Samuel
Taylor Coleridge,
Lectures
and Notes on Shakespeare and Other English Poets
(1818)
"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
Shakespeare, 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 Shakespeare, 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 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
(freak or monster) of the capricious and irregular genius of
Shakespeare. 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 Shakespeare'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 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 Shakespeare's modes
of creating characters is, to conceive any one intellectual or moral
faculty in morbid excess, and then to place himself, Shakespeare, 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
1.
consequent
upon it, with all its symptoms and accompanying qualities. This
character Shakespeare 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 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 of 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 Shakespeare'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 costume, by
throwing the date back into a fabulous king's reign.
2.
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 Caesar;" – 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 "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 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 Shakespeare meant to put an effect in the actor's power in the
very first words – "Who's there?" – is evident
3.
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!" from 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: –
"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 –"
4.
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
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 Shakespeare 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: –
"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.
5.
No
Addison could be more careful to be poetical in diction than
Shakespeare 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 Shakespeare introduces a most important, but still
subordinate character first, Laertes, who is yet thus graciously
treated in consequence of the assistance 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
Shakespeare 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 everyone 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.
6.
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 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
taedium vitae 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 Shakespeare'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.)
"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".
7.
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 –"
Shakespeare
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, Shakespeare 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 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 Shakespeare'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
8.
sentences of this speech of Hamlet's, Shakespeare 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
Shakespeare, 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, 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 (from the rear),
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 Shakespeare 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!"
Ib.
"Mar.
Hillo, ho, ho, my
lord!
Ham. Hillo, ho, ho,
boy! come bird, come,"
&am;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
9.
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 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 Shakespeare'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.
10.
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."
I
do not understand this; and Shakespeare seems to have 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 Shakespeare'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.
11.
In
the thoughts, and even in the separate parts of the diction, this
description is highly poetical: in truth, taken by itself, this is its fault that it
is too poetical! – the
language of the lyric vehemence and epic pomp, and not of the drama.
But if Shakespeare had made the diction truly dramatic, where would
have been the contrast between "Hamlet" and the play in "Hamlet?"
Ib.
"–
had seen the mobled
queen," &c.
A
mob-cap is still a word in common use for a morning cap, which conceals
the whole head of hair, and passes under the chin. It is nearly the
same as the night-cap, that is, it is an imitation of it, so as to
answer the purpose ("I am not drest
for company"), and yet reconciling it with neatness and perfect purity.
Ib.
Hamlet's soliloquy:
"O,
what a rogue and peasant slave am I!" &c.
This
is Shakespeare's own attestation to the truth of the idea of Hamlet
which I have before put forth.
Ib.
"The
spirit that I have seen,
May be a 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."
See
Sir Thomas Brown:
"I
believe – that those apparitions and ghosts of departed persons are not
the wandering souls of men, but the unquiet walks of devils, prompting
and suggesting us unto mischief, blood and villainy, instilling and
stealing into our hearts, that the blessed spirits are not at rest in
their graves, but wander solicitous of the affairs of the world." – Relig. Med. Pt. I. Sect. 37.
Act
iii. sc. 1.
"To
be, or not to be, that is the question," &c.
This
speech is of absolutely universal interest, – and yet to which of all
Shakespeare's characters could it have been appropriately given but to
Hamlet? For Jaques it
would have been too deep,
12.
and
for Iago too habitual a communication with the heart; which in every
man belongs, or ought to belong, to all mankind.
Ib.
"That
undiscover'd
country, from whose bourne
No traveller returns –"
Theobald's
note in defence of the supposed contradiction of this in the apparition
of the Ghost.
O
miserable defender! If it be necessary to remove the apparent
contradiction, – if it be not rather a great beauty, – surely, it were easy to say, that no
traveller returns to this world, as to his home, or abiding-place.
Ib.
"Ham.
Ha, ha! are you honest?
Oph. My lord?
Ham. Are you fair?"
Here
it is evident that the penetrating Hamlet perceives, from the strange
and forced manner of Ophelia, that the sweet girl was not acting a part
of her own, but was a decoy; and his after speeches are not so much
directed to her as to the listeners and spies. Such a discovery in a
mood so anxious and irritable accounts for a certain harshness in him;
– and yet a wild up-working of love, sporting with opposites in a wilful self-tormenting strain of
irony, is perceptible throughout. "I did love you once:" – "I loved you
not:" – and particularly in his enumeration of the faults of the sex
from which Ophelia is so free, that the mere freedom therefrom
constitutes her character. Note Shakespeare's charm of composing the
female character by the absence of characters, that is, marks and outjuttings.
Ib.
Hamlet's speech: –
"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."
Observe
this dallying with the inward purpose, characteristic of one who had
not brought his mind to the steady acting point. He would fain sting
the uncle's mind; – but to stab his body! – The soliloquy of Ophelia,
which follows, is the perfection of love – so exquisitely unselfish!
Ib.
sc. 2. This dialogue of Hamlet with the players is one of the happiest
instances of Shakespeare's power of diversifying the scene while he is
carrying on the plot.
13.
Ib.
"Ham.
My lord, you play'd
once i' the university, you say?" (To Polonius.)
To
have kept Hamlet's love for Ophelia before the audience in any direct
form, would have made a breach in the unity of the interest; – but yet
to the thoughtful reader it is suggested by his spite to poor Polonius,
whom he cannot let rest.
Ib.
The style of the interlude here is distinguished from the real dialogue
by rhyme, as in the first interview with the players by epic verse.
Ib.
"Ros. My lord, you once did love
me.
Ham.
So I do still, by these pickers and stealers."
I
never heard an actor give this word "so" its
proper emphasis. Shakespeare's meaning is – "loved you? Hum! – so I do
still, &c." There has been no change in my opinion: – I think
as ill of you as I did. Else Hamlet tells an ignoble falsehood, and a
useless one, as the last speech to Guildernstern
– "Why, look you now," &c. – proves.
Ib.
Hamlet's soliloquy: –
"Now
could I drink hot blood,
And do such business as the bitter day
Would quake to look on."
The
utmost at which Hamlet arrives, is a disposition, a mood, to do
something:– but what to
do, is still left undecided, while every word he utters tends to betray
his disguise.
Yet observe how perfectly equal to any call of the moment is Hamlet,
let it only not be for the future.
Ib.
sc. 4. Speech of Polonius. Polonius's volunteer obtrusion of himself
into this business, while it is appropriate to his character, still
itching after former importance, removes all likelihood that Hamlet
should suspect his presence, and prevents us from making his death
injure Hamlet in our opinion.
Ib.
The king's speech: –
"O,
my offence is rank, it smells to heaven," &c.
This
speech well marks the difference between crime and guilt of habit. The
conscience here is still admitted to audience. Nay, even as an audible
soliloquy, it is far less improbable than is supposed by such as have
watched men only in the beaten road of their feelings. But the final –
14.
"all may be well!" is remarkable;
– the degree of merit attributed by the self-flattering soul to its own
struggle, though baffled, and to the indefinite half-promise,
half-command, to persevere in religious duties. The solution is in the
divine medium of the Christian doctrine of expiation: – not what you
have done, but what you must determine.
Ib.
Hamlet's speech: –
"Now
might I do it, pat, now he is praying: And
now I'll do it: – And so he goes to heaven:
And so am I revenged? That would be scann'd,"
&c.
Dr.
Johnson's mistaking of the marks of reluctance and procrastination for
impetuous, horror-striking fiendishness! – Of such importance is it to
understand the germ of the character. But the interval taken by
Hamlet's speech is truly awful! And then –
"My
words fly up, my thoughts remain below:
Words without thoughts, never to heaven go," –
O
what a lesson concerning the essential difference between wishing and
willing, and the folly of all motive-mongering, while the individual
self remains!
Ib.
sc. 4.
"Ham.
A bloody deed; – almost as bad, good mother,
As kill a king, and marry with his brother.
Queen. As kill a king?"
I
confess that Shakespeare has left the character of the Queen in an
unpleasant perplexity. Was she, or was she not, conscious of the
fratricide?
Act
iv. sc. 2.
"Ros. Take you me for a spunge, my lord?
Ham. Ay, Sir; that soaks up the King's countenance, his rewards, his
authorities," &c.
Hamlet's
madness is made to consist in the free utterance of all the thoughts
that had passed through his mind before; – in fact, in telling
home-truths.
Act
iv. sc. 5. Ophelia's singing. O, note the conjunction here of these two
thoughts that had never subsisted in disjunction, the love for Hamlet,
and her filial love, with the guileless floating on the surface of her
pure imagination of the cautions so lately expressed, and the fears not
too delicately avowed, by her father and brother concerning the dangers
to which her honour lay exposed. Thought, affliction,
passion, murder itself – she turns to favour and
prettiness. This play of association is instanced in the close: –
"My
brother shall know of it, and I thank you for your good counsel."
Ib.
Gentleman's speech: –
"And
as the world were now but to begin,
Antiquity forgot, custom not known,
The ratifiers and props
of every ward –
They cry," &c.
Fearful
and self-suspicious as I always feel, when I seem to see an error of
judgement in Shakespeare, yet I cannot reconcile the cool, and, as
Warburton calls it, "rational and consequential," reflection in these
lines with the anonymousness or the alarm, of this Gentleman or
Messenger, as he is called in other editions.
