Criticism on Hamlet

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**HAMLET**

[189] Act I. Scene i. (I. i. 63.)

He smote the sleaded Polack on the ice.

Polack was in that age, the term for an inhabitant of Poland: Polaque, French. As in a translation of Passeratius's epitaph on Henry III of France, published byCamden :

Whether thy chance or choice thee hither brings,

Stay, passenger, and wail the best of kings.

This little stone a great king's heart doth hold,

Who rul'd the fickle French and Polacks bold:

So frail are even the highest earthly things.

Go, passenger, and wail the hap of kings.

Act I. Scene i. (I. i. 138.) If thou hast any sound.

The speech of Horatio to the spectre is very elegant and noble, and congruous to the common traditions of the causes of apparitions.

Act I. Scene i. (I. i. 153 foll.) Whether in sea or fire, &c.

According to the pneumatology of that time, every element was inhabited by its peculiar order of spirits, who had dispositions different, according to their various places of abode. The meaning therefore is, that all spirits extravagant, wandering out of their element, whether aerial spirits visiting earth, or earthly spirits ranging the air, return to their station, to their proper limits in which they are confined.

[190] Act I. Scene ix. (I. v. 154) Swear by my sword.

Mr. Garrick produced me a passage, I think, in Brant ôme, from which it appeared, that it was common to swear upon the sword, that is, upon the cross which the old swords had upon the hilt.

Act II. Scene ii. (II. i. 114-17.)

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.

This is not the remark of a weak man. The vice of age is too much suspicion. Men long accustomed to the wiles of life cast commonly beyond themselves, let their cunning go further than reason can attend it. This is always the fault of a little mind, made artful by long commerce with the world.

Act II. Scene iv. (II. ii.)

Polonius is a man bred in courts, exercised in business, stored with observation, confident of his knowledge, proud of his eloquence, and declining into dotage. His mode of oratory is truly represented as designed to ridicule the practice of those times, of prefaces that made no introduction, and of method that embarrassed rather than explained. This part of his character is accidental, the rest is natural. Such a man is positive and confident, because he knows that his mind was once strong, and knows not that it is become weak. Such a man excels in general principles, but fails in the particular application. He is knowing in retrospect, and ignorant in foresight. While he depends upon his memory, and can draw from his repositories of knowledge, he utters weighty sentences, and gives useful counsel; but as the mind in its enfeebled state cannot be kept long busy and intent, the old man is subject to [191] sudden dereliction of his faculties, he loses the order of his ideas, and entangles himself in his own thoughts, till he recovers the leading principle, and falls again into his former train. This idea of dotage encroaching upon wisdom, will solve all the phænomena of the character of Polonius.

Act II. Scene vi. (II. ii. 269) The shadow of a dream.

Shakespeare has accidentally inverted an expression of Pindar, that the state of humanity is [Greek words], the dream of a shadow.

Act III. Scene ii. (III. i. 56 foll.) To be or not to be?

Of this celebrated soliloquy, which bursting from a man distracted with contrariety of desires, and overwhelmed with the magnitude of his own purposes, is connected rather in the speaker's mind, than on his tongue, I shall endeavour to discover the train, and to shew how one sentiment produces another.

Hamlet, knowing himself injured in the most enormous and atrocious degree, and seeing no means of redress, but such as must expose him to the extremity of hazard, meditates on his situation in this manner: Before I can form any rational scheme of action under this pressure of distress, it is necessary to decide, whether, after our present state, we are to be or not to be. That is the question, which, as it shall be answered, will determine, whether 'tis nobler, and more suitable to the dignity of reason, to suffer the outrages of fortune patiently, or to take arms against them, and by opposing end them, though perhaps with the loss of life. If to die, were to sleep, no more, and by a sleep to end the miseries of our nature, such a sleep were devoutly to be wished; but if to sleep in death be to dream, to retain our powers of sensibility, we must pause to consider, in that sleep of death what dreams may come.  This consideration [192] makes calamityso long endured; for who would bear the vexations of life, which might be ended by a bare bodkin, but that he is afraid of something in unknown futurity? This fear it is that gives efficacy to conscience, which, by turning the mind upon this regard, chills the ardour of resolution, checks the vigour of enterprise, and makes thecurrent of desire stagnate in inactivity.

We may suppose that he would have applied these general observations to his own case, but that he discovered Ophelia.

Act III. Scene ii. (III. i. 70.) The whips and scorns of time.

It may be remarked, that Hamlet, in his enumeration of miseries, forgets, whether properly or not, that he is a prince, and mentions many evils to which inferior stations only are exposed.

