Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth

SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED LONDON.BOMBAY.CALCUTTA.MADRAS.MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK.BOSTON.CHICAGO.DALLAS.SAN FRANCISCO THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. TORONTO SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY LECTURES ON HAMLET, OTHELLO, KING LEAR MACBETH BY A.C. BRADLEY LL.D. LITT.D., FORMERLY PROFESSOR OF POETRY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD _SECOND EDITION_ (_THIRTEENTH IMPRESSION_) MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 1919 _COPYRIGHT._ First Edition 1904. Second Edition March 1905. Reprinted August 1905, 1906, 1908, 1910, 1911, 1912, 1914, 1915, 1916, 1918, 1919. GLASGOW: PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO. LTD. TO MY STUDENTS PREFACE These lectures are based on a selection from materials used in teaching at Liverpool, Glasgow, and Oxford; and I have for the most part preserved the lecture form. The point of view taken in them is explained in the Introduction. I should, of course, wish them to be read in their order, and a knowledge of the first two is assumed in the remainder; but readers who may prefer to enter at once on the discussion of the several plays can do so by beginning at page 89. Any one who writes on Shakespeare must owe much to his predecessors. Where I was conscious of a particular obligation, I have acknowledged it; but most of my reading of Shakespearean criticism was done many years ago, and I can only hope that I have not often reproduced as my own what belongs to another. Many of the Notes will be of interest only to scholars, who may find, I hope, something new in them. I have quoted, as a rule, from the Globe edition, and have referred always to its numeration of acts, scenes, and lines. _November, 1904._ * * * * * NOTE TO SECOND AND SUBSEQUENT IMPRESSIONS In these impressions I have confined myself to making some formal improvements, correcting indubitable mistakes, and indicating here and there my desire to modify or develop at some future time statements which seem to me doubtful or open to misunderstanding. The changes, where it seemed desirable, are shown by the inclusion of sentences in square brackets. CONTENTS PAGE INTRODUCTION 1 LECTURE I. THE SUBSTANCE OF SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY 5 LECTURE II. CONSTRUCTION IN SHAKESPEARE'S TRAGEDIES 40 LECTURE III. SHAKESPEARE'S TRAGIC PERIOD--HAMLET 79 LECTURE IV. HAMLET 129 LECTURE V. OTHELLO 175 LECTURE VI. OTHELLO 207 LECTURE VII. KING LEAR 243 LECTURE VIII. KING LEAR 280 LECTURE IX. MACBETH 331 LECTURE X. MACBETH 366 NOTE A. Events before the opening of the action in _Hamlet_ 401 NOTE B. Where was Hamlet at the time of his father's death? 403 NOTE C. Hamlet's age 407 NOTE D. 'My tables--meet it is I set it down' 409 NOTE E. The Ghost in the cellarage 412 NOTE F. The Player's speech in _Hamlet_ 413 NOTE G. Hamlet's apology to Laertes 420 NOTE H. The exchange of rapiers 422 NOTE I. The duration of the action in _Othello_ 423 NOTE J. The 'additions' in the Folio text of _Othello_. The Pontic sea 429 NOTE K. Othello's courtship 432 NOTE L. Othello in the Temptation scene 434 NOTE M. Questions as to _Othello_, IV. i. 435 NOTE N. Two passages in the last scene of _Othello_ 437 NOTE O. Othello on Desdemona's last words 438 NOTE P. Did Emilia suspect Iago? 439 NOTE Q. Iago's suspicion regarding Cassio and Emilia 441 NOTE R. Reminiscences of _Othello_ in _King Lear_ 441 NOTE S. _King Lear_ and _Timon of Athens_ 443 NOTE T. Did Shakespeare shorten _King Lear_? 445 NOTE U. Movements of the _dramatis personae_ in _King Lear_, II 448 NOTE V. Suspected interpolations in _King Lear_ 450 NOTE W. The staging of the scene of Lear's reunion with Cordelia 453 NOTE X. The Battle in _King Lear_ 456 NOTE Y. Some difficult passages in _King Lear_ 458 NOTE Z. Suspected interpolations in _Macbeth_ 466 NOTE AA. Has _Macbeth_ been abridged? 467 NOTE BB. The date of _Macbeth_. Metrical Tests 470 NOTE CC. When was the murder of Duncan first plotted? 480 NOTE DD. Did Lady Macbeth really faint? 484 NOTE EE. Duration of the action in _Macbeth_. Macbeth's age. 'He has no children' 486 NOTE FF. The Ghost of Banquo 492 INDEX 494 INTRODUCTION In these lectures I propose to consider the four principal tragedies of Shakespeare from a single point of view. Nothing will be said of Shakespeare's place in the history either of English literature or of the drama in general. No attempt will be made to compare him with other writers. I shall leave untouched, or merely glanced at, questions regarding his life and character, the development of his genius and art, the genuineness, sources, texts, inter-relations of his various works. Even what may be called, in a restricted sense, the 'poetry' of the four tragedies--the beauties of style, diction, versification--I shall pass by in silence. Our one object will be what, again in a restricted sense, may be called dramatic appreciation; to increase our understanding and enjoyment of these works as dramas; to learn to