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Hamlet
A NEW VARIORUM EDITION
or
Shakespeare
EDITED BV
HORACE HOWARD FURNESS, Ph.D., LLD.
MONOKAIIT MBMan OF THE ' UEt.'TSC HE SH ANK&rEARS-CKSKl.LSCHAinr '
OF WKIMAK
Hamlet
VOL. II
APPENDIX
{FOURTEENTH EDITION]
PHILADELPHIA J.
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
LONIMJN: 5 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT (;AR1>KN
f,^
s^W
Co[)yri^ht, 1877, by J. B. LiriM\(<> 1 1 Company.
Copyright, 1905, by Hokack Howard Furnkss.
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W«brc:<)Tr & Thomson, I.ii'HNCOir'> I'kkss
F-hctrLlyf-frs. I'Inl'i I'^n/a
APPENDIX
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGB
Actors' Interpretations . . . . 245
Baumgart 392
Benedix 35*
Betterton 247
Bibliography 397
Blackwood's Magazine . . . . 203
Bodenstedt 338
Boerne 289
Booth, Edwin 255
Boswell 197
Browne, C. Elliott 241
Bucknill 208
Campbell, Thomas . . 157, 161, 196
Chasles, Philarfite 382
Chateaubriand 381
Clergyman 375
Clodius 280
Coleridge 1 52, 1 54
Coleridge, Hartley 197
Conolly -. ..211
Costume . . 261
Courdaveaux 386
Date and the Text 5
Davies 247
Devrient, Eduard and Otto . , 346
Doering . . 320
Dowden 187
Drake 196
Duration of Action 243
Eckardt 301
Editions Collated, List of . . . . 394
Elze 335.378
English Comedians in Germany .. 114
Farren 199
Fechter 253
Ferriar 195
Flathe SM
Forrest, Edwin 255
Fratricide Punished . . . . I2X
Freiligrath 37^
French, George Russell . . . . 238
Friesen, von 31$* 33^
Gans 291
Garrick . . . . 245, 247, 248, 269
Garrick's Version 244
Garve 275
Gentleman, Francis 247
Gerth S40, 312
Gervinus . . 299
Goethe . . 272
Grimm, Hermann 371
Hackett 251
Halford . . . . « . . . 20X
Hallam 164
Hanmer 143
Hazlitt 155
Hebler 318
Henderson 248
Herder 276
Hermes 289
Hoffinann 299
Horn, Franz 281
Hudson . . . . 170, 177, 226
Hughs, The accurate Mr John . . 35
Hugo, Francois- Victor . . . . 390
Hugo, Victor 384
Hunter . . . . . . . . 165
Hystorie of Hamblet . , . . 91
Insanity, Real or Feigned . . . . 195
Irving, Henry 258
Jameson, Mrs 160
Johnson, Dr 145
3
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGS
Karpf Zl(i
Kean, Edmund 251
Kemble, John Philip
Kellogg
Kenny . . .
Klein
Knight
Koenig
Kreyssig . . .
248
216
176
296
204
350
302
Latham 227
Lessing 267
Lewes, George Henry . . . . 230
Lewes, Mrs 176
Lichtenberg 269
Lloyd 207
Lowell 221
Ludwig . . 344
Mackenzie 14S
Macready 251, 255
Maginn 162, 202
March 186
Marquard . . 292
Maudsley . . . . . • . . 231
Meadows 225
M6zi6res 3^3
Minto 184
Moberly
Montagu, Mrs
Mozley
Names and Characters
No-Philosopher
OechelhaUser
Oehlmann .
Onimus .
179
146
174
236
329
340
332
233
rAGB
Quarto, The undated . . . . 34
Quartos, The Players' . . . . 35
Rapp . . . . 294
Ray 204
Richardson 149
Ritson . . 148
Roetscher 294
Rohrbach 304
Plumptre 236
Pries 288
Quarterly Review . .
Quarto of 1603 [earliest entry]
Quarto of 1603 [Reprint] . .
Quarto of 1604 . . . .
Quarto of 1605 . . . .
Quarto of 1611 .. ••
Ross . .
Rumelin
Ruskin
219
324
241
I&7, 201
12
.. 37
.. 13
.. 33
.. 34
Schipper 313 .
Schlegel 279
Schmidt, Julian 347
Shaftesbury, Anthony, Earl of . . . 143
Sievers . . . . . . . . 321
Snider 182
Steams 223
Stedefeld 343
Steevens 147
Storffrich 303
Strachey 172
Struve, fon 39>
Taine 3^6
Tieck 284
Tschischwitz 331
Tyler 228
Ulrici 292
Vehse lox
Very, Jones 164
Vischer 309
Voltaire 381
Was the Queen an Accessory ? . . 265
Weiss 190
Werder 354
Werner . . . . . . . . 342
White 221
Wiseman, Cardinal 218
375
Woelffel
Young
Ziegler
Zimmennann
251
278
34«
APPENDIX
THE DATE, AND THE TEXT
THK year in which Shakespeare first wrote Hamlet has given rise to much dis-
cussion.
From fourteen to sixteen years before the date of the first edition that has come
down to us of this tragedy, allusions to a Play apparently bearing the same title, and
containing the same plot, are to be found in contemporary literature.
The question that still divides the Shakespearian world is, stated broadly, whether
or not this older drama be one of Shakespeare's earliest works.
The earliest allusion to it was pointed out by Dr Farmer, in his Eaay on the
Learning of Shakespeare (ed. ii, p. 8$). The allusion is contained in an Epistle
• To the Gentlemen Students of both Universities,' written by Nash, and prefixed to
Greene's Menaphon, or Arcadia, printed in 1589. Nash, referring to the makers of
plays of that day, says : He tume backe to my first text, of studies of delight, and
talke a little in friendship with a few of our triviall translators. It is a common
practice now a dales amongst a sort of shifting companions, that runne through every
arte and thrive by none to leave the trade of Noverint whereto they were borne, and
busie themselves with the indevours of art, that could scarcelie latinize their necke-
verse if they should have neede ; yet English Seneca read by candle-light yeeldes
manie good sentences, as Blould is a btgger, and so foorth : and if you intreate him
faire in a frostie morning, he will afibord you whole Hamlets, I should say Hand-
fulls of tragical speaches* But O grief! Temptis edax rerum ; — what is it that
will last always ? The sea exhaled by drops will in continuance be drie ; and Seneca,
let bloud line by line, and page by page, at length must needs die to our stage.'
Malone ( Variorum, 1S21, vol. ii, p. 372), after quoting this passage, continues:
Not having seen the first edition of this tract till a few years ago, I formerly doubted
whether the foregoing passage referred to the tragedy of Hamlet; but the word
Hamlets being printed in the original copy in a different character from the rest, I
have no longer any doubt upon the subject. It is manifest from this passage that
some play on the story of Hamlet had been exhibited before the year 1589; but I
am inclined to think that it was not Shakespeare's drama, but an elder performance,
on which, with the aid of the old prose Hystorie of Haniblet, his tragedy was formed.
The great number of pieces which we knov} he formed on the performances of pre-
ceding writers, renders it highly probable that some others also of his dramas were
* Thus far in this extract t have followed Staunton ; the rest is as Malone quotes it. Ed.
5
6 APPENDIX
constructed on plays that are now lost. Perhaps the original Hamlet was written by
Thomas Kyd; who was the author of one play (and probably of more) to which no
name is affixed. The only tragedy to which Kyd's name is affixed ( Cornelia) is ft
professed translation from the French of Gamier, who, as well as his translator,
imitated Seneca. In Kyd's Spanish Tragedy, as in Shakespeare's Hamlet, there is,
if I may say so, a play represented within a play ; if the old play oi Hamlet should
ever be recovered, a similar interlude, I make no doubt, would be found there ; and
somewhat of the same contrivance may be traced in the old Taming of a Shrew, a
comedy which perhaps had the same author as the other ancient pieces now enume-
rated. Nash seems to point at some dramatic writer of that time who had originally
been a scrivener or attorney, and instead of transcribing deeds and pleadings, had
chosen to imitate Seneca's plays, of which a translation had been published many
years before. Shakespeare, however freely he may I^ive borrowed from Plutarch or
Holinshed, does not appear to be at all indebted to Seneca ; and therefore I do not
believe that he was the person in Nash's contemplation,' Malone was inclined to
believe at first that the person alluded to as having left the trade of Noverint (that
is, of attorney, from the Latin formula with which deeds began : Noverint Universi,
and of which our Know all men is a translation) could not have been Shakespeare ;
but afterwards, on a review of the numerous legal terms and phrases used by Shake-
speare, he changed his opinion, and suspected that Shakespeare ' was early initiated
in at least the forms of law ; and was employed, while at Stratford, in the office of
some country attorney who was at the same time a petty conveyancer, and perhaps
also the Seneschal of some manor-court.'
In reference to the date of this Epistle of Nash's, Dyce in his edition of Greene's
Works (vol. i, p. ciii), after citing the title of Menaphon. Camillas alarum to slum-
bering Euphues, in his melancholie Cell at Silexedra.'SiC, Sec, 1589, 4to, adds:
' First printed 1 587,' but gives no authority in the way of title or imprint. This date of
1587 has been followed, on Dyce's authority, by Collier and one or two others, but
Knight thinks it is a mistake, and Dyce himself seems to have had a misgiving on
the subject, for in his second edition of Shakespeare he gives the date of Greene's
Menaphon as 1589 with ' [qy if first printed in 1587?] ' after it The surer date,
therefore, is 1589. This date is of importance; it makes Shakespeare twenty-five
years old, instead of twenty-three, when Nash thus alluded to him, — no small gain
for those who maintain that this older Hamlet was written by him.
C. A. Brown {Shakespeare's Autobiographical Poems, p. 254) maintains emphat-
ically that Shakespeare's tragedy was referred to in the phrase ' whole Hamlets of
tragical speaches.' and that Shakespeare himself was alluded to as having left the
trade of Noverint ; and further, that his reason for assigning 1589 as the date of the
composition of Hamlet is ' founded solely on this passage from Nash. It is to be
understood as regarding its original state before the alterations and enlargements had
taken place.' . . . ' If there exists a description of that elder play, I do not hesi-
tate in saying it is Shakespeare's and no other's, provided the Ghost appears in it.
According to the old black-letier Quarto, whence the tragedy is derived, the killing
of the Prince's father was public ; consequently, no Ghost was employed to reveal
it to the son. Now the change from an open slaying, with some show of cause, to a
secret murder, involving the necessity of the Ghost's appearance to seek revenge, is
BO important, so wonderful an invention for the dramatic effect of the story, that I
cannot imagine it belonged to any but Shakespeare. Should I be mistaken in this
opinion, still I appeal to Nash's authority, published in 1589, that Shakespeare's
THE DATE, AND THE TEXT 7
HamUt had been played : the word in Italics, " Hamlets^^ proving thai Hamlet was
then on the stage, and that it had been written by a " Noverint," or lawyer's clerk ;
while the examples which I have given of Shakespeare's law-phrases, and which
might be multiplied tenfold at least, if sought in all his works, prove that such must
have been the employment of his early days.'
Knight agrees with Brown, and sees nothing, on the score of Shakespeare's
youth, * extravagant in his [Brown's] belief,' adding : • Let it be remembered that
in that very year [1589], when Shakespeare was twenty-five, it has been distinctly
proved by Collier that he was a sharer in the Blackfriars theatre with others, and
some of note, below him in the list of sharers.'
In reference to this Epistle of Nash's, Staunton says : * Here the " shifting com-
panions, that runne through every arte," brings so distinctly to mind the epithet "an
absolute Johannes Factotum" which Nash's sworn brother, Greene, in his Groats-
worth of Wit, &c., 1593, applied to Shakespeare; and "the trade of Noverint" so
well tallies with the received tradition of his having passed some time in the office
of an attorney, that, primd facie, the allusion to HamUt would seem directly levelled
at our author's tragedy. But then interposes a difficulty on the score of dates.
Shakespeare, in 1589, was only twenty-three [jiV] years old, — too young, it may be
well objected, to have earned the distinction of being satirized by Nash as having
"run through every art." It is asserted, too, on good authority that an edition
of the Menaphon was published in 1 587, and if that earlier copy contained Nash's
Epistle, the probability of his referring to Shakespeare is considerably weakened.'
Just as Malone's edition of 1790 was issuing from the press, there was found at
Dulwjch Q>llege a large Folio MS volume, containing valuable information respect-
ing theatrical affairs from the year 1591 to 1609. The volume is in the handwriting
of Philip Henslowe, a proprietor, or joint lessee, of more than one theatre during
that period, and contains, among others, his accounts of receipts and expenditures
in connection with his theatrical management. Malone reprinted copious extracts
from this MS in the first volume of his edition ; but it was reprinted entire by the
'Shakespeare Society' in 1845, with a valuable Preface by Collier, from which the
following extracts are given, which, although not strictly germane to the First Quarto
of Hamlet, contain much important aid in estimating the value of the theories re-
specting it. But, first, a few words as to the Diary itself: * Henslowe,' says Collier,
* was an ignorant man, even for the time in which he lived, and for the station he oc-
cupied ; he wrote a bad hand, adopted any orthography that suited his notions of the
sound of words, especially of proper names (necessarily of most frequent occurrence),
and he kept his book, as respects dates in particular, in the most disorderly, negligent,
and confused manner. Sometimes, indeed, he observes a sort of system in his entries ;
but often, when he wished to make a note, he seems to have opened his book at
random, and to have written what he wanted in any space he found vacant. He
generally used his own pen, but, as we have stated, in some places the hand of a
scribe or clerk is visible; and here and there the dramatists and actors themselves
wrote the item in which they were concerned, for the sake, perhaps, of saving the
old manager trouble ; thus, in various parts of the manuscript, we meet with the
handwriting, not merely the signatures, of Drayton, Chapman, Dekker, Chettle,
Porter, Wilson, Hathaway, Day, S. Rowley, Haughton, Rankins, and Wadeson ;
but, although frequently mentioned, we have no specimen of the handwriting of
Nash, Ben Jonson, Middleton, Webster, Marston, or Heywood.' Where the names
S APPENDIX
of nearly all dramatic poets of the age are to be frequently found, we might certainly
count on finding that of Shakespeare, but the shadow within which Shakespeare's
earthly life was spent envelops him here, too, and ' his name,* as Collier says, ' is
not met with in any part of the manuscript.' 'At various times and for uncertain
periods, Henslowe was more or less interested in the receipts obtained by players
acting under the names of the Queen, Lord Nottingham, Lord Strange, Lord Sussex,
Lord Worcester, and the Lord Chamberlain. The latter was the company of which
Shakespeare was a member, either as actor or author, from his first arrival in, until
his final retirement from, London ; which company, after the accession of James I.
was allowed to assume the distinguishing title of 7'Ae Kin^s Players.^
So much for the general character of this interesting volume ; the portion of the
contents that is most important is the period which it covers from 3 June, 1594, to
18 July, 1596; during the whole of this time the Lord AdmiraVs Players were
jointly occupying, or possibly playing in combination at, the theatre at Newington
Butts with the Lord Chamberlain^ s Players ; * and here we find by Henslowe that
no fewer than forty new plays were got up and acted. For about ten days of the
two years the companies ceased to perform, on account, perhaps, of the heat of the
weather, and the occurrence of Lent ; so that two years are the utmost upon which a
calculation can be made, and the result of it is, that the audiences of that day re-
quired a new play upon an average about every eighteen days, including Sundays.
The rapidity with which plays must then have been written is most remarkable, and
is testified beyond dispute by later portions of Henslowe's manuscript, where, among
other charges, he registers the sums paid, the dates of payment, and the authors who
received the money. Nothing was more common than for dramatists to unite their
abilities and resources, and when a piece on any account was to be brought out with
peculiar dispatch, three, four, five, and perhaps even six poets engaged themselves
on different portions of it. Evidence of this dramatic combination will be found
of such frequent occurrence that it is vain here to point out particular pages where
it is to be met with.' The union of the two companies of players just referred to
lasted a little more than two years. Possibly it may have been merely a joint occu-
pation of the same theatre while the Globe was building, but at any rale it is singular
that while it lasted, whatever may have been its character, ' most of the old plays
which our great dramatist is supposed, more or less, to have employed, and of the
stories of which he availed himself, are found in Henslowe's list of this period.
Here we find a Titus Andronicus, a Lear, a Havilet, a Henry V, and a Henry VI,
a Buckingham, the old Taming of a Shrew, and several others. For aught we
know, Shakespeare may have had originally some share in their authorship, or if he
had not, as he probably acted in them, he may have felt himself authorised, as a
member of the company, to use them to the extent that answered his purpose
No fact is more clearly made out, and very much by the evidence Henslowe fur-
nishes, than that it was a very common practice for our early dramatists to avail
themselves of the materials, whether of plot, character, or language, supplied by
their immediate predecessors, and even by their actual contemporaries.'
Five lines before the entry in Henslowe's diary there is this memorandum : • In
the name of God Amen, beginninge at Newington, my Lord Admeralle and my
Lorde chamberlen men, as folowelh. 1594.' (It is to be borne in mind that Shake-
speare was one of the ' Lorde chamberlen men' at this date.')
The entry itself is as follows :
Q of June 1594, Rd at hamlet . . « • viij«
THE DATE, AND THE TEXT 9
In a note Malone says : « In the Essay on the Order of Shakespeare s Plays, I
have stated my opinion [quoted above], that there was a play on the subject of
Hamlet prior to our author's, and here we have a full confirmation of that conjec-
ture. It cannot be supposed that our poet's play should have been performed but
once in the time of this account, and that Hcnslowe should have drawn from such
a piece but the sum of eight shillings, when his share in several other plays came to
three and sometimes four pounds. It is clear that not one of our author's plays was
played at Newington Butts ; if one had been performed, we should certainly have
found more.*
Collier's note (p. 35, ed. Sh. Soc!) is as follows: 'Malone contends, we think
correctly, that this was the old Hamlet, and not Shakespeare's play. [If this be
the case], our great dramatist might adopt the story, and feel that he had a better
right to do so, because the old play had been acted by his friends and fellows, or
perhaps with their assistance.'
Among other peculiarities of Henslowe's diary is the custom which he adopted
of marking each new play with the abbreviation ne. The above entry has no such
mark; it is therefore to be inferred that it was not a first performance.
The next trace that we find of the old tragedy is in Lodge's Wits miserie, which
also was discovered by Dr Farmer {^Essay, &c., p. 75, second edition, 1767), who,
however, supposed that the allusion by Lodge referred to Shakespeare's own play,
and not to any older tragedy. Aubrey having said that Shakespeare ' did act exceed-
ingly well^ Farmer denies that we have any reason to suppose so, because ' Rowe
tells us from the information of Betterton, who was inquisitive into this point, and
had very early opportunities of inquiry from Sir W. Davenant, that he was no extra-
ordinary actor, and that the top of his performance was the Ghost in his own
Hamlet. Yet this chef d^ceuvre did not please ; I will give you an original stroke
at it. Dr Lodge, who was for ever pestering the town with pamphlets, published in
the year 1596, Wits miserie, and the Worlds madnesse, discovering the Devils incar-
nat of this Age. One of these Devils is Hate- Virtue, or Sorrow for another mans
good Success, who, says the Doctor, is " <j foule lubber, and looks as pale as the
visard of j"* ghost, which cried so miserally [jiV] at y* theator, like an oisterwife,
Hamlet reuenge." '
This phrase, ' Hamlet, revenge !* made a deep impression on the popular mind,
and is referred to more than once before the present Hamlet appeared and obliterated
the memory of it.
DVCE (^Preliminary Note to Hamlet, p. lOo) : My own conviction is ... . that
the piece alluded to by Nash and Lodge, and acted at Newington, was an earlier
tragedy on the same subject, which no longer exists, and which probably (like many
other old dramas) never reached the press.
Staxjnton remarks : ' After duly weighing the evidence on either side, we incline
%o agree with Dyce, that the play alluded to by Lodge and Nash was an earlier pro-
duction on the same subject; though we find no cause to conclude that the first
sketch of Shakespeare's Hamlet, as published in 1603, was not the piece to which
Henslowe refers in his entry, connected with the performance at Newington Butts.'
In the Variorum of 1773, Steevens says: 'I have hitherto met with no earliei
edition of this play [Hamlet'] than the one in the year 1605 [1604, — Var. 1778], tho*
it must have been performed before that time, as I have seen a copy of Speght's
lO APPENDIX
edition of Chaucer, which fonnerly belonged to Di Gabriel Harvey (the antagonist
of Nash), who, in his own handwriting, has set down the play as a performance
with which he was well acquainted, in the year 1598. His words are these: "The
younger sort take much delight in Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis, but his Lucrea
and his tragedy of Hamlet Prince of Denmarke, have it in them to please the wiser
sort, 1598."'
In consequence of this note of Steevens, Malone was induced to believe that
Shakespeare's Hamlet was first published in 1596, but afterwards, in the Variorum
of 1821 (ii, 369), he has the following note : ' In a former edition of this Essay,
I was induced to suppose that Hamlet must have been written prior to 1598, from
the loose manner in which Mr Steevens has mentioned a manuscript note by Ga-
briel Harvey, in a copy, which had belonged to him, of Speght's Chaucer, in which,
we are told, he has set down Hamlet as a performance with which he was well ac-
quainted in 159S. But I have been favored by the Bishop of Dromore [Dr Percy],
the possessor of the book referred to, with an inspection of it, and, on an attentive
examination, I have found reason to believe that the note in question may have been
written in the latter end of the year 1600. Harvey doubtless purchased this volume
in 1598, having, both at the beginning and end of it, written his name. But it by no
means follows that all the intermediate remarks which are scattered throughout were
put down at the same time. He speaks of translated Tasso in one passage ; and
the first edition of Fairfax, which is doubtless alluded to, appeared in 1600.'
Wherefore, and in consequence of the allusion to the ' inhibition ' of the players
spoken of in Hamlet, II, ii, 320, Malone supposed Hamlet to have appeared first in.
1600
According to Singer {^Preliminary Remarks to Hamlet, p. 152, 1826), the trans-
lated Tasso, referred to by Malone, need not necessarily have been Fairfax's trans>
lation of 1600, but Harvey may have alluded to the version of the first five books
of the Jerusalem, published by R, C[arew] in 1594. Singer therefore 'safely
places the date of the first composition of Hamlet at least as early as 1597.'
Knight : Not a tittle of distinct evidence exists to show that there was any other
play of Hamlet but that of Shakspere; and all the collateral evidence upon
which it is inferred that an earlier play of Hamlet than Shakspere's did exist may,
on the other hand, be taken to prove that Shakspere's original sketch of Hamlet
was in repute at an earlier period than is commonly assigned to its date In
Henslowe's diary, the very next entry is ' at the taminge of a shrewe;' and Malone,
in a note, adds : ' the play which preceded Shakespeare's.' When Malone wrote
this note he believed that Shakspere's Taming of the Shreiv was a late production;
but in the second edition of his * Chronological Order ' he is persuaded that it was
one of his very early productions. ' There is nothing,' says Knight in conclusion,
' to prove that both these plays thus acted were not Shakspere's.'
Malone, in his edition of 1790, finds another reference to this old tragedy in
Jonson's The Case is Altered, which was written before the end of 1599. It is as
follows : ' But first I'll play the ghost ; I'll call him out.' The allusion is so very
doubtful that Malone did not refer to it in his subsequent editions. As Gifford says,
we might as well find an allusion in ' the ghost of every play that has appeared since
the days of Thespis.'
The last allusion to this old tragedy that we find before the publication of the
First Quarto in 1603 is given by Capell {Notes, iii, 232), and bears witness to the
THE DATE, AND THE TEXT II
distinguishing phrase before quoted : * Asinuts. Wod I were hang'd if I can call
yon any names bat Captaine and Tucca. Tucca. No. Fye'st ; my name's Hamlet
reuenge : thou hast been at Parris garden, hast not?' — Dekker's Saiiro-mastix, 1602.
This allusion by Dekker may be compared, says Haluwell, with another pas-
sage, in Westward Hoe, 1607, — ' I, but when light wives make heavy husbands,
let these husbands play mad Hamlet ; and crie revenge? So likewise in R6w-
lands's The Night Raven, 1618, — ' I will not cry Hamlet Reuenge my greeues. But
I will call Hang-man Reuenge on theeues ' [p. 27, ed. Hunterian Club, where the
date of the first edition is given as 1620]. Halliwell adds: There is also reason
to suppose that another passage in the old tragedy of Hamlet is alluded to in
Armin's Nest of Ninnies, 1608, — 'ther are, as Hamlet saies, things cald whips in
store ' [p. 55, ed Sh. Soc. But may not this refer to the ' whips and scorns of time '
in the later Hamlet?].
DOUCK (ii, 265) : In a poem, written by Anthony Scoloker, a jwinter, entitled
Daiphantus, or The passions of love, &c., 1604, there are the following allusions to
Hamlet : * — or to come home to the vulgars Element, like Friendly Shakespeare's
Tragedies, where the Commedian rides, where the Tragedian stands on Tip-toe :
Faith it should please all, like Prince Hamlet. But in sadnesse, then it were to be
feared he would mnne mad.'
'CdUt flayers /ooiet, the foole he judgeth wisest.
Will learnt them eution, out of Chaucer's Pander. ....
Puts off bis doathes, his shirt he only weares.
Much like mad-HamUt; thus his passion teares.'
In Eastward Hoe, by Chapman, Jonson, and Marston, 1605, says Steevejjs, there
is a fling at the hero of this tragedy. A footman named Hamlet enters, and a
tankard-bearer asks him : * 'Sfoote, Hamlet, are you mad ?' Malonx says there was
no satire intended. Eastward Hoe was acted at Shakespeare's own play-house (the
Blackfriars), by the * children of the revels.'
Steevens also cites from Dekker's Bel-maiis Night-walkes, 1612: — 'But if any
mad Hamlet, hearing this, smell villainie, and rush in by violence,* &c.
Dr Latham ( Two Dissertations on Hamlet, &c. London, 1872, p. 87) says that
we 'know the date' of this older Hamlet to be 1589, but gives no proofs for his
assertion, and in the next sentence weakens our faith in his figures by stating that
Shakespeare was then in his twenty-third year. We are still more puzzled by
finding on page 91 a reference to the Hamlet of 1598. Under either date, I believe,
Dr T.atham denies that this older Hamlet, referred to by Nash, Lodge, and others,
was written by Shakespeare, but maintains that ' it is wholly or partially preserved *
in the text of the Bestrafte Brudermord. See Note prefixed to a translation of this
old German drama in this volume.
The foregoing are all the allusions, I believe, to a play of Hamlet which many
critics believe preceded Shakespeare's tragedy. Some of these allusions that occur
after 1602 probably refer to Shakespeare's tragedy, but I have given them all be-
cause they are mentioned by one or another of the editors, and because it is proper
that in an edition for students, like this, every item of evidence should be set
forth.
"We now come to something more definitely connected with Shakespeare than
an3rthing thus far.
Steevens discovered the following entry in the Stationers' Registers :
12 APPENDIX
[1602] xxvj to Julij
James Robertes Entred for his Copie vnder the handes of master Pacfeild and
master waterson warden A booke called ' i/i^ Revenge of
HAMLETT Prince {ofl Denmarke' as yt was latelie Acted
by the Lord Chamberleyne his servantes vj'*
^ * (I have exactly followed the transcript of the entry as given by Arber.) Whether
or not the book, thus licensed, was printed in this year we cannot tell ; no copy of it
has survived. That it was Shakespeare's tragedy we can have but little doubt, since
it was acted by the company to which he belonged. In the following spring, in 1603,
• The Lord Chamberlain's Servants' became ' The King's Players,' and the Quarto pub-
lished in that year states that it had been acted • by his Highness' servants.' « Thus we
see,' says Collier, 'that in July, 1602, there was an intention to print and publish a
play called Ttie Revenge of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke, and this intention, we may
fairly conclude, arose out of the popularity of the piece, as it was then acted by " the
Lord Chamberlain's Servants," who, in May following, obtained the title of " the
King's Players." The object of Roberts, in making the entry, was to secure it to
himself, being, no doubt, aware that other printers and booksellers would endeavor
to anticipate him. It seems probable that he was unable to obtain such a copy of
Hamlet as he would put his name to ; but some inferior and nameless-printer, who
was not so scrupulous, having surreptitiously secured a manuscript of the play, how-
ever imperfect, which would answer the purpose, and gratify public curiosity, the
edition bearing date 1603 was published.'
This edition of 1603 is reprinted in this volume; reference to the title-page will
show that although it is there stated to have been printed ' at London ' ' for N. L.
[?'. e. Nicholas Ling] and John Trundell,' no printer's name is mentioned. Hence
Collier's inference that the ' nameless printer ' was some unscrupulous rival of
James Robertes. But Dyce says {Introduction to Hamlet, p, lOO, 1866), ' we have no
proof that Roberts was not the " nameless printer" of the Quarto of 1603 ; on the con-
trary, there is reason to suspect that he was, since we find that he printed the next Quarto
of 1604 for the same Nicholas Ling, who was one of the publishers of the Quarto
of 1603.' The title-page of the Quarto published in 1604 states that it was printed
by J.[ames] R.[obertes] for N.[icholas] L.[ing] ; wherefore Dyce's inference is
probably correct that James Roberts was also ' the printer of the Quarto of 1603,
or what we now call the First Quarto.' Collier, in his second edition, in support
of his conjecture that Robertes did not print Q,, calls attention to the fact that Q,
' has Ling's device on the title-page, and that it was possibly from his types ; the
edition of 1604 was printed for, not by, him;' be that as it may, it is a matter of
very small moment, and one thing is certain: that the edition, by whomsoever
printed, reflects but little credit on the printer; it gives a very inadequate idea of
the tragedy as it was acted, if not at the very time, certainly within a few months
afterwards. Possibly, if Roberts was the printer, this consciousness withheld his
name from the title-page of a publication whose chief object appears to have been to
forestall the market until something better could be furnished.
It will be noticed, by referring to the Reprint p. 37, that on the title-page of
the Quarto of 1603 it is stated that it had been acted ' in the two Vniuersities of
Cambridge and Oxford.' * No evidence,' says Clarendon, • has yet been discov*
ered of the occasion on which the play was acted at the two universities ; but if wo
might hazard a conjecture, it seems not improbable tha't it might have been at some
THE DATE, AND THE TEXT 13
entertainment in honor of the king's accession, and it may have been selected as
being connected with the native country of his queen.'
Of this edition of 1603 only two copies have survived, and both are imper-
fect ; one lacks the title-page, and the other the last leaf. The Quarto of 1604 was
the earliest copy known down to 1823, when a copy of the Quarto of 1603 was
found by Sir Henry Bunbury, who gives the following account of it in his Corri'
spondence of Sir TTiomas ffanmer, London, 1838, p. 80: — '[The only copy of the
First Quarto] known to be in existence, was found by me in a closet at Barton, 1823.
This curiosity (for a great curiosity it is, independently of its being an unique copy)
is now in the possession of the Duke of Devonshire ; it probably was picked up by
my grandfather, Sir William Bunbury, who was an ardent collector of old dramas.
For the satisfaction of bibliographers, I take this opportunity of recording the par-
ticulars of the little volume, which contained this Hamlet of 1603. It was a small
quarto, barbarously cropped, and very ill-bound ; its contents were as follows :—
Merchant of Venice, 1600, complete; Merry Wives of IVindsor, 1602, do.; Muck
Ado about Nothing, 1600, do.; Midsummer Nighfs Dream, 1600, do.; Troilus
and Cressida (wanting the title-page) ; Romeo and Juliet, 1 599, complete; Hamlet,
1603 (wanting the last page); Second Part of Henry the Fourth, 1600, complete;
First Part of do., 1598, do. ; Henry the Fifth, 1602, do. ; Richard the Third, 1602.
do.; Two Noble Kinsmen, 1 634, with MS corrections of the text I exchanged the
volume with Messrs Payne and Foss, for books to the value of ;^l8o, and they sold
it for ;^230 to the Duke of Devonshire.'
See also The Athen<tum, 18 Oct. 1856, for a fuller account of this volume.
There was a reprint of this copy made by Payne and Foss in 1825, which is said
to be exceedingly accurate. It was lithographed in facsimile in 1858, under the
supervision of Collier, at the expense of the Duke of Devonshire'. It was again
reprinted in i860 under the supervision of S. Timmins, esq., with the Quarto of
1604 printed on opposite pages, — a highly valuable edition. It takes its place also
among the lithographic reprints by E. W. Ashbee, under the supervision of Halli-
WELL, and it is from this edition that the present reprint, in this volume, is made. It
is also reprinted with extreme accuracy in the Cambridge Edition-
The Cambridge Editors state (I think without sufScient authority) that this copy
« belonged to Sir Thomas Hanmer, though he does not appear to have mentioned it
in his notes to Shakespeare, or in his correspondence, and its existence was not
known till his library came into the possession of Sir E. H. [«V] Bunbury in 1821.'
Sir H. E. Bunbury, as we have seen, believed that its original owner was his grand-
father, who was the nephew of Sir Thomas Hanmer.
In 1856 the second copy, lacking the title-page, was bought from a student of
Trinity College, Dublin, by a Dublin book-dealer, for one shilling, and sold by him
for £,^o^, it was afterwards bought by Mr Halliwell for /^I20, and is now in the
British Museum.
The next year after the First Quarto was issued the Second Quarto was published,
with the following title-page :
THE I TragicaU Hiftorie of ] HAMLET, | Prince of Denmarke. \ By William
Shakefpeare. | Newly imprinted and enlai^ed to almoft as much | againe as it
was, according to the true and perfect | Coppie. | AT LONDON, | Printed by
I. R. for N. L. and are to be fold at his | fhoppe vnder Saint Dunftons Church
in I Fleetflreet. 1604.
14 APPENDIX
Lowndes mentions an edition of 1604 as 'printed by J. R. for N. Landure,' but
this is probably a mistake, which is repeated, however, in Halliwell's Shakespeariana.
It has found its way into several editions, — Knight's, for instance, as well as Elze's
and Francois- Victor Hugo's. Elze called attention to it in The Atkenceum, 1 1 Feb.
i860, and gave as his authority Halliwell's Shakespeariana. Halliwell replied
in the same Journal, 25 Feb. i860: 'I fear I have fallen into a blunder respect-
ing the name of the publisher of the Hamlet of 1604. The initials are all that are
given in the imprint, but Xhejisk in the printer's device over the letters N. L. would
seem clearly to show that Ling, not Landure, was the publisher.'
The statement that this edition is ' enlarged to almost as much again as it was ' is
correct enough for a bookseller's announcement, — there are about five hundred and
sixty-seven lines lacking to make it exactly as much again. The First Quarto num-
bers two thousand one hundred and forty-three lines; the Second Quarto about three
thousand seven hundred and nineteen.
This notable difference in quantity, coupled with a marked difference in words,
phrases, and even in the order of the Scenes, together with a change in the names of
some of the characters, has given rise to an interesting discussion, which probably
will never be decided: it is whether, in the Quarto of 1603, we have the first draught
of Shakespeare's tragedy, which the author afterwards remodelled and elaborated
until it appears as we now have it substantially, in the Quarto of 1604, or is the First
Quarto merely a maimed and distorted version ' of the true and perfect coppie ' ?
Collier was, I think, the first to maintain, from a careful comparison of the two,
that the copy of 1 603 was printed from manuscript taken down in short-hand from
the players' mouths. Singer in his earlier edition in 1826, and in his later in 1856,
suggests that it may have been * printed from an imperfect manuscript of the prompt
books, or the play-house copy, or stolen from the author's papers. It is next to im-
possible that it can have been taken down during the representation The
variations .... are too numerous and striking to admit of a doubt of the play
having been subsequently revised, amplified, and altered by the poet.'
Caldecott {Preface to Hamlet, 1832, p. vi) : [This First Quarto exhibits] in that
which was afterwards wrought into a splendid drama, the first conception, and com-
paratively feeble expression of a great mind.
The next and the chlefest advocate of this view is KNIGHT, and his arguments are
here given almost in full; his extracts from Q^ are omitted, and references to the
lines of the Reprint in this edition are substituted. His remarks are to be found in
the Introductory Notice to Hamlet in his edition of Shakespeare's Plays, p. 87 ; no
difference has been observed between his first and last editions, twenty-four years
apart.
In the reprint of the edition of 1603 [by Payne and Foss, 1825], it is stated to
be the 'only known copy of this tragedy as originally written by Shakespeare,
which he afterwards altered and enlarged.' We believe that this description is
correct ; that this remarkable copy gives us the play as originally written by Shake-
speare. It may have been piratical, and we think it was so. It may, as Mr Collier
Bays, have been ' published in haste from a short-hand copy taken from the mouths
of the players.' But this process was not applied to the present Hamlet; the
Hamlet of 1603 is a sketch of the perfect Hamlet, and probably a corrupt copy of
that sketch. We agree with Caldecott, and we think, further, that this first con-
ception was an early concejilion; that it was remodelled, — 'enlarged to almost
as much againe as it was,' — at the beginning of the seventeenth century; and that
THE DATE, AND THE TEXT 1 5
this original copy being then of comparatively little valne was piratically pub*
lished. .... The highest interest of this edition consists, as we believe, in the
opportunity which it affords of studying the growth, not only of the great poet's
command over language, — not only of his dramatic skill, — but of the higher quali-
ties of his intellect, — his profound philosophy, his wonderful penetration into what
is most hidden and obscure in men's characters and motives. We request the
reader's indulgence whilst we attempt to point out some of the more important con-
siderations which have suggested themselves to us, in a careful study of this
original edition.
And, first, let us state that all the action of the amended Hamlet is to be found in
the first sketch. The play opens with the Scene in which the Ghost appears to
Horatio and Marcellus. The order of the dialogue is the same ; but, in the Quarto
of 1604, it is a little elaborated. The grand passage beginning : ' In the most high
and palmy state of Rome,' is not found in this copy ; and it is omitted in the Folio.
The Second Scene introduces us, as at present, to the King, Queen, Hamlet, Polo-
nius, and Laertes, but in this copy Polonius is called Corambis. Tlie dialogue here
is much extended in the perfect copy. We will give an example. [Compare lines
173-179 of Q, with I, ii, 77-86.]
We would ask if it is possible that such a careful working up of the first idea
could have been any other work than that of the poet himself? Can the alterations
be accounted for upon the principle that the first edition was an imperfect copy of
the complete play, ' published in haste from a short-hand copy taken from the mouths
of the players ? Could the players have transformed the line, • But I have that
within which passeth show,' into ' Him have I lost, I must of force forego.' The
baste of short-hand does not account for what is truly the refinement of the poetical
art. The same nice elaboration is to be found in Hamlet's soliloquy in the same
scene. In the first copy we have not the passage so characteristic of Hamlet's
mind : ' How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this
world.' Neither have we the noble comparison of • Hyperion to a satyr.' The fine
Shaksperian phrase, so deep in its metaphysical truth, ' a beast that wants discourse
of reason,' is in the fiirst copy, * a beast devoid of reason.' Shakspere must have
dropt verse from his mouth, as the fairy in the Arabian tales dropt pearls. It appears
to have been no effort to him to have changed the whole arrangement of a poetical
sentence, and to have inverted its different members ; he did this as readily as if he
were dealing with prose. In the first copy we have, * as if increase Of appetite had
grown by what it look'd on.' In the amended copy we have, 'by what it fed on.'
Such changes are not the work of short-hand writers.
The interview of Horatio, Bernardo, and Marcellus with Hamlet succeeds as in
the perfect copy, and the change here is very slight. The scene between Laertes
and Ophelia in the same manner follows. Here again there is a great extension.
The injunction of Laertes in the first copy is contained in these few lines. [See
lines 331-339 of Q,.]
Compare this with the splendid passage which we now have. Look especially at
the four lines beginning, ' For nature, crescent,' &c. [I, iii, 11-14], in which we see
the deep philosophic spirit of the mature Shakspere. Polonius and his few precepts
next occur ; and here again there is a slight difference. The lecture of the old
courtier to his daughter is somewhat extended
The character of Hamlet is fully conceived in the original play, whenever he is
in action, as in this scene £where Hamlet encounters the GhostJ. It is the contem-
1 6 APPENDIX
plative part of his nature which is elaborated in the perfect copy. This great scene,
as it was first written, appeared to the poet to have been scarcely capable of improve*
ment.
The character of PoloniuS, under the name of Corambis, presents itself in the
original copy with little variation. We have extension, but not change. As we
proceed we find that Shakspere, in the first copy, more emphatically marked the
supposed madness of Hamlet than he thought fit to do in the amended copy. Thus
Ophelia does not, as now, say, — ' Alas, my lord, my lord, I have been so affrighted,'
tout she comes at once to proclaim Hamlet mad. [See lines 664-672 of Q^.]
Again, in the next scene, when the King communicates his wishes to Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern, he does not speak of Hamlet as merely put • from the understand-
ing of himself;' but in this first copy he says, — ♦ Our dear cousin Hamlet Hath lost
the very heart of all his sense.' In the description which Polonius, in the same
scene, gives of Hamlet's madness for Ophelia's love, the symptoms are made much
stronger in the original copy. [See Q,, lines 788-7921.]
It is curious that, in Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, we have the stages of
melancholy, madness, and frenzy indicated as described by Celsus; and Burton
himself mentions frenzy as the worst stage of madness, • clamorous, continual.' In
the first copy, therefore, Hamlet, according to the description of Polonius, is not
only the prey of melancholy and madness, but by ' continuance' of frenzy. In the
amended copy the symptoms, according to the same description, are much milder,—
a sadness — a fast — a watch — a weakness — a lightness, — and a madness. The reason
of this change appears to us tolerably clear. Shakspere did not, either in his first
sketch or his amended copy, intend his audience to believe that Hamlet was essen-
tially mad ; and he removed, therefore, the strong expressions which might encourage
that belief.
Immediately after the scene of the original copy in which Polonius describes
Hamlet's frenzy, Hamlet comes in and speaks the celebrated soliloquy. In the
amended copy this passage, as well as the scene with Ophelia which follows it, is
placed after Hamlet's interview with the Players. The soliloquy in the first copy is
evidently given with great corruptions, and some of the lines appear transposed by
the printer ; on the contrary, the scene with Ophelia is very slightly altered. The
scene with Polonius, now the Second Scene of the Second Act, follows that with
Ophelia in the first copy. In the interview with Guildenstern and Rosencrantz the
dialogue is greatly elaborated in the amended copy ; we have the mere germ of the
fine passage, ' This goodly frame,' &c. — prose with almost more than the music of
poetry. In the first copy, instead of this noble piece of rhetoric, we have the some-
what tame passage : — ' Yes, faith, this great world you see contents me not; no, nor
the spangled heavens, nor earth, nor sea ; no, nor man, that is so glorious a creature,
contents not me ; no, nor woman too, though you laugh.' ....
[Page 90.] Our readers, we think, will be pleased to compare the following pas-
sage of the first copy and the amended play, which offers us an example of the most
surpassing skill in the elaboration of a first idea. [Compare Q,, lines 1222-1231,
with III, ii, 49-69.]
Schlegel observes that ' Shakspere has composed " the play " in Hamlet altogether
In sententious rhymes, full of antitheses.' See the opening speech of the Player
King [III, ii, 145-150]. Here is not only the antithesis, but the artificial elevation,
that wxs to keep the language of the Interlude apart from that of the real drama.
Shakspere has most skilfully managed the whole business of the Player King and
")
THE DATE, AND THE TEXT 17
Queen upon this principle; bat, as we think, when he wrote his first copy, his
power as an artist was not so consummate. In that copy the first lines of the Player
King are singiilarly flowing and musical ; and their sacrifice shows us how inexora-
ble was his judgement [See Q , lines 1 274-1279.]
The soliloquy of the King in the Third Act is greatly elaborated from the first
copy ; and so is the scene between Hamlet and his mother. In the Play, as we now
have it, Shakspere has left it doubtful whether the Queen was privy to the murder
of her husband ; but in this scene, in the first copy, she says, — • But, as I have a soul,
I swear by heaven, I never knew of this most horrid murder.' And Hamlet, upon
this declaration, says, — * And, mother, but assist me in revenge. And in his death
your infamy shall die.' The Queen, upon this, protests — ' I will conceal, consent,
and do my best. What stratagem soe'er thou shall devise.' In the amended copy the
Queen merely says, — * Be thou assured if words be made of breath, And breath of
life, I have no life to breathe What thou hast said to me.'. . . .
The madness of Ophelia is beautifully elaborated in the amended copy, but all
her snatches of songs are the same in both editions. What she sings, however, in the
First Scene of the original copy is with great art transposed to the Second Scene of
the amended one. The pathos of — ♦ And will he not come again?' is doubled, as it
now stands, by the presence of Laertes.
We are now arrived at a scene in the Quarto of 1603 altogether different firom
anything we find in the amended copy. It is a short scene between Horatio and the
Queen, in which Horatio relates Hamlet's return to DeimMjk, and describes the
treason which the King had plotted against him, as well as the mode by which he
had evaded it by the sacrifice of Rosencrantz and Guildenstem. The Queen, with
reference to the • subtle treason that the King had plotted,' says: 'Then I per-
ceive there's treason in his looks,' &c [See Q,, lines 1 75^-1 759-]
This is decisive as to Shakspere's original intentions with regard to the Queen,
but the suppression of the scene in the amended copy is another instance of his ad-
mirable judgement. She does not redeem her guilt by entering into plots against
her guilty husband ; and it is far more characteristic of the irregular impulses of
Hamlet's mind, and of his subjection to circumstances, that he should have no con-
fidences with his mother, and form with her and Horatio no plans of revenge. The
story of Rosencrantz and Guildenstem is told in six lines. [See Q,, 1773-1778.]
The expansion of this simple passage into the exquisite narrative of Hamlet to Ho-
ratio of the same circuimstances presents, to our minds, a most remarkable example
of the difference between the mature and the youthful intellect.
The scene of the Grave-digger, in the original copy, has all the great points of the
present scene. The frenzy of Hamlet at the grave is also the same. Who but the
poet himself could have worked up this line — ' Anon, as mild and gentle as a dove,'
into — ' Anon, as patient as the female dove. When that her golden couplets are dis-
closed, His silence will sit drooping.'? The scene with Osric is greatly expanded in
the amended copy. The catastrophe appears to be the same ; but the last leaf of the
copy of 1603 is wanting \sic in Knight's last edition]. ....
We must express our decided opinion, grounded upon an attentive comparison of
the original sketch with the perfect play, that the original sketch was an early pro-
duction of our poet. The copy of 1603 is no doubt piratical; it is unquestionably
very imperfectly printed. But if the passage about the * inhibition ' of the players
fixes the date of the perfect play as 1600, which we believe it does, the essential dif-
ferences between the sketch and the perfect play,^-differences which do not depend
Vol. II.-<i
l8 APPENDIX
opon the corruption of a text, — can only be accounted for upon the belief that there
was a considerable interval between the productions of the first and second copy,
in which the author's power and judgement had become mature, and his peculiar
habits of philosophical thought had been completely established. This is a matter
•which does not admit of proof within our limited space, but the passages which
we have already given from the original copy do something to prove it
In proof that Romeo and Juliet is one of Shakspere's early plays, Hallam points
out the ' want of that thoughtful philosophy which, when once it had germinated in
Shakspere's mind, never ceased to display itself.' The Hamlet of 1604 is full of
this • thoughtfuU philosophy.' But the original sketch, as given in Q,, exhibits few
traces of it in the form of didactic observations. Note the following passages which
arc not there found : 'For nature crescent,' &c., I, iii, II ; 'This heavy-headed
revel,* &c., I, iv, 17; 'There is nothing, either good or bad, but thinking makes it
so,' &c., II, ii, 244; 'I could be bounded in a nutshell,* &c., II, ii, 249; 'Bring
me to the test,' &c.. Ill, iv, 142; *I see a cherub,* &c., IV, iii, 47; ' Nature is fine
in love,* &c., IV, v, 157; 'There's a divinity,* &c., V, ii, 10. Further, the plays
which belong to the beginning of the seventeenth century, as Hallam points out,
indicate a censuring of mankind. If, then, this quality be not found in the original
sketch of Hamlet, we may refer that sketch to an earlier period. It is remarkable
that in this sketch the misanthropy, if so it may be called, of Hamlet can scarcely
be traced ; his feelings have altogether reference to his personal griefs and doubts.
The first Hamlet was, we think, written when this • bitter remembrance,' whatever
it was, had no place in his heart. Note the following passages, which indicate these
morbid feelings, which are wanting in Q, : • How weary, flat, stale, and unprofitable,'
&c., I, ii, 133 ; ' Denmark's a prison,' &c., II, ii, 239 ; ' I have of late .... lost all
my mirth,' &c., II, ii, 288. The soliloquy, 'To be, or not to be,* &c,, where the
outpourings of a wounded spirit are generalized in the Q,, III, i, 56; ' Absent thee
from felicity awhile,' &c., V, ii, 334, 335. These examples are sufficient, we think,
to show that we have internal evidence that the original sketch and the augmented
and perfect copy of Hamlet were written under different influences and habits of
thought.
[The argument against the early composition of Hamlet, derived from the nega-
tive testimony of Francis Meres, who in 1598 mentioned twelve plays of Shake-
speare's, among which Hamlet is not named. Knight ( Chronology of Shakespeare* s
Plays) opposes by contending that Meres's list is not to be supposed to be complete.
• The expression which Meres uses, " for comedy witness" implies that he selects
particular examples of excellence.']
Thus far Knight. No one, I think, can deny that his remarks are shrewd and
forcible.
A writer in The Edinbihigh Review (April, 1845, vol. Ixxxi, p. 378) maintains
the same views, as follows :
The reason of the thing has long made it be admitted as probable that Shake-
speare's activity as an original dramatist must have commenced much sooner than
the dales commonly assigned to the oldest of his works in the received copies
In these circumstances we find that a play named Hamlet, and described by marks
•ending to establish (though not decisively establishing) its identity with a play of
Shakespeare's is mentioned as existing in 1587, or the poet's twenty-fifth year [jjV] ;
and that similar notices occur in 1594 and 1596. We are thus entitled to assume it
as probable that Hamlet did exist, in one shape or another, from the oldest of those
THE DATE, AND THE TEXT 1 9
dates. If any of us still have difficulty in believing that this drama, as we possess
it in its complete form, — the most deeply contemplative of all its author's works,—
could have come into being as an efiusion of his earliest manhood, there is now at
hand the hypothesis, — rendered plausible by what we know in regard to other works
of his, — that, as first composed, Hamlet may have been not inconsiderably unlike
what it is in the shape best known to us. So far we are entitled to proceed without
knowing that any edition exists which throws more light on the question.
When we open the Quarto of 1603, the conjectures previously formed become
certainties. Though we had otherwise no reason to suspect that Hamlet had existed
in a different shape before its publication in 1604, we should at once perceive that it
had done so; and that the edition of 1603, notwithstanding the imperfections and
blunders which make it perhaps the very worst of all the badly printed plays of the
time, does yet present no unsatisfactory representation of the state and peculiarities
of the work in its earlier form. Afterwards, taking again into account the external
circumstances, we find them to square, as exactly as could be expected, with the
internal evidence afforded by a comparison of the editions. In short, we have no
difficulty in believing that Q, gives us, although with provoking imperfections and
corruptions, a form of the work older by a good many years than that in which we
have been accustomed to study it, — a form exhibiting such dissimilarities from the later
one, as indicate not obscurely the progress of the poet's mind, from the unripe fervor
of early manhood to the calmer and more philosophic inspiration of perfect maturity.
[Page 380.] In other words, the older Play evolves but partially either of the ele-
ments of the Prince's contemplative character, — the philosophic and the poetic, — those
deep and fine touches of a moody and cheerless yet noble philosophy, — those daz-
zling flashes of imaginative light which make all that is around them blaze up with
reflected splendor. But it wants more of the philosophy than of the poetry. Al-
though the story, as Knight has appositely observed, does really, when we reflect
upon its accumulation of revolting and bloody incidents, present 4n aspect which
throws it back into the school of Titus Andronictu ; although it is one which, per-
haps, Shakespeare would not in later years have selected, in its full mass of horror
at least, as a fit subject for genuine tragedy; yet, even in the earliest form in which
we possess the drama, we perceive the theme to have been idealized by the high
working of a great poetic mind. Thus, in the First Act, which puts in representa-
tion the most imaginative features of the idea, there is not in the most prominent
parts a material difference between the two editions. The mighty conception had
arisen in the young poet's imagination with full and ripe distinctness; and that rich
strength of words and of illustrative images, that bright array of lights and shades
caught from external nature and reflected back upon the poetic heart, that early ease
and felicity which he had proved in his youthful lyrics and descriptive verses, here
enabled him to bestow on the induction of his drama, a development to which subse-
quent changes in his own mind qualified him to add but little. The Ghost scenes
receive only some additional polishing and a few additional strokes of imagery. It
is in the minor scenes, — the scene at court, and the interview of Ojrambis (the Po-
lonius of the old play) with his two children, — that the material changes occur. In
them there is a remodelling of almost everything. Even in the First Act, however,
there are not a few instances which would exemplify well the gradual progress by
which the character of Hamlet reached its full complement of representation. His
first soliloquy, although glaringly misprinted in the older copy, is as apt an illostrac
tion as any.
20 APPENDIX
In subsequent parts of the play, Shakespeare's views are perceived to have
changed in many most important respects during the interval between the two copies.
Much of this is seen in the elaboration of particular passages, of which specimens
are given by Knight. Much of it will be seen, also, on an intelligent and patient
analysis, in those transpositions which some critics would charge altogether to the
account of the copyists. One of these may be noticed as illustrative of those broader
conceptions of his art, — of that increase of gentleness and calmness, and of that
addiction to gradual preparation for startling and violent scenes of passion, — which
were taught to the poet by increased experience in thought and in dramatic com-
position.
A whole scene is transposed ; the famous interview with Ophelia, where he madly
reproaches and reviles her, — a scene whose harshness may not always be perceived
in the closet, but from which, in acting, no skill has been able, unless by a gross vio-
lation of the text and meaning of the author, "to remove an impression approaching
to actual pain.
Let us recollect the place which this scene, so unharmonious in its palpable
effect, holds in the drama. Let us recollect, also, how we are prepared for its
approach.
In the play, as we have it in the newer edition, Hamlet's assumed madness is an-
nounced by degrees. First comes Ophelia to describe that pitiful act in which he
had seemed to bid her an everlasting farewell. Then the King talks of Hamlet's
• transformation,' and sets the court-sponges to suck out the heart of his secret ; and
Polonius reasons wisely, like many other wise men, from false premises. After this,
Hamlet himself enters, reading ; and next ensues that most characteristic dialogue
with Polonius, and afterwards with Rosencrantz and Guildenstem, in which there
alternate deep scorn, wild and aimless taunting, majestic imagination, and philo-
sophic thought, — and that unspeakably profound pathos, that hopeless sinking of
the heart, which, recurring with increasing frequency as the drama proceeds, makes
us feel more and more keenly that, after all, the Prince's madness was not wholly
put on, — that the struggle of his intellect with his will had truly shaken the founda-
tions upon which reason builds her seat. Afterwards come the Players ; and when
they have departed, the Prince bursts out into that terrific outbreak of passion, of
self-reproach, of self-contempt, of grief, of hatred, and, finally, of determined re-
venge, which concentrates his whole history, and an abstract of his whole character,
within the compass of less than a hundred lines. Thus, in the altered play, closes
Act Second ; and it is only at the opening of the Third that we find the scene with
Ophelia.
But all this was originally managed by the poet in a different manner. The scene
with Ophelia was inserted long before in all its harshness; nay, with an abruptness
bringing it somewhat closer to the scene in the original Novel, — that coarse and
mean model from which, for this as for much else, so very many things were bor-
rowed. In the sketch the scene comes immediately after the wise reasonings of
Polonius; and, introduced by the soliloquy, ' To be, or not to be,' it is Hamlet's first
appearance since his interview with his father's spirit. The rough outline of the
fine dialofjue with Polonius and the two sponges immediately follows it. This was
what Shakespeare planned when he first wrote the play; we know what he did
when he came to revise it.
The change may be regarded in several lights. It may be thought of as bringing
out the strong scene with Ophelia, after more gradual and complete preparation, — as
THE DATE, AND THE TEXT 21
thus at once softening the seeming sternness of the scene itself, and developing
Hamlet's character, both as it was and as it seemed, with a more effective climax.
Or it may be thought of in a higher view, as an expedient bearing upon the iarmo-
nioos arrangement of the Play as a whole, — as enabling the imagination to contem-
plate the dramatic panorama more easily, and the sympathy to flow more quickly and
smoothly with the current of the emotion. It may be thought of as infusing greater
breadth and simplicity, and a stronger degree of contrast, into the masses into which
the drama naturally falls. According to the old arrangement, there was in some
measure a frittering away of strength, — a dividing of efforts which would have been
better made in unison. The energetic passion of the scene with Ophelia breaks out
suddenly and passes away without effect. The remainder of the Act is in a key far
less passionate. And, again, when we come to the Third Act the vehemence of the
play-scene breaks out with equal unexpectedness. Take the altered shape of the
drama. How differently does everything now proceed ! The Second Act is now an
nninterrupted series of scenes, marked by repose ; a broad mass of light on the pic-
ture, with heavy shadows on this side and on that. The mind of the Prince, the
minds of all who stand about him, are for a time quiescent, brooding, expectant.
And then, in the Third Act, of which the transposed scene is the opening, comes the
convnlsion, shock after shock ; — the wild insults heaped upon Ophelia, — the sup-
pressed suspicion which begins the play-scene, — the mad jubilee of revenge and
hate which reigns in its close, — the vainly remorseful prayer of the murderer, with
Hamlet's fiendish paroxysm of cool malice as he watches him on his knees (one of
the most significant touches in the whole piece), — and, last of all, the fiery haste
and terrible impressiveness of the scene in the Queen's chamber, which contains the
slaughter of Polonius, the fearfully earnest reproof administered to the guilty mother^
the apparition of the murdered father, awful and portentous.
