explained by Cotgrave as a " short- 
 sleeved mariner's gown '' (French, u Esdavine" which is described 
 as a " coarse, high-collared, and short-sleeved gowne, reaching 
 downe to the mid-leg, and used most by seamen, and saylers ") ; 
 in fact, it was a long-hooded cloak, open in front, very much like 
 those one sees worn by some men now-a-days when travelling. 
 Hamlet in his haste had thrown it round him in the fashion of 
 a scarf or plaid. The descriptive power in this speech and the 
 preceding ones is singularly vivid ; while the language of Hamlet is 
 more graphic and less sententious than usual. The active, and not 
 the reflective, part of his nature is for the moment supreme. 
 
192 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 NOTE 8. 
 
 Or I could make a prologue to my brains, 
 They had begun the play, 
 
 THIS expression is rather obscure. The only note on the passage 
 which I can find is in Caldecott's edition (1819), page 149, Note D: 
 
 " Ere I could well conceive what they were about, what could be their 
 object in this mission ; before I had time to give my first thoughts to their 
 process, they were carrying their projects into act." 
 The simplest interpretation seems to be, "Before I could 
 make a prologue in my brains," or " to the satisfaction of my 
 brains, they had begun the play ;" i.e., " Before I could settle in 
 my mind the preliminaries of any counterplot, they had begun the 
 plot itself." 
 
 NOTE 9. 
 
 I HAVE a copy of the quarto of 1G95, which gives a list of " the 
 persons represented " and the names of the actors and actresses who 
 represented them ; in this cast Betterton was the Hamlet and Mrs. 
 Betterton the Ophelia. It was in that very year that this great 
 actor, who was now in his 60th year, opened the theatre in 
 Lincoln's Inn Fields ; he had acted Hamlet at different periods 
 during the last thirty-two years, and it is probable that the ex- 
 cisions which he made in the play were sanctioned by tradition 
 derived from Burbage, who was the original representative of the 
 part. The following notice to the reader is affixed to this edition 
 of the play (1695): 
 
 ' ' This Play being too long to be conveniently Acted, such places as might 
 be least prejudicial to the Plot or Sense, are lefb out upon the Stage : But 
 that we may no way wrong the incomparable Author, are here inserted 
 according to the Original Copy, with this mark "." 
 
 Not one of Betterton' s successors has ventured to restore the scene ; 
 but I have heard that, recently, Mr. Bandmaim, a German actor 
 who has mastered the English language to a certain extent, has 
 done so ; with what success I do not know. It would be very 
 interesting if some Shakespearian scholar, with special capabilities 
 for the task, like Mr. Halliwell or Mr. Furnivall, would collate the 
 various acting editions of "Hamlet" adopted by the great actors who 
 have represented this part, from Betteiton down to Irving. 
 
AUmiiOXAL NOTES. 
 
 NOTE 10. 
 
 THAT this interval must be a considerable one will be easily seen 
 on careful examination of tho remaining scenes of the play. It 
 might be thought that the break occurs at the end of the next 
 scene (Scene 5) ; but that is impossible, for the conversation 
 between the King and Laertes, which takes place in. Scene 7, is 
 evidently part of that which ends Scene 5 ; the interval occupied 
 by Scene 6 being only sufficient for the King to explain to Laertes 
 the circumstances of Polonius' death, which, if done on the stage, 
 would have been a needless repetition. We find from Scene 6 that 
 Hamlet has returned, the ship in which he sailed having been 
 overtaken by pirates, who made him their prisoner, on the second 
 day of his voyage ; how lung he was detained by them does not 
 appear, but it must have been for some time, since between Acts 
 IV. and V. there cannot elapse much more than two days, and at 
 the end of Act V. we find that the ambassadors have arrived from 
 England announcing the deaths of Eosencrantz and Guildenstern, 
 and that Fortinbras has returned from his expedition against 
 Poland ; so that it is evident that, at this point (Act IV., Scene 4) 
 the break implied by the fall of the act-drop ought to occur. 
 Another great advantage would be gained by this arrangement, for, 
 as the play is at present represented, the incident of Ophelia's mad- 
 ness appears to be very abruptly introduced ; she has scarcely had 
 time to hear of her father's death ; and the impression produced 
 upon the spectator is that her madness was a preconcerted circum- 
 stance, and did not arise naturally from the events as Shakespeare 
 intended it to do. If Ophelia's mad scene were to commence a 
 new act, it would be much more effective ; and the spectators 
 might then conceive, what was probably the intention of the author, 
 that the abrupt departure of Hamlet for England without attempting 
 any explanation to her, or expressing sorrow for the fatal mistake 
 by which he had killed her father, co-operated with that father's 
 violent and sudden death to overturn a mind on which secret 
 sorrow, and bitter disappointment, had long been preying. 
 