apprehend the action and some of the personages of each with a somewhat greater truth and intensity, so that they may assume in our imaginations a shape a little less unlike the shape they wore in the imagination of their creator. For this end all those studies that were mentioned just now, of literary history and the like, are useful and even in various degrees necessary. But an overt pursuit of them is not necessary here, nor is any one of them so indispensable to our object as that close familiarity with the plays, that native strength and justice of perception, and that habit of reading with an eager mind, which make many an unscholarly lover of Shakespeare a far better critic than many a Shakespeare scholar. Such lovers read a play more or less as if they were actors who had to study all the parts. They do not need, of course, to imagine whereabouts the persons are to stand, or what gestures they ought to use; but they want to realise fully and exactly the inner movements which produced these words and no other, these deeds and no other, at each particular moment. This, carried through a drama, is the right way to read the dramatist Shakespeare; and the prime requisite here is therefore a vivid and intent imagination. But this alone will hardly suffice. It is necessary also, especially to a true conception of the whole, to compare, to analyse, to dissect. And such readers often shrink from this task, which seems to them prosaic or even a desecration. They misunderstand, I believe. They would not shrink if they remembered two things. In the first place, in this process of comparison and analysis, it is not requisite, it is on the contrary ruinous, to set imagination aside and to substitute some supposed 'cold reason'; and it is only want of practice that makes the concurrent use of analysis and of poetic perception difficult or irksome. And, in the second place, these dissecting processes, though they are also imaginative, are still, and are meant to be, nothing but means to an end. When they have finished their work (it can only be finished for the time) they give place to the end, which is that same imaginative reading or re-creation of the drama from which they set out, but a reading now enriched by the products of analysis, and therefore far more adequate and enjoyable. This, at any rate, is the faith in the strength of which I venture, with merely personal misgivings, on the path of analytic interpretation. And so, before coming to the first of the four tragedies, I propose to discuss some preliminary matters which concern them all. Though each is individual through and through, they have, in a sense, one and the same substance; for in all of them Shakespeare represents the tragic aspect of life, the tragic fact. They have, again, up to a certain point, a common form or structure. This substance and this structure, which would be found to distinguish them, for example, from Greek tragedies, may, to diminish repetition, be considered once for all; and in considering them we shall also be able to observe characteristic differences among the four plays. And to this may be added the little that it seems necessary to premise on the position of these dramas in Shakespeare's literary career. Much that is said on our main preliminary subjects will naturally hold good, within certain limits, of other dramas of Shakespeare beside _Hamlet_, _Othello_, _King Lear_, and _Macbeth_. But it will often apply to these other works only in part, and to some of them more fully than to others. _Romeo and Juliet_, for instance, is a pure tragedy, but it is an early work, and in some respects an immature one. _Richard III._ and _Richard II._, _Julius Caesar_, _Antony and Cleopatra_, and _Coriolanus_ are tragic histories or historical tragedies, in which Shakespeare acknowledged in practice a certain obligation to follow his authority, even when that authority offered him an undramatic material. Probably he himself would have met some criticisms to which these plays are open by appealing to their historical character, and by denying that such works are to be judged by the standard of pure tragedy. In any case, most of these plays, perhaps all, do show, as a matter of fact, considerable deviations from that standard; and, therefore, what is said of the pure tragedies must be applied to them with qualifications which I shall often take for granted without mention. There remain _Titus Andronicus_ and _Timon of Athens_. The former I shall leave out of account, because, even if Shakespeare wrote the whole of it, he did so before he had either a style of his own or any characteristic tragic conception. _Timon_ stands on a different footing. Parts of it are unquestionably Shakespeare's, and they will be referred to in one of the later lectures. But much of the writing is evidently not his, and as it seems probable that the conception and construction of the whole tragedy should also be attributed to some other writer, I shall omit this work too from our preliminary discussions. LECTURE I THE SUBSTANCE OF SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY