The Tragedie of Hamlet

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ACTUS SECUNDUS.[1]

Enter Polonius, and Reynoldo.

[Sidenote: Enter old Polonius, with his man, or two.]

Polon. Giue him his money, and these notes Reynoldo.[2]

Reynol. I will my Lord.

Polon. You shall doe maruels wisely: good Reynoldo,

Of his behauiour.[3]

Reynol. My Lord, I did intend it.

Polon. Marry, well said;
Very well said. Looke you Sir,
Enquire me first what Danskers are in Paris; And how, and who; what meanes; and where they keepe: What company, at what expence: and finding By this encompassement and drift of question, That they doe know my sonne: Come you more neerer[4] Then your particular demands will touch it,

Take you as 'twere some distant knowledge of him,
And thus I know his father and his friends, [Sidenote: As thus]
And in part him. Doe you marke this Reynoldo?

Reynol. I, very well my Lord.

Polon. And in part him, but you may say not well; But if't be hee I meane, hees very wilde; Addicted so and so; and there put on him What forgeries you please: marry, none so ranke, As may dishonour him; take heed of that: But Sir, such wanton, wild, and vsuall slips, As are Companions noted and most knowne To youth and liberty.

[Footnote 1: Not in Quarto.

Between this act and the former, sufficient time has passed to allow the ambassadors to go to Norway and return: 74. See 138, and what Hamlet says of the time since his father's death, 24, by which together the interval seems indicated as about two months, though surely so much time was not necessary.

Cause and effect must be truly presented; time and space are mere accidents, and of small consequence in the drama, whose very idea is compression for the sake of presentation. All that is necessary in regard to time is, that, either by the act-pause, or the intervention of a fresh scene, the passing of it should be indicated.

This second act occupies the forenoon of one day.]

[Footnote 2: 1st Q.

Montano, here, these letters to my sonne, And this same mony with my blessing to him, And bid him ply his learning good Montano.]

[Footnote 3: The father has no confidence in the son, and rightly, for both are unworthy: he turns on him the cunning of the courtier, and sends a spy on his behaviour. The looseness of his own principles comes out very clear in his anxieties about his son; and, having learned the ideas of the father as to what becomes a gentleman, we are not surprised to find the son such as he afterwards shows himself. Till the end approaches, we hear no more of Laertes, nor is more necessary; but without this scene we should have been unprepared for his vileness.]

[Footnote 4: Point thus: 'son, come you more nearer; then &c.' The then here does not stand for than, and to change it to than makes at once a contradiction. The sense is: 'Having put your general questions first, and been answered to your purpose, then your particular demands will come in, and be of service; they will reach to the point--will touch it.' The it is impersonal. After it should come a period.]

[Page 66]

Reynol. As gaming my Lord.

Polon. I, or drinking, fencing, swearing, Quarelling, drabbing. You may goe so farre.

Reynol. My Lord that would dishonour him.

Polon. Faith no, as you may season it in the charge;[1]

You must not put another scandall on him, That hee is open to Incontinencie;[2] That's not my meaning: but breath his faults so quaintly, That they may seeme the taints of liberty; The flash and out-breake of a fiery minde, A sauagenes in vnreclaim'd[3] bloud of generall assault.[4]

Reynol. But my good Lord.[5]

Polon. Wherefore should you doe this?[6]

Reynol. I my Lord, I would know that.

_Polon._ Marry Sir, heere's my drift,
And I belieue it is a fetch of warrant:[7]           [Sidenote: of wit,]
You laying these slight sulleyes[8] on my Sonne,
                                                  [Sidenote: sallies[8]]
As 'twere a thing a little soil'd i'th'working:
                                        [Sidenote: soiled with working,]

Marke you your party in conuerse; him you would sound, Hauing euer seene. In the prenominate crimes, [Sidenote: seene in the] The youth you breath of guilty, be assur'd He closes with you in this consequence: Good sir, or so, or friend, or Gentleman. According to the Phrase and the Addition,[9] [Sidenote: phrase or the] Of man and Country.

Reynol. Very good my Lord.

Polon. And then Sir does he this?

He does: what was I about to say?
I was about to say somthing: where did I leaue?

Reynol. At closes in the consequence: At friend, or so, and Gentleman.[10]

[Footnote 1: 1st Q.

I faith not a whit, no not a whit,

As you may bridle it not disparage him a iote.]

[Footnote 2: This may well seem prating inconsistency, but I suppose means that he must not be represented as without moderation in his wickedness.]

[Footnote 3: Untamed, as a hawk.]

[Footnote 4: The lines are properly arranged in Q.

A sauagenes in vnreclamed blood, Of generall assault.

--that is, 'which assails all.']

[Footnote 5: Here a hesitating pause.]

[Footnote 6: --with the expression of, 'Is that what you would say?']

[Footnote 7: 'a fetch with warrant for it'--a justifiable trick.]

[Footnote 8: Compare sallied, 25, both Quartos; sallets 67, 103; and see soil'd, next line.]

[Footnote 9: 'Addition,' epithet of courtesy in address.]

[Footnote 10: Q. has not this line]

[Page 68]

Polon. At closes in the consequence, I marry, He closes with you thus. I know the Gentleman,

With windlesses,[2] and with assaies of Bias, By indirections finde directions out: So by my former Lecture and aduice
Shall you my Sonne; you haue me, haue you not?

Reynol. My Lord I haue.

Polon. God buy you; fare you well, [Sidenote: ye | ye]

Reynol. Good my Lord.

Polon. Obserue his inclination in your selfe.[3]

Reynol. I shall my Lord.

Polon. And let him[4] plye his Musicke.

Reynol. Well, my Lord. Exit.

Enter Ophelia.

Polon. Farewell:
How now Ophelia, what's the matter?

Ophe. Alas my Lord, I haue beene so affrighted.

Polon. With what, in the name of Heauen?

Ophe. My Lord, as I was sowing in my Chamber, [Sidenote: closset,] Lord Hamlet with his doublet all vnbrac'd,[5] No hat vpon his head, his stockings foul'd, Vngartred, and downe giued[6] to his Anckle, Pale as his shirt, his knees knocking each other, And with a looke so pitious in purport, As if he had been loosed out of hell,

[Footnote 1: of far reaching mind.]

[Footnote 2: The word windlaces is explained in the dictionaries as shifts, subtleties--but apparently on the sole authority of this passage. There must be a figure in windlesses, as well as in assaies of Bias, which is a phrase plain enough to bowlers: the trying of other directions than that of the jack, in the endeavour to come at one with the law of the bowl's bias. I find wanlass a term in hunting: it had to do with driving game to a given point--whether in part by getting to windward of it, I cannot tell. The word may come of the verb wind, from its meaning '_to manage by shifts or expedients_': Barclay. As he has spoken of fishing, could the windlesses refer to any little instrument such as now used upon a fishing-rod? I do not think it. And how do the words windlesses and indirections come together? Was a windless some contrivance for determining how the wind blew? I bethink me that a thin withered straw is in Scotland called a windlestrae: perhaps such straws were thrown up to find out 'by indirection' the direction of the wind.

The press-reader sends me two valuable quotations, through Latham's edition of Johnson's Dictionary, from Dr. H. Hammond (1605-1660), in which windlass is used as a verb:--

'A skilful woodsman, by windlassing, presently gets a shoot, which, without taking a compass, and thereby a commodious stand, he could never have obtained.'

'She is not so much at leasure as to windlace, or use craft, to satisfy them.'

To windlace seems then to mean 'to steal along to leeward;' would it be absurd to suggest that, so-doing, the hunter laces the wind? Shakspere, with many another, I fancy, speaks of threading the night or the darkness.

Johnson explains the word in the text as 'A handle by which anything is turned.']

[Footnote 3: 'in your selfe.' may mean either 'through the insight afforded by your own feelings'; or 'in respect of yourself,' 'toward yourself.' I do not know which is intended.]

[Footnote 4: 1st Q. 'And bid him'.]

[Footnote 5: loose; undone.]

[Footnote 6: His stockings, slipped down in wrinkles round his ankles, suggested the rings of gyves or fetters. The verb gyve, of which the passive participle is here used, is rarer.]

[Page 70]

To speake of horrors: he comes before me.

Polon. Mad for thy Loue?

Ophe. My Lord, I doe not know: but truly I do feare it.[1]

Polon. What said he?

_Ophe._[2] He tooke me by the wrist, and held me hard; Then goes he to the length of all his arme; And with his other hand thus o're his brow,

He fals to such perusall of my face,
As he would draw it. Long staid he so, [Sidenote: As a]
At last, a little shaking of mine Arme:
And thrice his head thus wauing vp and downe;
He rais'd a sigh, so pittious and profound,
That it did seeme to shatter all his bulke, [Sidenote: As it]
And end his being. That done, he lets me goe,
And with his head ouer his shoulders turn'd, [Sidenote: shoulder]
He seem'd to finde his way without his eyes,
For out adores[3] he went without their helpe; [Sidenote: helps,]
And to the last, bended their light on me.

