Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth
Here, thou incestuous, murderous, damn'd Dane,
Drink off this potion. Is thy union here?
Follow my mother.
The 'union' was the pearl which Claudius professed to throw into the
cup, and in place of which (as Hamlet supposes) he dropped poison in.
But the 'union' is also that incestuous marriage which must not be
broken by his remaining alive now that his partner is dead. What rage
there is in the words, and what a strange lightning of the mind!
Much of Hamlet's play with words and ideas is imaginatively humorous.
That of Richard II. is fanciful, but rarely, if ever, humorous. Antony
has touches of humour, and Richard III. has more; but Hamlet, we may
safely assert, is the only one of the tragic heroes who can be called a
humorist, his humour being first cousin to that speculative tendency
which keeps his mental world in perpetual movement. Some of his quips
are, of course, poor enough, and many are not distinctive. Those of his
retorts which strike one as perfectly individual do so, I think, chiefly
because they suddenly reveal the misery and bitterness below the
surface; as when, to Rosencrantz's message from his mother, 'She desires
to speak with you in her closet, ere you go to bed,' he answers, 'We
shall obey, were she ten times our mother'; or as when he replies to
Polonius's invitation, 'Will you walk out of the air, my lord?' with
words that suddenly turn one cold, 'Into my grave.' Otherwise, what we
justly call Hamlet's characteristic humour is not his exclusive
property, but appears in passages spoken by persons as different as
Mercutio, Falstaff and Rosalind. The truth probably is that it was the
kind of humour most natural to Shakespeare himself, and that here, as in
some other traits of the poet's greatest creation, we come into close
contact with Shakespeare the man.
3
The actor who plays the part of Hamlet must make up his mind as to the
interpretation of every word and deed of the character. Even if at some
point he feels no certainty as to which of two interpretations is right,
he must still choose one or the other. The mere critic is not obliged to
do this. Where he remains in doubt he may say so, and, if the matter is
of importance, he ought to say so.
This is the position in which I find myself in regard to Hamlet's love
for Ophelia. I am unable to arrive at a conviction as to the meaning of
some of his words and deeds, and I question whether from the mere text
of the play a sure interpretation of them can be drawn. For this reason
I have reserved the subject for separate treatment, and have, so far as
possible, kept it out of the general discussion of Hamlet's character.
On two points no reasonable doubt can, I think, be felt. (1) Hamlet was
at one time sincerely and ardently in love with Ophelia. For she herself
says that he had importuned her with love in honourable fashion, and had
given countenance to his speech with almost all the holy vows of heaven
(I. iii. 110 f.). (2) When, at Ophelia's grave, he declared,
I loved Ophelia; forty thousand brothers
Could not, with all their quantity of love,
Make up my sum,
he must have spoken sincerely; and, further, we may take it for granted
that he used the past tense, 'loved,' merely because Ophelia was dead,
and not to imply that he had once loved her but no longer did so.
So much being assumed, we come to what is doubtful, and I will begin by
stating what is probably the most popular view. According to this view,
Hamlet's love for Ophelia never changed. On the revelation made by the
Ghost, however, he felt that he must put aside all thoughts of it; and
it also seemed to him necessary to convince Ophelia, as well as others,
that he was insane, and so to destroy her hopes of any happy issue to
their love. This was the purpose of his appearance in her chamber,
though he was probably influenced also by a longing to see her and bid
her a silent farewell, and possibly by a faint hope that he might safely
entrust his secret to her. If he entertained any such hope his study of
her face dispelled it; and thereafter, as in the Nunnery-scene (III. i.)
and again at the play-scene, he not only feigned madness, but, to
convince her that he had quite lost his love for her, he also addressed
her in bitter and insulting language. In all this he was acting a part
intensely painful to himself; the very violence of his language in the
Nunnery-scene arose from this pain; and so the actor should make him
show, in that scene, occasional signs of a tenderness which with all his
efforts he cannot wholly conceal. Finally, over her grave the truth
bursts from him in the declaration quoted just now, though it is still
impossible for him to explain to others why he who loved her so
profoundly was forced to wring her heart.
Now this theory, if the view of Hamlet's character which I have taken is
anywhere near the truth, is certainly wrong at one point, viz., in so
far as it supposes that Hamlet's bitterness to Ophelia was a _mere_
pretence forced on him by his design of feigning to be insane; and I
proceed to call attention to certain facts and considerations, of which
the theory seems to take no account.
1. How is it that in his first soliloquy Hamlet makes no reference
whatever to Ophelia?
2. How is it that in his second soliloquy, on the departure of the
Ghost, he again says nothing about her? When the lover is feeling that
he must make a complete break with his past, why does it not occur to
him at once that he must give up his hopes of happiness in love?