 At the end of the " Additional Notes" will be found an arrangement 
 of all the scenes in this play, showing the amount of time occupied 
 by the action and the length of the various intervals supposed to 
 elapse at different points in the course of the tragedy. 
 
 NOTE 11, 
 
 THAT Shakespeare intended to refer to some particular expedition 
 in this passage I have not the slightest doubt ; but, unfortunately, 
 I have not been able to trace the source of ^this description. The 
 particulars given are very remarkable ; it was a little patch of 
 
 
 
194 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 ground not worth five ducats to farm yet it was garrisoned by 
 the Polack. I hoped to find the original of this unprofitable ex- 
 pedition in some of the " adventures " undertaken by Sir Walter 
 Raleigh, or by one of the Earls of Essex ; but I have not succeeded 
 to my own satisfaction. There are certain points of resemblance 
 between the enterprise of Walter Devereux in 1573, the object of 
 which was to conquer Ulster, or a portion of it, and this expedition 
 of Fortinbras. An unfavourable critic might speak of the members 
 of that adventurous body, of which Walter Devereux was the 
 leader, as '*' a list of lawless resolutes " without doing them any 
 grievous wrong. Of the apparent value of the country which these 
 brave butchers were to conquer, some idea may be formed from the 
 description given by Eroude (vol. x., page 554) : 
 
 "A few years before, Sir Henry Sidney's progress through Ulster had 
 been gravely compared to Alexander's journey into Bactria. The central 
 plains of Australia, the untrodden jungles of Borneo, or the still vacant 
 spaces in our map of Africa, alone now on the globe's surface represent 
 districts as unknown and mysterious as the north-east angle of Ireland in 
 the reign of Elizabeth Ulster was a desert," &c. , &c. 
 
 One feels on reading this eloquent description that five ducats 
 would have been a high rent to have paid for such a paradise ; still 
 the extent of it does not answer to the description in the text. In 
 1573 Shakespeare was only nine years old ; in 1580, when Walter 
 Ealeigh joined Grey's force in the attack upon the fort of Smerwick, 
 in Dingle Bay, he was only sixteen : yet both events might have 
 made some impression on his youthful memory. Smerwick, the 
 wretched fort in which the unhappy Spaniards and Italians held 
 out for two days against the English butchers, answers very well to 
 " the Officer's " description of the place against which Fortinbras 
 was leading his " lawless resolutes." It was " a very small neck of 
 land joined to the shore by a bank of sand " (Fronde, vol. xi., 
 page 224-). It was garrisoned and was regularly besieged and taken 
 by Grey and his followers ; the use they made of their conquest is 
 a matter of history; and let us hope few fouler stains rest on 
 the English name. If I could positively identify either Walter 
 Devereux' expedition, or that of Grey, as the original which sug- 
 gested Shakespeare's description in the text, I should make a 
 proviso, that it is not to be supposed, for one moment, that Fortin- 
 bras was guilty of the fiendish barbarities which both those blood- 
 thirsty murderers practised. 
 
 The whole of this scene (with the exception of Fortinbras' short 
 speech) has no parallel in the Quarto of 1603 ; it was evidently 
 added by Shakespeare on the revision of the play, a circumstance 
 which confirms me in tho belief that ho had some enterprise of that 
 timo in his mind. 
 
ADDITIONAL NOTES. 195 
 
 NOTE 12. 
 
 They cry, " Choose we ; Laertes shall be king ?' 
 