Polon. Goe with me, I will goe seeke the King, [Sidenote: Come, goe] This is the very extasie of Loue,
Whose violent property foredoes[4] it selfe,

And leads the will to desperate Vndertakings,
As oft as any passion vnder Heauen, [Sidenote: passions]
That does afflict our Natures. I am sorrie,
What haue you giuen him any hard words of late?

Ophe. No my good Lord: but as you did command, [Sidenote: 42, 82] I did repell his Letters, and deny'de His accesse to me.[5]

Pol. That hath made him mad.
I am sorrie that with better speed and Judgement

And meant to wracke thee: but beshrew my iealousie:

[Footnote 1: She would be glad her father should think so.]

[Footnote 2: The detailed description of Hamlet and his behaviour that follows, must be introduced in order that the side mirror of narrative may aid the front mirror of drama, and between them be given a true notion of his condition both mental and bodily. Although weeks have passed since his interview with the Ghost, he is still haunted with the memory of it, still broods over its horrible revelation. That he had, probably soon, begun to feel far from certain of the truth of the apparition, could not make the thoughts and questions it had awaked, cease tormenting his whole being. The stifling smoke of his mother's conduct had in his mind burst into loathsome flame, and through her he has all but lost his faith in humanity. To know his uncle a villain, was to know his uncle a villain; to know his mother false, was to doubt women, doubt the whole world.

In the meantime Ophelia, in obedience to her father, and evidently without reason assigned, has broken off communication with him: he reads her behaviour by the lurid light of his mother's. She too is false! she too is heartless! he can look to her for no help! She has turned against him to curry favour with his mother and his uncle!

Can she be such as his mother! Why should she not be? His mother had seemed as good! He would give his life to know her honest and pure. Might he but believe her what he had believed her, he would yet have a hiding-place from the wind, a covert from the tempest! If he could but know the truth! Alone with her once more but for a moment, he would read her very soul by the might of his! He must see her! He would see her! In the agony of a doubt upon which seemed to hang the bliss or bale of his being, yet not altogether unintimidated by a sense of his intrusion, he walks into the house of Polonius, and into the chamber of Ophelia.

Ever since the night of the apparition, the court, from the behaviour assumed by Hamlet, has believed his mind affected; and when he enters her room, Ophelia, though such is the insight of love that she is able to read in the face of the son the father's purgatorial sufferings, the picture of one 'loosed out of hell, to speak of horrors,' attributes all the strangeness of his appearance and demeanour, such as she describes them to her father, to that supposed fact. But there is, in truth, as little of affected as of actual madness in his behaviour in her presence. When he comes before her pale and trembling, speechless and with staring eyes, it is with no simulated insanity, but in the agonized hope, scarce distinguishable from despair, of finding, in the testimony of her visible presence, an assurance that the doubts ever tearing his spirit and sickening his brain, are but the offspring of his phantasy. There she sits!--and there he stands, vainly endeavouring through her eyes to read her soul! for, alas,

there's no art
To find the mind's construction in the face!

--until at length, finding himself utterly baffled, but unable, save by the removal of his person, to take his eyes from her face, he retires speechless as he came. Such is the man whom we are now to see wandering about the halls and corridors of the great castle-palace.

He may by this time have begun to doubt even the reality of the sight he had seen. The moment the pressure of a marvellous presence is removed, it is in the nature of man the same moment to begin to doubt; and instead of having any reason to wish the apparition a true one, he had every reason to desire to believe it an illusion or a lying spirit. Great were his excuse even if he forced likelihoods, and suborned witnesses in the court of his own judgment. To conclude it false was to think his father in heaven, and his mother not an adulteress, not a murderess! At once to kill his uncle would be to seal these horrible things irrevocable, indisputable facts. Strongest reasons he had for not taking immediate action in vengeance; but no smallest incapacity for action had share in his delay. The Poet takes recurrent pains, as if he foresaw hasty conclusions, to show his hero a man of promptitude, with this truest fitness for action, that he would not make unlawful haste. Without sufficing assurance, he would have no part in the fate either of the uncle he disliked or the mother he loved.]

[Footnote 3: a doors, like an end. 51, 175.]

[Footnote 4: undoes, frustrates, destroys.]

[Footnote 5: See quotation from 1st Quarto, 43.]

[Footnote 6: Quoted or coted: observed; Fr. coter, to mark the number. Compare 95.]

[Page 72]

It seemes it is as proper to our Age, [Sidenote: By heauen it is]
To cast beyond our selues[1] in our Opinions,
As it is common for the yonger sort
To lacke discretion.[2] Come, go we to the King,
This must be knowne, which being kept close might moue
More greefe to hide, then hate to vtter loue.[3] [Sidenote: Come.]
Exeunt.

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