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SUMMARY.
The division between the second and third acts is by common consent
placed here. The third act occupies the afternoon, evening, and night of
the same day with the second.
This soliloquy is Hamlet's first, and perhaps we may find it correct to
say only outbreak of self-accusation. He charges himself with lack of
feeling, spirit, and courage, in that he has not yet taken vengeance on
his uncle. But unless we are prepared to accept and justify to the full
his own hardest words against himself, and grant him a muddy-mettled,
pigeon-livered rascal, we must examine and understand him, so as to
account for his conduct better than he could himself. If we allow that
perhaps he accuses himself too much, we may find on reflection that he
accuses himself altogether wrongfully. If a man is content to think the
worst of Hamlet, I care to hold no argument with that man.
We must not look for expressed logical sequence in a soliloquy, which
is a vocal mind. The mind is seldom conscious of the links or
transitions of a yet perfectly logical process developed in it. This
remark, however, is more necessary in regard to the famous soliloquy to
follow.
In Hamlet, misery has partly choked even vengeance; and although sure in
his heart that his uncle is guilty, in his brain he is not sure.
Bitterly accusing himself in an access of wretchedness and rage and
credence, he forgets the doubt that has restrained him, with all besides
which he might so well urge in righteous defence, not excuse, of his
delay. But ungenerous criticism has, by all but universal consent,
accepted his own verdict against himself. So in common life there are
thousands on thousands who, upon the sad confession of a man
immeasurably greater than themselves, and showing his greatness in the
humility whose absence makes admission impossible to them, immediately
pounce upon him with vituperation, as if he were one of the vile, and
they infinitely better. Such should be indignant with St. Paul and
say--if he was the chief of sinners, what insolence to lecture them!
and certainly the more justified publican would never by them have been
allowed to touch the robe of the less justified Pharisee. Such critics
surely take little or no pains to understand the object of their
contempt: because Hamlet is troubled and blames himself, they without
hesitation condemn him--and there where he is most commendable. It is
the righteous man who is most ready to accuse himself; the unrighteous
is least ready. Who is able when in deep trouble, rightly to analyze his
feelings? Delay in action is not necessarily abandonment of duty; in
Hamlet's case it is a due recognition of duty, which condemns
precipitancy--and action in the face of doubt, so long as it is nowise
compelled, is precipitancy. The first thing is to be sure: Hamlet has
never been sure; he spies at length a chance of making himself sure; he
seizes upon it; and while his sudden resolve to make use of the players,
like the equally sudden resolve to shroud himself in pretended madness,
manifests him fertile in expedient, the carrying out of both manifests
him right capable and diligent in execution--a man of action in every
true sense of the word.
The self-accusation of Hamlet has its ground in the lapse of weeks
during which nothing has been done towards punishing the king. Suddenly
roused to a keen sense of the fact, he feels as if surely he might have
done something. The first act ends with a burning vow of righteous
vengeance; the second shows him wandering about the palace in
profoundest melancholy--such as makes it more than easy for him to
assume the forms of madness the moment he marks any curious eye bent
upon him. Let him who has never loved and revered a mother, call such
melancholy weakness. He has indeed done nothing towards the fulfilment
of his vow; but the way in which he made the vow, the terms in which he
exacted from his companions their promise of silence, and his scheme for
eluding suspicion, combine to show that from the first he perceived its
fulfilment would be hard, saw the obstacles in his way, and knew it
would require both time and caution. That even in the first rush of his
wrath he should thus be aware of difficulty, indicates moral symmetry;
but the full weight of what lay in his path could appear to him only
upon reflection. Partly in the light of passages yet to come, I will
imagine the further course of his thoughts, which the closing couplet of
the first act shows as having already begun to apale 'the native hue of
resolution.'
'But how shall I take vengeance on my uncle? Shall I publicly accuse
him, or slay him at once? In the one case what answer can I make to his
denial? in the other, what justification can I offer? If I say the
spirit of my father accuses him, what proof can I bring? My companions
only saw the apparition--heard no word from him; and my uncle's party
will assert, with absolute likelihood to the minds of those who do not
know me--and who here knows me but my mother!--that charge is a mere
coinage of jealous disappointment, working upon the melancholy I have
not cared to hide. (174-6.) When I act, it must be to kill him, and to
what misconstruction shall I not expose myself! (272) If the thing must
so be, I must brave all; but I could never present myself thereafter as
successor to the crown of one whom I had first slain and then vilified
on the accusation of an apparition whom no one heard but myself! I must
find proof--such proof as will satisfy others as well as myself. My
immediate duty is evidence, not vengeance.'
We have seen besides, that, when informed of the haunting presence of
the Ghost, he expected the apparition with not a little doubt as to its
authenticity--a doubt which, even when he saw it, did not immediately
vanish: is it any wonder that when the apparition was gone, the doubt
should return? Return it did, in accordance with the reaction which
waits upon all high-strung experience. If he did not believe in the
person who performed it, would any man long believe in any miracle?
Hamlet soon begins to question whether he can with confidence accept the
appearance for that which it appeared and asserted itself to be. He
steps over to the stand-point of his judges, and doubts the only
testimony he has to produce. Far more:--was he not bound in common
humanity, not to say filialness, to doubt it? To doubt the Ghost, was
to doubt a testimony which to accept was to believe his father in
horrible suffering, his uncle a murderer, his mother at least an
adulteress; to kill his uncle was to set his seal to the whole, and,
besides, to bring his mother into frightful suspicion of complicity in
his father's murder. Ought not the faintest shadow of a doubt, assuaging
ever so little the glare of the hell-sun of such crime, to be welcome to
the tortured heart? Wretched wife and woman as his mother had shown
herself, the Ghost would have him think her far worse--perhaps, even
accessory to her husband's murder! For action he must have proof!
At the same time, what every one knew of his mother, coupled now with
the mere idea of the Ghost's accusation, wrought in him such misery,
roused in him so many torturing and unanswerable questions, so blotted
the face of the universe and withered the heart of hope, that he could
not but doubt whether, in such a world of rogues and false women, it was
worth his while to slay one villain out of the swarm.
Ophelia's behaviour to him, in obedience to her father, of which she
gives him no explanation, has added 'the pangs of disprized love,' and
increased his doubts of woman-kind. 120.
But when his imagination, presenting afresh the awful interview, brings
him more immediately under the influence of the apparition and its
behest, he is for the moment delivered both from the stunning effect of
its communication and his doubt of its truth; forgetting then the
considerations that have wrought in him, he accuses himself of
remissness, blames himself grievously for his delay. Soon, however, his
senses resume their influence, and he doubts again. So goes the
mill-round of his thoughts, with the revolving of many wheels.
His whole conscious nature is frightfully shaken: he would be the poor
creature most of his critics would make of him, were it otherwise; it is
because of his greatness that he suffers so terribly, and doubts so
much. A mother's crime is far more paralyzing than a father's murder is
stimulating; and either he has not set himself in thorough earnest to
find the proof he needs, or he has as yet been unable to think of any
serviceable means to the end, when the half real, half simulated emotion
of the Player yet again rouses in him the sense of remissness, leads him
to accuse himself of forgotten obligation and heartlessness, and
simultaneously suggests a device for putting the Ghost and his words to
the test. Instantly he seizes the chance: when a thing has to be done,
and can be done, Hamlet is never wanting--shows himself the very
promptest of men.
In the last passage of this act I do not take it that he is expressing
an idea then first occurring to him: that the whole thing may be a snare
of the devil is a doubt with which during weeks he has been familiar.
The delay through which, in utter failure to comprehend his character,
he has been so miserably misjudged, falls really between the first and
second acts, although it seems in the regard of most readers to underlie
and protract the whole play. Its duration is measured by the journey of
the ambassadors to and from the neighbouring kingdom of Norway.
It is notably odd, by the way, that those who accuse Hamlet of inaction,
are mostly the same who believe his madness a reality! In truth,
however, his affected madness is one of the strongest signs of his
activity, and his delay one of the strongest proofs of his sanity.
This second act, the third act, and a part always given to the fourth,
but which really belongs to the third, occupy in all only one day.
[Footnote 1: Here follows in 1st Q.
Committed long before.
This spirit that I haue seene may be the Diuell,
And out of my weakenesse and my melancholy,
As he is very potent with such men,
Doth seeke to damne me, I will haue sounder proofes,
The play's the thing, &c.]
[Footnote 2:
'Stones have been known to move, and trees to speak;' &c.
Macbeth, iii. 4.]
[Footnote 3: In the 1st Q. Hamlet, speaking to Horatio (l 37), says,
And if he doe not bleach, and change at that,--
Bleach is radically the same word as blench:--to bleach, to blanch,
to blench--to grow white.]
[Footnote 4: Emphasis on May, as resuming previous doubtful thought
and suspicion.]
[Footnote 5: --caused from the first by his mother's behaviour, not
constitutional.]
[Footnote 6: --'such conditions of the spirits'.]
[Footnote 7: Here is one element in the very existence of the preceding
act: doubt as to the facts of the case has been throughout operating to
restrain him; and here first he reveals, perhaps first recognizes its
influence. Subject to change of feeling with the wavering of conviction,
he now for a moment regards his uncertainty as involving unnatural
distrust of a being in whose presence he cannot help feeling him his
father. He was familiar with the lore of the supernatural, and knew the
doubt he expresses to be not without support.--His companions as well
had all been in suspense as to the identity of the apparition with the
late king.]
[Page 116]
_Enter King, Queene, Polonius, Ophelia, Rosincrance,
Guildenstern, and Lords._[1] [Sidenote: Guyldensterne, Lords.]
[Sidenote: 72] King. And can you by no drift of circumstance
[Sidenote: An can | of conference]
Get from him why he puts on[2] this Confusion:
Grating so harshly all his dayes of quiet
With turbulent and dangerous Lunacy.
Rosin. He does confesse he feeles himselfe distracted,
[Sidenote: 92] But from what cause he will by no meanes speake.
Guil. Nor do we finde him forward to be sounded,
But with a crafty Madnesse[3] keepes aloofe:
When we would bring him on to some Confession
Of his true state.
Qu. Did he receiue you well?
Rosin. Most like a Gentleman.
Guild. But with much forcing of his disposition.[4]
Rosin. Niggard of question, but of our demands
Most free in his reply.[5]
Qu. Did you assay him to any pastime?
Rosin. Madam, it so fell out, that certaine Players
We ore-wrought on the way: of these we told him,
| |
[Sidenote: ore-raught[6]] |
And there did seeme in him a kinde of ioy
To heare of it: They are about the Court, [Sidenote: are heere about]
And (as I thinke) they haue already order
This night to play before him.
Pol. 'Tis most true;
And he beseech'd me to intreate your Majesties
To heare, and see the matter.
King. With all my heart, and it doth much content me
To heare him so inclin'd. Good Gentlemen,
[Footnote 1: This may be regarded as the commencement of the Third Act.]
[Footnote 2: The phrase seems to imply a doubt of the genuineness of the
lunacy.]
[Footnote 3: Nominative pronoun omitted here.]
[Footnote 4: He has noted, without understanding them, the signs of
Hamlet's suspicion of themselves.]
[Footnote 5: Compare the seemingly opposite statements of the two:
Hamlet had bewildered them.]
[Foonote 6: over-reached--came up with, caught up, overtook.]
[Page 118]
Giue him a further edge,[1] and driue his purpose on
| |
[Sidenote: purpose into these] |
To these delights.
Rosin. We shall my Lord. Exeunt.
[Sidenote: Exeunt Ros. & Guyl.]
King. Sweet Gertrude leaue vs too, [Sidenote: Gertrard | two]
For we haue closely sent for Hamlet hither,
[Sidenote: 84] That he, as 'twere by accident, may there
[Sidenote: heere]
Affront[2] Ophelia. Her Father, and my selfe[3] (lawful espials)[4]
Will so bestow our selues, that seeing vnseene
We may of their encounter frankely iudge,
And gather by him, as he is behaued,
If't be th'affliction of his loue, or no,
That thus he suffers for.
Qu. I shall obey you,
And for your part Ophelia,[5] I do wish
That your good Beauties be the happy cause
Of Hamlets wildenesse: so shall I hope your Vertues
[Sidenote: 240] Will bring him to his wonted way againe,
To both your Honors.[6]
Ophe. Madam, I wish it may.
Pol. Ophelia, walke you heere. Gracious so please ye[7]
[Sidenote: you,]
We will bestow our selues: Reade on this booke,[8]
That shew of such an exercise may colour
Your lonelinesse.[9] We are oft too blame in this,[10]
[Sidenote: lowlines:]
'Tis too much prou'd, that with Deuotions visage,
And pious Action, we do surge o're [Sidenote: sugar]
The diuell himselfe.
[Sidenote: 161] King. Oh 'tis true: [Sidenote: tis too true]
How smart a lash that speech doth giue my Conscience?
The Harlots Cheeke beautied with plaist'ring Art
Is not more vgly to the thing that helpes it,[11]
Then is my deede, to my most painted word.[12]
Oh heauie burthen![13]
[Footnote 1: '_edge_ him on'--somehow corrupted into egg.]
[Footnote 2: confront.]
[Footnote 3: Clause in parenthesis not in Q.]
[Footnote 4: --apologetic to the queen.]
[Footnote 5: --going up to Ophelia--I would say, who stands at a
little distance, and has not heard what has been passing between them.]
[Footnote 6: The queen encourages Ophelia in hoping to marry Hamlet, and
may so have a share in causing a certain turn her madness takes.]
[Footnote 7: --aside to the king.]
[Footnote 8: --to Ophelia: her prayer-book. 122.]
[Footnote 9: 1st Q.
And here Ofelia, reade you on this booke,
And walke aloofe, the King shal be vnseene.]
[Footnote 10: --aside to the king. I insert these asides, and
suggest the queen's going up to Ophelia, to show how we may easily hold
Ophelia ignorant of their plot. Poor creature as she was, I would
believe Shakspere did not mean her to lie to Hamlet. This may be why he
omitted that part of her father's speech in the 1st Q. given in the
note immediately above, telling her the king is going to hide. Still, it
would be excuse enough for her, that she thought his madness justified
the deception.]
[Footnote 11: --ugly to the paint that helps by hiding it--to which it
lies so close, and from which it has no secrets. Or, 'ugly to' may mean,
'ugly compared with.']
[Footnote 12: 'most painted'--very much painted. His painted word is
the paint to the deed. Painted may be taken for full of paint.]
[Footnote 13: This speech of the king is the first assurance we have
of his guilt.]