 IT would seem that, with " the rabble " at least, the popularity of 
 Claudius had been short-lived. His accession was probably more 
 owing to the nobles than to the people : they had wished to place 
 young Hamlet on his father's throne ; and now that he had been 
 sent off by Claudius to England, in order, as they thought, to get 
 rid of him as a successor, the people clamoured to be allowed to 
 choose for themselves and to make Laertes King : Gervinus credits 
 the energy of Laertes with the creation of this " rebellion, which 
 looks giant-like ;" but it is probable that he found the work 
 of creation at least half-done : the fact that Hamlet had been 
 sent out of the kingdom had more to do with their riotous attitude 
 than any love either of Laertes himself or of his father, who had 
 been so mysteriously killed. On the question as to whether the 
 Crown of Denmark was elective or not, see an interesting note 
 given in Malone's "Shakespeare" (ed. 1821, vol. vii., p. 209). 
 1 must here point out one touch of Shakespeare's art which I have 
 omitted to notice in the text. Immediately there is any mention 
 of rebellion the Queen is as zealous for her husband's cause as if 
 she had never heard anything to shake her faith in him and weaken 
 her affection ; this is right ; for after all she had chosen him as her 
 lover, and, once married to him, it is more noble in her to be true 
 to him with all his vices than to plot against him, as she proposes 
 her readiness to do in the suppressed scene of the Quarto 1603. 
 (See Appendix M.) 
 
 NOTE 13. 
 
 THERE is some reason for supposing Horatio to have been a sol- 
 dier, for Bernardo says (Act L, Scene 1, lines 12, 13) 
 
 If you do meet Horatio and Marcellus, 
 
 The rivals of my watch, bid them make haste. 
 
 " Rivals " means " companions," or " partners " (see Warburton's 
 Note and Eitsori's addition to it 'Malone's " Shakespeare " (1821), 
 vol. vii., p. 172). Malone, in his note, says : " Horatio is certainly 
 not an officer, but Hamlet's fellow-student at Wittenburg ; but as 
 he accompanied Marcellus and Bernardo on the watch from a motive 
 of curiosity, our poet considers him very properly as an associate 
 with them." 
 
 So again when Hamlet asks (Act I., Scene 2, line 225)-~ 
 
 Hold you the watch to-night ? 
 
196 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 In the Quartos the answer is assigned to " All," in the Folio to 
 " Both " i e., to Marcellus and Bernardo only, a reading generally 
 adopted. 
 
 But Horatio's own language in his speech in the same scene 
 (lines 196 208) may determine the question ; for his language 
 is scarcely reconcilable with the supposition that he was a fellow- 
 officer of Marcellus and Bernardo, or as if " to keep the watch " 
 were his duty. At the same time I do not see the necessity of 
 drawing any distinction between Bernardo and Francisco ; they all 
 appear to be on equal terms ; an officer does not usually relieve a 
 private soldier on guard. But Bernardo seems to have been on 
 equal terms with Marcellus, who seems to assume a tone of supe- 
 riority over Francisco. I think all the difficulties on this point 
 might be got over if we suppose that there was in the Court of 
 Denmark some body like our " Yeomen of the Guard," or " Gentle- 
 men at Arms," composed of gentlemen of good birth to whom the 
 duty of keeping the watch near the Palace was committed. Of this 
 body even Horatio might have been a member. 
 
 It is somewhat remarkable that, whether by the design of 
 Shakespeare or by accident, Horatio never once speaks to the King 
 throughout the play. The King speaks to him only once (Act V., 
 Scene 1, line 281), when he bids him wait upon Hamlet 
 
 I pray you, good Horatio, wait upon Mm. 
 
 In the scene of Ophelia's madness, when Horatio is present, the 
 King does not address himself to Horatio, but to the " Gentleman "* 
 who had ushered in Ophelia (see Act IV., Scene 5). 
 
 Horatio was certainly not in favour at the Court of Claudius ; he 
 seems to be the only person besides Hamlet who viewed the con- 
 duct of that king unfavourably. 
 
 NOTE 14. 
 
 If it be so, Laertes, 
 
 As how should it be so ? how otherwise ? 
 Will you be ruled by me ? 
 
 This passage, as it stands, seems to me almost hopelessly obscure. 
 In Malone's "Shakespeare" (1821) there is absolutely no note on 
 the passage. Caldecott does not notice it ; and even that obstinate, 
 illuminator of dark passages, Mr. Collier's old annolator, passes it 
 by without a word of comment. 
 
 The editors of the " Clarendon Hamlet " have a note in which 
 they give Keightley's conjecture, " how should it but be so ?" They 
 
 * Sometimes the "Gentleman " is omitted, and Horatio only is present, 
 in accordance with the stage direction of the Folios. 
 