The most eminent followers of Knight, although di^ering from him somewhat m
minor details, are Deuus, Elze, Staunton, and Dyce, and their views will be set
forth briefly before the argimients of the other side are given. It is well to remem-
ber the point under discussion : whether, making a full allowance for a certain per-
centage of t\'pographical errors, the differences between Q^ and Q, are due to a re-
modelling of the play by Shakespeare, or merely to the very imperfect transcript
from which Q, was printed. KNIGHT may be considered as the chiefest advocate of
the former theory, Coluer. the earliest of the latter.
Delius agrees with Knight in so far as that the variation between Q^ and Q, is appar-
ently too great to be wholly explained on Collier's hypothesis. After eliminating all
the sources of corruption which Gillier enumerates, there still remain differences
between the two texts which can be attributed to the poet and to the poet alone, e.g,
the change of names ; the transposition of scenes; rhymed verses which no piratical
printer would or could make ; and, finally, the scene between the Queen and Horatio
must have been Shakespeare's work. Knight does not seem to have given due
weight to the corruption which Q, received at the unskilful hands of the printers.
As Qj now stands, Shakespeare never wrote it, with all its omissions, abbrevia*
tions, and sophistications. If the old tragedy of which we have traces were not a
youthful production of Shakespeare's, it is very possible that he drew largely from it
for his own tragedy. Robertes was probably hindered from publishing the edition
for which he took out a license by the unwillingness of the actors to permit the pub-
lic to see the Play in any other way than on the stage. But as the interest of the
22 APPENDIX
public in the Play continued, N. L. and John Trundell started the fraudulent specn-
lation of offering for sale their version of the Play as though it were the same as thai
which was holding the stage in 1603. [The omission to account for the way in which
N. L, and John Trundell obtained possession of a version while James Robertes could
not, is not to be laid to the desire for condensation on the part of the present Ed.] This
imposture, and such impostures were not uncommon in those days, coupled with the
fear lest this spurious version should prove injurious to the acted Play, incited the
actors of Shakespeare's company to put their genuine version in press. The title-
page of Qj proves that its publication was due to the fraudulent edition of the pre-
ceding year. The words : * enlarged to almost as much againe as it was,' possibly do
not refer to any remodelling of the Play by Shakespeare, but to Q,, upon which the
object was to throw discredit in all respects, as an unauthorized and defective edition.
But, according to the usage in theatrical matters of those times, such antagonistic
competition among publishers applied only to a «rty drama ; wherefore the version
of Hamlet, as set forth in the Qq, may be safely attributed to the beginning of the
seventeenth century, or about the middle of Shakespeare's productive career.
Elze, {Einleitung. Hamlet. Leipzig, 1857, p. xix), after quoting the references
by Nash, Henslowe, Lodge, &c., to the old tragedy, says: All these allusions have
been referred to a Hamlet preceding Shakespeare's, because it is universally assumed
that Shakespeare arrived in London in 1586, and did not take the Hamlet in hand,
as it then existed, until 1597-1598. And the reason why this date is selected is be-
cause Francis Meres, in his Palladis Tamia of that year, did not enumerate Hamlet
among Shakespeare's other Plays. Now, from the connection in which this passage
occurs, it follows by no manner of means that Meres intended to give a complete
list of all Shakespeare's works that had appeared up to that time, but merely
vouchers sufficient to prove his assertion that Shakespeare wxs the Plautus and
Seneca among Englishmen ; Meres mentioned as many comedies as tragedies, just
six of each kind, probably those that he held in highest esteem, and which would be
the most likely to carry the name of the poet down to posterity. For not only Ham-
let, which assuredly did not exist at that time in the complete shape which has inspired
the wonder of succeeding ages, but Pericles also and Henry VI, are lacking in this
list of Meres's Pi ays, and they were undoubtedly written and had been acted before
1598. The assumption of the existence of an ante-Shakespearian Hamlet is a mere
make-shift to which recourse has been had through inability to reconcile the forego-
ing facts and allusions with Shakespeare's Hamlet as it was subsequently put forth.
[Page xxii.] There are two arguments which have hitherto escaped notice, by
means ofwhich we can approximate to the date of the earliest sketch of Hamlet.
First: Shakespeare's ridicule of Euphuism, not only in the character of Osric, but
also of the Grave-digger, who is a Euphuist in his way. In the scene with the
latter Hamlet alludes to the ' three years' since the 'age has grown so picked.'
Now Lily's Euphues appeared, according to Malone and Collier, in 1579, accord-
ing to Watts, in 1580, and according to Drake, in 1581 ; allowing some time for it
to permeate all classes of society, we have the year 1585 as about the time to which
Hamlet may allude. Secondly: in 1585, Shakespeare's son Hamnet was bom,
one of twins. This unusual increase to his family must have added greatly to the
distress of Shakespeare's already straitened circumstances ; and the youthful father
and poet was driven to London to seek his fortunes. It is perhaps not too much to
Bay that it was this little son that forced him to London. Is it not readily conceiva-
ble that at the very beginning of his career he should have chosen a subject for bis
THE DATE, AND THE TEXT 23
pen which bore the same name as his beloved boy, and that he should have recuired
to it afterwards with ondisguised preference? Hamnet died in 1596; and this blow,
which must have fallen most heavily on the father, may possibly have led him to
take up once more this spiritual child of the same name. Who can estimate the
effect which grief for his only son may not have had in producing that deep-
seated melancholy and distaste for the vanity of the world which have found in this
tragedy their immortal expression ?
[Page xxiv.] Further speculations are idle, as to how often or in what years
Shakespeare remodelled Hamlet; it sufiBces to know that in Q, we have the next to
the last version, and in Q, the last version. It must not be understood that the re-
vision was made between these dates; on the contrary, the allusion to the ' inhibition'
[see Notes, II, ii, 320] proves that it must have been between 1600 and 1602.
TiMMINS {^Preface to the Devonshire Hamlets, p. ix) : From allusions in literature
at the close of the sixteenth century it is a reasonable assumption that this drama,
bearing date 1603, may have been a recognized work of Shakespeare, publicly per-
formed several years before that date and surreptitiously printed in that year. This
would allow the further inference that the subject was a favorite one with Shake-
speare, and that about the beginning of the seventeenth century he revised his early
drama, and * enlarged it to almost as much againe as it was.' .... My conviction is
that in Q, we have a * rough-hewn ' draft of a noble drama (written probably 1587-
1589), 'diverse times acted by His Highnesse servants' till 1602, when it was • en
tered * for publication, and soon afterwards • enlarged,' and * shaped,' as it appears
in Qj^ by the divine bard's maturer mind.
Staunton : "WTiat really concerns us is to know whether, making large allowance
for omissions and corruptions due to the negligence of those through whose hands
the manuscript passed, the edition of 1603 exhibits the play as Shakespeare first
wrote it and as it was ' diverse times acted.' We believe it does. The internal
evidence is to our judgement convincing that in this wretchedly printed copy we
have the poet's first conception (vmtten probably at an early stage of his dramatic
career] of that magnificent tragedy which, remodelled and augmented, was published
in 1604.
Dyce (ed. 2, 1866) : It seems certain that in Q, (as is the case with respect to
the earliest Quartos of The Merry Wives of Windsor and Romeo and Juliet") we
have Shakespeare's first conception of the Play, though with a text mangled and
corrupted throughout, and perhaps formed on the notes of some short-hand writer,
who had imperfectly taken it down during representation. Not to dwell on other
particulars, the names borne by Polonins and Reynaldo in Q, are alone sufficient to
show that the said Quarto exhibits a form of the tragedy very different from that
which it afterwards assumed in Q^ and F,.
The following remarks of Hunter's belong to this side of the question, but are
not inserted in chronological order because they -do not attempt to discuss the point
that is immediately at issue.
HiWTER {New Jlltist., &c., ii, 204) :-The exact mode of the preparation of this
tragedy will probably never be fully ascertained. Shakesj)eare seems to have worked
upon it in a manner different from what was his usual practice. We collect from
the newly-discovered copy, not only that large additions were made to the play after-
it had been presented at the theatres, "but that very material changes were made ia
the distribution of the scenes and the order of events. This seems to show that
there was no period when the poet sat down to his work having a settled project ia
24 APPENDIX
ta& mind, and meaning to work out the design continuously from the opening to the
catastrophe ; and this may be, after all, the true reason of the difficulty, which has
always been felt, of determining what the character really is in which the poet
meant to invest the hero of the piece. It may account, also, for the introduction of
scenes which appear to have been written for the sake of themselves alone ;_beau-
tiful in themselves, but neither necessary for the maintenance of a general harmony
in the whole, nor for carrying on the business of the story. To this want of con-
tinuity in the composition of the piece, and of having the mind steadily intent on
one design, plan, and object, is also to be attributed the great falling oif in the later
portions, and the lame and impotent manner in which what ought to be the grand
catastrophe is at last brought about.
It should perhaps be noticed that Gervinus follows Knight.
Thus far the advocates of the theory that in Q, we have a reproduction, imperfee*"
and garbled it is true, of the old Hamlet, alluded to by Nash and others, and written
by Shakespeare in his youth, and revised by him in his maturer years.
On the other hand it is contended that Q, and Q^ represent the same version, the
difference between the two editions indicating not the growth of Shakespeare's
mind, but the carelessness or incompetence of short-hand writers, transcribers, and
printers.
Collier, as has been before stated, believes that Qj was put forth by sopie name-
less and unscrupulous printer from an imperfect manuscript of a play surreptitiously
obtained, and that but few copies were sold, as its worthlessness was soon discovered.
As accurate reprints of this Quarto are accessible. Collier says : * it will be unneces-
sary to go in detail into proofs to establish, as we could do without much difficulty,
the following points :
' I. That great part of the play, as it there stands, was taken down in short-hand,
♦ 2. That where mechanical skill failed the short-hand writer, he either filled up the
blanks badly from memory, or employed an inferior writer to assist him.
' 3. That although some of the scenes were carelessly transposed, and others en*
tirely omitted, in the edition of 1603, the drama, as it was acted while the short-hand
writer was employed in taking it down, was, in all its jnain features, the same as the
more perfect copy of the tragedy printed with the date of 1 604. It is true that in
the edition of X603, Polonius is called Corambis, and his servant Montano, and we
may not be able to determine v/hy these changes were made in the immediately sub-
sequent impression ; but we may, perhaps, conjecture that they were names in the
older play on the same story, or names which Shakespeare at first introduced and
subsequently thought fit to reject. We know that Ben Jonson changed the whole
dramatis persona: of his Every Man in his Humour. [Dyce, after quoting this
last sentence, adds : ' Perhaps they were names which Shakespeare had originally
retained from the earlier drama, and which, on revising and altering his tragedy, he
changed to Polonius and Reynaldo.']
• But although we entirely reject Qj as an authentic Hamlet, it is of high value in
enabling us to settle the text of various important passages. It proves, besides, that
certain portions of the play as it appears in F,, which do not form part of Q,, were
originally acted, and were not, as has been hitherto imagined, subsequent intro-
ductions.'
W. W. Lloyd {Critical Essay en Hamlet, contributed to SiNGER's Second Edi-
tion, p. 345) : I confess that the Hamlet of Q^, marred and mangled as it is. does
THE DATE, AND THE TEXT 2$
not give me the impression of one of Shakespeare's early works, and if some early
allusions to a play of HamUt are his, I should infer it must have been in yet another
prior phase.
Tycho Mommsen {Athefuzum, ^ Feb. 1857) : The discovery of the last leaf of
the earliest HamUt having some months ago excited great interest on both sides of
the water, and again directed the public attention to that curious edition, you would,
perhaps, allow me, though a foreigner, a column of your paper, in order to state the
results of a careful examination of both this and of another First Quarto, — that of
Romeo and Juliet, 1597, — which seem to be no first sketches, as some have
imagined, but mere misrepresentations of the genuine text. This opinion is borne
out by the following reasons :
1. There are in both editions very striking inconsistencies of the action, owing
not only to omissions or transpositions, but also to certain alterations of the text,
which cannot but have originated in foreign interpolation.
2. It seems improbable that a juvenile writer should have at first conceived and
written his dramas in a shorter form. We might rathe* have expected the contrary,
of which we have some instances in Schiller's Don Carlos and Goethe's Goetz von
Berlichingen.
3. The deviations are less numerous and less considerable in the beginning of
either play ; this may be accounted for by the probability that the reviser's patience
forsook him towards the end of his irksome task.
4. Very often the blunders of the mutilated Hamlet seem caused by abbreviations,
eked out in the wrong way by an unskilful and ignorant reviser. Even the new
names, which we find in the Hamlet of 1603, — Corambis for Polonius, and Montano
for Reynaldo, — might be traced to the same source, if we think them pi-^ced out
from Cor. and Man., which might mean Courtier and Man of Polonius.
5. I apprehend that I discern two hands employed, one after the other, upon this
Hamlet, — the one being probably that of an actor, who put down from memory a
sketch of the original play as it was acted, and who wrote very illegibly ; the other
that of a bad poet, most probably ' a bookseller's hack,' who, without any personal
intercourse with the writer of the notes, availed himself of them to make up his
early copy of Hamlet. Numerous mistakes of the ear fall to the share of the formei
contributor, whereas much more numerous misconceptions of the eye and wrong
out-piecings are to be attributed to the latter. The compositor may have added to
these blunderings.
6. The earliest edition of Romeo and Juliet, though decidedly better, participates
on a limited scale in the same errors.
7. Both copies concur in a great many vulgarisms ; both often turn poetry Into
prose, and abound with every kind of shallow repetition, — now of set phrases, oaths,
expletives, then (which is strongly indicative of interpolation) of certain lines and
passages of peculiar energy, such as would impress themselves more literally upon
the memory of the hearer. By these iterations the reviser endeavored to compen-
sate for what was lost of the original.
8. Some of the characters in this Hamlet difier more from the authentic editions
than others. This might be as easily explained upon the supposition of their being
more imperfectly set forth in the notes, on account of certain peculiarities of the
actors who personated them, or from the writer's being less acquainted with some
scenes, as upon the supposition that Shakespeire afterwards retouched or remodelled
them.
26 APPENDIX
9. Out of these positions it would appear that there must be about the said copies
a general tameness and prosaic languor, which leads us far away from cveiything
that is peculiar to the well-known over-bold style of Shakespeare's juvenile pro-
ductions.
10. This is chiefly observable in those scenes and passages which are entirely
different from what we read in their stead in later copies. In those of the mutilated
Hamlet there is an absolute want of that metaphorical language which was one of
the fairy gifts of the poet from his cradle;- while those of the spurious Romeo and
Juliet read somewhat better, but are nevertheless far too bad for Shakespeare, —
perhaps even some nice verses not excluded, which glare in the middle of other
peculiarities of the interpolated copy as the pannus purpureus of Horace. Some
of the additions in both copies are of a flat, sententious kind, not unfrequenfly out
of keeping with the rest, — some are dull, coarse, nay, vulgar, — others are temporary
allusions to theatrical affairs, which may very possibly have been of the players'
making, even of the original ones belonging to Shakespeare's company.
11. Innumerable blunders with regard to scansion and metre are found only in
these earliest editions, and in indissoluble connection with tautologous insertions,
omissions, &c. Also, single alternate rhyme now and then balks the ear of the
reader.
12. The above-mentioned coincidence of blunders is mainly to be met with in
those lines and passages which serve to connect pieces of the genuine text (the
ligatures).
13. The most curious misunderstandings of every kind are found on almost every
page.
14. Such I take to be the genuine characteristics of all interpolations whatever ;
and it is by these means and no other that we endeavor to eliminate the spurious
parts of the Homeric epics and of our own Nibelungen Lay.
15. But while we have every reason to set these editions down as thoroughly
sophisticated, and no reason but mere speculation to deem even part of their pecu-
liarities genuine, we must not forget that they are nevertheless of considerable prac-
tical value. Whenever the reading of such a copy, in some obscure passage, coin-
cides with that of the better text, we can hardly think it corrupt ; on the other hand,
a various reading of the mutilated copy, though in itself without any authority, may
lead us to discover typographical errors in the better edition. It is of some use,
also, to have involved and difficult passages often rendered there with different
words ; it then aids us in the way of interpretation. But the greatest advantage,
perhaps, is on the score of scenic effect; it is common to all the adulterated editions
of Shakespeare that they explain much more of the stage business than the genuine
ones; another proof that the foundation of such copies was that of actual per-
formance.
16. Nevertheless, we ought to hesitate much before we adopt any of the peculiar
readings of such editions into our text. [The language has been here and there
very slightly modified where the meaning was obscure. Ed.]
Grant White {Introduction to Hamlet, "p. 10): The great difference in length
between the texts of the first and the second edition has been generally regarded of
late years as presumptive evidence that the play was revised and largely added to
before the printing of the latter. And this opinion has been thought to derive very
material support from the noteworthy announcement upon the title-page of the
second edition ; of which opinion that announcement, however (owing to what 1
THE DATE AND THE TEXT 27
regard as a misapprehension of its meaning), is rather the source. On this title-page
the play is said to be ' Newly imprinted. and enlarged to almost as much againe as it
was, according to the true and perfect coppie,' which has been accepted on all hands
as meaning that the play has been * enlarged ' by the author. But upon the very
face of it, and especially under the circumstances,' has it not clearly a very different
purport? The previous edition is so corrupt, disconnected, and heterogeneous,
that the least observant reader, even of that day when plays were printed so care-
lessly, must have seen that as a whole it was but a maimed and mutilated version
of the true text, and in some parts a mere travestie of it. If seems to be veiy plainly
indicated that the enlargement announced on the title-page of Q^ was the conse-
quence of the procurement of a complete and authentic text, and was merely the
work of the printer or publisher, and not of the author.
* A close examination of the text of Q, has convinced me that it is merely an im-
perfect, garbled, and interpolated version of the completed play, and that its com-
parative brevity is caused by sheer mutilation, consequent upon the haste and secrecy
with which the copy for it was obtained and put in type In III, i, the phrase,
• to a nunnery go,' is baldly repeated eight times within a few lines ; showing that
the reporter jotted down a memorandum of Hamlet's objurgation, but forgot to vary
it as Shakespeare did, — a kind of evidence of the share that he had in the text of
1603, which he has left us on more than one occasion. The phrases 'for to,' ' when
as,' and ' where as,' Shakespeare's avoidance of which has been noted in the Essay
on the Authorship of King Henry the Sixth, occur in the earliest version several
times; but in the Quarto of 1604 the two latter are not found at all, the former but
once, and in the Folio it disappears entirely. [See III, i, 167.] .... It has been
observed that many of the passages found in the later, but not in the earlier, ver-
sion are distinguished by that blending of psychological insight with imagination
and fancy, which is the highest manifestation of Shakespeare's genius, but we must
remember that Q^ was hastily printed to meet an urgent popular demand, and that
the philosophical part of the play would be at once the most difficult to obtain by
surreptitious means, and the least valued by the persons to supply whose cravings
that edition was published To minds undisciplined in thought, abstract truth
is difficult of apprehension and of recollection ; whereas, a mere child can remember
a story. And in addition to this very important consideration, there is yet a more
important fact, that some of the most profoundly thoughtful passages in the Play,—
passages most indicative of maturity of intellect and wide observation of life, — are
found essentially complete, although grossly and almost ludicrously corrupted, in the
first imperfect version of the tragedy. Two of the most celebrated and most reflect-
ive passages of the Play shall furnish us examples in point of the last remark, and
also characteristic specimens of the kind of corruption to which the text of the Play
was subjected in the preparation of Q,.
* A comparison of [lines 195-215 of Q,] with those of the perfect soliloquy [I, ii,
129] makes it apparent that these are but an imperfect representation of those. The
latter are no expansion of the former. The thoughts are the same in both, with the
exception of seven lines which were plainly omitted from the first version, not added
to it in writing the second. The maimed and halting [lines 196, 197], which it is
absurd to suppose that Shakespeare could have written at any period of his life,
are the best that the person who furnished it could do to supply the place of the
corresponding lines of the seven which follow them in the perfect soliloquy ; the
rest is all tangled and disordered, though but slightly defective, and shows in its very
28 APPENDIX
confusion of parts (hat it represents the perfect speech. Notice the misplacement of
lines, such as the one containing the comparison to Hercules, and that about ' the
shoes', and the * unrighteous tears ;' and see that ' Why, she would hang on him ' is
not only misplaced, but that 'him' is without an antecedent, owing to the omission
of the allusion to Hamlet's father and his love for the Queen ; yet see in this very
derangement and in these defects the proof that the earlier version is merely muti-
lated, not a sketch ; the latter, merely perfect, not elaborated. The evidence of the
same relation of the two texts is perhaps yet stronger in the case of the second and
more important soliloquy, which is printed thus in the first Quarto: [see lines 815-
837]. This reads almost like intentional burlesque, so completely, yet absurdly,
are all the thoughts of the genuine soliloquy represented in it. Like the shadow of
a fair and stately building on the surface of a troubled river, it distorts outline, de-
stroys symmet'.'y, confuses parts, contracts some passages, expands others, robs color
of its charm and light of its brilliancy, and presents but a dim, grotesque, and shape-
less image of the beautiful original ; while yet, with that original before us, we can
see that it is a reflection of the whole structure, and not merely of its foundation,
its framework, o: its important parts. How ludicrously the well-known sentences,
• To sleep, perchance to dream,' and that, several lines below, about ' the dread ot
something after death,' are lumped together, and crushed into shapelessness in the
lines [817-S21] ! That this soliloquy as it stands in Q, is merely a mutilated version
of that which is found in Q^ is as clear to my apprehension as that the latter was
written by William Shakespeare.
• Another proof that Q^ is but an accidentally imperfect representation of the
completed Play is found in the fragment which it gives of the Fourth Scene of
Act IV, in which Fortinbras enters at the head of the Norwegian forces. This
consists only of the speech of Fortinbras. [See Q,, lines 1614-1619.] This has
the same distorted likeness to the genuine speech that the soliloquies just cited
have to their prototypes in the true text. But, — to look farther, — with this speech
the scene ends : we have • exeunt all,^ and immediately, ' enter King and Queened
Now, will any one believe that Shakespeare brought Fortinbras at the head of an
army upon the stage merely to speak these half dozen lines of commonplace?
Plainly, the only object was to give Hamlet the opportunity for that great introspect-
ive soliloquy in which, with a psychological insight profounder than that which is
exhibited in any other passage of the tragedy, the poet makes the Prince confess in
whisper to himself the subtle modes and hidden causes of his vacillation. Consid-
ering the motive of the Play, the introduction of Fortinbras and his army without
the subsequent dialogue and soliloquy is a moral impossibility which overrides all
other arguments. Yet this one is not unsupported. For the speech of Fortinbras
in the first version itself furnishes evidence that it was written out for the press by a
person who had heard the dialogue which it introduces. The latter part of the line
— • Tell him that Fortinbras, nephew to old Norway,' — has no counterpart in the
genuine speech; but we detect in it an unmistakeable reminiscence of the following
passage of the subsequent dialogue which is found in Q^ : ' Ham. Who commands
them, sir? Cap. The Ne/>he7v to old No7-iuay,Yor\.tnhTas,9.e.' It is to be noted, too,
that the absence of this dialogue and soliloquy from Q, is nO proof whatever that
they were not written when the copy for that edition was prepared ; and this for the
all-sufTitient reason that they are also wanting in the Folio itself, which was printed
twenty years afterwards. It seems almost certain that these passages were omitted
in tbc representation, and struck out of the stage-copy from which the Folio was
/
THE DATE, AND THE TEXT 29
pnnted, owing tc the great length of the Play and a lack of popular interest conse*
quent upon their speculative character. And it is also safe to conclude that the
same considerations led the procurer of the copy for the surreptitious edition to
•withhold even a garbled version of them, if, indeed^ they were not already omitted
in the performance at the time when he did his work.
' And this brings us to another branch of the evidence in the case. There are
many important passages of the completed Play of which there is no vestige in the
Quarto of 1603, which would seem to favoi^the conclusion that that edition repre-
sents but an early sketch of Shakespeare's work, especially as some of them are re-
flective in character, and all indicate maturity of power. Of these I will mention
the lines about the ominous appearances in Rome ' ere the mightiest Julius fell,' I, i,
114; all that part of Hamlet's censure of Danish drunkenness, beginning, « This
heavy-headed revel,' I, iv, 17; the reflection upon ' That monster custom,' III, iv,
161 ; the soliloquy just above alluded to, IV, iv, 32; the euphuistic passage between
Osric and Hamlet, beginning, ♦ Sir, here is newly come to court Laertes,' V, ii, 106;
and the Prince's brief colloquy with a Lord in the same scene. But the absence of
these passages from Qj is deprived of all bearing upon the question of the state of
the Play which that edition professed to represent by the fact that they are likewise
lacking in the Folio. On the other hand, there are passages in the Folio which are
not found in Q^, enlarged though it was ' to almost as much againe ' as the Play had
been before, ' according to the true and perfect coppie ;' and of these passages there
are traces at least in Q,. Such is the passage about the company of child actors,—
* How comes it ? Do they grow rusty ?' and seven speeches afterwards, II, ii, 325,
— which, although entirely lacking in the Second Quarto, is thus represented in the
First: [See Q,, 971-977].
' There are other vestiges in Q, of passages which do not appear in Q^, but which
are found in the Folio ; and, although they are of minor importance, they go to show
none the less that the surreptitious text of 1603 and the authentic text of twenty
years later had a common origin.
' In some parts of Q^ the arrangement of the scenes is not the same as in that of
the subsequent editions, which might seem to favor the supposition that the Play was
re-cast after its first production. But the order of the earliest edition in these cases is
mere disorder, resulting from the inability of the person, who superintended the
preparation of the copy for the press, to arrange even the materials at hand in their
proper sequence. As evidence of this, it is only necessary to state that the soliloquy,
* To be, or not to be,' III, i, is introduced in Q, immediately after the proposal of
Polonius, II, ii,'that Ophelia shall lure Hamlet into an exhibition of his madness.
It is immediately preceded by the command of her father : ' And here Ofelia, reade
you on this booke. And walke aloofe, the King shal be vnsee.ne;' and, as in the
true and perfect copy, it closes with the entreaty, ' Lady in thy orizons be all my
sinnes remembred ;' and yet, according to the imperfect, as well as the perfect, text,
Ophelia is not upon the stage ! The circumstance that in two scenes Hamlet enters
just as the same personages (the King, the Queen, and Ophelia's father) leave the
otage, misled the purloiner of the text for the first edition into the supposition that
the old courtier^s suggestion in the earlier scene was immediately followed.
• But the text of the First Quarto presents two features of difference from that of
any subsequent edition, which cannot be attributed to accident or haste. These are
the names of Ophelia's father and of his servant, and the existence of a scene which
(in form though not in substance) has no counterpart in the authentic text. The
30 APPENDIX
scene in question is a brief one between Horatio and tbe Queen. It succeeds that
of Ophelia's insanity; and in it Horatio informs Hamlet's mother of the manner in
which her son escaped the plot laid by the King to have him put to death in England.
[Sfee Q,, lines 1 747-1 782.] Here, at last, is no confusion or mutilation; all is
coherent and complete; but, on the other hand, there is heaviness of form, empti
ness of matter. Plainly Shakespeare never wrote this feeble stuff: it is an interpo-
lation. What he did write, having the same purpose, the reader will find in the
beginning of the Second Scene of Act V, and he will notice that the occurrences
which Hamlet in that version relates to Horatio are exactly the same as those, — of
which in this Horatio informs the Queen, even to the use of the dead king's seal,— n
to which there is no allusion in the old history. But it is to be observed that neither
in Hamlet's letter to Horatio, nor in any other part of the authentic text, is there a
hint of an appointed meeting between them 'on the east side of the city to-morrow
morning.' From these circumstances it appears that the scene in the first edition
does not represent a counterpart in Shakespeare's Hamlet, which the procurer of the
copy for that edition had failed to obtain. It seems rather a remnant of a previous
play on the same subject.
' Such I believe it and the names Corambis and Montano to be. We have seen, by
Henslowe's Diary, that there was a Hamlet performed on the 9th of June, 1594.
Henslowe heads the leaves upon which this memorandum is entered, • In the name
of God, Amen, beginning at newington, my lord admirell men and my lord cham-
berlem men as followeth, 1594.' Here we have a Hamlet played, 1594, at a theatre
where the company to which Shakespeare belonged was performing; in 1602 the
same company still perform a Hamlet ; and we know of no play of the same name
performed at any other theatre. It seems at least most probable, then, that this
tragedy belonged from the first to that ' cry of players ; and I believe that when
they shortened it (for the pruning was plainly their work, and not the poet's, as the
case of the scene which opens with the entry of Fortinbras and his army makes
manifest) they omitted Hamlet's long, discursive relation to Horatio of his stratagem
against Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and, as the story must be told, introduced the
short scene between Horatio and the Queen from the old play, which, according to
the stage practice of that time (and perhaps even of our day), they had a perfect
right to do. As to two names from an older play, nothing is more probable than
that Shakespeare himself should have retained them. But when in the height of
his reputation as a poet and a dramatist, 1603, he saw a mutilated, and in some parts
caricatured, version of his most thoughtful work surreptitiously published, nothing,
also, is more probable than that he, and his fellow-players with him, should send
immediately ' the true and perfect copy ' to the press, and that from this, in case it
had not been done before, he should eliminate even the slightest traces of the pre-
vious drama, if they were but two names. I have hardly a doubt that this was done,
and that the Quarto of 1604 was printed from a copy of the tragedy obtained with
the consent of its author and the company to which it belonged.
• Shakespeare's tragedy was surely written between 1598, the date of Meres's Pal'
ladis Tamia, and June, 1602, when Roberts made his entry in the Registers of the
Stationers' Company ; and yet a closer approximation to the exact date is afforded
by the allusion to the • inhibition ' of the Players. We may, therefore, with some
certainty attribute the production of Shakespeare's version of Hamlet to the year
1600.'
The Cambridge Editors {Preface, vol. viii, p. viii) : The manuscript for Q,
THE DATE, AND THE TEXT 3 1
Bay Bave been compiled in the first instance from short-hand notes taken during the
representation, but there are many errors in the printed text which seem like errors
of a copyist rather than of a hearer. Compare [lines 365, 366, of QJ with the cor-
responding lines of Q, [see I, iii, 73, 74, and notes, in this edition]. A few lines
above, both Quartos give courage for • comrade,' a mistake due undoubtedly to the
eye, and not to the ear. We believe, then, that the defects of the manuscript from
which Qj was printed had been in part at least supplemented by a reference to the
authentic copy in the library of the theatre. Very probably the man employed for
this purpose was some inferior actor or servant, who would necessarily work in haste
and by stealth, and in any case would not be likely to work very conscientiously for
the printer or bookseller, who was paying him to deceive his masters The
chief differences between Q, and Q, are only such as might be expected between a
bona fide and a mala fide transcription.'
The Cambridge Editors modified their views of the origin of Q, before they pub-
lished their next edition in the Clarendon Press Series, and suggested a solution of
the mystery which will, I think, commend itself the more thoroughly it is under-
stood, and the more closely the play is studied. Hallfwell, in his folio edition
of 1865, suggests what partly covers the same ground when he says, in the Intro*
duction to Hamlet, 'there are small fragments peculiar to [Q,], some of which
may be attributed to the pen of the great dramatist.'
W. G. Clark and W. A. Wright (^Preface to Hamlet. Clarendon Press Series,
p. viii) : It is clear, upon a very slight examination, that Q^ is printed from a copy
which was hastily taken down and perhaps surreptitiously obtained, either from
short-hand notes made during the representation, or privately from the actors them-
selves. These notes, when transcribed, would form the written copy which the printers
had before them, and would account for the existence of errors which are errors of
the copyist rather than of the hearer. But granting all this, we have yet to account for
differences between the earlier and later forms of the Play which cannot be explained
by the carelessness of short-hand writer, copyist, or printer. Knight, with great in-
genuity, maintains that the Quarto of 1603 represents the original sketch of the
Play, and that this was an early work of the poet. We differ from him in respect to
this last conclusion, because we can see no evidence for Shakespeare's connection
with the Play before 1602.
• First, there is the complete absence of any positive evidence on the point, and
next, there is the very strong negative evidence that in the enumeration of Shake-
peare's works by one who was an ardent admirer of his genius, Francis Meres, there
is no mention whatever of Hamlet. That Hamlet should be omitted and Titus An'
dronicus inserted is utterly unintelligible, except upon the supposition that in 1.598
the play bearing the former name had not in any way been connected with Shake-
speare. Elze appeals to the omission of Pericles and Henry VI from the list as a
parallel instance, but we submit that there is no reason at all for associating Shake*
spearewith Pericles 2X this period, and that his connection with the Three Parts of
Henry VI is doubtful. In any case, the last-mentioned play would hardly be quoted
by an admirer as a proof of his genius ; whereas, if Hamlet had existed, even in the
imperfect form in which it appears in Q,, it would have supplied at least as good an
instance of his tragic power as Titus Andronicus or Richard III. At some time,
therefore, between 1598 and 1602 Hamlet, as retouched by Shakespeare, was put
upon the stage. We are inclined to think that it was acted not very long before the
date of Roberts's entry in the Stationers' Registers, namely, 26 July, 1602. Our
32 APPENDIX
reason for this opinion is that if the Play had been long a popular one, and had b?en
frequently represented, the printer or publisher would have had many opportunities
of procuring a more accurate copy than that from which the edition of 1603 was
made. The errors of this edition, and the manifest haste with which it was printed,
seem to show that the Play had been acted only a short time before, and that the
publisher went to press with the first copy he could obtain, however imperfect.
This supposition is favored by the expression in the Stationers^ Register, 'as it
was lately acted,' which would hardly have been used of a play which had long
been popular
« After a careful examination of Q^, and a comparison of the Play as there exhibited
with its later form, we have arrived at a conclusion which, inasmuch as it is conjec-
tural, and based to a large extent upon subjective considerations, we state with some
diffidence. It is this : — That there was an old play on the story of Hamlet, some por-
tions of which are still preserved in Q, ; that about the year 1602 Shakespeare took
this and began to remodel it for the stage, as he had done with other plays ; that Q,
represents the Play after it had been retouched by him to a certain extent, but before
his alterations were complete ; and that in Q^ we have for the first time the Hamlet
of Shakespeare. It is quite true, as Knight has remarked, that in the Quarto of
1 603 we have the whole ' action ' of the Play ; that is to say, the events follow very
much the same order, and the catastrophe is the same. There are, however, some
important modifications even in this respect. The scene with Ophelia which in the
modern Play occurs m III, i, is in the older form introduced in the middle of II, ii.
Polonius is Corambis in the older Play, and Reynaldo is Montano. The madness
of Hamlet is much more pronounced, and the Queen's innocence of her husband's
murder much more explicitly stated, in the earlier than in the later Play. In fact,
the earlier Play in these respects corresponds more closely with the original story.
In the earlier form it appears to us that Shakespeare's modifications of the Play had
not gone much beyond the Second Act. Certainly in the Third Act we find very
great unlikeness and very great inferiority to the later Play. In fact, in the First,
Third, and Fourth Scenes there is hardly a trace of Shakespeare, and in the Second,
which is the scene where the Play is introduced, there are very remarkable differ-
ences. The Fourth Act, in language, has very little in common with its present
form, and in the First Scene of the Fifth Act there are still some traces of the origi-
nal Play. In the Second Scene of this Act the dialogue between Hamlet and Ho-
ratio is not found, and the interview with Osric in its old dress may fairly be put
down to the earlier writer. The rest of the scene is much altered, and of course
improved, and wherever these improvements come it strikes us with irresistible force
that in comparing the later with the earlier form of the Play we are not comparing
the work of Shakespeare at two different periods of his life, but the work of Shake-
speare with that of a very inferior artist. If any one desires to be convinced of this,
let him read the interview of Hamlet with his mother in the two Quartos of 1603
and 1604. Going backward, we come to the Second Act, and here the First Scene
is so imperfectly given in Q, that it is impossible to say what it really represented.
Here and there a line occurs as it now stands, but on the whole it is very defective,
and appears to have been set down from memory. The opening of the Second
.Scene is changed, and in Q^ seems to belong to the original Play ; on the other
hand, the speeches of Corambis (Polonius) and Voltemar (Voltimand) are nearly
verbatim the same as the later edition. The rest of the scene is altered and much
improved. The First Act is substantially the same in the two editions, allowing for
THE DATE, AND THE TEXT 33
tbe extremely imperfect and careless manner in which it is given in Q,. The First
Scene is fairly rendered ; the speeches of Marcellus and Horatio being, so far as
they go, almost word for word the same as in Q^, where the dialogue is expanded.
In the Second Scene the speeches are very imperfect, and it is difiBcult to say how
far they represent the earlier or the later Play ; Hamlet's soliloquy is sadly mutilated,
as if written down in fragments from memory, but in the interview with Horatio the
early Quarto agrees closely with the later. The Third and Fourth Scenes are badly
reported, but otherwise contain the groundwork of the present Play ; and Hamlet's ad-
dress to the Ghost is given almost verbatim, as is the dialogue which follows. In the
Fifth Scene the order of the dialogue is slightly altered, but not materially changed,
and Hamlet's soliloquy after the Ghost's disappearance is very much mutilated.
The interview with Marcellus and Horatio is but little altered. In conclusion, we
venture to think that a close examination of Q, will convince any one that it con-
tains some of Shakespeare's undoubted work, mixed with a great deal that is not
his, and will confirm our theory that the text, imperfect as it is, represents an older
play in a transition state, while it was undergoing a remodelling, but had not received
more than the first rough touches of the great master's hand.'
So great was the popularity of this tragedy that in the year following the publica-
tion of Q, another edition was issued. This Third Quarto is not, correctly speaking,
a new edition. It is merely a reprint of the Second Quarto. The title-pages of the
two editions are identical except in date. The Cambridge Editors say that it * was
printed from the same forms as Q,, and differing from it no more than one copy of
the same edition may differ from another.' In this assertion I think the range of
books should be restricted to the Elizabethan printing-offices ; the differences that
are often founa between two copies of the same edition issued in those early days
are matters of common experience. But in modem times two copies of the same
edition, ' printed from the same forms,' would hardly, perhaps, vary as much from each
other as Q varies from Q^. For instance, I have found the following changes (be
it remembered that I have collated Ashbee's Facsimiles, not the originals) :
In I, i, 107,
Romadge
Q.
Romeage
Q,
IV, i, 31,
moft
Q,
mufl
Q3
IV, vii, 78,
riband
Q,
ribaud
Q3
V, i, 286,
thirtie
Q,
thereby
Q,
V, ii. 9.
pall
Q,
fall
%
V, ii, \\2,
dofie
Q,
dazzie
Q3
V, ii, 113,
yaw
Q,
raw
Q3
V, ii, 124,
too't
Q,
doo't
Q3
V, ii, 154,
it be
Q.
it be might
Q3
V, ii, 178,
A did fir
Q,
A did fo fir
Q3
V, ii, 259,
Viice
Qa
Onixe
Q3
Signature on 1
as' page G 2
Q,
O2
Qs
In V, ii, 154, the addition of * might' in Q ' drove over* a word in each sacceed<
ing line of the speech. The lines, in this passage, therefore, do not correspond in
the two Quartos.
That eight out of twelve should occur in the last scene of the last Act is note-
worthy. They are all trifling in quality, and may ' stand in numbers, yet in reck-
VOL II.— 3
34 APPENDIX
oiling none.' When it is considered that these twelve are all the variations to be
found in more than two thousand lines, the quantity approximates the infinitely
small, and may be neglected ; practically, therefore, Q is identical with Q^, and if
the work of collation for this edition were to be repeated Q would be omitted from
the list.
Halliwell says : If the initials I. R. [in the imprint of both Q^ and Q ] are
those, as is most liicely, of James Roberts, there must have been some friendly ar-
rangement between him and Ling respecting the ownership of the copyright, which
certainly now belonged to the latter, as appears from the following entry on the
books of the Stationers' Company :
[1607.] 19 Novembris.
John Smjrthick Entred for his copies vnder th[e h]andes of the wardens, these
bookes followinge Whiche dyd belonge to Nicholas Lynge
[No] 6 Abookecalled^y^^/Zy^rr \f
Accordingly, after this date all succeeding Quartos were published by John Smeth-
wicke.
The Fourth Quarto appeared in 161 1. On its title-page it is called 'The Tragedy
of Hamlet,' instead of ' The Tragicall Hiftorie of Hamlet,' as the preceding Quartos
have it. Otherwise, it is the same (* Coppie' is here spelled ' Coppy '), except the
imprint, which reads : Printed for lohn Smethwicke, and are to be fold at his (hoppe
I in Saint Dunftons Church yeard in Fleetflreet. | Vnder the Diall. 161 1.
It is, perhaps, worth while to note here some variations which occur in two dif-
ferent copies of this same edition :
in, iii, 57:
' corrupted '
Editor's
?*■
conruptcd Q^
Cam
• Ed.
III, iii, 70:
' fteele '
"
steale "
III, iii, 73 :
'but
"
bot
III, Hi, 74 :
' fo a goes '
"
so goes "
III, iv, 22 and
23:
'hoe'
"
how "
III, iv, 113:
' fighing '
"
sighting
III, iv, 135:
'liue'd'
"
lives "
In every instance Ashbee's facsimile agrees with the Editor's copy. The first four
of these variations occur on the same page ; and all add one more to the numberless
proofs that in the old printing-offices the sheets were corrected while going through
the press. The copy of the Cambridge Editors is therefore the older of the two
it may be but by a few minutes. The unfortunate (or should we not say fortunate ?)
inference to be drawn from such facts as these points to the uselessness of minute
collation.
The copy which has been used for the present edition formerly belonged to George
Daniel, and was secured at the sale of Sir William Tite's library in 1875.
There is a Fifth Quarto, undated, whereof the title-page reads :
The I Tragedy | of | Hamlet | Prince of Dentnarke. \ Newly Imprinted and in-
larged, according to the true | and perfect Copy laflly Printed. | By | William
Shakefpcare. | London, | Printed by W. S. for lohn Smethwicke, and are to be
fold at his | Shop in Saint Dunjlatts Church-yard in Fleetftreet : | Vnder the
Diall.
THE DATE, AND THE TEXT 35
This ediUon Malone ( Var. 1 821, ii, 652) believes was printed in 1607, because
m that year the transfer to John Smethwicke was made in the Station^s' Registers,
in the entry just quoted. For the same reason Halxiwell thinks that it was • pos-
sibly printed about 1609.' But the Cambridge Editors say : ' We are convinced,
however, that the undated Quarto was printed from that of 161 1,' — a conviction to
which, I think, all will come who carefully examine the collation recorded in the
first volume of this edition. The spelling of the undated Quarto constantly inclines
to the more modem usage, e.g. Sunday es instead of Sondaies; thereunto instead of
there- vnto, &c. &c. Even the title-page is much more modem than that of Q^, e.g.
Copy instead of Coppy ; London instead of At London ; Shcp instead of shoppe ;
Dunstan instead of Dunston ; Church-yard instead of Church yeard.
These are all the Quartos that appeared during Shakespeare's lifetime, and before
the publication of the First Folio ; consequently, they are all that possibly derived
their texts from original sources. All subsequent Quartos are but reprints of these,
with the spelling more and more modernized as years go on, with some manifest
misprints in the earlier Quartos corrected, and with a natural percentage of errors
of their own. They are generally called the ' Players' Quartos,' and their dates
will be found in the Bibliography in this volume. The Quarto that immediately
followed Q , or the undated Quarto, is the Quarto of 1637 ; the Cambridge Editors
added this to their list of Quartos, whereof the variations are recorded in their
notes, under the symbol Q^.
A copy of this Quarto I have been unable to procure ; where, therefore, it is cited
in the Textual Notes in vol. i, it is followed by an asterisk to indicate that it is taken
at second-hand from the Cambridge Edition. The lack of this Quarto is the less to
be regretted, since to judge by the Textual Notes of the Cambridge Edition only
slight differences are to be perceived between it and my copy of the Quarto of 1676,
which was evidently printed from it ; where the Cambridge Editors cite Qj, I have
generally had occasion to cite Q'76. I have just referred to 'my copy' of 1676; I
speak thus, because there are decided variations at times between it and the copy
used by the Cambridge Editors. It is hardly worth while to occupy valuable space
with a list of these varias lectiones in two unimportant editions. The list would be
interesting only to those who possess copies of the edition, and it would be a pity to
deprive such of the harmless pleasure of hunting these variations down, which can
readily be done by comparing the Textual Notes in this edition with those of the
Cambridge Editors ; and to all others the list would be weary, flat, stale, and un-
profitable. Perhaps such discrepancies would never have been noted even by the
present Editor were it not that in the dull monotony of collating, which becomes at
times almost mechanical, such a trifling novelty as the detection of a difference be-
tween two copies of the same edition becomes by contrast wildly exciting. When
Q'76 agrees with any of the other Qq, it is not noted.
Theobald, throughout his Shakespeare Restored, refers to an edition of 1703 by
the • accurate Mr John Hughs.' Of this edition the Cambridge Editors say that
♦it is different from the Players' Quarto of 1703, and is not mentioned in Bohn's
edition of Lowndes's Bibliographers' Manual. No copy of it exists in the British
Museum, the Bodleian, the library of the Duke of Devonshire, the Capell collection,
or any other to which we have had access.' Mr WiNSOR, of the Boston Library,
has noted that there are two editions of 1703, both with the same title, but one much
less correctly printed than the other ; the test- word is « Bamardo,' the last word on
p. 1 ; in the inferior edition it reads Bomardo. Neither of these editions is that of
36 APPENDIX
the ' accurate Mr Hughs.' The test-word for his edition (which I have never seen)
would hii faction instead of ' fashion,' II, ii, 329, or else Roaming instead of ' Wrong '
of the Qq, in I, iii, 109. I mention this in the hope that it may some day lead tn
the discovery of a copy which at present certainly appears to be rarer than Qj.
In the four Folios we have virtually one and the same text, and it is clearly a dif-
ferent one from the Quartos. Collier thinks that • if the Hamlet in the First Folio
were not composed from some now unknown Quarto, it was derived from a manuscript
obtained by Heminge and Condell from the theatre. The Acts and Scenes are
marked only in the First and Second Acts, after which no divisions of the kind are
noticed, and where the Third Act commences is merely matter of modern conjecture.
Some large portions of the Play appear to have been omitted for the sake of short
ening the performance.' ' Certain portions are found in the Folio which are not in
the Second and succeeding Quartos, but we have the evidence of the First Quarto
that they were originally acted, and were not, as has been hitherto imagined, subse-
quent additions.'
In the Textual Notes I have not always recorded a typographical peculiarity of
the Second Folio, which I do not remember ever to have seen noted : it is the fre-
quent omission of the apostrophe in such cases of elision as * wheres Polonius ;'
• whats the news;' ' Happily hes the second time come to them ;' ' Ide fain know
that ;' the apostrophe is almost invariably omitted before * 'tis,' but not always ; for
instance, it is both present and absent in the line, • That he is mad 'tis true : Tis true,
tis pity.' I have looked in vain for any rule or system that may have guided the
printer ; it was apparently spasmodic carelessness or indifference.
White : The text of Hamlet is distinguished rather by a very few striking and
important corruptions than by many of minor import. In fact, there is hardly a pas-
sage in the tragedy, excepting that in the First Scene about the ' stars with trains
of fire and dews of blood,' that can give trouble to a reader intent only upon the en-
joyment of his author, which, considering the style of the work, and the vicissitudes
of the stage and the printing-office to which its text was subjected, is remarkable.
Halliwell : My sad and strong belief is that we have not the materials for the
formation of a really perfect text ; and that now at best we must be contented with a
defective copy of what is in many respects the most noble of all the writings of
Shakespeare. It is always asserted that the great dramatist was indifferent to lite-
rary fame, and that it is to this circumstance the lamentable state in which so much
of his work has descended to us is to be attributed. Other views may, indeed, for
a time have prevented a diligent attention to the publication of his writings; but
there is nothing to show that he had not meditated a complete edition of them under
his own superintendence while in his retirement at New Place. It would be a more
reasonable supposition that the preparation of such an edition was prevented by his
untimely death.
Camhrioge Editors : In giving all the passages from both Folio and Quarto, we
are reproducing, as near as may be, the work as it was originally written by Shake-
speare, or rather as finally retouched by him after the spurious edition of 1603.
Fleay {Shakespeare Manual, p. 41) : I should place the first draft in 1601, the
complete play in 1603. I have little doubt that the early Hamlet of 1589 \Tas
written by Shakespeare and Marlowe in conjunction ; and that portions of it can be
traced in Q,, as Coramhis.
THE
Tragicall Hiftorie of
HAMLET
Prince of Denmarke
By William Shake-fpeare.
As it hath beene diuerfe times acfted by his Highnefle ler-
uants in the Cittie of London : as alfo in the two V-
niuerfities of Cambridge and Oxford, and elfe- where
[VIGpftiTTE.'l
At London printed for N.L. and lohn Trundell.
1603.
X
The Tragicall Hiftoric of
HAMLET
Prince of Denmarke.
Enter ttvo Centmels.
1. ^ Tand : who is that?
2. ^Tis I.
1. O yon come moft carefully vpon your watch,
2. And if you meete Marcellus and Horatio,
The partners of my watch, bid them make hafte. S
I. 1 will : See who goes there.
Enter Horatio and Marcellus.
Hot, Friends to this ground.
Mar. And leegemen to the Dane,
O farewell honeft fouldier, who hath releeued you?
1. Bamardo hath my place, giue you good night. lo
Mar. Holla, Bamardo.
2. Say, is Horatio there?
Hor. A peece of him.
2. Welcome Horatio, welcome good Marcellus.
Mar. What hath this thing appear* d againe to night. 1 5
2. I haue feene nothing.
Mar. Horatio fayes tis but our fantafie,
And wil not let beliefe take hold of him,
Touching this dreaded fight twice feene by vs,
[I, i, 26.] Therefore I haue intreated him a long with vs 30
To watch the minutes of this night.
That if againe this apparition come.
He may approoue our eyes,and fpeake to it-
Hor. Tut, t'will not appeare.
2. Sit downe I pray, and let vs once againe 25
Aflaile your eares that are fo fortified.
What we haue two nights feene.
39
^O The Tragedie of Hamlet
Hor. Wei, fit we downe,and let vs heare Bernardo fpeake
of this.
2. Laft night of al.when yonder ftarre that's weft- }0
ward from the pole, had made his courfe to
Illumine that part of heauen. Where now it bumes,
The bell then towling one.
Enter Ghojl,
Mar. Breake off your talke, fee where it comes againe.
2. In the fame figure like the King that's dead, 35
Mar. Thou art a fcholler, fpeake to it "Roratio.
2. Lookes it not like the king?
Hor, Moft like, it horrors mee with feare and wonder.
2. It would be fpoke to.
[1, i, 45.] Mar. Queftion it Horatio. 4<*
I/or. What art thou that thus vfurps the ftate,in
Which the Maieflie of buried Dentnarke did fometimes
WalkePBy heauen I charge thee fpeake.
Mar. It is offended. exit GhoJl.
2. See, it ftalkes away. 45
Hor. Stay, fpeake, fpeake, by heauen I charge thee
fpeake.
Mar, Tis gone and makes no anfwer.
2. How now Horatio,yon tremble and looke pale.
Is not this fomething more than fantafie ? 5'
What thinke you on't?
Hor, Afore my God, I might not this beleeue, without
the fenfible and true auouch of my owne eyes.
Mar. Is it not like the King'
Hor, As thou art to thy felfe, 55
Such was the very armor he had on,
When he the ambitious Norway combated.
So frownd he once.when in an angry parle
He fmot the fleaded pollax on the yce,
[T, i, 64 ] Tis ftrange. *^
Mar, Thus twice before, and iutip at this dead hower,
With Marfliall ftalke he paffed through our watch.
Hor. In what particular to worke, I know not,
IJut in the thought and fcope of my opinion,
This bodes fome ftrange eruption to the ftate. 65
Mar. Good,now fit downe, and tell me he that knowes
Why this fame ftrikt and moft obferuant watch,
So nightly toyles the fubiecfl of the land.
And why fuch dayly coft of brazen Cannon
And forraine marte, for implements of warre, 7®
Why fuch impreffe of Ihip-writes, whofe fore taskt
Does not diuide the funday from the weeke:
What might be toward that this fweaty march
Doth make the night ioynt labourer with the d.iy,
Prince of Denmarke. \\
Who is't that can informe me? 75
Hor. Mary that can I, at leaft the whifper goes fo,
Our late King, who as you know was by Forten-
BraiTe of Norway,
Thereto prickt on by a moft emulous caufe, dared to
rif J, 84-] The combate, in which our valiant Hamlet, 80
For fo this fide of our knowne world efteemed him,
Did flay this Fortenbraffe,
Who by a feale compa(5l well ratified,by law
And heraldrie, did forfeit with his life all thofe
His lands which he ftoode feazed of by the conqueror. 85
Againfl the which a moity competent,
Was gaged by our King :
Now fir, yong Fortenbraffe,
Of inapproued mettle hot and full.
Hath in the skirts of Norway here and there, 90
Sharkt vp a fight of lawleffe Refolutes
For food and diet tc some enterprife,
That hath a ftomacke in't : and this (I take it) is the
Chiefe head and ground of this our watch.
Enter the Ghoji.
But loe,behold,fee where it comes againe, 95
He croffe it.though it blaft me : flay illufion,
If there be any good thing to be done,
That may doe eafe to thee,and grace to mee,
Speake to mee.
[I, i, 133.] If thou art priuy to thy countries fate, 100
Which happly foreknowing may preuent, O fpeake to me.
Or if thou haft extorted in thy life,
Or hoorded treafure in the wombe of earth.
For which they fay you Spirites oft walke in death, fpeake
to me, ftay and fpeake, fpeake,ftoppe it Marcellus. 105
2. Tis heere, exit GhoJl.
Hor. Tis heere.
Mare. Tis gone, O we doe it wrong, being so maiefti-
call, to offer it the (hew of violence.
For it is as the ayre invelmorable, i lo
And our vaine blowes malitious mockeiy.
2, It was about to fpeake when the Cocke crew.
Hor. And then it faded like a guilty thing,
Vpon a fearefuU fummons : I haue heard
The Cocke, that is the trumpet to the morning, 1 1 5
Doth with his earely and (hrill crowing throate.
Awake the god of day, and at his found,
Whether in earth or ayre, in fea or fire.
The ftrauagant and erring fpirite hies
{I, i, 155.] To his confines, and of the trueth heereof lao
This prefent obiedt made probation.
Alarc. It faded on the crowing of 'he Cocke,
4^ The Tragedie of Hamlet
Some fay, that euer gainft that feafon comes.
Wherein our Sauiours birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning fingeth all night long, IS5
And then they fay, no fpirite dare walke abroade,
The nights are wholefome,then no planet frikes,
No Fairie takes, nor Witch hath powre to charme,
So gratious, and fo hallowed is that time.
Yior. So haue I heard, and doe in parte beleeue it : 13C
But fee the Sunne in ruffet mantle clad,
Walkes ore the deaw of yon hie mountaine top.
Breake we our watch vp, and by my aduife,
Let vs impart what we haue feene to night
Vnto yong Y\.amlet : for vpon my life 131,
This Spirite dumbe to vs will fpeake to him:
Do you confent.wee (hall acquaint him with it,
As needefMll in our loue, fitting our duetie?
Marc. Lets doo't I pray, and I this morning know,
[1, 1,175.] Where we (hall finde him moft conueniently. 140
Enter King, Queene, Hamlet, Leartes, Corambis,
and the two Ambajfadors, with Attendants.
[I, ii, 27.] King Lordes.we here haue writ to Fortenbrajfe,
Nephew to olde Norway, who impudent
And bed-rid, fcarcely heares of this his
Nephews purpofe : and Wee heere difpatch
Yong good Cornelia, and you Voltemar I45
For bearers of thefe greetings to olde
Norway, giuing to you no further perfonall power
To bufineffe with the King,
Then thofe related articles do (hew :
Farewell.and let your halve commend your dutie, IS<1
Gent. In this and all thii.gs will wee (hew our dutie.
King. Wee doubt nothing, hartily farewel :
And now Leartes what's the nowes with you?
You faid you had a fute what i'd Leartes?
Lea : My gratious Lord, your fauorable licence, 155
Now that the funerall rites are all performed,
I may haue leaue to go againe to France,
For though the fauour of your grace might (lay mce,
Yet fomething is there whifpeis in my hart,
f I, ii, 56.] Which makes my minde and Ipirits bend all for France. 160
King Haue you your fathers \ca.\xc,LeartesF
Cor. He hath, my lord .wrung from me a forced graunt.
And I befeech you grant your Highneife leaue.
Kiui; With all our heart, Leartes fare thee well.
Lear. I in all loue and dutie take my leaue. 163
H3 lyRirtesI I-r.-iitcs, B. Mu». copy. 153. nnuet] ntwt B Mui copy.
Prince of Dentnarke. 43
King. And now princely Sonne Hamlet, Exit.
What meanes thefe fad and melancholy moodes?
For your intent going to Wittenberg,
Wee hold it moft vnmeet and vnconuenient,
Being the loy and halfe heart of your mother. 1 70
Therefore let mee intreat you ftay in Court,
All Denmarkes hope our coofm and deareft Sonne.
Ham. My lord, ti's not the fable fute I weare:
No nor the teares that ftill ftand in my eyes,
Nor the diftradled hauiour in the vifage, I7S
Nor all together mixt with outward femblance,
Is equall to the forrow of my heart.
Him haue I loft I muft of force forgoe,
Thefe but the ornaments and futes of woe.
[I, ii, 87.] King This ftiewes a louing care in you.Sonne Hamlet, l»o
But you muft thinke your father loft a father.
That father dead, loft his, and fo Oialbe vntill the
Generall ending. Therefore ceafe laments.
It is a fault gainft heauen, fault gainft the dead,
A fault gainft nature, and in reafons 185
Common courfe moft certaine.