[Page 120]
Pol. I heare him comming, let's withdraw my Lord.
| |
[Sidenote: comming, with-draw]
_Exeunt._[1] |
_Enter Hamlet._[2]
Ham. To be, or not to be, that is the Question:
Whether 'tis Nobler in the minde to suffer
The Slings and Arrowes of outragious Fortune,
[Sidenote: 200,250] Or to take Armes against a Sea of troubles,[3]
And by opposing end them:[4] to dye, to sleepe
No more; and by a sleepe, to say we end
The Heart-ake, and the thousand Naturall shockes
That Flesh is heyre too? 'Tis a consummation
Deuoutly to be wish'd.[5] To dye to sleepe,
To sleepe, perchance to Dreame;[6] I, there's the rub,
For in that sleepe of death, what[7] dreames may come,[8]
When we haue shuffle'd off this mortall coile,
[Sidenote: 186] Must giue vs pawse.[9] There's the respect
That makes Calamity of so long life:[10]
For who would beare the Whips and Scornes of time,
The Oppressors wrong, the poore mans Contumely,
| |
[Sidenote: proude mans] |
| [Sidenote: 114] The pangs of dispriz'd Loue,[11] the Lawes delay, |
| The insolence of Office, and the Spurnes |
[Sidenote: despiz'd] |
That patient merit of the vnworthy takes,
When he himselfe might his Quietus make |
[Sidenote: th'] |
| [Sidenote: 194,252-3] With a bare Bodkin?[12] |
Who would these Fardles |
beare[13]
To grunt and sweat vnder a weary life, |
[Sidenote: would fardels] |
| [Sidenote: 194] But that the dread of something after death,[14] |
The vndiscouered Countrey, from whose Borne
No Traueller returnes,[15] Puzels the will, |
|
And makes vs rather beare those illes we haue,
Then flye to others that we know not of.
Thus Conscience does make Cowards of vs all,[16]
[Sidenote: 30] And thus the Natiue hew of Resolution[17]
Is sicklied o're, with the pale cast of Thought,[18]
[Footnote 1: Not in Q.--They go behind the tapestry, where it hangs
over the recess of the doorway. Ophelia thinks they have left the room.]
[Footnote 2: In Q. before last speech.]
[Footnote 3: Perhaps to a Danish or Dutch critic, or one from the
eastern coast of England, this simile would not seem so unfit as it does
to some.]
[Footnote 4: To print this so as I would have it read, I would complete
this line from here with points, and commence the next with points. At
the other breaks of the soliloquy, as indicated below, I would do the
same--thus:
And by opposing end them....
[Footnote 5: Break.]
[Footnote 6: Break.]
[Footnote 7: Emphasis on what.]
[Footnote 8: Such dreams as the poor Ghost's.]
[Footnote 9: Break. --'_pawse_' is the noun, and from its use at page
186, we may judge it means here 'pause for reflection.']
[Footnote 10: 'makes calamity so long-lived.']
[Footnote 11: --not necessarily disprized by the lady; the disprizer
in Hamlet's case was the worldly and suspicious father--and that in
part, and seemingly to Hamlet altogether, for the king's sake.]
[Footnote 12: small sword. If there be here any allusion to suicide,
it is on the general question, and with no special application to
himself. 24. But it is the king and the bare bodkin his thought
associates. How could he even glance at the things he has just
mentioned, as each, a reason for suicide? It were a cowardly country
indeed where the question might be asked, 'Who would not commit suicide
because of any one of these things, except on account of what may follow
after death?'! One might well, however, be tempted to destroy an
oppressor, and risk his life in that.]
[Footnote 13: Fardel, burden: the old French for fardeau, I am
informed.]
[Footnote 14: --a dread caused by conscience.]
[Footnote 15: The Ghost could not be imagined as having returned.]
[Footnote 16: 'of us all' not in Q. It is not the fear of evil that
makes us cowards, but the fear of deserved evil. The Poet may intend
that conscience alone is the cause of fear in man. '_Coward_' does not
here involve contempt: it should be spoken with a grim smile. But Hamlet
would hardly call turning from suicide cowardice in any sense. 24.]
[Footnote 17: --such as was his when he vowed vengeance.]
[Footnote 18: --such as immediately followed on that The native hue of
resolution--that which is natural to man till interruption comes--is
ruddy; the hue of thought is pale. I suspect the '_pale cast_' of an
allusion to whitening with rough-cast.]
[Page 122]
| And enterprizes of great pith and moment,[1] |
[Sidenote: pitch [1]] |
With this regard their Currants turne away,
And loose the name of Action.[2] Soft you now, |
[Sidenote: awry] |
[Sidenote: 119] The faire Ophelia? Nimph, in thy
Be all my sinnes remembred.[4] |
Orizons[3] |
Ophe. Good my Lord,
How does your Honor for this many a day?
Ham. I humbly thanke you: well, well, well.[5]
Ophe. My Lord, I haue Remembrances of yours,
That I haue longed long to re-deliuer.
I pray you now, receiue them.
Ham. No, no, I neuer gaue you ought.[6]
| |
[Sidenote: No, not I, I never] |
Ophe. My honor'd Lord, I know right well you did,
And with them words of so sweet breath compos'd,
As made the things more rich, then perfume left:
[Sidenote: these things | their perfume lost.[7]]
Take these againe, for to the Noble minde
Rich gifts wax poore, when giuers proue vnkinde.
There my Lord.[8]
Ham. Ha, ha: Are you honest?[9]
Ophe. My Lord.
Ham. Are you faire?
Ophe. What meanes your Lordship?
Ham. That if you be honest and faire, your
| |
[Sidenote: faire, you should admit] |
Honesty[10] should admit no discourse to your Beautie.
Ophe. Could Beautie my Lord, haue better
Comerce[11] then your Honestie?[12]
| |
[Sidenote: Then with honestie?[11]] |
Ham. I trulie: for the power of Beautie, will
sooner transforme Honestie from what it is, to a
Bawd, then the force of Honestie can translate
Beautie into his likenesse. This was sometime a
Paradox, but now the time giues it proofe. I did
loue you once.[13]
Ophe. Indeed my Lord, you made me beleeue so.
[Footnote 1: How could suicide be styled an enterprise of great
pith? Yet less could it be called of great pitch.]
[Footnote 2: I allow this to be a general reflection, but surely it
serves to show that conscience must at least be one of Hamlet's
restraints.]
[Footnote 3: --by way of intercession.]
[Footnote 4: Note the entire change of mood from that of the last
soliloquy. The right understanding of this soliloquy is indispensable to
the right understanding of Hamlet. But we are terribly trammelled and
hindered, as in the understanding of Hamlet throughout, so here in the
understanding of his meditation, by traditional assumption. I was roused
to think in the right direction concerning it, by the honoured friend
and relative to whom I have feebly acknowledged my obligation by
dedicating to him this book. I could not at first see it as he saw it:
'Think about it, and you will,' he said. I did think, and by
degrees--not very quickly--my prejudgments thinned, faded, and almost
vanished. I trust I see it now as a whole, and in its true relations,
internal and external--its relations to itself, to the play, and to the
Hamlet, of Shakspere.
Neither in its first verse, then, nor in it anywhere else, do I find
even an allusion to suicide. What Hamlet is referring to in the said
first verse, it is not possible with certainty to determine, for it is
but the vanishing ripple of a preceding ocean of thought, from which he
is just stepping out upon the shore of the articulate. He may have been
plunged in some profound depth of the metaphysics of existence, or he
may have been occupied with the one practical question, that of the
slaying of his uncle, which has, now in one form, now in another,
haunted his spirit for weeks. Perhaps, from the message he has just
received, he expects to meet the king, and conscience, confronting
temptation, has been urging the necessity of proof; perhaps a righteous
consideration of consequences, which sometimes have share in the primary
duty, has been making him shrink afresh from the shedding of blood, for
every thoughtful mind recoils from the irrevocable, and that is an awful
form of the irrevocable. But whatever thought, general or special, this
first verse may be dismissing, we come at once thereafter into the light
of a definite question: 'Which is nobler--to endure evil fortune, or to
oppose it à outrance; to bear in passivity, or to resist where
resistance is hopeless--resist to the last--to the death which is its
unavoidable end?'
Then comes a pause, during which he is thinking--we will not say 'too
precisely on the event,' but taking his account with consequences: the
result appears in the uttered conviction that the extreme possible
consequence, death, is a good and not an evil. Throughout, observe, how
here, as always, he generalizes, himself being to himself but the type
of his race.
Then follows another pause, during which he seems prosecuting the
thought, for he has already commenced further remark in similar strain,
when suddenly a new and awful element introduces itself:
--To sleep! perchance to dream!
He had been thinking of death only as the passing away of the present
with its troubles; here comes the recollection that death has its own
troubles--its own thoughts, its own consciousness: if it be a sleep, it
has its dreams. '_What dreams may come_' means, 'the sort of dreams that
may come'; the emphasis is on the what, not on the may; there is no
question whether dreams will come, but there is question of the
character of the dreams. This consideration is what makes calamity so
long-lived! 'For who would bear the multiform ills of life'--he alludes
to his own wrongs, but mingles, in his generalizing way, others of those
most common to humanity, and refers to the special cure for some of his
own which was close to his hand--'who would bear these things if he
could, as I can, make his quietus with a bare bodkin'--that is, by
slaying his enemy--'who would then bear them, but that he fears the
future, and the divine judgment upon his life and actions--that
conscience makes a coward of him!'[14]
To run, not the risk of death, but the risks that attend upon and follow
death, Hamlet must be certain of what he is about; he must be sure it is
a right thing he does, or he will leave it undone. Compare his speech,
250, 'Does it not, &c.':--by the time he speaks this speech, he has had
perfect proof, and asserts the righteousness of taking vengeance in
almost an agony of appeal to Horatio.
The more continuous and the more formally logical a soliloquy, the less
natural it is. The logic should be all there, but latent; the bones of
it should not show: they do not show here.]
[Footnote 5: One 'well' only in Q.]
[Footnote 6: He does not want to take them back, and so sever even that
weak bond between them. He has not given her up.]
[Footnote 7: The Q. reading seems best. The perfume of his gifts was
the sweet words with which they were given; those words having lost
their savour, the mere gifts were worth nothing.]
[Footnote 8: Released from the commands her father had laid upon her,
and emboldened by the queen's approval of more than the old relation
between them, she would timidly draw Hamlet back to the past--to love
and a sound mind.]
[Footnote 9: I do not here suppose a noise or movement of the arras, or
think that the talk from this point bears the mark of the madness he
would have assumed on the least suspicion of espial. His distrust of
Ophelia comes from a far deeper source--suspicion of all women, grown
doubtful to him through his mother. Hopeless for her, he would give his
life to know that Ophelia was not like her. Hence the cruel things he
says to her here and elsewhere; they are the brood of a heart haunted
with horrible, alas! too excusable phantoms of distrust. A man wretched
as Hamlet must be forgiven for being rude; it is love suppressed, love
that can neither breathe nor burn, that makes him rude. His horrid
insinuations are a hungry challenge to indignant rejection. He would
sting Ophelia to defence of herself and her sex. But, either from her
love, or from gentleness to his supposed madness, as afterwards in the
play-scene, or from the poverty and weakness of a nature so fathered and
so brothered, she hears, and says nothing. 139.]
[Footnote 10: Honesty is here figured as a porter,--just after, as a
porter that may be corrupted.]
[Footnote 11: If the Folio reading is right, commerce means
companionship; if the Quarto reading, then it means
intercourse.
Note then constantly for our than.]
[Footnote 12: I imagine Ophelia here giving Hamlet a loving look--which
hardens him. But I do not think she lays emphasis on your; the word is
here, I take it, used (as so often then) impersonally.]
[Footnote 13: '--proof in you and me: I loved you once, but my
honesty did not translate your beauty into its likeness.']
[Footnote 14: That the Great Judgement was here in Shakspere's thought,
will be plain to those who take light from the corresponding passage in
the 1st Quarto. As it makes an excellent specimen of that issue in the
character I am most inclined to attribute to it--that of original sketch
and continuous line of notes, with more or less finished passages in
place among the notes--I will here quote it, recommending it to my
student's attention. If it be what I suggest, it is clear that Shakspere
had not at first altogether determined how he would carry the
soliloquy--what line he was going to follow in it: here hope and fear
contend for the place of motive to patience. The changes from it in the
text are well worth noting: the religion is lessened: the hope
disappears: were they too much of pearls to cast before 'barren
spectators'? The manuscript could never have been meant for any eye but
his own, seeing it was possible to print from it such a chaos--over
which yet broods the presence of the formative spirit of the Poet.
Ham. To be, or not to be, I there's the point,
To Die, to sleepe, is that all? I all:
No, to sleepe, to dreame, I mary there it goes,
For in that dreame of death, when wee awake,
[Sidenote: 24, 247, 260] And borne before an euerlasting Iudge,
From whence no passenger euer retur'nd,
The vndiscouered country, at whose sight
The happy smile, and the accursed damn'd.
But for this, the ioyfull hope of this,
Whol'd beare the scornes and flattery of the world,
Scorned by the right rich, the rich curssed of the poore?
The widow being oppressed, the orphan wrong'd,
The taste of hunger, or a tirants raigne,
And thousand more calamities besides,
To grunt and sweate vnder this weary life,
When that he may his full Quietus make,
With a bare bodkin, who would this indure,
But for a hope of something after death?
Which pulses the braine, and doth confound the sence,
Which makes vs rather beare those euilles we haue,
Than flie to others that we know not of.
I that, O this conscience makes cowardes of vs all,
Lady in thy orizons, be all my sinnes remembred.]
[Page 126]
Ham. You should not haue beleeued me. For
vertue cannot so innocculate[1] our old stocke,[2] but
we shall rellish of it.[3] I loued you not.[4]
Ophe. I was the more deceiued.
Ham. Get thee to a Nunnerie. Why would'st [Sidenote: thee a]
thou be a breeder of Sinners? I am my selfe indifferent[5]
[Sidenote: 132] honest, but yet I could accuse me of
such things,[6] that it were better my Mother had
[Sidenote: 62] not borne me,[7] I am very prowd, reuengefull,
Ambitious, with more offences at my becke, then I
haue thoughts to put them in imagination, to giue
them shape, or time to acte them in. What should
such Fellowes as I do, crawling betweene Heauen
| |
[Sidenote: earth and heauen] |
and Earth.[8] We are arrant Knaues all[10], beleeue
none of vs.[9] Goe thy wayes to a Nunnery.
Where's your Father?[11]
Ophe. At home, my Lord.[12]
Ham. Let the doores be shut vpon him, that
he may play the Foole no way, but in's owne house.[13]
Farewell.[14]
Ophe. O helpe him, you sweet Heauens.
_Ham._[15] If thou doest Marry, Ile giue thee this
Plague for thy Dowrie. Be thou as chast as Ice,
as pure as Snow, thou shalt not escape Calumny.[16]
Get thee to a Nunnery. Go,[17] Farewell.[18] Or if
thou wilt needs Marry, marry a fool: for Wise men
know well enough, what monsters[19] you make of
them. To a Nunnery go, and quickly too. Farwell.[20]
Ophe. O[21] heauenly Powers, restore him.
_Ham._[22] I haue heard of your pratlings[23] too wel
[Sidenote: your paintings well]
enough. God has giuen you one pace,[23] and you
[Sidenote: hath | one face,]
make your selfe another: you gidge, you amble,
[Sidenote: selfes | you gig and amble, and]
and you lispe, and nickname Gods creatures, and
[Sidenote: you list you nickname]
make your Wantonnesse, your[24] Ignorance.[25] Go
[Footnote 1: 'inoculate'--bud, in the horticultural use.]
[Footnote 2: trunk or stem of the family tree.]
[Footnote 3: Emphasis on relish--'keep something of the old flavour of
the stock.']
[Footnote 4: He tries her now with denying his love--perhaps moved in
part by a feeling, taught by his mother's, of how imperfect it was.]