ADDITIONAL NOTES. 197 
 
 say, " we should have expected, ' how should it not be so V " but 
 they do not give the anonymous conjecture to be found in the foot- 
 notes of the " Cambridge Shakespeare" (vol. viii., p. 144), "how 
 shoul't not be so T which I suspect to be the right reading. They 
 suggest an explanation of the passage as it stands viz., " that the 
 first clause refers to Hamlet's return, the second to Laertes " feel- 
 ings."' (See Clarendon Press Series, "Hamlet," pp. 204, 205.) 
 
 I confess that this, the only attempt to explain the words, as 
 they stand, which I can find, does not satisfy me. The fact is, no 
 sense can be made of them, if read as printed in the text. The 
 insejtion of the "not " makes them perfectly intelligible. It has oc- 
 curred to me, as there is no authority for this insertion, that if the 
 word " should " were italicised we might make sense of it, thus 
 
 If it be so 
 
 (i.e., if Hamlet has come back because, on consideration, he did not 
 choose to go to England) 
 
 As how should it be so ? 
 
 (i.e., how should there be any question about it being so 1) 
 How (could it be) otherwise ? 
 
 I admit that we should expect, in this case, the word '* if " to bo 
 repeated, but I can make sense of the speech in no other manner. 
 The general meaning is clear : the King is puzzling over this sudden 
 return of Hamlet, and he rapidly reviews the situation. First he 
 asks 
 
 Arc all the rest come back ? 
 Or ia'ii some abuse, and no such thing ? 
 
 Surely his trusty spaniels, Eosencrantz and Guildenstern, cannot 
 have disobeyed or deceived him ! Then where are they \ They 
 would not go to England without Hamlet, and surely they would 
 not let him escape. The writing is certainly Hamlet's ; he answers 
 to Laertes' inquiry 
 
 " Naked 1" 
 And in a postscript here, he says " Alone." 
 
 Can they have been wrecked and he alone saved ? Hamlet cannot 
 have discovered the plot against him. Eosencrantz and Guilden- 
 stern did not know the contents of the letter they could not have 
 betrayed him. ]S T o it must be that ho has on a sudden caprice 
 refused to continue the voyage, and made the sailors turn back. 
 Yes, it must be so without question it must be. Then in that 
 case how can he get rid of Hamlet and appease Laertes at one and 
 the same time ? Something like these thoughts would pass 
 through the mind of Claudius before he succeeds in hitting upon' 
 the ingenious scheme which he now proceeds to divulge to Laertes. 
 
193 
 
 A STUDY OF HiMLET. 
 
 NOTE 15. 
 
 WHEN did the madness of Englishmen take rank as a national 
 characteristic on the Continent 1 It is hard to say. That invtovato 
 virgin. Good Queen Bess, was sufficiently eccentric to impress the 
 foreigners, who were allowed access to her beauteous presence, with 
 an idea that* she was slightly mad. Other monarchs in that age 
 might be eccentric in their vices, but her especial oddity consisted 
 in her virtues. There was a taint of insanity about them. Henry 
 the Eighth was a perfect Bedlam in himself, and might well in- 
 spire foreigners with unfavourable views as to the sanity of English- 
 men. In the Plantagenets' time, and in that of their immediate 
 successors, the madness of Englishmen chiefly made itself remark- 
 able by the audacious valour with which they gained victories over 
 their foreign foes. Tom Coryat, that most facetious of travellers, 
 might well spread far and wide a reputation for eccentricity on 
 behalf of his countrymen ; but his " Crudities " were not given to 
 the public till seven years after the publication of " Hamlet." One 
 ought to examine carefully the journals and letters of foreigners, 
 published during the IGth century, in order to trace the origin of our 
 reputation for madness. In connection with this imputation on our 
 national sanity, it would occur to every reader of Shakespeare to 
 see what Portia has to say of her English suitor. On referring to 
 the passage we find that not madness, nor eccentricity, but two 
 other failings, are there imputed to our countrymen. 
 
 NERISSA. What say you, then, to .Falconbridgo, the young baron of 
 England ? 
 
 PORTIA. You know, I say nothing to him, for he understands not me, 
 nor I him : he hath neither Latin, French, nor Italian, and 
 you will come into the court and swear that I have a poor 
 pennyworth of English. He is a proper man's picture, but 
 alas ! who can converse with a dumb show ? How oddly 
 he is suited ! I think he bought his doublet in Italy, his 
 round hose in France, his bonnet in Germany, and his 
 behaviour everywhere. 
 