None liues on earth, but hee is borne to die.
(^. Let not thy mother loofe her praiers Hamlet,
Stay here with vs, go not to Wittenberg.
Ham. I (hall in all my beft obay you madam. 190
King Spoke like a kinde and a moft louing Sonne,
And there's no health the King (hall drinke to day,
But the great Canon to the clowdes (hall tell
The rowfe the King (hall drinke vnto Prince Hamlet.
Exeunt all bttt Hamlet.
[I, ii, 129.] Ham. O that this too much grieu'd and fallied fle(h 195
Would melt to nothing, or that the vniuerfall
Globe of heauen would tume al to a Chads !
O God within two moneths; no not two : maried.
Mine vncle : O let me not thinke of it.
My fathers brotb*!r : but no more like 20»
My father, then I to H'*-cule:.
Within two months, ere yei the fait of moft
Vnrighteous teates had left their flu(hing
In her galled eyes : (he married, O God, a beaft'
Deuoyd of reafon would not haue made 30^
Such fpeede : Frailtie, thy name is Woman,
Why (he would hang on him, as if increafe
Of appetite had growne by what it looked on.
O wicked wicked fpeede, to make fuch
Dexteritie to inceftuous (hestes, 210
198. Glut] God, B. Mus. copy. 198. niarieti] married B. Mus copy.
maMetAs] months B. Mus. copy
44 T^h^ Tragedy of Hatnlet
Ere yet the Ihooes were olde,
The which (he followed my dead fathers corfe
Like Nyobe, all teares : married, well it is not.
Nor it cannot come to good:
But breake my heart, for I muft holde my tongue, 215
Enter Horatio aiid Marcellus.
fl, ii, 160 j Hor. Health to your Lordfliip.
Ham. I am very glad to fee you, (Horatio) or I much
forget my felfe.
Hor, The fame my Lord, and your poore feniant euer.
Ham. O my good friend, I change that name with you : 220
but what make you from Wittenberg Woratio?
Marcellus.
Marc. My good Lord.
Ham. I am very glad to fee you, good euen firs:
But what is your affaire in Elfenoure? 225
Weele teach you to drinke deepe ere you depart.
Hor. A trowant difpofition, my good Lord
Ham. Nor fliall you make mee trufler
Of your owne report againft your felfe:
Sir, I know you are no trowant: 230
But what is your affaire in Elfenoure?
Hor. My good Lord, I came to fee your fathers funerall.
Ham. O I pre thee do not mocke mee fellow fludient,
I thinke it was to fee my mothers wedding.
Hor. Indeede my Lord, it followed hard vpon. 235
Ham. Thrift, thrift, Horatio, the funerall bak't meates
Did coldly furnifh forth the marriage tables,
Would I had met my deercll foe in heauen
Ere euer I had feene that day Horatio;
[I, ii, 184.] () my father, my father, me thinks I fee my father, 240
Hor. Where my Lord?
Ham. Why, in my mindes eye Horatio.
Hor. I faw him once, he was a gallant King.
JIam. He was a man, take him for all in all.
I (hall not looke vpon his like ::gaine. 245
Hor. My Lord, I thinke I faw him yesternight,
Ham. Saw, who?
Hor. My Lord, the King your father.
Ham. Ha, ha, the King my father ke you.
Hor. Ceafen your admiration for a while 250
With an attentiue eare, till I may deliuer,
Vpon the witnelTe of fhefe Genllemen
This wonder to you.
Ham. For Gods loue let me heare it.
Hor. Two nights together had thefe Gentlemen, 255
Marcellus and Bernardo, on their watch,
In the dead vad and middle of the night,
Becne thus incountercd by a figure like your father,
Prince of Detimarke. 45
Anned to poynt, exadUy Capapea
[I, ii, 20I.] Appeeres before them thrife, he walkes 260
Before their weake and feare oppreflfed eies.
Within his tronchions length,
While they diflilled almoft to gelly.
W^ith the zSl of feare ftands dumbe,
And fpeake not to him: this to mee 265
In dreadful fecrefie impart they did.
And I with them the third night kept the watch,
Where as they had deliuered forme of the thing.
Each part made true and good,
The Apparition comes : I knew your father, *TO
Thefe handes are not more like.
Ham. Tis very flrange.
Hot. As I do liue.my honord lord, tis true.
And wee did thinke it right done,
In our dutie to let you know it. 275
Ham. Where was this?
Mar. My Lord.vpon the platforme where we watched.
Ham. Did you not fpeake to it?
Hor. My Lord we did, but anfwere made it none,
[I, ii, 215.] Yet once me thought it was about to fpeake, 280
And lifted vp his head to motion.
Like as he would fpeake, but euen then
The morning cocke crew lowd, and in all hafte.
It (hruncke in hafle away.and vanifhed
Our fight. 285
Ham. Indeed, indeed firs, but this troubles me:
Hold you the watch to night?
All We do my Lord.
Ham. Armed fay ye?
All Armed my good Lord. 290
Ham. From top to toe?
All. My good Lord, from head to foote.
Ham. Why then faw you not his face?
Hor. O yes my Lord, he wore his beuer vp.
Ham. How look't he, frowningly? 295
Hor. A countenance more in forrow than in anger.
Ham. Pale, or red?
Hor. Nay, verie pal
Ham. And fixt his eies vpon you.
[I, ii, 234.] Hor. Moft conftantly. J<»
Ham. I would I had beene there,
Hor. It would a much amazed yo a.
Ham. Yea very like,very like,ftaid it long?
Hor. While one with moderate pace
Might tell a hundred. 7^%
Mar. O longer, longer.
Ham. His beard was grifleld, n' .
4v The Tragedie of Hamlet
Nor. It was as I haue feene it in his life,
A fable filuer.
Ham. I wil watch to night, perchance t'wil walke againe. 310
Ilor. I warrant it will.
JIatn. If it aflume my noble fathers perfon,
He fpeake to it, if hell it felfe fliould gape,
And bid me hold my peace, Gentlemen,
If you haue hither confealed this fight, 315
Let it be tenible in your filence ftill,
And whatfoeuer elfe fhall chance to night,
Giue it an vnderflanding,but no tongue,
I will requit your loues,fo fare you well,
Vpon the platforme, twixt eleuen and twelue, 320
Tie vifit you.
All. Our duties to your honor. exeunt.
Ham. O your loues,your loues, as mine to you,
Farewell, my fathers fpirit in Armes,
Well, all's not well. I doubt fome foule play, 325
Would the night were come,
Till then,fit flill my foule, foule deeds will rife
[1. ii, 257.] Though all the world orewhelme them to mens eies. Exit.
Enter Leartes and Ofelia.
[I, iii, I.] Leart, My neceffaries are imbarkt, I muft aboord.
But ere I part, marke what I fay to thee : 330
I fee Prince Hamlet makes a fliew of loue
Beware Ofelia, do not truft his vowes,
Perhaps he loues you now, and now his tongue,
Speakes from his heart, but yet take heed my filler.
The Chariefl maide is prodigall enough, 331,
If fhe vnmaske hir beautie to the Moone.
Vertue it felfe fcapes not calumnious thoughts,
Belieu't <?/(r//a,therefore keepe a loofe
Left that he trip thy honor and thy fame.
Ofel. Brother, to this I haue lent attentiue eare, 340
And doubt not but to keepe my honour firme,
But my deere brother,do not you
Like to a cunning Sophifter,
Teach me the path and ready way to heauen.
While you forgetting what is faid to me, 345
Your felfe, like to a careleffe libertine
Doth giue his heart, his appetite at ful,
And little recks how that his honour dies.
Lear. No, feare it not my deere Ofelia,
[I, iii, 52.] Here comes my father, occafion fmiles vpon a fecond leaae. 350
Enter Corambis.
Cor. Yet here Leartes? aboord, aboord, for (hame.
The winde fits in the fhoulder of your faile,
And you are ftaid for, there my blefTmg with thee
And thefe few precepts in thy memory.
Prince of Denmarke. 47
•* Be thou familiar, but by no meanes vulgare ; 35S
" Thofe friends thou haft, and their adoptions tried,
" Graple them to thee with a hoope of fteele,
»♦ But do not dull the palme with entertaine,
" Of euery new vnfleg'd courage,
•♦ Beware of entrance into a quarrell ;but being in, 360
" Beare it that the oppofed may beware of thee,
" Coftly thy apparrell, as thy purfe can buy.
" But not expreft in fafhion,
" For the apparell oft proclaimes the man.
And they of France of the chiefe rancke and ftation 365
Are of a moft fele<5t and generall chiefe in that :
" This aboue all, to thy owne felfe be true.
And it muft follow as the night the day.
Thou canft not then be falfe to any one,
/I,iii, 81.] Farewel, my blefling with thee. 370
Lear. I humbly take my leaue, farewell Ofelia,
And remember well what I haue faid to you. exit.
Ofel. It is already lock't within my hart,
And you your felfe shall keepe the key of it.
Ccr. What i'ft Ofelia he hath faide to you? 375
Ofel. Something touching the prince Hamlet.
Cor. Mary wel thought on, t'is giuen me to vnderftand.
That you haue bin too prodigall of your maiden prefence
Vnto Prince Hamlet, if it be fo,
As fo tis giuen to mee, and that in waie of caution 380
I muft tell you ; you do not vnderftand your felfe
So well as befits my honor, and your credite.
Ofel. My lord, he hath made many tenders of his loue
to me.
Cor. Tenders, I, I, tenders you may call them.
Ofel. And withall,fuch eameft vowes. 385
ri, iii, 1 15.] Cor. Springes to catch woodcocks,
What, do I not know when the blood doth bume.
How prodigall the tongue lends the heart vowes.
In briefe, be more fcanter of your maiden prefence.
Or tendring thus you'l tender mee a foole. 39c
Ofel. I fhall obay my lord in all I may.
Cor. Ofelia, receiue none of his letters,
" For louers lines are fnares to intrap the heart ;
" Refufe his tokens, both of them are keyes
To vnlocke Chaftitie vnto Defire ; 39J
Come in Ofelia, fuch men often proue,
•* Great in their wordes, but little in their loue.
[1, ui, 136.] Ofel. I will my lord. exeunt.
Enter Hamlet, Horatio, and Marcellus.
[I, iv, ..] Ham. The ayre bites Ihrewd; it is an eager and
An nipping winde, what houre i'ft? 400
Hor. I think it lacks of twelue, Sound Trumpets.
4© Tiie Tragedy of Hatnlet
Mar. No, t'is ftrucke.
Hor. Indeed i heard it not,what doth this mean my lord?
Ham, O the king doth wake to night, & takes his rowfe,
Keepe waffel,and the fwaggering vp-fpring reeles, 405
And as he dreames, his draughts of renifh downe,
The kettle, drumme, and trumpet, thus bray out,
The triumphes of his pledge.
Ifor. Is it a cuftome here?
I/am. I mary i'ft and though I am 410
Natiue here, and to the maner borne.
It is a cuftome, more honourd in the breach.
Then in the obferuance.
Enter the Ghq/l.
[I, iv, 38.] Hor. Looke my Lord, it comes.
Ham. Angels and Minifters of grace defend vs, 4I 5
Be thou a fpirite of health, or goblin damn'd.
Bring with thee ayres from heauen, or blafts from hell :
Be thy intents wicked or charitable.
Thou commeft in fuch queftionable fhape,
That I will fpeake to thee, 420
He call thee Hamlet, King, Father, Royall Dane,
O anfwere mee, let mee not burft in ignorance,
But fay why thy canonizd bones hearfed in death
Haue burft their ceremonies:why thy Sepulcher,
In which wee faw thee quietly interr'd, 425
Ilath burft his ponderous and marble lawes.
To caft thee vp againe: what may this meane,
That thou, dead corfe,againe in compleate fteele,
Reuiffets thus the glimfes of the Moone,
Making night hideous, and we fooles of nature, 430
So horridely to fhake our difpofition.
With tb.oughts beyond the reaches of our foules?
fl, iv, 57.] Say,fpeake,wherefore,what may this meane?
Hor. It beckons you, as though it had fomething
To impart to you alone. 435
Mar. Looke with what courteous adlion
It waues you to a more remoued ground.
But do not go with it.
Hor. No, by no meanes my Lord.
JIam. It will not fpeake, then will I follow it. 44c
Hor. What if it tempt you toward the flood my Lord.
That becklcs ore his bace.into the fea.
And there affume some other horrible fliape.
Which might depriue your foueraigntie of reafon.
And drive you into madnefle : thinke of it. 445
JIam. Still am I called, go on,iIe follow thee.
Hor. My Lord, you fliall not go.
[1, IV, 64. I Ham. Why what (hould be the feare?
I do not fct my life at a pinnes fee,
Prince of Dentnarke. ^Q
And for my foule.what can it do to that? 45a
Being a thing immortall, like it felfe,
Go on, ile follow thee.
Mar. My Lord be rulde, you (hall not goe.
Ham. My fate cries out, and makes each pety Artiae
As hardy as the Nemeon Lyons nerue, 455
Still am I cald, vnhand me gentlemen ;
By heauen ile make a ghoft of him that lets me,
Away I fay, go on, ile follow thee.
Hor. He waxeth defperate with imagination.
Mar. Something is rotten in the (late of Dentnarke. 460
Hor. Haue after ; to what iffue will this fort?
P, It, 88.] Mar. Lets follow, tis not fit thus to obey him. exit.
Enter Ghojl and Hamlet.
P, V, I.] Ham. lie go no farther,whither wilt thou leade me?
Ghojl Marke me.
Ham. I will. 465
Ghojl I am thy fathers fpirit, doomd for a time
To walke the night, and all the day
Confinde in flaming fire,
Till the foule crimes done in my dayes of Nature
Arepurged and burnt away. 470
Ham. Alas poore Ghoft.
Ghojl Nay pitty me not, but to my vnfolding
Lend thy liftning eare, but that I am forbid
To tell the fecrets of my prifon houfe
I would a tale vnfold, whofe lighteft word 475
Would harrow vp thy foule, freeze thy yong blood,
Make thy two eyes like ftars ftart from their fpheres,
Thy knotted and combined locks to part.
And each particular haire to ftand on end
Like quils vpon the fretful! Porpentine, 480
But this fame blazon muft not be.to eares of fleih and blood
Hamlet, if euer thou didft thy deere father loue.
P, V, 24.] Ham. O God.
Gho. Reuenge his foule, and moft vnnaturall murder :
Ham. Murder. 485
Ghojl Yea, murder in the higheft degree.
As in the leaft tis bad,
But mine moft foule,beaftly,and vnnaturall.
Ham. Hafte me to knowe it, that with wings as fwift as
meditation, or the thought of it,may fweepe to my reuenge. 490
Ghojl O I finde thee apt, and duller Ihouldst thou be
Then the fat weede which rootes it felfe in eafe
On Lethe wharffe : briefe let me be.
Tis giuen out, that fleeping in my orchard,
A Serpent ftung me ; fo the whole eare of Denmatke 495
Is with a forged Profles of my death rankely abufde:
But know thou noble Youth : he that did fting
Vou II.-4
50 The Tragedie of Hamtei
Thy fathers heart, now weares his Crowne.
[I, V, 40.] Ham. O my prophetike foule, my vncle! my vncle.
Ghojl Yea he, that inceftuous wretch, wonne to his will 500
0 wicked will.and gifts! that haue the power (with g^fts.
So to feduce my mofl feeming vertuous Queene,
But vertne, as it neuer will be moued,
Though Lewdneffe court it in a fhape of heauen,
So Lull, though to a radiant angle linckt, 505
Would fate it felfe from a celeftiall bedde,
And prey on garbage : but foft, me thinkes
1 fent the mornings ayre, briefe let me be,
Sleeping within my Orchard, my cuftome alwayes
In the after noone, vpon my fecure houre <|C
Thy vncle came, with iuyce of Hebona
In a viall, and through the porches of my eares
Did powre the leaprous diftilment.whofe effedl
Hold fuch an enmitie with blood of man,
That fwift as quickefilner, it pofteth through 515
The naturall gates and allies of the body,
And tumes the thinne and wholefome blood
[I, V, 69.] Like eager dropings into milke.
And all my fmoothe body, barked, and tettered ouer.
Thus was I fleeping by a brothers hand t2o
Of Crowne,of Queene,of life,of dignitie
At once depriued, no reckoning made of.
But fent vnto my graue.
With all my accompts and fmnes vpon my head,
0 horrible, mofl horrible! 525
Ham. O God!
ghojl If thou haft nature in thee, beare it not.
But howfoeuer, let not thy heart
Confpire againft thy mother aught,
Leaue her to heauen, 530
And to the burthen that her confcience beares.
1 muft be gone, the Glo-worme (hewes the Martin
To be neere, and gin's to pale his vneffectuall fire :
Hamlet adue,adue,adue : r<fmember me. Eint
1 1, V, 92.] Ham. O all you hofte of heauen! O earth,what elfe? 535
And (hall I couple hell ; remember thee?
Yes thou poore Ghoft ; from the tables
Of my memorie, ile wipe away all fawes of Bookes,
All triuiall fond conceites
That euer youth.or elfe obferuance noted, J40
And thy remembrance, all alone (liall fit.
Yes, ycv, by heauen, a damnd pernitious villaine,
Murderon.-., bawdy, fmiling danmed villaine,
(My tallies) meet it is I set it downe,
That one may finile, and fmile, and he a villayne; 1^45
At leaft 1 am furc, it mav be fo in Dcnmarke.
Prince of Dentnarke. 5^
So vncle, there you are, there you are.
Now to the words ; it is adue adue : remember me,
[I,T, 112.] Soe t'is enough I haue fwome. ^50
Hot. My lord, my lord. Enter. Horatio^
Mar. Lord Hamlet. and Marcelbu.
Nor. Ill, lo,lo,ho,ho.
Mar. Ill,lo,lo,fo,ho,fo,come boy, come.
Hot. Heauens fecure him.
Mar. How i'ft my noble lord? 555
Hor. What news my lord?
Sam. O wonderfull, wonderful.
Hot. Good my lord tel it.
Jfam. No not I, you'l reueale it
JI(yr. Not I my Lord by heauen. 560
Mar Nor I my Lord.
Ham. How fay you thenPwould hart of man
Once thinke it? but you'l be fecret.
Both. I by heauen.my lord.
Ham. There's neuer a villaine dwelling in all Denmarke, 565
But hee's an arrant knaue.
|_I,T, 125.] Hor. There need no Ghoft come from the graue to tell
you this.
Ham. Right, you are in the right, and therefore
I holde it meet without more circumllance at all.
Wee (hake hands and part;you as your buHnes 570
And defiers Ihall leade you : for looke you,
Euery man hath bufmes, and defires, fuch
As it is, and for my owne poore parte, ile go pray.
Hor. Thefe are but wild and wherling words, my Lord.
Ham. I am fory they offend you ;hartely,yes faith hartily. 575
Hor. Ther's no offence my Lord.
Ham. Yes by Saint Patrike but there is 'Horatio,
And much offence too, touching this vifion.
It is an honeft ghofl, that let mee tell you.
For your defires to know what is betweene vs, ^80
Or'emaifter it as you may :
And now kind frends, as yon are frends,
SchoUers and gentlmen,
Grant mee one poore requeft.
Both. What i'ft my Lord? 585
!!>▼. '44-] Ham. Neuer make known what you haue feene to night
Both. My lord.we will not.
Ham. Nay but fweare.
Hor. In faith my Lord not I.
Mar. Nor I my Lord in faith. ego
Ham. Nay vpon my fword, indeed vpon my iword.
Gho. Sweare.
The Gojl under the/lage.
Ham Ha, ha, come you here, this fellow in the fellerige.
5 2 The Tragedie of Hamlet
Here confent to fweare.
Hor. Propofe the oth my Lord. 595
Ham. Neuer to fpeake what you haue ieene to night,
Sweare by my fword.
Gost. Sweare.
Ham. Hie dr' vbique ; nay then weele fliift our ground:
Come hither Gentlemen, and lay your handes 600
Againe vpon this fword, neuer to fpeake
Of that which you haue feene, fweare by my fword.
Ghojl Sweare.
fl, V, 162.] Ham. Well faid old Mole, can'fl worke in the earth?
so faft, a worthy Pioner, once more remoue. 605
Hor. Day and night.but this is wondrous flrange.
Ham. And therefore as a flranger giue it welcome,
There are more things in heauen and earth Horatio,
Then are Dream't of, in your philofophie,
But come here,as before you neuer (hall 610
How flrange or odde foere I beare my felfe,
As I perchance hereafter fhall thinke meet.
To put an Anticke difpofition on.
That you at fuch times feeing me, neuer fhall
[I, V, 174.] With Annes, incombred thus.or this head fliake, 615
Or by pronouncing fome vndoubtfull phrafe.
As well well, wee know, or wee could and if we would.
Or there be, and if they might, or fuch ambiguous.-
Giuing out to note, that you know aught of mee,
This not to doe, fo grace, and mercie 620
At your moft need helpe you, fweare
GhoJl. fweare.
Ham. Refl, reft, perturbed fpirit: fo gentlemen,
In all my loue I do commend mee to you.
And what fo poore a man as Hamlet may, 625
To pleafure you, God willing fliall not want.
Nay come lett's go together.
But ftil your fingers on your lippes I pray.
The time is out of ioynt.O curfed fpite.
That euer I was borne to fet it right, 630
f I, V, 191.] Nay come lett's go together. Exeunt.
Enter Corambis, and Montana.
[H, 1, I.] Cor. Montana, here, thefe letters to my fonne,
And this fame mony with my l)lL'fring to him.
And bid him ply his learning good Montnno.
Mon. Iwill my lord. 635
Cor. You fliall do very well Afontano, to fay thus,
I knew the gentleman, or know his father,
To inquire the manner of his life.
As thus; being amongft his acquaintance.
You may fay, you faw him at fuch a time, marke you mee, 640
At game, or drincking, fwearing, or drubbing.
Prince of Denmarke. 53
You may go fo farre.
Mon. My lord, that will impeach his reputation.
Cor. I faith not a whit, no not a whit.
Now happely hee clofeth with you in the confequence, 645
As you may bridle it not difparage him a iote.
What was I a bout to fay,
pi, i, 52.] Mon. He clofeth with him in the confequence.
Cor. I, you fay right, he clofeth with him thus.
This will hee fay, let mee fee what hee will fay, 650
Mary this,I faw him yeflerday, or tother day.
Or then, or at fuch a time, a dicing.
Or at Tennis, I or drincking drunke, or entring
Of a howfe of lightnes viz. brothell,
Thus fir do wee that know the world, being men of reach, 655
By indiredlions, finde diredlions forth,
And fo fhall you my fonne ; you ha me, ha you not?
Mon. I haue my lord.
Cor. Wei, fare you well,commend mee to him.
Mon. I will my lord. 660
fll, i, 73.3 Cor. And bid him ply his musicke
Mon. My lord I wil. exit.
Enter, Ofelia.
Cor. Farewel.how now 0/^//a,what's the news with you?
Ofe. O my deare father, fuch a change in nature.
So great an alteration in a Prince, 665
So pitifull to him, fearefuU to mee,
A maidens eye ne're looked on.
Cor. Why what's the matter my Ofelia?
Of. O yong Prince Hamlet, the only floure of Denmark^
Hee is bereft of all the wealth he had, 670
The lewell that ador'nd his feature mod
Is filcht and (lolne away, his wit's bereft him,
Hee found mee walking in the gallery all alone.
There comes hee to mee.with a diflracted looke,
[II, i, 8o.'J Jlis garters lagging downe, his (hoes vntide, 673
And fixt his eyes fo ftedfaft on my face,
As if they had vow'd, this is their latefl obiedt.
Small while he floode, but gripes me by the wrist,
And there he holdes my pulfe till with a figh
He doth vnclafpe his holde, and parts away 680
Silent.as is the mid time of the night:
And as he went, his eie was flill on mee,
For thus his head ouer his fhoulder looked.
He feemed to finde the way without his eies:
For out of doores he went without their helpe, 685
And fo did leaue me.
Cor. Madde for thy loue.
What haue you giuen him any crofle wordes of late?
[n, i, I "Jg.] Ofelia I did rrpell his letters, deny his gifts, 69O
54 The Tragedie of Hamlet
As you did charge me.
Cor. Why that hath made him madde:
By heau'n t'is as proper for our age to cafl
Beyond our felues, as t'is for the yonger fort
To leaue their wantonnefle. Well, I am fory 695
That I was fo ra(h : but what remedy?
Lets to the King, this madnefle may prooue,
[II, I, 120.] Though wilde a while, yet more true to thy loue. exeunt.
Enter King and Queene, Rojfencraftjand Gilderjione.
[II, ii, I.] King Right noble friends, that our deere cofm Hamlet
Hath loft the very heart of all his fence, 70c
It is moft right, and we mofl fory for him :
Therefore we doe defire, euen as you tender
Our care to him, and our great loue to you,
That you will labour but to wring from him
The caufe and ground of his diftemperancie. 705
Doe this, the king of Denmarke flial be thankefull,
Ros. My Lord, whatfoeuer lies within our power
Your maieftie may more commaund in wordes
Then vfe perfwafions to your liege men,bound
By loue, by duetie, and obedience, 7^°
Guil. What we may doe for both your Maiefties
To know the griefe troubles the Prince your fonne,
We will indeuour all the beft we may.
So in all duetie doe we take our leaue,
[II, ii, 33.] King Thankes Guilderftone, and gentle Roffencraft. 715
Que. Thankes Roffencraft, and gentle Gilderftone.
Enter Corambis and Ofelia.
Cor. My Lord, the Ambaffadors are ioyfuUy
Retum'd from Norway.
King Thou flill haft beene the father of good news.
Cor. Haue I my Lord? I affure your grace, 7*0
I holde my duetie as I holde my life.
Both to my God, and to my foueraigne King:
And I beleeue, or elfe this braine of mine
Hunts not the traine of policie fo well
As it had wont to doe, but I haue found 7^5
The very depth of Hamlets lunacie.
Queene God graunt he hath.
Enter the Ambajfadors.
ril, ii, 59.] King Now Voltemar,\i\\?X from our brother Norway?
Volt. Moft faire returnes of j^reetings and defires.
Vpon our firft he fent forth to fuppreffe 73^
His nephews leuies, which to him ap]'>ear'd
To be a preparation gainft the Polacke :
But better look't into, he truely found
It was againft your Highneffe.whereat grieued.
That fo his fickenefre,afje,an(l impotence, 735
Was falfcly borne in hand, fends out arrefts
Prince of Denmarke. 55
On Fortenbrajfe, which he in briefe obays,
Receiues rebuke from Norway.^x^i. in fine,
Makes vow before his vncle, neuer more
To giue the aflay of Armes againfl your Maieflie, 74°
Whereon old Norway ouercome with ioy,
[n, ii, 73.] Giues him three thoufand crownes in annuall fee.
And his commiflion to employ thofe fouldiers,
So leuied as before, againfl the Polacke,
With an intreaty heerein further fliewne, 745
That it would pleafe you to giue quiet paffe
Through your dominions, for that enterprife
On such regardes offafety and allowances
As therein are fet downe.
King It likes vs well, and at fit time and leafore 750
Weele reade and anfwere thefe his Articles,
Meane time we thanke you for your well
Tooke labour : go to your reft,at night weele feaft togithen
Right welcome home. exeunt Ambajfadors.
[H. H, 85.] Cor. This bufines is very well difpatched. 755
Now my Lord.touching the yong Prince Hamlet,
Certaine it is that hee is madde: mad let vs grant him then:
Now to know the caufe of this effe<5l.
Or elfe to fay the caufe of this defedl;
For this effedl defedtiue comes by caufe. 760
Queene Good my Lord be briefe.
Cor. Madam I will: my Lord, I haue a daughter,
Haue while (hee's mine : for that we thinke
Is fureft, we often loofe:now to the Prince.
My lord, but note this letter, 765
The which my daughter in obedience
Delieuer'd to my handes.
King Reade it my Lord.
Cor. Marke my Lord.
[II ii, 115.] Doubt that in earth is fire, 770
Doubt that the ftarres doe moue,
Doubt trueth to be a liar,
But doe not doubt I loue.
To the beautiful Ofelia :
Thine euer the mofl vnhappy Prince Hamlet. 77i
My Lord, what doe you thinke of me?
I, or what might you thinke when I fawe this?
King As of a true friend and a mod louing fubie<ft.
Cor. I would be glad to prooue fo.
Now when I faw this letter.tnus I befpake my maiden: 780
Lord Hamlet is a Prince out of your ftarre.
And one that is vnequall for your loue:
Therefore I did commaund her refufe his letters.
Deny hi? tokens, and to abfent her felfe.
Shee as my childe obediently obey'd me. 785
56 The Tragedy of Hamlet
Now fince which time, feeing his loue thus croflPd,
Which I tooke to be idle, and but fport,
He (Iraitway grew into a melancholy,
From that vnto a fall, then vnto diftradlion,
Then into a fadnefle, from that vnto a madnefle, 790
And fo by continuance,and weakeneffe of the braine
Into this frenfie, which now poffefleth him:
fll, ii, 155.] And if this be not true, take this from this.
King Thinke you t'is fo?
Cor. How? fo my Lord, I would very faine know 795
That thing that I haue faide t'is fo, pofitiuely,
And it hath fallen out otherwife.
Nay, if circumflances leade me on.
He finde it out,if it were hid
As deepe as the centre of the earth. 800
King, how (hould wee trie this fame?
Cor. Mary my good lord thus,
The Princes walke is here in the galery,
There let Q/^/z'fl.walke vntill hee comes.*
Your felfe and I will fland clofe in the ftudy, »i05
There fhall you heare the effedl of all his hart,
And if it proue any otherwife then loue.
Then let my cenfure faile an other time.
[n, ii, 167.] King, fee where hee comes poring vppon a booke.
Enter Hamlet.
Cor. Madame, will it pleafe your grace 810
To leaue vs here?
Que. With all my hart. exit.
[in, i, 44.] Cor. And here Ofelia, reade you on this booke.
And walke aloofe, the King fhal be vnfeene.
[Ill, i, 56.] I/avt. To be,or not to be, I there's the point, 815
To Die, to fleepe.is that all? I all:
No,to fleepe,to dreame, I mary there it goes,
For in that dreame of death, when wee awake,
And borne before an euerlafting ludge,
From whence no paflenger euer retur'nd, 890
The vndifcouered country, at whofe fight
The happy fmile.and the accurfed damn'd.
Rut for this,the ioyfull hope of this,
Whol'd beare the fcornes and flattery of the world,
Scorned by the right rich,the rich curfled of the poore? 82^
The widow being opprened,the orphan wrong'd.
The tafle of hunger, or a tirants raigne,
And thoufand more calamities befides,
To grunte and fweate vnder this weary life,
When that he may his full Quietus make, 830
With a bare bodkin, who would this indure,
But for a hope of foniething after death?
Which pufles the braine, and doth confound the Icnce,
Prince of Denmarke. 57
Which makes vs rather beare thofe euilles we haue.
Than flie to others that we know not of. 835
I that.O this confcience makes cowardes of vs all,
[III, i, 90.] Lady in thy orizons, be all my finnes remembred.
Ofel. My Lord, I haue fought opportunitie,which now
I haue,to redeliuer to your worthy handes, a fmall remem-
brance, fuch tokens which I haue receiued of you. 840
[III, i, 105.] Ham. Are you faire?
Ofel. My Lord.
Ham. Are you honeft?
Ofel. ^^^lat meanes my Lord?
Ham. That if you be faire and honeft, 845
Your beauty fliould admit no difcourse to your honefty.
Ofel. My Lord, can beauty haue better priuiledge than
with honefty?
Ham. Yea mary may it ; for Beauty may transforme
Honefty, from what (he was into a bawd:
Then Honefty can transforme Beauty: 850
This was fometimes a Paradox,
But now the time giues it fcope.
[Ill, i, 96.] I neuer gaue you nothing.
Ofel. My Lord, you know right well you did,
And with them fuch eameft vowes of loue, 855
As would haue moou'd the ftonieft breaft aliue,
But now too true I finde.
Rich giftes waxe poore, when giuers grow vnkinde.
Ham. I neuer loued you.
Ofel. You made me beleeue you did. 860
1 III, i, 117.] Ham. O thou (houldft not a beleeued me!
Go to a Nunnery goe, why (houldft thou
Be a breeder of fmners? I am my felfe indifferent honeft.
But I could accufe my felfe of fuch crimes
It had beene better my mother had ne're borne me, 865
O I am very prowde, ambitious, difdainefuU,
With more fmnes at ray becke, then I haue thoughts
To put them in, what fhould fuch fellowes as I
Do, crawling between heauen and earth?
To a Nunnery goe, we are arrant knaues all, 870
Beleeue none of vs, to a Nunnery goe.
Ofel. O heauens fecure him!
[111,1,131.] Ham. Wher's thy father?
Ofel. At home my lord.
Ham. For Gods fake let the doores be (hut on him, %1^
He may play the foole no where but in his
Owne houfe:to a Nunnery goe.
Ofel. Help him good God.
Ham, If thou doft marry, He giue thee
This plague to thy dowry: 880
Be thou as chafte as yce, as pure as fnowe.
5o The Tragedie of Hamlet
Thou (halt not fcape calumny ,to a Nunnery goe.
Ofel. Alas, what change is this?
Ham. But if thou wilt needes marry ,marry a foole,
For wifemen know well enough, 885
What monfters you make of them,to a Nunnery goe,
Ofel. Pray God reflore him,
[111,1,142,] Ham. Nay, I haue heard of your paintings too,
God hath giuen you one face.
And you make your felues another, 890
You fig.and you amble, and you nickname Gods creatures.
Making your wantonnefle, your ignorance,
A pox, t'is fcuruy, He no more of it.
It hath made me madde : He no more marriages,
All that are married but one,(hall liue, JJ95
The reft (hall keepe as they are, to a Nunnery goe,
[ III, i, 149.] To a Nunnery goe. exit.
Ofe. Great God of heauen,what a quicke change is this?
The Courtier,Scholler,Souldier, all in him,
All dalht and fplintered thence, O woe is me, 900
To a feene what I haue feene,fee what I fee, exit.
[Ill.i, 162.] King Loue? No,no, that's not the caufe. Enter King and
Some deeper thing it is that troubles him. Corambis,
Cor. Wel,fomething it is:my Lord, content you a while,
I will my felfe goe feele him:let me worke, 905
He try him euery way: fee where he comes.
Send you thofe Gentlemen, let me alone
To finde the depth of this, away ,be gone. exit King.
[II, ii, 172.] Now my good Lord.do you know me? Enter Hamlet.
Ham. Yea very well,y'are a filhmonger, 910
Cor. Not I my Lord.
Ham, Then fir, I would you were fo honeft a man,
For to be honeft, as this age goes,
Is one man to be pickt out of tenne thousand.
jll, ii, 190.] Cor. What doe you reade my Lord? 915
Ham. Wordes.wordes.
Cor. What's the matter my Lord?
Ham. Betweene who?
Cor. I meane the matter you reade my Lord.
Ham. Mary moft vile herefie: 920
For here the Satyricall Satyre writes,
That oMe men haue hollow eyes.weake backes,
Grey beardes, pittifull weake hammes, gowty legges,
All which sir.I moft potently beleeue not:
For fir, your felfe (halbe olde as I am, 925
If like a Crabbe, you could goe backeward.
f II, ii, 206. ] Cor. How pregnant his replies are, and full of wit:
Yet at firft he tooke me for a fishmonger :
All this comes by loue, the vemencie of loue,
And when I was yong, I was very idle, 9.V)
Prince of Denmarke. 59
And fuflfered much extafie in loue, very neere this:
pi, ii, 204.] Will you walke out of the aire my Lord?
Ham. Into my graue.
Cor. By the maffe that's out of the aire indeed.
Very flirewd anfwers, 935
My lord I will take my leaue of you.
Enter Gilder/lone, and Roffencraft.
Ham. You can take nothing from me fir,
I will more willingly part with all,
[II, ii, 216.] Olde doating foole.
Cor, You feeke Prince Hamlet,fee,there he is. exit. 940
Gil. Health to your Lordfhip.
Ham. What, Gilderflone,and RofTencraft,
Welcome kinde Schoole-fellowes to Elfanoure.
Gil. We thanke your Grace.and would be very glad
You were as when we were at Wittenberg. 945
[II, ii, 269.] Ham. I thanke you, but is this vifitation free of
Your felues, or were you not fent for?
Tell me true,come,I know the good King and Queene
Sent for you.there is a kinde of confeflion in your eye :
Come, I know you were fent for. 95°
Gil. What fay you?
fll, ii, 283.] Ham. Nay then I fee how the wmde fits,
Come,you were fent for.
RoJJ'. My lord,we were, and willingly if we might,
Know the caufe and ground of your difcontent. 955
Ham. Why I want preferment.
Roff. I thinke not fo my lord.
["II, ii, 290.] Ham. Yes faith,this great world you fee contents me not.
No nor the fpangled heauens.nor earth,nor fea.
No nor Man that is fo glorious a creature, 960
Contents not me.no nor woman too,though you laugh.
Gil. My lord, we laugh not at that.
Ham. WTiy did you laugh then.
When I faid.Man did not content mee?
Gil. My Lord, we laughed,when you laid, Man did not 965
content you.
What entertainement the Players Ihall haue,
ni, ii, 307. 1 We boorded them a the way : they are comming to you.
Ham. Players.what Players be they?
Rojf. My Lord,the Tragedians of the Citty,
Thofe that you tooke delight to fee fo often. ((tie ? Q70
Ham. How comes it that they trauell? Do they grow re-
Gil. No my Lord, their reputation holds as it was wont.
Ham. How then?
Gil. Yfaith my Lord, noueltie carries it away
For the principall publike audience that 975
IZame to them, are turned to priuate playes,
f IT, 'i, 327.] And to the humour of children.
60 The Tragedie of Hamlet
Ham. I doe not greatly wonder of it,
[II, ii, 347.] For thofe that would make mops and moes
At my vncle, when my father lined, 980
Now giue a hundred,two hundred pounds
For his picture : but they fliall be welcome,
[II, ii, 309.] He that playes the King (hall haue tribute of me.
The ventrous Knight (hall vse his foyle and target,
The louer (hall figh gratis, 985
The clowne (hall make them laugh (for't.
That are tickled in the lungs, or the blanke verfe shall halt
[II, ii, 314.1 And the Lady (hall haue leaue to fpeake her minde freely.
The Trumpets found. Enter Corambis.
[II, ii, 364.] Do you fee yonder great baby?
He is not yet out of his fwadling clowts. 990
Gil. That may be, for they fay an olde man
Is twice a childe. (Players,
Ham. He prophecie to you, hee comes to tell mee a the
You fay true, a monday lad, t'was fo indeede.
Cor. My lord, I haue news to tell you. 99S
Ham. My Lord, I haue newes to tell you:
When Roffios was an A(5tor in Rome.
Cor, The Actors are come hither.my lord.
Ham. Buz,buz.
Cor. The befl A(5tors in Chriftendome, lOOO
Either for Comedy ,Tragedy,Hi(lorie,Pa(lorall,
Paflorall,Hiftoricall,Hi(loricall,Comicall,
Comicall hiftoricall, Paftorall, Tragedy hiftoricall:
Seneca cannot be too heauy,nor Plato too light:
For the law hath writ thofe are the onely men. I005
[II, ii, 384.] Ha. O lepha Judge of IfraeHv/haX a treafure hadft thou?
Cor. Why what a treafure had he my lord?
Ham. Why one faire daughter,and no more,
The which he loued paffing well.
Cor. A.ftil harping a my daughterlwell my Lord, lOIO
If you call me lepha, I hane a daughter that
I loue pafTmg well.
Ham. Nay that followes not.
Cor. What followes then my Lord?
Ham. Why by lot, or God wot, or as it came to pa(re, IOI5
And fo it was, the (ir(l verfe of me godly Ballet
Wil tel you albfor look you where my abridgement comes:
[II, ii, 402.] Welcome maifters, welcome all. Enter players.
What my olde friend, thy face is vallanced
Since I faw thee laft,com'ft thou to beard me in Denmarkef I020
My yong lady and miftris, burlady but your (you were:
Ladi(hip is growne by the altitude of a chopine higher than
Pray God fir your voyce, like a peece of vncurrant
Golde, be not crack't in the ring: come on maifters,
Weele euen too't, like French Falconers, 1035
Prince of Denmarke. 6 1
Flie at any iing we fee, come, a tafte of youi
Quallitie, a fpeech.a pafTionate fpeech.
Players What fpeech my good lord?
Ham, I heard thee fpeake a fpeech once,
But it was neuer a(5led:or if it were, 1030
Neuer aboue twice, for as I remember,
It pleafed not the vulgar,it was cauiary
To the million : but to me
And others, that receiued it in the like kinde.
Cried in the toppe of their iudgements,an excellent play, 1035
Set downe with as great modeflie as cunning:
One faid there was no fallets in the lines to make the fauory,
But called it an honed methode,as wholefome as fweete.
Come, a fpeech in it I chiefly remember
fll, ii, 425.] Was Mneas tale to Dido, 1040
And then efpecially where he talkes of Princes flaughter.
If it Hue in thy memory beginne at this line.
Let me fee.
The rugged Pyrrus, like th'arganian beast:
No 'tis not fo, it begins with Pirrus: *04S
O I haue it.
The rugged Pirrus,\\e whofe fable armes.
Black as his purpofe did the night refemble,
WTien he lay couched in the ominous horl'e.
Hath now his blacke and grimme complexion fmeered 1050
With Heraldry more difmall, head to foote.
Now is he totall guife, horridely tricked
With blood of fathers,mothers, daughters, fonnes,
Back't and imparched in calagulate gore.
Rifted in earth and fire, olde grandfire Pryam feekes : 1055
So goe on, (accent.
Cor. Afore God, my Lord, well fpoke, and with good
I'll, ii, 446.] Play, Anone he finds him ftriking too fliort at Greeks,
His antike fword rebellious to his Arme,
Lies where it falles, vnable to refift. 1060
Pyrrus at Pryam driues, but all in rage.
Strikes wide, but with the whiffe and winde
[II, ii, 452.] Of his fell fword, th'unnerued father falles.
[II, ii, 476.] Cor, Enough my friend.t'is too long.
Ham, It fliall to the Barbers with your beard: 1065
A pox, hee's for a ligge, or a tale of bawdry.
Or elfe he fleepes, come on to He at ha, come.
Play. But who.O who had feene the mobled Queene?
Cor, Mobled Queene is good, faith very good.
Play, All in the alarum and feare of death rofe vp, 1070
And o're her weake and all ore-teeming loynes,a blancket
And a kercher on that head.where late the diademe stoode,
Who this had feene with tongue inuenom'd fpeech,
1073. tomgu* inu*notn'd'\ The space between these words Hf there be any at all) is of the very least.
62 The Tragedy of Hamlet
Would treafon haue pronounced,
For if the gods themfelues had feene her then, IO75
When fhe faw Pirrus with malitious flrokes.
Mincing her husbandes limbs,
It would haue made milch the burning eyes of heauen,
f II, ii, 496.] And paflion in the gods.
Cor. Looke my lord if he hath not changde his colour, f "5So
And hath teares in his eyes : no more good heart, no more.
Ham. T'is well, t'is very well, I pray my lord.
Will you fee the Players well bellowed,
I tell you they are the Chronicles
And briefe abftradls of the time, IO85
After your death I can tell you.
You were better haue a bad Epiteeth,
Then their ill report while you Hue.
Cor. My lord, I will vfe them according to their deferts.
Ham. O farre better man,vfe euery man after his deferts, 1090
Then who fhould fcape whipping?
Vfe them after your owne honor and dignitie,
The lefle they deferue, the greater credit's yours.
Cor. Welcome my good fellowes. exit.
[II, ii, 511.] Ham, Come hither maifters, can you not play the mur- 1095
der of G on/ago?
players Yes my Lord.
Ham. And could'ft not thou for a neede ftudy me
Some dozen or fixteene lines.
Which I would fet downe and infert? 1 100
players Yes very eafily my good Lord.
Ham. T'is well, I thanke you:follow that lord:
And doe you heare firs? take heede you mocke him not.
Gentlemen, for your kindnes I thanke you.
And for a time I would defire you leaue me. 1105
Gil, Our loue and duetie is at your commaund.
Exeunt all but Hamlet.
[II, ii, 5^3] Ham. Why what a dunghill idiote flaue am I?
Why thefe Players here draw water from eyes:
For Hecuba, why what is Hecuba to him,or he to Hecuba?
What would he do and if he had my lofTe? IIIO
His fathei murdred, and a Crowne bereft him,
He would turne all his teares to droppes of blood,
Amaze the flanders by with his laments,
Strike more then wonder in the iudiciall eares,
Confound the ignorant, and make mute the wife, '"5
Indeede his pafTion would be generall.
Yet I like to an alTe and John a Dreamcs,
Hauing my father murdred by a villaine.
Stand ftill.and let it palTe, why fure I am a coward:
Who pluckes me by the beard, or twites my nofe, 1130
[II, il, 54''^. 1 Giue's me the lie i'lh throate dowiiP to the lungs,
Prince of Denmarke. 03
Sore I fliould take it, or elfe I haue no gall.
Or by this I fliould a fatted all the region kites
Witii tnis flaues offell, this damned villaine,
Treacherous.bawdy .murderous villaine: II25
Why this is braue, that I the fonne of my deare father.
Should like a fcalion, like a very drabbe
Thus raile in wordes. About my braine,
I haue heard that guilty creatures fitting at a play,
Hath.by the very cunning of the fcene,confeft a murder 1 130
Committed long before.
This fpirit that I haue feene may be the Diuell,
And out of my weakenefle and my melancholy.
As he is very potent with fuch men,
Doth feeke to damne me, I will haue founder proofes, II35
The play's the thing,
[II, ii, 581.] Wherein I'le catch the confcience of the King. exit.
Enter the King, Queene, and Lordes.
[Ill, i, I.] -King Lordes, can you by no meanes finde
The caufe of our fonne Hamlets lunacie?
You being fo neere in loue, euen from his youth, II4D
Me thinkes fliould gaine more than a flranger fliould.
Gil. My lord, we haue done all the beft we could.
To wring from him the caufe of all his griefe,
But ft:ill he puts vs off.and by no meanes
Would make an anfwere to that we expofde. H45
Roff. Yet was he fomething more inclin'd to mirth
Before we left him, and I take it.
He hath giuen order for a play to night.
At which he craues your highnefle company.
King With all our heart, it likes vs very well: 1 150
[in, i, 26.] Gentlemen, feeke flill to increafe his mirth,
Spare for no cofl, our coffers fliall be open.
And we vnto your felues will flill be thankefull.
Both In all wee can, be fure you ftiall commaund.
Queene Thankes gentlemen, and what the Queene of I155
May pleafure you, be fure you fliall not want. {Denmarke
Gil. Weele once againe vnto the noble Prince.
King Thanks to you both: Gertred you'l fee this play.
Queene My lord I will, and it ioyes me at the foule
He is inclin'd to any kinde of mirth. I160
Cor. Madame, I pray be ruled by me :
And my good Soueraigne, giue me leaue to fpeake,
We cannot yet finde out the very ground
Of his diftemperance, therefore
I holde it meete, if fo it pleafe you, II65
Elfe they fliall not meete,and thus it is.
04 The Tragedie of Hamlet
King What i'fl Corambis? (done
[III, i, l8l.] Cor. Mary my good lord this,foone when the fports are
Madam, fend you in hafte tc fpeake with him,
And I my felfe will fland behind the Arras, 1 1 70
There queflion you the caufe of all his griefe,
And then in loue and nature vnto you, hee'le tell you all:
My Lord,how thinke you on't?
King It likes vs well, Gerterd, what fay you?
Queene With all my heart, foone will I fend for him. ^^75
Car. My felfe will be that happy melTenger,
Who hopes his griefe will be reueal'd to her. exeunt omne*
Enter Hamlet and the Players.
rm, ii, I.] Ham. Pronounce me this fpeech trippingly a the tongue
as I taught thee,
Mary and you mouth it, as a many of your players do
I'de rather heare a towne bull bellow, IlJJo
Then fuch a fellow fpeake my lines.
Nor do not faw the aire thus with your hands,
But giue euery thing his a(5lion with temperance. (fellow,
0 it offends mee to the foule, to heare a rebuftious periwig
To teare a paflion in totters, into very ragges, 1 1 85
To fplit the eares of the ignoraut,who for the (noifes,
Moft parte are capable of nothing but dumbe (hewes and
1 would haue fuch a fellow whipt,for ore doing, tarmagant
[III, ii, 13.] It out.Herodes Herod.
[Ill, ii, 33.] players My Lorde, wee haue indifferently reformed that I190
among vs.
Ham. The better, the better, mend it all together:
[III, ii, 26.] There be fellowes that I haue feene play.
And heaitl others commend them, and that highly too.
That hauing neither the gate of Chriftian, Pagan,
Nor Turke,haue fo flrutted and bellowed, II95
That you would a thought, fome of Natures journeymen
Had made men.and not made them well,
They imitated humanitie,fo abhominable;
Take heede,auoyde it.
[Ill, ii, 14.] players I warrant you my Lord. 1200
fill, ii, 35.] Ham. And doe you heare? let not your Clowne fpeake
More then is fet downe, there be of them I can tell you
That will laugh themfelues, to fet on fome
Quantitie of barren fpectators to laugh with them.
Albeit there is fome neceffary point in the Play 1205
Then to be cbferued:0 t'is vile, and fliewes
A pittifuU ambition in the foole that vfeth it.
And then you haue fome agen, that keepes one fute
Of ieafls, as a man is knowne by one fute of
Apparell, and Gentlemen quotes his ieafls downe I2I0
In their tables, before they come to the play,as thus:
I\-tnce of Benmarke. 65
Cannot you ftay till I eate my porrige? and.you owe me
A quarters wagesrand, my coate wants a cullifon:
And.your beere is fowre:and,blabbering with his lips,
And thus keeping in his cinkapafe of ieafts, 1215
When, God knows,the warme Qowne cannot make a ieft
Vnleffe by chance.as the blinde man catcheth a hare:
Maifters tell him of it.
players We will my Lord.
Ham. Well, goe make you ready. exeunt players. 1220
Horatio, Heere my Lord.
[III,u,48.] Ham. /Tt^ra/z"*?, thou art euen as iuft a man,
As e're my conuerfation cop'd withall.
Hor. 0 my lord!
Ham. Nay why fhould I flatter thee? 1225
Why Ihould the poore be flattered?
What gaine fliould I receiue by flattering thee,
That nothing hath but thy good minde?
Let flattery fit on thofe time-pleafing tongs,
To glofe with them that loues to heare their praife, 1230
And not with fuch as thou Horatio,
[III, ii, 70.] There is a play to night, wherein one Sceane they haue
Comes very neere the murder of my father,
When thou flialt fee that A(5l afoote,
Marke thou the King, doe but obferue his lookes, I235
For I mine eies will riuet to his face:
And if he doe not bleach, and change at that.
It is a damned ghofl that we haue feene,
Horatio, haue a care, obferue hira well.
Hor. My lord, mine eies Ihall Hill be on his face, 1 240
And not the fmallefl alteration
That fliall appeare in him, but I Qiall note it.
Ham. Harke, they come.
Enter King, Queene, Corambis, and other Lords, (a play?
pll, ii, 87.3 King How now fon Hamlei,\iOVT fare you.fliall we haue
Ham. Yfaith the Camelions difh, not capon cramm'd, 1245
feede a the ayre.
I father : My lord, you playd in the Vniuerfitie.
Cor. That I did my L: and I was counted a good adloi;
Ham. What did you enadl there?
Cor. My lord, I did a<fl lulitis Cafar, I was killed
in the Capitoll, Brutus killed me. 1250
Ham. It was a brute parte of him,
To kill fo capitall a calfe.
Come, be thefe Players ready?
Queene Hamlet come fit downe by me.
Ham. No by my faith mother, heere's a mettle more at- 1 255
Lady will you giue me leaue,and fo forth: (tradtiae:
X24S< /eede]/eed Cam.
Vol. II.— s
66 The Tragedie of Hamlet
To lay my head in your lappe?
Of el. No my lord. (trary matters?
[111,11,109.] Ham. Vpon your lap,what do you thinke I meantcon-
Enter in a Dumbe Shew, the King and the Queene, he Jits
downe in an Arbor, Jhe leaues him: Then enters Luci-
anus with Poyfon in a Viall, and powres it in his eares,and
goes away : Then the Queene commeth and findes him
dead: and goes away with the other.
[Ill, ii, 128.] Ofel. "What meanes this my Lord? Enter the Prologue. 1260
Ham, This is myching Mallico, that meanes my chiefe. /K
Ofel. "What doth this meane my lord?
Ham, you fliall heare anone, this fellow will tell you all.
Ofel, "Will he tell vs what this fliew meanes?
Ham, I, or any Ihew you'le Ihew him, 126$
Be not afeard to (hew, hee'le not be afeard to tell :
O thefe Players cannot keepe counfell, thei'le tell all.
Prol, For vs,and for our Tragedie,
[III, ii, 139.] Heere ftowpiug to your clemencie,
"We begge your hearing patiently. I270
Ham. I'ft a prologue,or a poefie for a ring?
Ofel, Tis (hort my Lord.
Ham, As womens loue.
Enter the Duke and Dutchejfe.
[Ill, ii, 145.] Duke Full fortie yeares are pad, their date is gone.
Since happy time ioyn'd both our hearts as one: 1275
And now the blood that fill'd my youthfull veines,
Runnes weakely in their pipes, and all the ftraines
Of muficke, which whilome pleafde mine eare.
Is now a burthen that Age cannot beare:
And therefore fweete Nature mud pay his due, Z280
To heauen muft I, and leaue the earth with you.
Dutchejfe O fay not fo,left that you kill my heart,
"When death takes you, let life from me depart.
Duke Content thy felfe, when ended is my date,
Thon mai{l(perchance)haue a more noble mate, 1285
More wife,more youthfull, and one.
Dutchejfe O fpeake no more, for then I am accuiil,
[Ill.ii, 169.] None weds the fecond, but (he kils the firft:
[III,ii, 174.] A fecond time I kill my Lord that's dead,
"When fecond husband kiffes me in bed. I290
Ham, O wormewood.wormewood!
[ni, ii, 176.] Duke I doe beleeue you fweete.what now you fpeake.
But what we doe determine oft we breake,
[III, ii, 202.] For our demifes ftil are ouerthrowne.
Our thoughts are ours, their end's none of our owne: I295
So thinke you will no fecond husband wed.
But die thy thoughts, when thy firft Lord is dead.
[Ill, ii, 212.] Dutchejfe Both here and there purfue me lafling flrife,
I once a widdow,euer I be wife
Prince of Denmarke. 67
Ham. If {hedould breake now. 1300
Dttke Tis deepely fwome/weete leaue me heere a while.
My fpirites growe dull, and faine I would beguile the tedi-
ous time with fleepe.
Duichefe Sleepe rocke thy braine,
And neuer come mifchance betweene vs twaine. exit Lady
Ham. Madam, how do you like this play? 1305
Queeru The Lady protefls too much«
Ham. O but fliee'le keep>e her word.
Xing Haue you heard the argument, is there no oSence
in it?
Ham. No offence in the world,po3rfon in ieft,poifon in
Xing What do you call the name of the play? (left. 1310
Ham. Moufe-trap:mary how trapically:this play is
[111, ii, 228.] The image of a murder done in guyana, Albertus
Was the Dukes name, his wife Baptijia,
Father,it is a knauifh peece a worke:but what
A that, it toucheth not ts, you and I that haue free 1315
Soules^et the galld iade wince, this is one
Ltuianus nephew to the King.
Ofel. Ya're as good as a Chorus my lord.
Ham. 1 could interpret the loue you beare , if I fawe the
fm, ii, 236.] poopies dallying.
pil, ii, 114.] Ofel. Y'are very pleafant my lord. 1320
Ham. Who I, your onlie jig-maker, why what (houlde
a man do but be merry? for looke how cheerefully my mo-
ther lookes, my father died within thefe two houres.
OfeL Nay, t'is twice two months,my Lord.
Ham. Two months.nay then let the diuell weare blacke, 1325
For i'le haue a fute of Sables : lefus, two months dead.
And not forgotten yet? nay then there's fome
Likelyhood, a gentlemans death may outliue memorie.
But by my faith hee mufl build churches then.
Or els hee muft follow the olde Epitithe, 1 330
[III,ii, 127.] With hoh, with ho, the hobi-horfe is forgot
[HI, ii, 237.] Ofel, Your iefts are keene my Lord.
Ham, It would coll you a groning to take them o£
Ofel. Still better and worfe.
Ham. So you muft take your husband, begin. Murdred 1335
Begin, a poxe, leaue thy damnable faces and begin,
Gjme, the croking rauen doth bellow for reuenge.
Murd. Thoughts blacke, hands apt, drugs fit, and time
Confederate feafon, elfe no creature feeing: (agreeing.
Thou mixture rancke.of midnight weedes coUe(5led, 134©
With Heeates bane thrife blafled, thrife infe<5led.
Thy oaturall magicke.and dire propertie.
One wholefbme life vfuips immediately. exit,
1309. in if/l\ iniett Cam.
68 The Tragedie of Hamlet
pil, ii, 249,] Ham. He poyfons him for his eftate.
King Lights, I will to bed. §345
Cor. The king rifes.lights hoe.
Exeunt King and Lordes.
Ham. What, frighted with falfe fires?
£111, ii, 259.] Then let the stricken deere goe weepe.
The Hart vngalled play,
For fome muft laugh, while fome mud weepe, 1350
Thus runnes the world away.
Hor. The king is mooued my lord.
pll, ii, 274.] Hor. I Horatio, i'le take the Ghofls word
For more than all the coyne in Denmarke.
Enter Rojfencraft and Gilderjlone.
Rojf. Now my lord.how i'ft with you? 1355
Ham. And if the king like not the tragedy,
Why then belike he likes it not perdy.
