Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth
_Fourth Period._--_Pericles_, Cymbeline, Winter's Tale, Tempest, _Two
Noble Kinsmen_, _Henry VIII._]
[Footnote 26: The reader will observe that this 'tragic period' would
not exactly coincide with the 'Third Period' of the division given in
the last note. For _Julius Caesar_ and _Hamlet_ fall in the Second
Period, not the Third; and I may add that, as _Pericles_ was entered at
Stationers' Hall in 1608 and published in 1609, it ought strictly to be
put in the Third Period--not the Fourth. The truth is that _Julius
Caesar_ and _Hamlet_ are given to the Second Period mainly on the ground
of style; while a Fourth Period is admitted, not mainly on that ground
(for there is no great difference here between _Antony_ and _Coriolanus_
on the one side and _Cymbeline_ and the _Tempest_ on the other), but
because of a difference in substance and spirit. If a Fourth Period were
admitted on grounds of form, it ought to begin with _Antony and
Cleopatra_.]
[Footnote 27: I should go perhaps too far if I said that it is generally
admitted that _Timon of Athens_ also precedes the two Roman tragedies;
but its precedence seems to me so nearly certain that I assume it in
what follows.]
[Footnote 28: That play, however, is distinguished, I think, by a
deliberate endeavour after a dignified and unadorned simplicity,--a
Roman simplicity perhaps.]
[Footnote 29: It is quite probable that this may arise in part from the
fact, which seems hardly doubtful, that the tragedy was revised, and in
places re-written, some little time after its first composition.]
[Footnote 30: This, if we confine ourselves to the tragedies, is, I
think, especially the case in _King Lear_ and _Timon_.]
[Footnote 31: The first, at any rate, of these three plays is, of
course, much nearer to _Hamlet_, especially in versification, than to
_Antony and Cleopatra_, in which Shakespeare's final style first shows
itself practically complete. It has been impossible, in the brief
treatment of this subject, to say what is required of the individual
plays.]
[Footnote 32: _The Mirror_, 18th April, 1780, quoted by Furness,
_Variorum Hamlet_, ii. 148. In the above remarks I have relied mainly on
Furness's collection of extracts from early critics.]
[Footnote 33: I do not profess to reproduce any one theory, and, still
less, to do justice to the ablest exponent of this kind of view, Werder
(_Vorlesungen ueber Hamlet_, 1875), who by no means regards Hamlet's
difficulties as _merely_ external.]
[Footnote 34: I give one instance. When he spares the King, he speaks of
killing him when he is drunk asleep, when he is in his rage, when he is
awake in bed, when he is gaming, as if there were in none of these cases
the least obstacle (III. iii. 89 ff.).]
[Footnote 35: It is surprising to find quoted, in support of the
conscience view, the line 'Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,'
and to observe the total misinterpretation of the soliloquy _To be or
not to be_, from which the line comes. In this soliloquy Hamlet is not
thinking of the duty laid upon him at all. He is debating the question
of suicide. No one oppressed by the ills of life, he says, would
continue to bear them if it were not for speculation about his possible
fortune in another life. And then, generalising, he says (what applies
to himself, no doubt, though he shows no consciousness of the fact) that
such speculation or reflection makes men hesitate and shrink like
cowards from great actions and enterprises. 'Conscience' does not mean
moral sense or scrupulosity, but this reflection on the _consequences_
of action. It is the same thing as the 'craven scruple of thinking too
precisely on the event' of the speech in IV. iv. As to this use
of 'conscience,' see Schmidt, _s.v._ and the parallels there given. The
_Oxford Dictionary_ also gives many examples of similar uses of
'conscience,' though it unfortunately lends its authority to the
misinterpretation criticised.]
[Footnote 36: The King does not die of the _poison_ on the foil, like
Laertes and Hamlet. They were wounded before he was, but they die after
him.]
[Footnote 37: I may add here a word on one small matter. It is
constantly asserted that Hamlet wept over the body of Polonius. Now, if
he did, it would make no difference to my point in the paragraph above;
but there is no warrant in the text for the assertion. It is based on
some words of the Queen (IV. i. 24), in answer to the King's
question, 'Where is he gone?':
To draw apart the body he hath killed:
O'er whom his very madness, like some ore
Among a mineral of metals base,
Shows itself pure; he weeps for what is done.
But the Queen, as was pointed out by Doering, is trying to screen her
son. She has already made the false statement that when Hamlet, crying,
'A rat! a rat!', ran his rapier through the arras, it was because he
heard _something stir_ there, whereas we know that what he heard was a
man's voice crying, 'What ho! help, help, help!' And in this scene she
has come straight from the interview with her son, terribly agitated,
shaken with 'sighs' and 'profound heaves,' in the night (line 30). Now
we know what Hamlet said to the body, and of the body, in that
interview; and there is assuredly no sound of tears in the voice that
said those things and others. The only sign of relenting is in the words
(III. iv. 171):
For this same lord,
I do repent: but heaven hath pleased it so,
To punish me with this and this with me,
That I must be their scourge and minister.
His mother's statement, therefore, is almost certainly untrue, though it
may be to her credit. (It is just conceivable that Hamlet wept at
III. iv. 130, and that the Queen supposed he was weeping for
Polonius.)
Perhaps, however, he may have wept over Polonius's body afterwards?