 " Merchant of Venice," Act I., Sc. 2, lines 59-69. 
 
 Now, it is singular that up to a very few years ago these two 
 defects were, not without justice, imputed pretty generally to our 
 fellow-countrymen on the Continent namely, that we could not 
 speak any but our own language, and that our dress was of a non- 
 descript character and in vile taste. The fact that our American 
 cousins have outshone us in both particulars, that certain individual 
 Englishmen have rather distinguished themselves by their fluency 
 in foreign tongues, and that our style of dress has even found favour 
 abroad all the.se circumstances have combined to relieve us of 
 these imputations ; but still, in the case of the majority of English 
 travellers they are not wholly unreasonable. ' 
 
NOTES. l ( .l'.l 
 
 NOTE 16. 
 
 THE first of these two passages is as follows : 
 
 OSRIO. The king, sir, hath laid, sir, that in a dozen passes between your- 
 self and him, he shall not exceed you three hits : he hath laid on twelve 
 for nine. 
 
 Certainly this is very obscurely expressed, for it was impossible 
 that Osric could state anything clearly or simply ; but I think the 
 meaning is plain. " A dozen passes " does not mean simply twelve 
 hits, for in a pass both might score a hit, the wager, being that 
 Laertes will not gain three more hits than Hamlet. To do this it is 
 plain Laertes must hit his opponent twelve times at least in every 
 twenty-one, or four times in every seven ; the odds, in short, that 
 Laertes lays on himself are twelve to nine, or four to three. It 
 would have been quite clear if Osric had said that the King had 
 laid that Laertes would not win best out of seven hits three times, 
 for that is what it really comes to. I think the expression " a 
 dozen " was a very vague one in Shakespeare's time, and that if the 
 text is corrupt, the corruption lies in these words. In the Quarto 
 1603 we find the Gravedigger, speaking of Yorick : s skull, says to 
 Hamlet, " Looke you, here's a scull hath bin here these dozen 
 yeare." (Sve Allen's Reprint, page 86, and Appendix P, page 
 182.) 
 ' The other passage I have alluded to is this 
 
 "Thus has he and many more of the same breed that I know the drosa 
 age dotes on only got the time of the tune and outward habit of encoun- 
 ter ; a kind of yesty collection, which carries them through and through 
 the most, fond and winnQwed opinions." 
 
 The words- in italics are the readings of the Folios. The sec >nd 
 .and third Quartos read " prophane and trennowed" the fourth 
 Quarto, "prophane and trennowned ;" the fifth and sixth Quartos, 
 "profane and trennowned;" but the 1676 Quarto reads "prophane 
 and renowned," which was probably the right reading. 
 
 There are various emendations. Johnson suggests " sane and 
 renowned." He explains it : " These men have got the cant of the 
 day . . a kind of frothy collection of fashionable prattle which 
 yet carries them through the moat select and approved judgments." 
 
 Steevens takes "fond" to mean foolish, and " winnowed" 
 " sifted," " examined," the sense being that such men impose 
 upon not only " the weak, but those of sounder judgment." 
 
 I believe the sense to be different, whichever reading we take : 
 "profane and renowned opinions" would mean " common and 
 well-known opinions " profane in the same sense as the Latin pro- 
 fanus e. a. : 
 
 Odi profanum vulgus et arceo : 
 
200 
 
 A STUDY OF HAMLET. 
 
 whilst "fond and winnowed " would mean " foolish and such as 
 are blown about by the wind." What Hamlet means to say is 
 that such men as Osric have a "yesty" or "superficial" stock of 
 knowledge, which enables them to talk fluently on common and 
 well-known subjects, or to impose upon foolish and unsteady people, 
 who are carried away by every wind of opinion and have no judg- 
 ment of their own. 
 
 NOTE 17. 
 