RoJf. We are very glad to fee your grace fo pleafant.
My good lord, let vs againe intreate (ture
To know of you the ground and caufe of your diftempera- I360
Gil. My lord, your mother craues to fpeake with you.
[ni,ii, 316.] Ham, We fhall obey, were flie ten times our mother.
RoJf. But my good Lord.fliall I intreate thus much?
[HI, ii, 334.] Ham. I pray will you play vpon this pipe?
Roff. A]as my lord I cannot. 1365
Ham. Pray will you.
Gil. I haue no skill my Lord.
Ham. why looke, it is a thing of nothing,
T'is but flopping of thefe holes.
And with a little breath from your lips, I370
It will giue moft delicate mufick,
Gil. But this cannot wee do my Lord.
Ham. Pray now, pray hartily, I befeech you.
RoJf. My lord wee cannot. (me?
Ham. Why how vnworthy a thing would you make of 1375
You would feeme to know my flops, you would play vpon
You would fearch the very inward part of my hart, mee.
And diue into the fecreet of my foule.
Zownds do you thinke lam eafier to be pla'yd
On, then a pipe ? call mee what Inflrument I380
[III, ii, 354.] You will, though you can frett mee, yet you can not
[IV, ii, 12.] Play vpon mee, befides,tb be demanded by a fpunge.
Rof. How a fpunge my Lord?
Ham. I fir.a fpunge, that fokes vp the kings
Countenance, fauours, and rewardes, that makes I385
His liberalitie your flore houfe : but fuch as you.
Do the king.in the end, befl feruife ;
For hee doth keep you as an Ape doth nuttes.
Prince of Denmarke. 69
In the comer of Ms law, firft mouthes you,
Then fwallowes you : fo when hee hath need 1390
Of you, t'is but fqueefing of you,
[IV, ii, 20.] And fpunge.you Ihall be dry againejou fhall.
Rof. Wei my Lord wee'le take our leaue.
Ham Farewell, farewell, God bleffe you.
Exit Rojfencraft and Gilderjlone.
Enter Corambis
[ni,ii,357.] Cor. My lord, the Queene would fpeake with you. 1395
Ham, Do you fee yonder clowd in the fhape of a camelll
Cor. T'is like a camell in deea.
Ham, Now me thinkes it's like a weafel.
Cor, T'is back't like a weafeU.
Ham, Or like a whale. 1400
Cor. Wtrj like a whale. exit Coram.
Ham. "Why then tell my mother i'le come by and by.
Good night Horatio.
Hor. Good night vnto your Lordfhip. exit Horatio.
Ham. My mother (he hath fent to fpeake with me: ^405
0 God, let ne're the heart of Nero enter
This foft bofome.
Let me be cruell, not vnnaturall.
1 will fpeake daggers, thofe (harpe wordes being fpent,
[m, ii, 384.3 To doe her wrong my foule (hall ne're confent. exit. 1410
Enter the King.
King O that this wet that falles vpon my face
[in, iii, 36.] Would wa(h the crime cleere from my confcience I
When I looke vp to heauen.I fee my trefpalTe,
The earth doth (lill crie out vpon my fa<5l,
Pay me the murder of a brother and a king, I415
And the adulterous fault I haue committed:
0 thefe are finnes that are vnpardonable :
Why fay thy finnes were blacker than is ieat,
Yet may contrition make them as white as (howe:
1 but ftill to perfeuer in a fmne, I420
It is an ail gaind the vniuerfall power,
Mod wretched tnan,ftoope,bend thee to thy prayer,
Aske grace of heauen to keepe thee from defpaire.
hee kneeles. enters Hamlet
Ham. I fo, come forth and worke thy laft,
[m, ill, 75.] And thus hee dies : and fo am I reuenged: I425
No, not fo: he tooke my father fleeping, his fins brim fuD,
And how his foule (loode to the (late of heauen
Who knowes, faue the immortall powres.
And (hall I kill him now.
When he is purging of his foule? 1430
70 The Tragedy of Hamlet
Making his way for heauen,this is a benefit,
[III, iii, 88.] And not reuenge:no, get thee vp agen, (drunke.
When bee's at game fwaring, taking his carowfe, drinking
Or in the incefluous pleafure of his bed,
Or at fome adl that hath no relifh 1435
Of faluation in't, then trip him
That his heeles may kicke at heauen,
And fall as lowe as heh my mother flayes,
This phificke but prolongs thy weary dayes. exit Ham.
[Ill, iii, 97.] King My wordes fly vp,my fmnes remaine below. 1440
No King on earth is fafe, if Gods his foe. exit King.
Enter Queene and Corambis.
Cor, Madame,! heare yong Hamlet comming,
[III, iv, 4.] I'le flirowde my felfe behinde the Arras. exit Cor,
Queene Do fo my Lord.
Ham. Mother,mother, O are you here? 1445
How i'fl with you mother?
Queene How i'ft with you?
Ham, I'le tell you, but firft weele make all fafe.
Queene Hamlet, thou haft thy father much offended.
Ham. Mother, you haue my father much offended. 1450
Queene How now boy?
Ham. How now mother! come here.fit downe, for you
fliall heare me fpeake.
Queene What wilt thou doe? thou wilt not murder me ?
Heipe hoe. 1455
Cor. Helpe for the Queene.
[IIIj IV, 24.] Ham. I a Rat, dead for a Duckat.
Ra(h intruding fool e,fare well,
I tooke thee for thy better.
Queene Hamlet.what haft thou done? 1 460
Ham. Not fo ,much harme, good mother.
As to kill a king.and marry with his brother.
Queene How! kill a king!
Ham. I a King:nay fit you downe, and ere you part,
If you be made of penitrable ftuffe, 1465
I'le make your eyes looke downe into your heart.
And fee how horride there and blacke it ftiews. (words?
Queene Hamlet, what mean'ft thou by thefe killing
[III, iv, 53.] Ham. Why this I meane, fee here, behold this picture,
It is the portraiture.of your deceafed husband, l4'/0
See here a face, to outface Mars himfelfe.
An eye, at which his foes did tremble at,
A front wherin all vertues are fet downe
For to adorne a king, and guild his crowne,
Whofe heart went hand in hand euen with that vow, 1475
He made to you in marriage.and he is dead.
Murdred, damnably murdred, this was your husband,
Looke you now, here is your husband,
Prince of Denmarke. *J I
With a face like Vulcan.
A looke fit for a murder and a rape, 14S0
A dull dead hanging looke, and a hell-bred cie.
To affright children and amaze the world:
And this fame haue you left to change with this.
rm* w» 77»] What Diuell thus hath cofoned you at hob-man blinde?
A! haue you eyes and can you looke on him 148$
K That flew my father, and your deere huf band,
To Hue in the inceduous pleafure of his bed?
Qtuene O Hamlet, fpeake no more.
Ham. To leaue him that bare a Monarkes minde.
For a king of dowts, of very flireads. 1490
Queene Sweete Hamlet ceafe.
Ham. Nay but ftill to persift and dwell in finne.
To fweate vnder the yoke of infamie,
To make increafe of fliame, to feale damnation.
Queene Hamlet, no more. -495
Ham. Why appetite with you is in the waine.
Your blood runnes backeward now- from whence it came,
Who'Ie chide bote blood within a Virgins heart,
When luft fliall dwell within a matrons breafl?
£111, iv, 156.] Queene Hamlet.thou cleaues my heart in twaine. 1500
Ham, O throw away the worfer part of it.and keepe the
better.
Enter the ghojl in his nighi grumt.
[in, iv, X03.] Saue me, faue me,you gratious
Powers aboue,and houer ouer mee,
With your celeftiall wings.
Doe you not come your tardy fonne to chide, 1505
That I thus long haue let reuenge flippe by?
O do not glare with lookes fo pittifull/
Left that my heart of ftone yeelde to compaffion.
And euery part that fliould affift reuenge,
Forgoe their proper powers, and fall to pitty. 1510
Ghojl Hamlet, I once againe appeare to thee.
To put thee in remembrance of my death:
Do not neg]e(5l, nor long time put it ofiF.
But I perceiue by thy diflra(fled lookes,
Thy mother's fearefull, and fhe ftands amazde: 1515
pil, iv, 115.] Speake to her Hamlet, for her fex is weake.
Comfort thy mother, Hamlet, thinke on me.
Ham. How i'ft with you Lady?
Queene Nay, how i'ft with you
That thus you bend your eyes on vacancie, 1520
And holde difcourfe with nothing but with ajrre?
Ham. Why doe you nothing heare?
Queene Not I.
72 The Tragedie of Hamlet
Ham. Nor doe you nothing fee?
Queene No neither. (habite 1525
Ham. No, why fee the king my father, my father, in the
As he lined, looke you how pale he lookes.
See how he fteales away out of the Portall,
£111, iv, 136.] Looke, there he goes. exit g}ioJl.
Queene Alas, it is the weaknefle of thy braine, 1530
Which makes thy tongue to blazon thy hearts griefe:
But as I haue a foule.I fweare by heauen,
I neuer knew of this mod horride murder:
But Hamlet, this is onely fantafie,
And for my loue forget thefe idle fits. 1535
Ham. Idle, no mother, my pulfe doth beate like yours,
[III, iv, 141.] It is not madnefle that poffefTeth Hamlet.
0 mother, if euer you did my deare father loue,
till, iv, 165.] Forbeare the adulterous bed to night.
And win your felfe by little as you may, •*540
In time it may be you wil lothe him quite:
And mother, but aiTill me in reuenge,
And in his death your infamy fhall die.
Queene Hamlet, I vow by that maiefty.
That knowes our thoughts, and lookes into our hearts, 1545
1 will conceaIe,confent,and doe my befl.
What flratagem foe're thou flialt deuife.
Ham. It is enough, mother good night:
Come fir, I'le prouide for you a graue,
[III, iv, 215.] Who was in life a foolifh prating knaue. "^^V^
Exit Hamlet with the dead body.
Enter the King and Lordes.
King Now Gertred, what fayes our fonne,how doe you
finde him?
[TV, i, 7'] Queene Alas my lord, as raging as the fea :
Whenas he came, I firft befpake him faire,
But then he throwes and toffes me about.
As one forgetting that I was his mother: I555
At laft I call'd for help: and as I cx\&i.,Coramhis
Call'd, which Hamlet no fooner heard.but whips me
Out his rapier.and cries.a Rat,a Rat, and in his rage
The good olde man he killes.
King Why this his madnefle will vndoe our ftate. 1560
Lordes goe to him, inquire the body out.
Gil. We will my lord. Exeunt Lordes.
King Gertred, your fonne (hall prefently to England,
[IV, i, 29.] His fiiipping is already furnifhed.
And we haue fent by Rajfencrafi and Gilderjionet '5^S
Our letters to our deare brother of England,
For Hamlets welfare and his bappineflc:
Prince of Denmarke, J^
Happly the aire and climate of the Country
May pleafe him better than his natiue home:
Seewhere he comes. 1 5 70
Enter Hamkt and the Lordes.
[IV, iii, 12.] Gil. My lord, we can by no meanes
Know of him where the body is.
King Now fonne Hamlet, where is this dead body?
f IV, iii, 20.] Ham. At fupper, not where he is eating,but
Where he is eaten, a certaine company of politicke wormes 1575
are euen now at him.
Father,your fatte King,and your leane Beggar
Are bat variable feruices, two dilhes to one mefle:
Looke you, a man may fifh with that worme
That hath eaten of a King, 1580
And a Beggar eate that fifli.
Which that worme hath caught.
King ^Vhatofthis?
Ham. Nothing father, but to tell you.how a King
May go a progrefle through the guttes of a Beggar. 1585
King But fonne Hamlet, where is this body?
Ham. In heau'n, if you chance to miffe him there.
Father, you had befl looke in the other partes below
For him, aud if you cannot finde him there.
You may chance to nofe him as you go %'p the lobby. 1590
King Make hafle and finde him out.
Ham. Nay do you heare? do not make too much haflCi
I'le warrant you hee'le (lay till you come.
King Well fonne Hamlet, we in care of you:but fpecially
in tender prefenxation of your health, 1595
The which we price euen as our proper felfe,
It is our minde you forthwith goe for England,
The winde fits faire, you fliall aboorde to night.
Lord Rojfencraft and Gilder/lone Ihall goe along with you.
Ham. O with all my heart:farewel mother. 1600
King Yoxir louing i2ih&r,Hamlet.
Ham. My mother I fay: you married my mother.
My mother is your wfe, man and wife is one flefli,
py, iii, 51.] And fo(my mother)farewel:for England hoe.
exeunt all but the king.
king Gertred, leaue me, I605
And take your leaue of Hamlet,
To England is he gone, ne're to retume:
pV, iii, 63.] Our Letters are vnto the King of England,
That on the fight of them.on his allegeance.
He prefently without demaunding why, I610
That Hamlet loofe his head.for he mufl die.
There's more in him than (hallow eyes can fee:
74 The Tragedie of Hamlet
He once being dead, why then our (late is free. exit.
Enter Fortenbrajfe, Drumme and Souldiers,
[TV, iv, I.] Fort. Captaine, from vs goe greete
The king of Denmarke: tfi\%
Tell him that ForUnbraJfe nephew to old Norway,
Craues a free pafle and condu<5l ouer his land.
According to the Articles agreed on:
You know our Randevous, goe march away, exeunt all,
[IV, v.] enter King and Queene.
King Hamlet is (hip't for England,fare him well, 1620
I hope to heare good newes from thence ere long,
If euery thing fall out to our content,
As I doe make no doubt but fo it Ihall.
Qtteene God grant it may,heau'ns keep my Hamlet fafe:
But this mifchance of olde Corambis death, 1625
Hath pierfed fo the yong Ofeliaes heart.
That flie, poore maide, is quite bereft her wittes.
King Alas deere heart! And on the other fide.
We vnderfland her brother's come from France,
And he hath halfe the heart of all our Land, 1630
And hardly hee'le forget his father's death,
Vnleffe by fome meanes he be pacified.
Qu. O fee where the yong Ofelia is I
Enter Ofelia playing on a Lute, and her haire
doTune finging.
[rV, V, 23.] Ofelia How fliould I your true loue know
From another man? 1 635
By his cockle hatte, and his ftaffe.
And his fandall (hoone.
PV, V, 34.] White his fhrowde as mountaine fnowe,
Larded with fweete flowers,
That bewept to the graue did not goe 1640
With true louers fhowers:
PV, V, 29.] lie is dead and gone Lady,he is dead and gone.
At his head a graflie greene turffe.
At his heeles a flone.
king How i'fl with you fweete Ofelia? 1645
Ofelia Well God yeeld you,
It grieues me to fee how they laid him in the cold ground,
pV, V, 66.] I could not chufe but weepe :
[IV, V, 185.] And will he not come againe?
And will he not come againe? 1650
No,no,hee's gone, and we caft away mone.
Prince of Denmarke. 75
And he neuer will come againe.
His beard as white as fnowe:
All flaxen was his pole,
He is dead, he is gone, 1655
And we caft away moane :
God a mercy on his foule.
And of all chriften foules I pray God.
flVj V, 195.] God be with you Ladies,God be with you. exit Ofelia.
king A pretty wretch! this is a change indeede: 1660
0 Time, how fwiftly runnes our ioyes away?
Content on earth was neuer certaine bred.
To day we laugh and Hue, to morrow dead.
How now, what noyfe is that?
A noyfe within. enter Leartes*
Lear. Stay there vntill I come, 1665
PV, V, III.] O thou vilde king.giue me my father:
Speake, fay, v/here's my father?
king Dead.
Lear. Who hath murdred him?fpeake, i'le not
[IV, V, 126.] Be juggled with, for he is murdred, 167°
Queene True.but not by him.
Z^ar. By whome, by heau'n I'le be refolued.
king Let him goe Certred,z.-9iz.y, I feare him not,
[IV, V, 119.3 There's fuch diuinitie doth wall a king.
That treafon dares not looke on. 1675
Let him goe Cerired, that your father is murdred,
T'is true, and we mod fory for it, ^
Being the chiefeft piller of our ftate:
Therefore will you like a moft defperate gamfter,
Swoop-ftake-like, draw at friend, and foe,and all? 1680
[IV, T, 141.] Lear, To his good friends thus wide I'le ope mine arms.
And locke them in my hart,but to his foes,
1 will no reconcilement but by bloud.
king "Why now you fpeake like a moft louing fonne:
And that in foule we forrow for for his death, 1685
Your felfe ere long (hall be a witnefie,
Meane while be patient, and content your felfe.
Enter Ofelia as before.
Lear. "Who's this, Ofelia? O my deere fiflerl
Fft poflible a yong maldes life,
|_I"V,v, 156.] Should be as mortall as an olde mans fawe? 1690
O heau'ns themfelues! how now Ofelia?
Ofet. "Wei God a mercy, I a bin gathering of floures:
Here, here is rew for you,
PV»v» I77-] You may call it hearb a grace a Sundayes,
Heere's fome for me too : you mufl weare yotir rev 1695
"What a difference, there's a dazie.
Here Loue, there's rofemary for you
For remembrance: I pray Loue remember,
76 The Tragedie of Hamlet
And there's panfey for thoughts.
Lear, A document in madnes, thoughts, remembrance; 1700
O God, O God!
Ofelia There is fennell for you,I would a giu'n you
Some violets, but they all withered, when
My father died: alas, they fay the owle was
[IV, V, 40.] A Bakers dauglter, we fee what we are, 1705
But can not tell what we fhall be.
flV, V, 182.] For bonny fweete Robin is all my ioy.
Lear. Thoughts & afflidlions,torments worfe than hell.
[IV, V, 44.] Ofel. Nay Loue, I pray you make no words of this now:
[IV, V, 166.] I pray now, you fliall fmg a downe, 1710
And you a downe a, t'is a the Kings daughter
And the falfe fleward,and if any body
[IV, V, 45.] Aske you of any thing, fay you this.
To morrow is faint Valentines day,
All in the morning betime, *7*5
And a maide at your window.
To be your Valentine :
The yong man rofe, and dan'd his clothes,
And dupt the chamber doore,
Let in the maide, that out a maide 1720
Neuer departed more.
Nay I pray marke now,
By gifle.and by faint Charitie,
Away,and fie for Ihame:
Yong men will doo't when they come too't: 1 725
By cocke they are too blame.
Quoth (he, before you tumbled me.
You promifed me to wed.
So would I a done,by yonder Sunne,
If thou hadfl not come to my bed, '730
fIV, V, 69.] So God be with you all, God bwy Ladies.
God bwy you Loue. exit Ofelia.
Lear. Griefe vpon griefe, my father murdered,
My fifler thus diftra(5led;
Curfed be his foule that wrought this wicked adl. 173S
king Content you good Leartes for a time.
Although I know your griefe is as a floud,
Brimme full of forrow, but forbeare a while.
And thinke already the reuenge is done
On him that makes you fuch a hapleffe fonne. '74^
Lear. You haue preuail'd my Lord,^ while I'le flriue.
To bury griefe within a tombe of wrath,
Which once vnhearfed, then the world fhall heare
Leartes had a father he held deere.
king No more of that, ere many dayes be done, I74S
1707, ioyljoy Cam. ed.
Prince of Denmarke. 77
You fliall heare that you do not dreame %'pon. exeunt om.
Enter Horatio and the Queene.
Hor. Madame, year fonne is fafe arriv'de la Denmarke^
This letter I euen now receiv'd of him,
Whereas he writes how he efcap't the danger.
And fubtle treafon that the king had plotted, 1750
Being crofled by the contention of the windes.
He found the Packet fent to the king of England,
Wherein he faw himfelfe betray' d to death,
As at his next conuerfion with your grace.
He will relate the circumflance at full. 1755 ^^
Queene Then I perceiue there's treafon in his lookes
That feem'd to fugar o're his villanie:
But I will foothe and pleafe him for a time,
For murderous mindes are alwayes jealous.
But know not you Horatio where he is? 1760
Hor, Yes Madame,and he hath appoynted me
To meet him on the eaft fide of the Cittie
To morrow morning.
Queene O faile not, good Horatio , and withall, com-
A mothers care to him, bid him a while jnend me 1765 y
Be wary of his prefence, left that he
Faile in that he goes about.
Hor. Madame, neuer make doubt of that:
I think by this the news be come to court :
He is arriv'de, obferue the king.and you fliall 1770
Quickely {inde,HamIet being here.
Things fell not to his minde.
Queene But what became of Gilderjlone and Rajfencraft}
Hor, He being fet alhore, they went for England,
And in the Packet there writ down that doome 1 775
To be perform'd on them poynted for him:
And by great chance he had his fathers Seale,
So all was done without difcouerie.
Queene Thankes be to heauen for blefUng of the pnnce,
Horatio once againe I take my leaue, 1780
With thowfand mothers bleffings to my fonne.
Horat, Madam adue.
Enter King and Leartes.
King. Hamlet from England! is it poffible?
What chance is this? they are gone, and he come home.
Lear. O he is welcome, by my foule he is : 1785
At it my iocund heart doth leape for ioy,
pV,vii,57.] That I (hall Hue to tell him, thus he dies.
iing Leartes, content your felfe.be rulde by me.
And you Ihall haue no let for your reuenge.
fIV,T, 133.] Lear. My will, not all the world. 1790
King Nay but Leartes,marke the plot I haue layde.
78 The Tragedy of Hatniet
I hane heard him often with a greedy wifli,
Vpon fome praife that he hath heard of you
Touching your weapon, which with all his heart,
He might be once tasked for to try your cunning. lyoe
Lea, And how for this?
King Mary Leartes thus: I'le lay a wager,
Shalbe on Hamlets fide, and you (hall giue the oddes.
The which will draw him with a more defire,
To try the maiftry, that in twelue venies tSoo
You gaine not three of him : now this being granted,
When you are hot in midft of all your play.
Among the foyles fliall a keene rapier lie,
Steeped in a mixture of deadly poyfon,
That if it drawes but the leaft dramme of blood, 1805
In any part of him.he cannot liue:
This being done will free you from fufpition,
And not the deerefl friend that Hamlet lov'de
Will euer haue Leartes in fufpedl.
Lear. My lord, I like it well: I810
But fay lord Hamlet fhould refufe this match.
King I'le warrant you,wee'le put on you
Such a report of fmgularitie.
Will bring him onjalthough againft his will.
And left that all fhould miffe, 1815
I'le haue a potion that fliall ready ftand,
In all his heate when that he calles for drinke.
Shall be his period and our happinefle.
Lear. T'is excellent, O would the time were comet
Here comes the Queene. enter the Queene. ' 1820
king How now Gertred,why looke you heauily?
Queene O my Lord, the yong Ofelia
Hauing made a garland of fundry fortes of floures.
Sitting vpon a willow by a brooke,
[IV, vii, 175] The enuious fprig broke, into the brooke (he fell, 1825
And for a while her clothes fpread wide abroade,
Bore the yong Lady vp: and there (he fate fmiling,
Euen Mermaide-like, twixt heauen and earth,
Chaunting olde fundry tunes vncapable
As it were of her diflreffe, but long it could not be, 183O
Till that her clothes, being heauy with their drinke
Dragg'd the fweete wretch to death.
Lear. So,(he is drownde:
[IV, vii, 187.] Too much of water haft thou Ofelia;
Therefore I will not drowne thee in my teares, 1835
Reuenge it is muft yield this heart releefe.
For woe begets woe,and griefe hangs on griefe. exeunt,
enter Clowne and an other.
fV, 1, 1.] Clcwne I fay no, (he ought not to be buried
Prince of Denmarke, 79
In chriftian buriall.
2. Why fir? 1840
Clovme Mary because fliee's drownd.
2. But fhe did not drowne her felfe.
Clowns No, that's certaine.the water drown' d her.
2. Yea but it was againfl her wilL
Clowne No, I deny that, for looke you fir, I ftand here, 1845
If the water come to me, I drowne not my felfe :
But if I goe to the water, and am there drown' d,
Ergo I am guiltie of my owne death :
Y'are gone, goe y'are gone fir.
2. I but fee.Qie hath chriflian buriall, 1850
Becaufe flie is a great woman.
ClowTte Mary more's the pitty, that great folke
Should haue more authoritie to hang or drowne
Themfelues, more than other people :
Goe fetch me a ftope of drinke, but before thou 1855
Goeft, tell me one thing, who buildes flrongefl.
Of a Mafon, a Shipwright, or a Carpenter?
2. Why a Mafon, for he buildes all of flone.
And will indure long.
Clovme That's prety, too't agen, too't agen. i860
2. Why then a Carpenter, for he buildes the gallowes.
And that brings many a one to his long home.
Clowne Prety agen, the gallowes doth well.maiy howe
dooes it well ? the gallowes dooes well to them that doe ill,
goe get thee gone : 1865
And if any one aske thee hereafter ,fay,
A Graue-maker, for the houfes he buildes
[V, i, 58.] Laft till Doomef-day. Fetch me a ftope of beere, goe.
Enter Hamlet and Horatio.
[V, i, 89.] Clowne A picke-axe and a fpade,
A fpade for and a winding flieete, 1870
Mod fit it is, for t'will be made, he throwes vp ajkouel.
For fuch a gheft moft meete.
Ham. Hath this fellow any feeling of himfelfe.
That is thus merry in making of a graue?
See how the flaue joles their heads againfl the earth. 1875
[V, i, 65.] Hor. My lord, Cuflome hath made it in him feeme no-
Clowne A pick-axe and a fpade.a fpade, (thing.
For and a winding (heete,
Mofl fit it is for to be made.
For fuch a ghefl; mofl meet. ' I880
r^» *» 93'] Ham. Looke you, there's another Horatio.
Why mai't not be the fcuU of fome Lawyer?
Me thinkes he fhould indite that fellow
Of an a(ilion of Batterie, for knocking
bo The Tragedie of Hamlet
Him about the pate with's fhouel mow where is your 1885
Quirkes and quillets now,your vouchers and
Double vouchers, your leafes and free-holde,
And tenements? why that fame boxe there will fcarfe
Holde the conueiance of his Iand,and mufl
The honor lie there? O pittifuU transformance! 1890
Iprethee tell me Horatio,
Is parchment made of fheep-skinnes?
Hor. I my Lorde,and of calues-skinnes too.
Ham, Ifaith they prooue themfelues flieepe and calues
[V, i, 109.] That deale with them,or put their trufl in them. 1895
There's another, why may not that be fuch a ones
[V, i, 81.] Scull, that praifed my Lord fuch a ones horfe,
When he meant to beg him? Horatio, I prethee
Lets queflion yonder fellow.
(V, i, 110.] Now my friend, whofe graue is this? 1900
Clowne Mine fir.
Ham. But who muft lie in it? (fir.
Clowne If I fliould fay, I fhould, I fnould lie in my throat
Ham, What man muft be buried here?
Clowne No man fir. '90S
Ham. What woman?
Clowne. No woman neither fir,but indeede
One that was a woman.
Ham, An excellent fellow by the Lord Horatio,
[V, i, 131.] This feauen yeares haue I noted it : the toe of the pefant, 1910
Comes fo neere the heele of the courtier,
That hee gawles .his kibe, I prethee tell mee one thing,
fV, i, I54'] How long will a man lie in the ground before hee rots?
Clowne Ifaith fir, if hee be not rotten before
He be laide in, as we haue many pocky corfes, I915
He will laft you, eight yeares, a tanner
Will laft you eight years full out, or nine.
Ham, And why a tanner?
Clowne Why his hide is fo tanned with his trade.
That it will holde out water, that's a parlous I920
Deuourer of your dead body, a great foaker.
[V, i, 163.] Looke you, heres a fcuU hath bin here this dozen yeare.
Let me fee, I euer fince our laft king Hamlet
[V, i, 136.] Slew Fortenbrajfe in combat,yong Hamlets father.
Hoc that's mad. 1925
Ham. I mary, how came he madde ?
[V, i, 150.] Clowne Ifaith very ftrangely, by loofing of his wittes.
Ham, Vpon what ground?
Clowne A this ground, in Denmarke.
Ham. Where is he now? I930
Clowne Why now they fent him to England,
Ham. To Englandl wherefore?
Clowne Why they fay he fliall haue his wittes there,
Prince of Denmarke. 8 1
r^» >> '43-] Or if he haae not, f is no great matter there.
It will not be feene there. I935
Ham. Why not there?
Cloztme Why there they fay the men are as mad as he.
Ham. Whofe fciill was this?
£V, i, 168.3 Clrume This.a plague on him.a madde rogues it was.
He pxjwred once a whole flagon of Rhenilh of my head, 194O
Why do not you know him? this was one Yorickes fculL
£V, i, 173.3 Ham. Was this? I prethee let me fee it,alas poore Yoricke
I knew him Horatio,
A fellow of infinite mirth, he hath caried mee twenty times
vpon his backe, here hung thofe lippes that I haue Kiffed a 1945
hundred times,and to fee, now they abhorre me : WTieres
your lefts now Yoricke? your flaflies of meriment: now go
to my Ladies chamber, and bid her paint her felfe an inch
thicke, to this (he muft come Yoricke. Horatio, I prethee-
^V, i, 186,3 tell me one thing, dooft thou thinke that Alexander looked 1950
thus?
Hor. Euen fo my Lord.
Ham. And fmelt thus?
Hor. I my lord, no otherwife.
Ham. No.why might not imagination worke, as thus of 1955
AlexanderyAlexander died^Aiexander was buried,^/ifxa«^tfr
became earth, of earth we make clay, and Alexander being
but clay, why might not time bring to paffe, that he might
ftoppe the boung hole of a beere barrell?
Imperious Cafar dead and turned to clay, i960
[V, i, 202.3 Might ftoppe a hole, to keepe the winde away.
Enter King and Queene, Leartes^nd other lordes,
with a Priejl after the coffin.
Ham. What funerall's this that all the Court laments?
[V, i, 209.3 ^^ fliews to be fome noble parentage:
Stand by a while.
Lear. What ceremony elfe? say,what ceremony elfe? 1965
Prieji My Lord, we haue done all that lies in vs.
And more than well the church can tolerate,
She hath had a Dirge fung for her maiden foule :
And but for fauour of the king.and you.
She had beene buried in the open fieldes, t970
Where now (he is allowed chriftian buriall.
Lear. So, I tell thee churli(h Prieft, a miniftring Angell
(hall my fifter be, when thou lieft howling.
£V, 1,230.3 Ham. The faire (^/J-Ziij dead!
Queene Sweetes to the fweete, farewell: I975
I had thought to adome thy bridale bed,faire maide.
And not to follow thee vnto thy graue.
Lear. Forbeare the earth a whileififter farewelh
'Leartes leapu into the graue.
voi_n.-6
8 2 The Tragedie of Hamlet
Now powre your earth an,01ympus hie.
And make a hill to o're top olde Fellon: Hamlet leapes 1980
Whats he that coniures fo? in after "Leartes
Ham. Bcholde lis I, Hamlet the Dane.
Lear, The diuell take thy foule.
Ham. O thou praieft not well,
I prethec take thy hand from off my throate, 1985
For there is fomething in me dangerous,
[V, i, 251.] Which let thy wifedome fearc, holde off thy hand:
[V, i, 257.] I lou'de Ofelia as deere as twenty brothers could:
Shew me what thou wilt doe for her:
Wilt fight.wilt fafl, wilt pray, I990
[V, i, 264.) Wilt drinke vp veffels,eate a crocadile? He doot:
Com'A. thou here to whine?
And where thou talk'fl of burying thee a liue.
Here let vs fland : and let them throw on vs.
Whole hills of earth, till with the heighth therof, 1995
Make Oofell as a Wart.
King. Forbeare Leartes, now is hee mad, as is the fea,
Anone as milde and gentle as a Doue:
Therfore a while giue his wilde humour fcope.
Ham, What is the reafon fir that you wrong mee thus? 200O
I neuer gaue you caufe : but fland away,
[V, i, 280.] A Cat will meaw, a Dog will haue a day.
Exit Hamlet and Horatio.
Qtieene. Alas, it is his madnes makes him thus,
And not his heart, Leartes.
King. My lord, t'is fo : but wee'Ie no longer trifle, 2005
This very day fhall Hamlet drinke his laft.
For prefently we meane to fend to him,
Therfore Leartes be in readynes.
Lear. My lord, till then my foule will not bee quiet.
King. Come Gertred, wee'l haue Leartes, and our fonne, 2010
Made friends and Louers, as befittes them both,
Euen as they tender vs, and loue their countrie.
Queene God grant they may. exeunt omnes.
Enter Hamlet a7jd Horatio
[V, ii, 75.] Ham, beleeue mee, it greeues mee much Horatio,
That to Leartes I forgot my felfe : 1015
For by my felfe me thinkes I feele his griefe.
Though there's a difference in each others wrong.
Enter a Bragart Gentleman,
|V, ii, 82.] I/oratio,h\x\. marke yon water-flie,
The Court knowes him, but hee knowes not the Court.
Gent. Now God faue thee,fwcete prince Hamlet. a020
Ham. And you fir: fob, how the muske-cod fmclsl
Gen, I come with an cmbaffage from his maiefly to you
Ham. I (hall fir giue you attention :
Prince of Denmarke. 83
[V» ii, 93.] By my troth me thinkes f is very colde.
Gen\. It is indeede very rawiih colde. 202$
Ham, T'is hot me thinkes.
Gent. Very fwoltery hote :
[V, ii, 140.] The King, fweete Prince, hath layd a wager on your fide.
Six Barbaiy horfe,again{l fix firench rapiers.
With all their acoutrements too,a the carriages: 2030
In good faith they are very curioufly wrought
Ham. The cariages fir,I do not know what you meane.
Gent, The girdles, and hangers fir, and fuch like.
Ham. The worde had beene more cofin german to the
phrafe, if he could haue carried the canon by his fide, 2035
And howe's the wager? I vnderftand you now.
£V, ii| 156.3 Gent. Mary fir, that yong Leartes in twelue venies
At Rapier and Dagger do not get three oddes of you,
And on your fide the King hath laide.
And defires you to be in readinefTe. 2040
Ham. "Very well, if the King dare venture his wager,
I dare venture my skulhwhen mull this be?
Gent. My Lord, prefently, the king, and her maieily,
With the reft of the beft iudgement in the Court,
Are comming downe into the outward pallace. 2045
Ham. Goe tell his maieftie, I wil attend him.
Gent. I fliall deliuer your moft fweet anfwer. exit.
Ham. You may fir, none better, for y'are fpiced,
Elfe he had a bad nofe could not finell a foole.
Hot. He will difclofe himfelfe without inquirie. aojo
[V, Ii, 199.3 Ham. Beleeue me Horatio, my hart is on the fodaine
Very fore, all here about.
Hot. My lord.forbeare the challenge then.
Ham. No Horatio, not I, if danger be now.
Why then it is not to come,there's a predeftinate prooidence 2055
in the fall of a fparrow .• heere comes the King.
Enter King, Queene, Leartes, Lordes.
King Now fonne Hamlet, we haue laid vpon your head,
And make no queftion but to haue the beft.
JV, ii, 248.3 Ham. Your maieftie hath laide a the weaker fide.
King. We doubt it not,deliuer them the foiles. to6o
[V, ii, 213.3 Ham. Firft Leartes, heere's my hand and loue,
Protefting that I neuer wrongd Leartes.
If Hamlet in his madneffe did amiffe.
That was not Hamlet, but his madnes did it.
And all the wrong I e're did to Leartes, 3065
I here proclaime was madnes,therefore lets be at peace.
And thinke I haue fliot mine arrow o're the houfe.
And hurt my brother.
Lear. Sir I am satisfied in nature,
ao55- prede/l{ntUe\fredestiuate Cam. 9057. Aax*] hantCxBk
[V,ii,
246.]
King (
[V.ii,
242.]
Ham.
[V,ii,
252.]
Haue all i
Lear.
rv,u,
, 267.]
Ham.
Gent.
Lear.
Ham,
Lear.
King ]
[V, ii,
275.]
Queene
rv, ii,
270.]
King
84 The Tragedie of Hamlet
But in tennes of honor I'le fland aloofe, 2070
And will no reconcilement,
[V, ii, 235.] Till by fome elder maillers of our time
I may be satisfied.
Giue them tne foyles.
I'le be your foyle Leartes, thefe foyles, 2075
a laught,come on fir ; a hit.
No none. Heere they play:
Judgement.
A hit, a moft palpable hit.
Well, come againe. They play againe. 2080
Another. Judgement
I, I grant, a tuch, a tuch.
Here Hamlet,\hQ king doth diinke a health to thee
Here Hamlet,takc my napkin,wipe thy face.
Giue him the wine. 2085
Ham. Set it by, I'le haue another bowt firfl,
I'le drinke anone.
[V, ii, 276.] Queene Here Hamlet, thy mother drinkes to thee.
Shee drinkes.
King Do not drinke Gertred: O t'is the poyfned cupl
[V, ii, 284.] Ham. Leartes come, you dally with me, 2090
I pray you pafle with your mofl cunningfl play.
Lear. I! fay you fo? haue at you,
lie hit you now my Lord:
And yet it goes almofi. againfl my confcience.
Ham. Come on fir. 209$
[V, ii, 289:3 They catch one anothers Rapiers, and both are wounded^
Leartes falles downe, the Queene falles downe and dies.
King Locke to the Queene.
Queene O the drinke, the drinke, Hfl»z/(?/,the drinke.
Ham. Treafon,ho, keepe the gates.
Lords How i'ft my Lord Leartes?
fV, ii, 293.] Lear. Euen as a coxcombe fhould, 2100
Foolifhly flaine with my owne weapon:
[V, ii, 302.] Hamlet, thou haft not in thee halfe an houre of life.
The fatall Inftrument is in thy hand.
Vnbated and invenomed : thy mother's poyfned
That drinke was made for thee. 2105
Ham. The poyfned Inftrument within my hand?
[V, ii, 309.] Then venome to thy venome,die damn'd villaine:
[V, li, 313.] Come drinke, here lies thy vnion here. The king diet.
Lear. O he is iuftly ferued:
Hamlet, before I die, here take my hand, 21 10
And withall, my loue : I doe forgiue thee. Leartes dies.
[V, ii, 325.3 Ham. And I thee, O I am dead Horatio,{^xt thee well.
Hor. No, I am more an antike Roman,
Then a Dane.here is fome poifon left.
Pritice of Denmarke. 85
Ham. Vpon my lone I charge thee let it goe, 21 15
O fie Horatio, and if thou {houldft die.
What a fcandale wouldfl thou leaue behinde?
What tongue fhould tell the flory of our deaths.
If not from thee? O my heart Cnckes Horatio,
Mine eyes haue loft their fight, my tongue his vfe: 2120
Farewel Horatiojasaxxisa. receiue my foule. Ham. dies.
Enter Voltemar and the Ambajfadors from England,
enter Fortenbrajfe with his traine,
[V, ii, 349.1 Fort. Where is this bloudy fight?
Hor. If aught of woe or wonder you 'Id behold,
Then looke vpon this tragicke fpe(5lacle.
XS* "» 353*3 Fort. O imperious death ! how many Princes 2125
Haft thou at one draft bloudily fhot to death? {land,
Ambajjf. Our ambaffie that we haue brought from Eng-
Where be thefe Princes that fliould heare vs fpeake?
O moft moft vnlooked for time ! vnhappy country.
Hor. Content your felues. He fliew to all, the ground, 2130
The firft beginning of this Tragedy :
[V» ii" 3650 Let there a fcaffold be rearde vp in the market place,
And let the State of the world be there :
Where you (hall heare fuch a fad ftory tolde.
That neuer mortall man could more vnfolde. 2'35
Fort. I haue fome rights of memory to this kingdome,
Which now to claime my leifure doth inuite mee :
Let foure of our chiefeft Captaines
Beare Hamlet like a fouldier to his graue :
For he was likely, had he lined,
To a prou'd moft royall.
Take vp the bodie, fuch a fight as this
[V, ii, 389.] Becomes the fieldes, but here doth much amiffe. 2143
Finis.
•143. figk{\ fight dsa.
NOTE ON THE HYSTORIE OF HAMBLET
In that chaotic mass of ' authentic Extracts from divers English Books that were
in Print' in Shakespeare's time, Capell's third volume of Notes, on p. 19, the title
of Tfu Hystorie of HambUt is given, together with the contents merely of the eight
chapters. To this Capell has added thie following note : * Upon the woman, who in
Chapter ii, is set to tempt Hamlet is grounded Shakespeare's Ophelia ; and his de-
liverance from this snare by a friend suggested his Horatio. The courtiers [* ap-
pointed to leade Hamblet into a solitary place,' — p. 96 of the Reprint] are likewise a
shadow of Rosincrantz and Guildenstem, Amidst all this resemblance of persons
and circumstances, it is rather strange that none of the relater's expressions have got
into the play : and yet not one of them is to be found excgpt in Chapter iii, where
Hamlet kills the counsellor (who is described as of a greater reach than the rest, ani
is the poet's Polonius) behind the arras .... and is made to cry out : ' a rat, a raL
After which ensues Hamlet's harangue to his mother ; and the manner in which she is
affected by this harangue is better describ'd than any other thing in all the history, or,
more properly, is the only good stroke in it. To speak the very truth, perhaps, the
Geruthe of this picture is superior to Shakespeare's Gertrude in this one situation ;
allowance being made for the coloring, suiting the time 'twas done in. Shake*
speare pursues the history no farther than to the death of the tyrant ; and he brings
this event to pass by means different from what are there related ; yet it is easy to
see that Hamlet's counterfeit funeral fumish'd him with the idea of Ophelia's true
one ; as his harangue to the Danes did th? speech of Horatio. This history, as it
is call'd, is an almost literal translation from the French of Belleforest ; and is of
much older date than the impression from which these extracts are made ; perhaps
but little later than it's original, which was written in 1570, and published soon after.*
In the Introduction to the first volume of his edition of Shakespeare, p. 52, Capell
has the following additional remarks : About the middle of the sixteenth century
Francis de Belleforest, a French gentleman, entertain'd his countrymen with a col-
lection of novels, which he entitles Hislaires tragiques ; they are in part originab,
part translations, and chiefly from Bandello. He began to publish them in the year
1564 ; and continued his publication successively in several tomes, how many I know
not ; the dedication to his fifth tome is dated six years after. In that tome the troi-
si^me Histoire has this title : Avec quelle ruse Atnleth, qui depuis fut roy de Danne-
march, vengea la mart de son ptre Honniendille, occis par Fengon sonfrere, <Sr» autre
occurrence de son histoire. Painter compil'd his Palace of Pleasure almost entirely
from Belleforest, taking here and there a novel as pleas'd him, but he did not trans-
late the whole : other novels, it is probable, were translated by different people, and
publish'd singly ; this, at least, that we are speaking of, was so, and is intitled « The
Hystorie of Hamblet ;' it is in Quarto, and black letter. There can be no doubf
made, by persons who are acquainted with these things, that the translation is nol
much younger than the French original ; though the only edition of it that is yej
87
88 APPENDIX
come to my knowledge is no earlier than 1608 ; that Shakespeare took his play from
it there can likewise be very little doubt.
Theobald was the first to note that the plot of Hamlet is derived from Saxo
Grammaticus. A brief extract of the story from Historice DaniccB is given by him
on the first page of his edition of the tragedy.
Skottowe {Life of Shakespeare, &c., 1824, ii, p. i) analyses the Hystorie at
greater length than any other commentator has thought worth the while, unless it be
jonong the Germans. It is needless to repeat his remarks here ; the curious student
with the Reprint at hand can misspend what time he pleases, and make his own
conclusions. Skottowe sums up: '■The Hystorie cf Hatnblet, then, contributes
much towards the illustration of a character deemed peculiarly difficult. It assigns
rational motives for actions otherwise unintelligible, and lays the foundation for the
necessary distinction that has been made between the natural and artificial character
of Hamlet ; a clue to the interpretations of his actions, which, carefully pursued,
leaves little in his conduct dubious or obscure. Above all things, the reason for his
deportment to Ophelia is explained.'
The copy of the black-letter Quarto owned by Capell is the only one that is
known, and is preserved among his books at Cambridge. It was reprinted in 1841
by Collier in the first volume of his Shakespeare^ s Library, and of it Collier re-
marks : It was printed for Thomas Pavier, a well-known stationer of that time.
There can be little doubt that it had come originally from the press considerably be-
fore the commencement of the seventeenth century, although the multiplicity of
readers of productions of the kind, and the carelessness with which such books
were regarded after perusal, has led to the destruction, as far as can now be ascer-
tained, of every earlier copy It will be found that the tragedy varies in many
important particulars from the novel, especially towards the conclusion ; that nearly
the whole conduct of the story is different ; that the catastrophe is totally dissimilar,
and that the character of the hero in the prose narrative is utterly degraded below
the rank he is entitled to take in the commencement. The murder of Hamlet's
father, the marriage of his mother with the murderer, Hamlet's pretended mad-
ness, his interview with his mother, and his voyage to England, are nearly the only
points in common. We are thus able to see how far Shakespeare followed the
Hystorie; but we shall probably never be able to ascertain to what extent he made
use of the antecedent play [referred to by Nash, Lodge, and others]. The prose
narrative of 1608 is a bald, literal, and, in many respects, uncouth translation from
the Histoires tragiques of Belleforest, who was himself by no means an elegant writer
for the time in which he lived : his story of Amletk was professedly copied from
an earlier author, whom he does not name, but who was either Saxo Grammaticus
or some writer who had intermediately borrowed the incidents and converted them
to his own purposes. The English translator, especially in the descriptive portion
of his work, has multiplied all the faults of Belleforest, including his lengthened
and involved periods and his frequent confusion of persons. It may be suspected
that one or two of the longer speeches, and particularly the oration of Hamlet, occu-
pying nearly the whole of Chapter vi, was by another and a better hand, who had
a more complete knowledge of French and a happier use of his own language.
' We must not have much hesitation in believing that the oldest copy (perhaps
printed about the year 1585) was sufficiently corrupt in its readings; but the corrup-
tions increased with the re-impressions, and a few portions of the edition of 1608
seem almost to defy correction. Some passages might be rendered more intelligi-
NOTE ON THE HYSTORIE OF HAMBLET 89
ble, SQch as, * distill a field of tears ' (page 1 12), instead of diztill a flood of tears /
but it was thought T>est to present the curious relic, as nearly as it could be done, in
the shape and state in which it issued from the press not quite two centuries and a
half ago. For this reason it has not been considered right to make the orthography
of the name of the hero uniform ; sometimes he is called Hamblet (as, no doubt, it
stood in the first impression), and at other times Hamlet, as we have every reason to
suppose it was altered in the old play, and as we find it in Shakespeare.'
Elze contends that the translation from Belleforest is of a later date than the
drama. Prose versions are more likely to follow poetical versions than the reverse.
This is noticeable in the popular legends of both England and Germany. It is readily
conceivable that a poet should select from Belleforest the story of Hamlet's feigned
insanity and of his revenge, and cast it in a dramatic or poetic mould, but it is not
so conceivable that a mediocre translator should pick out this single story, unless he
were led to do so by the popularity of the poetic version. There are two points
or passages in the HystorU of Hamblet which materially strengthen this view : as
has been before noticed, this Hystorie is a clumsy translation of Belleforest, adhering
throughout to the original with slavish fidelity, except in two places, which betray
the mark of a superior hand, and point very decisively to Shakespeare. In the His-
toires tragiques the counsellor who acts the spy during Amleth's interview with his
mother conceals himself under the quilt {stramentum, according to Saxo ; loudier
OT lodier, according to Belleforest), and Amleth on entering the chamber y«/w;>j upon
this quilt {sauta sur ce lodur) ; whereas the English version converts the quilt into
a curtain or tapestry, and makes use of the very same terms employed by Shake-
speare, viz. : • hangings' and ' arras.' In the second place, it is still more striking that
the English translator makes Amleth exclaim in the very words of Shakespeare :
• A rat ! a rat !' whereof not a trace is to be found in Belleforest. That this passage,
on the stage, made a deep impression on the audience is highly probable, and the
probability receives confirmation from the fact that Shirley in his Traitor, 1635,
imitated this scene almost word for word, ^^^lat more likely, then, than that the
translator half unconsciously adopted an incident and phraseology which had caught
the popular fancy, and become almost proverbial ? At any rate, we hold this expla«
nation to be less forced than that which assumes that two such striking passages were
invented by a translator of a manifestly inferior stamp, and transferred from his work
to Shakespeare's. [Especially when, I think Elze might have added, they are the
only two points where the phraseology is common to both.] We by no means wish
to deny the possibility of the Hystorie cf Hamblef^ having been published long
before 1608; perhaps, as Collier thinks, even as early as 1580. According to our
belief, the first sketch of Hamlet is to be set down at about 1585-86.
The above argument of Elze's in favor of the existence of the drama before the
translation has not, I think, met with the acceptance it deserves. To my mind it is
convincing. Not that the early drama was by Shakespeare. That is not my belief.
Dr Bell {Shakespeare's Puck, ii, 231, and iii, 140) maintains that Shakespeare
passed three years of his life on the Continent, and while there became thoroughly
imbued with the German language and literature of the time, and that he took the
story of Hamlet from Hans Sachs, who wrote a version of it in 1558; and further-
more Dr Bell says that Shakespeare has followed his original ' religiously.' If the
present Editor could have perceived the lightest gossamer thread of connection be-
tween Hans Sachs's rude, uncouth doggerel and Shakespeare's tragedy, Hans Sachs's
bald version wouli have been reprinted in the present volume.
90 APPENDIX
White {Introduction to Hamlet, p. 7) : Yet with all this dissimilarity between
[Hamlet and the Hystorie of Hamblet\ added to that which is the consequence of
the addition of new characters an^ new incidents, there is remarkable resemblance
in minute particulars. Thus, for instance, in the story as well as in the play,
Hamlet, on detecting the hidden eavesdropper in his mother's closet, calls out, « A
rat, a rat !' and the purport and character of his subsequent reproaches to his mother
ire notably alike in both.
Dyce (Second Edition) : Whether Shakespeare derived the incidents [which are
common to both the tragedy and The Hystorie'] from The Hystorie, or from the older
drama on the same subject, we are left to guess.
There are several pages of Introductory matter, termed ArgumeTU and Preface,
prefixed to the Hystorie, but as they contain no syllable in reference to Hamlet, and
are very tedious besides, they are not reprinted here.
THE
HYSTORIE
OF HAMBLET.
LONDON:
Imprinted by Richard Bradocke, for Thomaz Pavur, and are to be sold at his
shop in Comc-hiU, neere to the Royall Exchange.
1608.
CHAP. I.
How HorvendiU and Fengon were made Covemours of the Province of Ditmane,
and how Horvendile marryed Geruth, the daughter to Roderick, chief K. of
Denmark, by whom he had Hamblet : and how after his marriage his brother
Fengon slewe him trayterotisiy, and marryed his brothers wife, and what foU
lowed.
You must understand, that long time before the kingdome of Denmark received
the faith of Jesus Christ, and imbraced the doctrin of the Christians, that the common
people in those dayes were barbarous and uncivill, and their princes
cruell, without faith or loyaltie, seeking nothing but murther, and de- in times past
posing (or at the least) offending each other, either in honours, goods, r^ un^ilL
or lives ; not caring to ransome such as they took prisoners, but rather
sacrificing them to the cruell vengeance naturally imprinted in their hearts : in such
sort, that if ther were sometime a good prince or king among them, who
beeing adorned with the most perfect gifts of nature, would adict him- tie of the
selfe to vertue, and use courtesie, although the people held him in ad- ^^'**
miration (as vertue is admirable to the most wicked) yet the envie of his neighbors was
so great, that they never ceased untill that vertuous man were dispatched .
out of the world. King Rodericke, as then raigning in Denmarke, Vjne of Den-
after hee had appeased the troubles in the countrey, and driven the ''^*"'*-
Sweathlanders and Slaveans from thence, he divided the kingdom into divers prcv-
91
92 THE HYSTORIE OF HAMBLET,
inces, placing governours therein; who after (as the like happened in France) bare
the names of Dukes, Marqueses, and Earls, giving the government of
time, called Jutie (at this present called Ditmarsse) lying upon the conntrey of the
marese.^"" Cimbrians, in the straight or narrow part of land that sheweth like a
point or cape o^ ground upon the sea, which neithward bordereth upon
the countrey of Norway, two valiant and warlike lords Horvendile and Fengon,
sonnes to Gervendile, who likewise had beene governour of that province. Now
the greatest honor that men of noble birth could at that time win and obtaine, was
in exercising the art of piracie upon the seas, assayling their neighbours, and the
countries bordering upon them ; and how much the more they used to rob, pill, and
spoyle other provinces, and ilands far adjacent, so much the more their
a king and a honours and reputation increased and augmented : whevin Horvendile
pirate. obtained the highest place in his time, beeing the most renouned pirate
that in those dayes scoured the seas and havens of the north parts : whose great
fame so mooved the heart of CoUere, king of Norway, that he was
of Norway ^ much grieved to heare that Horvendile surmounting him in feates .of
armes, thereby obscuring the glorie by him alreadie obtained upon the
seas : (honor more than covetousnesse of richer (in those dayes) being the reason
that provoked those barbarian princes to overthrow and vanquish one the other, not
caring to be slaine by the handes of a victorious person). This valiant and hardy
king having challenged Horvendile to fight with him body to body, the combate
was by him accepted, with conditions, that hee which should be vanquished should
loose all the riches he had in his ship, and that the vanquisher should cause the
body of the vanquished (that should bee slaine in the combate) to be honourably
buried, death being the prise and reward of him that should loose the battaile : and
to conclude, Collere, king of Norway (although a valiant, hardy, and
slew CoUere couragious prince) was in the end vanquished and slaine by Horven-
dile, who presently caused a tombe to be erected, and therein (with all
honorable obsequies fit for a prince) buried the body of king Collere, according to
their auncient manner and superstitions in these dayes, and the conditions of the
combate, bereaving the kings shippes of all their riches; and having slaine the
kings sister, a very brave and valiant warriour, and over runne all the coast of
Norway, and the Northern Ilands, returned home againe layden with much treasure,
sending the most parte thereof to his soveraigne, king Rodericke, thereby to pro-
cure his good liking, and so to be accounted one of the greatest favourites about his
majestic.
The king, allured by those presents, and esteeming himselfe happy to have so
valiant a subject, sought by a great favour and coutesie to make him become bounden
unto him perpetually, giving him Geruth his daughter to his wife,. of
Bonne to Hor- whom he knew Horvendile to bee already much inamored. And the
ven ;le. more to honor him, determined himselfe in person to conduct her into
Jutie, where the marriage was celebrated according to the ancient manner: and to
be briefe, of this marriage proceeded Hamblct, of whom I intend to speake, and for
his cause have chosen to renew this present hystorie.
Fengon, brother to this prince Horvendile, who [not] onely fretting and despight-
ing in his heart at the great honor and reputation wonne by his brother
\C\% conspiral ^"^ Warlike affaires, but solicited and provoked by a foolish jealousie to
eie against see him honc«rcd with royall allance, and fearing thereby to bee deposed
bis brother. ,,. ,, .... , ,
from his part of the government, or rather desirmg to be onely gover*
PRINCE OF DENMARKE. 93
nour, thereby to obscure the memorie of the victories and conquests of his brother
Horvendile, determined (whatsoever happened) to kill him ; which hee effected in
such sort, that no man once so much as suspected him, every man esteeming that
from such and so firme a knot of alliance and consanguinitie there could proceed no
other issue then the full effects of vertue and courtesie : but (as I sayd before) the de-
sire of bearing soveraigne rule and authoritie respecteth neither blood nor amitie, nor
caring for vertue, as being wholly without respect of lawes, or majestie devine; for it
is not possible that hee which invadeth the countrey and taketh away the riches of an
other man without cause or reason, should know or feare God. "Was not this a
craftie and subtile counsellor ? but he might have thought that the mother, knowing
her husbands case, would not cast her sonne into the danger of death. But Fengon,
having secretly assembled certain men, and perceiving himself strong enough to ex-
ecute his interprise, Horvendile his brother being at a banquet with
,.,,,,. . , Fengon kiu-
his friends, sodainely set upon him, where he slewe him as traiterously, eth his
as cunningly he purged himselfe of so detestable a murther to his sub- '"■°'"^''-
jects ; for that before he had any violent or bloody handes, or once committed par-
ricide upon his brother, hee had incestuously abused his wife, whose honour hee
ought as well to have sought and procured as traiterously he pursued and effected
his destruction. And it is most certaine, that the man that abandoneth himselfe to any
notorious and wicked action, whereby he becommeth a great sinner, he careth not
to commit much more haynous and abhominable offences, and covered his boldnesse
and wicked practise with so great subtiltie and policie, and under a vaile of meere
simplicitie, that beeing favoured for the honest love that he bare to his sister in lawe,
for whose sake, hee affirmed, he had in that sort murthered his brother, that his
sinne found excuse among the common people, and of the nobilitie was esteemed
for justice : for that Geruth, being as courteous a princesse as any then living in the
north parts, and one that had never once so much as offended any of her subjects,
either commons or courtyers, this adulterer and infamous murtherer, slaundered his
dead brother, that hee would have slaine his wife, and that hee by chance finding
him upon the point ready to do it, in defence of the lady had slaine him, bearing
off the blows, which as then he strooke at the innocent princesse, without any other
cause of malice whatsoever. Wherein hee wanted no false witnesses to approove
his act, which deposed in like sort, as the wicked calumniator himselfe protested,
being the same persons that had bom him company, and were participants of his
treason; so that insteed of pursuing him as a parricide and an incestu-
ous person, al the courtyers admired and flattered him in his good for- niore^'^ho"
tune, making more account of false witnesses and detestable wicked cured in
reporters, and more honouring the calumniators, then they esteemed vertuous per-
of those that seeking to call the matter in question, and admiring the ^°^'
vertues of the murthered prince, would have punished the massacrers and bereavers
of his life. Which was the cause that Fengon, boldned and incouraged by such
impunitie, durst venture to couple himselfe in marriage with her whom .^^ incestu-
hee used as his concubine during good Horvendiles life, in that sort ous marriage
spotting his name with a double vice, and charging his conscience with with his bro-
abhominable g^ilt, and two-fold impietie, as incestuous adulterie and ^"^ *' •
parricide murther : and that the unfortunate and wicked woman, that had receaved
the honour to bee the wife of one of the valiantest and wiseth princes in the north,
imbased her selfe in such vile sort, as to falsifie her faith unto him, and which is
worse, to marrie him, that had bin the tyranous murtherer of hei lawfull husband;
94 THE HYSTORIE OF HAMBLET,
which made divers men thinke that she had beene the causer of the murther, thereby
to live in her adultery without controle. But where shall a man finde a more wicked
and bold woman, then a great parsonage once having loosed the bands of honor and
honestie? This princesse, who at the first, for her rare vertues and courtesses was
honored of al men and beloved of her husband, as soone as she once gave eare to
the tyrant Fengon, forgot both the ranke she helde among the greatest names, and
the dutie of an honest .wife on her behalfe. But I will not stand to gaze and mer-
vaile at women, for that there are many which seeke to blase and set them foorth,
in which their writings they spare not to blame them all for the faults of some one,
or few women. But I say, that either nature ought to have bereaved man of that
opinion to accompany with women, or els to endow them with such spirits, as that
If a man be ^^^ ^^^ easily support the crosses they endure, without complaining
deceived hy so often and so strangely, seeing it is their owne beastlinesse that over-
a woman, it, , _.-., , .. -
is his owne throwes them. For if it be so, that a woman is so imperfect a creature
beastlinesse. ^^ ^j^gy uj^j^g jjgr jq ^g^ ^nd that they know this beast to bee so hard to
bee tamed as they affirme, why then are they 50 foolish to preserve them, and so dull
and brutish as to trust their deceitfull and wanton imbraceings. But let us leave
her in this extreamitie of laciviousnesse, and proceed to shewe you in what sort the
yong prince Hamblet behaved himselfe, to escape the tyranny of his uncle.
