Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth
and the image of his past life rises before him, of all his joy in
thought and observation and the stores they have accumulated in his
memory. All that is done with for ever: nothing is to remain for him on
the 'table' but the command, 'remember me.' He swears it; 'yes, by
heaven!' That done, suddenly the repressed passion breaks out, and, most
characteristically, he thinks _first_ of his mother; then of his uncle,
the smooth-spoken scoundrel who has just been smiling on him and calling
him 'son.' And in bitter desperate irony he snatches his tables from his
breast (they are suggested to him by the phrases he has just used,
'table of my memory,' 'book and volume'). After all, he _will_ use them
once again; and, perhaps with a wild laugh, he writes with trembling
fingers his last observation: 'One may smile, and smile, and be a
villain.'
But that, I believe, is not merely a desperate jest. It springs from
that _fear of forgetting_. A time will come, he feels, when all this
appalling experience of the last half-hour will be incredible to him,
will seem a mere nightmare, will even, conceivably, quite vanish from
his mind. Let him have something in black and white that will bring it
back and _force_ him to remember and believe. What is there so unnatural
in this, if you substitute a note-book or diary for the 'tables'?[258]
But why should he write that particular note, and not rather his 'word,'
'Adieu, adieu! remember me'? I should answer, first, that a grotesque
jest at such a moment is thoroughly characteristic of Hamlet (see p.
151), and that the jocose 'So, uncle, there you are!' shows his state of
mind; and, secondly, that loathing of his uncle is vehement in his
thought at this moment. Possibly, too, he might remember that 'tables'
are stealable, and that if the appearance of the Ghost should be
reported, a mere observation on the smiling of villains could not betray
anything of his communication with the Ghost. What follows shows that
the instinct of secrecy is strong in him.
It seems likely, I may add, that Shakespeare here was influenced,
consciously or unconsciously, by recollection of a place in _Titus
Andronicus_ (IV. i.). In that horrible play Chiron and Demetrius, after
outraging Lavinia, cut out her tongue and cut off her hands, in order
that she may be unable to reveal the outrage. She reveals it, however,
by taking a staff in her mouth, guiding it with her arms, and writing in
the sand, 'Stuprum. Chiron. Demetrius.' Titus soon afterwards says:
I will go get a leaf of brass,
And with a gad of steel will write these words,
And lay it by. The angry northern wind
Will blow these sands, like Sibyl's leaves, abroad,
And where's your lesson then?
Perhaps in the old _Hamlet_, which may have been a play something like
_Titus Andronicus_, Hamlet at this point did write something of the
Ghost's message in his tables. In any case Shakespeare, whether he wrote
_Titus Andronicus_ or only revised an older play on the subject, might
well recall this incident, as he frequently reproduces other things in
that drama.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 258: The reader will observe that this suggestion of a
_further_ reason for his making the note may be rejected without the
rest of the interpretation being affected.]
NOTE E.
THE GHOST IN THE CELLARAGE.
It has been thought that the whole of the last part of I. v.,
from the entrance of Horatio and Marcellus, follows the old
play closely, and that Shakespeare is condescending to the
groundlings.
Here again, whether or no he took a suggestion from the old
play, I see no reason to think that he wrote down to his
public. So far as Hamlet's state of mind is concerned, there
is not a trace of this. Anyone who has a difficulty in
understanding it should read Coleridge's note. What appears
grotesque is the part taken by the Ghost, and Hamlet's
consequent removal from one part of the stage to another. But,
as to the former, should we feel anything grotesque in the
four injunctions 'Swear!' if it were not that they come from
under the stage--a fact which to an Elizabethan audience,
perfectly indifferent to what is absurdly called stage
illusion, was probably not in the least grotesque? And as to
the latter, if we knew the Ghost-lore of the time better than
we do, perhaps we should see nothing odd in Hamlet's insisting
on moving away and proposing the oath afresh when the Ghost
intervenes.
But, further, it is to be observed that he does not merely
propose the oath afresh. He first makes Horatio and Marcellus
swear never to make known what they have _seen_. Then, on
shifting his ground, he makes them swear never to speak of
what they have _heard_. Then, moving again, he makes them
swear that, if he should think fit to play the antic, they
will give no sign of knowing aught of him. The oath is now
complete; and, when the Ghost commands them to swear the last
time, Hamlet suddenly becomes perfectly serious and bids it
rest. [In Fletcher's _Woman's Prize_, V. iii., a passage
pointed out to me by Mr. C.J. Wilkinson, a man taking an oath
shifts his ground.]
NOTE F.
THE PLAYER'S SPEECH IN _HAMLET_.
There are two extreme views about this speech. According to
one, Shakespeare quoted it from some play, or composed it for
the occasion, simply and solely in order to ridicule, through
it, the bombastic style of dramatists contemporary with
himself or slightly older; just as he ridicules in _2 Henry
IV._ Tamburlaine's rant about the kings who draw his chariot,
or puts fragments of similar bombast into the mouth of Pistol.
