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

A. C. Bradley

coming. He asks what players they are, and is told, 'Even those you were wont to take such delight in, the tragedians of the city.' He asks, 'Do they hold the same estimation they did when I was in the city?' Evidently he has not been in the city for some time. And this is still more evident when the players come in, and he talks of one having grown a beard, and another having perhaps cracked his voice, since they last met. What then is this city, where he has not been for some time, but where (it would appear) Rosencrantz and Guildenstern live? It is not in Denmark ('Comest thou to beard me in Denmark?'). It would seem to be Wittenberg.[253] All these passages, it should be observed, are consistent with one another. And the conclusion they point to is that Hamlet has left the University for some years and has been living at Court. This again is consistent with his being thirty years of age, and with his being mentioned as a soldier and a courtier as well as a scholar (III. i. 159). And it is inconsistent, I believe, with nothing in the play, unless with the mention of his 'going back to school in Wittenberg.' But it is not really inconsistent with that. The idea may quite well be that Hamlet, feeling it impossible to continue at Court after his mother's marriage and Claudius' accession, thinks of the University where, years ago, he was so happy, and contemplates a return to it. If this were Shakespeare's meaning he might easily fail to notice that the expression 'going back to school in Wittenberg' would naturally suggest that Hamlet had only just left 'school.' I do not see how to account for these passages except on this hypothesis. But it in its turn involves a certain difficulty. Horatio, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern seem to be of about the same age as Hamlet. How then do _they_ come to be at Wittenberg? I had thought that this question might be answered in the following way. If 'the city' is Wittenberg, Shakespeare would regard it as a place like London, and we might suppose that Horatio, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were living there, though they had ceased to be students. But this can hardly be true of Horatio, who, when he (to spare Hamlet's feelings) talks of being 'a truant,' must mean a truant from his University. The only solution I can suggest is that, in the story or play which Shakespeare used, Hamlet and the others were all at the time of the murder young students at Wittenberg, and that when he determined to make them older men (or to make Hamlet, at any rate, older), he did not take trouble enough to carry this idea through all the necessary detail, and so left some inconsistencies. But in any case the difficulty in the view which I suggest seems to me not nearly so great as those which the usual view has to meet.[254] FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 251: These three words are evidently addressed to Bernardo.] [Footnote 252: Cf. Antonio in his melancholy (_Merchant of Venice_, I. i. 6), And such a want-wit sadness makes of me That I have much ado to know myself.] [Footnote 253: In _Der Bestrafte Brudermord_ it _is_ Wittenberg. Hamlet says to the actors: 'Were you not, a few years ago, at the University of Wittenberg? I think I saw you act there': Furness's _Variorum_, ii. 129. But it is very doubtful whether this play is anything but an adaptation and enlargement of _Hamlet_ as it existed in the stage represented by Q1.] [Footnote 254: It is perhaps worth while to note that in _Der Bestrafte Brudermord_ Hamlet is said to have been 'in Germany' at the time of his father's murder.] NOTE C. HAMLET'S AGE. The chief arguments on this question may be found in Furness's _Variorum Hamlet_, vol. i., pp. 391 ff. I will merely explain my position briefly. Even if the general impression I received from the play were that Hamlet was a youth of eighteen or twenty, I should feel quite unable to set it against the evidence of the statements in V. i. which show him to be exactly thirty, unless these statements seemed to be casual. But they have to my mind, on the contrary, the appearance of being expressly inserted in order to fix Hamlet's age; and the fact that they differ decidedly from the statements in Q1 confirms that idea. So does the fact that the Player King speaks of having been married thirty years (III. ii. 165), where again the number differs from that in Q1. If V. i. did not contain those decisive statements, I believe my impression as to Hamlet's age would be uncertain. His being several times called 'young' would not influence me much (nor at all when he is called 'young' simply to distinguish him from his father, _as he is in the very passage which shows him to be thirty_). But I think we naturally take him to be about as old as Laertes, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and take them to be less than thirty. Further, the language used by Laertes and Polonius to Ophelia in I. iii. would certainly, by itself, lead one to imagine Hamlet as a good deal less than thirty; and the impression it makes is not, to me, altogether effaced by the fact that Henry V. at his accession is said to be in 'the very May-morn of his youth,'--an expression which corresponds closely with those used by Laertes to Ophelia. In some passages, again, there is an air of boyish petulance. On the other side, however, we should have to set (1) the maturity of Hamlet's thought; (2) his manner, on the whole, to other men and to his mother, which, I think, is far from suggesting the idea of a mere youth; (3) such a passage as his words to Horatio at III. ii. 59 ff., which imply that both he and Horatio have seen a good deal of life (this passage has in Q1 nothing corresponding to the most significant lines). I have shown in Note