CHAP. II.
How Hamhlet counterfeited the mad man, to escape the tyrannie of his uncle, and
how he was tempted by a woman {through his uncles procurement) who thereby
thought to undermine the Prince, and by that meanes to finde out whether he
counterfeited madnesse or not : and how Hamblet would by no meanes bee brought
to consent unto her, and what followed.
GERtTTH having (as I sayd before) so much forgotten herself, the prince Hamblet
perceiving himself to bee in danger of his life, as beeing abandoned of his owne
mother, and forsaken of all men, and assuring himselfe that Fengon would not de-
tract the time to send him the same way his father Horvendile was gone, to beguile
the tyrant in his subtilties (that esteemed him tb bee of such a minde that if he once
attained to mans estate he wold not long delay the time to revenge the death of his
father) counterfeiting the mad man with such craft and subtill practises, that hee
made shewe as if hee had utterly lost his wittes : and under that vayle hee covered
his pretence, and defended his life from the treasons and practises of tlie tyrant his
uncle. And all though hee had beene at the schoole of the Romane Prince, who,
because hee counterfeited himselfe to bee a foole, was called Brutus, yet hee imitated
his fashions, and his wisedom. For every day beeing in the quecnes palace, (who
as then was more carefull to please her whorcmaster, then ready to revenge the
cruell death of her. husband, or to restore her sonne to his inheritance), hee rent
and tore his clothes, wallowing and lying in the durt and mire, his face all filthy and
blacke, running through the streets like a man distraught, not speaking one worde,
but such a'-, seemed to procecdc of madnesse and mccrc frenziej all his actions and
PRINCE OF DENMARKE. 95
jestares beeing no other than the right countenances of a man wholly deprived of
all reason and understanding, in such sort, that as then hee seemed fitte for nothing
but to make sport to the pages and mffling courtiers that attended in the court of his
uncle and father-in-law. But the yong prince noted them well enough, minding one
day to bee revenged in such manner, that the memorie thereof should remaine per-
petually to the world.
Beholde, I pray you, a great point of a wise and brave spirite in a yong prince,
by so great a shewe of imperfection in his person for advancement, and his owne
imbasing and despising, to worke thq. meanes and to prepare the way for himselfe to
bee one of the happiest kings in his age. In like sort, never any man was recuted
by any of his actions more wise and prudent then Brutus, dissembling
a great alteration inTiis minde, for that the occasion of such his devise teemed wise*
of foolishnesse proceeded onely of a good and mature counsell and feft;ni°'™'tj[e
deliberation, not onely to preserve his goods, and shunne the rage of foo'e- R^^
the proude tyrant, but also to open a large way to procure the banish- and Haiicar-
ment and utter ruine of wicked Tarquinius, and to infranchise the "^^^^us.
people (which were before oppressed) from the yoake of a great and miserable ser-
vitude. And so, not onely Brutus, but this man and worthy prince, to whom wee
may also adde king David, that counterfeited the madde man among David coun-
the petie kings of Palestina to preserve his life from the subtill prac- terfeited the
tises of those kings. I shew this example unto such, as beeing offended fore king
with any great personage, have not sufficient means to prevaile in their ^'^^-
intents, or revenge the injurie by them receaved. But when I speake of revenging
any injury received upon a great personage or superior, it must be un-
derstood by such an one as is not our soveraigne, againste whome wee
male by no meanes resiste, nor once practise anie treason nor conspiracie against hij
life : and hee that will followe this course must speake and do all things whatsoever
that are pleasing and acceptable to him whom hee meaneih to deceive, practise his
actions, and esteeme him above all men, cleane contrarye to his owne intent and
meaning; for that is rightly to playe and counterfeite the foole, when a man is con-
strained to dissemble and kisse his hand, whome in hearte hee could wishe an hun-
dred foote depth under the earth, so hee mighte never see him more, if it were not
a thing wholly to bee disliked in a christian, who by no meanes ought to have a
bitter gall, or desires infected with revenge. Hamblet, in this sorte counterfeiting
the madde man, many times did divers- actions of great and deepe consideration,
and often made such and so fitte answeres, that a wise man would soone have
judged from what spirite so fine an invention mighte proceede ; for that standing by
the fire and sharpning sticks like poynards and prickes, one in smiling manner asked
him wherefore he made those little staves so sharpe at the points ? I pre-
pare (saith he) piersing dartes and sharpe arrowes to revenge my fathers g^ere of""
death. Fooles, as I said before, esteemed those his words as nothing ; Prince Kara-
but men of quicke spirits, and such as hadde a deeper reache began to
suspect somewhat, esteeming that under that kinde of folly there lay hidden a greate
and rare subtilty, such as one day might bee prejudiciall to their prince, saying, that
under colour of such rudeness he shadowed a crafty pollicy, and by his de\-ised
simplidtye, he concealed a sharp and pregnant spirit : for which cause they coun-
selled the king to try and know, if it were possible, how to discover the intent and
meaning of the yong prince ; and they could find no better nor more fit invention to
intrap him, then to set some faire and beawtifull woman in a secret place, that with
96 THE HYSTORIE OF HAMBLET,
flattering speeches and all the craftiest meanes she could use, should purposely seek
to allure his mind to have his pleasure of her : for the nature of all young men,
(especially such as are brought up wantonlie) is so transported with
ru^tedTnman ^^^ ^^^'"^^^ ^^ ^^^ ^^sh, and entreth so greedily into the pleasures
therof, that it is almost impossible to cover the foul affection, neither
yet to dissemble or hyde the same by art or industry, much lesse to shunne it. Wliat
cunning or subtilty so ever they use to cloak theire pretence, seeing occasion offered,
and that in secret, especially in the most inticing sinne that rayneth in man, they
cannot chuse (being constrayned by voluptuousnesse) but fall to natu-
used^'to" du! ^^^^ ^'^^^'^ ^"^ working. To this end certaine courtiers were appointed
cover Hamb- to leade Hamblet into a solitary place within the woods, whether thev
lets raadnes. , , , ...,.,,., •'
brougnt the woman, mcitmg him to take their pleasures together, and
to imbrace one another, but the subtill practises used in these our dales, not to try
„ if men of great account bee extract out of their wits, but rather to de-
Corrupters . , . ■,•,-,
of yong gen- prive them of strength, vertue and wisedome, by meanes of such dev-
princes courts '^^'^ practitioners, and intefernall spirits, their domestical servants, and
and great ministers of corruption. And surely the poore prince at this assault
had him in great danger, if a gentleman (that in Horvendiles time had
been nourished with him) had not showne himselfe more affectioned to the bringing
np he had received with Hamblet, then desirous to please the tirant, who by all
meanes sought to intangle the sonne in the same nets wherein the father had ended
his dayes. This gentleman bare the courtyers (appointed as aforesaide of this
treason) company, more desiring to give the prince instruction what he should do,
then to intrap him, making full account that the least showe of perfect sence and
wisedome that Hamblet should make would be sufficient to cause him to loose his
life : and therefore by certain signes, he gave Hamblet intelligence in what danger
bee was like to fall, if by any meanes hee seemed to obaye, or once like the wanton
toyes and vicious provocations of the gentlewoman sent thither by his uncle. Which
much abashed the prince, as then wholy beeing in affection to the lady, but by her
he was likewise informed of the treason, as being one that from her infancy loved
and favoured him, and would have been exceeding sorrowfull for his misfortune, and
much more to leave his companie without injoying the pleasure of his body, whome
shee loved more than herselfe. The prince in this sort having both deceived the
courtiers, and the ladyes expectation, that afSrmed and swore that hee never once
offered to have his pleasure of the woman, although in subtilty hee affirmed the
contrary, every man there upon assured themselves that without all doubt he was
distraught of his sences, that his braynes were as then wholly void of force, and
incapable of reasonable apprehension, so that as then Fengons practise took no
effect : but for al that he left not off, still seeking by al meanes to finde out Hamb*
let's subtilty, as in the next chapter you shall perceive.
PRINCE OF DENMARKE. Q7
CHAP. III.
How Fengon, uncle to Hamblet, a second time to intrjp him in his politick madnes,
caused one of his counsellors to bt secretly hidden in the queenes chamber, behind
the arras, to heare what speeches passed between Hamblet and the Queen ; and
how Hamblet killed him, and escaped that danger, and what followed.
Among the friends of Fengon, there was one that above al the rest doubted ot
Hamblets practises in counterfeiting the madman, who for that cause said, that it
was impossible that so craftie a gallant as Hamblet, that counterfeited
the foole, should be discovered with so common and unskilful! prac- subtaty°°usS
tises, which might easily bee perceived, and that to finde out his poH- w deceive
tique pretence it were necessary to invent some subtill and crafty
meanes, more attractive, whereby the gallant might not have the leysure to use his
accustomed dissimulation ; which to effect he said he knewe a fit waie, and a most
convenient meane to effect the kings desire, and thereby to intrap Hamblet in his
subtilties, and cause him of his owne accord to fall into the net prepared for him,
and thereby evidently shewe his secret meaning. His devise was thus, that King
Fengon should make as though he were to goe some long voyage concerning affaires
of great importance, and that in the meane time Hamblet should be shut up alone
in a chamber with his mother, wherein some other should secretly be hidden behind
the hangings, unknowne either to him or his mother, there to stand and h«ere theil
speeches, and the complots by them to bee taken concerning the accomplishment of
the dissembling fooles pretence; assuring the king that if there were any point of
wisedome and perfect sence in the gallants spirit, that without all doubte he would
easily discover it to his mother, as being devoid of all feare that she would utter or
make knowne his secret intent, beeing the woman that had borne him in her bodie,
and nourished him so carefully ; and withall offered himselfe to be the man that
should stand to harken and beare witnesse of Hamblets speeches with his mother,
that hee might not be esteemed a counsellor in such a case wherein he refused to be
the executioner for the behoofe and service of his prince. This invention pleased
the king exceeding well, esteeming it as the onelie and soveraigne remedie to heale
the prince of his lunacie ; and to that ende making a long voyage, issued out of his
pallace, and road to hunt in the forrest. Mean time the counsellor entred secretly
into the queenes chamber, and there hid himselfe behind the arras, not
long before the queene and Hamblet came thither, who beeing craftie ,uj,tiUy™ "*
and poUitique, as soone as hee was within the chamber, doubting some
treason, and fearing if he should speake severely and wisely to his mother touching
his secret practises he should be understood, and by that meanes intercepted, used
his ordinary manner of dissimulation, and began to come like a cocke beating with
his armes, (in such manner as cockes use to strike with their wings) upon the hang-
ings of the chamber : whereby, feeling something stirring under them,
he cried, A rat, a rat ! and presently drawing his sworde thrust it into venge taken
the hangings, which done, pulled the counsellour (halfe dead) out by upon Wm"that
the heeles, made an end of killing him, and beeing slaine, cut his bodie would have
in pieces, which he caused to be boyled, and then cast it into an open
Vol. II.— 7
98
THE HYSTORIE OF HAMBLET,
vaulte or privie, that so it mighte serve for foode to the hogges. By which meanes
having discovered the ambushe, and given the inventer thereof his just rewarie, hee
came againe to his mother, who in the meane time wepte and tormented her selfe to
eee all her hopes frustrate, for that what fault soever she had committed, yet was
shee sore grieved to see her onely child made a meere mockery, every man reproach-
ing her with his follv, one point whereof she had as then seene before
Queene ' ,, . , , . . .
Geruthes re- her eyes, which was no small pncke to her conscience, esteeming that
pentance. ^j^^ gods sent her that punishment for joyning incestuously in marriage
with the tyrrannous murtherer of her husband, who like wise ceased not to invent
all the means he could to bring his nephew to his ende, accusing his owne naturall
indiscretion, as beeing the ordinary guide of those that so much desire the pleasures
Df the bodie, who shutting up the waie to all reason, respect not what maie ensue
of of their lightnes and great inconstancy, and how a pleasure of small moment is
sufficient to give them cause of repentance during their lives, and make them curse
the daye and time that ever any such apprehensions entred into theire mindes, or
that they closed their eies to reject the honestie requisite in ladies of her qualitie,
and to despise the holy institution of those dames that had gone before her, both in
nobilitie and vertue, calling to mind the great prayses and commendations given by
the danes to Rinde, daughter to king Rothere, the chastest lady in her
princes" of an time, and withall so shamefast that she would never consent to mar-
admirable riage with any prince or knight whatsoever ; surpassing in vertue all
the ladyes of her time, as shee herselfe surmounted them in beawtie,
good behaviour, and comelines. And while in this sort she sate tormenting her-
selfe, Hamlet entred into the chamber, who having once againe searched every
corner of the same, distrusting his mother as well as the rest, and perceiving him-
selfe to bee alone, began in sober and discreet manner to speak unto her, saying,
What treason is this, O most infamous woman ! of all that ever prostrated them-
selves to the will of an abhominable whore monger, who, under the vail of a dis-
sembling creature, covereth the most wicked and detestable crime that man could
ever imagine, or was committed. Now may I be assured to trust you, that like a
vile wanton adultresse, altogether impudent and given over to her pleasure, runnes
ipreading forth her armes joyfully to imbrace the trayterous villanous tyrant that
murthered my father, and most incestuously receivest the villain into the lawfull bed
of your loyall spouse, imprudently entertaining him in steede of the deare father of
your miserable and discomforted soone, if the gods grant him not the grace speedilie
to escape from a captivity so unworthie the degree he holdeth, and the race and
noble familie of his ancestors. Is this the part of a queene, and daughter to a king?
to live like a brute beast (and like a mare that yieldeth her bodie to the horse that
hath beaten hir companion awaye), to followe the pleasure of an abhominable king
that h.-ith murthered a farre more honester and better man then himself in massacring
Horvendile, the honor and glory of the Danes, who are now esteemed of ho force
nor valour at all, since the shining splendure of knighthood was brought to an end
by the most wickedest and cruellest villaine living upon earth. I, for my part, will
never account him for my kinsman, nor once knowe him for mine uncle, nor you
my deer mother, for not having respect to the blud that ought to have united us so
Itraightly together, and who neither with your honor nor without suspicion of con-
sent to the death of your husband could ever have agreed to have marryed with his
cruell cnemie. O, queene Geruthe, it is the part of a bitch to couple with many,
■nd desi'e acquaintance of divers mastiffcs : it is licentiousnes only that hath made
PRINCE OF DENMARKE. 99
you deface out of your mmde the memory of the valor and vertues of the good king
your husband imd my father : it was an unbrideled desire that guided the daughter
of Roderick to imbrace the tyrant Fengon, and not to. remember Horvendile (un-
worthy of so strange intertainment), neither that he killed his brother traiterously,
and that shee being his fathers wife betrayed him, although he so well favoured and
loved her, that for her sake he utterly bereaved Norway of her riches and valiant
souldiers to augment the treasures of Roderick, and make Geruthe wife to the har-
dyest prince in Europe : it is not the parte of a woman, much lesse of a princesse,
in whome all modesty, curtesse, compassion, and love ought to abound, thus to leav«»
her deare child to fortune in the bloody and mnrtherous hands of a villain and tray
tor. Bruite beasts do not so, for lyons, tygers, ounces and leopards fight for the
safety and defence of their whelpes ; and birds that have beakes, claws, and wings,
resist such as would ravish them of their yong ones ; but you, to the contrary, expose
and deliver mee to death, whereas ye should defend me. Is not this as much as if
you should betray me, when you knowing the perversenes of the tyrant and his in-
tents, ful of deadly counsell as touching the race and image of his brother, have not
once sought, nor desired to finde the meanes to save your child (and only son) by
sending him into Swethland, Norway, or England, rather than to leave him as a
pray to youre infamous adulterer ? bee not offended, I praye you, Madame, if trans-
ported with dolour and griefe, I speake so boldely unto you, and that I respect you
lesse then dutie requireth ; for you, having forgotten mee, and wholy rejected the
memorye of the deceased K. my father, must not bee abashed if I also surpasse the
bounds and limits of due consideration. Beholde into what distresse I am now
fallen, and to what mischiefe my fortune, and your over great lightnesse, and want
of wisedome have induced mee, that I am constrained to playe the madde man to
save my life, in steed of using and practising armes, following adventures, and seek-
ing all meanes to make my selfe knowne to bee the true and undoubted heire of the
valiant and vertuous king Horvendile. It was not without cause, and juste occasion,
that my gestures, countenances, and words, seeme all to proceed from a madman,
and that I desire to have all men esteeme mee wholly deprived of sence and reason-
able understanding, bycause I am well assured, that he that hath made no conscience
to kill his owne brother, (accustomed to murthers, and allured with desire of gov-
emement without controll in his treasons), will not spare, to save himselfe with the
like crueltie, in the blood and flesh of the loyns of his brother by him massacred :
and, therefore, it is better for me to fayne madnesse, then to use my right sences as
nature hath bestowed them upon me : the bright shining cleames therof I am forced
to hide under this shadow of dissimulation, as the sun doth hir beams under some
great cloud, w^hen the wether in sommer time overcasteth. The face of a mad man
scrveth to cover my gallant countenance, and the gestures of a fool are fit for me, to
the end that guiding my self wisely therein, I may preserve my life for the Danes,
and the memory of my late deceased father ; for the desire of revenging his death
is so engraven in my heart, that if I dye not shortly, I hope to take such and sc
great vengeance, that these countryes shall for ever speake thereof. Neverthelesse,
I must stay the time, meanes, and occasion, lest by making over great hast, I be now
the cause of mine owne sodaine mine and overthrow, and by that
meanes end before I beginne to effect my hearts desire. Hee that hath ^^ ^btilde
to doe with a wicked, disloyall, cruell, and discourteous man must use to » disloyall
craft and politike inventions, such as a fine witte can best imagine, not
♦o discover his interprise ; for seeing that by force I cannot effect my desire, reason
ICX) THE HYSTORIE OF HAMBLET,
tlloweth me by dissimulation, subtiltie, and secret practises to proceed therein. To
conclude, weepe not (madame) to see my folly, but rather sigh and lament your
Wee must *^^"^ offencc, tormenting your conscience in regard of the infamie that
weepe for our hath SO defiled the ancient renowne and glorie that (in times past) hon-
owne faults i ,-. , /• i • ,
and not for oured queene Geruth ; for wee are not to sorrowe and grieve at other
other mens. mens vices, but for our owne misdeedes, and great folloyes. Desiring
you, for the surplus of my proceedings, above all things (as you love your owne life
and welfare) that neither the king nor any other may by any meanes know mine
intent ; and let me alone with the rest, for I hope in the ende to bring my purpose
to effect.
Although the queene perceived herselfe neerely touched, and that Hamlet mooved
her to the quicke, where she felt herself interested, neverthelesse shee forgot all dis
daine and wrath, which thereby she might as then have had, hearing her selfe so
sharply chiden and reprooved, for the joy she then conceaved, to behold the gallant
spirit of her sonne, and to thinke what she might hope, and the easier expect of hii
so great policie and wisdome. But on the one side she durst not lift up her eyes to
beholde him, remembering her offence, and on the other side she would gladly have
imbraced her son, in regard of the wise admonitions by him given unto her, which
as then quenched the flames of unbridled desire that before had mooved her to affect
K. Fengon, to ingraff in her heart the vertuous actions of her lawfuU spouse, whom
inwardly she much lamented, when she beheld the lively image and portraiture of
his vertue and great wisedome in her childe, representing his fathers haughtie and
valiant heart : and so, overcome and vanquished with this honest passion, and weep
ing most bitterly, having long time fixed her eyes upon Hamlet, as beeing ravished
into some great and deepe contemplation, and as it were wholy amazed, at the last
imbracing him in her armes (with the like love that a vertuous mother may or can
use to kisse and entertaine her owne childe), shee spake unto him in this manner.
I know well (my sonne) that I have done thee great wrong in marrying with
Fengon, the cruell tyrant and murtherer of thy father, and my loyall spouse : but
when thou shalt consider the small meanes of resistance, and the treason of the
palace, with the little cause of confidence we are to expect or hope for of the cour-
tiers, all wrought to his will, as also the power hee made ready, if I should have
refused to like of him, thou wouldest rather excuse then accuse me of lasciviousnes
or inconstancy, much lesse offer me that wrong to suspect that ever thy mother
Geruthe once consented to the death and murther of her husband : swearing unto
thee (by the majestic of the Gods) that if it had layne in my power to have resistetl
the tyrant, although it had beene with the losse of my blood, yea and my life, I
would surely have saved the life of my lord and husband, with as good a will and
desire as, since that time, I have often beene a meanes to hinder and impeach the
shortning of thy life, which being taken away, I will no lomger live here upon earth.
For seeing that thy sences are whole and sound, I am in hope to see an easie meanes
invented for the revenging of thy fathers death. Neverthelesse, mine owne sweet
soone, if thou hast pittie of thy selfe, or care of the memorie of thy father (although
thou wilt do nothing for her that deserveth not the name of a mother in this respect),
I pray thee, carie thine affayres wisely : bee not hastie, nor over furious in thy in-
terprises, neither yet advance thy selfe more then reason shall moove thee to effect
thy purpose. Thou seest there is not almost any man wherein thou mayest put thy
trust, nor any woman to whom I dare utter the least part of my secrets, that would
not presently report it to thine adversarie, who, altliouch in outward shew he dis
PRINCE OF DENMARKE. lOI
•embleth to love thee, the better to injoy his pleasures of me, yet hee distrusteth and
feareth mee for thy sake, and is not so simple as to be easily perswaded that thou
art a foole or mad ; so that if thou chance to doe any thing that seemeth to proceed
of wisedome or policie (how secretly soever it be done) he will presently be informed
thereof, and I am greatly afraide that the devils have shewed him what hath past at
this present between us, (fortune so much pursueth and contrarieth our ease and
welfare) or that this murther that now thou hast committed be not the cause of both
our destructions, which I by no meanes will seeme to know, but will keepe secret
both thy wisedome and hardy interprise ; beseeching the Gods (my good soone) that
they, guiding thy heart, directing thy counsels, and prospering thy interprise, I may
see thee possesse and injoy that which is thy right, and weare the crowne of Den-
marke, by the tyrant taken from thee ; that I may rejoyce in thy prosperitie, and
therewith content my self, seeing with what courage and boldnesse thou shalt take
vengeance upon the murtherer of thy father, as also upon all those that have assisted
and favoured him in his murtherous and bloody enterprise. Madame (sayd Hamlet)
I will put my trust in you, and from henceforth meane not to meddle further with
your affayres, beseeching you (as you love your owne flesh and blood) that you will
from hence foorth no more esteeme of the adulterer, mine enemie whom I wil surely
kill, or cause to be put to death, in despite of all the devils in hel : and have he
never so manie flattering courtezans to defend him, yet will I bring him to his death,
and they themselves also shall beare him company therein, as they have bin his per-
verse counsellors in the action of killing my father, and his companions in his
treason, massacre and cruell enterprise. And reason requireth that, even as tray-
terously they then caused their prince to bee put to death, that with the like (nay
well, much more) justice they should pay the interest of their fellonious actions.
You know (Madame) how Hother your grandfather, and father to jjother &-
the good king Roderick, having vanquished Guimon, caused him to thertoRoder-
be burnt, for that the cruell vilain had done the like to his lord Gevare, burnt his lord
whom he betrayed in the night time. And who knoweth not that *^^*"-
traytors and perjured persons deserve no faith nor loyaltie to be observed towardes
them, and that conditions made with murtherers ought to bee esteemed
as cobwebs, and accounted as if they were things never promised nor ^ my^y
agreed upon : but if I lay handes upon Fengon, it will neither be fel- ther faithful-
lonie nor treason, hee being neither my king nor my lord, but I shall fidelitie to
justly punish him as my subject, that hath disloyaly behaved himselfe p'^7/i°,"es °'
against his lord and soveraigne prince. And seeing that glory is the
rewarde of the vertuous, and the honour and praise of those that do service to their
naturall prince, why should not blame and dishonour accompany traytors, and igno-
minious death al those that dare be so bold as to lay violent hands upon sacred
kings, that are friends and companions of the gods, as representing their majestic
and persons. To conclude, glorie is the crown of vertue, and the price of con-
stancie ; and seeing that it never accompanieth with infelicitie, but shunneth cow-
ardize and spirits of base and trayterous conditions, it must necessarily followe, that
either a glorious death will be mine ende, or with my sword in hand, (laden with
tryumph and victorie) I shall bereave them of their lives that made mine unfortu-
nate, and darkened the beames of that vertue which I possessed from the blood and
famous memory of my predecessors. For why should men desire to live, when
shame and infamie are the executioners that torment their consciences, and villany
is the cause that withholdeth the heart from valiant interprises, and diverteth the
I02 THE HYSTORIE OF HAMBLET,
minde from honest desire of glorie and commendation, which induieth for ever? I
know it is foolishly done to gather fruit before it is ripe, and to seeke to enjoy a
benefit, not knowing whither it belong to us of right ; but I hope to effect it so well,
and have so great confidence in my fortune (that hitherto hath guided the action of
my life) that I shall not dye without revenging my selfe upon mine enemie, and that
himselfe shall be the instrument of his owne decay, and to execute that which of
my selfe I durst not have enterprised.
After this, Fengon (as if hee had beene out some long journey) came to the court
againe, and asked for him that had received the charge to play the intilligencer, to
entrap Hamlet in his dissembled wisedome, was abashed to heare neither newes nor
tydings of him, and for that cause asked Hamlet what was become of him, naming
the man. The prince that never used lying, and who in all the answers that ever he
made (during his counterfeit madnesse) never strayed from the trueth (as a generous
minde is a mortal enemie to untruth) answered and sayd, that the counsellor he
sought for was gone downe through the privie, where being choaked by the filthy-
nesse of the place, the hogs meeting him had filled their bellyes.
CHAP. nil.
Hvw Fengon the third titne devised to send Hamblet to the king of England, with
secret letters to have him put to death : and how Hamblet, when his companions
slept, read the letters, and instead of them counterfeited others, willing the king
of England to put the two messengers to death, and to marry his daughter to
Hamblet, which was effected ; and how Hamblet escaped out of England.
A MAN would have judged any thing, rather then that Hamblet had committed
that murther, nevertheless Fengon could not content himselfe, but still his minde
gave him that the foole would play him Some tricke of liegerdemaine, and willingly
would have killed him, but he feared king Rodericke, his grandfather, and furthei
durst not offend the queene, mother to the foole, whom she loved and much cher-
ished, shewing great griefe and heavinesse to see him so transported out of his wits.
And in that conceit, seeking to bee rid of him, determined to finde the meanes to
doe it by the ayde of a stranger, making the king of England minister of his massa-
creing resolution, choosing rather that his friende should defile his renowne with so
great a wickednesse, then himselfe to fall into perpetuall infamie by an exploit of so
great crueltie, to whom hee purposed to send him, and by letters desire him to put
him to death.
Hamblet, understanding that he should be sent into England, presently doubted
the occasion of his voyage, and for that cause speaking to the queene, desired her
not to make any shew of sorrow or griefe for his departure, but rather counterfeit
a gladnesse, as being rid of his presence; whom, although she loved, yet she dayly
grieved to see him in so pittifuU estate, deprived of all sence and reason : desiring
her further, that she should hang the hall with tapestrie, and make it fast with nayles
upon the walles, and keepe the brands for him which hee hjd sharpened at the
points, then, when as he said he made arrowes to revenge the death of his father t
PRINCE OF DENMARKE. IO3
lastly, he counselled her, that the yeere after his departure being accomplished, she
should celebrate his funerals ; assuring her that at the same instant she should see
him retume with great contentment and pleasure unto her for that his voyage. Now,
to beare him company were assigned two of Fengons faithfuU ministers, bearing
letters ingraved in wood, that contained Hamlets death, in such sort as he had ad-
vertised the king of England. But the subtile Danish prince (beeing at sea) whilst
kis companions slept, having read the letters, and know^ne his uncles great trea-
son, with the wicked and villainous mindes of the two courtyers
that led him to the slaughter, raced out the letters that concerned his craft to save
death, and in stead thereof graved others, with commission to the king
of England to hang his two companions ; and not content to tume the death they
had devised against him upon their owne neckes, wrote further, that king Fengon
willed him to give his daughter to Hamlet in marriage. And so arriving in England,
the messengers presented themselves to the king, giving him Fengons letters ; who
having read the contents, sayd nothing as then, but stayed convenient time to eflFect
Fengons desire, meane time using the Danes familiarly, doing them that honour to
sit at his table (for that kings as then were not so curiously, nor solemnely served as
m these our dayes,) for in these dayes meane kings, and lords of small revenewe
are as difHcult and hard to bee scene, as in times past the monarches of Persia used
to bee : or as it is reported of the great king of Aethyopia, who will not permit any
man to see his face, which ordinarily hee covereth with a vaile. And as the mes-
sengers sate at the table with the king, subtile Hamlet was so far from being merry
with them, that he would not taste one bit of meate, bread, nor cup of beare what-
soever, as then set upon the table, not without great wondering of the company,
abashed to see a yong man and a stranger not to esteeme of the delicate meates and
pleasant drinkes served at the banquet, rejecting them as things filthy, evill of tast,
and worse prepared. The king, who for that time dissembled what he thought,
caused his ghests to be conveyed into their chamber, willing one of his secret ser-
vantes to hide himselfe therein, and so to certifie him what speeches past among the
Danes at their going to bed.
Now they were no sooner entred into the chamber, and those that were appointed
to attend upon them gone out, but Hamlets companions asked him, why he refused
to eate and drinke of that which hee found upon the table, not honouring the ban-
quet of so great a king, that entertained them in friendly sort, with such honour and
courtesie as it deserved ? saying further, that hee did not well, but dishonoured him
that sent him, as if he sent men into England that feared to bee poysoned by so
great a king. The prince, that had done nothing without reason and prudent con-
sideration, answered them, and sayd : What, think you, that I will eat bread dipt
in humane blood, and defile my throate with the rust of yron, and use that meat that
stinketh and savoureth of mans flesh, already putrified and corrupted, and that sent-
eth like the savour of a dead canyon, long since cast into a valt ? and how woulde
you have mee to respect the king, that hath the countenance of a slave ; and the
queene, who in stead of great majestic, hath done three things more like a woman
of base parentage, and fitter for a waiting gentlewoman then beseeming a lady of
her qualitie and estate. And having sayd so, used many injurious and sharpe
speeches as well against the king and queene, as others that had assisted at that
banquet for the intertainment of the Danish ambassadors ; and therein Hamblet said
trueth, as hereafter you shall heare, for that in those dayes, the north parts of the
worlde, living as then under Sathans lawes, were full of inchanters, so that there
I04 THE HYSTORIE OF HAMBLET,
was not any yong gentleman whatsoever that knew not something therein sufficient
to serve his turne, if need required : as yet in those dayes in Gothland and Biarmy,
there are many that knew not what the Christian religion permitteth, as by reading
the histories of Norway and Gothland, you male easilie perceive: and so Hamletj
while his father lived, had bin instructed in that devilish art, whereby the wicked
spirite abuseth mankind, and advertiseth him (as he can) of things past.
It toucheth not the matter herein to discover the parts of devination in man, and
whether this prince, by reason of his over great melancholy, had received those im
pressions, devining that, which never any but himselfe had before declared, like the
philosophers, who discoursing of divers deep points of philosophie, attribute the
force of those divinations to such as are saturnists by complection, who oftentimes
speake of things which, their fury ceasing, they then alreadye can hardly understand
who are the pronouncers ; and for that cause Plato saith, many deviners and many
poets, after the force and vigour of their fier beginneth to lessen, do hardly under-
stand what they have written, although intreating of such things, while the spirite
of devination continueth upon them, they doe in such sorte discourse thereof that
the authors and inventers of the arts themselves by them alledged, commend their
discourses and subtill disputations. Likewise I mean not to relate that which divers
men beleeve, that a reasonable soul becometh the habitation of a meaner sort of
devels, by whom men learn the secrets of things natural ; and much lesse do I ac-
count of the supposed governors of the world fained by magitians, by whose means
they brag to effect mervailous things. It would seeme miraculous that Hamlet shold
divine in that sort, which after prooved so true (if as I said before) the devel had
not knowledg of things past, but to grant it he knoweth things to come I hope you
shall never finde me in so grose an error. You will compare and make equall deri-
vation, and conjecture with those that are made by the spirit of God, and pronounced
by the holy prophets, that tasted of that marvelous science, to whome onely was de-
clared the secrets and wondrous workes of the Almighty. Yet there are some im-
posturious companions that impute so much devinitie to the devell, the father of
lyes, that they attribute unto him the truth of the knowledge of thinges that shall
happen unto men, alledging the conference of Saul with the witch, although one
example out of the Holy Scriptures, specially set downe for the condemnation of
wicked man, is not of force to give a sufficient law to all the world ; for they them-
selves confesse that they can devine, not according to the universal cause of things,
but by signes borrowed from such like causes, which are all waies alike, and by
those conjectures they can give judgement of thinges to come, but all this beeing
grounded upon a weake support, (which is a simple conjecture) and having so
slender a foundation, as some foolish or late experience the fictions being voluntarie.
It should be a great folly in a man of good judgement, specially one that imbraceth
the preaching of the gospell, and seeketh after no other but the trueth thereof, to
repose upon any of these likelihoods or writings full of deceipt.
As touching magical operations, I will grant them somewhat therein, finding
divers histories that write thereof, and that the Bible maketh mention, and forbid-
deth the use thereof: yea, the lawes of the gentiles and ordinances of emperors
have bin made against it in such sort, that Mahomet, the great hereticke and friend
of the devell, by whose subtiltyes hee abused most part of the east countries, hath
ordained great punishments for such as use and practise those unlawfull and damna-
Vle artes, which, for this time leaving of, let ws returne to Hamblet, brought up in
the?€ abuses, according to the manner of his country, whose companions hearing his
PRINCE OF DENMARKE. IO5
answere reproached him of folly, saying that hee could by no meanes show a greater
point of indiscretion, then in despising that which is lawfull, and rejecting that
which all men receaved as a necessary thing, and that hee had not grossely so for-
gotten himselfe as in that sorte to accuse such and so excellent a man as the king of
England, and to slander the queene, being then as famous and wise a princes as any
at that day raigning in the ilands thereabouts, to cause him to be punished according
to his deserts ; but he, continuing in his dissimulation, mocked him, saying that hee
had not done any thing that was not good and most true. On the other side, the
king being advertised thereof by him that stood to heare the discourse, judged pres-
ently that Hamlet, speaking so ambiguously, was either a perfect foole, or else one
of the wisest princes in his time, answering so sodainly, and so much to the purpose
upon the demaund by his companions made touching his behaviour ; and the better
to find the trueth, caused the babler to be sent for, of whome inquiring in what place
the com grew whereof he made bread for his table, and whether in that ground
there were not some signes or newes of a battaile fought, whereby humaine blood
had therein been shed ? the babler answered that not far from thence there lay a
field ful of dead mens bones, in times past slaine in a battaile, as by the greate
heapes of wounded seniles mighte well appeare, and for that the ground in that
parte was become fertiler then other grounds, by reason of the fatte and humours
of the dead bodies, that every yeer the farmers used there to have in the best wheat
they could finde to serve his majesties house. The king perceiving it to be true,
according to the yong princes wordes, asked where the hogs had bin fed that were
killed to be served at his table ? and answere was made him, that those hogs getting
out of the said fielde wherein they were kepte, had found the bodie of a thiefe that
had beene hanged for his demerits, and had eaten thereof: whereat the king of
England beeing abashed, would needs know with what water the beer he used to
drinke of had been brued ? which having knowne, he caused the river to bee digged
somewhat deeper, and therin found great store of swords and rustic armours, that
gave an ill savour to the drinke. It were good I should heere dilate somewhat of
Merlins prophesies, which are said to be spoken of him before he was fully one
yeere old; but if you consider wel what hath al reddy been spoken, it is no hard
matter to divine of things past, although the minister of Sathan therein played his
part, giving sodaine and prompt answeres to this yong prince, for that herein are
nothing but natural things, such as were wel known to be true, and therefore not
needfull to dreame of thinges to come. This knowne, the king, greatly moved with
a certaine curiositie to knowe why the Danish prince saide that he had the counte-
nance of a slave, suspecting thereby that he reproached the basenes of his blood,
and that he wold affirme that never any prince had bin his sire, wherin to satisfie
himselfe he went to his mother, and leading her into a secret chamber, which he
shut as soone as they were entred, desired her of her honour to shewe him of whome
he was ingendred in this world. The good lady, wel assured that never any man
had bin acquainted with her love touching any other man then her husband, sware
that the king her husband onely was the man that had enjoyed the pleasures of her
body ; but the king her sonne, alreadie with the truth of the Danish princes answers,
threatned his mother to make her tell by force, if otherwise she would not confesse
it, who for feare of death acknowledged that she had prostrated her body to a slave,
and made him father to the king of England; whereat the king was abashed, and
wholy ashamed. I give them leave to judge who esteeming themselves honester
ihan theire neighbours, and supposing that •here can be nothing amisse in their
to6 THE HYSTORIE OF HAMBLET,
houses, make more enquirie then is requisite to know the which tney would rather
not have known. Neverthelesse dissembling what he thought, and biting upon the
bridle, rather then he would deprive himselfe by publishing the lasciviousnes of his
mother, thought better to leave a great sin unpunished, then thereby to make him-
selfe contemptible to his subjects, who peradventure would have rejected him, as not
desiring to have a bastard to raigne over so great a kingdome.
But as he was sorry to hear his mothers confession, on the otherside he tooke
great pleasure in the subtilty and quick spirit of the yong prince, and for that cause
went unto him to aske him, why he had reproved three things in his queene con-
venient for a slave, and savouring more of basenes then of royaltie, and far unfit for
the majesty of a great prince ? The king, not content to have receaved a great dis-
pleasure by knowing him selfe to be a bastard, and to have heard with what injuries
he charged her whom hee loved best in all the world, would not content himself
untill he also understood that which displeased him, as much as his owne proper
disgrace, which was that his queen was the daughter of a chambermaid, and with
all noted certaine foolish countenances she made, which not onely shewed of what
parentage she came, but also that hir humors savored of the basenes and low degree
of hir parents, whose mother, he assured the king, was as then yet holden in servi-
tude. The king admiring the young prince, and behoulding in him some matter of
greater respect then in the common sort of men, gave him his daughter in marriage,
according to the counterfet letters by him devised, and the next day caused the two
servants of Fengon to be executed, to satisfie, as he thought, the king's desire. But
Hamlet, although the sport plesed him wel, and that the king of England could not
have done him a greater favour, made as though he had been much offended, threat-
ning the king to be revenged, but the king, to appease him, gave him a great sum
of gold, which Hamlet caused to be molten, and put into two staves, made hollow
for the same purpose, to serve his tourne there with as neede should require ; for of
all other the kings treasures he took nothing with him into Denmark but onely those
two staves, and as soone as the yeere began to bee at an end, having somewhat
before obtained licence of the king his father in law to depart, went for Denmarke ;
then, with all the speed hee could to returne againe into England to marry his
daughter, and so set sayle for Denmarke.
CHAP. V.
rfow Hamblct, having escaped out of England, arrived in Denmarke the same day
that the Danes were celebrating his funerals, supposing him to be dead in Eng-
land; and ho7v he revenged his fathers death upon his uncle and the rest of the
courtiers ; and what followed.
Hamblet in that sort sayling into Denmark, being arrived in the contry, entered
into the pallace of his uncle the same day that they were celebrating his funeralls,
and ?oing into the hall, procured no small astonishment and wonder to them all, no
man hinking other but that hee had becne deade : among the which many of them
PRINCE OF DENMARKE. I07
rejoyced not a little for the pleasure which they knew Fengon A^ould conceave for
so pleasan* a losse, and some were sadde, as remembering the honourable king Hor-
rendile, whose victories they could by no meanes forget, much lesse deface out of
theire memories that which apperteined unto him, who as then greatly rejoyced to
see a false report spread of Hamlets death, and that the tyrant had not as yet ob-
tained his will of the heire of Jutie, but rather hoped God would restore him to his
sences againe for the good and welfare of that province. Their amazement at the
last beeing toumed into laughter, all that as then were assistant at the funerall ban-
quet of him whome they esteemed dead, mocked each at other, for having beene so
simply deceived, and wondering at the prince, that in his so long a voyage he had
not recovered any of his sences, asked what was become of them that had borne
him company into Create Brittaine ? to whome he made answere (shewing them the
two hollow staves, wherein he had put his molten golde, that the King of England
had given him to appease his fury, concerning the murther of his two companions),
and said. Here they are both. Whereat many that already knew his humours, pres-
ently conjectured that hee had plaide some tricke of legerdemane, and to deliver
himselfe out of danger, had throwne them into the pitte prepared for him : so that
fearing to follow after them and light upon some evil adventure, they went presently
out of the court. And it was well for them that they didde so, considering the
tragedy acted by him the same daie, beeing accounted his funerall, but in trueth
theire last dales, that as then rejoyced for their overthrow; for when every man
busied himselfe to make good cheare, and Hamlets arivall provoked them more to
drinke and carouse, the prince himselfe at that time played the butler and a gentle-
man attending on the tables, not suffering the pots nor goblets to bee empty, whereby
hee gave the noble men such store of liquor, that all of them being ful
11 • 1 • 1 1-1 -111 Dninkenes
laden with wine and gorged with meate, were constrained to lay them- a vice over
selves downe in the same place where they had supt, so much their ^^"""north
sences were dulled, and overcome with the fire of over great drinking partes of the
. world.
(a vice common and familiar among the Almaines, and other nations
inhabiting the north parts of the world) which when Hamlet perceiving, and finding
so good opportunitie to effect his purpose and bee revenged of his enemie?, and by
the means to abandon the actions, gestures, and apparel of a mad man, occasio- so
fitly finding his turn, and as it were effecting it selfe, failed not to take hold thcro*",
and seeing those drunken bodies, filled with wine, lying like hogs upon the ground
some sleeping, others vomiting the over great abundance of wine which without
measure they had swallowed up, made the hangings about the hall to fall downe
and cover them all over; which he nailed to the ground, being boorded, and at the
ends thereof he stuck the brands, whereof I spake before, by him sharpned, which
served for prickes, binding and tying the hangings in such sort, that what force
soever they used to loose themselves, it was unpossible to get from under them : and
presently he set fire in the foure comers of the hal, in such sort, that all that were
as then therein not one escaped away, but were forced to purge their sins by fire,
and dry up the great abundance of liquor by them received into their bodies, all of
them dying in the inevitable and mercilesse flames of the whot and burning fire :
which the prince perceiving, became wise, and knowing that his uncle, before the
end of the banquet, had withdrawn himselfe into his chamber, which
J r -L t 11/-1 1-, -^ strange
Stood apart from the place where the fire burnt, went thither, and en- revenge taken
tring into the chamber, layd hand upon the sword of his fathers mur- ^ Hamlet.
therer, leaving his own' in the place, which while he was at the banket some of the
I08 THE HYSTORIE OF HAMBLET,
courtiers had nailed fast into the scaberd, and going to Fengon said : I wonder, dis-
loyal king, how thou canst sleep heer at thine ease, and al thy pallace is burnt, the
fire thereof having burnt the greatest part of thy courtiers and ministers of thy
cruelty, and detestable tirannies; and which is more, I cannot imagin
Amockebut. ,,,,,, , ,r i i ■> ■,
yet sharp how thou sholdst wel assure thy self and thy estate, as now to take thy
Eiven^""^"^ ^^^^> seeing Hamlet so neer thee armed with the shafts by him prepared
Hamlet to his long since, and at this present is redy to revenge the traiterous injury
by thee done to his lord and father.
Fengon, as then knowing the truth of his nephews subtile practise, and hering
him speak with stayed mind, and which is more, perceived a sword naked in his
hand, which he already lifted up to deprive him of his life, leaped quickly out of
the bed, taking holde of Hamlets sworde, that was nayled into the scaberd, which
as hee sought to pull out. Hamlet gave him such a blowe upon the chine of the
necke, that hee cut his head cleane from his shoulders, and as he fell to the ground
sayd, This just and violent death is a just reward for such as thou art: now go thy
wayes, and when thou commest in hell, see thou forget not to tell thy brother (whom
thou trayterously slewest), that it was his sonne that sent thee thither with the mes-
sage, to the ende that beeing comforted thereby, his soule may rest among the
blessed spirits, and quit mee of the obligation that bound me to pursue his vengeance
upon mine owne blood, that seeing it was by thee that I lost the chiefe thing that
tyed me to this aliance and consanguinitie. A man (to say the trueth) hardie,
couragious, and worthy of eternall comendation, who arming himself with a crafty,
dissembling, and strange shew of beeing distract out of his wits, under that pretence
deceived the wise, poUitike, and craftie, thereby not onely preserving his life from
the treasons and wicked practises of the tyrant, but (which is more) by an new and
unexpected kinde of punishment, revenged his fathers, death, many
iio^°o'f"H'am- yc^'"^^ after the act committed : in no such sort that directing his
let for killing courses with such prudence, and effecting his purposes with so great
boldnes and constancie, he left a judgement to be decyded among men
of wisdom, which was more commendable in him, his constancy or magnanimitie,
or his wisdom in ordring his affaires, according to the premeditable determination
he had conceaved.
If vengeance ever seemed to have any shew of justice, it is then.
How just ^}^gj^ pietie and affection constraineth us to remember our fathers un-
Tengeance r
ought to be justly murdered, as the things wherby we are dispensed withal, ano
which seeke the means not to leave treason and murther unpunished :
seeing David a holy and just king, and of nature simple, courteous, and debonaire,
yet when he dyed he charged his soone Salomon (that succeeded him
Davids in- ■ -^ throane) not to suffer certaine men that had done him injurie to
lent in com- i '
mantling Sa- escape unpunished. Not that this holy king (as then ready to dye, and
venge him of to give account before God of all his actions) was carefull or desirous
en"mies '^'* ^^ revenge, but to leave this example unto us, that where the prince or
countrey is interessed, the desire of revenge cannot by any meanes
(how small soever) beare the title of condemnation, but is rather commendable and
worthy of praise : for otherwise the good kings of Juda, nor others had not pursued
them to death, that had offended their predecessors, if God himself had not inspired
and ingraven that desire within their hearts. Hereof the Athenian lawes beare
witnesse, whose custome was to erect images in rememb-ance of those men that.
PRINCE OF DENMARKE. IO9
revenging the injuries of the commonwealth, boldly massacred tyrant* and such as
troubled the peace and welfare of the citizens.
Hamblet, having in this manner revenged himselfe, durst not presently declare
his action to the people, but to the contrary determined to worke by policie, so to
give them intelligence, what he had done, and the reason that drewe him thereunto :
so that beeing accompanied with such of his fathers friends that then were rising,
he stayed to see what the people would doe when they shoulde heare of that sodaine
and fearefuU action. The next morning the townes bordering there aboutes, de-
siring to know from whence the flames of fire proceeded the night before they had
seene, came thither, and perceiving the kings pallace burnt to ashes, and many
bodyes (most part consumed) lying among the mines of the house, all of them were
much abashed, nothing being left of the palace but the foundation. But they were
much more amased to beholde the body of the king all bloody, and his head cut
off lying hard by him ; whereat some began to threaten revenge, yet not knowing
against whom; others beholding so lamentable a spectacle, armed themselves, the
rest rejoycing, yet not daring to make any shewe thereof; some detesting the cruel-
tie, others lamenting the death of their Prince, but the greatest part calling Hor-
vendiles murther to remembrance, acknowledging a just judgement from above, that
had throwne downe the pride of the tyrant. And in this sort, the diversities of
opinions among that multitude of people being many, yet every man ignorant what
would be the issue of that tragedie, none stirred from thence, neither yet attempted
to move any tumult, every man fearing his owne skinne, and distrusting his neigh-
bour, esteeming each other to bee consenting to the massacre.
CHAP. VI.
How Hamlet, having slaine his Uncle, and burnt his Palace, made an Oration to
the Danes to shew them what he done ; and how they made him King of Den-
mark ; and what followed.
Hamlet then seeing the people to be so quiet, and most part of them not usmg
any words, all searching onely and simply the cause of this mine and destruction,
not minding to loose any time, but ayding himselfe with the commodotie thereof,
entred among the multitude of people, and standing in the middle spake unto them
as followeth.
If there be any among you (good people of Denmark) that as yet have fresh
within your memories the wrong done to the valiant king Horvendile, let him not
be mooved, nor thinke it strange to behold the confused, hydeous, and fearfull spec-
tacle of this present calamitie: if there be any man that affecteth fidelitie, and al-
loweth of the love and dutie that man is bound to shewe his parents, and find it a
just cause to call to remembrance the injuryes and wrongs that have been done
to our progenitors, let him not be ashamed beholding this massacre, much lesse
offended to see so fearfull a mine both of men and of the bravest house in all this
countrey : for the hand that hath done this justice could not effect it by any othe'
£IO THE HYSTORIE OF HAMBLET,
meanes, neither yet was it lawful! for him to doe it otherwise, then by ruinating
both sensible and unsensible things, thereby to preserve the memorie of so just a
vengeance.
I see well (my good friends) and am very glad to know so good attention and
devotion in you, that you are sorrie (before your eyes) to see Fengon so murthered,
and without a head, which heeretofore you acknowledged for your commander; but
I pray you remember this body is not the body of a king, but of an execrable tyrant,
and a parricide most detestable. Oh Danes ! the spectacle was much more hydeous
when Horvendile your king was murthered by his brother. What should I say a
brother ? nay, rather by the most abhominable executioner that ever beheld the same.
It was you that saw Horvendiles members massacred, and that with teares and
lamentations accompanied him to the grave ; his body disfigured, hurt in a thousand
places, and misused in ten times as many fashions. And who doubteth (seeing ex-
perience hath taught you) that the tyrant (in massacring your lawfull king) sought
onely to infringe the ancient liberties of the common people ? and it was one hand
onely, that murthering Horvendile, cruelly dispoyled him of life, and by the same
meanes unjustly bereaved you of your ancient liberties, and delighted more in
oppression then to embrace the plesant countenance of prosperous libertie without
adventuring for the same. And what mad man is he that delighteth more in the
tyrany of Fengon then in the clemencie and renewed courtesie of Horvendile ? If
it bee so, that by clemencie and aflfabilitie the hardest and stoutest hearts are moli-
fied and made tractable, and that evill and hard usage causeth subjects to be out-
ragious and unruly, why behold you not the debonair cariage of the first, to compare
it with the cruelties and insolencies of the second, in every respect as cruell and
barbarous as his brother was gentle, meeke, and courteous ? Remember, O you
Danes, remember what love and amitie Horvendile shewed unto you ; with what
equitie and justice he swayed the great affaires of this kingdome, and with what
humanitie and courtisie he defended and cherished you, and then I am assured that
the simplest man among you will both remember and acknowledge that he had a
most peaceable, just, and righteous king taken from him, to place in his throane a
tyrant and murtherer of his brother : one that hath perverted all right, abolished the
auncient lawes of our fathers, contaminated the memories of our ancestors, and by
his wickednesse polluted the integritie of this kingdome, upon the necke thereof
having placed the troublesome yoak of heavie servitude, abolishing that libertie
wherein Horvendile used to maintaine you, and suffered you to live at your ease.
And should you now bee sorrie to see the ende of your mischiefes, and that this
miserable wretch, pressed downe with the burthen of his offences, at this present
payeth the usury of the parricide committed upon the body of his brother, and would
not himselfe be the revenger of the outrage done to me, whom he sought to deprive
of mine inheritance, taking from Denmark a lawfull successor, to plant a wicked
stranger, and bring into captivitie those that my father had infranchised and delivered
out of misery and bondage ? And what man is he, that having any sparke of wis-
dom, would esteem a good deed to be an injury, and account pleasures equal with
wrongs and evident outrages ? It were then great folly and temerity in princes and
valiant commanders in the wars to expose themselves to perils and hazards of their
lives for the welfare of the common people, if that for a recompence they should
reape hatred and indignation of the multitude. To what end should Mother have
punished Balder, if, in steed of recompence, the Danes and Swethlanders had ban
ished him to receive and accept the successors of him that desired nought but his
PRINCE OF DENMARKE. 1 1 1
mine and overthrowe? What is hee that hath so small feeling of reason and
equitie, that would be grieved to see treason rewarded with the like, and that as
evill act is punished with just demerit in the partie himselfe that was the occasion ?
who was ever sorrowful] to behold the murtherer of innocents brought to his end,
or what man weepeth to see a just massacre done upon a tyrant, usurper, villaine,
and bloody personage ?
I perceive you are attentive, and abashed for not knowing the author of your de-
liverance, and sorry that you cannot tell to whom you should bee thankefuU for such
and so great a benefit as the destruction of a tyrant, and the overthrow of the place
that was the storehouse of his villanies, and the true receptacle of all the theeves
and traytors in this kingdome : but beholde (here in your presence) him that brought
so good an enterprise to effect. It is I (my good friends), it is I, that confesse I
have taken vengeance for the violence done unto my lord and father, and for the
subjection and servitude that I perceived in this countrey, whereof I am the just and
lawfull successor. It is I alone, that have done this piece of worke, whereunto you
ought to have lent me your handes, and therein have ayded and assisted me. I
have only accomplished that which all of you might justly have effected, by good
reason, without falling into any point of treason or fellonie. It is true that I hope
so much of your good willes towards the deceased king Horvendile, and that the
remembrances of his vertues is yet so fresh within your memories, that if I had re-
quired your aide herein, you would not have denied it, specially to your natural!
prince. But it liked mee best to doe it my selfe alone, thinking it a good thing to
punish the wicked without hazarding the lives of my friends and loyall subjects, not
desiring to burthen other mens shoulders with this weight ; for that I made account
to effect it well inough without exposing any man into danger, and by publishing
the same should cleane have overthrowne the device, which at this present I have
so happily brought to passe. I have burnt the bodyes of the courtiers to ashes, being
companions in the mischiefs and treasons of the tyrant; but I have left Fengon
whole, that you might punish his dead carkasse (seeing that when hee lived you
durst not lay hands upon him), to accomplish the full punishment and vengeance
due unto him, and so satisfie your choller upon the bones of him that filled his
greedy hands and coffers with your riches, and shed the blood of your brethren and
friends. Bee joyfull, then (my good friends) ; make ready the nosegay for this
usurping king : bume his abhominable body, boyle his lascivious members, and cast
the ashes of him that hath beene hurtfull to all the world into the ayre : drive from
you the sparkes of pitie, to the end that neither silver, nor christall cup, nor sacred
ombe may be the restfull habitation of the reliques and bones of so detestable a
nan : let not one trace of a parricide be scene, nor your countrey defiled with the
jresence of tt.e least member of this tyrant without pity, that your neighbors may
»ot smell the contagion, nor our land the polluted infection of a body condemned
or his wickednes. I have done my part to present him to you in this sort ; now it
belongs to you to make an end of the worke, and put to the last hand of dutie
thereunto your severall- functions call you; for in this sort you must honor abhomi-
.lable princes, and such ought to be the funerall of a tyrant, parricide, and usurper,
ooth of the bed and patrimony that no way belonged unto him, who having bereaved
uis countrey of liberty, it is fit that the land refuse to give him a place for the eternal
lost of his bones.
O my good friends, seeing you know the wrong that hath bin done into mee,
V liat my griefs are, and in what misery I have lived since the death of the king.