 How this change of foils is brought about is not quite certain. 
 Salvini delighted and surprised the audience, at the first representa- 
 tion he gave of Hamlet, by the graceful manner in which he 
 managed this exchange. After Laertes had hit him he put his 
 hand up to his side, as if he felt the prick of the unbated weapon ; 
 then just as Laertes was about to take up his foil, which had 
 been knocked out of his hand in the encounter, Signer Salvini 
 placed his foot on it, and, bowing gracefully, presented his anta- 
 gonist with his own foil. Graceful as this undeniably is? I do not 
 think it can be justified on a careful consideration of the scene ; 
 the action is too deliberate ; it is manifest that Hamlet does not 
 stop when he is hit, but that he continues his attack furiously till 
 the point of each foil getting caught in the hilt of the other, both 
 are disarmed ; but they do not stop, Hamlet being too eager to hit 
 Laertes ; each snatches at the first weapon that conies to his hand, 
 and they continue the struggle, in which Hamlet wounds Laertes. 
 In answer to the objection that Laertes, though struck with the 
 venomed point after Hamlet, when the virulence of the poison 
 might be supposed to have diminished, yet dies the first it may 
 be observed that Hamlet's wound was probably much the slighter 
 of the two, for in the excited state in which he evidently was, and 
 not knowing he had an unbated weapon in his hand, he would 
 probably strike Laertes much harder than Laertes, knowing the 
 deadly power of the poison, had struck him. Hamlet's words after 
 the scuffle 
 
 Nay, come again 
 
 fould hardly have been spoken had he detected Laertes' treachery, 
 or had he been conscious that he was wounded. His mind is, I 
 believe, entirely wrapped up in the trial of skill, for the time being, 
 and his excitement arises from his eagerness to win the match. ' 
 
SCHEME OF 
 
 Occupied by fhe play of "Hamlet" showing, approximately, 
 intervals beticeen the various Scenes and Acts. 
 
 ACT i. 
 
 Scene 1. Night. 
 
 INTERVAL UF TWELVE HOUR*. 
 
 Scene z. 
 
 Scene Z.-y- ime ' 
 
 INTERVAL OF SOME HOURS. 
 
 ; Z } Ni S nt - 
 Time occupied by First Act : Twenty-four hour3. 
 
 INTERVAL OF ABOUT TWO MONTHS AND A HALF. 
 
 II. 
 
 Scctie 1. 1 
 
 Scene 2. > Day-time. Action consecutive. 
 
 Scene 3. ) 
 
 INTERVAL OF TWENTY-FOUR HOURS. 
 
 ACT III. 
 
 Scene 1. Morning. 
 
 INTERVAL OF SOME HOURS. 
 
 Scene 2. ( Evening ) 
 
 Scene 3. < to / x\ction consecutive. 
 
 Scene i: ( night. ) 
 
202 SCHEME OF TIME. 
 
 ACT IV. 
 
 Scene 1. 
 
 Scene 2. ( The same night. The action being consecutive from Act III 
 Scene 3. ( Scene 2, to Act IV., Scene 4, inclusive. 
 Scene 4. ) 
 
 INTERVAL OF TWO MONTH,?. 
 
 Scene 5. ) 
 
 Scene 6. > Day-time. Action consecutive. 
 
 Scene 7. ) 
 
 INTERVAL OF TV\*0 DAYS; 
 
 ACT V. 
 
 Scene 1. Day-titae. 
 
 AN INTERVAL, PERHAPS, OF TWENTY-FOUR HOURS. 
 
 Scene 2. Day-time. 
 
 END OF 1'LAY. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Addison's "Cato," 14. 
 
 Bernardo his meeting with Hamlet, 18 ; the distinction between him and Mar- 
 cellus and Francisco, 196. 
 
 Betterton, 167, 192. 
 
 Caldecott's edition of "Hamlet," 15. 
 
 Cambridge " Shakespeare," 16, 197. 
 
 'Clarendon' "Hamlet," 169,187-8,196-7. 
 
 Claudius his succession to the throne, 16 ; assumption of fatherly affection for 
 Hamlet, 17 ; inquires of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern the result of their 
 interview with Hamlet, 39 ; his dread of Hamlet increased, 41 ; decides to 
 send him to England, 41 ; his consent to be present at the play, 42 ; pre- 
 pares to send Hamlet to England, 45 ; his soliloquy and prayer, 45 ; his 
 hypocrisy, 60 ; apology for the leniency he has shown to Hamlet, 63 ; 
 informs Hamlet of his decision to send him to England, 63 ; his self-posses- 
 sion when Laertes demands an explanation, 78 ; receives Hamlet's letter, 83 ; 
 concocts his plan of revenge on Hamlet with Laertes, 84 ; contrast between 
 Claudius and Laertes, 86 ; his hypocrisy at the last, 107 ; insinuates himself 
 into Gertrude's affections and some of the kingly duties, 116 ; contrast 
 between Claudius and the elder Hamlet, 116 ; was he intended to be a 
 satire on Henry VIII.? 116; the amount of his affection for Gertrude, 118 ; his 
 plans arrive at maturity, 118; his conduct during Hamlet's absencg at 
 Wittenberg, 120 ; accepts the crown, 121. 
 
