Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth
play-scene, hoping that the King would betray his guilt to the whole
court. Unfortunately the King did not. It is true that immediately
afterwards Hamlet got his chance; for he found the King defenceless on
his knees. But what Hamlet wanted was not a private revenge, to be
followed by his own imprisonment or execution; it was public justice. So
he spared the King; and, as he unluckily killed Polonius just
afterwards, he had to consent to be despatched to England. But, on the
voyage there, he discovered the King's commission, ordering the King of
England to put him immediately to death; and, with this in his pocket,
he made his way back to Denmark. For now, he saw, the proof of the
King's attempt to murder him would procure belief also for the story of
the murder of his father. His enemy, however, was too quick for him, and
his public arraignment of that enemy was prevented by his own death.
A theory like this sounds very plausible--so long as you do not remember
the text. But no unsophisticated mind, fresh from the reading of
_Hamlet_, will accept it; and, as soon as we begin to probe it, fatal
objections arise in such numbers that I choose but a few, and indeed I
think the first of them is enough.
(_a_) From beginning to end of the play, Hamlet never makes the
slightest reference to any external difficulty. How is it possible to
explain this fact in conformity with the theory? For what conceivable
reason should Shakespeare conceal from us so carefully the key to the
problem?
(_b_) Not only does Hamlet fail to allude to such difficulties, but he
always assumes that he _can_ obey the Ghost,[34] and he once asserts
this in so many words ('Sith I have cause and will and strength and
means To do't,' IV. iv. 45).
(_c_) Again, why does Shakespeare exhibit Laertes quite easily raising
the people against the King? Why but to show how much more easily
Hamlet, whom the people loved, could have done the same thing, if that
was the plan he preferred?
(_d_) Again, Hamlet did _not_ plan the play-scene in the hope that the
King would betray his guilt to the court. He planned it, according to
his own account, in order to convince _himself_ by the King's agitation
that the Ghost had spoken the truth. This is perfectly clear from II.
ii. 625 ff. and from III. ii. 80 ff. Some readers are misled by the
words in the latter passage:
if his occulted guilt
Do not itself unkennel in one speech,
It is a damned ghost that we have seen.
The meaning obviously is, as the context shows, 'if his hidden guilt do
not betray itself _on occasion of_ one speech,' viz., the 'dozen or
sixteen lines' with which Hamlet has furnished the player, and of which
only six are delivered, because the King does not merely show his guilt
in his face (which was all Hamlet had hoped, III. ii. 90) but
rushes from the room.
It may be as well to add that, although Hamlet's own account of his
reason for arranging the play-scene may be questioned, it is impossible
to suppose that, if his real design had been to provoke an open
confession of guilt, he could have been unconscious of this design.
(_e_) Again, Hamlet never once talks, or shows a sign of thinking, of
the plan of bringing the King to public justice; he always talks of
using his 'sword' or his 'arm.' And this is so just as much after he has
returned to Denmark with the commission in his pocket as it was before
this event. When he has told Horatio the story of the voyage, he does
not say, 'Now I can convict him': he says, 'Now am I not justified in
using this arm?'
This class of theory, then, we must simply reject. But it suggests two
remarks. It is of course quite probable that, when Hamlet was 'thinking
too precisely on the event,' he was considering, among other things, the
question how he could avenge his father without sacrificing his own life
or freedom. And assuredly, also, he was anxious that his act of
vengeance should not be misconstrued, and would never have been content
to leave a 'wounded name' behind him. His dying words prove that.
(2) Assuming, now, that Hamlet's main difficulty--almost the whole of
his difficulty--was internal, I pass to views which, acknowledging this,
are still unsatisfactory because they isolate one element in his
character and situation and treat it as the whole.
According to the first of these typical views, Hamlet was restrained by
conscience or a moral scruple; he could not satisfy himself that it was
right to avenge his father.
This idea, like the first, can easily be made to look very plausible if
we vaguely imagine the circumstances without attending to the text. But
attention to the text is fatal to it. For, on the one hand, scarcely
anything can be produced in support of it, and, on the other hand, a
great deal can be produced in its disproof. To take the latter point
first, Hamlet, it is impossible to deny, habitually assumes, without any
questioning, that he _ought_ to avenge his father. Even when he doubts,
or thinks that he doubts, the honesty of the Ghost, he expresses no
doubt as to what his duty will be if the Ghost turns out honest: 'If he
but blench I know my course.' In the two soliloquies where he reviews
his position (II. ii., 'O what a rogue and peasant slave am I,'
and IV. iv., 'How all occasions do inform against me') he
reproaches himself bitterly for the neglect of his duty. When he
reflects on the possible causes of this neglect he never mentions among
them a moral scruple. When the Ghost appears in the Queen's chamber he
confesses, conscience-stricken, that, lapsed in time and passion, he has
let go by the acting of its command; but he does not plead that his
conscience stood in his way. The Ghost itself says that it comes to whet
his 'almost blunted purpose'; and conscience may unsettle a purpose but
does not blunt it. What natural explanation of all this can be given on
the conscience theory?