1 1 2 THE HYSTORIE OF HAMBLET,
my lord and father, and seeing that you have both known and tasted these things
then, when as I could not conceive the outrage that I felt, what neede I recite it
unto you ? what benefit would it be to discover it before them that knowing it would
burst (as it were with despight) to heare of my hard chance, and curse Fortune for
so much imbasing a royall prince, as to deprive him of his majesty, although not
any of you durst so much as shew one sight of sorrow or sadnes ? You know how
my father in law conspired my death, and sought by divers meanes to take away my
life ; how I was forsaken of the queen my mother, mocked, of my friends, and dis-
pised of mine own subjects : hetherto I have lived laden with griefe, and wholy
confounded in teares, my life still accompanied with fear and suspition, expecting
the houre when the sharp sword would make an end of my life and miserable an-
guishes. How many times, counterfeiting the mad man, have I heard you pitty my
distresse, and secretly lament to see me disinherited? and yet no man sought to
revenge the death of my father, nor to punish the treason of my incestuous uncle,
full of murthers and massacres. This charitie ministred comfort, and your affec-
tionate complaints made me evidently see your good wills, that you had in memorie
the calamity of your prince, and within your harts ingraven the desire of vengeance
for the death of him that deserved a long life. And what heart can bee so hard
and untractable, or spirit so severe, cruel, and rigorous, that would not relent at the
remembrance of my extremities, and take pitty of an orphan child, so abandoned of
the world ? What eyes were so voyd of moysture but would distill a field of tears,
to see a poore prince assaulted by his owne subjects, betrayed by his mother, pur-
sued by his uncle, and so much oppressed that his friends durst not shew the effects
f their charitie and good affection? O (my good friends) shew pity to him whom
; ou have nourished, and let your harts take some compassion upon the memory of
my misfortunes ! I speak to you that are innocent of al treason, and never defiled
your hands, spirits, nor desires with the blud of the greate and vertuous king Hor-
vendile. Take pity upon the queen, sometime your soveraign lady, and my right
honorable mother, forced by the tyrant, and rejoyce to see the end and extinguishing
of the object of her dishonor, which constrained her to be lesse pitiful to her own
blood, so far as to imbrace the murtherer of her own dear spouse, charging her selfe
with a double burthen of infamy and incest, together wtth injuring and disannulling
of her house, and the ruine of her race. This hath bin the occasion that made me
counterfet folly, and cover my intents under a vaile of meer madnes, which hath
wisdom and pollicy therby to inclose the fruit of this vengeance, which, that it hath
attained to the ful point of efficacy and perfect accoanplishment, you yourselves shall
bee judges; for touching this and other things concerning my profit, and the man-
aging of great affairs, I refer my self to your counsels, and therunto am fully deter-
mined to yeeld, as being those that trample under your feet the murtherers of my
father, and despise the ashes of him that hath polluted and violated the spouse of
his brother, by him massacred ; that hath committed felony against his lord, traiter-
ously assailed the majesty of his king, and odiously thralled his contry under ser-
vitude and bondage, and you his loyall subjects, from whom he, bereaving your
liberty, feared not to ad incest to parricide, detestable to al the world. To you also
it belongeth by dewty and reason commonly to defend and protect Hamlet, the
minister and executor of just vengeance, who being jealous of your honour and
your reputation, hath hazarded himself, hoping you will serve him for fathers, de-
fenders, and tutors, and regarding him in pity, restore him to his goods and in-
heritances. It is I that have taken away the infamy of my contry, and extinguished
PRINCE OF DENMARKE. II3
the fi.e thet imbraced your fortunes. I have washed the spots that defiled the repu-
tation of the queen, overthrowing both the tirant and the tiranny, and beguiling the
subtilties of the craftiest deceiver in the world, and by that meanes brought his
wickednes and impostures to an end. I was grieved at the injurie committed both
to my father and my native country, and have slaine him that used more rigorous
coramandements over you, .hen was either just or convenient to be used unto men
that have commaunded the valiantest nations in the world. Seeing, then, he was
such a one to you, it is reason that you acknowledge the benefit, and thinke wel of
for the good I had done your posterity, and admiring my spirit and wisdome, chuse
me your king, if you think me worthy of the place. You see I am the author of
your preservation, heire of my fathers kingdome, not straying in any point from his
vertuous action, no murtherer, violent parricide, nor man that ever offended any of
you, but only the vitious. I am lawfull successor in the kingdom, and just revenger
of a crime above al others most grievous and punishable : it is to me that you owe
the benefit of your liberty receaved, and of the subversion of that tyranny that so
much afflicted you, that hath troden under feete the yoke of the tirant, and over-
whelmed his throne, and taken the scepter out of the hands of him that abused a
holy and just authoritie ; but it is you that are to recompence those that have well
deserved, you know what is the reward of so greate desert, and being in your hands
to distribute the same, it is of you that I demand the price of my vertue, and the
recompence of my victory.
This oration of the yong prince so mooved the harts of the Danes, and wan the
affections of the nobility, that some wept for pity, other for joy, to see the wise-
dome, and gallant spirit of Hamlet ; and having made an end of their
sorrow, al with one consent proclaimed him king of Jutie and Cher- ^j ^^ne
sonnese, at this present the proper country of Denmarke. And having ?»« of Den-
celebrated his coronation, and received the homages and fidelities of
his subjects, he went into England to fetch his wife, and rejoyced with his father
in law touching his good fortune ; but it wanted little that the king of England had
not accomplished that which Fengon with all his subtilties could never attaine.
[There remain two more chapters of Tlu HystorU of Hambht, Prime of Den-
marke. As the interest of the story ceases here, so fW as Shakespeare's Hamlet is
concerned, the poet having made no use of it beyond this point, I subjoin mereW
the titles of the last two chapters. Ed.]
CHAP. VII.
How Hamlet, after his coronation, went into England ; and how the king of Eng-
land secretly would have put him to death ; and how he slew the king of Eng-
land, and returned againe into Denmarke with two wives; and what followed.
CHAP. VIII.
How Hamblet, being in Denmarke, was assailed by Wiglerus his Uncle, and after
betrayed by his last wife, called Hermetrude, and was slaine : after whose deatA
she marryed his enemie, Wiglerus.
Vol. II.— 8
NOTE ON 'FRATRICIDE PUNISHED'
TlECK, in the Preface to his Alt-Englisches Theater (Berlin, i8n, p. xii), was the
first to call attention to the curious and almost inexplicable fact, that at the beginning
of the seventeenth century companies of actors travelled through Germany, styling
themselves • English Comedians.' « They performed,' says Tieck, • chiefly in Dresden,
and for the most part pieces imitated from Shakespeare's contemporaries, nay, even
from Shakespeare himself; for instance, Titus Andronicus. Subsequently, they had
their Comedies printed, and the first two parts contain nothing but old English
Comedies.'
The fact thus announced by Tieck remained for many years a vague mjrth, so
far lacking the elements of probability that its truth would have been incontinently
denied, except for the stubborn fact that the collection of • English Comedies and
Tragedies ' alluded to by Tieck stood recorded as printed in 1620. Within the last
few years, however, the subject has received attention, not only in Germany, as is
natural, but also in England, where it may be supposed to be a matter of some pride
to have started a sister nation of poets and thinkers on its dramatic career.
It is not within the scope of this edition of Hamlet to give a history of the dis-
cussion to which this subject has given rise, however interesting and tempting such a
history may be, but it is essential to know some of the facts, as proved by laborious
and learned German scholars, before we can estimate justly the value of the old
tragedy of Fratricide Punished, which is here translated ; if a connection can be
traced between itinerant English actors, strolling through Germany, and the stage of
Shakespeare, such a tragedy as this, or as Romio and yulietta, or as Tito Andronico,
acquires great interest.
In 1865 Albert Cohn, of Berlin, published Shakespeare in Germany, a book
admirable throughout and of indispensable value to the student of this subject.
Shakespearian literature both in England and Germany is therein brought under
contribution, and German libraries and town archives have yielded up their dusty
records ; in Cohn's exhaustive Preface no statement is made without authority, and
we may safely accept his conclusions.
In Heywood's Apology for Actors, 1612 (printed by the Shakespeare Society),
there is the following passage (p. 40, ed. Sk. Soc.) : 'At the entertainement of the
Cardinall Alphonsus and the infant of Spaine in the Low-countryes, they were pre-
sented at Antwerpe with sundry pageants and playes: the King of Denmarke,
father to him that now reigneth, entertained into his service a company of English
comedians, commended unto him by the honourable the Earle of Leicester : the
Duke of Brunswicke and the Landgrave of Hessen retaine in their courts certaine
of ours of the same quality.'
CoHN cites this extract, and shows that the King of Denmarke referred to is
Frederick II, who died 1588; further, that of this company of English comediaa<:
114
NO TE ON ' FRA TRIG IDE PUNISHED ' 1 1 5
five left the Danish service in 1586, and attached themselves to the household of the
Elector of Saxony ; and further still, which is most noteworthy, that two members
of this small band were named Thomas Pope and George Bryan, men who subse-
quently, on their return to England, became fellow-actors in Shakespeare's com-
pany, and whose names appear in the list of actors in the First Folio.
This small company, however, did not enter the service of the Elector of Saxony
as actors, although it is highly probable that they added acting to their other oflBces.
In the decree appointing them to their post in the Elector's household they are
termed ' Fiddlers and Instnmientalists,' and are required to ' perform music and feats
of agility and other accomplishments which they have acquired, for the Elector's
delectation.' It is enough for vhe present purpose that a connection be proved, and
that a very close one, between Shakespeare's theatre and Germany.
However satisfactory the proof may be of the presence on the Continent of this
single company of English actors, it is not alone sufficient to account for the frequent
references in contemporary literature to ' English Comedians.'
Wherefore Cohn shows that towards the close of the sixteenth century no less
Jian three companies of English comedians started on professional visits to the
courts of various German princes. These comedians were, in truth, what their title
implies, genuine Englishmen, and not, as Tieck conjectured, German amateurs, who
had gone to London and returned with a stock of plays that they had there studied.
A twofold poverty took them from their homes : first, poverty of the purse ;
secondly, poverty of the German drama. The former is not diflScult of belief; but
it is hard to coivceive the extent of the latter ; it is only by knowing how wretched
were the farces which passed at that time for dramas, that we can appreciate the
welcome extended to strolling bands of actors, who, indififerent as they may have
been in their quality on the London stage, nevertheless brought with them some
whiff of the Shakespearian atmosphere, and at whom people could gaze, even
though they barely understood what was said, with greater profit than at the inde-
cent buffoonery of boorish clowns.
Sometimes the connection between Shakespeare and the German stage is of the
closest. On page Ixxxix Cohn shows that the Merchant of Venice was performed at
Halle in 161 1. A Landgrave of Germany in that year, in a letter to his nephew,
describing some splendid banquets and theatrical performances with which he had
been entertained at Halle, states that he had seen • a German Comedy, The yew of
Venice, taken from the English.' No other Jew of Venice is known in England at
that time but Shakespeare's, which was entered in the Stationers' Registers, 22 July,
1598, as 'the Marchaunt of Venyce or otherwise called the Jewe of Venyce.' Dek-
ker's Jew of Venice was not entered until 1653. Here we have a translation of one
of Shakespeare's plays performed in Germany during Shakespeare's lifetime.
In a diary kept by an officer of the court at Dresden in 1 626 we have a list of the
plays performed by ' the English actors,' and among them are Romeo and fulietta,
jfulio Cesare, Hamlet a Prince in Dennemarck, and Lear, King in Engelandt.
One more question should be answered which has doubtless occurred to every one
at the first mention of English comedians in Germany : in what language were these
Plays performed ? Strange as it may seem, they were undoubtedly sometimes per-
formed in English. Cohn (p. cxxxiv) cites the following entry from Rochell's
Chronicle of the City of MUnster: ' On the 26th of November (1599) there arrived
here eleven Englishmen, all young and lively fellows, except one, a rather elderly
man, who managed everything. They acted five successive days, m the Town-
1 1 b APPENDIX
hall, five different comedies in their English language. They had with them vari-
ous instruments on which they played, such as lutes, citherns, fiddles, oipes, and the
like; they danced many new and strange dances (not common here in this country)
at the beginning and at the end of their comedies. They had with them a clown,
who, before each Act, when they had to change their costume, spoke much nonsense
In German, and played many pranks to make the people laugh. They were licensed
by the Town Council for six days only, after which they had to leave. During these
five days they got a great deal of money from those who wished to see and heai
them; for every one had to give them a shilling at their departure.' ' It is proba-
ble,' adds Cohn, ' that these English players all soon acquired a familiarity witb
the German language, or that they associated themselves with Germans, and the?
merely undertook the managing part of the performances. As early as 1 600, Land-
grave Maurice of Hesse stipulated in an agreement with his English players thai
they should arrange such plays as he or they might wish to be acted. At a later
period, in 1659, we find that the English comedians at the Dresden Court had to
provide German translations of the plays they intended to act It is most likely
that the clown was generally a German, and availed himself of his privilege to
interpret to the audience the foreign idiom of his fellow-players.'
Elze (whom it is safe to follow in such matters) says, in the Preface to his edition
of Chapman's Alphonsus, that there is ' incontrovertible evidence that at first [the
English comedians] acted English, — particularly Shakespearian, — plays in theii
own language. Afterwards, however, they associated with Germans.'
The foregoing pages have supplied us with sufficient evidence that the German
version of Hamlet is entitled to respectful consideration. After making due allow-
ance for time, place, and actors, enough remains to show that we have here an old
drama of no ordinary interest to Shakespearian students.
Bernhardy, in 1857, started the conjecture, which has been since then gradually
gaining acceptance, I think, with English scholars, that ' this German Hamlet is a
weak copy of the old tragedy which preceded the Quarto of 1603.'* 'What is
particularly striking is the contrast between the Prologue and the Play itself. The
latter presents us with little more than a mere skeleton of the Shakespearian piece,
while the Prologue, in spite of its coarseness, has many curious touches and expres-
sions which remind us strongly of the turns of expression in Shakespeare and his
contemporaries.'
' It approaches,' says Cohn (p. cxx), ' most nearly to that form of Shakespeare's
Hamlet which we find in the Quarto of 1 603.'
Dyce (ed. 2) also remarks that the German version 'approaches more nearly to
Q, than to that of the later editions; but as it gives certain passages which are
parallel to those of the received text of Hamlet, and of which there is no trace in Q^,
the translator must have employed some other edition of the original besides that of
1603 The prologue is superior in composition to the play itself.'
Cohn : There can be no doubt that there existed a far older version of this tragedy
than the one with which we are acquainted About 1665 this piece was per-
formed by the Veltheim company, but it is of a much older date than this ; we find
it in the Dresden stage-library in 1626, and even then it was no new piece; there is
• Shakesprar/» Hamlet. Ein literar-historisck kritiscktr Vertuck, in the Hamburgtr lit*'
rarisch-kritisihe lil&tter, 1857. ' regret that I have been unable to obtain a copy of this Essay. I
JUn indcbieif to Cohn for the above quotations. En
NOTE ON 'FRATRICIDE PUNISHED \\^
evi y reason to believe that it had been brought over to Germany by the English
Plk^ers as early as 1603.
Clark and Wright, after quoting this statement of Cohn's, say: If this h3rpothesis
be correct, it is probable that the German text even in its present diluted form may
contain something of the older English Play upon which Shakespeare worked
It dees not appear that the German plajrwright made use of Shakespeare's Hamlet,
or even of the play as represented in Q^. The theory that it may be derived from a
still earlier source is therefore not improbable.
Unfortunately, the text, as we now have it, of this tragedy of Fratricide Punished
can be traced no farther back than 1710. It is not given in the English Comedies
and Tragedies, printed in 1620. The earliest copy is in manuscript, • bearing date
" Pretz, den 27 October, 1710," and had been at one time in the possession of Conrad
Ekhof, the celebrated actor and manager of the Gotha Theatre, who was bom in
1720, and died in 1778. After his death certain extracts were published in the
Theater- /Calender auf das jfahr lyyg, Gotha, under the care of its editor, H. A.
O. Reichard, who afterwards gave the full text of the play in his Periodical : Olla
Potrida, Berlin, 1781,' and this text has been reprinted by CoHN, and translated in
the present volume.
As we have seen, Cohn puts the date at which the tragedy was acted in Germany
at 'about 1603,' but it is to be feared that his enthusiasm has ' outrun the pausei
reason,' and the wish to put the tragedy as close to Q, as possible has been the father
to the thought. Certain it is that the earliest authentic mention of this tragedy that
I can find in Cohn's preface is where it was acted at Dresden in 1626, and we can
only infer that the version then acted was substantially what we now have here.
Under these circumstances it behoves us to search closely in the play itself for evi-
dence of its date and of its English origin.
The Prologue of the old German Hamlet is spoken by mythological characters,
and this fact, says Bernhardv, ' as well as some turns of expression which forcibly
remind us of English poets, and some harsh nn-German constructions, appear to es-
tablish the foreign origin of the piece, and that it is a translation,' ' Single passages
in the German piece show that an edition of the original must have been used which
contained passages that are in the Folio, but not in the First Quarto, while other pas-
sages prove incontrovertibly that precisely this Quarto must have been the source
employed by the translator. Thus, for instance, the Ghost says : " Hear me, Ham-
let, for the time draws near when I must betake myself again to the place whence 1
have come," and concludes his speech with the words : " So was I of my kingdom,
my wife, and my life robbed by this tyrant." The former is evidently taken from
the words in our accepted text : " My hour is almost come," &c., I, v, 2 ; and in the
latter the order of the words is the same [as in Q^; see line 521].'
Cohn : As the reader has the entire piece before him, it will not be necessary to
call attention to the numerous passages, which, in spite of the dilution by unskilful
hands, place its early origin beyond all doubt. In other places we can distinctly
perceive the hand of the re-modeller, who kept in view the circumstances of the
theatre of his own time, and which have given the tone to so many passages. His
utter want of skill is sufficiently proved by his introduction of the comic characters,
the peasant Jens and Phantasmo, the fool, both of whom are altogether out of place
in the piece. The manner in which the scenes taken from Shakespeare's tragedy
have been vulgarized, the coarse humour which has been mixed up with the serious
Il8 APPENDIX
incidents, the box on the ear which the Ghost gives the sentinel, and other absurd*
ities must be laid to the account of the reviser, and not to the actors who first brought
the piece to Germany.
The • pretty case' which Hamlet tells Horatio, p. 130, about the effect which the
cunning of the scene has upon guilty creatures sitting at a play, according to Cohn,
enables us to form a conclusion respecting the age of the piece. ' There can be no
doubt that this is the incident which, whether fact or fiction, is introduced in the
tragedy, A Warning for fair women, written a little before 1590.' Heywood gives
the same story as occurring in Norfolk, and also a similar one that happened in Am-
sterdam. ' It is not a little characteristic of the stage at that time,' adds Cohn, ' that
the actors who first performed the German Hamlet did not rest satisfied with the
mere allusion as they found it in Shakespeare, but related the incident itself. Wheth-
er the passage refers to the incident in Norfolk or in Amsterdam, it is a striking
evidence that Hamlet was transferred to the German stage at a very early period.
The later reviser transferred the scene to Strasburg, as more familiar to his audience.
It is probable that the company for which this new version was adapted had come
from Strasburg, where we have already seen that there were English Players in 1654.
We are inclined to believe that the first form of the version of the piece now before
us was made about that time, but that the form in which it is here presented to the
reader, and in which it has experienced many alterations and dilutions, is to be as-
cribed to a more modem hand.'
In 1872 Dr Latham subjected this old German Hamlet to a severer scrutiny than it
had before received; and his conclusion coincides, in the main, with that of Bemhardy,
Cohn, and Clark and Wright, viz. : that the old tragedy of Hamlet which preceded
Qj may be here preserved either wholly or partially in this translation into German.
The order in which the Dramatis Personae are set down ' is more ancient than modern,
the males and females being mixed together, instead of the females bemg arranged by
themselves at the end of the list ; and the order being less regulated by the rank of
the interlocutors than by the order in which they appear on the stage ; though this
is not adhered to with the strictness of the classical drama.' In Sigrie Latham sees
a corruption of Signe — • the most famous Norse love-tale being that of Signe and
Hagbert, whose sad fate made their names household words to every youth and
maiden in the North.' . . . . ' The uncle's name is Eric. This has undoubtedly at
the first view as Scandinavian a look as Signe ; but it is English as well. In the
tale of Argentile and Curan, a well-known episode in Warner's Albion^s England,
the hero has a wicked uncle, and, just as in the present play, Eric is his name. But
in both romances from which the poem seems most especially to be taken no such
name is found ; the usurper there being Godard. Without enlarging upon the ex-
tent to which this connects Warner's Curan with Shakespeare's Hamlet, we may
fairly infer that some lost tradition or some unknown record is the common founda-
tion for the two names. Individually, I go further, and think either it may have had
a Latin title : Gesta Erici (or Eorici) Hegis ; or, that out of confusion both of title
and subject the actual Chronicon Regis Erici may have been so called. The as-
sumed confusion, however, goes farther, until Gesta Regis ends in the King^s yester,
and Eric becomes Yorick. It is only, however, in Shakespeare that the Jester's
name appears : indeed, in the German Hamlet the whole scene of the Grave-diggers
is conspicuous for its absence.' [See note on V, i, 170.]
Latham finds three special points of detail, viz. : The blunder about Roscius, the
tllusion to Juvenal, and tlie reference to Portugal,— of which the first two are more
NOTE ON 'FRATRICIDE PUNISHED' II9
against than in favor of Shakespeare's having been the author of the original of the
German Hamlet, and the third is in favor of the date of the German Hamlet being
about 1589.
• I. The blunder about Roscius [see last line of p. 128]. In the original, Alanis
Xussig; the latter word is doubtless meant for ' Roscius,' but what means Alarust
It is submitted that it means Amerinus. Now there were two Jioscii, and Cicero
delivered an oration in defence of both. One was Roscius the actor; the other
Sexttts Roscius Amerinus, who was no actor at all. This, however, is the Roscius
of Corambus, Now this is a blunder that requires as much scholarship to commit as
to avoid, being one that a learned man might make from inadvertency, whereas an
unlearned one could not make it at all. It was certainly not made by Shakespeare.
This we know from his text, where Roscius stands alone. It could scarcely hav^
been made by the supposed adapters who came after him.
' 2. The allusion to Juvenal. This is in the same predicament with the preceding.
It is more classical than the text of the supposed original. [Latham here cites V, ii,
94—100, and the corresponding passage in the German Hamlet, on p. 140, where
Hamlet quizzes Phantasmo about the heat and coldness of the weather, and aftei
comparing the two with Juvenal's Satire, iii, lOO, adds : * In the German text there
is, to say the least, a similarity sufficient to suggest a comparison. The English text
has never suggested anything, not even to Johnson, who had paraphrased the Satire.^
This I do not understand. The English text suggested Juvenal's Satire to Theobald
a hundred and forty years ago. See note on V, ii, 94. Verily, is not a New Va-
riorum needed ? Ed.]
'3. The reference to Portugal. In the German Hamlet [p. 135, ninth line from
the top], Hamlet says, "just send me off to Portugal, so that I may never come back
again." ' In this reference to Portugal, Latham ingeniously finds an allusion to the
unfortunate expedition to Portugal in 1589, in which eleven thousand soldiers per-
ished out of twenty-one thousand, and of eleven hundred gentlemen who accom-
panied it only three hundred and fifty returned to their native country. And this,
Latham thinks, fixes the date of the German Hamlet.
Dr Latham concludes as follows : In the first place, the dramatic exposition of
an action or a situation is one thing : the mere statement that such an action or situa-
tion occurred, another. It is one thing to describe in a good business-like, prosaic
manner the way in which the elder Hamlet was poisoned ; it is another thing to
describe the poisoning as Shakespeare does. The same applies to the situation of
Hamlet with his drawn sword, and the wicked uncle at prayer. The idea of sparing
the murderer until he is certain of eternal condemnation, though sufficiently devilish,
IS poetic or prosaic according to the mode of exhibiting it.
' Secondly : We must not only note what we find in the German play, but what
we miss. Thus, —
' a. Of instances of realistic imagery, such as " not a mouse stirring," we find
none.
' b. Of ironical bits of cynicism, such as " We would obey were she ten times our
mother," not one,
' c. Of the soliloquies, not one.
* Of hypotheses by which the difference may be accounted for, I know but one,
and to the notice of this I limit myself. It is, that the German Play is the Play of
Shakespeare corrupted, attenuated, shorn of its great nobility, distorted, degraded,
mlgarized. But \*as the German stage thus much below the English? or even if
1 20 APPENDIX
it were so, how do we reconcile the recognition of the poetical element (such as it
is), as shown by the Prologue, with the eschewal of it as manifested by the elimina*
tion of the soliloquies ?
' Again, it is not denied that what with the existence of imperfect texts, and what
with " stuff" sometimes " foisted in," and sometimes omitted, by the players much
may be achieved. But time is an element in such a process as this, and here we
have something like tangible data to go by ; or at any rate there are certain limits
within which we must confine the effects of what we may call the wear-and-tear of
time, and there are also criteria by which we may measure the inferiority (real or
imaginary) of the German stage to the English. In neither case have we much
latitude.'
It is probably needless to call attention to what must strike every one at the first
glance, merely at the Dramatis Personse of Fratricide Punished, and that is the
name given to Polonius, which is, except in one letter, the same as that in Q,. This
is noted by all who have touched upon the subject of this German play. Again, the
very name Hamlet shows that the adapter of the German play at least did not go to
Belleforest for his tragedy. Furthermore, the allusion to Jephtha points so clearly
to the old English ballad, that I think there can be little doubt that in Fratricide
Punished we have a translation of an old English tragedy, and most probably the
one which is the groundwork of the Quarto of 1603.
In conclusion, let me say a few words as to the following translation. I have
endeavored to make it as literal as possible. The admirable translation by Miss
Georgina Archer in Cohn's volume, while it is most felicitous in catching the
turn of colloquial expressions, a highly difficult task, appeared to me, as it did to
Dr Latham, to yield a little too much to the desire to reproduce Shakespeare's
phraseology ; if the translation be literal, the student will discover for himself these
parallelisms as readily in the English as in the German. In one or two small
matters I think I have discovered allusions or interpretations that have escaped my
predecessors, e.g. spanische Pfauentritte, I suppose, is equivalent to P/auentanz,
and have therefore translated it by ' Spanish pavan ;' again, in Phantasmo's swear-
ings at Ophelia, I think das elementische Madchen is not merely ' simpleton,' as Miss
Archer translates it, nor ' that high-flying maiden,' as Dr Latham renders it, but
that elementische is an adjective eliminated from potz element, and is intended to be
comic. But these are the merest trifles, and scarcely worth a thought. By one
phrase I confess I was completely gravelled, — as a phrase its meaning is clear enough,
but its drift is puzzling: Phantasmo's last words, dass euch die Klinge verlahmet and
I am by no means sure that Dr Latham's version is not nearer the genuine than
mine: ' and may the blade hurt you.'
1 have included in brackets words which seem to indicate the hand of the German
translator, such as harquehusirt, rez>ange, &c. Dr Latham has done it in many in-
stances likewise.
As far as I know, attention was first directed in England to the subject of English
actors in Germany by W. J. Thoms in the New Monthly Magazine, July, 1840, in
tn article which was afterwards reprinted in Three Notelets on Shakespeare.
TRAGCEDIA.
DER BESTRAFTE BRUDERMORD
ODER:
PRINZ HAMLET AUS D^NNEMARK.
(FRATRICIDE PUNISHED
OK
PRINCE HAMLET OF DENMARK.)
DRAMATIS PERSON.E.
I. — In the Prologue.
Night, in a car covered with stars.
Alecto.
THISI PHONE.
MiEGERA.
2. — In the Tragedy.
Ghost of the old King of Denmark.
Erico, brother to the King.
Hamlet, Prince, son to the murdered King.
SiGRlE, the Queen, Hamlet's mother.
Horatio, a noble friend to the Prince.
CoRAMBUS, Royal Chamberlain,
Leonhardus, his son.
Ophelia, his daughter.
Phantasmo, the Court Fool.
Francisco, Officer of the Guard.
Jens, a peasant.
Carl, the principal of the Actors.
Corporal of the Guard.
Two talking Banditti {Zwei redende Banditen}.
Two Sentinels.
Life Guards, ■)
Court Servants, >■ Mutes {S'umme).
Two Actors, J
122 FRATRICIDE PUNISHED, OR
PROLOGUE.
Night \^from above\. I am dark Night, which sends all hings to sleep,
I am the wife of Morpheus, the time for vicious pleasure,
I am the guardian of thieves, and the protector of lovers ;
I am dark Night, and have it in my might
To practice evil, to afflict mankind.
My mantle covers the shame and rest of the harlot.
Before Phoebus shall shine I will begin a game.
Ye children of my breast, and daughters of my lust,
St Furies, up, up! come forth and show yourselves!
Come, hearken attentively to what will soon take place.
Alec. What says dark Night, the queen of quiet ?
What new work does she propose ? what is her wish and will ?
Mag. From Acheron's dark pit come I, Msegera, hither,
From thee, thou mother of evil, to hear thy desire.
This. And I, Thisiphone : what hast thou to the fore ? Say on,
Thou black Hecate, whether I can serve thee.
Night. Listen, ye Furies all three, — listen, ye children of darkness and motaeis
of all misfortune ; listen to your poppy-crowned Queen of the Night, the patroness
of thieves and robbers, the friend and light of the incendiary, the lover of stolen
goods, the dearly loved goddess of unlawful love, — how often are my altars hon-
ored by it ! During this night and the coming morrow must ye stand by me, for it is
the King of this land who burns with love for the wife of his brother, whom for her
sake he has murdered, that he may possess both her and the kingdom. Now is the
hour at hand when they lie together. I will throw my mantle over them so that
neither may see their sin. Therefore be ready to sow the seeds of disunion, mingle
poison with their marriage, and put jealousy in their hearts. Kindle a fire of re-
venge, and let the sparks fly over the whole realm ; entangle kinsmen in the net
of crime, and give joy to hell, so that those who swim in the sea of murder may
soon drown. Begone, hasten, and fulfil my command.
This. I have already heard enough, and will soon perform
More than dark Night can of herself imagine.
Mcsg. Pluto himself shall not prompt me to so much
As shortly I shall be seen performing.
Alec. I fan the sparks and make the fire burn;
Ere it dawns the second time, the whole game I'll shiver.
Night. Then haste ; vthile I ascend make good your work.
[Ascends. Musu
ACT L
Scene L — Two Solditrs.
first Sentinel. Who's there ?
Second Sentinel. A friend !
First Sent. What friend ?
Sec. .Sent. Sentinel !
PRINCE HAMLE2 OF DENMARK. I 23
First Sent. O ho, comrade ! — if thou com'st to relieve me, I wish the time may
not be so long to thee as it has been to me.
Sec. Sent. Eh ! comrade, it is not so cold now.
First Sent. Cold or not, I've had a hell's sweat here.
See. Sent. Why so frightened? — that's not right in a soldier. He must fear
neither friend nor foe ; no, nor the devil himself.
First Sent. Yes, but just let him grab thee behind, and thou'lt soon learn to prar
Miserere Domine.
Sec. Sent. But what is it that has particularly frightened thee ?
First Sent. I'll tell thee. I've seen a ghost in the front of the castle, and he
wanted twice to pitch me down from the bastion.
Sec. Sent. Then relieve guard, you fool ! A dead dog doesn't bite. I'll see
whether a ghost that has neither flesh nor blood can hurt me.
First Sent. Just look out, if he shows himself to thee again, what he does to
thee. I'm off to the watch-house. Adieu ! \^Exit.
Sec. Sent. Only be off: perhaps you were bom on a Sunday : they say such
folks can see all kinds of ghosts. I'll now mount guard. [Healths proclaimed
•within, to the sound of trumpets.'] Our new King makes merry. They are drink-
ing healths.
Scene II. — Ghost of the King approaches the Sentinel, and frightens him, and
then exit.
See. Sent. O holy Anthony of Padua, defend me ! I see now what my comrade
told me. O Saint Velten [sic"] \ if my first round were only over, I'd run away like
any rogue. [Sennet and drums within.'] If I only had a drink of wine from the
king's table, to put out the fear and fire in my heart ! [ Ghcst from behind gives him
a box on the ear, and makes him drop his musket, and exit.] The devil himself is
after me. Oh, I'm so frightened, I can't stir!
Scene III. — Horatio and Soldiers.
sec. Sent. Who's there ?
Hor. The watch !
Sec. Sent. Which one ?
Hor. The first !
'^c. Sent. Stand, watch ! Corporal, forward, to arms !
[Francisco and IVatch come forward, and give the word from the other side.
Hor. Sentinel, look well to thy post ; the Prince himself may perhaps go the
rounds. Be caught sleeping, an d it may cost thee the best head thou'st got
Sec. Sent. Ah ! if the whole company were here, not a man of them would go
to sleep ; and I must be relieved, or I'll run away, though I be hanged to-morrow
on the highest gallows.
Hor. What for?
Sec. Sent. Oh, your worship, there's a ghost here which appears every qoanci
of an hour ; it set upon me so that I fancy myself a live man in purgatory.
Fran. Just what the sentinel last relieved told me.
See. Sent. Ay, ay ; only just wait a bit. It won't keep away long.
[Ghost goes across the stage.
124 FRATRICIDE PUNISHED, OR
Hor. On my life it is a ghost, and looks just like the late king of Denmark.
Fran. He Dears himself sadly, and seems as if he wanted to say something.
Hot. Tnere is some mystery in this.
Scene IV. — Hamlet.
Sec, Sent. Who's there ?
Ham. Hush !
Sec. Sent. Who's there ?
Ham. Hush !
Sec. Sent. Answer, or I'll teach thee better manners
Ham. A friend !
Sec. Sent. What friend?
Ham. Friend to the kingdom.
Fran. By my life, it is the Prince.
Hor. Your highness, is it you or not ?
Ham. What ! are you here, Horatio ? What brings you here ?
Hor. Your highness, I have gone \visitirt'] the rounds to see that every one is at
his post.
Ham. That's like an honest soldier, for on you rests the safety of the king and
kingdom.
Hor. Your highness, a strange thing has happened : regularly eveiy quarter ot
an hour a ghost appears ; and, to my mind, he is very like the dead king, your
father. He does much harm to the sentinels on this post.
Ham. I hope not ; for the souls of the pious rest quietly till the time of their
resurrection.
Hor. Yet so it is, your highness. I've seen it myself.
Fran. And he frightened me veiy much, your highness.
Sec. Sent. And he gave me a sound box on the ear.
Ham. What time is it ?
Fran. It is just midnight.
Ham. ,Good ! — just the time when ghosts, if they walk, show themselves.
[Healths again, and trumpets, '\ Holloa ! what is this ?
Hor. I fancy that at court they are still jolly with their toasts.
Ham. Right, Horatio ! My father and uncle makes himself bravely merry with
his followers [^Adha'renten^ Alas, Horatio! I know not why it is that since my
father's death I am all the time so sick at heart, while my royal mother has so soon
forgotten him, and this King still sooner, for while I was in Germany he had him-
self quickly crowned king in Denmark but with a show of right he has made over
to me the crown of Norway, and appealed to the election of the states.
Scene V. — Ghost.
Sec. Sent. Oh dear! here's tlie ghost again !
Hor. Does your highness see now ?
Fran. Your highness, don't be frightened.
[ Ghost crosses the stage, and beckons to Hamiei.
Ham. The (ihost beckons me. Gentlemen, stand aside a little. — Horatio, do
not go too lar away I will follow the ghost, and see what he wants. \Exii.
PRINCE HAMLET OF DENMARK. I 25
Hor. Gentlemen, let us follow him to see that he take no harm. [Exeunt.
Ghost beckons Hamlet to the middle of the stage, and opens his jaws :everal times.
Ham. Tell who thou art, and say what thou desirest.
Ghost. Hamlet \
Ham. Sir !
Ghost. Hamlet !
Ham. What desirest thou ?
Ghost. Hear me, Hamlet, for the time draws near when I must betake myself
again to the place whence I have come ; hear, and give heed to what I shall relate
.0 thee.
Ham. Speak, thou sacred shade of my royal father !
Ghost. Then hear, my son Hamlet, what I have to tell thee of thy father's un-
natural death.
Ham. What ? unnatural death ?
Ghost. Ay, unnatural death ! Know that I had the habit, to which nature had
accustomed me, of walking in my royal pleasure-garden every day after my noontide
meal, and there to enjoy an hour's rest. One day when I did this, behold, my
brother came, thirsting for my crown, and had with him the subtile \subtilen'\ juice
of so-called Hebenon [^Ebeno^ This oil, or juice, has this effect: that as soon as a
few drops of it mix with the blood of man, they at once clog the veins and destroy
life. This juice he poured, while I was sleeping, into my ear, and as soon as it en-
tered my head I had to die instantly ; whereupon it was given out that I had had a
violent apoplexy. So was I of my kingdom, my wife, and my life robbed by this
tyrant.
Ham. Just Heaven ! If this be true, I swear to revenge thee.
Ghost. I cannot rest until my unnatural murder be revenged. \^Exit.
Ham. I swear not to rest until I have revenged myself on this fratricide.
Scene VI, — Horatio. Hamlet. Francisco.
Hor. How is it with your highness ? Why so terror-stricken ? Mayhap you have
been hurt \^alierirt'\. ,
Ham. Yes, verily, and indeed beyond measure,
Hor. Has your highness seen the Ghcst?
Ham. Ay ! truly have I seen it, and also spoken to it,
Hor. O Heaven ! this bodes something strange.
Ham. He revealed to me a horrible thing ; therefore I pray you, gentlemen,
ftand by me in a matter that calls for vengeance,
Hor. Of my fidelity you are surely convinced : only disclose it to me.
Fran. Your highness cannot doubt as to my help either.
Ham. Gentlemen, before I reveal the matter you must swear an oath on your
honor and faith,
Fran. Your highness knows the great love I bear you, I will willingly risk mt
life if you wish to avenge yourself.
Hor. Only just propose the oath to us : we will stand by you faithfully.
Ham. Then lay your finger on my sword : We swear !
Hor. and Fran. We swear !
Ghost [within"^. We swear 1
Ham. Holla ! what is this ? Once more : We swear !
126 FRATRICIDE PUNISHED, OR
Hor. and Fran. We swear !
Ghost. We swear !
Ham. This must mean something strange. Come, once more, and let us go to
the other side. We swear !
Hor. and Fran. We swear !
Ghost, We swear !
Ham. What is this ? Is it an echo which sends back our own words ? Come,
we will go to another spot. We swear !
Ghost. We swear !
Ham. Oh ! I hear now what this means. It seems that the Ghost of my father
is displeased at my making the matter known. Gentlemen, I pray you, leave me ;
to-morrow I will tell you all.
Hor. and Fran. Your highness, farewell. \_Exit Francisco,
Ham. Horatio, come here.
Hor, What is your highness's will ?
Ham, Has the other gone ?
Hor, Yes, he has gone.
Ham. I know, Horatio, that thou hast been at all times true to me ; to thee 1
will reveal what the Ghost told me, — namely, that my father died a violent death.
My father, — he who is now my father, — murdered him.
Hor. O Heaven ! what do I hear ?
Ham. Thou knowest, O Horatio ! that my departed father was wont every day
after his noontide meal to sleep an hour in his pleasure-garden. The villain, know-
ing this, comes to my father and pours into his ear, whilst he is asleep, the juice of
Hebenon, from which powerful poison my father at once gave up the ghost. This the
accursed dog did in order to obtain the crown ; but from this moment I will begin a
feigned madness, and, thus feigning, so cunningly will I play my part that I shall
find an opportunity to avenge my father's death.
Hor. If so it stands, I pledge myself to be true to your highness.
Ham. Horatio, I will so avenge myself on this ambitious man and adulterer and
murderer that posterity shall talk of it for ever. I will now go, and, feigning mad-
ness, wait upon him until I find an opportunity to effect my revenge. \^Exeunt.
Scene VII. — King, Queen, Hamlet, Corambus, and Court,
King. Although our brother's death is still fresh in the memory of us all, and it
befits us to suspend all state-shows, we must nevertheless change our black mourning
suits into crimson, purple, and scarlet, since my late departed brother's widow has
now become our dearest consort. Let, then, every one show himself cheerful, and
make himself a sharer of our pleasure But you, Prince Hamlet, do you he con-
tent. See here, how your lady mother is grieved and troubled at your melancholy.
We have heard, too, that you have determined to go back to Wittenberg; do not
do so for your mother's sake. Stay here, for we. love you and like to see you, and
would not that any harm .should happen to you. Stay with us at court, or, if not,
you can betake yourself to your kingdom, Norway.
Queen. Dearly-beloved son, Prince Hamlet, it greatly astonishes us that you have
thought to go away from here, and to betake yourself to Wittenberg. You know
well that your royal father has lately died, and if you leave us, the grief and melon-
choly which now oppress our hearts will only be the greater. Then, dearest son.
PRINCE HAMLET OF DENMARK. I 27
stay here, and every pleasure and delight, if so it please you, shall be freely
yours.
Ham. Your command I will obey with all my heart, and will here remain and
not depart.
King. Do so, dearest Prince. But, Corambus, how is it with your son Leon-
hardo ? Has he already set out for France ? •
Cor. Ay, gracious lord and King, he has gone already.
Kitig. But is it with your consent [ Consens] ?
Q>r. Ay, with over-consent, with middle-consent, and with under-consent Oh,
your majesty, he got an extraordinary, noble, excellent, and splendid consent
from me.
King. As he has your consent, it may go well with him, and may the gods bring
him safe back again. But we have it now in mind to hold a carouse \_Cariseir\,
whereby our dearest spouse may forget her melancholy. But you, Prince Hamlet,
with the other nobles, must show yourself mirthful. For the present, however, we
will make an end of our festivities, for the day is dawning to put to flight black
night. You, however, dearest consort, I shall accompany to your bed-chamber.
Cqpie, let us, arm in arm and hand in hand.
Enjoy the pledge that love and rest demand.
ACT II.
Scene I. — King. Qtuen.
King. Dearest consort, how comes it that you are so sad ? Tell, I pray you, tlie
cause of your sadness. You are indeed our Queen. We love you, and all that the
kingdom can afford is yours. What is it, then, that troubles you?
Queen. My King, I am greatly troubled at the melancholy of my son Hamlet,
who is my only Prince ; and this it is that pains me.
King. What ! is he melancholy ? We will gather together all the excellent doc-
tors and physicians in our whole kingdom to relieve him.
Scene II. — Enter to them Corambus.
Cor. News, gracious lord and King !
King. What news ?
Cor. Prince Hamlet is mad — ay, as mad as the Greek madman ever was.
King. And why is he mad ?
Cor. Because he has lost his wits.
King. Where, pray, has he lost his wits ?
Cor. That I don't know. That he may know who has found them.
Scene HI. — Ophelia.
Oph. Alas, father ! protect me !
Cor. What is it, my child ?
Oph. Alas, father ! Prince Hamlet plagues me. He lets me have no peace.
Cor. Make thyself easy, dear daughter. But he has not done anything else to
thee ? — Oh, now I know why Prince Hamlet is mad. He is certainly in love with
my daughter.
128 FRATRICIDE PUNISHED, OR
King. Has love, then, such power as to make a man mad?
Cor. Gracious lord and King, love is certainly strong enough to make a man
mad. I can still remember how it plagued me when I was young : it made me as
mad as a March hare \_Mdrzhaasen\, But now I do not mind it. I like better to
sit by my fire and count my red pennies, and drink your majesty's health.
King. May not one see with one's own eyes his raving and madness ?
Cor. Yes, your majesty. We will just step a little aside, and my daughter shall
show him the jewel which he gave her, and then your majesty can see his madness.
[ Tkey hide themselves.
Scene IV. — Hamlet and Ophelia.
Oph. I pray your highness to take back the jewel which you presented to mt.
Ham. Wliat, girl ! wouldst thou have a husband ? Get thee away from me ;
nay, come here. Hearken, girl, you young women do nothing but lead young
fellows astray. Your beauty you buy of the apothecaries and peddlers. Listen, I wili
tell you a story. There was a cavalier in Anion \sic\ who fell in love with a lady,
who, to look at, was the goddess Venus. However, when bedtime came, the bride
went first and began to undress herself. First, she took out ^n eye which had been
set in very cunningly ; then her front teeth, made of ivory, so cleverly that the like
were not to be seen; then she washed herself, and off went all the paint with which
she had smeared herself. At last, when the bridegroom came and thought to em-
brace her, the moment he saw her he started back, and thought it was a spectre.
And thus it is that you deceive the young fellows ; therefore listen to me. But stay,
girl ! No, go to a nunnery, but not to a nunnery where two pairs of slippers lie at
the bedside. \^Exit.
Cor. Is he not perfectly and veritably \_perfect ttnd veritabel'\ mad, gracious lord
and King?
King. Corambus, leave us. When we have need of you we will send for you.
[Exit Corambus.'] — We have seen this madness and raving of the Prince's with
great astonishment. But it seems to us that this is not genuine madness, but rather
a feigned [simulirte] madness. We must contrive to have him removed from here,
if not from life ; otherwise some harm may come of it.
Scene V. — Hamlet. Horatio.
Ham. My worthy friend Horatio, through this assumed madness I hope to gel
the opportunity of revenging my father's death. You know, however, that my father
is always surrounded by many guards [ Trabantett'] ; wherefore it may miscarry.
Should you chance to find my dead lx>dy, let it be honorably buried ; for at the first
opportunity I will try my chance with him.
Hor. I entreat your highness to do no such thing; perhaps the Ghost has de-
ceived you.
Haw. Oh no! his words were all too plainly spoken. I can, indeed, believe in
him. But what news is the old fool bringing here ?
Scene VI. — Corambus.
Cor News, gracious lord ! the comedians have come.
Ham. When Marus Russig [j/V] was a comedian in Rome, what a fine time
that was I
PRINCE HAMLET OF DENMARK. 1 29
Cor. Ha! ha I ha! Your highness is always teasing [wx/r^ me.
Ham. O Jeptha, Jeptha I what a fair daughter hast thou !
Cor. Your highness always will be bringing in my daughter.
Ham, Well, old man, let the master of the comedians come in.
Cor. It shall be so. \^Exit,
Ham. These comedians come just in time. I will use them to test the Ghost,
whether he has told the truth or not. I have seen a tragedy acted wherein one
brother kills another in a garden, and this they shall now act. If the king change
color, he has done what the Ghost has told me.
Scene VII. — Actors. Carl, the principal Actor.
Carl. May the gods always bestow on your highness blessings, happiness, and
health!
Ham. I thank you, my friend. What do you wish ?
Carl, Your highness will graciously pardon us. We are foreign High-German
actors, and our wish was to have had the privilege of acting at his majesty's wed-
ding. But Fortune turned her back, and contrary winds their face, toward us.
We therefore ask of your highness leave to act a story, so that our long journey shall
not have been made in vain.
Ham. Were you not, a few years ago, at the University of Wittenberg? I think
I saw you act \agiren'\ there.
Carl. Yes, your highness. We are the same actors.
Ham. Have you still got all of the same company ?
Carl, We are not quite so strong, because some students took situations \Coiu
diiion'] in Hamburg. Still, we are strong enough for many merry comedies, and
tragedies.
Ham, Could you give us a play to-night ?
Carl. Yes, your highness : we are strong enough and in practice enough.
Ham, Have you still all three women with you ? They acted very welL
Carl. No, only two. One remained with her husband at the court of Saxony.
Ham, When you were at Wittenberg you acted good comedies ; but there were
some fellows among you who had good cloth«s, but dirty shirts, and some who had
boots, but no spurs.
Carl. Your highness, it is often a hard matter to have everything. Perhaps they
thought they would not have to ride.
Ham, Still, it is better when everything is just right [^accurcU"]. But listen a few
minutes, and excuse me ; you do not often hear directly what the spectators think
of you. There were also some among you who had silk stockings and white shoes,
but with black hats full of feathers on their heads, and with about as many feathers
below as above. I think they must have gone to bed in them instead of nightcaps.
That's bad, and is easily changed. You may, too, as well tell some of them that
when they act a king or a princely personage, they should not leer so much when
they pay a compliment to a lady, and not be always stepping a Spanish pavan
[spanische Pfauentritte\, nor putting on such braggadocio airs \_Fechtermienen'\.
A man of rank laughs at such things. Natural ease is the best. He who plays a
king must fancy that during the play he is a king, and a peasant must be a peasant
Carl, Your highness, I accept this correction with humble respect, and we will
try to do better for the future.
Vol. II.-<j
I30 FRATRICIDE PUNISHED, OR
Ham, I am a great lover of your art, and mean "well toward you ; in a mirror
one may see his own failings. Listen to me : you acted once at Wittenberg a piece
about King Pir — , Pir — , Pir something or other.
Carl. Ah ! perhaps it was one about the great King Pyrro \sic'\.
Ham, I think it was, but I am not quite sure.
Carl. If your highness could only name a character in it, or say what it was
about.
Ham, It was about one brother murdering another in a garden.
Carl. That's the piece, I'm sure. Did not the king's brother pour poison into
the king's ear?
IIa7n. Right, right ! That's the very one. Can you play [prasentiren] that piece
this evening?
Carl. Oh yes, easily enough : it requires only a few characters.
Ham. Well, then, go, get the stage ready in the great hall. If you want any
timber, you can get it of the architect; if anything from the armory, or anything in
the way of clothes, ask the Master of the Robes or the Steward. We wish you to be
provided with everything.
Carl. I humbly thank your highness for these favors; we will set about it at
«nce. Farewell. [Exit,
Ham. These actors come most opportunely for me. — Horatio, give good heed to
the King ; if he turn pale or change color [alier{ri'],he has certainly done the deed ;
for these players with their fictions often produce the effect of truth. Listen, I'll tell
thee a pretty tale. At Strasburg, in Germany, there was a pretty case [ Casus^ : a woman
murdered her husband by stabbing him through the heart with a shoemaker's awl,
and then, with the help of her paramour, she buried him under the threshold.
Nine whole years did the deed remain concealed, until at last actors came that way and
acted a tragedy containing a similar incident. The woman, who was with her hus-
band [sici at the play, was touched in her conscience, and began to cry aloud, and
shrieked, • Woe is me ! that hits me ; for so it was that I killed my innocent hus-
band.' She tore her hair, ran out of the theatre to the judge, confessed of her own
accord the murder ; and as this was found to be true, she, in deep repentance for her
sins, received the consolations of a priest, and in true contrition gave up her body
to the executioner and commended her soul to Heaven. Oh, that my father and
uncle might thus feel remorse if he has done this thing ! Come, Horatio, we will
go and await the King. Pray, however, observe [odserviren] everything closely, for
I shall dissemble [sit)iultren~\.
Hor. Your highness, I shall impose on my eyes a sharp lookout. [Exeunt.
Scene VIII. — King. Queen. Hamlet. Horatio. Coramlus. Ophelia. Courtiers.
King. My dearest consort, I hope that now you will banish your melancholy,
and let it give place to joy : there is to be, before supper, a comedy by the Germans,
and after supper a ballet [BaUet'\ by our own people.
Queen. I shall be glad to see such mirth ; I doubt much whether my heart will
be at ease, for I know not what kind of an approaching misfortune disturbs our
spirits.
King. Pray be content. — Prince Hamlet, we understand that some actors have
arrived who are to act a comedy for us this evening. Tell us, is that so t
Ham. Yes, my father, it is. They applied to me, and I gave them permission.
X hope your majesty will also approve.
PRINCE HAMLET OF DENMARK. T31
King. What kind of a plot is it ? There is nothing, I suppose, offensive in it
or rude?
Ham. It is a good plot. We who have good consciences are not touched by it.
King. ^Vhere are they? Let them begin soon ; for we would like to see what
these Germans can do.
Ham. Marshal, see whether the actors are ready; tell them to begin.
Cor. Ye actors, where are ye? Ye must begin at once. Holla! they're
coming.
Here enters the Flay. The King with his consort. He wishes to lie down to sleep;
the Queen begs him not to do so; he lies dovm, nevertheless; the Queen takes
leave of him with a kiss, and exit. The King's brother comes with a phial and
pours something into his ear, and exit.
Ham. That is King Pyrrus, who goes into the garden to sleep. The Queen begs
him not to do so ; however, he lies down. The poor little wife goes away ; see, there
comes the King's brother with the juice of Hebenon and pours it into his ear, which,
as soon as it mixes with the blood of man, destroys the body.
King. Torches, lanterns, here ! the play does not please us.
Cor. Pages, lackies [/'a'^wj, Z(Zf>l^«»], light the torches! The King wishes to
leave. Quick, light up ! The actors have made a mess of it.
[Exeunt King, Queen, Corambus, and Courtiers,
Ham. Torches here ! the play does not please us. — Now thou seest that the Ghost
has not deceived me. — Actors, go hence with this conclusion, that though you did
not act the piece all through, and the King was displeased with it, ye^jt pleased us
much, and in my behalf Horatio shall satisfy [contentiren^ you.
Carl. We thank you, and beg you for a passport \_Reisepass'\.
Ham. That you shall have. [Exeunt Actors."] Now, can I dare to go on
boldly with my revenge. — Did you see how the King changed color when he saw
the play ?
Hot. Yes, your highness, the thing is certain.
Ham. Therefore my father was murdered just as you saw it in the play. But I
will pay him off for his evil deed.
Scene IX. — Corambus.
Cor. The actors will get a poor reward, for their acting [Aciuml has sore dis-
pleased the King.
Ham. What sayest thou, old man : they will get a poor reward ? The worse
they are rewarded by the King, all the better will they be rewarded by Heaven.
Cor. Your highness, can actors get to heaven ?
Ham. Dost thou suppose, old fool, that they won't find room there, too ? Where-
fore, begone, and treat [tractiren] these people well.
Cor. Ay, ay, I'll treat them as they deserve.
Ham. Treat them well, I say; for there is no greater praise to be got than
through actors, for they travel far and wide. If they are treated well in one place,
they cannot praise it enough in another; for their theatre [Theatrum] is a little
world wherein they represent nearly all that happens in the great world. They
revive the old forgotten histories, and set before us good and bad examples; they
publish abroad the justice and praisew^orthy government of princes; they punish
132 FRATRICIDE PUNISHED, OR
vices, and exalt virtues ; they praise the good, and show how tyranny is punished.
Therefore you should reward them well.
Cor. Well, they shall have their reward, since they are such people. Farewell,
your highness. \^Exit.
Ham, Come, Horatio, I am going ; and from this hour I shall endeavor to find
the King alone, that I may take his life as he has taken my father's.
Hor. Pray, your highness, be very cautious, lest you yourself come to harm.
Verse.
Ham. I shall, I must, I will, give this vile wretch his due.
If stratagem should fail, with force I'll then break through.
ACT III.
Scene I. — Here is presented [prSsentirt sich] an Altar in a Temple,
King \alone'\. Now begins my conscience to awaken, the sting of treachery to
prick me sharply. It is time to turn to repentance, and to confess to Heaven the
crime I have committed. I fear my crime is so great that they will never forgive
me; nevertheless, I will pray to the gods from the bottom of my heart that they
will forgive my grievous sins. \The King kneels before the altar.
Scene II. — Hamlet with a drawn sword.
Ham. Thus long have I followed the damned dog, until I have found him. Now
is the time, when he is alone. I will slay him in the midst of his devotions, [if
about to stab him."] But no, I will first let him finish his prayer. But ah, when I
think of it, he did not first give my father time for a prayer, but sent him to hell in
his sleep and perhaps in his sins. Therefore will I send him after to the same place.
f /j again about to run him through from behind."] But hold, Hamlet ! why wouldst
thou»take his sins upon thyself? I will let him finish his prayer, and let him go this
time, and give him his life ; but another time I will fulfil my revenge. [Exit.
King. My conscience is somewhat lightened ; but the dog still lies gnawing at
my heart. Now will I go, and with fastings, and alms, and fervent prayers appease
the Highest. Ah, cursed ambition ! to what hast thou brought me 1 [Exit
Scene III. — Queen. Cor ambus.
Queen. Corambus, say, how is it with our son. Prince Hamlet? Does his mad-
ness abate at all, or will not his raving cease ?
Cor. Ah, no, your majesty; he is still just as mad as he was before.
Scene IV. — Horatio,
Hor. Most gracious Queen, Prince Hamlet is in the antechamber, and craves a
private audience \_Audienz\.
Queen. He is very dear to us ; so let him come in at once.
Hor. It shall be done, your majesty. \ExU.
PRINCE HAMLET OF DENMARK, 1 33
Queen. Hide yourself, Corambus, behind the tapestiy till we call you.
Cor. Ay, ay, I will hide myself a bit. \Hides himself.
Scene V. — Hamlet.
Ham. Lady mother, did you really know your first husband .
Queen. Ah ! remind me not of my former grief. I caimot restrain my tears when
I think of him.
Ham. Do you weep? Ah, leave off; they are mere crocodile's tears. But see,
there in that gallery hangs the counterfeit \Conierfait'\ of your first husband, and
there hangs the counterfeit of your present. "What think you now? Which. of
them is the comeliest ? Is not the first a majestic lord ?
Queen. He is indeed that.
Ham. How could you, then, so soon forget him ? Fie, for shame ! Almost on
the same day you had the burial and the nuptials. But hush ! are all the doors shut
fast?
Queen. Why do you ask it? \Cor ambus coughs behind the tapestry.
Ham. Who is that listening to us ? \Stabs him.
Cor. Woe is me, O Prince ! What are you doing ? I die !
Queen. O Heaven, my son ! what are you doing ? It is Corambus, the cham-
berlain.
Scene VI. — Ghost passes across the stage. It lightens.
Ham. Ah, noble shade of my father, stay! Alas! alas! what wouldst thou?
Dost thou demand vengeance ? I will fulfil it at the right time.
Queen. What are you about ? and to whom are you talking ?
Ham. See you not the ghost of your departed husband ? See, he beckons as if
he would speak to you.
Queen. How ? I see nothing at all.
Ham. I can readily believe that you see nothing, for you are no longer worthy
to look on his form. Fie, for shame ! Not another word will I speak to you.
[Exit.
Queen [^alone"}. O Heaven! how much madness this melancholy has brought
upon the Prince ! Alas ! my only son has wholly lost his senses. Alas ! alas ! I am
much to blame for it. Had I not wedded my brother-in-law, my first husband's
brother, I had not robbed my son of the crown of Denmark. But when a thing is
done, what can we do ? Nothing. It must be as it is. If the pope had not allowed
the marriage, it would never have taken place. I will go hence, and try my best to
restore my son to his former sense and health. [Exit.
Scene VII. — Jens, alone.
yens. It is long since I have been to court and paid my taxes. I am afraid that,
go where I may, I shall be put into jail [ins Loch kriecken]. If I could only find
some good friend who would speak a good word for me, so that I might not be
punished !