Act III. Scene ii. (III. i. 89). Nymph, in thy orisons, &c.

This is a touch of nature. Hamlet, at the sight of Ophelia, does not immediately recollect, that he is to personate madness, but makes her an address grave and solemn, such as the foregoing meditation excited in his thoughts.

Act III. Scene v.

I know not why our editors should with such implacable anger, persecute our predecessors. [Greek words], the dead it is true can make no resistance, they may be attacked with great security; but since they can neither feel nor mend, the safety of mauling them seems greater than the pleasure; nor perhaps would it much misbeseem us to remember, amidst our triumphs over the nonsensical and the senseless, that we likewise are men; that debemur morti, and as Swift observed toBurnet , shall soon be among the dead ourselves.

[193] Act III. Scene ix. (III. iii. 94-5.)

That his soul may be as damn'd and black

As hell, whereto it goes.

This speech, in which Hamlet, represented as a virtuous character, is not content with taking blood for blood, but contrives damnation for the man that he would punish, is too horrible to be read or to be uttered.

Act IV. Scene v. (IV. v. 84.) In hugger mugger to inter him.

All the modern editions that I have consulted give it,

In private to inter him; -

That the words now replaced are better, I do not undertake to prove; it is sufficient that they are Shakespeare's: If phraseology is to be changed as words grow uncouth by disuse, or gross by vulgarity, the history of every language will be lost; we shall no longer have the words of any authour; and as these alterations will be often unskilfully made, we shall in time have very little of his meaning.

Act IV. Scene ix. (IV. vii. 20-1.)

Would, like the spring that turneth wood to stone,

Convert his gyves to graces.

This simile is neither very seasonable in the deep interest of this conversation, nor very accurately applied. If the spring had changed base metals to gold, the thought had been more proper.

Act V. Scene i. (V. i. 84-5.)

This might be the pate of a politician, which this ass o'er-offices.

In the quarto, for over-offices is, over-reaches, which agrees better with the sentence. I believe both the words were Shakespeare's. An author in revising his work, when his original ideas have faded from his [194] mind, and new observations have produced new sentiments, easily introduces images which have been more newly impressed upon him, without observing their want of congruity to the general texture of his original design.

Act V. Scene ii. (V. i. 254.)

Allow'd her virgin RITES.

The old quarto reads virgin CRANTS.

I have been informed by an anonymous correspondent, that crants is the German word for garlands, and I suppose it was retained by us from the Saxons. To carry garlands before the bier of a maiden, and to hang them over her grave, is still the practice in rural parishes.

Crants therefore was the original word, which the authour, discovering it to be provincial, and perhaps not understood, changed to a term more intelligible, but less proper. Maiden rites give no certain or definite image. He might have put maiden wreaths, or maiden garlands, but he perhaps bestowed no thought upon it, and neither genius nor practice will always supply a hasty writer with the most proper diction.

Act V. Scene iii. (V. ii. 6-7.)

Rashly,

And prais'd be rashness for it.

Hamlet, delivering an account of his escape, begins with saying, That he rashly - and then is carried into a reflection upon the weakness of human wisdom. I rashly - praised be rashness for it - Let us not think these events casual, but let us know, that is, take notice and remember, that we sometimes succeed by indiscretion,when we fail by deep plots, and infer the perpetual superintendence and agency of the Divinity. The observation is just, and will be allowed by every [195] human being who reflects on the course of his own life.

Act V. Scene iii. (V. ii. 41-2.)

As Peace should still her wheaten garland wear,

And stand a COMMA 'tween their amities;

The expression of our authour is, like many of his phrases, sufficiently constrained and affected, but it is not incapable of explanation. The Comma is the note ofconnection and continuity of sentences; the Period is the note of abruption and disjunction. Shakespeare had it perhaps in his mind to write, That unless Englandcomplied with the mandate, war should put a period to their amity; he altered his mode of diction, and thought that, in an opposite sense, he might put, That Peace should stand a Comma between their amities. This is not an easy style; but is it not the style of Shakespeare?

Act V. Scene v. (V. ii. 240.)

HAMLET. Give me your pardon, Sir. I've done you wrong.

I wish Hamlet had made some other defence; it is unsuitable to the character of a good or a brave man to shelter himself in falsehood.

If the dramas of Shakespeare were to be characterised, each by the particular excellence which distinguishes it from the rest, we must allow to the tragedy ofHamlet the praise of variety. The incidents are so numerous, that the argument of the play would make a long tale. The scenes are interchangeably diversified with merriment and solemnity; with merriment that includes judicious and instructive observations, and solemnity, not strained by poetical violence above the natural sentiments of man. New characters appear from time to time in continual succession, exhibiting various forms of life and particular modes [196] of conversation. The pretended madness of Hamlet causes much mirth, the mournful distraction of Ophelia fills the heart with tenderness, and every personage produces the effect intended, from the apparition that in the first act chills the blood with horror, to the fop in the last, that exposes affectation to just contempt.

The conduct is perhaps not wholly secure against objections. The action is indeed for the most part in continual progression, but there are some scenes which neither forward nor retard it. Of the feigned madness of Hamlet there appears no adequate cause, for he does nothing which he might not have done with the reputation of sanity. He plays the madman most, when he treats Ophelia with so much rudeness, which seems to be useless and wanton cruelty.

Hamlet is, through the whole play, rather an instrument than an agent. After he has, by the stratagem of the play, convicted the King, he makes no attempt to punish him, and his death is at last effected by an incident which Hamlet has no part in producing.

The catastrophe is not very happily produced; the exchange of weapons is rather an expedient of necessity, than a stroke of art. A scheme might easily have been formed, to kill Hamlet with the dagger, and Laertes with the bowl.

The poet is accused of having shewn little regard to poetical justice, and may be charged with equal neglect of poetical probability. The apparition left the regions of the dead to little purpose; the revenge which he demands is not obtained but by the death of him that was required to take it; and the gratification which would arise from the destruction of an usurper and a murderer, is abated by the untimely death of Ophelia, the young, the beautiful, the harmless, and the pious.

**HAMLET**

[342] ["Hamlet" was the play, or rather Hamlet himself was the character, in the intuition and exposition of which I first made my turn for philosophical criticism, and especially for insight into the genius of Shakspere, noticed. This happened first amongst my acquaintances, as Sir George Beaumont will bear witness; and subsequently, long before Schlegel had delivered at Vienna the lectures on Shakspere, which he afterwards published, I had given on the same subject eighteen lectures substantially the same, proceeding from the very same point of view, and deducing the same conclusions, so far as I either then agreed, or now agree, with him. I gave these lectures at the Royal Institution before six or seven hundred auditors of rank and eminence, in the spring of the same year, in which Sir Humphry Davy, a fellow-lecturer, made his great revolutionary discoveries in chemistry. Even in detail the coincidence of Schlegel with my lectures was so extraordinary, that all who at a later period heard the same words, taken by me from my notes [343] of the lectures at the Royal Institution, concluded a borrowing on my part form Schlegel. Mr. Hazlitt, whose hatred of me is in such an inverse ratio to my zealous kindness towards him, as to be defended by his warmest admirer, Charles Lamb - (who, God bless him! besides his characteristic obstinacy of adherence to old friends, as long at least as they are at all down in the world, is linked as by a charm to Hazlitt's conversation) - only as "frantic;" - Mr. Hazlitt, I say, himself replied to an assertion of my plagiarism from Schlegel in these words; - "That is a lie; for I myself heard the very same character of Hamlet from Coleridge before he went to Germany, and when he had neither read nor could read a page of German!" Now Hazlitt was on a visit to me at my cottage at Nether Stowey, Somerset, in the summer of the year 1798, in the September of which year I first was out of sight of the shores of Great Britain. Recorded by me, S.T. Coleridge, 7th January, 1819.]

The seeming inconsistencies in the conduct and character of Hamlet have long exercised the conjectural ingenuity of critics; and, as we are always loth to suppose that the cause of defective apprehension is in ourselves, the mystery has been too commonly explained by the very easy process of setting it down as in fact inexplicable, and by resolving the phenomenon into a misgrowth or lusus of the capricious and irregular genius of Shakspere. The shallow and stupid arrogance of these vulgar and indolent decisions I would fain do my best to expose. I believe the character of Hamlet may be traced to Shakspere's deep and accurate science in mental philosophy. Indeed, that this character must have some connection with the common fundamental laws of our nature may be assumed from the fact, that Hamlet has been the darling of every country in which the literature of England has been fostered. In order to understand him, it is essential that we should reflect on the constitution of our own minds. Man is distinguished from the brute animals in proportion as thought prevails over sense : but in the healthy processes of the mind, a balance is constantly maintained between the impressions from outward [344] objects and the inward operations of the intellect; - for if there be an overbalance in the contemplative faculty, man thereby becomes the creature of mere meditation, and loses his natural power of action. Now one of Shakspere's modes of creating characters is, to conceive any one intellectual or moral faculty in morbid excess, and then to place himself, Shakspere, thus mutilated or diseased, under given circumstances. In Hamlet he seems to have wished to exemplify the moral necessity of a due balance between our attention to the objects of our senses, and our meditation on the workings of our minds, - an equilibrium between the real and the imaginary worlds. In Hamlet this balance is disturbed : his thoughts, and the images of his fancy, are far more vivid than his actual perceptions, and his very perceptions, instantly passing through the medium of his contemplations, acquire, as they pass, a form and a colour not naturally their own. Hence we see a great, an almost enormous, intellectual activity, and a proportionate aversion to real action consequent upon it, with all its symptoms and accompanying qualities. This character Shakspere places in circumstances, under which it is obliged to act on the spur of the moment :- Hamlet is brave and careless of death; but he vacillates from sensibility, and procrastinates from thought, and loses the power of action in the energy of resolve. Thus it is that this tragedy presents a direct contrast to that of "Macbeth;" the one proceeds with the utmost slowness, the other with a crowded and breathless rapidity.

The effect of this overbalance of the imaginative power is beautifully illustrated in the everlasting broodings and superfluous activities of Hamlet's mind, which, unseated from its healthy relation, is constantly occupied with the world within, and abstracted from the world without, - giving substance to shadows, and throwing a mist over all common-place actualities. It is the nature of thought to [345] be indefinite; - definiteness belongs to external imagery alone. Hence it is that the sense of sublimity arises, not from the sight of an outward object, but from the beholder's reflection upon it; - not from the sensuous impression, but from the imaginative reflex. Few have seen a celebrated waterfall without feeling something akin to disappointment : it is only subsequently that the image comes back full into the mind, and brings with it a train of grand or beautiful associations. Hamlet feels this; his senses are in a state of trance, and he looks upon external things as hieroglyphics. His soliloquy -

"O! that this too too solid flesh would melt," &c.

springs from that craving after the indefinite - for that which is not - which most easily besets men of genius; and the self-delusion common to this temper of mind is finely exemplified in the character which Hamlet gives of himself :-

"It cannot be

But I am chicken liver'd, and lack gall

To make oppression bitter."

He mistakes the seeing his chains for the breaking them, delays action till action is of no use, and dies the victim of mere circumstance and accident.

There is a great significancy in the names of Shakspere's plays. In the "Twelfth Night," "Midsummer Night's Dream," "As You Like It," and "Winter's Tale," the total effect is produced by a co-ordination of the characters as in a wreath of flowers. But in "Coriolanus," "Lear," "Romeo and Juliet," "Hamlet," "Othello," &c., the effect arises from the subordination of all to one, either as the prominent person, or the principal object. "Cymbeline" is the only exception; and even that has its advantages in preparing the audience for the chaos of time, place, and [346] costume, by throwing the date back into a fabulous king's reign.

But as of more importance, so more striking, is the judgment displayed by our truly dramatic poet, as well as the poet of the drama, in the management of his first scenes. With the single exception of "Cymbeline," they either place before us at one glance both the past and the future in some effect, which implies the continuance and full agency of its cause, as in the feuds and party-spirit of the servants of the two houses in the first scene of "Romeo and Juliet;" or in the degrading passion for shows and public spectacles, and the overwhelming attachment for the newest successful war-chief in the Roman people, already become a populace, contrasted with the jealousy of the nobles in "Julius Cæsar;" - or they at once commence the action so as to excite a curiosity for the explanation in the following scenes, as in the storm of wind and waves, and the boatswain in the "Tempest," instead of anticipating our curiosity, as in most other first scenes, and in too many other first acts; - or they act, by contrast of diction suited to the characters, at once to heighten the effect, and yet to give a naturalness to the language and rhythm of the principal personages, either as that of Prospero and Miranda by the appropriate lowness of the style, - or as in "King John," by the equally appropriate stateliness of official harangues or narratives, so that the after blank verse seems to belong to the rank and quality of the speakers, and not to the poet; - or they strike at once the key-note, and give the predominant spirit of the play, as in the "Twelfth Night," and in "Macbeth;" - or finally, the first scene comprises all these advantages at once, as in "Hamlet."

Compare the easy language of common life, in which this drama commences, with the direful music and wild wayward rhythm and abrupt lyrics of the opening of[347] "Macbeth." The tone is quite familiar; - there is no poetic description of night, no elaborate information conveyed by one speaker to another of what both had immediately before their senses - (such as the first distich in Addison's "Cato," which is a translation into poetry of "Past four o'clock and a dark morning!"); - and yet nothing bordering on the comic on the one hand, nor any striving of the intellect on the other. It is precisely the language of sensation among men who feared no charge of effeminacy, for feeling what they had no want of resolution to bear. Yet the armour, the dead silence, the watchfulness that first interrupts it, the welcome relief of the guard, the cold, the broken expressions of compelled attention to bodily feelings still under control - all excellently accord with, and prepare for, the after gradual rise into tragedy; - but, above all, into a tragedy, the interest of which is as eminently ad et apud intra, as that of "Macbeth" is directly ad extra.