B that it is very unsafe to argue to Hamlet's youth from the words about his going back to Wittenberg. On the whole I agree with Prof. Dowden that, apart from the statements in V. i., one would naturally take Hamlet to be a man of about five and twenty. It has been suggested that in the old play Hamlet was a mere lad; that Shakespeare, when he began to work on it,[255] had not determined to make Hamlet older; that, as he went on, he did so determine; and that this is the reason why the earlier part of the play makes (if it does so) a different impression from the later. I see nothing very improbable in this idea, but I must point out that it is a mistake to appeal in support of it to the passage in V. i. as found in Q1; for that passage does not in the least show that the author (if correctly reported) imagined Hamlet as a lad. I set out the statements in Q2 and Q1. Q2 says: (1) The grave-digger came to his business on the day when old Hamlet defeated Fortinbras: (2) On that day young Hamlet was born: (3) The grave-digger has, at the time of speaking, been sexton for thirty years: (4) Yorick's skull has been in the earth twenty-three years: (5) Yorick used to carry young Hamlet on his back. This is all explicit and connected, and yields the result that Hamlet is now thirty. Q1 says: (1) Yorick's skull has been in the ground a dozen years: (2) It has been in the ground ever since old Hamlet overcame Fortinbras: (3) Yorick used to carry young Hamlet on his back. From this nothing whatever follows as to Hamlet's age, except that he is more than twelve![256] Evidently the writer (if correctly reported) has no intention of telling us how old Hamlet is. That he did not imagine him as very young appears from his making him say that he has noted 'this seven year' (in Q2 'three years') that the toe of the peasant comes near the heel of the courtier. The fact that the Player-King in Q1 speaks of having been married forty years shows that here too the writer has not any reference to Hamlet's age in his mind.[257] FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 255: Of course we do not know that he did work on it.] [Footnote 256: I find that I have been anticipated in this remark by H. Tuerck (_Jahrbuch_ for 1900, p. 267 ff.)] [Footnote 257: I do not know if it has been observed that in the opening of the Player-King's speech, as given in Q2 and the Folio (it is quite different in Q1), there seems to be a reminiscence of Greene's _Alphonsus King of Arragon_, Act IV., lines 33 ff. (Dyce's _Greene and Peele_, p. 239): Thrice ten times Phoebus with his golden beams Hath compassed the circle of the sky, Thrice ten times Ceres hath her workmen hir'd, And fill'd her barns with fruitful crops of corn, Since first in priesthood I did lead my life.] NOTE D. 'MY TABLES--MEET IT IS I SET IT DOWN.' This passage has occasioned much difficulty, and to many readers seems even absurd. And it has been suggested that it, with much that immediately follows it, was adopted by Shakespeare, with very little change, from the old play. It is surely in the highest degree improbable that, at such a critical point, when he had to show the first effect on Hamlet of the disclosures made by the Ghost, Shakespeare would write slackly or be content with anything that did not satisfy his own imagination. But it is not surprising that we should find some difficulty in following his imagination at such a point. Let us look at the whole speech. The Ghost leaves Hamlet with the words, 'Adieu, adieu! Hamlet, remember me'; and he breaks out: O all you host of heaven! O earth! what else? And shall I couple hell? O, fie! Hold, hold, my heart; And you, my sinews, grow not instant old, But bear me stiffly up. Remember thee! Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat In this distracted globe. Remember thee! Yea, from the table of my memory I'll wipe away all trivial fond records, All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past, That youth and observation copied there; And thy commandment all alone shall live Within the book and volume of my brain, Unmix'd with baser matter: yes, by heaven! O most pernicious woman! O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain! My tables--meet it is I set it down, That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain; At least I'm sure it may be so in Denmark: [_Writing_ So, uncle, there you are. Now to my word; It is 'Adieu, adieu! remember me.' I have sworn 't. The man who speaks thus was, we must remember, already well-nigh overwhelmed with sorrow and disgust when the Ghost appeared to him. He has now suffered a tremendous shock. He has learned that his mother was not merely what he supposed but an adulteress, and that his father was murdered by her paramour. This knowledge too has come to him in such a way as, quite apart from the _matter_ of the communication, might make any human reason totter. And, finally, a terrible charge has been laid upon him. Is it strange, then, that he should say what is strange? Why, there would be nothing to wonder at if his mind collapsed on the spot. Now it is just this that he himself fears. In the midst of the first tremendous outburst, he checks himself suddenly with the exclamation 'O, fie!' (cf. the precisely similar use of this interjection, II. ii. 617). He must not let himself feel: he has to live. He must not let his heart break in pieces ('hold' means 'hold together'), his muscles turn into those of a trembling old man, his brain dissolve--as they threaten in an instant to do. For, if they do, how can he--_remember_? He goes on reiterating this 'remember' (the 'word' of the Ghost). He is, literally, afraid that he will _forget_--that his mind will lose the message entrusted to it. Instinctively, then, he feels that, if he _is_ to remember, he must wipe from his memory everything it already contains;