134 FRATRICIDE PUNISHED, OR
Scene VIII, — Phantasmo.
Pkan. There are strange goings-on at court. Prince Hamlet is mad, Ophelia is
mad too. In short \in Summa"], things go on so very strangely that I am almost
inclined to run away.
yms. Potz tausend ! I see my good friend Phantasmo. No better man could I
hit upon. I will ask him to say a good word for me. — Good luck to you, Mr Phan-
tasmo!
P^an. Many thanks ! What do you want, Mr Qown ?
j^ens. Ah, Mr Phantasmo, 'tis a long time since I have been at court, and I owe a
great deal. Therefore I beg that you will put in a good word for me ; I will reward
\^s/>endtren] you with a good cheese.
Phan. What ! dost thou think, churl, that et court I get nothing to eat?
Scene IX. — Ophelia, mad,
Oph. I run and race, but cannot find my sweetheart. He sent me word to come
to him. We are to be married, and I am dressed for it already. But there is my
love ! See ! art thou there, my lambkin? I have sought thee so ; yes, have I sought
thee. Alas ! just think ! the tailor has spoilt my cotton \kattunen'\ gown. See, there
is a pretty floweret for thee, my heart !
Phan. Oh, the devil ! I wish I could clear out. She thinks I am her sweet-
heart.
Oph. What sayest thou, my love ? We will go to bed together. I will wash
thee quite clean.
Phan. Ay, ay, I'll soap thee, and wash thee out, too.
Oph. Listen, my love : hast thou already put on thy new suit ? Ay, that is beau-
tifully made, just in the new fashion.
Phan. I know that well enough without —
Oph. Oh, Potz tausend I what I came near forgetting I The King has invited
me to supper, and I must run fast. Look there ! my little coach, my little coach !
\^Exit.
Phan. O Hecate, thou queen of witches, how glad I am that mad thing has
cleared out ! If she had stayed any longer, I should have been mad too. I must
get away before the foolish thing comes back.
Jens. Oh, merciful Mr Phantasmo, I beg you not to forget me.
Phan. Come along. Brother Rogue. I'll see what I can do for thee with the
tax-collector. {Exeunt.
Scene X. — King. Hamlet. Horatio. Two Attendants.
King. Where is the corpse of Corambus ? Has it not yet been removed ?
Hor. He is still lying in the place where he was stabbed.
King. It grieves us that he has lost his life so suddenly. Go, let him be taken
away. We wish to have him honorably buried. — Alas ! Prince Hamlet ! what have
you done, to stab old, harmless Corambus ! It grieves us to our heart, yet since it
was done unwittingly, this murder is in some degree excusable ; but I fear that when
it gets known among the nobility, it will raise a riot among my subjects, and they
may revenge his death on you. However, out of fatherly care we have devised a
plan to avert this misfortune.
PRINCE HAMLET OF DENMARK. 1 35
ffam. I am sorry for it, uncle and father. I wanted to say something in private
to the Queen, but this spy lay in wait for us. I did not know, however, that it was
this old fool. But what does your majesty intend as the best thing to be done {j>ro-
cediren\ with me ?
King. We have resolved to send you to England, because this crown is friendly
to our own; there you can cool yourself off [refrigiren] for a while, since the air
there is healthier, and may promote your recovery better than here. We will give
you some of our attendants, who shall accompany you and serve you faithfully.
Ham. Ay, ay. King ; just send me off to Portugal, so that I may never come back
again. That's the best.
King. No, not to Portugal, but to England, and these two shall accompany you
on the journey. But when you arrive in England you shall have more attendants.
I/am. Are those the lackeys [Laquaien'] ? They're nice fellows !
King. Listen, you two [aside to the two Attendants']. As soon as you get to
England, do as I have ordered you. Take a dagger, or each one a pistol, and kill
him. But should this attempt miscarry, take this letter and present it, along with the
Prince, at the place which is written on it. There he will be so well looked to that
he will never come back again from England. But on this point I warn you:
reveal your business to no man. You shall receive your reward as soon as you
return.
Ham. Well, your majesty, who are the right ones, then, that are to travel with
me?
King. These two. Now, the gods be with you, that with a fair wind you may
reach the place and spot I
Ham. Well, adieu [Adieu], lady mother!
King. How is this, my prince ? why do you call us mother ?
ffam. Surely, man and wife are one flesh. Father or mother — it is all the same
to me.
King. Well, fare ye well. Heaven be with you ! [Exit.
Ham. Now, you noble chaps [ncblen Quanichen], are you to be my com-
panions ?
Attends. Ay, your highness.
Ham. Come, then, noble .comrades [taking each by the hand], let us go, let U5
go to England ; take your little message in your hands ; thou art a brave chap. Let
us go, let us go to England ! [Exeunt.
Scene XL — Phantasmo. Ophelia.
Phan. Wherever I go or stay, that darned [elementische] girl, that Ophelia, runs
after me out of every comer. I can get no peace along of her. She keeps saying
that I am her lover, and it is not true. If I could only hide myself somewhere
where she could not find me ! Now, the plague is loose again ! There she comes
again!
Oph. Where can my sweetheart be ? The rogue won't stay with me, but had
rather run away. — But, see, there he is ! Listen, my love : I have been at the priest's,
and he will join us this very day. I have made all ready for the wedding, and
bought chickens, hares, meat, butter, and cheese. There is nothing else wanting
but the musicians to play us to bed.
Phan. I can only say, yes. — Come, then, let us go to bed together.
136 FRATRICIDE PUNISHED, OR
Oph. No, no, my poppet, we must first go to church together, and then we'll eat
and drink, and then we'll dance. Ah, how merry we shall be !
Phan. Ay, it will be right merry, — three eating out of one dish.
Oph. What sayest thou ? If thou wilt not have me, I'll not have thee \sirikes
html. Look there! there is my love beckoning to me. See there! what fine
clothes he has on ! See, he is enticing me to him. He throws me a rose and a lily.
He wants to tak? me in his arms. He beckons me : I am coming, I am coming.
[Exit.
Phan. Near to, she's not wise, but farther off, she's downright mad. I wish she
were hanged, and then the carrion could not run after me so. [Exit,
ACT IV.
Scene I. — Hamlet. Two Banditti [Panditett].
Ham. This is a pleasant spot, here on this island. Let us stay here a while, and
dine. There's a pleasant wood, and there a cool stream of water. So fetch me the
best from the ship ; here we'll make right merry.
Pirst Band. Gracious sir, this is no time for eating, for from this island you will
never depart ; for here is the spot which is chosen for your churchyard.
Ham. What sayest thou, thou scoundrel, thou slave \_Esclav'\ ? Knowest thou
whom I am? Wouldst thou jest so with a royal prince? However, for this time,
I forgive you.
Sec. Band. No, it is no jest, but downright earnest. Just prepare yourself for
death.
Ham. Why so ? What injury have I ever done you ? For my part I can think
of none. Therefore, speak out : why do you entertain such bad thoughts ?
First Band. It is our orders from the. King; as soon as we get your highness ou
this island we are to kill you.
Ham. Dear friends, spare my life ! Say that you have done your work, and so
long as I live I will never return to the King. Think well what good you gain by
having your hands covered with the blood of an innocent prince ! Will you stain
your consciences with my sins ? Alas ! that most unfortunately I am unarmed ! If
I only had something in my hands ! [Snatches at a dagger."]
Sec. Band. I say, comrade, take care of thy weapon.
First Band. I'll take care. — Now, Prince, get ready. We haven't much time.
Ham. Since it cannot be otherwise, and I must die at your hands at the bidding
of the tyrannical King, I will submit without resistance, although I'm innocent. And
you, bribed to the deed through poverty, I willingly forgive. My blood, however,
must be answered for by the murderer of his brother and of my father at the great
Day of Judgement.
First Band. What has that Day to do with us ? We must do this day what we
were told.
Sec. Band. Tliat's true, brother. — Hurry up ! there's no help for it. — Let us fire,
—I on one side and thou on the other.
Ham. Hear me — one word more. Since the very worst of malefactors is not
denied a time for repentance, I, an innocent prince, beg you to let me raise to my
Maimer a fervent prayer; after that I am ready to die. But I will give you a signal:
PRINCE HAMLET OF DENMARK. 1 3*7
I will turn my hands toward heaven, and the moment I stretch oat my arms, fire I
Aim both pistols at my sides, and when I say ' Shoot !' give me as much as I need,
and be sure to hit me so ^^X I shall not be long in torture.
See. Band. Well, we can easily grant him this favor. — Therefore, go ahead.
Ham. [spreading oitt his hands'^. Shoot ! [ihrcrunng himself forward on his face
between the two, who shoot each other."] O just Heaven ! thanks be to thee for this
angelic idea ! I will praise for ever the guardian angel who through my own idea
has saved my life. But these villains, — as was their work, so is their pay. The
dogs are still stirring; they have shot [^hargueiusirt'] each other. But out of re-
venge [Revangel I'll give them a death-blow to make sure, else one of the rogues
might escape. [^Stabs them with their own swords."] I'll search them, and see
whether they have by chance any warrant of arrest about them. This one has
nothing. Here on this murderer I find a letter ; I will read it. This letter is written
to an arch-murderer in England ; should this attempt fail, they had only to hand me
over to him, and he would soon enough blow out the light of my life. But the gods
stand by the righteous. Now will I return to my father, to his horror. But I will
not trust any longer to water ; who knows but what the ship's captain is a villain
too ? I will go to the first town and take the post. The sailors I will order back to
Denmark. These rascals I will throw into the water. \_Exit.
Scene II. — King, with Attendants.
King. We long to learn how matters have turned out with our son. Prince Ham-
let, and whether the men whom we sent with him as his fellow-travellers have faith-
fully performed what we commanded.
Scene III. — Phantasms. King,
Phan, News, Monsieur \sic] King ! The very latest news I
King. What is it, Phantasmo ?
Phan. Leonhardus has come back home from France.
IGng, That pleases us; admit him to our presence.
Scene IV. — Leonhardus.
Leon. Gracious lord and King, I demand of your majesty my father, or just
vengeance for his lamentable murder. If this be not done, I shall forget t^at yon
are King, and revenge myself on him who has done the deed.
King. Leonhardus, be satisfied that we are guiltless of thy father's death. Prince
Hamlet unawares ran him through, behind the hangings, but we will take care that
he is punished for it.
Leon. Since your majesty is guiltless of my father's death, I therefore beg for
pardon on my knees. Rage as well as filial afiiection so overcame me that I scarcely
knew what I did.
King. Thou art forgiven. We can well believe that it goes to thy very heart to
have lost thy father so miserably. But be satisfied, thou shalt have a father again in
ourselves.
Leon. I thank you for this high royal favor.
138 FRATRICIDE PUNISHED, OR
Scene V. — Phantasmo.
Pkan. Uncle King, more news still 1
King. What news dost thou bring again ?
P.'i^n. Prince Hamlet has come back.
ICing. The devil has come back, and not Prince Hamlet !
Phan. Prince Hamlet has come back, and not the devil.
King. Leonhardus, listen here. Now thou canst avenge thy father's death. The
Prince has come home again ; but thou must promise us on thy oath not to reveal it
to any one.
Phan. Doubt me not, your majesty. What you reveal to me shall be as secret
as if you had spoken to a stone.
King. We will arrange a match between thee and him, thus : you shall fence
with rapiers [Rapieren"], and the one who makes the first three hits shall win a
white Neapolitan horse. But in the middle of this combat you must let your rapier
drop, and instead of it you must have at hand a sharp-pointed sword, made exactly
like the rapier, but the point thou must smear with strong poison: as soon, then, as thou
shalt have wounded him with it, he will have to die. But thou wilt win the prize,
and with it the King's favor.
Leon, Your majesty must pardon me. I dare not undertake this, because the
Prince is a skilled swordsman, and he might easily practise all this on me.
King, Leonhardus, hesitate not, but do thy King this pleasure ; to revenge thy
father thou must do it. . For know, as your father's murderer the Prince deserves
such a death. But we cannot get justice upon him, because he has his lady mother
to back him, and the subjects love him much. Hence, if we openly revenged our-
selves on him, there might easily be a rebellion. But to shun him as our stepson
and kinsman is only an act of sacred justice ; for he is murderous and mad, and for
the future we ourselves must be in fear of such a wicked man. If you do what we
desire, you will relieve your King of his fears, and in a disguised way revenge your
father's murder.
Leon, It is a hard matter, and one which I am scarcely equal to. For should it
get abroad it would surely cost me my life.
King, Do not doubt ! Should this fail, we have thought of another trick. We
will have an oriental diamond pounded fine, and when he is heated present it to
him, mixed with sugar, in a beaker full of wine. Thus shall he drink his death to
our health.
Leon. Well, then, your majesty, under this safeguard I will do the deed.
Scene VI.— Queen.
Queen, Gracious lord and King, dearest husband, I bring you bad news.
King. What is it, dearest soul ?
Queen. My favorite attendant [S/aafsJutig/er}, Ophelia, runs up and down,
cries and screams; she cats and drinks nothing. They think she has quite lost
her wits.
King, Alas ! one hears nothing but downright sad and unhappy news I
PRINCE HAMLET OF DENMARK, 1 39
SCENZ VII. — Ophelia, with flowers.
<yph. See ! there, thou hast a flower; thou too; thou too. [Gives each a fiower.'Y
But, potz tausend ! what had I clean forgotten ! I must run quick. I have for-
gotten my ornaments. Alas ! my frontlet [Fronte"^ 1 I must go quickly to the
court-jeweller, and ask what new fashions he has got. Sa, sa \sic\y set the table
quickly. I'll soon be back. \Runs off.
Leon. Am I, then, bom to every misfortune ? My father is dead, and my sisteu
is robbed of her wits ! My heart almost bursts with grief.
King. Leonhardus, be content, thou shalt live alone in otir favor. — But do you,
dearest wife, be pleased to walk within with us, for we have something secret to
reveal to you. — Leonhardus, do not forget what we have said to you.
Leon, I shall be eager to do it.
Queen. My King, we must devise some means by which this unfortunate maiden
may be restored to her senses.
King. Let the case be submitted to cor own physician. — But do you, Leonhardus,
follow us. [Exeunt.
ACT V.
Scene L — Hamlet.
Ham. Unfortunate Prince I how much longer must thou live without peace.
How long dost thou delay, O righteous Nemesis ! before thou whettest thy righteous
sword of vengeance for my uncle, the fratricide ? Hither have I come once more,
but cannot attain to my revenge, because the fratricide is surrounded all the time
by so many people. But I swear that, before the sun has finished his journey firom
east to west, I will revenge myself on him.
Scene II. — Horatio.
Hot. Your highness, I am heartily glad to see you here again in good health.
But, I pray you, tell me why you have returned so soon.
Ham. Ah, Horatio, thou hast nearly missed never seeing me again alive; fot
my life was already at stake, had not the Almighty power specially protected me.
Hot. How ? What says your highness ? How did it happen ?
Ham. Thou knowest that the King gave me two fellow-travellers as servants to
accompany me. Now it happened that one day we had contrary \contrairen\ winds,
and we anchored at an island not far from Dover. I went on shore with my two
companions to get a little fresh air. Then came these cursed rascals, and would
have taken my life, and said that the King had bribed them to it. I begged for my
life, and promised to give them as great a reward, and that, if they reported me to
the King as dead, I would never again go near the court. But there was no pity in
them. At last the gods put something into my head ; whereupon I begged them
that, before my death, I might offer a prayer, and that when I cried * Shoot !' they
were to fire at me. But just as I gave the word I fell on the ground, and they
shot each other. Thus have I this time escaped with my life. My arrival, however,
will not be agreeable to the King.
Hor. Oh, unheard-of treachery !
I40 FRATRICIDE PUNISHED, OR
Scene III. — Phantasmo.
Ham, Look, Horatio, this fool is far dearer to the King than my person. Let
us hear what he has to say.
Pkan. Welcome home, Prince Hamlet! Do you know the news? The King
has laid a wager on you and the young Leonhardus. You are to fight together with
rapiers, and he who gives the other the first two [wVj hits is to win a white Neapoli-
tan horse.
Ham. Is this certain what thou sayest ?
Phan. Yes, it is precisely so.
Hain. Horatio, what can this mean ? I and Leonhardus are to fight one another.
I fancy they have been quizzing this fool, for you can make him believe what yott
choose. — See here, Signora \jic\ Phantasmo, it is terribly cold.
Phan. Ay, ay, it is terribly cold. [His teeth chatter.
Ham. It is not so cold now as it was.
Phan. Ay, ay, it is just the happy medium.
Ham. But now it is very hot. [ Wipes his face.
Phan. Oh, what a terrible heat ! \Aho wipes away the perspiration.
Ham. And now it is neither really hot, nor really cold.
Phan. Yes, it is now just temperate \temperirt'\.
Ham. There, thou seest, Horatio, one can quiz him as much as one likes.— Phan-
tasmo, go back to the King and say that I will shortly wait on him. [Exit Phati'
iasmo.'\ Come now, Horatio, I will go at once and present myself to the King.
But ah ! what means this ? Blood flows from my nose, and my whole body shakes.
Oh, woe's me ! what has happened ? [Swoons.
Hor. Most noble prince ! — O Heaven ! what means this ? — Be yourself again,
your highness. Most noble Prince, what's the matter ? What ails you ?
Ham. I know not, Horatio. When I thought of returning to the court, a sudden
faintness came over me. What this may mean is known to the gods.
Hor. Ah, Heaven grant that this omen [ Omen"] portends nothing bad I
Ham. Be it what it may, I'll none the less go to the court, even though it cost
me my life. [Exit.
Scene IV. — ICing^. Leonhardus. Phantasmo.
King. Leonhardus, get thyself ready, for Prince Hamlet will soon be here too.
Leon. Your majesty, I am already prepared, and I will do my best.
King. Look well to it 1 Here comes the Prince —
Scene V. — Hamlet. Horatio.
Ham. All happiness and health to your majesty I
King. We thank you. Prince We are greatly rejoiced that melancholy has in
some degree left you. Wherefore, we have arranged a friendly match between you
and the young Leonhardus. You are to fight with rapiers, and the one who makes
the first three [jiV] hits shall win a white Neapolitan horse, with saddle and
trappings.
Ham. Your majesty must pardon me, for I have had but little practice with
PRINCE HAMLET OF DENMARK. 141
rapiers. But Leonhardus has just come from France, where, doubtless, he has had
good practice. Therefore you must excuse me.
King. Prince Hamlet, do it to gratify us, for we are desirous of knowing what
sort of feints the Germans and French use.
Scene VL— Queen.
Queen. Gracious lord and King, I have to announce to you a great calamity !
King. Heaven forbid ! What is it ?
Queen. Ophelia went up a high hill, and threw herself down, and killed her-
self.
Leon. Alas ! Unfortunate Leonhardus ! thou hast lost within a short space of
time both a father and a sister I Whither will misfortune lead thee ? I could for
grief wish myself dead.
King. Be comforted, Leonhardus. We are gracious to you; only begin the con*
test, — Phantasmo, bring the rapiers. — Horatio, you shall be umpire.
Phan. Here is the warm beer.
Ham. Well, then, Leonhardus, come on, and let us see which of us is to fit the
other with the fool's cap and bells. Should I, however, make a mistake \tinen
Exces begeken"], pray excuse [excusireni me, for it is long since I have fought
Leon, I am your highness's servant : you are only jesting.
[During thefint bout they fight fair. Leonhardus is hit.
Ham. That was one, Leonhardus !
Leon. True, your highness ! Now for revenge \_Ano Revange'\ ! \He drops his
rapier f and seizes the poisoned sword which lies ready [parat], and gives the Prince
a thrust in carte [die Quarte] in the arm. Hamlet parries [pariret] on Leonhardus,
so that they both drop their weapons. Each runs for his rapier. Hamlet gets the
poisoned sword, and stabs Leonhardus mortally. "^ Woe is me ! I have a mortal
thrust I receive what I thought to pay another. Heaven have mercy on me !
Ham. What the devil is this, Leonhardus ? Have I wounded you with the
rapier ? How does this happen ?
King. Go quick, and bring my beaker with wine, so that the combatants may
refresh themselves a little. Go, Phantasmo, and fetch it. [^Descends from the throne.
Aside."} I hope that when they both drink of the wine they will then die, and no
one will know of this trick,
Ham^ Tell me, Leonhardus ! how has this come about ?
Leon. Alas, Prince ! I have been seduced into this misforttme by the King. See
what you have in your hand ! It is a poisoned sword.
Ham. O Heaven ! what is this ? Preserve me from it !
Leon. I was to have wounded you with it, for it is so strongly poisoned that who
gets the least wound from it must straightway die.
King. Ho, gentlemen ! rest yourselves a little and drink. [ IVhile the King is
rising from his chair and speaking these words, the Queen takes the cup out of Phan-
tasmds hand and drinks, the King cries out.} Ho! what keeps the goblet?—
Alas, dearest wife! what are you doing? This wine is mixed with deadly poison I
Oh woe ! what have you done ?
Queen. Oh woe ! I am dying ! [ The King stands in front of the Queen.
Ham. And thou, tyrant, shalt bear her company in death,
[^Hamlet stabs him from behind.
142 FRATRICIDE PUNISHED,
King. Oh woe ! I receive my evil reward !
Leon. Adieu \sic\. Prince Hamlet ! — Adieu, world ! I am dying also. — ^Ah, for.
give me, Prince I
Ham. May Heaven receive thy soul ! for thou art guiltless. But this tyrant, I
hope he may wash off his black sins in hell. — Ah, Horatio, now is my soul at rest,
now that I have revenged myself on my enemies ! 'Tis true I have also received a
hit on my arm, but I hope it will signify nothing. I grieve that I have stabbed
Leonhardus ; but I know not how I got the accursed sword into my hand. But as
is the labor, so is the reward ; he has received his pay. Nothing afflicts me more
than my lady mother. Still, she too has deserved this death for her sins. But tell
me, who gave her the cup that has poisoned her?
Phan. I, Prince. I too brought the poisoned sword ; but the poisoned wine was
to be drunk by you alone.
Ham. Hast thou also been an instrument in this misery? Lo, there! thou afso
hast thy reward I \^Stabs him dead.
Phan. Stab away, till your sword is tir'^d ! \dass euch die Klinge verlahme /]
Ham. Alas, Horatio ! I fear that my completed revenge will cost me my life,
for I am sore wounded in the arm. I am growing very faint ; my limbs grow weak ;
my legs will no longer stand ; my voice fails me ; I feel the poison in all my limbs.
But I pray you, dear Horatio, carry the crown to Norway, to my cousin, the Duke
Fortempras {sic}, so that the kingdom may not fall into other hands. Alas 1 Oh
woe ! I die !
Hor. Alas, most noble Prince ! still look for aid ! — O Heaven 1 he is dying in
my arms ! Alas ! what has not this kingdom suffered for ever so long from hard
wars? Scarcely is there peace but internal disturbance, ambition, faction, and
murder fill the land anew. In no age of the world could such a lamentable tragedy
ever have happened as has now, alas ! been enacted at this court. With the help of
the faithful councillors I will make all preparations that these high personages shall
be interred according to their rank. Then will I at once [cito] betake myself to
Norway with the crown, and hand it over as this unfortunate Prince commanded.
So is it when a King with guile usurps the throne.
And afterward with treachery maintains it as his own.
With mockery and scorn he ends his days abhorred,
For as the labor is, so follows the reward.
ENGLISH CRITICISMS
ANTHONY, EARL OF SHAFTESBURY (1710)
( Characteristics. Advice to an Author, soX. i, p. 275. Fifth edition, 1 732.)— Besides
some laudable Attempts which have been made with tolerable Success, of late years,
towards a just manner of Writing, both in the heroick and familiar Style ; we have
older Proofs of a right Disposition in our People towards the moral and instructive\,
Way. Our old dramatick Poet, Shakespear, may witness for oar good Ear and
manly Relish. Notwithstanding his natural Rudeness, his unpolish'd Style, his
antiquated Phrase and Wit, his want of Method and Coherence, and his Deficiency
in almost all the Graces and Ornaments of this kind of Writings ; yet by the Just-
ness of his Moral, the Aptness of many of his Descriptions, and the plain and
natural Turn of several of his Characters, he pleases his Audience, and often gains
their Ear, without a single Bribe from Luxury or Vice.
That Piece of his. The Tragedy of Hamlet, which appears to have most affected
English Hearts, and has perhaps been oftenest acted of any which have come upon
our Stage, is almost one continu'd Moral; a Series of deep Reflections, drawn from
one Mouth, upon the Subject of one single Accident and Calamity, naturally fitted
to move Horror and Compassion. It may be properly said of this Play, if I mistake
not, that it has only One Character or principal Part. It contains no Adoration or
Flattery of the Sex : no ranting at the Gods : no blustring Heroism : nor any thing
of that curious mixture of the Fierce and Tender, which makes the hinge of modem
Tragedy, and nicely varies it between the Points of Love and Honour.
SIR THOMAS HANMER (1736)
{Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.* London,
'736, p. 9.) — [The speech of Marcellus telling of Horatio's incredulity touching the
dreaded sight] helps greatly to deceive us ; for it shows one of the principal persons
of the drama to be as incredulous in relation to the appearance of phantoms as we
can be ; but that at last he is convinced of his error by the help of his eyes. For it
is a maxim entirely agreeable to truth, if we consider human nature, that whatever
is supernatural or improbable is much more likely to gain credit with us, if it be in-
• In the Memoir of Sir Thomas Hanmbr by Sir Henry Bunbury, p. 80, it is stated that ' there
is reason to believe that he [Hanmer] was the author' of this anonymous work, and it is, I believe,
generally ascribed to him. Ed.
143
144 APPENDIX
troduced as such by the persons of the drama, but at last proved to be true, though,
an extraordinary thing, than if it were brought in as a thing highly probable, and
no one were made to boggle at the belief of it. The reason of this seems to be that
we can for once, upon a very great occasion, allow such an incident as this to have
happened, if it be brought in as a thing of great rarity ; but we can by no means
suspend our judgement and knowledge, or deceive our understandings as to grant
that to be common and usual which we know to be entirely supernatural and im-
probable.
[Page 31.] Hamlet's light and even ludicrous expressions to his companions, his
making them swear by his sword, &c., are all circumstances certainly inferior to the
preceding part. But as we should be very cautious in finding fault with men of
such an exalted genius as our author certainly was, lest we should blame them when
in reality the fault lies in our own slow conception, we should well consider what
could have been our author's view in such a conduct. I must confess I have turned
this matter on every side, and all that can be said of it (as far as I am able to
penetrate) is, that he makes the Prince put on this levity of behavior, that the
gentlemen who were with him might not imagine that the Ghost had revealed some
matter of great consequence to him, and that he miglit not be suspected of any deep
designs.
[Page 33.] Now I am come to mention Hamlet's madness, I must speak my opinion
of our poet's conduct in this particular. To conform to the groundwork of his plot,
Shakespeare makes the young Prince feign himself mad. I cannot but think this to
be fnjudicious ; for, so far from securing himself from any violence which he feared
from the usurper, which was his design in so doing, it seems to have been the most
likely way of getting himself confined, and consequently debarred from an oppor-
tunity of revenging his father's death. To speak truth, our poet, by keeping too
close to the groundwork of his plot, has fallen into an absurdity; there appears no
reason at all ift nature why this young Prince did not put the usurper to death as
soon as possible, especially as Hamlet is represented as a youth so brave and so care-
less of his own life. The case, indeed, is this : had Hamlet gone naturally to work,
thei e would have been an end of our play. The poet, therefore, was obliged to
delay his hero's revenge; but then he should have contrived some good reason for
it. His beginning his scenes of madness by his behavior to Ophelia was judicious,
because by this means he might be thought to be mad for her, and not that his braiu
was disturbed about state affairs, which would have been dangerous. x
[Page 38.] I purposely omit taking notice of the famous speech : 'To be, or not-
to be,' &c. Every English reader knows its beauties.
[Page 39.] The scene represented by the Players is in wretched verse. This we
may, without incurring the denomination of an ill-natured critic, venture to pronounce:
that in almost every place where Shakespeare has attempted rhyme, either in the
body of his plays, or at the ends of Acts or Scenes, he falls far short of the beauty
and force of his blank verse. One would think they were written by two different
persons. I believe we may justly take notice that rhyme never arrived at its
true beauty, never came to its perfection, in England until long since Shakespeare's
time.
[Page 42.] The Ghost's not being seen by the Queen was very proper; we could
hardly suppose that a woman, and a guilty one especially, could be able to bear so
terrible a sight without the loss of reason. Besides that, I believe, the poet had also
some eye to a vulgar notion that spirits are only seen by those with whom their busi*
HANMER— JOHNSON 145
ness is, let there be never so many persons in company. This compliance with these
popular fancies, still gives an air of probability to the whole.
[Page 45.] Laertes's character is a very odd one; it is not easy to say whethet it \
is good or bad; but his consenting to the villainous contrivance to murder Hamlet '
makes him much more a bad man than a good one. Surely, revenge for such an i
accidental murder as was that of his father's could never justify him in any treach-
erous practices. It is very nice conduct in the poet to make the usurper build his
scheme upon the generous, unsuspicious temper of the person he intends to murder,
and thus to raise the prince's character by the confession of his enemy, and to make
the villain ten times more odious from his own mouth. The contrivance of the foil
unbated is, methinks, too gross a deceit to go down even with a man of the most
unsuspicious nature.
[Page 46.] It does not appear whether Ophelia's madness was chiefly for her
father's death or for the loss of Hamlet. It is not often that young women run mad
for the loss of their fathers. It is more natural to suppose that, like Chimene in the
Cid, her great sorrow proceeded from her father being killed by the man she loved,
and thereby making it indecent for her ever to marry him.
[Page 58.] As a proof of the bad taste of the multitude we find in this nation of
ours, that a vile Pantomime piece, full of machinery, or a lewd^ blasphemous G>m-
edy, or a wretched Farce, or an empty, obscure, low Ballad Opera (in all which, to
the scandal of our nation and age, we surpass all the world), shall draw together
crowded audiences, when there is full elbow-room at a noble piece of Shakespeare's
or Rowe's. [These foregoing extracts are given mainly for their historical value, as
indicating the thoughtful appreciation, — not very profound, it must be confessed, but,
still, true and genuine, — in which Sh. was held by eminent men (and Sir Thomas
Hanmer was Speaker of the House of Commons) a little more than a hundred years
after his death. It is also to be noted that Hanmer has anticipated much modem
criticism, both English and German, which still continues to be put forth as novel 01
striking. Ed.]
DR JOHNSON (1765)
( The Plays of Shakespeare, vol. viii, p. 311.) — If the dramas of Shakespeare were
to be characterized, each by the particular excellence which distinguishes it from the
rest, we must allow to the tragedy of Hamlet the praise of variety. The incidents
are so numerous that the argument of the play would make a long tale. The
scenes are interchangeably diversified with merriment and solemnity; with merri-
ment that includes judicious and instructive observations ; and solemnity not strained
by poetical violence above the natural sentiments of man. New characters appear
from time to time in continual succession, exhibiting various forms of life and pai-
ticular modes of conversation. The pretended madness of Hamlet causes much
tairth, the mournful distraction of Ophelia fills the heart with tenderness, and every "
personage produces the effect intended, from the Apparition, that in the First Act
chills the blood with horror, to the Fop in the last, that exposes afiectation to just
contempt.
The conduct is perhaps not wholly secure against objections. The action is, in-
deed, for the most part, in continual progression, but there are some scenes which
neither forward nor retard it. Of the feigned madness of Hamlet there appears no
adequate cause, for he does nothing which he might not have done with the reputa*
Vot. IL— 10
146 APPENDIX
tion of sanity. He plays the madman most when he treats Ophelia with so much
rudeness, which seems to be useless and wanton cruelty.
Hamlet is, through the whole piece, rather an instrument than an agent. After he
has, by the stratagem of the play, convicted the King, he makes no attempt to
punish him ; and his death is at last effected by an incident which Hamlet had no
part in producing.
The catastrophe is not very happily produced ; the exchange of weapons is rather
an expedient of necessity than a stroke of art. A scheme might easily be formed
to kill Hamlet with the dagger and Laertes with the bowl.
The poet is accused of having shown little regard to poetical justice, and may be
charged with equal neglect of poetical probability. The apparition left the regions
of the dead to little purpose ; the revenge which he demands is not obtained but by
the death of him that was required to take it ; and the gratification which would
arise from the destruction of an usurper and a murderer is abated by the untimely
death of Oph., the young, the beautiful, the harmless, and the pious.
MRS MONTAGU (1769)
{Essay on the Writings and Genius of Shakespear, 1769, p. 163.) — The first pro-
priety in dealing with preternatural beings seems to be that the ghost be intimately
connected with the fable ; that he increase the interest, add to the solemnity of it,
and that his efficiency in bringing on the catastrophe be in some measure adequate
to the violence done to the ordinary course of things in his visible interposition. To
this end it is necessary that this being should be acknowledged and revered by the
national superstition, and every operation that develops the attributes, which the
vulgar opinion or nurse's legend taught us to ascribe to him, will augment our pleas-
ure ; whether we give the reins to imagination, and, as spectators, yield ourselves
up to the pleasing delusion, or, as critics, examine the merit of the composition. In
all these capital points Shakespeare has excelled. At the solemn midnight hour the
scene opens, and Bernardo tells us that the ghost of the late monarch had appeared
the night before ' When yon same star, that westward from the pole, Had made his
course t' illume that part of heaven, Where now it burns. The bell then beating
one .' Here enters the Ghost, after you are thus prepared. There is something
solemn and sublime in thus regulating the walking of the spirit by the course of the
stJ^r. It intimates a connection and correspondence between things beyond our ken,
and above the visible diurnal sphere. Horatio is affected with that kind of fear which
such an appearance would naturally excite. He trembles and turns pale. When the
violence of the emotion subsides, he reflects that probably this supernatural event ^
portends some danger lurking in the State. This suggestion gives importance to the
phenomenon, and engages our attention. Such appearances, says he, preceded the
fall of the mightiest Julius, and the ruin of the great commonwealth. There is
great art in this conduct. The true cause of the royal Dane's discontent could not
be guessed at ; it was a secret which could be revealed only by himself. In the
mean time it was necessary to captivate our attention by demonstrating that the poet
was not going to exhibit such idle and frivolous gambols as ghosts are by the vulgar
often represented to perform. Horatio's address to the Ghost is, in its whole pur-
port, in accordance with the popular conception of such matters. The vanishing
of the Ghost at the crowing of the cock is another circumstance of established
superstition.
STEEVENS 147
STEEVENS (1778)
{The Plays of William Shakspeare, 1778, vol. x, p. 412.*) — Hamlet, at the com-
mand of his father's ghost, undertakes with seeming alacrity to revenge the murder ;
and declares he will banish all other thoughts from his mind. He makes, however,
but one effort to keep his word, and that is when he mistakes Polonius for the King.
On another occasion he defers his purpose till he can find an opportunity of taking
his uncle when he is least prepared for death, that he may insure damnation to his
soul. Though he assassinated Polonius by accident, yet he deliberately procures the
execution of his school-fellows, Rosencrantz and Guildenstem, who appear not, [from
any circumstances in this play,] to have been acquainted with the treacherous pur-
poses of the mandate they were employed to carry. [To embitter their fate, and
hazard their punishment beyond the grave, he denies them even the few moments
necessary for a brief confession of their sins.] Theit end (as he declares in a sub
sequent conversation with Horatio) gives him no concern, for they obtruded them
selves into the service, and he thought he had a right to destroy them. From his
brutal conduct towards Ophelia he is not less accountable for her distraction and death.
He interrupts the funeral designed in honor of this lady, at which both the King
and Queen were present ; and, by such an outrage to decency, renders it still more
necessary for the usurper to lay a second stratagem for his life, though the first had
proved abortive. He insults the brother of the dead, and boasts of an affection for
his sister, which, before, he had denied to her face, and yet at this very time must be
considered as desirous of supporting the character of a madman, so that the open-
ness of his confession is not to be imputed to him as a virtue. He apologizes to
Horatio afterwards for the absurdity of his behavior, to which, he says, he was pro-
voked by that nobleness of fraternal grief, which, indeed, he ought rather to have ap-
plauded than condemned. Dr Johnson has observed, that to bring about a recon-
ciliation with Laertes he has availed himself of a dishonest fallacy ; and to conclude,
it is obvious to the most careless spectator or reader, that he kills the King at last to
revenge himself, and not his father.
Hamlet cannot be said to have pursued his ends by very warrantable means ; and if
the poet, when he sacrificed him at last, meant to have enforced such a moral, it is
not the worst that can be deduced from the play ; for, as Maximus, in Beaumont
and Fletcher's Valentinian, says : —
' Although bis justice were as white as truth.
His way was crooked to it ; that condemns him.
The late Dr Akinside once observed to me, that the conduct of Hamlet was every
way unnatural and indefensible, unless he were to be regarded as a young man
whose intellects were in some degree impaired by his own misfortunes : by the
death of his father, the loss of expected sovereignty, and a sense of shame resulting
from the hasty and incestuous marriage of his mother.
I have dwelt the longer on this subject because Hamlet seems to have been hitherto
regarded as a hero not undeserving the pity of the audience ; and because no writer
on Shakespeare has taken the pains to point out the immoral tendency of his
character.
• These remaikt Sleevens changed somewhat la his edition of 1793. The changes are indicated
by brackets. Eo.
148 APPENDIX
HENRY MACKENZIE (1780)
{The Mirror, No. 99, 18 April, 1780.) — Had Shakespeare made Hamlet pursue
Ws vengeance with a steady determined purpose, had he led him through difficulties
arising from accidental causes, and not from the doubts and hesitation of his own
mind, the anxiety of the spectator might have been highly raised; but it would
have been anxiety for the event, not for the person.
As it is, we feel not only the virtues, but the weaknesses, of Hamlet as our own ;
we see a man, who in other circumstances would have exercised all the moral and
social virtues, placed in a situation in which even the amiable qualities of his mind
serve but to aggravate his distress and to perplex his conduct. Our compassion for
the first, and our anxiety for the latter, are excited in the strongest manner; and
hence arises that indescribable charm in Hamlet which attracts every reader and
every spectator, which the more perfect characters of other tragedies never dispose
us to feel.
The Orestes of the Greek poet, who at his first appearance lays down a plan ot
vengeance which he resolutely pursues, interests us for the accomplishment of his
purpose ; but of him we think only as the instrument of that justice which we wish
to overtake the murderers of Agamemnon. We feel with Orestes (or rather with
Sophocles, for in such passages we always hear the poet in his hero), that ' it is fit
that such gross infringements of the moral law should be punished with death in
order to make wickedness less frequent ;' but when Horatio exclaims, on the death
of his friend : • Now cracks a noble heart ;' we forget the murder of the King, the
villainy of Claudius, the guilt of Gertrude; our recollection dwells only on the
memory of that ' sweet prince,' the delicacy of whose feelings a milder planet should
have ruled, whose gentle virtues should have bloomed through a life of felicity and
usefulness.
RITSON (1783)
{Remarks, Sec, 1783, p. 217.) — Hamlet, the only child of the late king, upon
whose death he became lawfully entitled to the crown, had, it seems, ever since that
event been in a state of melancholy, owing to excessive grief for the suddenness
with which it had taken place, and indignant horror at his mother's speedy and in-
cestuous marriage. The spirit of the king, his father, appears, and makes him ac-
quainted with the circumstances of his untimely fate, which he excites him to
revenge ; this Hamlet engages to do: an engagement it does not appear he ever
forgot. It behoved him, however, to conduct hisself \sic\ with the greatest pru-
dence. The usurper was powerful, and had Hamlet carried his design into imme-
diate execution, it could not but have been attended with the worst consequences to
his own life and fame. No one knew what the Ghost had imparted to him, till he
afterwards made Horatio acquainted with it; and though his interview with the spirit
gave him certain proof and satisfactory reason to know and detest the usurper, it
would scarcely, in the eye of the people, have justified his killing their king. To
conceal, and, at a convenient time, to effect, his purpose, he counterfeits madness,
and, for his greater assurance, puts the spirit's evidence and the usurper's guilt to
the test of a play, by which the truth of each is manifested. . . .
f Page 221.] Hamlet's conversation with Laertes immediately before the fencing
■J
RITSON— RICHARDSON 1 49
scene was at the Queen's earnest entreaty; and though Dr Johnson be pleased \o
give it the harsh name of ' a dishonest fallacy,* there are better, because more natural,
judges who consider it as a most gentle and pathetic address; certainly Hamlet
did not intend the death of Polonius; of consequence, unwittingly and by mere
accident, injured Laertes, who declared that he was ' satisfied in nature,' and that he
only delayed his perfect reconcilement till his honor was satisfied by elder masters,
whom at the same time (for he has the instrument of death in his hand) he never
meant to consult. Let the conduct and sentiments of Laertes in this inter\'iew and ^
in his conversation with the usurper, together with his villainous design against the
life of Hamlet, be examined and tried by any rules of gentility, honor, or humanity,
natural or artificial, he must be considered as a treacherous, cowardly, diabolical
wretch
Dr Akinside was a very ingenious, sensible, and worthy man ; but enough has
been said to satisfy those who doubt, that the conduct of Hamlet is neither unnatural
nor indefensible. That his intellects were really impaired by the circumstances
enumerated by the above learned physician is very probable; and indeed Hamlet his
self \sic\, more than once, plainly insinuates it.
RICHARDSON (1784)
{^Essays on Some of Shakespeare's Dramatic Characters, 1797, p. 75. fifth edi-
tion.)— The mind of Hamlet, violently agitated and filled with displeasing and painful
images, loses all sense of felicity. He even wishes for a change of being. The
appearance is wonderful, and leads us to inquire into affections and opinions that
could render him so despondent. The death of his father was a natural evil, and
as such he endures it. That he is excluded from succeeding immediately to the
royalty seems to affect him slightly ; for to vehement and vain ambition he appears ^
superior. He is moved by finer principles, by an exquisite sense of virtue, of moral
beauty and turpitude. The impropriety of Gertrude's behavior, her ingratitude to
the memory of her former husband, and the depravity she discovers in the choice of
a successor, afflict his soul, and cast him into utter agony. Here, then, is the prin-
ciple and spring of all his actions.
[Page 78.] To erase an established affection, and substitute aversion, or even in-
difference, does violence to our nature ; our affliction will bear an exact proportion
to our former tenderness. So delicate is your affection, and so refined your sense of
moral excellence, when the moral faculty is softened into a tender attachment, that
the sanctity and purity of the heart you love must appear without a stain. Such is
\^e condition of Hamlet. Exquisitely sensible of moral beauty and deformity, he dis-
cerns tui-pitude in a parent. Surprise adds bitterness to his sorrow ; and led, by the
same moral principle, to admire and glory in the high desert of his father, even this
admiration contributes to his uneasiness. Aversion to his uncle, arising from the
same origin, augments his anguish. All these emotions are rendered still more
violent, being exasperated by his recent interview [in I, ii] with the Queen. Over-
whelmed with afflicting images, no exhilarating affection can have admission to his
heart. He wishes for deliverance from his affliction by deliverance from a painful
existence.
[Page 98.] The condition of Hamlet's mind becomes still more curious and interest-
ing. His suspicions are confirmed. Conceiving designs of punishment, and sensible
that he is already suspected by the King, he is thrown into violent perturbation.
1 50 APPENDIX
Afraid at the same time lest his aspect or demeanor should betray him, his agitation is
such as threatens the overthrow of his reason. He trembles, as it were, on the brir.k
of madness; and is at times not altogether certain that he acts or speaks according
to the dictates of a sound understanding. He partakes of such insanity as may
arise in a mind of great sensibility, from excessive agitation of spirit, and much
labor of thought; but which naturally subsides when the perturbation ceases. Yet
he must act, and with prudence. He must even conceal his intentions, — his actual
condition suggests a mode of concealment. Knowing that he must appear incohe-
rent and inconsistent, he is not unwilling to have it believed that his reason is some-
what disarranged, and that the strangeness of his conduct admits of no other ex-
planation. As it is of signal consequence to him to have the rumor of his madness
believed and propagated, he endeavors to render the counterfeit specious. There is
nothing that reconciles men more readily to believe in any extraordinary appearance
than to have it accounted for. A reason of this kind is often more plausible and
imposing than many forcible arguments, particularly if the theory be of our own
invention. Accordingly, Hamlet, the more easily to deceive the King and his crea-
tures, and to furnish them with an explication of his uncommon deportment, prac-
tises his artifice on Ophelia. There is no change in his attachment, unless in so far
as other passions of a violent character have assumed a temporary influence. His
affection is permanent. To confirm and publish the report that his understanding
was disordered, he would act in direct opposition to his former conduct. Full of
honor and affection, he would put on the semblance of rudeness. To Ophelia he would
show dislike, because a change of this nature would be, of all others, the most re-
markable, and because his affection for her was passionate and sincere.
[Page 102.] The tendency of indignation, and of furious and inflamed resent-
ment, is to inflict punishment on the offender. But if resentment is ingrafted on the
moral faculty and grows from it, its tenor and conduct will be different. In its first
emotion it may breathe excessive and immediate vengeance; but sentiments of
justice and propriety interposing will arrest and suspend its violence. An ingenuous
mind, thus agitated by powerful and contending principles, exceedingly tortured and
perplexed, will appear hesitating and undetermined. Thus the vehemence of the
vindictive passion will, by delay, suffer abatement ; by its own ardor it will be ex-
hausted ; and our natural and habituated propensities will resume their influence.
These continue in possession of the heart until the mind reposes and recovers vigor;
then if the conviction of injury still remains, and if our resentment seems justified
by every amiable principle, by reason and the sentiments of mankind, it will return
with power and authority. Should any unintended incident awaken our sensibility,
and dispose us to a state of mind favorable to the influence and operation of ardent
and impetuous passions, our resentment will revisit us at that precise period, and
turn in its favor, and avail itself of every other sentiment and affection. The mind
of Hamlet, weary and exhausted by violent agitation, continues doubtful and unde-
cided till his sensibility, excited by a theatrical exhibition, restores to their authority
his indignation and desire of vengeance. Still, however, his moral principles, the
supreme and governing powers of his constitution, conducting those passions which
they seem to justify and excite, determine him again to examine his evidence, or
endeavor by additional circumstances to have it strengthened.
[Page 117.] On reviewing the analysis now given, a sense of virtue seems to be
the ruling principle in the character of Hamlet. In other men it may appear with the
ensigns of high authority; in Hamlet it possesses absolute power. United with amia^
RICHARDSON 151
ble affections, with every graceful accomplishment, and ev?ry agreeable quality, il
embellishes and exalts them. It rivets his attachment to his friends when he finds
them deserving ; it is a source of sorrow if they appear corrupted. It even sharpens
his penetration ; and, if unexpectedly he discerns turpitude or impropriety in any
character, it inclines him to think more deeply of their transgression than if his sen
timents were less refined. It thus induces him to scrutinize their conduct, and may
lead him to the discovery of more enormous guilt Yet with all this purity of
moral sentiment, with the utmost rectitude of intention, and the most active zeal in
the exercise of every duty, he is hated, persecuted, and destroyed. Nor is this so in-
consistent with poetical justice as may at first sight be apprehended. The particular
temper and state of Hamlet's mind is connected with weaknesses that embarrass, or
may be somewhat incompatible with bold and persevering projects. His amiable
hesitations and reluctant scruples lead him at one time to indecision; and then
betray him, by the self-condemning consciousness of such apparent imbecility, into
acts of rash and inconsiderate violence. Meantime, his adversaries, suffering no such
internal conflict, persist with uniform determined vigor in the prosecution of unlawful
schemes. Thus Hamlet, and persons of his constitution, contending with less virtu-
ous opponents, can have little hope of success ; and so the poet has not in the catas-
trophe been guilty of any departure from nature, or any infringement of poetical
justice. We love, we almost revere, the character of Hamlet, and grieve for his
sufferings. But we must at the same time confess, that his weaknesses, amiable
weaknesses ! are the cause of his disappointment and early death.
[Page 131.] The sentiments that Hamlet expresses when he finds Claudius at prayei
are not, I will venture to affirm, his real ones. There is nothing in his whole cha-
racter that justifies such savage enormity. We are therefore bound in justice and
candor to look for some hj-pothesis that shall reconcile what he now delivers with
his usual maxims and general deportment. I would ask, then, whether on many
occasions we do not allege as the motives of our conduct those considerations which
are not really our motives ? Nay, is not this sometimes done almost without our
knowledge ? Is it not done when we have no intention to deceive others ; but when
by the influences of some present passion we deceive ourselves ? When the profli-
gate is accused of enormities he will have them pass for manly spirit, or love of so-
ciety ; and imposes this opinion not upon others, but upon himself. When the miser
indulges his love of wealth, he says, and believes, that he follows the maxims of a
laudable economy. So a]so, while the censorious and invidious slanderer gratifies
his malignity, he boasts, and believes, that he obeys the dictates of justice. Apply
this principle to the case of Hamlet ; sense of supposed duty and a regard to charac-
ter prompt him to slay his uncle ; and he is withheld at that instant by the ascend-
ant of a gentle disposition ; by the scruples, and perhaps weakness, of extreme
sensibility. But how can he answer to the world and to his sense of duty for miss-
ing this opportunity ? The real motive cannot be urged. Instead of excusing, it
would expose him, he thinks, to censure ; perhaps to contempt. He looks about for
a motive ; and one better suited to the opinions of the multitude, and better calcu-
lated to lull resentment, is immediately suggested. He alleges, as direct causes of
his delay, motives that could never influence his conduct ; and thus exhibits a most
exquisite picture of amiable self-deceit.
[Page 139.] Thinking himself incapable of happiness, he thinks he should be
quite unconcerned with any human event. This is another effort of self-deceit, for
JD truth he is not unconcerned. He affects to regard serious and even important
152 APPENDIX
matters with a careless indifference. He would laugh; but his laughter is not that
of mirth. Add to this, that in those moments when he fancies himself indifferent or
unconcerned he endeavors to treat those actions, which would naturally excite indig-
nation, with scorn or contempt. This on several occasions leads him to assume
the appearance of an ironical, but melancholy, gayety.
[Page 141.] The character is consistent. Hamlet is exhibited with good disposi-
tions, and struggling with untoward circumstances. The contest is interesting. As
he endeavors to do right, we approve and esteem him. But his original constitution
renders him unequal to the contest; he displays the weaknesses and imperfections to
which his peculiar character is liable ; he is unfortunate ; his misfortunes are in
some measure occasioned by his weakness ; he thus becomes an object not of blame,
but of genuine and tender regret.
COLERIDGE (1808)
{Notes and Lectures upon Shakespeare, New York, 1868, vol. iv, p. 144.) — I gave
these lectures at the Royal Institution in the spring of the same year (1808) in which
Sir Humphrey Davy, a fellow-lecturer, made his great revolutionaiy discoveries in
chemistry. Even in detail, the coincidence of Schlegel with my lectures was so ex-
traordinary that all who at a later period heard the same words, taken by me from
my notes of the lectures at the Royal Institution, concluded a borrowing on my part
from Schlegel. Mr Hazlitt replied to an assertion of my plagiarism from Schlegel
in these words : — ' That is a lie ; for I myself heard the very same character of
Hamlet from Coleridge before he went to Germany, and when he had neither read,
nor could read, a page of German !' [Collier {Introduction to Hamlet, 1843, p.
193) also corroborates this by the assertion, that he had himself heard Coleridge
'broach these views some years before Schlegel's Lectures, Ueber Dramatische
Kunst und Literatur, were published.' Ed.] ....
I believe the character of Hamlet may be traced to Shakespeare's deep and accu-
rate science in mental philosophy. Indeed, that this character must have some con-
nection with the common fundamental laws of our nature may be assumed from the
fact that Hamlet has been the darling of every country in which the literature of Eng-
land has been fostered. In order to understand him, it is essential that we should
reflect on the constitution of our own minds, Man is distinguished from the brute
animals in proportion as thought prevails over sense ; but in the healthy processes of
the mind, a balance is constantly maintained between the impressions from outward
objects and the inward operations of the intellect ; for if there be an overbalance in
the contemplative faculty, man thereby becomes the creature of mere meditation,
and loses his natural power of action. Now, one of Shakespeare's modes of crea-
ting characters is to conceive any one intellectual or moral faculty in morbid excess,
and then to place himself, Shakespeare, thus mutilated or diseased, under given cir-
cumstances. In Hamlet he seems to have wished to exemplify the moral necessity
of a due balance between our attention to the objects of our senses and our med-
itation on the working of our minds, — an equilibrium between the real and the
imaginary worlds. In Hamlet this balance is disturbed ; his thoughts and the
images of his fancy are far more vivid than his actual perceptions, and his very
perceptions, instantly passing through the medium of his contemplations, acquire, as
they pass, a form and a color not naturally their own. Hence we see a great, an
almost enormous, intellectual activity, and a proportionate aversion to real action
COLERIDGE 1 53
consequent upon it, with all its symptoms and accompanying qualities. This cha-
racter Shakespeare places in circumstances under which it is obliged to act on the spur
of the moment : Hamlet is brave and careless of death ; but he vacillates from sensi-
bility, and procrastinates from thought, and loses the power of action in the energy
of resolve. Thus it is that this tragedy presents a direct contrast to that of Macbeth ;
the one proceeds with the utmost slowness, the other with a crowded and breathless
rapidity.
The effect of this overbalance of the imaginative power is beautifully illustrated
in the everlasting broodings and superfluous activities of Hamlet's mind, which,
unseated from its healthy relation, is constantly occupied with the world within, and
abstracted from the world without, — ^giving substance to shadows, and throwing a
mist over all commonplace actualities. It is the nature of thought to be indefinite ;
— definiteness belongs to external imagery alone. Hence it is that the sense of sub-
limity arises, not from the sight of an outward subject, but from the beholder's re-
flection upon it ; — not from the sensuous impression, but from the imaginative reflex.
Few have seen a celebrated waterfall without feeling something akin to disappoint-
ment; it is only subsequently that the image comes back full into the mind, and
brings with it a train of grand or beautiful associations. Hamlet feek this ; his
senses are in a state of trance, and he looks upon external things as hieroglyphics.
His soliloquy : ' Oh ! that this too, too solid flesh would melt,' &c., springs from that
craving after the indefinite, — for that which is not, — which most easily besets men of
genius ; and the self-delusion common to this temper of mind is finely exemplified
in the character which Hamlet gives of himself : —
' It cannot be
But I am pigeon-Iivered, and lack gall
To make oppression bitter.'
He mistakes the seeing of his chains for the breaking of them, delays action till
action is of no use, and dies the victim of mere circumstance and accident.
With the single exception of Cymbeline, [the First Scenes of all of Shakespeare's
dramas] either place before us at one glance both the past and the future in some
effect, which implies the continuance and full agency of its cause, as in the feuds and
party-spirit of the Servants of the two houses in the first scene in Romeo and
yuliet : or in the degrading passion for shows and public spectacles, and the over-
whelming attachment for the newest successful war-chief in the Roman people,
already become a populace, contrasted with the jealousy of the nobles, in Julms
Casar ;^or they at once commence the action so as to excite a curiosity for the ex
planation in the following scenes, as in the storm of wind and waves, and the boat-
swain, in The Tempest, instead of anticipating our curiosity, as in most other First
Scenes, and in too many other First Acts ; — or they act, by contrast of diction suited
to the characters, at once to heighten the effect, and yet to give a naturalness to the
language and rhythm of the principal personages, either as that of Prospero and Mi-
randa by the appropriate lowness of the style, — or as in King John, by the equally
appropriate stateliness of official harangues or narratives, so that the after blank
verse seems to belong to the rank and quality of the speakers, and not to the poet ;
—or they strike at once the key-note, and give the predominant spirit of the play, as
in Twelfth Night and in Macbeth ; — or, finally, the First Scene comprises all these
advantages at once, as in Hamlet.
Compare the easy language of common life, in which this drama commences, with
the direful music and wild wayward rhythm and abrupt lyrics of the opening of
154 APPENDIX
Macbeth. The tone is quite familiar ; — there is no poetic description of night, no elab.
orate information conveyed by one speaker to another of what both had immediately
before their senses (such as the first distich in Addison's Cato, which is a translation
into poetry of ' Past four o'clock and a dark morning!') ; — and yet nothing border-
ing on the comic on the one hand, nor any striving of the intellect on the other. It
is precisely the language of sensation among men who feared no charge of effemi-
nacy for feeling what they had no want of resolution to bear. Yet the armor, the
dead silence, the watchfulness that first interrupts it, the welcome relief of the guard,
the cold, the broken expressions of compelled attention to bodily feelings still under
control, — all excellently accord with, and prepare for, the after gradual rise into
tragedy ; — but, above all, into a tragedy the interest of which is as eminently ad et
apud intra as that of Macbeth is directly ad extra. [The rest of Coleridge's notes
are incorporated in the commentary to the text. Ed.]
COLERIDGE (1812)
{Seven Lectures on Shakespeare and Milton, London, 1856, p. 141.) — The firsl
question we should ask ourselves is : What did Shakespeare mean when he drew the
character of Hamlet ? He never wrote anything without design, and what was his
design when he sat down to produce this tragedy ? My belief is, that he always
regarded his story before he began to write much in the same light as a painter
regards his canvas before he begins to paint : as a mere vehicle for his thoughts, — as
a ground upon which he was to work. What, then, was the point to which Shake-
speare directed himself in Hamlet ? He intended to portray a person in whose
view the external world and all its incidents and objects were comparatively dim and
of no interest in themselves, and which began to interest only when they were re-
flected in the mirror of his mind. Hamlet beheld external things in the same way
that a man of vivid imagination, who shuts his eyes, sees what has previously made
an impression on his organs. The poet places him in the most stimulating circum-
stances that a human being can be placed in. He is the heir-apparent of a throne :
his father dies suspiciously ; his mother excludes her son from his throne by marry-
ing his uncle. This is not enough ; but the Ghost of the murdered father is intro-
duced to assure the son that he was put to death by his own brother. What is the
effect upon the son ? — instant action and pursuit of revenge ? No : endless reason-
ing and hesitating, constant urging and solicitation of the mind to act, and as con-
stant an escape from action ; ceaseless reproaches of himself for sloth and negli-
gence, while the whole energy of his resolution evaporates in these reproaches.