Ib.
King's speech: –
"There's
such divinity doth hedge a king,
That treason can but peep to what it would,
Acts little of his will."
Proof,
as indeed all else is,
that Shakespeare never intended us to see the King with Hamlet's eyes;
though, I suspect, the managers have long done so.
Ib.
Speech of Laertes: –
"To
hell, allegiance! vows
to the blackest devil!"
"Laertes
is a good character, but," &c. WARBURTON.
Mercy
on Warburton's notion of goodness! Please to refer to the seventh scene
of this act; –
"I
will do it;
And for this purpose I'll anoint my sword," &c.
uttered
by Laertes after the King's description of Hamlet; –
"He
being remiss,
Most generous, and free from all contriving,
Will not peruse the foils."
Yet
I acknowledge that Shakespeare evidently wishes, as much as possible,
to spare the character of Laertes, – to break the extreme turpitude of
his consent to become an agent and accomplice of the King's treachery;
– and to this end he re-introduces Ophelia at the close of this scene
to afford a probable stimulus of passion in her brother.
Ib.
sc. 6. Hamlet's capture by the pirates. This
is almost the only play of Shakespeare, in which mere accidents,
independent of all will, form an essential part of the plot, – but here
how judiciously in keeping with the character of the over-meditative
Hamlet, ever at last determined by accident or by a fit of passion!
Ib.
sc. 7. Note how the King first awakens Laertes's vanity by praising the
reporter, and then gratifies it by the report itself, and finally
points it by –
"Sir,
this report of his
Did Hamlet so envenom with his envy!" –
Ib.
King's speech:
"For
goodness, growing to a pleurisy,
Dies in his own too much."
Theobald's
note from Warburton, who conjectures "plethory."
I
rather think that Shakespeare meant "pleurisy," but involved in it the
thought of plethora, as supposing pleurisy to arise from too much
blood; otherwise I cannot explain the following line –
"And
then this should is like a spendthrift sigh,
That hurts by easing."
In
a stitch in the side everyone must have heaved a sigh that "hurt by
easing."
Since
writing the above I feel confirmed that "pleurisy" is the right word;
for I find that in the old medical dictionaries the pleurisy is often
called the "plethory."
Ib.
"Queen.
Your sister's drown'd,
Laertes.
Laer. Drown'd! O, where?"
That
Laertes might be excused in some degree for not cooling, the Act
concludes with the affecting death of Ophelia, – who in the beginning
lay like a little projection of land into a lake or stream, covered
with spray-flowers quietly reflected in the quiet waters, but at length
is undermined or loosened, and becomes a faery isle, and after a brief
vagrancy sinks almost without an eddy!
Act
v. sc. 1. O, the rich contrast between the Clowns and Hamlet, as two
extremes! You see in the former the mockery of logic, and a traditional
wit valued, like truth, for its antiquity, and treasured up, like a
tune, for use.
Ib.
sc. 1 and 2. Shakespeare seems to mean all Hamlet's character to be
brought together before his final disappearance from the scene; – his
meditative excess in the grave-digging, his yielding to passion with
Laertes, his love for Ophelia blazing out, his tendency to generalize
on all occasions in the dialogue with Horatio, his fine gentlemanly
manners with Osrick,
and his and Shakespeare's own fondness for presentiment:
"But
thou would'st not
think, how ill all's here about my heart: but it is no matter."
From
the "Table Talk"
(June
15, 1827)
"Hamlet's character is the prevalence of the
abstracting and generalizing habit over the practical. He does not want
courage, skill, will, or opportunity; but every incident sets him
thinking; and it is curious, and at the same time strictly
natural, that Hamlet, who all the play seems reason itself, should be
impelled, at last, by mere accident, to effect his object. I have a
smack of Hamlet myself, if I may say so."
"A
Maxim is a conclusion upon observation of matters of fact, and is
merely retrospective; an idea, or, if you like, a Principle, carries
knowledge within itself, and is prospective. Polonius is a man of
maxims. While he is descanting on matters of past experience, as in
that excellent speech to Laertes before he sets out on his travels, he
is admirable; but when he comes to advise or project, he is a mere
dotard. You see Hamlet, as the man of ideas, despises him. A man of
maxims only is like a Cyclops with one eye, and that eye placed in the
back of his head."
"In
the scene with Ophelia, in the third act, Hamlet is beginning with
great and unfeigned tenderness; but perceiving her reserve and coyness,
fancies there are some
listeners, and then, to sustain his part, breaks out into
all that coarseness."
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