Well, in the _next_ scene (IV. ii.) we see him _alone_ with the
body, and are therefore likely to witness his genuine feelings. And his
first words are, 'Safely stowed'!]
[Footnote 38: Not 'must cripple,' as the English translation has it.]
[Footnote 39: He says so to Horatio, whom he has no motive for deceiving
(V. ii. 218). His contrary statement (II. ii. 308) is made to
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.]
[Footnote 40: See Note B.]
[Footnote 41: The critics have laboured to find a cause, but it seems to
me Shakespeare simply meant to portray a pathological condition; and a
very touching picture he draws. Antonio's sadness, which he describes in
the opening lines of the play, would never drive him to suicide, but it
makes him indifferent to the issue of the trial, as all his speeches in
the trial-scene show.]
[Footnote 42: Of course 'your' does not mean Horatio's philosophy in
particular. 'Your' is used as the Gravedigger uses it when he says that
'your water is a sore decayer of your ... dead body.']
[Footnote 43: This aspect of the matter leaves _us_ comparatively
unaffected, but Shakespeare evidently means it to be of importance. The
Ghost speaks of it twice, and Hamlet thrice (once in his last furious
words to the King). If, as we must suppose, the marriage was universally
admitted to be incestuous, the corrupt acquiescence of the court and the
electors to the crown would naturally have a strong effect on Hamlet's
mind.]
[Footnote 44: It is most significant that the metaphor of this soliloquy
reappears in Hamlet's adjuration to his mother (III. iv. 150):
Repent what's past; avoid what is to come;
And do not spread the compost on the weeds
To make them ranker.]
[Footnote 45: If the reader will now look at the only speech of Hamlet's
that precedes the soliloquy, and is more than one line in length--the
speech beginning 'Seems, madam! nay, it _is_'--he will understand what,
surely, when first we come to it, sounds very strange and almost
boastful. It is not, in effect, about Hamlet himself at all; it is about
his mother (I do not mean that it is intentionally and consciously so;
and still less that she understood it so).]
[Footnote 46: See Note D.]
[Footnote 47: See p. 13.]
[Footnote 48: _E.g._ in the transition, referred to above, from
desire for vengeance into the wish never to have been born; in
the soliloquy, 'O what a rogue'; in the scene at Ophelia's grave.
The Schlegel-Coleridge theory does not account for the psychological
movement in these passages.]
[Footnote 49: Hamlet's violence at Ophelia's grave, though probably
intentionally exaggerated, is another example of this want of
self-control. The Queen's description of him (V. i. 307),
This is mere madness;
And thus awhile the fit will work on him;
Anon, as patient as the female dove,
When that her golden couplets are disclosed,
His silence will sit drooping.
may be true to life, though it is evidently prompted by anxiety to
excuse his violence on the ground of his insanity. On this passage see
further Note G.]
[Footnote 50: Throughout, I italicise to show the connection of ideas.]
[Footnote 51: Cf. _Measure for Measure_, IV. iv. 23, 'This deed
... makes me unpregnant and dull to all proceedings.']
[Footnote 52: III. ii. 196 ff., IV. vii. 111 ff.:
_e.g._,
Purpose is but the slave to _memory_,
Of violent birth but poor validity.]
[Footnote 53: So, before, he had said to him:
And duller should'st thou be than the fat weed
That roots itself in ease on Lethe wharf,
Would'st thou not stir in this.
On Hamlet's soliloquy after the Ghost's disappearance see Note D.]
LECTURE IV
HAMLET
The only way, if there is any way, in which a conception of Hamlet's
character could be proved true, would be to show that it, and it alone,
explains all the relevant facts presented by the text of the drama. To
attempt such a demonstration here would obviously be impossible, even if
I felt certain of the interpretation of all the facts. But I propose now
to follow rapidly the course of the action in so far as it specially
illustrates the character, reserving for separate consideration one
important but particularly doubtful point.
1
We left Hamlet, at the close of the First Act, when he had just received
his charge from the spirit of his father; and his condition was vividly
depicted in the fact that, within an hour of receiving this charge, he
had relapsed into that weariness of life or longing for death which is
the immediate cause of his later inaction. When next we meet him, at the
opening of the Second Act, a considerable time has elapsed, apparently
as much as two months.[54] The ambassadors sent to the King of Norway
(I. ii. 27) are just returning. Laertes, whom we saw leaving Elsinore
(I. iii.), has been in Paris long enough to be in want of fresh
supplies. Ophelia has obeyed her father's command (given in I. iii.),
and has refused to receive Hamlet's visits or letters. What has Hamlet
done? He has put on an 'antic disposition' and established a reputation
for lunacy, with the result that his mother has become deeply anxious
about him, and with the further result that the King, who was formerly
so entirely at ease regarding him that he wished him to stay on at
Court, is now extremely uneasy and very desirous to discover the cause
of his 'transformation.' Hence Rosencrantz and Guildenstern have been
sent for, to cheer him by their company and to worm his secret out of
him; and they are just about to arrive. Beyond exciting thus the
apprehensions of his enemy Hamlet has done absolutely nothing; and, as
we have seen, we must imagine him during this long period sunk for the
most part in 'bestial oblivion' or fruitless broodings, and falling
deeper and deeper into the slough of despond.
Now he takes a further step. He suddenly appears unannounced in