According to Coleridge, on the other hand, this idea is 'below
criticism.' No sort of ridicule was intended. 'The lines, as
epic narrative, are superb.' It is true that the language is
'too poetical--the language of lyric vehemence and epic pomp,
and not of the drama'; but this is due to the fact that
Shakespeare had to distinguish the style of the speech from
that of his own dramatic dialogue.
In essentials I think that what Coleridge says[259] is true.
He goes too far, it seems to me, when he describes the
language of the speech as merely 'too poetical'; for with much
that is fine there is intermingled a good deal that, in epic
as in drama, must be called bombast. But I do not believe
Shakespeare meant it for bombast.
I will briefly put the arguments which point to this
conclusion. Warburton long ago stated some of them fully and
cogently, but he misinterpreted here and there, and some
arguments have to be added to his.
1. If the speech was meant to be ridiculous, it follows either
that Hamlet in praising it spoke ironically, or that
Shakespeare, in making Hamlet praise it sincerely, himself
wrote ironically. And both these consequences are almost
incredible.
Let us see what Hamlet says. He asks the player to recite 'a
passionate speech'; and, being requested to choose one, he
refers to a speech he once heard the player declaim. This
speech, he says, was never 'acted' or was acted only once; for
the play pleased not the million. But he, and others whose
opinion was of more importance than his, thought it an
excellent play, well constructed, and composed with equal
skill and temperance. One of these other judges commended it
because it contained neither piquant indecencies nor
affectations of phrase, but showed 'an honest method, as
wholesome as sweet, and by very much more handsome than
fine.'[260] In this play Hamlet 'chiefly loved' one speech;
and he asks for a part of it.
Let the reader now refer to the passage I have just
summarised; let him consider its tone and manner; and let him
ask himself if Hamlet can possibly be speaking ironically. I
am sure he will answer No. And then let him observe what
follows. The speech is declaimed. Polonius interrupting it
with an objection to its length, Hamlet snubs him, bids the
player proceed, and adds, 'He's for a jig or a tale of bawdry:
or he sleeps.' 'He,' that is, 'shares the taste of the million
for sallets in the lines to make the matter savoury, and is
wearied by an honest method.'[261] Polonius later interrupts
again, for he thinks the emotion of the player too absurd; but
Hamlet respects it; and afterwards, when he is alone (and
therefore can hardly be ironical), in contrasting this emotion
with his own insensibility, he betrays no consciousness that
there was anything unfitting in the speech that caused it.
So far I have chiefly followed Warburton, but there is an
important point which seems not to have been observed. All
Hamlet's praise of the speech is in the closest agreement with
his conduct and words elsewhere. His later advice to the
player (III. ii.) is on precisely the same lines. He is to
play to the judicious, not to the crowd, whose opinion is
worthless. He is to observe, like the author of Aeneas'
speech, the 'modesty' of nature. He must not tear a 'passion'
to tatters, to split the ears of the incompetent, but in the
very tempest of passion is to keep a temperance and
smoothness. The million, we gather from the first passage,
cares nothing for construction; and so, we learn in the second
passage, the barren spectators want to laugh at the clown
instead of attending to some necessary question of the play.
Hamlet's hatred of exaggeration is marked in both passages.
And so (as already pointed out, p. 133) in the play-scene,
when his own lines are going to be delivered, he impatiently
calls out to the actor to leave his damnable faces and begin;
and at the grave of Ophelia he is furious with what he thinks
the exaggeration of Laertes, burlesques his language, and
breaks off with the words,
Nay, an thou'lt mouth,
I'll rant as well as thou.
Now if Hamlet's praise of the Aeneas and Dido play and speech is
ironical, his later advice to the player must surely be ironical too:
and who will maintain that? And if in the one passage Hamlet is serious
but Shakespeare ironical, then in the other passage all those famous
remarks about drama and acting, which have been cherished as
Shakespeare's by all the world, express the opposite of Shakespeare's
opinion: and who will maintain that? And if Hamlet and Shakespeare are
both serious--and nothing else is credible--then, to Hamlet and
Shakespeare, the speeches of Laertes and Hamlet at Ophelia's grave are
rant, but the speech of Aeneas to Dido is not rant. Is it not evident
that he meant it for an exalted narrative speech of 'passion,' in a
style which, though he may not have adopted it, he still approved and
despised the million for not approving,--a speech to be delivered with
temperance or modesty, but not too tamely neither? Is he not aiming here
to do precisely what Marlowe aimed to do when he proposed to lead the
audience
From jigging veins of rhyming mother-wits,
And such conceits as clownage keeps in pay,
to 'stately' themes which beget 'high astounding terms'? And is it
strange that, like Marlowe in _Tamburlaine_, he adopted a style marred
in places by that which _we_ think bombast, but which the author meant
to be more 'handsome than fine'?
2. If this is so, we can easily understand how it comes about that the