[Footnote 5: tolerably.]
[Footnote 6: He turns from baiting woman in her to condemn himself. Is
it not the case with every noble nature, that the knowledge of wrong in
another arouses in it the consciousness of its own faults and sins, of
its own evil possibilities? Hurled from the heights of ideal humanity,
Hamlet not only recognizes in himself every evil tendency of his race,
but almost feels himself individually guilty of every transgression.
'God, God, forgive us all!' exclaims the doctor who has just witnessed
the misery of Lady Macbeth, unveiling her guilt.
This whole speech of Hamlet is profoundly sane--looking therefore
altogether insane to the shallow mind, on which the impression of its
insanity is deepened by its coming from him so freely. The common nature
disappointed rails at humanity; Hamlet, his earthly ideal destroyed,
would tear his individual human self to pieces.]
[Footnote 7: This we may suppose uttered with an expression as startling
to Ophelia as impenetrable.]
[Footnote 8: He is disgusted with himself, with his own nature and
consciousness--]
[Footnote 9: --and this reacts on his kind.]
[Footnote 10: 'all' not in Q.]
[Footnote 11: Here, perhaps, he grows suspicious--asks himself why he is
allowed this prolonged tête à tête.]
[Footnote 12: I am willing to believe she thinks so.]
[Footnote 13: Whether he trusts Ophelia or not, he does not take her
statement for correct, and says this in the hope that Polonius is not
too far off to hear it. The speech is for him, not for Ophelia, and will
seem to her to come only from his madness.]
[Footnote 14: Exit.]
[Footnote 15: (re-entering)]
[Footnote 16: 'So many are bad, that your virtue will not be believed
in.']
[Footnote 17: 'Go' not in Q.]
[Footnote 18: Exit, and re-enter.]
[Footnote 19: Cornuti.]
[Footnote 20: Exit.]
[Footnote 21: 'O' not in Q.]
[Footnote 22: (re-entering)]
[Footnote 23: I suspect pratlings to be a corruption, not of the
printed paintings, but of some word substituted for it by the Poet,
perhaps prancings, and pace to be correct.]
[Footnote 24: 'your' not in Q.]
[Footnote 25: As the present type to him of womankind, he assails her
with such charges of lightness as are commonly brought against women. He
does not go farther: she is not his mother, and he hopes she is
innocent. But he cannot make her speak!]
[Page 128]
too, Ile no more on't, it hath made me mad. I say,
we will haue no more Marriages.[1] Those that are
| |
[Sidenote: no mo marriage,] |
married already,[2] all but one shall liue, the rest
shall keep as they are. To a Nunnery, go.
Exit Hamlet. [Sidenote: Exit]
-
_Ophe._ O what a Noble minde is heere o're-throwne?
The Courtiers, Soldiers, Schollers: Eye, tongue, sword,
Th'expectansie and Rose[4] of the faire State,
[Sidenote: Th' expectation,]
The glasse of Fashion,[5] and the mould of Forme,[6]
Th'obseru'd of all Obseruers, quite, quite downe.
Haue I of Ladies most deiect and wretched, [Sidenote: And I of]
That suck'd the Honie of his Musicke Vowes: [Sidenote: musickt]
Now see that Noble, and most Soueraigne Reason, [Sidenote: see what]
Like sweet Bels iangled out of tune, and harsh,[7]
[Sidenote: out of time]
That vnmatch'd Forme and Feature of blowne youth,[8]
[Sidenote: and stature of]
Blasted with extasie.[9] Oh woe is me,
T'haue scene what I haue scene: see what I see.[10]
Enter King, and Polonius.
King. Loue? His affections do not that way tend,
Nor what he spake, though it lack'd Forme a little, [Sidenote: Not]
Was not like Madnesse.[11] There's something in his soule?
O're which his Melancholly sits on brood,
And I do doubt the hatch, and the disclose[12]
Will be some danger,[11] which to preuent [Sidenote: which for to]
I haue in quicke determination
[Sidenote: 138, 180] Thus set it downe. He shall with speed to England
For the demand of our neglected Tribute:
Haply the Seas and Countries different
[Footnote 1: 'The thing must be put a stop to! the world must cease! it
is not fit to go on.']
[Footnote 2: 'already--(aside) all but one--shall live.']
[Footnote 3: 1st Q.
Ofe. Great God of heauen, what a quicke change is this?
The Courtier, Scholler, Souldier, all in him,
All dasht and splinterd thence, O woe is me,
To a seene what I haue seene, see what I see. Exit.
To his cruel words Ophelia is impenetrable--from the conviction that not
he but his madness speaks.
The moment he leaves her, she breaks out in such phrase as a young girl
would hardly have used had she known that the king and her father were
listening. I grant, however, the speech may be taken as a soliloquy
audible to the spectators only, who to the persons of a play are but
the spiritual presences.]
[Footnote 4: 'The hope and flower'--The rose is not unfrequently used
in English literature as the type of perfection.]
[Footnote 5: 'he by whom Fashion dressed herself'--he who set the
fashion. His great and small virtues taken together, Hamlet makes us
think of Sir Philip Sidney--ten years older than Shakspere, and dead
sixteen years before Hamlet was written.]
[Footnote 6: 'he after whose ways, or modes of behaviour, men shaped
theirs'--therefore the mould in which their forms were cast;--the
object of universal imitation.]
[Footnote 7: I do not know whether this means--the peal rung without
regard to tune or time--or--the single bell so handled that the tongue
checks and jars the vibration. In some country places, I understand,
they go about ringing a set of hand-bells.]
[Footnote 8: youth in full blossom.]
[Footnote 9: madness 177.]
[Footnote 10: 'to see now such a change from what I saw then.']
[Footnote 11: The king's conscience makes him keen. He is, all through,
doubtful of the madness.]
[Footnote 12: --of the fact- or fancy-egg on which his melancholy sits
brooding]
[Page 130]
With variable Obiects, shall expell
This something setled matter[1] in his heart
Whereon his Braines still beating, puts him thus
From[2] fashion of himselfe. What thinke you on't?
Pol. It shall do well. But yet do I beleeue
The Origin and Commencement of this greefe [Sidenote: his greefe,]
Sprung from neglected loue.[3] How now Ophelia?
You neede not tell vs, what Lord Hamlet saide,
We heard it all.[4] My Lord, do as you please,
But if you hold it fit after the Play,
Let his Queene Mother all alone intreat him
To shew his Greefes: let her be round with him, [Sidenote: griefe,]
And Ile be plac'd so, please you in the eare
Of all their Conference. If she finde him not,[5]
To England send him: Or confine him where
Your wisedome best shall thinke.
King. It shall be so:
Madnesse in great Ones, must not vnwatch'd go.[6]
| Exeunt. |
[Sidenote: unmatched] |
Enter Hamlet, and two or three of the Players.
Ham.[7] Speake the Speech I pray you, as I
pronounc'd it to you trippingly[8] on the Tongue:
But if you mouth it, as many of your Players do,
| |
[Sidenote: of our Players] |
I had as liue[9] the Town-Cryer had spoke my [Sidenote: cryer spoke]
Lines:[10] Nor do not saw the Ayre too much your [Sidenote: much with]
hand thus, but vse all gently; for in the verie
Torrent, Tempest, and (as I may say) the Whirlewinde
[Sidenote: say, whirlwind]
of Passion, you must acquire and beget a [Sidenote: of your]
Temperance that may giue it Smoothnesse.[11] O it
offends mee to the Soule, to see a robustious Perywig-pated
[Sidenote: to heare a]
Fellow, teare a Passion to tatters, to [Sidenote: totters,]
verie ragges, to split the eares of the Groundlings:[12]
[Sidenote: spleet]
who (for the most part) are capeable[13] of nothing,
but inexplicable dumbe shewes,[14] and noise:[15] I
could haue such a Fellow whipt for o're-doing [Sidenote: would]
[Footnote 1: 'something of settled matter'--idée fixe.]
[Footnote 2: '_away from_ his own true likeness'; 'makes him so unlike
himself.']
[Footnote 3: Polonius is crestfallen, but positive.]
[Footnote 4: This supports the notion of Ophelia's ignorance of the
espial. Polonius thinks she is about to disclose what has passed, and
informs her of its needlessness. But it might well enough be taken
as only an assurance of the success of their listening--that they had
heard without difficulty.]
[Footnote 5: 'If she do not find him out': a comparable phrase, common
at the time, was, Take me with you, meaning, Let me understand you.
Polonius, for his daughter's sake, and his own in her, begs for him
another chance.]
[Footnote 6: 'in the insignificant, madness may roam the country, but in
the great it must be watched.' The unmatcht of the Quarto might bear
the meaning of countermatched.]
[Footnote 7: I should suggest this exhortation to the Players introduced
with the express purpose of showing how absolutely sane Hamlet was,
could I believe that Shakspere saw the least danger of Hamlet's pretence
being mistaken for reality.]
[Footnote 8: He would have neither blundering nor emphasis such as might
rouse too soon the king's suspicion, or turn it into certainty.]
[Footnote 9: 'liue'--lief]
[Footnote 10: 1st Q.:--
I'de rather heare a towne bull bellow,
Then such a fellow speake my lines.
Lines is a player-word still.]
[Footnote 11: --smoothness such as belongs to the domain of Art, and
will both save from absurdity, and allow the relations with surroundings
to manifest themselves;--harmoniousness, which is the possibility of
co-existence.]
[Footnote 12: those on the ground--that is, in the pit; there was no
gallery then.]
[Footnote 13: receptive.]
[Footnote 14: --gestures extravagant and unintelligible as those of a
dumb show that could not by the beholder be interpreted; gestures
incorrespondent to the words.
A dumb show was a stage-action without words.]
[Footnote 15: Speech that is little but rant, and scarce related to the
sense, is hardly better than a noise; it might, for the purposes of art,
as well be a sound inarticulate.]
[Page 132]
Termagant[1]: it out-Herod's Herod[2] Pray you
auoid it.
Player. I warrant your Honor.
Ham. Be not too tame neyther: but let your
owne Discretion be your Tutor. Sute the Action
to the Word, the Word to the Action, with this
speciall obseruance: That you ore-stop not the [Sidenote: ore-steppe]
modestie of Nature; for any thing so ouer-done, [Sidenote ore-doone]
is fro[3] the purpose of Playing, whose end both at
the first and now, was and is, to hold as 'twer the
Mirrour vp to Nature; to shew Vertue her owne [Sidenote: her feature;]
Feature, Scorne[4] her owne Image, and the verie
Age and Bodie of the Time, his forme and pressure.[5]
Now, this ouer-done, or come tardie off,[6] though it
make the vnskilfull laugh, cannot but make the [Sidenote: it makes]
Iudicious greeue; The censure of the which One,[7]
[Sidenote: of which one]
must in your allowance[8] o're-way a whole Theater
of Others. Oh, there bee Players that I haue
scene Play, and heard others praise, and that highly
[Sidenote: praysd,]
(not to speake it prophanely) that neyther hauing
the accent of Christians, nor the gate of Christian,
Pagan, or Norman, haue so strutted and bellowed,
| |
[Sidenote: Pagan, nor man, haue] |
that I haue thought some of Natures Iouerney-men
had made men, and not made them well, they
imitated Humanity so abhominably.[9]
[Sidenote: 126] Play. I hope we haue reform'd that indifferently[10]
with vs, Sir.
Ham. O reforme it altogether. And let those
that play your Clownes, speake no more then is set
downe for them.[12] For there be of them, that will
themselues laugh, to set on some quantitie of
barren Spectators to laugh too, though in the
meane time, some necessary Question of the Play
be then to be considered:[12] that's Villanous, and
shewes a most pittifull Ambition in the Fool that
vses it.[13] Go make you readie. Exit Players
[Footnote 1: 'An imaginary God of the Mahometans, represented as a most
violent character in the old Miracle-plays and Moralities.'--Sh. Lex.]
[Footnote 2: 'represented as a swaggering tyrant in the old dramatic
performances.'--Sh. Lex.]
[Footnote 3: away from: inconsistent with.]
[Footnote 4: --that which is deserving of scorn.]
[Footnote 5: impression, as on wax. Some would persuade us that
Shakspere's own plays do not do this; but such critics take the
accidents or circumstances of a time for the body of it--the clothes
for the person. Human nature is 'Nature,' however dressed.
There should be a comma after 'Age.']
[Footnote 6: 'laggingly represented'--A word belonging to time is
substituted for a word belonging to space:--'this over-done, or
inadequately effected'; 'this over-done, or under-done.']
[Footnote 7: 'and the judgment of such a one.' '_the which_' seems
equivalent to and--such.]
[Footnote 8: 'must, you will grant.']
[Footnote 9: Shakspere may here be playing with a false derivation, as I
was myself when the true was pointed out to me--fancying abominable
derived from ab and homo. If so, then he means by the phrase: 'they
imitated humanity so from the nature of man, so inhumanly.']
[Footnote 10: tolerably.]
[Footnote 11: 'Sir' not in Q.]
[Footnote 12: Shakspere must have himself suffered from such clowns:
Coleridge thinks some of their gag has crept into his print.]
[Footnote 13: Here follow in the 1st Q. several specimens of such a
clown's foolish jests and behaviour.]
[Page 134]
Enter Polonius, Rosincrance, and Guildensterne.[1]
| |
[Sidenote: Guyldensterne, & Rosencraus.] |
How now my Lord,
Will the King heare this peece of Worke?
Pol. And the Queene too, and that presently.[2]
Ham. Bid the Players make hast.
Will you two helpe to hasten them?[4]
Both. We will my Lord. Exeunt.
[Sidenote: Ros. I my Lord. Exeunt they two.]
_Enter Horatio_[5]
Ham. What hoa, Horatio? [Sidenote: What howe,
]
Hora. Heere sweet Lord, at your Seruice.
[Sidenote: 26] Ham.[7] Horatio, thou art eene as iust a man
As ere my Conversation coap'd withall.
Hora. O my deere Lord.[6]
Ham.[7] Nay do not thinke I flatter:
For what aduancement may I hope from thee,[8]
That no Reuennew hast, but thy good spirits
To feed and cloath thee. Why shold the poor be flatter'd?
No, let the Candied[9] tongue, like absurd pompe, [Sidenote: licke]
And crooke the pregnant Hindges of the knee,[10]
Where thrift may follow faining? Dost thou heare,
[Sidenote: fauning;]
Since my deere Soule was Mistris of my choyse;[11]
[Sidenote: her choice,]
And could of men distinguish, her election
Hath seal'd thee for her selfe. For thou hast bene
[Sidenote: 272] As one in suffering all, that suffers nothing.
A man that Fortunes buffets, and Rewards
Hath 'tane with equall Thankes. And blest are those, [Sidenote: Hast]
Whose Blood and Iudgement are so well co-mingled,
| |
[Sidenote: comedled,[12]] |
[Sidenote: 26] That they are not a Pipe for Fortunes finger,
To sound what stop she please.[13] Giue me that man,
That is not Passions Slaue,[14] and I will weare him
In my hearts Core: I, in my Heart of heart,[15]
As I do thee. Something too much of this.[16]
[Footnote 1: In Q. at end of speech.]
[Footnote 2: He humours Hamlet as if he were a child.]
[Footnote 3: Not in Q.]
[Footnote 4: He has sent for Horatio, and is expecting him.]
[Footnote 5: In Q. after next speech.]
[Footnote 6: --repudiating the praise.]
[Footnote 7: To know a man, there is scarce a readier way than to hear
him talk of his friend--why he loves, admires, chooses him. The Poet
here gives us a wide window into Hamlet. So genuine is his respect for
being, so indifferent is he to having, that he does not shrink, in
argument for his own truth, from reminding his friend to his face that,
being a poor man, nothing is to be gained from him--nay, from telling
him that it is through his poverty he has learned to admire him, as a
man of courage, temper, contentment, and independence, with nothing but
his good spirits for an income--a man whose manhood is dominant both
over his senses and over his fortune--a true Stoic. He describes an
ideal man, then clasps the ideal to his bosom as his own, in the person
of his friend. Only a great man could so worship another, choosing him
for such qualities; and hereby Shakspere shows us his Hamlet--a brave,
noble, wise, pure man, beset by circumstances the most adverse
conceivable. That Hamlet had not misapprehended Horatio becomes evident
in the last scene of all. 272.]
[Footnote 8: The mother of flattery is self-advantage.]
[Footnote 9: sugared. 1st Q.:
Let flattery sit on those time-pleasing tongs;
To glose with them that loues to heare their praise;
And not with such as thou Horatio.
There is a play to night, &c.]
[Footnote 10: A pregnant figure and phrase, requiring thought.]
[Footnote 11: 'since my real self asserted its dominion, and began to
rule my choice,' making it pure, and withdrawing it from the tyranny of
impulse and liking.]
[Footnote 12: The old word medle is synonymous with mingle.]
[Footnote 13: To Hamlet, the lordship of man over himself, despite of
circumstance, is a truth, and therefore a duty.]
[Footnote 14: The man who has chosen his friend thus, is hardly himself
one to act without sufficing reason, or take vengeance without certain
proof of guilt.]
[Footnote 15: He justifies the phrase, repeating it.]
[Footnote 16: --apologetic for having praised him to his face.]
[Page 136]
There is a Play to night before the King,
One Scoene of it comes neere the Circumstance
Which I haue told thee, of my Fathers death.
I prythee, when thou see'st that Acte a-foot,[1]
Euen with the verie Comment of my[2] Soule [Sidenote: thy[2] soule]
Obserue mine Vnkle: If his occulted guilt, [Sidenote: my Vncle,]
Do not it selfe vnkennell in one speech,
[Sidenote: 58] It is a damned Ghost that we haue seene:[3]
And my Imaginations are as foule
As Vulcans Stythe.[4] Giue him needfull note,
[Sidenote: stithy; | heedfull]
For I mine eyes will riuet to his Face:
And after we will both our iudgements ioyne,[5]
To censure of his seeming.[6] [Sidenote: in censure]
Hora. Well my Lord.
If he steale ought the whil'st this Play is Playing. [Sidenote: if a]
And scape detecting, I will pay the Theft.[1] [Sidenote: detected,]
Enter King, Queene, Polonius, Ophelia, Rosincrance,
Guildensterne, and other Lords attendant with
his Guard carrying Torches. Danish March.
Sound a Flourish.
[Sidenote: Enter Trumpets and Kettle Drummes, King, Queene,
Ham. They are comming to the Play: I must
[Sidenote: 60, 156, 178] be idle.[7] Get you a place.
King. How fares our Cosin Hamlet?
Ham. Excellent Ifaith, of the Camelions dish:
[Sidenote: 154] I eate the Ayre promise-cramm'd,[8] you cannot feed
Capons so.[9]
King. I haue nothing with this answer Hamlet,
these words are not mine.[10]
Ham. No, nor mine. Now[11] my Lord, you
plaid once i'th'Vniuersity, you say?
Polon. That I did my Lord, and was accounted
a good Actor. |
[Sidenote: did I] |
[Footnote 1: Here follows in 1st Q.
Marke thou the King, doe but obserue his lookes,
For I mine eies will riuet to his face:
[Sidenote: 112] And if he doe not bleach, and change at that,
It is a damned ghost that we haue seene.
Horatio, haue a care, obserue him well.
Hor. My lord, mine eies shall still be on his face,
And not the smallest alteration
That shall appeare in him, but I shall note it.]
[Footnote 2: I take 'my' to be right: 'watch my uncle with the
comment--the discriminating judgment, that is--of my soul, more intent
than thine.']
[Footnote 3: He has then, ere this, taken Horatio into his
confidence--so far at least as the Ghost's communication concerning the
murder.]
[Footnote 4: a dissyllable: stithy, anvil; Scotch,
studdy.
Hamlet's doubt is here very evident: he hopes he may find it a false
ghost: what good man, what good son would not? He has clear cause and
reason--it is his duty to delay. That the cause and reason and duty are
not invariably clear to Hamlet himself--not clear in every mood, is
another thing. Wavering conviction, doubt of evidence, the corollaries
of assurance, the oppression of misery, a sense of the worthlessness of
the world's whole economy--each demanding delay, might yet well, all
together, affect the man's feeling as mere causes of rather than reasons
for hesitation. The conscientiousness of Hamlet stands out the clearer
that, throughout, his dislike to his uncle, predisposing him to believe
any ill of him, is more than evident. By his incompetent or prejudiced
judges, Hamlet's accusations and justifications of himself are equally
placed to the discredit of his account. They seem to think a man could
never accuse himself except he were in the wrong; therefore if ever he
excuses himself, he is the more certainly in the wrong: whatever point
may tell on the other side, it is to be disregarded.]
[Footnote 5: 'bring our two judgments together for comparison.']
[Footnote 6: 'in order to judge of the significance of his looks and
behaviour.']
[Footnote 7: Does he mean foolish, that is, lunatic? or
insouciant, and unpreoccupied?]
[Footnote 8: The king asks Hamlet how he fares--that is, how he gets
on; Hamlet pretends to think he has asked him about his diet. His talk
has at once become wild; ere the king enters he has donned his cloak of
madness. Here he confesses to ambition--will favour any notion
concerning himself rather than give ground for suspecting the real state
of his mind and feeling.
In the 1st Q. 'the Camelions dish' almost appears to mean the play,
not the king's promises.]
[Footnote 9: In some places they push food down the throats of the
poultry they want to fatten, which is technically, I believe, called
cramming them.]
[Footnote 10: 'You have not taken me with you; I have not laid hold of
your meaning; I have nothing by your answer.' 'Your words have not
become my property; they have not given themselves to me in their
meaning.']
[Footnote 11: Point thus: 'No, nor mine now.--My Lord,' &c. '--not
mine, now I have uttered them, for so I have given them away.' Or does
he mean to disclaim their purport?]
[Page 138]
Ham. And[1] what did you enact?
Pol. I did enact Iulius Caesar, I was kill'd
i'th'Capitol: Brutus kill'd me.
Ham. It was a bruite part of him, to kill so
Capitall a Calfe there.[2] Be the Players ready?
Rosin. I my Lord, they stay vpon your patience.
Qu. Come hither my good Hamlet, sit by me. [Sidenote: my
deere]
Ham. No good Mother, here's Mettle more attractiue.[3]
Pol. Oh ho, do you marke that?[4]
Ham. Ladie, shall I lye in your Lap?
Ophe. No my Lord.
Ham. I meane, my Head vpon your Lap?[5]
Ophe. I my Lord.[6]
Ham. Do you thinke I meant Country[7] matters?
Ophe. I thinke nothing, my Lord.
Ham. That's a faire thought to ly between
Maids legs.
Ophe. What is my Lord?
Ham. Nothing.
Ophe. You are merrie, my Lord?
Ham. Who I?
Ophe. I my Lord.[8]
Ham. Oh God, your onely Iigge-maker[9]: what
should a man do, but be merrie. For looke you
how cheerefully my Mother lookes, and my Father
dyed within's two Houres.
[Sidenote: 65] Ophe. Nay, 'tis twice two moneths, my Lord.[10]
Ham. So long? Nay then let the Diuel weare
[Sidenote: 32] blacke, for Ile haue a suite of Sables.[11] Oh
Heauens! dye two moneths ago, and not forgotten
yet?[12] Then there's hope, a great mans Memorie,
| may out-liue his life halfe a yeare: But byrlady |
[Sidenote: ber Lady a] |
| he must builde Churches then: or else shall he |
[Sidenote: shall a] |
[Footnote 1: 'And ' not in Q.]
[Footnote 2: Emphasis on there. 'There' is not in 1st Q. Hamlet
means it was a desecration of the Capitol.]
[Footnote 3: He cannot be familiar with his mother, so avoids her--will
not sit by her, cannot, indeed, bear to be near her. But he loves and
hopes in Ophelia still.]
[Footnote 4: '--Did I not tell you so?']
[Footnote 5: This speech and the next are not in the Q., but are
shadowed in the 1st Q.]
[Footnote 6: --consenting.]
[Footnote 7: In 1st Quarto, 'contrary.'
Hamlet hints, probing her character--hoping her unable to understand. It
is the festering soreness of his feeling concerning his mother, making
him doubt with the haunting agony of a loathed possibility, that
prompts, urges, forces from him his ugly speeches--nowise to be
justified, only to be largely excused in his sickening consciousness of
his mother's presence. Such pain as Hamlet's, the ferment of subverted
love and reverence, may lightly bear the blame of hideous manners,
seeing, they spring from no wantonness, but from the writhing of
tortured and helpless Purity. Good manners may be as impossible as out
of place in the presence of shameless evil.]
[Footnote 8: Ophelia bears with him for his own and his madness' sake,
and is less uneasy because of the presence of his mother. To account
satisfactorily for Hamlet's speeches to her, is not easy. The freer
custom of the age, freer to an extent hardly credible in this, will not
satisfy the lovers of Hamlet, although it must have some weight. The
necessity for talking madly, because he is in the presence of his uncle,
and perhaps, to that end, for uttering whatever comes to him, without
pause for choice, might give us another hair's-weight. Also he may be
supposed confident that Ophelia would not understand him, while his
uncle would naturally set such worse than improprieties down to wildest
madness. But I suspect that here as before (123), Shakepere would show
Hamlet's soul full of bitterest, passionate loathing; his mother has
compelled him to think of horrors and women together, so turning their
preciousness into a disgust; and this feeling, his assumed madhess
allows him to indulge and partly relieve by utterance. Could he have
provoked Ophelia to rebuke him with the severity he courted, such rebuke
would have been joy to him. Perhaps yet a small addition of weight to
the scale of his excuse may be found in his excitement about his play,
and the necessity for keeping down that excitement. Suggestion is easier
than judgment.]
[Footnote 9: 'here's for the jig-maker! he's the right man!' Or perhaps
he is claiming the part as his own: 'I am your only jig-maker!']
[Footnote 10: This needs not be taken for the exact time. The statement
notwithstanding suggests something like two months between the first and
second acts, for in the first, Hamlet says his father has not been dead
two months. 24. We are not bound to take it for more than a rough
approximation; Ophelia would make the best of things for the queen, who
is very kind to her.]
[Footnote 11: the fur of the sable.]
[Footnote 12: 1st Q.
nay then there's some
Likelyhood, a gentlemans death may outliue memorie,
But by my faith &c.]
[Page 140]
suffer not thinking on, with the Hoby-horsse,
whose Epitaph is, For o, For o, the Hoby-horse
is forgot.
Hoboyes play. The dumbe shew enters.
[Sidenote: The Trumpets sounds. Dumbe show followes.]
_Enter a King and Queene, very louingly; the Queene
| |
[Sidenote: and a Queene, the queen] |
embracing him. She kneeles, and makes shew of
[Sidenote: embracing him, and he her, he takes her up, and]
Protestation vnto him. He takes her vp, and
declines his head vpon her neck. Layes him downe
| |
[Sidenote: necke, he lyes] |
vpon a Banke of Flowers. She seeing him
a-sleepe, leaues him. Anon comes in a Fellow,
[Sidenote: anon come in an other man,]
takes off his Crowne, kisses it, and powres poyson
[Sidenote: it, pours]
in the Kings eares, and Exits. The Queene returnes,
[Sidenote: the sleepers eares, and leaues him:]
findes the King dead, and makes passionate [Sidenote: dead, makes]
Action. The Poysoner, with some two or
[Sidenote: _some three or foure come in againe, seeme
to condole_]
three Mutes comes in againe, seeming to lament
with her. The dead body is carried away: The
[Sidenote: with her, the]
Poysoner Wooes the Queene with Gifts, she
[Sidenote: 54] seemes loath and vnwilling awhile, but in the end,
| |
|
[Sidenote: seemes harsh awhile,] |
| accepts his loue.[1] |
Exeunt[2] |
[Sidenote: accepts loue.] |
Ophe. What meanes this, my Lord?
Ham. Marry this is Miching _Malicho_[3] that
| |
[Sidenote: this munching Mallico] |
meanes Mischeefe.
Ophe. Belike this shew imports the Argument
of the Play?
Ham. We shall know by these Fellowes:
| |
[Sidenote: this fellow, Enter Prologue] |
| the Players cannot keepe |
counsell, they'l tell
[Sidenote: keepe, they'le] |
all.[4]
Ophe. Will they tell vs what this shew meant? [Sidenote: Will a tell]
Ham. I, or any shew that you'l shew him. Bee [Sidenote: you will]
not you asham'd to shew, hee'l not shame to tell
you what it meanes.
Ophe. You are naught,[5] you are naught, Ile
marke the Play.
[Footnote 1: The king, not the queen, is aimed at. Hamlet does not
forget the injunction of the Ghost to spare his mother. 54.
The king should be represented throughout as struggling not to betray
himself.]
[Footnote 2: Not in Q.]
[Footnote 3: skulking mischief: the latter word is Spanish, To mich
is to play truant.
How tenderly her tender hands betweene
In yvorie cage she did the micher bind.
The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia, page 84.
My Reader tells me the word is still in use among printers, with the
pronunciation mike, and the meaning to skulk or idle.]
[Footnote 4: --their part being speech, that of the others only dumb
show.]
[Footnote 5: naughty: persons who do not behave well are treated as if
they were not--are made nought of--are set at nought; hence our word
naughty.
'Be naught awhile' (As You Like It, i. 1)--'take yourself away;' 'be
nobody;' 'put yourself in the corner.']
[Page 142]
Enter[1] Prologue.
For vs, and for our Tragedie,
Heere stooping to your Clemencie:
We begge your hearing Patientlie.
Ham. Is this a Prologue, or the Poesie[2] of a
Ring? |
[Sidenote: posie] |
Ophe. 'Tis[3] briefe my Lord.
Ham. As Womans loue.
-
Enter King and his Queene. [Sidenote: and Queene]
[Sidenote: 234] King. Full thirtie times[5] hath Phoebus Cart gon
round,
Neptunes salt Wash, and Tellus Orbed ground: [Sidenote: orb'd the]
And thirtie dozen Moones with borrowed sheene,
About the World haue times twelue thirties beene,
Since loue our hearts, and Hymen did our hands
Vnite comutuall, in most sacred Bands.[6]
Bap. So many iournies may the Sunne and Moone [Sidenote: Quee.]
Make vs againe count o're, ere loue be done.
But woe is me, you are so sicke of late,
So farre from cheere, and from your forme state,
[Sidenote: from our former state,]
That I distrust you: yet though I distrust,
Discomfort you (my Lord) it nothing must:
-
For womens Feare and Loue, holds quantitie, [Sidenote: And womens hold]
In neither ought, or in extremity:[7]
[Sidenote: Eyther none, in neither]
Now what my loue is, proofe hath made you know,
| [Sidenote: |
my Lord is proofe] |
And as my Loue is siz'd, my Feare is so.
[B] |
[Sidenote: ciz'd,] |
[Footnote A: Here in the Quarto:--
For women feare too much, euen as they loue,]
[Footnote B: Here in the Quarto:--
Where loue is great, the litlest doubts are feare,
Where little feares grow great, great loue growes there.]
[Footnote 1: Enter not in Q.]
[Footnote 2: Commonly posy: a little sentence engraved inside a
ring--perhaps originally a tiny couplet, therefore poesy, 1st Q., 'a
poesie for a ring?']
[Footnote 3: Emphasis on ''Tis.']
[Footnote 4: Very little blank verse of any kind was written before
Shakspere's; the usual form of dramatic verse was long, irregular, rimed
lines: the Poet here uses the heroic couplet, which gives a resemblance
to the older plays by its rimes, while also by its stately and
monotonous movement the play-play is differenced from the play into
which it is introduced, and caused to look intrinsically like a play
in relation to the rest of the play of which it is part. In other words,
it stands off from the surrounding play, slightly elevated both by form
and formality. 103.]
[Footnote 5: 1st Q.
Duke. Full fortie yeares are past, their date is gone,
Since happy time ioyn'd both our hearts as one:
And now the blood that fill'd my youthfull veines,
Ruunes weakely in their pipes, and all the straines
Of musicke, which whilome pleasde mine eare,
Is now a burthen that Age cannot beare:
And therefore sweete Nature must pay his due,
To heauen must I, and leaue the earth with you.]
[Footnote 6: Here Hamlet gives the time his father and mother had been
married, and Shakspere points at Hamlet's age. 234. The Poet takes
pains to show his hero's years.]
[Footnote 7: This line, whose form in the Quarto is very careless,
seems but a careless correction, leaving the sense as well as the
construction obscure: 'Women's fear and love keep the scales level; in
neither is there ought, or in both there is fulness;' or: 'there is
no moderation in their fear and their love; either they have none of
either, or they have excess of both.' Perhaps he tried to express both
ideas at once. But compression is always in danger of confusion.]
[Page 144]
King. Faith I must leaue thee Loue, and shortly too:
My operant Powers my Functions leaue to do: [Sidenote: their functions]
And thou shall liue in this faire world behinde,
Honour'd, belou'd, and haply, one as kinde.
| For Husband shalt thou---- |
|
|
| Bap. Oh confound the rest: |
|
[Sidenote: Quee.] |
| Such Loue, must needs be Treason in my brest: |
| In second Husband, let me be |
accurst, |
|
| None wed the second, but who |
kill'd the |
first.[1] |
| Ham. Wormwood, Wormwood. |
[Sidenote: Ham. That's wormwood[2]] |
Bapt. The instances[3] that second Marriage moue,
Are base respects of Thrift,[4] but none of Loue.
A second time, I kill my Husband dead,
When second Husband kisses me in Bed.
King. I do beleeue you. Think what now you speak:
But what we do determine, oft we breake:
Purpose is but the slaue to Memorie,[5]
Of violent Birth, but poore validitie:[6]
Which now like Fruite vnripe stickes on the Tree,
| |
[Sidenote: now the fruite] |
But fall vnshaken, when they mellow bee.[7]
Most necessary[8] 'tis, that we forget
To pay our selues, what to our selues is debt:
What to our selues in passion we propose,
The passion ending, doth the purpose lose.
The violence of other Greefe or Ioy, [Sidenote: eyther,]
Their owne ennactors with themselues destroy: [Sidenote: ennactures]
Where Ioy most Reuels, Greefe doth most lament;
Greefe ioyes, Ioy greeues on slender accident.[9]
[Sidenote: Greefe ioy ioy griefes]
This world is not for aye, nor 'tis not strange
That euen our Loues should with our Fortunes change.
For 'tis a question left vs yet to proue,
Whether Loue lead Fortune, or else Fortune Loue.
[Footnote 1: Is this to be supposed in the original play, or inserted by
Hamlet, embodying an unuttered and yet more fearful doubt with regard to
his mother?]
[Footnote 2: This speech is on the margin in the Quarto, and the
Queene's speech runs on without break.]
[Footnote 3: the urgencies; the motives.]
[Footnote 4: worldly advantage.]
[Footnote 5: 'Purpose holds but while Memory holds.']
[Footnote 6: 'Purpose is born in haste, but is of poor strength to
live.']
[Footnote 7: Here again there is carelessness of construction, as if the
Poet had not thought it worth his while to correct this subsidiary
portion of the drama. I do not see how to lay the blame on the
printer.--'Purpose is a mere fruit, which holds on or falls only as it
must. The element of persistency is not in it.']
[Footnote 8: unavoidable--coming of necessity.]
[Footnote 9: 'Grief turns into joy, and joy into grief, on a slight
chance.']
[Page 146]
The great man downe, you marke his fauourites flies,
The poore aduanc'd, makes Friends of Enemies:
And hitherto doth Loue on Fortune tend,
For who not needs, shall neuer lacke a Frend:
And who in want a hollow Friend doth try,
Directly seasons him his Enemie.[1]
But orderly to end, where I begun,
Our Willes and Fates do so contrary run,
That our Deuices still are ouerthrowne,
Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our owne.[2]
[Sidenote: 246] So thinke thou wilt no second Husband wed.
But die thy thoughts, when thy first Lord is dead.
Bap. Nor Earth to giue me food, nor Heauen light, [Sidenote: Quee.]
Sport and repose locke from me day and night:[3]
-
Each opposite that blankes the face of ioy,
Meet what I would haue well, and it destroy:
Both heere, and hence, pursue me lasting strife,[4]
If once a Widdow, euer I be Wife.[5] [Sidenote: once I be a | be a wife]
Ham. If she should breake it now.[6]
King. 'Tis deepely sworne:
Sweet, leaue me heere a while,
My spirits grow dull, and faine I would beguile
The tedious day with sleepe.
Qu. Sleepe rocke thy Braine,
And neuer come mischance betweene vs twaine, |
[Sidenote: Sleepes[7]] |
| Exit |
[Sidenote: Exeunt.] |
Ham. Madam, how like you this Play?
Qu. The Lady protests to much me thinkes, [Sidenote: doth protest]
Ham. Oh but shee'l keepe her word.
[Footnote A: Here in the Quarto:--
To desperation turne my trust and hope,[8]
And Anchors[9] cheere in prison be my scope]
[Footnote 1: All that is wanted to make a real enemy of an unreal friend
is the seasoning of a requested favour.]
[Footnote 2: 'Our thoughts are ours, but what will come of them we
cannot tell.']
[Footnote 3: 'May Day and Night lock from me sport and repose.']
[Footnote 4: 'May strife pursue me in the world and out of it.']
[Footnote 5: In all this, there is nothing to reflect on his mother
beyond what everybody knew.]
[Footnote 6: This speech is in the margin of the Quarto.]
[Footnote 7: Not in Q.]
[Footnote 8: 'May my trust and hope turn to despair.']
[Footnote 9: an anchoret's.]
[Page 148]
King. Haue you heard the Argument, is there
no Offence in't?[1]
Ham. No, no, they do but iest, poyson in iest,
no Offence i'th'world.[2]
King. What do you call the Play?
Ham. The Mouse-trap: Marry how? Tropically:[3]
This Play is the Image of a murder done
in Vienna: Gonzago is the Dukes name, his wife
Baptista: you shall see anon: 'tis a knauish peece
of worke: But what o'that? Your Maiestie, and [Sidenote: of that?]
wee that haue free soules, it touches vs not: let the
gall'd iade winch: our withers are vnrung.[4]
_Enter Lucianus._[5]
This is one Lucianus nephew to the King.
Ophe. You are a good Chorus, my Lord.
| |
[Sidenote: are as good as a Chorus] |
Ham. I could interpret betweene you and your
loue: if I could see the Puppets dallying.[6]
Ophe. You are keene my Lord, you are keene.
Ham. It would cost you a groaning, to take off my edge.
[Sidenote: mine]
Ophe. Still better and worse.
| Ham. So you mistake Husbands.[7] |
[Sidenote: mistake your] |
| Begin Murderer. Pox, |
leaue thy damnable Faces, |
| |
|
[Sidenote: murtherer, leave] |
and begin. Come, the
for Reuenge.[8] |
croaking Rauen doth |
bellow |
Lucian. Thoughts blacke, hands apt,
Drugges fit, and Time agreeing:
Confederate season, else, no Creature seeing:[9] [Sidenote: Considerat]
Thou mixture ranke, of Midnight Weeds collected,
With Hecats Ban, thrice blasted, thrice infected,
Thy naturall Magicke, and dire propertie, |
[Sidenote: invected] |
| On wholsome life, vsurpe immediately. |
[Sidenote: vsurps] |
Powres the poyson in his eares.[10]
Ham. He poysons him i'th Garden for's estate:
[Sidenote: A poysons | for his]
[Footnote 1: --said, perhaps, to Polonius. Is there a lapse here in the
king's self-possession? or is this speech only an outcome of its
completeness--a pretence of fearing the play may glance at the queen for
marrying him?]
[Footnote 2: 'It is but jest; don't be afraid: there is no reality in
it'--as one might say to a child seeing a play.]
[Footnote 3: Figuratively: from trope. In the 1st Q. the passage
stands thus:
Ham. Mouse-trap: mary how trapically: this play is
The image of a murder done in guyana,]
[Footnote 4: Here Hamlet endangers himself to force the king to
self-betrayal.]
[Footnote 5: In Q. after next line.]
[Footnote 6: In a puppet-play, if she and her love were the puppets, he
could supply the speeches.]
[Footnote 7: Is this a misprint for 'so you must take husbands'--for
better and worse, namely? or is it a thrust at his mother--'So you
mis-take husbands, going from the better to a worse'? In 1st Q.: 'So
you must take your husband, begin.']
[Footnote 8: Probably a mocking parody or burlesque of some well-known
exaggeration--such as not a few of Marlowe's lines.]
[Footnote 9: 'none beholding save the accomplice hour:'.]
[Footnote 10: Not in Q.]
[Page 150]
His name's Gonzago: the Story is extant and writ
| in choyce Italian. You shall see anon how the |
[Sidenote: and written]
[Sidenote: in very choice] |
Murtherer gets the loue of Gonzago's wife.
Ophe. The King rises.[1]
Ham. What, frighted with false fire.[2]
Qu. How fares my Lord?
Pol. Giue o're the Play.
King. Giue me some Light. Away.[3]
All. Lights, Lights, Lights. Exeunt
[Sidenote: Pol. | Exeunt all but Ham. & Horatio.]
Manet Hamlet & Horatio.
Ham.[4] Why let the strucken Deere go weepe,
The Hart vngalled play:
For some must watch, while some must sleepe;
So runnes the world away.
Would not this[5] Sir, and a Forrest of Feathers, if
the rest of my Fortunes turne Turke with me; with
two Prouinciall Roses[6] on my rac'd[7] Shooes, get me
[Sidenote: with prouinciall | raz'd]
a Fellowship[8] in a crie[9] of Players sir. [Sidenote: Players?]
Hor. Halfe a share.
Ham. A whole one I,[10]
-
For thou dost know: Oh Damon deere,
This Realme dismantled was of Loue himselfe,
And now reignes heere.
A verie verie Paiocke.[12]
Hora. You might haue Rim'd.[13]
Ham. Oh good Horatio, Ile take the Ghosts
word for a thousand pound. Did'st perceiue?
Hora. Verie well my Lord.
Ham. Vpon the talke of the poysoning?
Hora. I did verie well note him.
Enter Rosincrance and Guildensterne.[14]
Ham. Oh, ha? Come some Musick.[15] Come the Recorders:
[Footnote 1: --in ill suppressed agitation.]
[Footnote 2: This speech is not in the Quarto.--Is the 'false fire'
what we now call stage-fire?--'What! frighted at a mere play?']
[Footnote 3: The stage--the stage-stage, that is--alone is lighted. Does
the king stagger out blindly, madly, shaking them from him? I think
not--but as if he were taken suddenly ill.]
[Footnote 4: --singing--that he may hide his agitation, restrain
himself, and be regarded as careless-mad, until all are safely gone.]
[Footnote 5: --his success with the play.]
[Footnote 6: 'Roses of Provins,' we are told--probably artificial.]
[Footnote 7: The meaning is very doubtful. But for the raz'd of the
Quarto, I should suggest lac'd. Could it mean cut low?]
[Footnote 8: a share, as immediately below.]
[Footnote 9: A cry of hounds is a pack. So in King Lear, act v. sc.
3, 'packs and sects of great ones.']
[Footnote 10: I for ay--that is, yes!--He insists on a whole
share.]
[Footnote 11: Again he takes refuge in singing.]
[Footnote 12: The lines are properly measured in the Quarto:
For thou doost know oh Damon deere
This Realme dismantled was
Of Ioue himselfe, and now raignes heere
A very very paiock.
By Jove, he of course intends his father. 170. What 'Paiocke' means,
whether pagan, or peacock, or bajocco, matters nothing, since
it
is intended for nonsense.]
[Footnote 13: To rime with was, Horatio naturally expected ass to
follow as the end of the last line: in the wanton humour of his
excitement, Hamlet disappointed him.]
[Footnote 14: In Q. after next speech.]
[Footnote 15: He hears Rosincrance and Guildensterne coming, and changes
his behaviour--calling for music to end the play with. Either he wants,
under its cover, to finish his talk with Horatio in what is for the
moment the safest place, or he would mask himself before his two false
friends. Since the departure of the king--I would suggest--he has borne
himself with evident apprehension, every now and then glancing about
him, as fearful of what may follow his uncle's recognition of the intent
of the play. Three times he has burst out singing.
Or might not his whole carriage, with the call for music, be the outcome
of a grimly merry satisfaction at the success of his scheme?]
[Page 152]
For if the King like not the Comedie,
Why then belike he likes it not perdie.[1]
Come some Musicke.
Guild. Good my Lord, vouchsafe me a word
with you.
Ham. Sir, a whole History.
Guild. The King, sir.
Ham. I sir, what of him?
Guild. Is in his retyrement, maruellous distemper'd.
Ham. With drinke Sir?
Guild. No my Lord, rather with choller.[2] [Sidenote: Lord, with]
Ham. Your wisedome should shew it selfe more
richer, to signifie this to his Doctor: for me to
| |
|
|
|
[Sidenote: the Doctor,] |
| put him to his |
Purgation, would |
perhaps |
plundge |
|
| him into farre |
more Choller.[2] |
|
|
[Sidenote: into more] |
| Guild. Good my Lord put your discourse into |
|
some frame,[3]
affayre. |
and start not so |
wildely |
from my |
[Sidenote: stare] |
Ham. I am tame Sir, pronounce.