In all the best attested stories of ghosts and visions, as in that of Brutus, of Archbishop Cranmer, that of Benvenuto Cellini recorded by himself, and the vision of Galileo communicated by him to his favourite pupil Torricelli, the ghost-seers were in a state of cold or chilling damp from without, and of anxiety inwardly. It has been with all of them as with Francisco on his guard, - alone, in the depth and silence of the night; - "'twas bitter cold, and they were sick at heart, and not a mouse stirring." The attention to minute sounds, - naturally associated with the recollection of minute objects, and the more familiar and trifling, the more impressive from the unusualness of their producing any impression at all - gives a philosophic pertinency [348] to this last image; but it has likewise its dramatic use and purpose. For its commonness in ordinary conversation tends to produce the sense of reality, and at once hides the poet, and yet approximates the reader or spectator to that state in which the highest poetry will appear, and in its component parts, though not in the whole composition, really is, the language of nature. If I should not speak it, I feel that I should be thinking it; - the voice only is the poet's, - the words are my own. That Shakspere meant to put an effect in the actor's power in the very first words - "Who's there?" - is evident from the impatience expressed by the startled Francisco in the words that follow - "Nay, answer me : stand and unfold yourself." A brave man is never so peremptory, as when he fears that he is afraid. Observe the gradual transition from the silence and the still recent habit of listening in Francisco's - "I think I hear them" - to the more cheerful call out, which a good actor would observe, in the - "Stand ho! Who is there?" Bernardo's inquiry after Horatio, and the repetition of his name and in his own presence, indicate a respect or an eagerness that implies him as one of the persons who are in the foreground; and the scepticism attributed to him, -

"Horatio says, 'tis but our fantasy;

And will not let belief take hold of him -"

prepares us for Hamlet's after eulogy on him as one whose blood and judgment were happily commingled. The actor should also be careful to distinguish the expectation and gladness of Bernardo's "Welcome, Horatio!" form the mere courtesy of his "Welcome, good Marcellus!"

Now observe the admirable indefiniteness of the first opening out of the occasion of all this anxiety. The preparation informative of the audience is just as much as was precisely necessary, and no more; - it begins with the uncertainty appertaining to a question : -

[349] "Mar. What, has this thing appear'd again to-night? -"

Even the word "again" has its credibilizing effect. Then Horatio, the representative of the ignorance of the audience, not himself, but by Marcellus to Bernardo, anticipates the common solution - "'tis but our fantasy!" upon which Marcellus rises into

"This dreaded sight, twice seen of us -"

which immediately afterwards becomes "this apparition," and that, too, an intelligent spirit, that is, to be spoken to! Then comes the confirmation of Horatio's disbelief; -

"Tush! tush! 'twill not appear! -"

and the silence, with which the scene opened, is again restored in the shivering feeling of Horatio sitting down, at such a time, and with the two eye-witnesses, to hear a story of a ghost, and that, too, of a ghost which had appeared twice before at the very same hour. In the deep feeling which Bernardo has of the solemn nature of what he is about to relate, he makes an effort to master his own imaginative terrors by an elevation of style, - itself a continuation of the effort, - and by turning off from the apparition, as from something which would force him too deeply into himself, to the outward objects, the realities of nature, which had accompanied it : -

"Ber.  Last night of all,

When yon same star, that's westward from the pole,

Had made his course to illume that part of heaven

Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself,

The bell then beating one -"

This passage seems to contradict the critical law that what is told, makes a faint impression compared with what is beholden; for it does indeed convey to the mind more than the eye can see; whilst the interruption of the narrative at the very moment, when we are most intensely [350] listening for the sequel, and have our thoughts diverted from the dreaded sight in expectation of the desired, yet almost dreaded, tale - this gives all the suddenness and surprise of the original appearance; -

"Mar. Peace, break thee off; look where it comes again! -"

Note the judgment displayed in having the two persons present, who, as having seen the Ghost before, are naturally eager in confirming their former opinions, - whilst the sceptic is silent, and after having been twice addressed by his friends, answers with two hasty syllables - "Most like," - and a confession of horror :

"- It harrows me with fear and wonder."

O heaven! words are wasted on those who feel, and to those who do not feel the exquisite judgment of Shakspere in this scene, what can be said? - Hume himself could not but have had faith in this Ghost dramatically, let his anti-ghostism have been as strong as Samson against other ghosts less powerfully raised.