And now what can be set against this evidence? One solitary passage.[35]
Quite late, after Hamlet has narrated to Horatio the events of his
voyage, he asks him (V. ii. 63):
Does it not, thinks't thee, stand me now upon--
He that hath kill'd my king and whored my mother,
Popp'd in between the election and my hopes,
Thrown out his angle for my proper life,
And with such cozenage--is't not perfect conscience
To quit him with this arm? and is't not to be damn'd
To let this canker of our nature come
In further evil?
Here, certainly, is a question of conscience in the usual present sense
of the word; and, it may be said, does not this show that all along
Hamlet really has been deterred by moral scruples? But I ask first how,
in that case, the facts just adduced are to be explained: for they must
be explained, not ignored. Next, let the reader observe that even if
this passage did show that _one_ hindrance to Hamlet's action was his
conscience, it by no means follows that this was the sole or the chief
hindrance. And, thirdly, let him observe, and let him ask himself
whether the coincidence is a mere accident, that Hamlet is here almost
repeating the words he used in vain self-reproach some time before
(IV. iv. 56):
How stand I then,
That have a father kill'd, a mother stain'd,
Excitements of my reason and my blood,
And let all sleep?
Is it not clear that he is speculating just as vainly now, and that this
question of conscience is but one of his many unconscious excuses for
delay? And, lastly, is it not so that Horatio takes it? He declines to
discuss that unreal question, and answers simply,
It must be shortly known to him from England
What is the issue of the business there.
In other words, 'Enough of this endless procrastination. What is wanted
is not reasons for the deed, but the deed itself.' What can be more
significant?
Perhaps, however, it may be answered: 'Your explanation of this passage
may be correct, and the facts you have mentioned do seem to be fatal to
the theory of conscience in its usual form. But there is another and
subtler theory of conscience. According to it, Hamlet, so far as his
explicit consciousness went, was sure that he ought to obey the Ghost;
but in the depths of his nature, and unknown to himself, there was a
moral repulsion to the deed. The conventional moral ideas of his time,
which he shared with the Ghost, told him plainly that he ought to avenge
his father; but a deeper conscience in him, which was in advance of his
time, contended with these explicit conventional ideas. It is because
this deeper conscience remains below the surface that he fails to
recognise it, and fancies he is hindered by cowardice or sloth or
passion or what not; but it emerges into light in that speech to
Horatio. And it is just because he has this nobler moral nature in him
that we admire and love him.'
Now I at once admit not only that this view is much more attractive and
more truly tragic than the ordinary conscience theory, but that it has
more verisimilitude. But I feel no doubt that it does not answer to
Shakespeare's meaning, and I will simply mention, out of many objections
to it, three which seem to be fatal. (_a_) If it answers to
Shakespeare's meaning, why in the world did he conceal that meaning
until the last Act? The facts adduced above seem to show beyond question
that, on the hypothesis, he did so. That he did so is surely next door
to incredible. In any case, it certainly requires an explanation, and
certainly has not received one. (_b_) Let us test the theory by
reference to a single important passage, that where Hamlet finds the
King at prayer and spares him. The reason Hamlet gives himself for
sparing the King is that, if he kills him now, he will send him to
heaven, whereas he desires to send him to hell. Now, this reason may be
an unconscious excuse, but is it believable that, if the real reason had
been the stirrings of his deeper conscience, _that_ could have masked
itself in the form of a desire to send his enemy's soul to hell? Is not
the idea quite ludicrous? (_c_) The theory requires us to suppose that,
when the Ghost enjoins Hamlet to avenge the murder of his father, it is
laying on him a duty which _we_ are to understand to be no duty but the
very reverse. And is not that supposition wholly contrary to the natural
impression which we all receive in reading the play? Surely it is clear
that, whatever we in the twentieth century may think about Hamlet's
duty, we are meant in the play to assume that he _ought_ to have obeyed
the Ghost.
The conscience theory, then, in either of its forms we must reject. But
it may remind us of points worth noting. In the first place, it is
certainly true that Hamlet, in spite of some appearances to the
contrary, was, as Goethe said, of a most moral nature, and had a great
anxiety to do right. In this anxiety he resembles Brutus, and it is
stronger in him than in any of the later heroes. And, secondly, it is
highly probable that in his interminable broodings the kind of paralysis
with which he was stricken masked itself in the shape of conscientious
scruples as well as in many other shapes. And, finally, in his shrinking
from the deed there was probably, together with much else, something
which may be called a moral, though not a conscientious, repulsion: I
mean a repugnance to the idea of falling suddenly on a man who could not
defend himself. This, so far as we can see, was the only plan that
Hamlet ever contemplated. There is no positive evidence in the play that
he regarded it with the aversion that any brave and honourable man, one
must suppose, would feel for it; but, as Hamlet certainly was brave and
honourable, we may presume that he did so.