Guild. The Queene your Mother, in most great
affliction of spirit, hath sent me to you.
Ham. You are welcome.[4]
Guild. Nay, good my Lord, this courtesie is
not of the right breed. If it shall please you to
make me a wholsome answer, I will doe your
Mothers command'ment: if not, your pardon, and
my returne shall bee the end of my Businesse. [Sidenote: of busines.]
Ham. Sir, I cannot.
Guild. What, my Lord?
Ham. Make you a wholsome answere: my wits
diseas'd. But sir, such answers as I can make, you [Sidenote: answere]
shal command: or rather you say, my Mother: [Sidenote: rather as you]
therfore no more but to the matter. My Mother
you say.
[Footnote 1: These two lines he may be supposed to sing.]
[Footnote 2: Choler means bile, and thence anger. Hamlet in his answer
plays on the two meanings:--'to give him the kind of medicine I think
fit for him, would perhaps much increase his displeasure.']
[Footnote 3: some logical consistency.]
[Footnote 4: --with an exaggeration of courtesy.]
[Page 154]
Rosin. Then thus she sayes: your behauior
hath stroke her into amazement, and admiration.[1]
Ham. Oh wonderfull Sonne, that can so astonish
a Mother. But is there no sequell at the heeles |
[Sidenote: stonish] |
| of this Mothers admiration? [Sidenote: |
admiration, impart.] |
Rosin. She desires to speake with you in her
Closset, ere you go to bed.
Ham. We shall obey, were she ten times our
Mother. Haue you any further Trade with vs?
Rosin. My Lord, you once did loue me.
Ham. So I do still, by these pickers and [Sidenote: And doe still]
stealers.[2]
Rosin. Good my Lord, what is your cause of
distemper? You do freely barre the doore of your
| |
[Sidenote: surely barre the door vpon your] |
owne Libertie, if you deny your greefes to your your
Friend.
Ham. Sir I lacke Aduancement.
Rosin. How can that be, when you haue the
[Sidenote: 136] voyce of the King himselfe, for your Succession in
Denmarke?
Ham. I, but while the grasse growes,[4] the
Prouerbe is something musty. |
[Sidenote: I sir,] |
_Enter one with a Recorder._[5]
O the Recorder. Let me see, to withdraw with,
| |
[Sidenote: ô the Recorders, let mee see one, to] |
you,[6] why do you go about to recouer the winde of
mee,[7] as if you would driue me into a toyle?[8]
Guild. O my Lord, if my Dutie be too bold,
my loue is too vnmannerly.[9]
Ham. I do not well vnderstand that.[10] Will you,
play vpon this Pipe?
Guild. My Lord, I cannot.
Ham. I pray you.
Guild. Beleeue me, I cannot.
Ham. I do beseech you.
[Footnote 1: wonder, astonishment.]
[Footnote 2: He swears an oath that will not hold, being by the hand of
a thief.
In the Catechism: 'Keep my hands from picking and stealing.']
[Footnote 3: Here in Quarto, Enter the Players with Recorders.]
[Footnote 4: '... the colt starves.']
[Footnote 5: Not in Q. The stage-direction of the Folio seems
doubtful. Hamlet has called for the orchestra: we may either suppose one
to precede the others, or that the rest are already scattered; but the
Quarto direction and reading seem better.]
[Footnote 6: --taking Guildensterne aside.]
[Footnote 7: 'to get to windward of me.']
[Footnote 8: 'Why do you seek to get the advantage of me, as if you
would drive me to betray myself?'--Hunters, by sending on the wind their
scent to the game, drive it into their toils.]
[Footnote 9: Guildensterne tries euphuism, but hardly succeeds. He
intends to plead that any fault in his approach must be laid to the
charge of his love. Duty here means homage--so used still by the
common people.]
[Footnote 10: --said with a smile of gentle contempt.]
[Page 156]
Guild. I know no touch of it, my Lord.
| Ham. Tis as easie as lying: |
gouerne these |
|
[Sidenote: It is] |
| Ventiges with your finger and |
thumbe, giue it |
|
|
| |
[Sidenote: fingers, |
& the vmber, giue] |
| breath with your mouth, and it will discourse |
most |
|
| |
|
[Sidenote: most eloquent] |
excellent Musicke. Looke you, these are the
stoppes.
Guild. But these cannot I command to any
vtterance of hermony, I haue not the skill.
Ham. Why looke you now, how vnworthy a
thing you make of me: you would play vpon mee;
you would seeme to know my stops: you would
pluck out the heart of my Mysterie; you would
sound mee from my lowest Note, to the top of my
| |
[Sidenote: note to my compasse] |
Compasse: and there is much Musicke, excellent
Voice, in this little Organe, yet cannot you make
| |
[Sidenote: it speak, s'hloud do you think I] |
it. Why do you thinke, that I am easier to bee
plaid on, then a Pipe? Call me what Instrument
you will, though you can fret[1] me, you cannot
| |
[Sidenote: you fret me not,] |
[Sidenote: 184] play vpon me. God blesse you Sir.[2]
Enter Polonius.
Polon. My Lord; the Queene would speak
with you, and presently.
| Ham. Do you see that Clowd? that's almost in |
[Sidenote: yonder clowd] |
| shape like a Camell. |
[Sidenote: shape of a] |
Polon. By'th'Misse, and it's like a Camell [Sidenote: masse and tis,]
indeed.
Ham. Me thinkes it is like a Weazell.
Polon. It is back'd like a Weazell.
Ham. Or like a Whale?[3]
Polon. Verie like a Whale.[4]
| Ham. Then will I come to my Mother, by and by: |
[Sidenote: I will] |
[Sidenote: 60, 136, 178] They foole me to the top of
I will come by and by. |
my bent.[5] |
[Footnote 1: --with allusion to the frets or stop-marks of a
stringed instrument.]
[Footnote 2: --to Polonius.]
[Footnote 3: There is nothing insanely arbitrary in these suggestions of
likeness; a cloud might very well be like every one of the three; the
camel has a hump, the weasel humps himself, and the whale is a hump.]
[Footnote 4: He humours him in everything, as he would a madman.]
[Footnote 5: Hamlet's cleverness in simulating madness is dwelt upon in
the old story. See '_Hystorie of Hamblet, prince of Denmarke_.']
[Page 158]
Polon.[1] I will say so. Exit.[1]
Ham.[1] By and by, is easily said. Leaue me Friends:
'Tis now the verie witching time of night,
When Churchyards yawne, and Hell it selfe breaths out
Contagion to this world.[3] Now could I drink hot blood,
And do such bitter businesse as the day
| |
[Sidenote: such busines as the bitter day] |
Would quake to looke on.[4] Soft now, to my Mother:
Oh Heart, loose not thy Nature;[5] let not euer
The Soule of _Nero_[6] enter this firme bosome:
Let me be cruell, not vnnaturall.
[Sidenote: 172] I will speake Daggers[7] to her, but vse none:
My Tongue and Soule in this be Hypocrites.[8]
How in my words someuer she be shent,[9]
To giue them Seales,[10] neuer my Soule consent.[4]
Enter King, Rosincrance, and Guildensterne.
King. I like him not, nor stands it safe with vs,
To let his madnesse range.[11] Therefore prepare you,
[Sidenote: 167] I your Commission will forthwith dispatch,[12]
[Sidenote: 180] And he to England shall along with you:
| The termes of our estate, may not endure[13] |
|
| Hazard so dangerous as doth hourely grow |
[Sidenote: so neer's as] |
| Out of his Lunacies. |
[Sidenote: his browes.] |
Guild. We will our selues prouide:
Most holie and Religious feare it is[14]
To keepe those many many bodies safe
That liue and feede vpon your Maiestie.[15]
Rosin. The single
And peculiar[16] life is bound
With all the strength and Armour of the minde,
[Footnote 1: The Quarto, not having Polon., Exit, or Ham., and
arranging differently, reads thus:--
They foole me to the top of my bent, I will come by and by,
Leaue me friends.
I will, say so. By and by is easily said,
Tis now the very &c.]
[Footnote 2: belches.]
[Footnote 3: --thinking of what the Ghost had told him, perhaps: it was
the time when awful secrets wander about the world. Compare Macbeth,
act ii. sc. 1; also act iii. sc. 2.]
[Footnote 4: The assurance of his uncle's guilt, gained through the
effect of the play upon him, and the corroboration of his mother's guilt
by this partial confirmation of the Ghost's assertion, have once more
stirred in Hamlet the fierceness of vengeance. But here afresh comes
out the balanced nature of the man--say rather, the supremacy in him of
reason and will. His dear soul, having once become mistress of his
choice, remains mistress for ever. He could drink hot blood, he
could do bitter business, but he will carry himself as a son, and the
son of his father, ought to carry himself towards a guilty
mother--mother although guilty.]
[Footnote 5: Thus he girds himself for the harrowing interview. Aware of
the danger he is in of forgetting his duty to his mother, he strengthens
himself in filial righteousness, dreading to what word or deed a burst
of indignation might drive him. One of his troubles now is the way he
feels towards his mother.]
[Footnote 6: --who killed his mother.]
[Footnote 7: His words should be as daggers.]
[Footnote 8: Pretenders.]
[Footnote 9: reproached or rebuked--though oftener scolded.]
[Footnote 10: 'to seal them with actions'--Actions are the seals to
words, and make them irrevocable.]
[Footnote 11: walk at liberty.]
[Footnote 12: get ready.]
[Footnote 13: He had, it would appear, taken them into his confidence in
the business; they knew what was to be in their commission, and were
thorough traitors to Hamlet.]
[Footnote 14: --holy and religious precaution for the sake of the many
depending on him.]
[Footnote 15: Is there not unconscious irony of their own parasitism
here intended?]
[Footnote 16: private individual.]
[Page 160]
To keepe it selfe from noyance:[1] but much more,
That Spirit, vpon whose spirit depends and rests
[Sidenote: whose weale depends]
The lives of many, the cease of Maiestie [Sidenote: cesse]
Dies not alone;[2] but like a Gulfe doth draw
What's neere it, with it. It is a massie wheele
[Sidenote: with it, or it is]
Fixt on the Somnet of the highest Mount,
To whose huge Spoakes, ten thousand lesser things
[Sidenote: hough spokes]
Are mortiz'd and adioyn'd: which when it falles,
Each small annexment, pettie consequence
Attends the boystrous Ruine. Neuer alone [Sidenote: raine,]
Did the King sighe, but with a generall grone. [Sidenote: but a[3]]
_King._[4] Arme you,[5] I pray you to this speedie Voyage;
[Sidenote: viage,]
For we will Fetters put vpon this feare,[6] [Sidenote: put about this]
Which now goes too free-footed.
Both. We will haste vs. Exeunt Gent
Enter Polonius.
Pol. My Lord, he's going to his Mothers Closset:
Behinde the Arras Ile conuey my selfe
To heare the Processe. Ile warrant shee'l tax him home,
And as you said, and wisely was it said,
'Tis meete that some more audience then a Mother,
Since Nature makes them partiall, should o're-heare
The speech of vantage.[7] Fare you well my Liege,
| Ile call vpon you ere you go to bed, |
|
| And tell you what I know. |
[Sidenote: Exit.] |
King. Thankes deere my Lord.
Oh my offence is ranke, it smels to heauen,
It hath the primall eldest curse vpon't,
A Brothers murther.[8] Pray can I not,
Though inclination be as sharpe as will:
My stronger guilt,[9] defeats my strong intent,
[Footnote 1: The philosophy of which self is the centre. The speeches of
both justify the king in proceeding to extremes against Hamlet.]
[Footnote 2: The same as to say: 'The passing, ceasing, or ending of
majesty dies not--is not finished or accomplished, without that of
others;' 'the dying ends or ceases not,' &c.]
[Footnote 3: The but of the Quarto is better, only the line halts.
It is the preposition, meaning without.]
[Footnote 4: heedless of their flattery. It is hardly applicable
enough to interest him.]
[Footnote 5: 'Provide yourselves.']
[Footnote 6: fear active; cause of fear; thing to be afraid of; the noun
of the verb fear, to frighten:
Or in the night, imagining some fear,
How easy is a bush supposed a bear!
A Midsummer Night's Dream, act v. sc. i.]
[Footnote 7: Schmidt (Sh. Lex.) says of vantage means to
boot. I
do not think he is right. Perhaps Polonius means 'from a position of
advantage.' Or perhaps 'The speech of vantage' is to be understood as
implying that Hamlet, finding himself in a position of vantage, that is,
alone with his mother, will probably utter himself with little
restraint.]
[Footnote 8: This is the first proof positive of his guilt accorded even
to the spectator of the play: here Claudius confesses not merely guilt
(118), but the very deed. Thoughtless critics are so ready to judge
another as if he knew all they know, that it is desirable here to remind
the student that only he, not Hamlet, hears this soliloquy. The
falseness of half the judgments in the world comes from our not taking
care and pains first to know accurately the actions, and then to
understand the mental and moral condition, of those we judge.]
[Footnote 9: --his present guilty indulgence--stronger than his strong
intent to pray.]
[Page 162]
And like a man to double businesse bound,[1]
I stand in pause where I shall first begin,
And both[2] neglect; what if this cursed hand
Were thicker then it selfe with Brothers blood,
Is there not Raine enough in the sweet Heauens
To wash it white as Snow? Whereto serues mercy,
But to confront the visage of Offence?
And what's in Prayer, but this two-fold force,
To be fore-stalled ere we come to fall,
Or pardon'd being downe? Then Ile looke vp, [Sidenote: pardon]
My fault is past. But oh, what forme of Prayer
Can serue my turne? Forgiue me my foule Murther:
That cannot be, since I am still possest
Of those effects for which I did the Murther.[3]
My Crowne, mine owne Ambition, and my Queene:
May one be pardon'd, and retaine th'offence?
In the corrupted currants of this world,
Offences gilded hand may shoue by Iustice [Sidenote: showe]
And oft 'tis seene, the wicked prize it selfe
Buyes out the Law; but 'tis not so aboue,
There is no shuffling, there the Action lyes
In his true Nature, and we our selues compell'd
Euen to the teeth and forehead of our faults,
To giue in euidence. What then? What rests?
Try what Repentance can. What can it not?
Yet what can it, when one cannot repent?[4]
Oh wretched state! Oh bosome, blacke as death!
Oh limed[5] soule, that strugling to be free,
Art more ingag'd[6]: Helpe Angels, make assay:[7]
Bow stubborne knees, and heart with strings of Steele,
Be soft as sinewes of the new-borne Babe,
All may be well.
[Footnote 1: Referring to his double guilt--the one crime past, the
other in continuance.
Here is the corresponding passage in the 1st Q., with the adultery
plainly confessed:--
Enter the King.
King. O that this wet that falles vpon my face
Would wash the crime cleere from my conscience!
When I looke vp to heauen, I see my trespasse,
The earth doth still crie out vpon my fact,
Pay me the murder of a brother and a king,
And the adulterous fault I haue committed:
O these are sinnes that are vnpardonable:
Why say thy sinnes were blacker then is ieat,
Yet may contrition make them as white as snowe:
I but still to perseuer in a sinne,
It is an act gainst the vniuersall power,
Most wretched man, stoope, bend thee to thy prayer,
Aske grace of heauen to keepe thee from despaire.]
[Footnote 2: both crimes.]
[Footnote 3: He could repent of and pray forgiveness for the murder, if
he could repent of the adultery and incest, and give up the queen. It is
not the sins they have done, but the sins they will not leave, that damn
men. 'This is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and
men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.'
The murder deeply troubled him; the adultery not so much; the incest and
usurpation mainly as interfering with the forgiveness of the murder.]
[Footnote 4: Even hatred of crime committed is not repentance:
repentance is the turning away from wrong doing: 'Cease to do evil;
learn to do well.']
[Footnote 5: --caught and held by crime, as a bird by bird-lime.]
[Footnote 6: entangled.]
[Footnote 7: said to his knees. Point thus:--'Helpe Angels! Make
assay--bow, stubborne knees!']
[Page 164]
Enter Hamlet.
Ham.[1] Now might I do it pat, now he is praying,
[Sidenote: doe it, but now a is a praying,]
And now Ile doo't, and so he goes to Heauen, [Sidenote: so a goes]
And so am I reueng'd: that would be scann'd, [Sidenote: reuendge,]
A Villaine killes my Father, and for that
I his foule Sonne, do this same Villaine send [Sidenote: sole sonne]
To heauen. Oh this is hyre and Sallery, not Reuenge.
[Sidenote: To heauen. Why, this is base and silly, not]
He tooke my Father grossely, full of bread, [Sidenote: A tooke]
[Sidenote: 54, 262] With all his Crimes broad blowne, as fresh as May,
[Sidenote: as flush as]
And how his Audit stands, who knowes, saue Heauen:[2]
But in our circumstance and course of thought
'Tis heauie with him: and am I then reueng'd,
To take him in the purging of his Soule,
When he is fit and season'd for his passage? No.
Vp Sword, and know thou a more horrid hent[3]
When he is drunke asleepe: or in his Rage,
Or in th'incestuous pleasure of his bed,
At gaming, swearing, or about some acte [Sidenote: At game a swearing,]
That ha's no rellish of Saluation in't,
Then trip him,[4] that his heeles may kicke at Heauen,
And that his Soule may be as damn'd and blacke
As Hell, whereto it goes.[5] My Mother stayes,[6]
This Physicke but prolongs thy sickly dayes.[7]
Exit.
King. My words flye vp, my thoughts remain below,
Words without thoughts, neuer to Heauen go.[8]
| |
Exit. |
|
|
| Enter Queene and Polonius. |
[Sidenote: |
_Enter Gertrard |
and_] |
Pol. He will come straight:
Looke you lay home to him |
|
[Sidenote: A |
will] |
[Footnote 1: In the 1st Q. this speech commences with, 'I so, come
forth and worke thy last,' evidently addressed to his sword; afterwards,
having changed his purpose, he says, 'no, get thee vp agen.']
[Footnote 2: This indicates doubt of the Ghost still. He is unwilling to
believe in him.]
[Footnote 3: grasp. This is the only instance I know of hent as a
noun. The verb to hent, to lay hold of, is not so rare. 'Wait till
thou be aware of a grasp with a more horrid purpose in it.']
[Footnote 4: --still addressed to his sword.]
[Footnote 5: Are we to take Hamlet's own presentment of his reasons as
exhaustive? Doubtless to kill him at his prayers, whereupon, after the
notions of the time, he would go to heaven, would be anything but
justice--the murdered man in hell--the murderer in heaven! But it is
easy to suppose Hamlet finding it impossible to slay a man on his
knees--and that from behind: thus in the unseen Presence, he was in
sanctuary, and the avenger might well seek reason or excuse for not
then, not there executing the decree.]
[Footnote 6: 'waits for me.']
[Footnote 7: He seems now to have made up his mind, and to await only
fit time and opportunity; but he is yet to receive confirmation strong
as holy writ.
This is the first chance Hamlet has had--within the play--of killing the
king, and any imputation of faulty irresolution therein is simply silly.
It shows the soundness of Hamlet's reason, and the steadiness of his
will, that he refuses to be carried away by passion, or the temptation
of opportunity. The sight of the man on his knees might well start fresh
doubt of his guilt, or even wake the thought of sparing a repentant
sinner. He knows also that in taking vengeance on her husband he could
not avoid compromising his mother. Besides, a man like Hamlet could not
fail to perceive how the killing of his uncle, and in such an attitude,
would look to others.
It may be judged, however, that the reason he gives to himself for not
slaying the king, was only an excuse, that his soul revolted from the
idea of assassination, and was calmed in a measure by the doubt whether
a man could thus pray--in supposed privacy, we must remember--and be a
murderer. Not even yet had he proof positive, absolute, conclusive:
the king might well take offence at the play, even were he innocent; and
in any case Hamlet would desire presentable proof: he had positively
none to show the people in justification of vengeance.
As in excitement a man's moods may be opalescent in their changes, and
as the most contrary feelings may coexist in varying degrees, all might
be in a mind, which I have suggested as present in that of Hamlet.
To have been capable of the kind of action most of his critics would
demand of a man, Hamlet must have been the weakling they imagine him.
When at length, after a righteous delay, partly willed, partly
inevitable, he holds documents in the king's handwriting as proofs of
his treachery--proofs which can be shown--giving him both right and
power over the life of the traitor, then, and only then, is he in cool
blood absolutely satisfied as to his duty--which conviction, working
with opportunity, and that opportunity plainly the last, brings the end;
the righteous deed is done, and done righteously, the doer blameless in
the doing of it. The Poet is not careful of what is called poetic
justice in his play, though therein is no failure; what he is careful of
is personal rightness in the hero of it.]
[Footnote 8: 1st Q.
King My wordes fly vp, my sinnes remaine below.
No King on earth is safe, if Gods his foe. Exit King.
So he goes to make himself safe by more crime! His repentance is mainly
fear.]
[Page 166]
Tell him his prankes haue been too broad to beare with,
And that your Grace hath scree'nd, and stoode betweene
Much heate, and him. Ile silence me e'ene heere:
| |
[Sidenote: euen heere,] |
| Pray you be round[1] with him.[2] |
[Sidenote: Enter Hamlet.] |
Ham. within. Mother, mother, mother.[3]
Qu. Ile warrant you, feare me not. [Sidenote: Ger. Ile wait you,]
Withdraw, I heare him comming.
Enter Hamlet.[4]
Ham.[5] Now Mother, what's the matter?
Qu. Hamlet, thou hast thy Father much offended. [Sidenote: Ger.]
Ham. Mother, you haue my Father much offended.
Qu. Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue. [Sidenote: Ger.]
Ham. Go, go, you question with an idle tongue.
[Sidenote: with a wicked tongue.]
_Qu_. Why how now _Hamlet_?[6] [Sidenote: _Ger_.]
_Ham_. Whats the matter now?
_Qu_. Haue you forgot me?[7] [Sidenote: _Ger._]
Ham. No by the Rood, not so:
You are the Queene, your Husbands Brothers wife,
But would you were not so. You are my Mother.[8]
| |
[Sidenote: And would it were] |
Qu. Nay, then Ile set those to you that can speake.[9]
Ham. Come, come, and sit you downe, you shall not boudge:
| You go not till I set you vp a glasse, |
|
| Where you may see the inmost part of you? |
[Sidenote: the most part] |
| Qu. What wilt thou do? thou wilt not murther |
[Sidenote: Ger.] |
| me?[10] Helpe, helpe, hoa. |
[Sidenote: Helpe how.] |
| Pol. What hoa, helpe, helpe, helpe. [Sidenote: What how helpe.] |
Ham. How now, a Rat? dead for a Ducate, dead.[11]
[Footnote 1: The Quarto has not 'with him.']
[Footnote 2: He goes behind the arras.]
[Footnote 3: The Quarto has not this speech.]
[Footnote 4: Not in Quarto.]
[Footnote 5: 1st Q.
Ham. Mother, mother, O are you here?
How i'st with you mother?
Queene How i'st with you?
Ham, I'le tell you, but first weele make all safe.
Here, evidently, he bolts the doors.]
[Footnote 6: 1st Q.
Queene How now boy?
Ham. How now mother! come here, sit downe, for you
shall heare me speake.]
[Footnote 7: --'that you speak to me in such fashion?']
[Footnote 8: Point thus: 'so: you'--'would you were not so, for you
are my mother.'--with emphasis on 'my.' The whole is spoken sadly.]
[Footnote 9: --'speak so that you must mind them.']
[Footnote 10: The apprehension comes from the combined action of her
conscience and the notion of his madness.]
[Footnote 11: There is no precipitancy here--only instant resolve and
execution. It is another outcome and embodiment of Hamlet's rare faculty
for action, showing his delay the more admirable. There is here neither
time nor call for delay. Whoever the man behind the arras might be, he
had, by spying upon him in the privacy of his mother's room, forfeited
to Hamlet his right to live; he had heard what he had said to his
mother, and his death was necessary; for, if he left the room, Hamlet's
last chance of fulfilling his vow to the Ghost was gone: if the play had
not sealed, what he had now spoken must seal his doom. But the decree
had in fact already gone forth against his life. 158.]
[Page 168]
Pol. Oh I am slaine. [1]_Killes Polonius._[2]
| Qu. Oh me, what hast thou done? |
[Sidenote: Ger.] |
| Ham. Nay I know not, is it the King?[3] |
|
| Qu. Oh what a rash, and bloody deed is this? |
[Sidenote: Ger.] |
Ham. A bloody deed, almost as bad good Mother,
[Sidenote: 56] As kill a King,[4] and marrie with his Brother.
Qu. As kill a King? [Sidenote: Ger.]
Ham. I Lady, 'twas my word.[5] [Sidenote: it was]
Thou wretched, rash, intruding foole farewell,
I tooke thee for thy Betters,[3] take thy Fortune, [Sidenote: better,]
Thou find'st to be too busie, is some danger,
Leaue wringing of your hands, peace, sit you downe,
And let me wring your heart, for so I shall
If it be made of penetrable stuffe;
If damned Custome haue not braz'd it so,
That it is proofe and bulwarke against Sense. [Sidenote: it be]
Qu. What haue I done, that thou dar'st wag thy tong,
In noise so rude against me?[6]
Ham. Such an Act
That blurres the grace and blush of Modestie,[7]
Calls Vertue Hypocrite, takes off the Rose
From the faire forehead of an innocent loue,
And makes a blister there.[8] Makes marriage vowes
As false as Dicers Oathes. Oh such a deed,
As from the body of Contraction[9] pluckes
| The very soule, and sweete Religion makes |
|
| A rapsidie of words. Heauens face doth glow, |
[Sidenote: dooes] |
Yea this solidity and compound masse,
With tristfull visage as against the doome, |
[Sidenote: Ore this] |
| [Sidenote: |
with heated visage,] |
| Is thought-sicke at the act.[10] [Sidenote: thought sick] |
Qu. Aye me; what act,[11] that roares so lowd,[12]
and thunders in the Index.[13]
[Footnote 1: Not in Q.]
[Footnote 2: --through the arras.]
[Footnote 3: Hamlet takes him for, hopes it is the king, and thinks here
to conclude: he is not praying now! and there is not a moment to be
lost, for he has betrayed his presence and called for help. As often as
immediate action is demanded of Hamlet, he is immediate with his
response--never hesitates, never blunders. There is no blunder here:
being where he was, the death of Polonius was necessary now to the death
of the king. Hamlet's resolve is instant, and the act simultaneous with
the resolve. The weak man is sure to be found wanting when immediate
action is necessary; Hamlet never is. Doubtless those who blame him as
dilatory, here blame him as precipitate, for they judge according to
appearance and consequence.
All his delay after this is plainly compelled, although I grant he was
not sorry to have to await such more presentable evidence as at last
he procured, so long as he did not lose the final possibility of
vengeance.]
[Footnote 4: This is the sole reference in the interview to the murder.
I take it for tentative, and that Hamlet is satisfied by his mother's
utterance, carriage, and expression, that she is innocent of any
knowledge of that crime. Neither does he allude to the adultery: there
is enough in what she cannot deny, and that only which can be remedied
needs be taken up; while to break with the king would open the door of
repentance for all that had preceded.]
[Footnote 5: He says nothing of the Ghost to his mother.]
[Footnote 6: She still holds up and holds out.]
[Footnote 7: 'makes Modesty itself suspected.']
[Footnote 8: 'makes Innocence ashamed of the love it cherishes.']
[Footnote 9: 'plucks the spirit out of all forms of contracting or
agreeing.' We have lost the social and kept only the physical meaning of
the noun.]
[Footnote 10: I cannot help thinking the Quarto reading of this
passage the more intelligible, as well as much the more powerful. We may
imagine a red aurora, by no means a very unusual phenomenon, over the
expanse of the sky:--
Heaven's face doth glow (blush)
O'er this solidity and compound mass,
(the earth, solid, material, composite, a corporeal mass in
confrontment with the spirit-like etherial, simple, uncompounded heaven
leaning over it)
With tristful (or heated, as the reader may choose)
visage: as against the doom,
(as in the presence, or in anticipation of the revealing judgment)
Is thought sick at the act.
(thought is sick at the act of the queen)
My difficulties as to the Folio reading are--why the earth should be
so described without immediate contrast with the sky; and--how the earth
could be showing a tristful visage, and the sickness of its thought. I
think, if the Poet indeed made the alterations and they are not mere
blunders, he must have made them hurriedly, and without due attention. I
would not forget, however, that there may be something present but too
good for me to find, which would make the passage plain as it stands.
Compare As you like it, act i. sc. 3.
For, by this heaven, now at our sorrows pale,
Say what thou canst, I'll go along with thee.]
[Footnote 11: In Q. the rest of this speech is Hamlet's; his long speech
begins here, taking up the queen's word.]
[Footnote 12: She still stands out.]
[Footnote 13: 'thunders in the very indication or mention of it.' But by
'the Index' may be intended the influx or table of contents of a book,
at the beginning of it.]
[Page 170]
Ham. Looke heere vpon this Picture, and on this,
The counterfet presentment of two Brothers:[1]
See what a grace was seated on his Brow, [Sidenote: on this]
[Sidenote: 151] Hyperions curies, the front of Ioue himselfe,
An eye like Mars, to threaten or command [Sidenote: threaten and]
A Station, like the Herald Mercurie
New lighted on a heauen kissing hill: [Sidenote: on a heaue, a kissing]
A Combination, and a forme indeed,
Where euery God did seeme to set his Seale,
To giue the world assurance of a man.[2]
This was your Husband. Looke you now what followes.
Heere is your Husband, like a Mildew'd eare
Blasting his wholsom breath. Haue you eyes?
| |
[Sidenote: wholsome brother,] |
Could you on this faire Mountaine leaue to feed,
And batten on this Moore?[3] Ha? Haue you eyes?
You cannot call it Loue: For at your age,
The hey-day[4] in the blood is tame, it's humble,
And waites vpon the Judgement: and what Iudgement
Would step from this, to this? [A] What diuell was't,
That thus hath cousend you at hoodman-blinde?[5] [Sidenote: hodman]
[B]
O Shame! where is thy Blush? Rebellious Hell,
If thou canst mutine in a Matrons bones,
[Footnote A: Here in the Quarto:--
Els could you not haue motion, but sure that sence
Is appoplext, for madnesse would not erre
Nor sence to extacie[6] was nere so thral'd
But it reseru'd some quantity of choise[7]
To serue in such[8] a difference,]
[Footnote B: Here in the Quarto:--
Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight.
Eares without hands, or eyes, smelling sance[9] all,
Or but a sickly part of one true sence
Could not so mope:[10]]
[Footnote 1: He points to the portraits of the two brothers, side by
side on the wall.]
[Footnote 2: See Julius Caesar, act v. sc. 5,--speech of Antony at
the end.]
[Footnote 3: --perhaps an allusion as well to the complexion of
Claudius, both moral and physical.]
[Footnote 4: --perhaps allied to the German heida, and possibly the
English hoyden and hoity-toity. Or is it merely
high-day--noontide?]
[Footnote 5: 'played tricks with you while hooded in the game of
blind-man's-bluff?' The omitted passage of the Quarto enlarges the
figure.
1st Q. 'hob-man blinde.']
[Footnote 6: madness.]
[Footnote 7: Attributing soul to sense, he calls its distinguishment
choice.]
[Footnote 8: --emphasis on such.]
[Footnote 9: This spelling seems to show how the English word sans
should be pronounced.]
[Footnote 10: --'be so dull.']
[Page 172]
To flaming youth, let Vertue be as waxe,
And melt in her owne fire. Proclaime no shame,
When the compulsiue Ardure giues the charge,
| Since Frost it selfe,[1] as actiuely doth burne, |
| As Reason panders Will. [Sidenote: |
And reason pardons will.] |
Qu. O Hamlet, speake no more.[2]
Thou turn'st mine eyes into my very soule,
[Sidenote: my |
[Sidenote: Ger.]
very eyes into my soule,] |
| And there I see such blacke and grained[3] spots, |
| |
[Sidenote: greeued spots] |
| As will not leaue their Tinct.[4] [Sidenote: will leaue there their] |
Ham. Nay, but to liue[5]
In the ranke sweat of an enseamed bed,
Stew'd in Corruption; honying and making loue
[Sidenote: 34] Ouer the nasty Stye.[6] |
[Sidenote: inseemed] |
Qu. Oh speake to me, no more,
[Sidenote: 158] These words like Daggers enter
No more sweet Hamlet. |
[Sidenote: Ger.]
in mine eares.
[Sidenote: my] |
Ham. A Murderer, and a Villaine:
A Slaue, that is not twentieth part the tythe [Sidenote: part the kyth]
Of your precedent Lord. A vice[7] of Kings,
A Cutpurse of the Empire and the Rule.
That from a shelfe, the precious Diadem stole,
And put it in his Pocket.
Qu. No more.[8] [Sidenote: Ger.]
_Enter Ghost._[9]
Ham. A King of shreds and patches.
[Sidenote: 44] Saue me; and houer o're me with your wings[10]
You heauenly Guards. What would you gracious figure?
| |
[Sidenote: your gracious] |
| Qu. Alas he's mad.[11] |
[Sidenote: Ger.] |
Ham. Do you not come your tardy Sonne to chide,
That laps't in Time and Passion, lets go by[12]
Th'important acting of your dread command? Oh say.[13]
[Footnote 1: --his mother's matronly age.]
[Footnote 2: She gives way at last.]
[Footnote 3: --spots whose blackness has sunk into the grain, or final
particles of the substance.]
[Footnote 4: --transition form of tint:--'will never give up their
colour;' 'will never be cleansed.']
[Footnote 5: He persists.]
[Footnote 6: --Claudius himself--his body no 'temple of the Holy Ghost,'
but a pig-sty. 3.]
[Footnote 7: The clown of the old Moral Play.]
[Footnote 8: She seems neither surprised nor indignant at any point in
the accusation: her consciousness of her own guiit has overwhelmed her.]
[Footnote 9: The 1st Q. has Enter the ghost in his night gowne. It
was then from the first intended that he should not at this point appear
in armour--in which, indeed, the epithet gracious figure could hardly
be applied to him, though it might well enough in one of the costumes in
which Hamlet was accustomed to see him--as this dressing-gown of the
1st Q. A ghost would appear in the costume in which he naturally
imagined himself, and in his wife's room would not show himself clothed
as when walking among the fortifications of the castle. But by the words
lower down (174)--
My Father in his habite, as he liued,
the Poet indicates, not his dressing-gown, but his usual habit, i.e.
attire.]
[Footnote 10: --almost the same invocation as when first he saw the
apparition.]
[Footnote 11: The queen cannot see the Ghost. Her conduct has built such
a wall between her and her husband that I doubt whether, were she a
ghost also, she could see him. Her heart had left him, so they are no
more together in the sphere of mutual vision. Neither does the Ghost
wish to show himself to her. As his presence is not corporeal, a ghost
may be present to but one of a company.]
[Footnote 12: 1. 'Who, lapsed (fallen, guilty), lets action slip in
delay and suffering.' 2. 'Who, lapsed in (fallen in, overwhelmed by)
delay and suffering, omits' &c. 3. 'lapsed in respect of time, and
because of passion'--the meaning of the preposition in, common to
both, reacted upon by the word it governs. 4. 'faulty both in delaying,
and in yielding to suffering, when action is required.' 5. 'lapsed
through having too much time and great suffering.' 6. 'allowing himself
to be swept along by time and grief.'
Surely there is not another writer whose words would so often admit of
such multiform and varied interpretation--each form good, and true, and
suitable to the context! He seems to see at once all the relations of a
thing, and to try to convey them at once, in an utterance single as the
thing itself. He would condense the infinite soul of the meaning into
the trembling, overtaxed body of the phrase!]
[Footnote 13: In the renewed presence of the Ghost, all its former
influence and all the former conviction of its truth, return upon him.
He knows also how his behaviour must appear to the Ghost, and sees
himself as the Ghost sees him. Confronted with the gracious figure, how
should he think of self-justification! So far from being able to explain
things, he even forgets the doubt that had held him back--it has
vanished from the noble presence! He is now in the world of belief; the
world of doubt is nowhere!--Note the masterly opposition of moods.]
[Page 174]
Ghost. Do not forget: this Visitation
Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose.[1]
But looke, Amazement on thy Mother sits;[2]
[Sidenote: 30, 54] O step betweene her, and her fighting Soule,[3]
[Sidenote: 198] Conceit[4] in weakest bodies, strongest workes.
Speake to her Hamlet.[5]
Ham. How is it with you Lady?[6]
| Qu. Alas, how is't with you? |
|
[Sidenote: |
Ger.] |
| That you bend your eye on vacancie, [Sidenote: you do |
bend] |
| And with their corporall ayre do |
hold discourse. |
|
|
|
| |
[Sidenote: with |
th'incorporall |
ayre] |
| Forth at your eyes, your spirits |
wildely peepe, |
|
|
|
| And as the sleeping Soldiours in |
th'Alarme, |
|
|
|
Your bedded haire, like life in excrements,[7]
Start vp, and stand an end.[8] Oh gentle Sonne,
Vpon the heate and flame of thy distemper
Sprinkle coole patience. Whereon do you looke?[9]
Ham. On him, on him: look you how pale he glares,
His forme and cause conioyn'd, preaching to stones,
Would make them capeable.[10] Do not looke vpon me,[11]
Least with this pitteous action you conuert
My sterne effects: then what I haue to do,[12]
[Sidenote: 111] Will want true colour; teares perchance for blood.[13]
| Qu. To who do you speake this? |
[Sidenote: Ger. To whom] |
| Ham. Do you see nothing there? |
|
|
| Qu. Nothing at all, yet all that is I |
see.[14] [Sidenote: |
Ger.] |
| Ham. Nor did you nothing heare? |
|
|
| Qu. No, nothing but our selues. |
[Sidenote: |
Ger.] |
Ham. Why look you there: looke how it steals away:
[Sidenote: 173] My Father in his habite, as he liued,
Looke where he goes euen now out at the Portall.
Exit. [Sidenote: Exit Ghost.]
[Sidenote: 114] Qu. This is the very coynage of your Braine,
[Footnote 1: The Ghost here judges, as alone is possible to him, from
what he knows--from the fact that his brother Claudius has not yet made
his appearance in the ghost-world. Not understanding Hamlet's
difficulties, he mistakes Hamlet himself.]
[Footnote 2: He mistakes also, through his tenderness, the condition of
his wife--imagining, it would seem, that she feels his presence, though
she cannot see him, or recognize the source of the influence which he
supposes to be moving her conscience: she is only perturbed by Hamlet's
behaviour.]
[Footnote 3: --fighting within itself, as the sea in a storm may be said
to fight.
He is careful as ever over the wife he had loved and loves still;
careful no less of the behaviour of the son to his mother.
In the 1st Q. we have:--
But I perceiue by thy distracted lookes,
Thy mother's fearefull, and she stands amazde:
Speake to her Hamlet, for her sex is weake,
Comfort thy mother, Hamlet, thinke on me.]
[Footnote 4: --not used here for bare imagination, but imagination
with its concomitant feeling:--conception. 198.]
[Footnote 5: His last word ere he vanishes utterly, concerns his queen;
he is tender and gracious still to her who sent him to hell. This
attitude of the Ghost towards his faithless wife, is one of the
profoundest things in the play. All the time she is not thinking of him
any more than seeing him--for 'is he not dead!'--is looking straight at
where he stands, but is all unaware of him.]
[Footnote 6: I understand him to speak this with a kind of lost,
mechanical obedience. The description his mother gives of him makes it
seem as if the Ghost were drawing his ghost out to himself, and turning
his body thereby half dead.]
[Footnote 7: 'as if there were life in excrements.' The nails and hair
were 'excrements'--things growing out.]
[Footnote 8: Note the form an end--not on end. 51, 71.]
[Footnote 9: --all spoken coaxingly, as to one in a mad fit. She regards
his perturbation as a sudden assault of his ever present malady. One who
sees what others cannot see they are always ready to count mad.]
[Footnote 10: able to take, that is, to understand.]
[Footnote 11: --to the Ghost.]
[Footnote 12: 'what is in my power to do.']
[Footnote 13: Note antithesis here: '_your piteous action_;' '_my stern
effects_'--the things, that is, 'which I have to effect.' 'Lest your
piteous show convert--change--my stern doing; then what I do will lack
true colour; the result may be tears instead of blood; I shall weep
instead of striking.']
[Footnote 14: It is one of the constantly recurring delusions of
humanity that we see all there is.]
[Page 176]
[Sidenote: 114] This bodilesse Creation extasie[1] is very cunning
in.[2]
Ham. Extasie?[3]
My Pulse as yours doth temperately keepe time,
And makes as healthfull Musicke.[4] It is not madnesse
| That I haue vttered; bring me to the Test |
|
And I the matter will re-word: which madnesse
Would gamboll from. Mother, for loue of Grace,
Lay not a flattering Vnction to your soule, |
[Sidenote: And the] |
[Sidenote:
That not your trespasse, but my madnesse speakes: |
not that flattering] |
| [Sidenote: 182] It will but skin and filme the Vlcerous place, |
Whil'st ranke Corruption mining all within,
Infects vnseene, Confesse your selfe to Heauen,
Repent what's past, auoyd what is to come, |
[Sidenote: whiles] |
| And do not spred the Compost or the Weedes, [Sidenote: compost on the] |
| To make them ranke. Forgiue me this my Vertue, |
[Sidenote: ranker,] |
For in the fatnesse of this pursie[5] times,
Vertue it selfe, of Vice must pardon begge,
Yea courb,[6] and woe, for leaue to do him good. |
[Sidenote: these] |
| [Sidenote: curbe and wooe] |
Qu. Oh Hamlet,
Thou hast cleft my heart in twaine.
Ham. O throw away the worser part of it, |
[Sidenote: Ger.] |
| And Liue the purer with the other halfe. [Sidenote: And leaue the] |
| Good night, but go not to mine Vnkles bed, |
[Sidenote: my] |
| Assume a Vertue, if you haue it not,[7][A] refraine |
to night |
[Sidenote: Assune
And that shall lend a kinde of easinesse |
to refraine night,] |
[Footnote A: Here in the Quarto:--
-
That monster custome, who all sence doth eate
Of habits deuill,[9] is angell yet in this
That to the vse of actions faire and good,
He likewise giues a frock or Liuery
That aptly is put on]
[Footnote 1: madness 129.]
[Footnote 2: Here is the correspondent speech in the 1st Q. I give it
because of the queen's denial of complicity in the murder.
Queene Alas, it is the weakenesse of thy braine.
Which makes thy tongue to blazon thy hearts griefe:
But as I haue a soule, I sweare by heauen,
I neuer knew of this most horride murder:
But Hamlet, this is onely fantasie,
And for my loue forget these idle fits.
Ham. Idle, no mother, my pulse doth beate like yours,
It is not madnesse that possesseth Hamlet.]
[Footnote 3: Not in Q.]
[Footnote 4: --time being a great part of music. Shakspere more than
once or twice employs music as a symbol with reference to corporeal
condition: see, for instance, As you like it, act i. sc. 2, 'But is
there any else longs to see this broken music in his sides? is there yet
another dotes upon rib-breaking?' where the broken music may be
regarded as the antithesis of the healthful music here.]
[Footnote 5: swoln, pampered: an allusion to the purse itself,
whether intended or not, is suggested.]
[Footnote 6: bend, bow.]
[Footnote 7: To assume is to take to one: by assume a virtue, Hamlet
does not mean pretend--but the very opposite: to pretend is to hold
forth, to show; what he means is, 'Adopt a virtue'--that of
abstinence--'and act upon it, order your behaviour by it, although you
may not feel it. Choose the virtue--take it, make it yours.']
[Footnote 8: This omitted passage is obscure with the special
Shaksperean obscurity that comes of over-condensation. He omitted it, I
think, because of its obscurity. Its general meaning is plain
enough--that custom helps the man who tries to assume a virtue, as well
as renders it more and more difficult for him who indulges in vice to
leave it. I will paraphrase: 'That monster, Custom, who eats away all
sense, the devil of habits, is angel yet in this, that, for the exercise
of fair and good actions, he also provides a habit, a suitable frock or
livery, that is easily put on.' The play with the two senses of the word
habit is more easily seen than set forth. To paraphrase more freely:
'That devil of habits, Custom, who eats away all sense of wrong-doing,
has yet an angel-side to him, in that he gives a man a mental dress, a
habit, helpful to the doing of the right thing.' The idea of hypocrisy
does not come in at all. The advice of Hamlet is: 'Be virtuous in your
actions, even if you cannot in your feelings; do not do the wrong thing
you would like to do, and custom will render the abstinence easy.']
[Footnote 9: I suspect it should be '_Of habits evil_'--the antithesis
to angel being monster.]
[Page 178]
To the next abstinence. [A] Once more goodnight,
And when you are desirous to be blest,
Ile blessing begge of you.[1] For this same Lord,
I do repent: but heauen hath pleas'd it so,[2]
To punish me with this, and this with me,
That I must be their[3] Scourge and Minister.
I will bestow him,[4] and will answer well
The death I gaue him:[5] so againe, good night.
I must be cruell, onely to be kinde;[6]
Thus bad begins,[7] and worse remaines behinde.[8] [Sidenote: This bad]
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