Act i. sc. 1.

"Mar. Good now, sit down, and tell me, he that knows,

Why this same strict and most observant watch," &c.

How delightfully natural is the transition to the retrospective narrative! And observe, upon the Ghost's reappearance, how much Horatio's courage is increased by having translated the late individual spectator into general thought and past experience, - and the sympathy of Marcellus and Bernardo with his patriotic surmises in daring to strike at the Ghost; whilst in a moment, upon its vanishing, the former solemn awe-stricken feeling returns upon them :-

"We do it wrong, being so majestical,

To offer it the show of violence. -"

Ib. Horatio's speech :-

[351] "I have heard,

The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn,

Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat

Awake the god of day," &c.

No Addison could be more careful to be poetical in diction than Shakspere in providing the grounds and sources of its propriety. But how to elevate a thing almost mean by its familiarity, young poets may learn in this treatment of the cock-crow.

Ib. Horatio's speech : -

"And, by my advice,

Let us impart what we have seen to-night

Unto young Hamlet; for, upon my life,

The spirit , dumb to us, will speak to him."

Note the inobtrusive and yet fully adequate mode of introducing the main character, "young Hamlet," upon whom is transferred all the interest excited for the acts and concerns of the king his father.

Ib. sc. 2. The audience are now relieved by a change of scene to the royal court, in order that "Hamlet" may not have to take up the leavings of exhaustion. In the king's speech, observe the set and pedantically antithetic form of the sentences when touching that which galled the heels of conscience, - the strain of undignified rhetoric, - and yet in what follows concerning the public weal, a certain appropriate majesty. Indeed was he not a royal brother? -

Ib. King's speech :-

"And now, Laertes, what's the news with you?" &c.

Thus with great art Shakspere introduces a most important, but still subordinate character first, Laertes, who is yet thus graciously treated in consequence of the assistance [352] given to the election of the late king's brother instead of his son by Polonius.

Ib.

"Ham. A little more than kin, and less than kind.

King. How is it that the clouds still hang on you?

Ham. Not so, my lord, I am too much i' the sun."

Hamlet opens his mouth with a playing on words, the complete absence of which throughout characterizes "Macbeth." This playing on words may be attributed to many causes or motives, as either an exuberant activity of mind, as in the higher comedy of Shakspere generally; - or to an imitation of it as a mere fashion, as if it were said - "Is not this better than groaning?" - or to a contemptuous exultation in minds vulgarized and overset by their success, as in the poetic instance of Milton's Devils in the battle; - or it is the language of resentment, as is familiar to every one who has witnessed the quarrels of the lower orders, where there is invariably a profusion of punning invective, whence, perhaps, nicknames have in a considerable degree sprung up; - or it is the language of suppressed passion, and especially of a hardly smothered personal dislike. The first, and last of these combine in Hamlet's case; and I have little doubt that Farmer is right in supposing the equivocation carried on in the expression "too much i' the sun," or son.

Ib.

"Ham. Ay, madam, it is common."

Here observe Hamlet's delicacy to his mother, and how the suppression prepares him for the overflow in the next speech, in which his character is more developed by bringing forward his aversion to externals, and which betrays his habit of brooding over the world within him, coupled with a prodigality of beautiful words, which are the half embodyings of thought, and are more than thought, and [353] have an outness, a reality sui generis, and yet retain their correspondence and shadowy affinity to the images and movements within. Note also Hamlet's silence to the long speech of the king which follows, and his respectful, but general, answer to his mother.

Ib. Hamlet's first soliloquy :-

"O, that this too too solid flesh would melt,

Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!" &c.

This tædium vitæ is a common oppression on minds cast in the Hamlet mould, and is caused by disproportionate mental exertion, which necessitates exhaustion of bodily feeling. Where there is a just coincidence of external and internal action, pleasure is always the result; but where the former is deficient, and the mind's appetency of the ideal is unchecked, realities will seem cold and unmoving. In such cases, passion combines itself with the indefinite alone. In this mood of his mind the relation of the appearance of his father's spirit in arms is made all at once to Hamlet : - it is - Horatio's speech, in particular - a perfect model of the true style of dramatic narrative; - the purest poetry, and yet in the most natural language, equally remote from the ink-horn and the plough.

Ib. sc. 3. This scene must be regarded as one of Shakspere's lyric movements in the play, and the skill with which it is interwoven with the dramatic parts is peculiarly an excellence of our poet. You experience the sensation of a pause without the sense of a stop. You will observe in Ophelia's short and general answer to the long speech of Laertes the natural carelessness of innocence, which cannot think such a code of cautions and prudences necessary to its own preservation.