 Davies, Tom his account of the arrangement of the pictures in the closet- 
 scene, 167. 
 
 Denmark Crown of, whether elective/ 118, 195; kings of, 191. 
 
 Fortinbras his character and appearance, 73 ; his victorious return, 108 ; was he 
 heir to the Crown of Norway? 177180, 
 
 Garrick, 169. 
 
 Gervinus, 90, 129, 148, 183, 186, 195. 
 
 Ghost its first appearance to Hamlet, 19 ; Hamlet's distrust of its genuineness, 39; 
 second appearance to Hamlet, in the closet-scene, 50 ; not seen by the 
 Queen, 51 ; effect of its appearance, 52 ; do Horatio and Marcellus hear the 
 Ghost at end of Act I.? 184. 
 
 Goethe, 15, 16, 131, 149. 
 
 Guildenstern see Rosencrantz. 
 
204 INDEX, 
 
 
 . 
 
 Hamlet love for fiis father, 10; his weakness, 11 ; contempt of evil, 12 ; fidelity 
 to his friends, 12; uncongeniality, 12; first entry, 16; respect to his 
 mother, 18 ; first soliloquy, 18 ; meeting with Horatio, Marcellus, and 
 Bernardo, 18 ; interview with the Ghost, 19 ; second soliloqiiy, 21 ; assump- 
 tion of madness, 22 ; his appeal to the aifection of his friends, 23 ; resolves 
 to break off his affectionate relations with Ophelia^^j was he guilty of the 
 ruin of Ophelia ? 26 ; his interview with Ophelia as planned by Pqlonius, 27 ; 
 his loss of confidence, in Eosencrantz and Guildenstern, 33 ; reception of the 
 players, 35 ; third soliloquy, 36 ; fourth soliloquy, 39 ; his speech to Hora- 
 tio, 42 ; his conduct during the play-scene, 42 ; his thoughts of diabolical 
 revenge, 45 ; his conduct during the closet-scene, 47 ; his conduct to his 
 mother considered, 53 ; the guilt incurred through killing Polonius, 55 ; 
 his knowledge of the King's treachery in sending him to England, 57 ; 
 assumption of ironical incoherence toward Eosencrantz and Guildenstern, 
 62 ; his defence to Horatio of his conduct to Eosencrantz and Guildenstern, 
 64 ; to what extent we can admit it as a justification '<$( that conduct, 68 ; 
 his meeting with the soldiers of Fortinbras, 70 ; fifth soliloquy, 71 ; his 
 conduct during the Grave-diggers' scene, 93 ; his ignorance of Ophelia's 
 madness, 93 ; proof of his age, 95 ; his conduct when he learns it is Ophelia's 
 funeral, 96 ; his sorrow for his passion at Ophelia's grave, 102 ; ridicules 
 Osric, 1^2 ; courteous bearing when the King and Queen ai-e announced, 103; 
 his fatalism, 104 ^apology to Laertesj 104*; his increased^ courtesy to .all, 
 106 ; kills the King7l08~; his charge io Horatio and death, 108 ; summary 
 of his character, 109 ; Salvini's opinion as to his chief characteristic, 110 ; 
 want of humility and faith his principal defect, 111 ; does he represent 
 religious uncertainty? 112; his Dearly lite, 113; his religion, 115; daily 
 occupations, 115; his letter to Ophelia, 119; the shock he receives on 
 reaching Elsinore after his father's death, 122 ; his age, 181 2 ; comparison 
 between him and Prince Henry, 186. 
 
 Horatio his meeting with Hamlet in company with Marcellus and Bernardo, 13 ; 
 his interview with Hamlet before the play-scene, 42 ; treated with confidence 
 by the Queen, 77 ; interview with the sailors, 81 ; his position, 81 ; goes to 
 jojin Hamlet, 82 ; accompanies Hamlet to the churchyard, 93 ; receives 
 J f a%lct's last charge to live and clear his name, 109 ; his marked difference 
 from the rest of the characters, 110 ; his similarity to Pylades, foot-note, 
 110 ; never speaks to the King, 196; was he a soldier? 196. 
 
 -Irving references to his acting in "Hamlet," 165, 166. 
 
 Johnson, 15 his censure on Hamlet's apology to Laertes, 104 ; proved to be un- 
 just, 105, 199. 
 
 Kean, Edmund, 44. 
 
 Laertes rebellion in his favour, 78 ; his conduct during his interview with the 
 King, 79 ; grief for Ophelia's condition, 80 ; his conduct when Claudius 
 proposes his plan of vengeance on Hamlet, 84 ; contrast between Laertes 
 and Claudius, 86 ; the proportion of guilt to be assigned to him for his part 
 in this plot, 88 ; Gervinus' opinion of him censured, 90 ; expostulates with 
 the priests at his sister's funeral, 96 ; his answer to Hamlet's apology before 
 the duel, 106 ; seeming repentance for his treachery, 108 ; his conduct to 
 his sister, 132, 133 ; his self-conceit, 133 ; his sententiousness an imitation 
 of his father, 133. 
 
 Malone, 15, 23, 38, 87, 93, 101, 165, 188, 195. 
 
 Marcellus his meeting with Hamlet, 18. 
 

 INDEX. 205 
 
 Ophelia -her description to Polonius of her last interview with Hamlet, 24; her 
 conduct during the meeting with Hamlet as planned by Polonius, 28 ; her 
 funeral, 96; her purity, 128; Gervinus' unjustitiable conclusions on her 
 conduct, 129 ; Goethe's opinion of her character, 131 ; passages from the 
 play confuting their aspersions, 132; her conduct during the play-scene, 
 141 ; strengthens the proof of her purity, 143 ; her madness, 143 ; the songs 
 she sings, 144 ; remarks on Gervinus' and Goethe's conception of her cha- 
 racter, 148. 
 
 Pictures the two pictures in the oloset-scene (Appendix) : Should they be pre- 
 sented on the stage or seen only in the mind's eye of Hamlet ? 166 171 : 
 how represented on the stage since the time of Betterton, 167168 ; by 
 various actors, 169. 
 
 Polonius his device to ascertain the cause of Hamlet's madness, 27 ; really a 
 satire on Lord Burleigh, 32 ; announces the players, 34 ; an absolute anti- 
 thesis of Hamlet, 35 ; his counsels to the Queen before the closet-scene, 47 ; 
 his death, 48 ; his fate not undeserved, 55 ; his popularity, 18 ; his exhorta- 
 tions to Ophelia, 133135 ; his testimony to her filial conduct, 136137. 
 
 Queen her conduct during the closet-scene, 48 ; her freedom from hypocrisy, 49 ; 
 not guilty of connivance at, or complicity in, her first husband's nnirder, 
 55 ; the promise given by her not to betray Hamlet's secret, 57 ; her ex- 
 planation of the murder of Polonius to the King, 59 ; her increased respect 
 for Horatio, 77 ; her description of Hamlet's mental condition, 100 ; her 
 death, 107. 
 
 Richardson's "Essay on Hamlet," 15. 
 
 Rosencrantz and Guildenstern welcomed by the King and Queen, 31 ; their inter- 
 view with Hamlet, 33 ; they summon Hamlet to his mother's presence, 44 ; 
 informed by the King that they are to go to England with Hamlet, 60 ; 
 their inseparability, 61 ; they seek Hamlet to get from him where he has 
 put the body of Polonius, 61 ; discussion of the question, whether they had 
 any guilty knowledge of the King's treachery in sending Hamlet to Eng- 
 land, 63. 
 
 Rossi, Ernesto -references to his acting in " Hamlet," 163, 166, 169. 
 
 Rowe, 14. 
 
 i -references to his acting in "Hamlet," 165, 166, 200, and footWte. 
 
 Schlegel, 16, 183. 
 
 Seymour (" Remarks on Shakespeare "), 168. 
 
 Steevens, 15, 98, 101, 104, 118, 187. 
 
 Ulrici, 180, 183, 189. 
 
 Voltaire, 14. 
 
 M'QOWAX AND co., STEAM PRINTERS, OBEAT WINDMILI, STREET, HAYMARKET, LONDOH. 
 

 
 
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