3. Hamlet does not, as the popular theory supposes, break with Ophelia
directly after the Ghost appears to him; on the contrary, he tries to
see her and sends letters to her (II. i. 109). What really happens is
that Ophelia suddenly repels his visits and letters. Now, _we_ know that
she is simply obeying her father's order; but how would her action
appear to Hamlet, already sick at heart because of his mother's
frailty,[71] and now finding that, the moment fortune has turned against
him, the woman who had welcomed his love turns against him too? Even if
he divined (as his insults to Polonius suggest) that her father was
concerned in this change, would he not still, in that morbid condition
of mind, certainly suspect her of being less simple than she had
appeared to him?[72] Even if he remained free from _this_ suspicion, and
merely thought her deplorably weak, would he not probably feel anger
against _her_, an anger like that of the hero of _Locksley Hall_ against
his Amy?
4. When Hamlet made his way into Ophelia's room, why did he go in the
garb, the conventionally recognised garb, of the distracted _lover_? If
it was necessary to convince Ophelia of his insanity, how was it
necessary to convince her that disappointment in _love_ was the cause of
his insanity? His _main_ object in the visit appears to have been to
convince _others_, through her, that his insanity was not due to any
mysterious unknown cause, but to this disappointment, and so to allay
the suspicions of the King. But if his feeling for her had been simply
that of love, however unhappy, and had not been in any degree that of
suspicion or resentment, would he have adopted a plan which must involve
her in so much suffering?[73]
5. In what way are Hamlet's insults to Ophelia at the play-scene
necessary either to his purpose of convincing her of his insanity or to
his purpose of revenge? And, even if he did regard them as somehow means
to these ends, is it conceivable that he would have uttered them, if his
feeling for her were one of hopeless but unmingled love?
6. How is it that neither when he kills Polonius, nor afterwards, does
he appear to reflect that he has killed Ophelia's father, or what the
effect on Ophelia is likely to be?
7. We have seen that there is no reference to Ophelia in the soliloquies
of the First Act. Neither is there the faintest allusion to her in any
one of the soliloquies of the subsequent Acts, unless possibly in the
words (III. i. 72) 'the pangs of despised love.'[74] If the popular
theory is true, is not this an astounding fact?
8. Considering this fact, is there no significance in the further fact
(which, by itself, would present no difficulty) that in speaking to
Horatio Hamlet never alludes to Ophelia, and that at his death he says
nothing of her?
9. If the popular theory is true, how is it that neither in the
Nunnery-scene nor at the play-scene does Shakespeare insert anything to
make the truth plain? Four words like Othello's 'O hardness to
dissemble' would have sufficed.
These considerations, coupled with others as to Hamlet's state of mind,
seem to point to two conclusions. They suggest, first, that Hamlet's
love, though never lost, was, after Ophelia's apparent rejection of him,
mingled with suspicion and resentment, and that his treatment of her was
due in part to this cause. And I find it impossible to resist this
conclusion. But the question how much of his harshness is meant to be
real, and how much assumed, seems to me impossible in some places to
answer. For example, his behaviour at the play-scene seems to me to show
an intention to hurt and insult; but in the Nunnery-scene (which cannot
be discussed briefly) he is evidently acting a part and suffering
acutely, while at the same time his invective, however exaggerated,
seems to spring from real feelings; and what is pretence, and what
sincerity, appears to me an insoluble problem. Something depends here on
the further question whether or no Hamlet suspects or detects the
presence of listeners; but, in the absence of an authentic stage
tradition, this question too seems to be unanswerable.
But something further seems to follow from the considerations adduced.
Hamlet's love, they seem to show, was not only mingled with bitterness,
it was also, like all his healthy feelings, weakened and deadened by his
melancholy.[75] It was far from being extinguished; probably it was
_one_ of the causes which drove him to force his way to Ophelia;
whenever he saw Ophelia, it awoke and, the circumstances being what they
were, tormented him. But it was not an absorbing passion; it did not
habitually occupy his thoughts; and when he declared that it was such a
love as forty thousand brothers could not equal, he spoke sincerely
indeed but not truly. What he said was true, if I may put it thus, of
the inner healthy self which doubtless in time would have fully
reasserted itself; but it was only partly true of the Hamlet whom we see
in the play. And the morbid influence of his melancholy on his love is
the cause of those strange facts, that he never alludes to her in his
soliloquies, and that he appears not to realise how the death of her
father must affect her.
The facts seem almost to force this idea on us. That it is less
'romantic' than the popular view is no argument against it. And
psychologically it is quite sound, for a frequent symptom of such
melancholy as Hamlet's is a more or less complete paralysis, or even
perversion, of the emotion of love. And yet, while feeling no doubt that
up to a certain point it is true, I confess I am not satisfied that the
explanation of Hamlet's silence regarding Ophelia lies in it. And the
reason of this uncertainty is that scarcely any spectators or readers of
_Hamlet_ notice this silence at all; that I never noticed it myself till
I began to try to solve the problem of Hamlet's relation to Ophelia; and
that even now, when I read the play through without pausing to consider
particular questions, it scarcely strikes me. Now Shakespeare wrote
primarily for the theatre and not for students, and therefore great
weight should be attached to the immediate impressions made by his
works. And so it seems at least possible that the explanation of