Ib. Speech of Polonius :- (in Stockdale's edition.)

[354] "Or (not to crack the wind of the poor phrase,)

Wronging it thus, you'll tender me a fool."

I suspect this "wronging" is here used much in the same sense as "wringing" or "wrenching;" and that the parenthesis should be extended to "thus". 

Ib. Speech of Polonius:-

"- How prodigal the soul

Lends the tongue vows :- these blazes, daughter," &c.

A spondee has, I doubt not, dropped out of the text. Either insert "Go to" after "vows;" -

"Lends the tongue vows:- Go to, these blazes, daughter -"

or read

"Lends the tongue vows:- These blazes, daughter, mark you -"

Shakspere never introduces a catalectic line without intending an equivalent to the foot omitted in the pauses, or the dwelling emphasis, or the diffused retardation. I do not, however, deny that a good actor might, by employing the last mentioned means, namely, the retardation, or solemn knowing drawl, supply the missing spondee with good effect. But I do not believe that in this or any other of the foregoing speeches of Polonius, Shakspere meant to bring out the senility or weakness of that personage's mind. In the great ever-recurring dangers and duties of life, where to distinguish the fit objects for the application of the maxims collected by the experience of a long life, requires no fineness of tact, as in the admonitions to his son and daughter, Polonius is uniformly made respectable. But if an actor were even capable of catching these shades in the character, the pit and the gallery would be malcontent at their exhibition. It is to Hamlet that Polonius is, and is meant to be, contemptible, because in inwardness and uncontrollable activity of movement, Hamlet's [355] mind is the logical contrary to that of Polonius, and besides, as I have observed before, Hamlet dislikes the man, as false to his true allegiance in the matter of the succession to the crown.

Ib. sc. 4. The unimportant conversation with which this scene opens is a proof of Shakspere's minute knowledge of human nature. It is a well established fact, that on the brink of any serious enterprise, or event of moment, men almost invariably endeavour to elude the pressure of their own thoughts by turning aside to trivial objects and familiar circumstances: thus this dialogue on the platform begins with remarks on the coldness of the air, and inquiries, obliquely connected, indeed, with the expected hour of the visitation, but thrown out in a seeming vacuity of topics, as to the striking of the clock and so forth. The same desire to escape from the impending thought is carried on in Hamlet's account of, and moralizing on, the Danish custom of wassailing: he runs off from the particular to the universal, and, in his repugnance to personal and individual concerns, escapes, as it were, from himself in generalizations, and smothers the impatience and uneasy feelings of the moment in abstract reasoning. Besides this, another purpose is answered; - for by thus entangling the attention of the audience in the nice distinctions and parenthetical sentences of this speech of Hamlet's, Shakspere takes them completely by surprise on the appearance of the Ghost, which comes upon them in all the suddenness of its visionary character. Indeed, no modern writer would have dared, like Shakspere, to have preceded this last visitation by two distinct appearances, - or could have contrived that the third should rise upon the former two in impressiveness and solemnity of interest.

But in addition to all the other excellencies of Hamlet's speech concerning the wassail-music - so finely revealing the predominant idealism, the ratiocinative meditativeness, [356] of his character - it has the advantage of giving nature and probability to the impassioned continuity of the speech instantly directed to the Ghost. The momentum had been given to his mental activity; the full current of the thoughts and words had set in, and the very forgetfulness, in the fervour of his argumentation, of the purpose for which he was there, aided in preventing the appearance from benumbing the mind. Consequently, it acted as a new impulse, - a sudden stroke which increased the velocity of the body already in motion, whilst it altered the direction. The co-presence of Horatio, Marcellus and Bernardo is most judiciously contrived; for it renders the courage of Hamlet and his impetuous eloquence perfectly intelligible. The knowledge, - the unthought of consciousness, - the sensation, - of human auditors, - of flesh and blood sympathists - acts as a support and a stimulation a tergo, while the front of the mind, the whole consciousness of the speaker, is filled, yea, absorbed, by the apparition. Add too, that the apparition itself has by its previous appearances been brought nearer to a thing of this world. This accrescence of objectivity in a Ghost that yet retains all its ghostly attributes and fearful subjectivity, is truly wonderful.

Ib. sc. 5. Hamlet's speech:-

"O all you host of heaven! O earth! What else?

And shall I couple hell? -"

I remember nothing equal to this burst unless it be the first speech of Prometheus in the Greek drama, after the exit of Vulcan and the two Afrites. But Shakspere alone could have produced the vow of Hamlet to make his memory a blank of all maxims and generalized truths, that "observation had copied there," - followed immediately by the speaker noting down the generalized fact,

"That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain!"

[357] Ib.

"Mar. Hillo, ho, ho, my lord!

Ham. Hillo, ho, ho, boy! come bird, come," &c.

This part of the scene after Hamlet's interview with the Ghost has been charged with an improbable eccentricity. But the truth is, that after the mind has been stretched beyond its usual pitch and tone, it must either sink into exhaustion and inanity, or seek relief by change. It is thus well known that persons conversant in deeds of cruelty, contrive to escape from conscience, by connecting something of the ludicrous with them, and by inventing grotesque terms and a certain technical phraseology to disguise the horror of their practices. Indeed, paradoxical as it may appear, the terrible by a law of the human mind always touches on the verge of the ludicrous. Both arise from the perception of something out of the common order of things - something, in fact, out of its place; and if from this we can abstract danger, the uncommonness will alone remain, and the sense of the ridiculous be excited. The close alliance of these opposites - they are not contraries - appears from the circumstance, that laughter is equally the expression of extreme anguish and horror as of joy: as there are tears of sorrow and tears of joy, so is there a laugh of terror and a laugh of merriment. These complex causes will naturally have produced in Hamlet the disposition to escape from his own feelings of the overwhelming and supernatural by a wild transition to the ludicrous, - a sort of cunning bravado, bordering on the flights of delirium. For you may, perhaps, observe that Hamlet's[358] 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.

The subterraneous speeches of the Ghost are hardly defensible:- but I would call your attention to the characteristic difference between this Ghost, as a superstition connected with the most mysterious truths of revealed religion, - and Shakspere's constant reverence in his treatment of it, - and the foul earthly witcheries and wild language in "Macbeth".

Act ii. sc. 1. Polonius and Reynaldo.

In all things dependent on, or rather made up of, fine address, the manner is no more or otherwise rememberable than the light motions, steps, and gestures of youth and health. But this is almost everything: - no wonder, therefore, if that which can be put down by rule in the memory should appear to us as mere poring, maudlin, cunning, - slyness blinking through the watery eye of superannuation. So in this admirable scene, Polonius, who is throughout the skeleton of his own former skill and statecraft, hunts the trail of policy at a dead scent, supplied by the weak fever-smell in his own nostrils.

Ib. sc. 2. Speech of Polonius: -

"My liege, and madam, to expostulate," &c.

Warburton's note:

"Then as to the jingles, and play on words, let us but look into the sermons of Dr. Donne (the wittiest man of that age),

and we shall find them full of this vein."

I have, and that most carefully, read Dr. Donne's sermons, and find none of these jingles. The great art of an orator - to make whatever he talks of appear of importance - this, indeed, Donne has effected with consummate skill.

[359] Ib.

"Ham. Excellent well;

You are a fishmonger."

That is, you are sent to fish out this secret. This is Hamlet's own meaning.

Ib.

"Ham. For if the sun breeds maggots in a dead dog,

Being a god, kissing carrion -"

These purposely obscure lines, I rather think, refer to some thought in Hamlet's mind, contrasting the lovely daughter with such a tedious old fool, her father, as he, Hamlet, represents Polonius to himself: - "Why, fool as he is, he is some degrees in rank above a dead dog's carcase; and if the sun, being a god that kisses carrion, can raise life out of a dead dog, - why may not good fortune, that favours fools, have raised a lovely girl out of this dead-alive old fool?" Warburton is often led astray, in his interpretations, by his attention to general positions without the due Shakespearian reference to what is probably passing in the mind of his speaker, characteristic, and expository of his particular character and present mood. The subsequent passage, -

"O Jephtha, judge of Israel! what a treasure hadst thou!"

is confirmatory of my view of these lines.

Ib.

"Ham. You cannot, Sir, take from me anything that I will more willingly part withal;

except my life, except my life, except my life."

This repetition strikes me as most admirable.

Ib.

"Ham. Then are our beggars, bodies; and our monarchs, and outstretched heroes, the beggars' shadows."

Join now!

I do not understand this; and Shakspere seems to have [360] intended the meaning not to be more than snatched at : "By my fay, I cannot reason!"

Ib.

"The rugged Pyrrhus - he whose sable arms," &c.

This admirable substitution of the epic for the dramatic, giving such a reality to the impassioned dramatic diction of Shakspere's own dialogue, and authorized, too, by the actual style of the tragedies before his time ("Porrex and Ferrex", "Titus Andronicus," &c.) - is well worthy of notice. The fancy, that a burlesque was intended, sinks below criticism: the lines, as epic narrative, are superb.

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