This, too, not from cowardice, for he is drawn as one of the bravest of his time, —
not from want of forethought or slowness of apprehension, for he sees through the
very souls of all who surround him, but merely from that aversion to action which
prevails among such as have a world in themselves
[Page 148.] Shakespeare wished to impress upon us the truth: that action is the
chief end of existence, — that no faculties of intellect, however brilliant, can be con-
sidered valuable, or indeed otherwise than as misfortunes, if they withdraw us from,
or render us repugnant to action, and lead us to think and think of doing, until the
time has elapsed when we can do anything effectually. In enforcing this moral
truth, Shakespeare has shown the fulness and force of his powers; all that is amiable
and excellent in nature is combined in Hamlet, with the exception of one quality.
COLERIDGE— HAZLITT 1 55
He is a man living in meditation, called upon to act by every motive haman and
divine, but the great object of his life is defeated by continually resolving to do,
yet doing nothing but resolve.
HAZLITT (1817)
(CharacUrs of Shakespean^s Plays, London, 1817, p. 104.) — Hamlet is a name:
his speeches and sayings but tbe idle coinage of the poet's brain. What then, are
they not real ? They are as real as our own thoughts. Their reality is in the
reader's mind. It is toe who are Hamlet. This play has a prophetic truth, which
is above that of history. Whoever has become thoughtful and melancholy through
his own mishaps or those of others ; whoever has borne about with him the clouded
brow of reflection, and thought himself ' too much i' the sun ;' whoever has seen
the golden lamp of day dimmed by envious mists rising in his own breast, and could
find in the world before him only a dull blank with nothing left remarkable in it ;
whoever has known * the pangs of despised love, the insolence of office, or the spurns
which patient merit of the unworthy takes ;' he who has felt his mind sink within
him, and sadness cling to his heart like a malady; who has had his hopes blighted
and his youth staggered by the apparition of strange things ; who cannot be well at
ease while he sees evil hovering near him like a spectre ; whose powers of action
have been eaten up by thought, — ^he to whom the universe seems infinite, and him-
self nothing; whose bitterness of soul makes him careless of consequences, and
who goes to a play as his best resource to shove off, to a second remove, the evils
of life by a mock representation of them : this is the true Hamlet.
We have been so used to this tragedy that we hardly know how to criticise it any
more than we should know how to describe our own faces. But we must make such
observations as we can. It is the one of Shakespeare's plays that we think of
oftenest, because it abounds most in striking reflections on human life, and because
the distresses of Hamlet are transferred, by the turn of his mind, to the general ac-
count of humanity. Whatever happens to him we apply to ourselves, because he
applies it so himself as a means of general reasoning. He is a great moraliser, and
what makes him worth attending to is, that he moralises on his own feelings and
experience. He is not a commonplace pedant. If Lear shows the. greatest depth
of passion, Hamlet is the most remarkable for the ingenuity, originality, and un-
studied development of character. Shakespeare had more magnanimity than any
other poet, and he has shown more of it in this play than in any other. There is
no attempt to force an interest : everything is left for time and circumstance to
unfold. The attention is excited without effort ; the incidents succeed each other
as matters of coiurse ; the characters think and speak and act just as they might do
if left entirely to themselves. There is no set purpose, no straining at a point The
observations are suggested by the passing scene, — the gusts of passion come and go
like sounds of music borne upon the wind. The whole play is an exact transcript
of what might be supposed to have taken place at the court of Denmark at the
remote period of time fixed upon, before the modem refinements in morals and
manners were heard of. It would have been interesting enough to have been
admitted as a bystander in such a scene, at such a time, to have heard and seen
something of what was going on. But here we are more than spectators. We
have not only 'the outward pageants and the signs of grief,' but 'we have that
«r5thin that passes show.' We read the thoughts of the heart, we catch the
15^ APPENDIX
passions living as they rise. Other dramatic writers give us very fine versions
and paraphrases of nature; but Shakespeare, together with his own comments,
gives us the original text, that we may judge for ourselves. This is a very great
advantage.
The character of Hamlet is itself a pure effusion of genius. It is not a character
marked by strength of will, or even of passion, but by refinement of thought and
sentiment, Hamlet is as little of the hero as a man well can be ; but he is a young
and princely novice, full of high enthusiasm and quick sensibility, — the sport of
circumstances, questioning with fortune and refining on his own feelings, and forced
from the natural bias of his disposition by the strangeness of his situation. He
seems incapable of deliberate action, and is only hurried into extremities on the
spur of the occasion, when he has no time to reflect, as in the scene where he kills
Polonius, and again, when he alters the letters which Rosencrantz and Guildenstem
are taking with them to England, purporting his death. At other times, when he is
most bound to act, he remains puzzled, undecided, skeptical, dallies with his pur-
poses, till the occasion is lost, and always finds some pretence to relapse into indo-
lence and thoughtfulness again. For this reason he refuses to kill the King when
he is at his prayers
He is the prince of philosophical speculators, and because he cannot have his
revenge perfect, according to the most refined idea his wish can form, he misses it
altogether. So he scruples to trust the suggestions of the Ghost, contrives the scene
of the play to have surer proof of his uncle's guilt, and then rests satisfied with this
confirmation of his suspicions, and the success of his experiment, instead of acting
upon it. Yet he is sensible of his own weakness, taxes himself with it, and tries to
reason himself out of it. Still, he does nothing; and this very speculation on his
own infirmity only affords him another occasion for indulging it. It is not for any
want of attachment to his father or abhorrence of his murder that Hamlet is thus
dilatory, but it is more to his taste to indulge his imagination in reflecting upon
the enormity of the crime, and refining on his schemes of vengeance, than to put
them into immediate practice. • His ruling passion is to think, not to act; and any
vague pretence that flatters this propensity instantly diverts him from his previous
purposes.
The moral perfection of this character has been called in question, we think, by
those who did not understand it. It is more interesting than according to rules :
amiable, though not faultless. The ethical delineations of ' that noble and liberal
casuist' (as Shakespeare has been well called) do not exhibit the drab-colored
Quakerism of morality. His plays are not copied either from The Whole Duty of
Man, or from The Academy of Comjtliments I We confess we are a little shocked
at the want of refinement in those who are shocked at the want of refinement in
Hamlet. The want of punctilious exactness in his behavior either partakes of the
« license of the time,' or else belongs to the very excess of intellectual refinement in
the character, which makes the common rules of life, as well as his own purposes,
sit loose upon him. He may be said to be amenable only to the tribunal of his own
thoughts, and is too much taken up with the airy world of contemplation to lay as
much stress as he ought on the practical consequences of things. His habitual
principles of action are unhinged and out of joint with the time. ....
Nothing can be more affecting or beautiful than the Queen's apostrophe to Ophelia
on throwing flowers into the grave. Shakespeare was thoroughly a master of the
mixed motives of human character, and he here shows us the Queen, who was so
HAZLITT- CAMPBELL 1 5 7
criminal in some respects, not without sensibility and affection in other relations of
life. Ophelia is a character almost too exquisitely touching to be dwelt upon. Oh,
rose of May ! oh, flower too soon faded ! Her love, her madness, her death, are
described with the truest touches of tenderness and pathos. It is a character which
nobody but Shakespeare could have drawn in the way that he has done, and to the
conception of which there is not even the smallest approach, except in some of the
old romantic ballads. Her brother, Laertes, is a character we do not like so well :
he is too hot and choleric, and somewhat rhodomontade. Polonius is a perfect cha-
racter in its kind; nor is there any foundation for the objections which have been
made to the consistency of this part. It is said that he acts very foolishly and talks
very sensibly. There is no inconsistency in that. Again, that he talks wisely at
one time and foolishly at another ; that his advice to Laertes is very sensible, and
his advice to the King and Queen on the subject of Hamlet's madness is very
ridiculous. But he gives the one as a father, and is sincere in it ; he gives the other
as a mere courtier, a busybody, and is accordingly officious, garrulous, and imperti-
nent. In short, Shakespeare has been accused of inconsistency in this and othei
characters, only becausqj'he has kept up the distinction which there is in nature
between the understandings and the moral habits of men, between the absurdity *
of their ideas and the absurdity of their motives, i Polonius is not a fool, but he
makes himself so. His folly, whether in his actions or speeches, comes imder the
head of impropriety of intention.
We do not like to see our author's plays acted, and least of all, Hamlet. There
is no play that suffers so much in being transferred to the stage. Hamlet himself
seems ^hardly capable of being acted. Mr Kemble unavoidably fails in this charac-
ter from a want of ease and variety. The character of Hamlet is made up of undula-
ting lines ; it has the yielding flexibility of ' a wave o' th' sea.' Mr Kemble plays
it like a man in armor, with a determined inveteracy of purpose, in one undeviating
straight line, which is as remote from the natural grace and refined susceptibility of
the character as the sharp angles and abrupt starts which Mr Kean introduces into
the part. Mr Kean's Hamlet is as much too splenetic and rash as Mr Kemble's is too
deliberate and formal. His manner is too strong and pointed. He throws a severity
approaching to \'irulence into the common observations and answers. There is
nothing of this in Hamlet. He is, as it were, wrapped up in his reflections, and
only thinks aloud. There should therefore be no attempt to impress what he says
upon others by a studied exaggeration of emphasis or manner; no talking at his
hearers. There should be as much of the gentleman and scholar as possible infused
into the part, and as little of the actor. A pensive air of sadness should sit reluc-
tantly upon his brow, but no appearance of fixed and sullen gloom. He is full of
weakness and melancholy, but there is no harshness in his nature. He is the most
amiable of misanthropes,
T. C. [THOMAS CAMPBELL?] (1818)
{Letters on Shakespeare, Blackwood's Magazine, February, i8i8,p. 505.) — Shake-
speare himself, had he even been as great a critic as a poet, could not have written
a regular dissertation on Hamlet. So ideal, and yet so real an existence could have
been shadowed out only in the colors of poetry. When a character deals solely or
• Is not this a misprint T Should it not be ' the wisdom of their ideas 'T Ed.
1 58 APPENDIX
chiefly with this world and its events, — when it acts, and is acted upon, by objects
that have a palpable existence, we see it distinctly, as if it were cast in a material
mould, — as if it partook of the fixed and settled lineaments of the things on which
it lavishes its sensibilities and its passions. We see in such cases, the vision of an
individual soUl, as we see the vision of an individual countenance. We can describe
both, and can let a stranger into our knowledge. But how tell in words so pure, so
fine, so ideal an abstraction as Hamlet ? . . . .
When we know how unlike the action of Shakespeare's mind was to our own,—
how deep and unboundedly various his beholdings of men's minds, and of all mani-
fested existence, — how wonderful his celerity of thought, the dartings of his intel-
lect, like the lightning glimpse, to all parts of his whole range of known being, —
how can we tell that we have attained the purposes of his mind ? We can reconcile
what perhaps others cannot. How can we tell that he could not reconcile what we
cannot ? We build up carefully our conception of a character. He did not. He
found springs of being in his man, and he unlocked them. How can we tell whither,
to his conception, these flowings might tend ? How can we know what he meant
by so much in all Hamlet's discourse, in his madness, and everywhere else, that
seems to us to have no direct meaning, no derivation from Hamlet's mind ? It is
most true, that they do not seem to agree with our ideal conception of Hamlet ; but
that is what we find in living men ; and he would indeed be a sorry philosopher who
should be startled by the exhibition of some feeling or passion in a character from
which he had no reason to expect it, as if there were general laws unerringly to
guide all the operations of ' that wild tumultuous thing, the heart of man.'
[Page 506.] Indeed, I have often thought that it is idle and absurd to try a poeti-
cal character on the stage, a creature existing in a Play, however like to real human
nature it may be, precisely by the same rules which we apply to our living brethren
of mankind in the substantial drama of life. No doubt a good Play is an imitation
of life, as far as the actions, and events, and passions of a few hours can represent
those of a whole lifetime. Yet, after all, it is but a Segment of a circle that we
can behold. Were the dramatist to confine himself to that narrow limit, how little
could he achieve ! He takes, therefore, for granted a knowledge, and a sympathy,
and a passion in his spectators, that extends to, and permeates the existence of his
characters long anterior to the short period which his art can embrace. He expects,
and he expects reasonably, that we are not to look upon everything acted and said
Defore us absolutely as it is said or acted. It is his business to make us comprehend
the whole man from a part of his existence. But we are not to be passive specta-
tors. It is our business to fill up and supply. It is our business to bring to the con-
templation of an imaginary drama a knowledge of real life, and no more to cry out
against apparent inconsistencies and violations of character, as we behold them in
poetry, than as we every day behold them exemplified by living men. The pageants
that move before us on the stage, however deeply they may interest us, are after all
mere strangers. It is Shakespeare alone who can give to fleeting phantoms the defi-
nite interest of real personages. But we ought not to turn this glorious power
against himself. We ought not to demand inexorably the same perfect, and uni-
versal, and embracing truth of character in an existence brought before us in a few
hurried scenes (which is all a Play can be) that we sometimes may think we find in
a real being, after long years of intimate knowledge, and which, did we know more,
would perhaps seem to us to be truth no longer, but a chaos of the darkest and
tvildest inconsistencies.
CAMPBELL 1 59
[Page 508.] If there is anything disproportionate in [Hamlet's] mind, it seems
to be this only, — that intellect is in excess. It is even ungovernable, and too
subtle. His own description of perfect man, ending with ' In apprehension how
like a god !' appears to me consonant with this character, and spoken in the high
and overwrought consciousness of intellect. Much that requires explanation in the
Play may perhaps be explained by this predominance and consciousness of great
intellectual power. Is it not possible that the instantaneous idea of feigning himself
mad belongs to this ? It is the power most present to his mind, and therefore in
that, though in the denial of it, is his first thought to place his defence. So might
we suppose a brave man of gigantic bodily strength counterfeiting cowardice and
imbecility until there came a moment for the rousing up of vengeance
Hamlet never gets farther, I believe, than one step, — that of self-protection in
feigning himself mad. He sees no course clear enough to satisfy his understanding ;
and with all due deference to those critics in conduct who seem disposed to censure
his dilatoriness, I should be glad if anybody would point out one. He is therefore
by necessity irresolute ; but he feels that he is letting time pass ; and the conscious-
ness of duty undone weighs down his soul. He thus comes to dread the clear know*
ledge of his own situation, and of the duties arising from it.
[Page 510.] Shakespeare never could have intended to represent [Hamlet's] love
to Ophelia as very profound. If he did, how can we ever account for Hamlet's
first exclamation, when in the churchyard he learns that he is standing by her grave,
and beholds her coffin ? ' What, the fair Ophelia !' Was this all that Hamlet
would have uttered, when struck into sudden conviction by the ghastliest terrors of
death, that all he loved in human life had perished ? We can with difficulty recon-
cile such a tame ejaculation, even with extreme tenderness and sorrow. But had it
been in the soul of Shakespeare to show Hamlet in the agony of hopeless despair,
—and in hopeless despair he must at that moment have been, had Ophelia been all
in all to him, — is there in all his writings so utter a failure in the attempt to give
vent to overwhelming passion ? When, afterwards, Hamlet leaps into the grave, do
we see in that any power of love? I am sorry to confess that the whole of that
scene is to me merely painful. It is anger with Laertes, not love for Ophelia, that
makes Hamlet leap into the grave. Laertes's conduct, he afterwards tells us, puts
him into a towering passion, — a state of mind which it is not easy to reconcile with
almost any kind of sorrow for the dead Ophelia. Perhaps, in this, Shakespeare may
have departed from nature. But had he been attempting to describe the behavior
of an impassioned lover at the grave of his beloved, I should be compelled to feel
that he had not merely departed from nature, but that he had offered her the most
profane violation and insult.
Hamlet is afterwards made acquainted with the sad history of Ophelia, — he knows
that to the death of Polonius, and his own imagined madness, irto~b5~attrib«ted her
miserable catastrophe. Yet, after the burial-scene, he seems utterly to have forgotten
mat Ophelia ever existed ; nor is there, as far as I recollect, a single allusion to her
throughout the rest of the drama. The only way of accounting for this seems to be
that Shakespeare had himself forgotten her, — that with her last rites she vanished
from the world of his memory. But this of itself shows that it was not his intention
to represent Ophelia as the dearest of all earthly things or thoughts to Hamlet, or
surely there would have been some melancholy, some miserable hauntings of her
image. But, even as it is, it seems nor a little unaccountable that Hamlet should
have been so slightly affected by her death.
I60 APPENDIX
Of the character of Ophelia, and the situation she holds in the action of the play,
I need say little. Everything about her is young, beautiful, artless, innocent, and
touching. She comes before us in striking contrast to the Queen, who, fallen as she
is, feels the influence of her simple and happy virgin purity. Amid the frivolity,
flattery, fawning, and artifice of a corrupted court, she moves in all the unpolluted
loveliness of nature. She is like an artless, gladsome, and spotless shepherdess,
with the gracefulness of society hanging like a transparent veil over her natural
beauty. But we feel, from the first, that her lot is to be mournful. The world in
which she lives is not worthy of her. And soon, as we connect her destiny with
Hamlet, we know that darkness is to overshadow her, and that sadness and sorrow
will step in between her and the ghost-haunted avenger of his father's murder.
Soon as our pity is excited for her, it continues gradually to deepen ; and when she
appears in her madness, we are not more prepared to weep over all its most pathetic
movements than we afterwards are to hear of her death. Perhaps the description
of that catastrophe by the Queen is poetical rather than dramatic; but its ex-
quisite beauty prevails, and Ophelia, dying and dead, is still the same Ophelia that
first won our love. Perhaps the very forgetfulness of her, throughout the remainder
of the play, leaves the soul at full liberty to dream of the departed. She has passed
av/ay from the earth like a beautiful air, — a delightful dream. There would have
been no place for her in the agitation and tempest of the final catastrophe.
MRS JAMESON (1832)
{Characteristics of Women, London, 1833. Second edition, vol. i, p. 254.) — Ophelia,
— poor Ophelia ! Oh far too soft, too good, too fair to be cast among the briers of
this working-day world, and fall and bleed upon the thorns of life ! What shall be
said of her ? for eloquence is mute before her ! Like a strain of sad, sweet music
which comes floating by us on the wings of night and silence, and which we rather
feel than hear, — like the exhalation of the violet dying even upon the sense it
charms, — like the snow-flake dissolved in air before it has caught a stain of earth, —
like the light surf severed from the billow, which a breath disperses, — such is the
character of Ophelia ; so exquisitely delicate, it seems as if a touch would profane
it ; so sanctified in our thoughts by the last and worst of human woes, that we
scarcely dare to consider it too deeply. The love of Ophelia, which she never once
confesses, is like a secret which we have stolen from her, and which ought to die
upon our hearts as upon her own. Her sorrow asks not words, but tears ; and her
madness has precisely the same effect that would be produced by the spectacle of '
real insanity, if brought before us : we feel inclined to turn away, and veil our eyes
in reverential pity and too painful sympathy.
[Page 259.] It is the helplessness of Ophelia, arising merely from her innocence,
which melts us with such profound pity. She is so young that neither her mind nor
her person have attained maturity; she is not aware of the nature of her own feel-
ings ; they are prematurely developed in their full force before she has strength to
bear them ; and love and grief together rend and shatter the frail texturf of her ex-
istence, like the burning fluid poured into a crystal vase. She says very little, and
what she does say seems rather intended to hide than to reveal the emotions of hef
heart ; yet in those few words we are made as perfectly acquainted with her cha-
racter, and with what is passing in her mind, as if she had thrown forth her soul
with all the glowing eloquence of Juliet. Passion with Juliet seems innate, a part
JAMESON— CAMPBELL l6l
of her being, ' as dwells the gathered lightning in a cloud ;' and we never fancy her
but with the dark splendid eyes and Titian-like complexion of the South. While
in Ophelia we recognize as distinctly the pensive, fair-haired, blue-eyed daughter of
the North, whose heart seems to vibrate to the passion she has inspired, more con-
scious of being loved than of loving ; and yet, alas ! loving in the silent depths of
her young heart far more than she is loved.
[Page 262.] When her father catechises her, he extorts from her in short sen-
tences, uttered with bashful reluctance, the confession of Hamlet's love for her, but
not a word of her love for him. The whole scene is managed with inexpressible
delicacy; it is one of those instances common in Shakespeare, in which we are
allowed to perceive what is passing in the mind of a person without any conscious-
ness on their part. Only Ophelia herself is unaware that while she is admitting the
extent of Hamlet's courtship, she is also betraying how deep is the impression it has
made, how entire the love with which it is returned.
[Page 276.] Of her subsequent madness, what can be said ? What an affecting,
what an astonishing, picture of a mind utterly, hopelessly wrecked ! past hope, past
cure ! There is the frenzy of excited passion, — there is the madness caused by
intense and continued thought, — there is the delirium of fevered nerves; but
Ophelia's madness is distinct from these : it is not the suspension, but the utter
destruction, of the reasoning powers; it is the total imbecility which, as medical
people well know, frequently follows some terrible shock to the spirits. Constance
is frantic; Lear is mad; Ophelia is insane. Her sweet mind lies in fragments
before us, — a pitiful spectacle ! Her wild, rambling fancies ; her aimless, broken
speeches ; her quick transitions from gayety to sadness, — each equally purposeless
and causeless ; her snatches of old ballads, such as perhaps her old nurse sang her
to sleep with in her infancy, — are all so true to the life, that we forget to wonder,
and can only weep. It belonged to Shakespeare alone so to temper such a picture
that we can endure to dwell upon it, —
' Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself.
She turns to favour and to prettiness.*
That in her madness she should exchange her bashful silence for empty babbling,
her sweet maidenly demeanor for the impatient restlessness that spurns at straws,
and say and sing precisely what she never could or would have uttered had she
been in possession of her reason, is so far from being an impropriety, that it is an
additional stroke of nature. It is one of the symptoms in this species of insanity,
as we are assured by physicians. I have myself known one instance in the case of
a young Quaker girl, whose character resembled that of Ophelia, and whose malady
arose from a similar cause.
THOMAS CAMPBELL [?] (1833)
{^Blackwood's Magazine, March, 1833, p. 407.*)— Neglected had [Ophelia] been by
one and all, — all but Horatio, that noble soul of unpretending worth, and he knew
not what ailed her till she was past all cure. He it is who feelingly, and poetically,
and truly describes the maniac; he it is who brings her in; he it is who follows her
• I infer that this article was written by Campbell, because in it the writer refers to himself as the
author of the Letters on Shakespeare , quoted on p, 157; and these Letters are signed T C Ed
Vou II.— IX
1 62 APPENDIX '
»way, — dumb all the while ! And who with right soul but must have been speech-
less amidst these gentle ravings ? The adulterous and incestuous only it is that
speak. ' How now, Ophelia ?' ' Nay! but, Ophelia,' so minceth the Queen. • How
do you, pretty lady ?' * Pretty Ophelia !' so stuttereth the King. Faugh ! the noisome
and loathsome hypocrites ! So that her poor lips were but mute, both would have fain
seen them sealed up with the blue mould of the grave ! But Laertes, — he with all
his faults and sins has a noble heart, — his words are pathetic or passionate. Horatio
says * her speech is nothing.' It is nearly nothing. But the snatches of old songs,
they are something, — as they come flowing in music from their once-hushed resting-
places far within her memory, which they had entered in her days of careless child-
hood, and they have a meaning now that gives them doleful utterance. It is Ham-
let who is the maniac's Valentine. * You are merry, my lord,' is all she said to him,
as he lay with his head in her lap at the play. She would have died rather than sing to
Hamlet that night the songs she sings now, — yet she had not sung them now had she
not been crazed with love ! ' Where is the beauteous majesty of Denmark?' She
must mean Hamlet, ' He is dead and gone, lady,' &c, Means she her father ?
Perhaps, — but most likely not. Hamlet ? It is probable. Mayhap but the dead man
of the song. Enough that it is of death, and burial. Or to that verse, as haply to
others too, she may attach no meaning at all. A sad key once struck, the melan-
choly dirge may flow on of itself. Memory and Consciousness accompanying not
one another in her insanity ! ' They say the owl was a baker's daughter. Lord, we
know what we are, but know not what we may be. God be at your table.' The
King says, ' conceit upon her father.' Adulterous beast ! it was no conceit on her
father. The words refer to an old story often related to children to deter them from
illiberal behavior to poor people. Ophelia had learnt the story in the nursery, and
she who was always charitable thinks of it now, — God only knows why, — and Shake-
speare, who had heard such dim humanities from the living lips of the deranged, — as
many have done who are no Shakespeares, — gave them utterance from the lips of
the sweetest phantom that ever wailed her woes in hearing of a poet's brain.
DR MAGINN (1836)
{Shakespeare Papers, London, i860, p. 275.) — Shakespeare has written plays, and
these plays were acted ; and they succeeded ; and by their popularity the author
achieved a competency, on which he was enabled to retire from the turmoils of a
theatrical life to the enjoyment of a friendly society and his own thoughts. Yet am
1 well convinced it is impossible that any one of Shakespeare's dramatic works, —
and especially of his tragedies, touching one of which I mean to speak, — ever could
be satisfactorily represented upon the stage. Laying aside all other reasons, it would
be, in the first place, neccssaiy to have a company such as was never yet assembled,
and no money could at any time have procured, — a company, namely, in which every
actor should be a man of mind and feeling; for in these dramas every part is a cha-
racter fashioned by the touch of Genius; and therefore every part is important. But
of no play is this more strictly true than it is of that strange, and subtle, and weird
work, Ilamkt : 'The heartache. And the thousand natural ills the flesh is heir to;'
human infirmities, human afilictions, and supernatural agony are so blended, — ques-
tions and considerations of Melancholy, of Pathology, Metaphysics, and Dcmonology
MAG INN I ^Z
are so intertangled, — ^the powers of man's Will, which are well-nigh almighty, and
the dictates of inexorable Fate, are brought into such an appalling yet dim collision,
tliat to wring a meaning from a work else inscrutable requires the exercise of every
faculty, and renders it necessary that not an incident should escape the observation,
that not a word should be passed over, without being scanned curiously.
Hamlet is, even more peculiarly than Lear, or Macbeth, or Othello, a play for the
study. And not this alone ; for it is, in good sooth, a work for the high student,
who, through the earnestness of his Love, the intensity of his Thought, the per
vading purity of his Reason, and the sweep and grasp of his Imagination, is, the
while he reads, always thrilled by kindred inspirations, — sometimes visited by dreams,
and not left unblessed by visions. To speak in other words, Hamlet is essentially a
work for the student of Genius. And Genius, I consider with Coleridge, to be the
action of Imagination and Reason, — the highest faculty of intellectual man, as con-
tradistinguished from Understanding, that interprets for us the various phenomena
of the world in which we live, giving to each its objectivity.
[Page 281.] Consider Hamlet in whatsoever light you will, it stands quite alone,
most peculiarly apart, from every other play of Shakespeare's. A vast deal has
been written upon the subject, and by a great number of commentators, by men
bom in different countries, educated after different fashions. . . . We might hope to see
a second Shakespeare, if the world had ever produced a commentator worthy of
Hamlet. The qualities and faculties such a man should possess . would be, indeed,
' rare in their separate excellence, wonderful in their combination.' Such a man as
Shakespeare imagined in him to whom his hero bequeathed the task of ' Reporting
him and his cause aright To the unsatisfied.'
[Page 325.] For this reason, also, Hamlet stands quite alone amongst Shake-
speare's plays. The Spirit of Love is weakest in Hamlet, and therefore it com-
mands but little human sympathy. Ophelia does love, and she dies. There is a
majesty in her gentleness, which you Worship with a gush of feeling in her earlier
scenes of the play ; the painful nature of her appearances, whilst mad, makes you
feel that death is a release ; and that release comes in an appropriate form, — the
gentle, uncomplaining, sorrow-stricken lady dies gently, and without a murmur of
bitterness or reproach, — the meek lady is no more, but the tragedy proceeds.
[Page 327.] I may here obser\-e that, for a play so bloody for the English vulgar,
and in itself so morally tragic for the scholar and the gentleman, Hamlet is for both,
in its performance on the stage, strangely beholden to spectacle, and to its comic
scenes or snatches of scenes : the visible show of the Ghost, the processions, funeral,
squabble at Ophelia's grave, fencing-match, and at the last the • quarry that cries on,
havoc !' have much power over the common spectator. I doubt if he could abide
it without these, and without having Polonius buffooned for him, and, to no small
extent, Hamlet himself; as he always was whenever I saw the part played, and as
Xht great critic, Dr Jchnson, would seem to think he ought to be. For he says, ' the
pretended madness of Hamlet causes much mirthl I P
[Page 330.] In a word, Hamlet, to my mind, is essentially a psychological exer-
cise and study. The hero, from whose acts and feelings everything in the drama
takes its color and pursues its course, is doubtless insane. But the species of in-
tellectual disturbance, the peculiar form of mental malady, under which he suffers,
is of the subtlest character.
1 64 APPENDIX
HALLAM (1837)
{Introduction to the Literature of Europe, vol. ii, p. 201, New York, 1868.) —
There seems to have been a period of Shakespeare's life when his heart was ill at
ease, and ill content with the world or his own conscience ; the memory of hours
misspent, the pang of affection misplaced or unrequited, the experience of man's
worser nature which intercourse with ill-chosen associates, by choice or circum-
stance, peculiarly teaches ; these, as they sank down into the depths of his great
mind, seem not only to have inspired into it the conception of Lear and Timon, but
that of one primary character, the censurer of mankind. This type is first seen in
the philosophic melancholy of Jaques, gazing with an undiminished serenity, and
with a gayety of fancy, though not of manners, on the follies of the world. It assumes
a graver cast in the exiled Duke of the same play, and next one rather more severe
in the Duke of Measure for Measure. In all these, however, it is merely contem-
plative philosophy. In Hamlet this is mingled with the impulses of a perturbed
heart under the pressure of extraordinary circumstances ; it shines no longer, as in
the former characters, with a steady light, but plays in fitful coruscations amid feigned
gayety and extravagance. In Lear it is the flash of sudden inspiration across the
incongruous imagery of madness ; in Timon it is obscured by the exaggerations of
misanthropy. These plays all belong to nearly the same period : As You Like It
being usually referred to 1600, Hamlet, in its altered form, to about 1602, Timon to
the same year, Measure for Measure to 1603, and Lear to 1604. In the later plays
of Shakespeare, especially in Macbeth and The Tempest, much of moral specula-
tion will be found, but he has never returned to this type of character in the per-
sonages.
JONES VERY (1839)
{Essays and Poems. Hamlet. Boston, 1839, p. 85.) — If Shakespeare's master-
passion then was, as we have seen it to be, the love of intellectual activity for its
own sake, his continual satisfaction with the simple pleasure of existence must have
made him more than commonly liable to the fear of death, or at least made that
change the great point of interest in his hours of reflection. Often and often must
he have thought, that to be or not to be forever was a question which must be set-
tled ; as it is the foundation, and the only foundation, upon which we feel that there
can rest one thought, one feeling, or one purpose worthy of a human soul. Here lie
the materials out of which this remarkable tragedy was built up. From the wrest-
ling of his own soul with the great enemy, comes that depth and mystery which
startles us in Hamlet. It is to this condition that Hamlet has been reduced, ....
He fears nothing save the loss of existence. But this thought thundere at the very
base of the cliiT on which, shipwrecked of every other hope, he had been thrown
[Page 88.] This is the hinge on which his every endeavor turns. Such a thought
as this might well prove more than an equal counterpoise to any incentive to what
we call action. The obscurity that lies over these depths of Hamlet's character arises
from this unique position in which the poet exhibits him ; a position which opens to
us the basis of Shakespeare's own being, and which, though dimly visible to all,
is yet familiar to but few
[Page 91.] This view will account for Hamlet's indecision. With him the nert
VER Y-'HUNTER 1 65
world, by the intense action of his thoughts, had become as real as the present; and,
whenever this is the case, thought must always at first take precedence of action.
[Page 93.] Even the revenge which suggests itself to Hamlet is not of this world.
To others it would assume a character of the most savage enormity, and one from
which, of all men, the tender and conscientious prince would soonest shrink. But
with him it is as natural as his most ordinary action. He has looked through the
slight afflictions of this world, and his prophetic eye is fixed on the limitless extent
beyond. Here, and here alone, will the fire of the King's incestuous lust bum un-
quenched, and the worm of remorse never die.
[Page 98.] We need not go further to show, what will now be apparent, the
tendency of Shakespeare to overact this particular part of Hamlet, and thus give it
an obscurity from too close a connection with his own mind, — a state so difficult to
approach. It is plain that to him the thought of death, and the condition of being
to which that change might subject him, would ever be his nearest thoughts ; and
that, wherever there exists the strong sense of life, these ideas must follow hard upon
it. In the question of Hamlet the thoughts, as well as the words, have their natural
order, when ' To be ' is followed by ' not to be.'
[Page 100.] The thoughts of this soliloquy are not found to belong to a particular
part of this play, but to be the spirit of the whole. ' To be, or not to be^ is written
over its every scene, from the entrance of the Ghost to the rude inscription over the
gateway of the churchyard ; and whenever we shall have built up in ourselves the
true conception of this the greatest of the poets, * To be, or not to be,' will be found
to be chiselled in golden letters on the very keystone of that arch which tells us of
his memory.
[Page 103.] In the height of emotion and mental conflict to which he is raised
by these contemplations, he finds relief, as in the graveyard and after his first inter-
view with the Ghost, in expressions which seem strangely at variance with each
other, but which, in reality, are but natural alternations. So much does he dwell in
the world of spirits, that there is a sort of ludicrous aspect upon which his mind
seizes as often as it returns to this. ♦ There is something,' says Scott, ' in my deepest
afflictions and most gloomy hours, that compels me to mix with my distresses strange
snatches of mirth, which have no mirth in them.'
JOSEPH HUNTER (1845)
{^New Illustrations of the Life, Studies, and Writings of Shakespeare, London,
1845, vol. ii, p. 205.) — Nothing in the dramatic art ever exceeded the skill with
which the First Act is throughout constructed. It is in the highest style of tragic
grandeur, making only this one reasonable claim upon our indulgence, that we must
lay aside our modem philosophy, and loek upon ourselves as belonging to a people
who were firm believers in the reality of such spectral appearances. Now, even
with all our skepticism, the poet has given to the scenes the spirit of reality. We
have neither time nor inclination to doubt. There is the majestic spectre, and we
seem to see and hear it. Had the poet proceeded continuously, according to what
from this opening may be concluded to have been at first his design, as far as we
have reason to believe that he had conceived a design, and shown us the young
prince made acquainted with the manner of his father's death by the supernatural
visitation, and at the same time engaged to avenge it on his uncle, not daring to do
1 66 APPENDIX
so openly, and thinking that the safest means of accomplishing his object was for a
time to counterfeit lunacy, then seeking the opportunity, now opposed from without,
now impeded by doubts of his uncle's guilt rising in his own mind, fearful of im-
plicating his mother in the suspicions respecting his father's mode of death, but at
length, in full satisfaction of his uncle's guilt, executing the Ghost's behest in some
open and solemn manner : — this, with such an under-plot as is here wrought in, of
his attachment to Ophelia, the effect of his assumed madness upon her, the impedi-
ments arising out of this attachment to the execution of the main purpose, would
have formed the plot of as magnificent a tragedy as hath ever been conceived from
the days when first the more awful passions were represented on the stage.
It would have afforded also scope for all that divereity of character and that
variety of incident which we find in the play as it now is, even, if that were thought
a suitable scene for such a drama, to the introduction of the play within the play, by
which Hamlet seeks to convince himself of his uncle's guilt ; scope also for all
those striking scenes and speeches, to which, and not to that in which lies the chief
and highest excellence of dramatic writing, Hamlet owes that high popularity it has
so long maintained. No one can be insensible to the power of such a composition
as this ; and yet, of all the greater works, may not this be considered as that which
is, on the whole, least honorable to him, showing us what he could do, and showing
us also what a noble promise he has left unfulfilled ?
To borrow an expression from the language of criticism in a sister art, the piece
is spotty. The spots are beautiful when contemplated in themselves, still they are
but spots.
There is also more by which the moral sense is offended in this play than in any
other ; offended, I mean, not with the characters, but with the author. The idea of
a human being seeking to avenge a great and unpunished crime by the assassination
of the criminal, even when we see that it involves parricide, however at variance it
may be with Christian feeling, does not offend, because we see it to be essential to
the very existence of such a story, and to belong to the history as it is found in the
old chronicles of Denmark; but to make Hamlet forbear to execute his purpose
when a favorable opportunity is presented, for the reason there given, is hideous,
and more the affair of the poet than the historian. But the still greater offence is
the introduction of Ophelia in a state of mind which, if ever it did exist in nature,
ought to be screened from every human eye, nor should the sex be profaned by the
remotest suspicion of its possible existence.
We have, also, here a pandering to the corrupt English taste in tragedy. * An
English audience at a tragedy love a clear stage ;' and certainly in Hamlet they may
be gratified. We start with the ghost of a murdered king; then there die the sue
ceeding King, the Queen, Hamlet, Polonius and his two children Laertes and
Ophelia, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern. Of the conspicuous charactere only Horatio
is left alive. An acquaintance with the ancient tragedy would have taught him that
this slaughter is committed under an erroneous impression of the requisites of
tragedy for effect, and the true source of the pleasure we derive from it. Indeed,
it is but too manifest that Shakespeare had a finer idea of comedy than of tragedy;
great, however, in both.
The introduction of Osric and Fortinbras, new characters, towards the close of
the play, is contrary to all rule; and though Shakespeare may be allowed to disre-
gard the rules of dramatic art, and to be a law to himself, yet it may be submitted
to the judgement of any one, whether it would not have been well for him to have
HUNTER— Q UAR TERL Y RE VIE W 1 67
conformed himself to the rule in this instance, especially in reference to the intro-
duction of such a character as Osric. Fortinbras may be tolerated, as Horatio must
have some one to listen to his summing up.
QUARTERLY REVIEW (1847)
(Vol. Ixxix, 1847, p. 318.) — Every word which drops from the lips of Shake-
speare's personages is the appropriate expression of their inward feelings; and owing
to that characteristic we have mentioned of the mighty master, — that he will not
stoop to be his own expositor in violation of nature, — we miss the spirit in which
they speak unless we note accurately their position at the time. It is from the ne-
glect of this precaution that the opening of Hamlet, which is alive with excitement,
striking contrasts, and the most delicate touches of nature, seems to have been taken
by the editors, old and new, for nothing more than an unimpassioned conversation
between two sentinels. Twice had Bernardo been encountered on the platform by
the Ghost of the King, and he is now for the third time advancing at midnight to
the scene of the apparition, in the belief that he will again behold the dreaded
spectre which had ' almost distilled him to jelly with the act of fear.' In this state
of mind he would be startled at every sight and sound, — at the sighing of the wind,
and the shadows cast by the moon. Thus alive to apprehension, he hears advancing
footsteps ; and the question, * Who's there ?' is, to our ear, the sudden, instinctive
exclamation of uncontrollable alarm, and not the ordinary challenge between one
sentinel and another. Fear, by concentrating the senses, endows them with a
supernatural acuteness ; and Shakespeare was not unmindful of the fact when he
made the listening, breathless Bernardo to be first conscious of their mutual ap-
proach. Francisco, the sentinel on duty, not recognizing a comrade in the terrified
voice which hails liim, replies: ' Nay, answer me ; stand and unfold yourself*
But the moment Bernardo, reassured at hearing him speak, calls out the watchword,
' Long live the king !' in his habitual tones, the sentinel knows his fellow, and greets
him by name. What follows is an exquisite specimen of Shakespeare's attention
to the subtlest minutiae. He shows us Bernardo eager with expectation, feverish to
anticipate the appearance of the Ghost, and to keep the secret from extending fur-
ther, by a circumstance that would be the certain consequence, — that he goes earlier
than usual, and arrives at his post with unwonted punctuality. ' You come most
carefully upon your hour,' says Francisco, And how nicely true to nature is the
rejoinder of Bernardo, that it has already struck ! He wishes to repel the notion
that he is before his accustomed time, for, with a guilty feeling, he fears to be sus-
pected. He then bids Francisco get to bed ; and in the answer of Francisco we
have another slight trait which strikingly exemplifies how careful Shakespeare was to
preserve entire consistency in the conduct of his characters : —
'Fran. For this relief much thanks. 'Tis bitter cold.
And I am sick at heart.'
And because he is sick at heart, absorbed in the contemplation of his individual
griefs, he has not remarked the ill-concealed agitation of Bernardo. With a mind
at ease, his attention would have been excited an I his curiosity aroused. As he is
going, Bernardo asks, with an off-hand air of assumed indifference, « Have you had
quiet guard ?' — an inquiry he dares not make in a formal way, in direct conversation,
lest he should betray his anxiety. The assurance he receives, — * Not a mouse stir-
ring,'—in relieving him as to the hours past, fixes his thoughts the more excltt-
168 APPENDIX
Bively on the coining moments. He has no wish to be left alone. He is impatiea
to be joined by his companions, and his parting word to Francisco is —
' Well, good night.
If you do meet Horatio and Marcellus,
The rivals of my watch, bid them make haste/
Francisco has scarcely left Bernardo, when, hearing Horatio and Marcellus com-
ing, he challenges them : — * Stand, ho ! Who is there ?' The few words which pass
in the nex half-page, commonplace as they appear to the inattentive reader, are
strokes of character the finest and the most expressive. Marcellus had been Ber
nardo's associate on the two preceding nights, and he shares Bernardo's solicitude.
Horatio is skeptical about the Ghost, and maintains it to be a delusion. The differ-
ence of their emotions is seen in their replies to the interrogation of the sentinel.
Horatio, light-hearted and disengaged, is the first to answer. He calls out quickly
and buoyantly, ' Friends to this ground.' With slow solemnity, Marcellus adds,
« And liegemen to the Dane.' His mind is upon the mysterious phantom. He
marvels what it forbodes. His vague suspicion that it portends some treason or mis-
fortune to the State leads him to join to the careless exclamation of Horatio a pro-
testation of their loyalty. Following the current of his thoughts, he is lost in medi-
tation ; he is unconscious of the presence of Francisco, who has come up with them ;
and when the latter says, ' Give you good night,' he exclaims, like one awakened
from a trance, ^O ! farewell, honest soldier !' On any other supposition the ejacula-
tion would be unmeaning, and it is conclusive to show what Shakespeare intended.
The reverie of Marcellus once broken, he turns from fruitless speculation to the
business of the night ; and, in the same breath in which he bids Francisco farewell,
inquires who has relieved him, that he may be satisfied it is no other than his own
partner, Bernardo. Francisco goes his way. Marcellus shouts, ' Holloa ! Bernardo !'
' Say,' returns Bernardo, without stopping to reply directly to the salutation. * What !
i? Horatio there?' Horatio is the scholar that is to accost the Ghost; he is the
supprior on whom both place their reliance, and Bernardo is all eagerness to learn
that he has not failed in his appointment. Horatio speaks for himself, and continues
to manifest his incredulity in his jocular rejoinder, « A piece of him.' Bernardo, over-
joyed to be relieved of his solitude, receives them with such rapturous warmth, —
' Welcome, Horatio ! welcome, good Marcellus !' — that Marcellus imagines from his
excited manner that the Ghost has visited him already. ♦ What,' he says, not so
much inquiringly as taking it for granted, — * What, has this thing appear'd again
to-night ?' The answer of Bernardo, ' I have seen nothing,' brings Marcellus to
Horatio's disbelief of the whole story : ' Horatio says 'tis but our fantasy,' &c.
The compression of the scene is wonderful, and there is, perhaps, no passage in
any drama which exhibits equal variety in the same space. The fright of Bernardo,
his suppressed emotion, his dislike to be by himself, the unconsciousness of Fran-
cisco, the levity of Horatio, the abstraction and highly wrought feelings of Mar-
cellus, the intense excitement in the greeting with Bernardo, are all brought out
clear and well defined in about twenty lines. Condensed and rapid as is the dia-
logue, it is complete. Nothing is omitted that was proper to the occasion. Nor is
it the least remarkable part of the art that, in the midst of so much animation, and
the play and conflict of so many passions, there is not a tinge of exaggeration. The
soberness of reality is preserved throughout.
[Page 333.] The universality of Shakespeare's genius is in some^sort reflected in
Hamlet. He has a mind wise and witty, abstract and practical; the utmost reach
QUAR TERL V RE VIE W 1 69
of philosophical contemplation is mingled with the most penetrating sagacity in the
affairs of life ; playful jest, biting satire, sparkling repartee, with the darkest and
deepest thoughts that can agitate man. He exercises all his various faculties with
surprising readiness. He passes without an effort ' from grave to gay, from lively to
severe,' — from his everyday character to personated lunacy. He divines, with the
rapidity of lightning, the nature and motives of those who are brought into contact
with him ; fits in a moment his bearing and retorts to their individual peculiarities ;
is equally at home whether he is mocking Polonius with hidden raillery, or dissipa-
ting Ophelia's dream of love, or crushing the sponges with sarcasm and invective,
or talking euphuism with Osric, and satirising while he talks it ; whether he is utter-
ing wise maxims, or welcoming the players with facetious graciousness, — probing the
inmost souls of others, or sounding the mysteries of his own. His philosophy stands
out conspicuous among the brilliant faculties which contend for the mastery. It is
the quality which gives weight and dignity to the rest. It intermingles with all his
actions. He traces the most trifling incidents up to their general laws. His natural
disposition is to lose himself in contemplation. He goes thinking out of the world.
The commonest ideas that pass through his mind are invested with a wonderful
freshness and originality. His meditations in the churchyard are on the trite notion
that all ambition leads but to the grave. But what condensation, what variety, what
picturesqueness, what intense, unmitigated gloom I It it is the finest sermon that
was ever preached against the vanities of life.
So far, we imagine, all are agreed. But the motives which induce Hamlet to defer
his revenge are still, and perhaps will ever remain, debateable ground. The favorite
doctrine of late is that the thinking part of Hamlet predominated over the active, —
that he was as weak and vacillating in performance as he was great in speculation.
If this theory were borne out by his general conduct, it would no doubt amply
account for his procrastination ; but there is nothing to countenance, and much to
refute, the idea. Shakespeare has endowed him with a vast energy of will. There
could be no sterner resolve than to abandon every purpose of existence, that he
might devote himself, unfettered, to his revenge ; nor was ever resolution better
observed. He breaks through his passion for Ophelia, and keeps it down, under
the most trying circumstances, with such inflexible firmness, that an eloquent critic
has seriously questioned whether his attachment was real. The determination of
his character appears again at the death of Polonius. An indecisive mind would
have been shocked, if not terrified, at the deed. Hamlet dismisses him with a few
contemptuous words, as a man would brush away a fly. He talks with even greater
indifference of Rosencrantz and Guildenstem, whom he sends ' to sudden death, not
shriving-time allowed.' He has on these, and, indeed, on all occasions, a short and
absolute way which only belongs to resolute souls. The features developed in his
very hesitation to kill the King are inconsistent with the notion that his hand refuses
to perform what his head contrives. He is always trying to persuade himself into a
conviction that it is his duty, instead of seeking for evasions.* He is seized with a
• His reasons for not killing the King when he is praying haVe been held to be an excuse. But if
Shakespeare had anticipated the criticism, he could not have guarded against it more effectually.
Hamlet has just tittered the soliloquy :
' •^— Now could I drink hot blood.
And do such bitter business as the day
Would quake to look on.*
In tbis frame he passes bis uncle's closet, and is for once, at least, equal to any emergency. Uis first
1 70 APPENDIX
savage joy when the Play supplies him with indubitable proof of his ancle's guilt.
His language, then, to Horatio is :
' — — is't not perfect conscience
To quit him with this arm ?'
He wants, it is clear, neither will nor nerve to strike the blow. There is, perhaps,
one supposition that will satisfy all the phenomena, and it has, to us, the recom-
mendation that we think it is the solution suggested by Shakespeare himself. Ham-
let, in a soliloquy, charges the delay on, —
' Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple
Of thinking too precisely on th' event.*
The oblivion is merely the effect of the primary cause, — ' the craven scruple,' — ^the
conscience which renders him a coward. His uncle, after all, is King; he is the
brother of his father, and the husband of his mother, and it was inevitable that he
should shrink, in his cooler moments, from becoming his assassin. His hatred to
his uncle, who has disgraced his family, and disappointed his ambition, gives him
personal inducements to revenge, which further blunt his purpose by leading him to
doubt the purity of his motives. The admonition of the Ghost to him is, not to
taint his mind in the prosecution of his end ; and no sooner has the Ghost vanished
than Hamlet, invoking the aid of supernatural powers, exclaims :
* O all you host of heaven I O earth I what else?
And shall I couple hell ? O, fie I
But the hell, whose support he rejects, is for ever returnmg to his mind and startling
his conscience. , It is this that makes him wish for the confirmation of the Play, for
evil spirits may have abused him. It is this which begets the apathy he terms
oblivion, for inaction affords relief to doubt. It is this which produces his incon-
sistencies, for conscience calls him different ways ; and when he obeys in one direc-
tion he is haunted by the feeling that he should have gone in the other. If he con-
templated the performance of a deed which looks outwardly more like murder than
judicial retribution, he trembles lest, after all, he should be perpetrating an unnatural
crime ; or if, on the other hand, he turns to view his uncle's misdeeds, he fancies
there is more of cowardly scrupulosity than justice in his backwardness, and he
abounds in self-reproaches at the weakness of his hesitation. And thus he might
for ever have halted between two opinions if the King himself, by filling up the
measure of his iniquities, had not swept away his scruples.
HUDSON (1848)
{^Lectures on Shakespeare, New York, 1848. Second edition, vol. ii, p. lOl.)—
Properly speaking, therefore, Hamlet lacks not force of will, as some have argued,
but only force of self-will ; that is, his will is strictly subjected to his reason and
conscience, and is of course powerless when it comes in conflict with them ; where
thought is to kill him at his devotions ; his second, that in that case Claudius will go to heaven. In-
stantly his father's sufferings rise into his mind ; he contrasts the happy future of the criminal with
the purgatory of the victim, and the contemplation exasperates him into a genuine desire for a fuller
revenge. The threat relieves him from the reproach of inactivity, and he falls back into his
former self.
HUDSON 171
they impede not his volitions he saems, as hath been said, all will. We are apt to
estimate men's force of will according to what they do ; but we ought often to esti-
mate it according to what they do not do; for to hold still often requires much
greater strength of will than to go ahead ; and the peculiarity of this representation
consists in the hero's being so placed that his will has its proper exercise, not so
much in acting as in thinking. In this way the working of his whole mind is ren-
dered as anomalous as his situation, which is just what the subject demands. More-
over, in the perfect harmony of the will and the reason, force of will would natu-
rally disappear altogether ; for, in that case, the will being entirely subject to the
law, nothing but the law would be visible in our conduct; and yet to preserve or
restore this harmony of will and reason is undoubtedly the greatest achievement in
human power. Thus, the highest possible exercise of will is in renouncing itself
and taking the law instead ; so that, paradoxical as it may seem, he may be justly
said to have most strength of will who has, or rather shows, none at all. Hamlet is
equal to the performance of any duty, but not to the reconciliation of incompatible
duties, and he cannot act for the simple reason that he has equal • respect unto all '
the duties of his situation. In a word, his inability is purely of a moral, not of a
complexional kind, and this inability is only another name for the highest sort of
power.
[Page 103.] Hamlet, it is true, is continually charging the fault of his situation
on himself. Herein is involved one of the finest strokes in the. whole delineation.
True virtue never publishes itself; it does not even know itself: radiating from the
heart through all the functions of life, its transpirations are so free and smooth and
deep as to escape the ear of consciousness. Hence people are generally aware of
their virtue in proportion as they have it not. We are apt to estimate the merit of
our good deeds according to the struggles we make in doing them ; whereas, the
greater our virtue, the less we shall have to struggle in order to do them, and it is
purely the weakness and imperfection of our virtue that makes it so hard for us to
do well. Accordingly, we find that he who does no duty without being goaded up
to it is conscious of much more virtue than he has ; while he who does every duty
as a thing of course, and a matter of delight, is unconscious of his virtue, simply
because he has so much of it.
Moreover, in his conflict of duties, Hamlet naturally thinks he b taking the wrong
one; for the calls of the claim he meets are hushed by satisfaction, while the calls
of the claim he neglects are increased by disapjK>intment« T)ms the motives which
he resists out-tongue those which he obeys, so that he hears nothing but the voice
of the duty he omits. We are, of course, insensible of the current with which we
move ; but we are made sensible of the current against which we move by the very
struggle it costs. In this way Hamlet comes to mistake his scruples of conscience
for want of conscience, and from his very sensitiveness of principle tries to reason
himself into a conviction of guilt. If, however, he were really guilty of what he
accuses himself, he would be trying to find or make excuses wherewith to opiate his
conscience. For the bad naturally try to hide their badness, the good their good-
ness, from themselves ; for which cause the former seek narcotics, the latter stimu-
lants, for their consciences. The good man is apt to think he has not conscience
enough, because it does not trouble him; the bad man naturally thinks he has
more conscience than he needs, because it troubles him all the while, — which ac-
counts for the well-known readiness of bad men to supply their neighbors with
conscience.
172 APPENDIX
[Page 112.] The idea of Hamlet is conscious plenitude of intellect, united with
exceeding fineness and fulness of sensibility, and guided by a predominant sentiment
of moral rectitude.
STRACHEY (i
{Shakespeare's Hamlet : An Attempt to find the Key to a great Moral Problem by
Methodical Analysis of the Play. London, 1848, p, 44.) — Observe how Hamlet's
generalisations are really drawn from the excessive brooding over- his own cha-
racter and circunrstances, and only afterwards applied to the men and things about
him. It is plainly he himself who is the original of this his description of the man
in whom either nature or circumstances have unduly developed some one tendency
of the character, to the injury of the proper and rational balance and harmony ol
the whole, and who, in consequence of this one defect, for which he is not respon-
sible, and should be rather pitied than blamed, is looked on with disparagement by
the world, however excellent all his other qualities may be. Coleridge has not
noticed how exactly this description agrees with his own estimate and explanation
of Hamlet's character, and the unobserved coincidence is a strong confirmation, if
any can be needed, of the true insight of the great critic.
[Page 51.] The development of Hamlet's character is so rapid, that it cannot be
considered as the mere ordinary opening out of the story and action of the. play.
The successive appearances of Hamlet on the stage are not (as in the case of other
characters) merely the successive pages in a book, in which we read what has been
written there long before ; but the enormously quick growth, before our very eyes,
of a plant subjected to the forcing action of tropical rain and sun. In all Shake-
speare's varieties of characters there is none in which he has chosen to draw the
man of genius so purely and adequately as in Hamlet; in Hamlet we see genius in
itself, and not as it appears when its possessor is employing it in the accomplishment
of some outward end ; and this genius bursts forth with a sudden and prodigious
expansion, into the regions of the pure intellect, as soon as its quiet course through
its previous channel of the ordinary life of a brave, refined, and noble-minded
prince-royal was violently stopped up by the circumstances with which we are
familiar, Hamlet now shows himself in that character which is properly, — though
not according to the popular appropriation of the word, — called skeptical. Partly
because he is cut off froni all legitimate practical outlet for his intellectual energies,
partly from the instinctive desire to turn away from the harrowing contemplation of
himself and his circumstances, he puts himself into the attitude of a bystander
and looker-on [aninTiKoc) in the midst of the bustling world around him. And like
other such skeptics he finds it more and more difficult to act, as his knowledge
becomes more and more comprehensive and circular, — to take apart in the affairs
of a world of which he seems to see the whole; and like them, too, he throws a
satirical tone into his observations on men, who, however inferior to him in intellect,
are always reminding him that he is dreaming while they are acting.
[Page 63.] I have endeavored already to point out that we can neither assert that
Hamlet is mad, nor that his mind is perfectly healthy ; much confusion and misap-
prehension about the character of Hamlet have arisen from thus attempting an im-
possible simplification of what is most complex. There are more things in heaven
and earth than are dreamt of in the philosophy of the small critic who thinks he has
only to rule two columns, with ' mad ' at the top of one, and ' sane ' at the top of the
STRACHEY 1 73
oCber, and then to put the name of Hamlet in one of the two. Hamlet, like all real
men, and especially men such as he, has a character made up of many elements,
ramifying themselves in many directions, some being healthy and some diseased, and
intertwined now in harmony, now in contradiction with each other. And, ac-
cordingly, it presents different aspects to different observers, who look from opposite
points of view, though each with considerable qualifications for judging rightly. We
have just seen the view taken by Ophelia, whose deep love, and woman's tact and
sentiment, can best appreciate the finer and more delicate features of Hamlet's cha-
racter, though she, perhaps, exaggerates the extent of the untuning of his reason,
from the influence of her own fears and of her father's declaration that he had gone
mad. The shrewd, clear-headed King, with his wits sharpened by anxiety, con-
siders the question from the side of its practical bearing on his own interests, and
sees that as far as these are concerned Hamlet is not mad, but most dangerously
sane.
[Page 77.] The speeches of the Ghost, and of the King and Queen in the Inter-
lude, with the real Queen's behavior at the latter, give sufficient, though negative, evi-
dence of her innocence of the murder ; while Hamlet's whole conduct in the scene
[with his mother] would be preposterous if he had any doubt of that innocence ; —
for how could he reprove the guilt of the second marriage, and pass over that of the
murder, if the Queen had been a partaker in this ? She must have known facts
which might reasonably excite her suspicions after the event, and perhaps, from her
neither pressing for an explanation, nor attempting a refutation of Hamlet's implied
charge against her present husband, such suspicions may have passed through her
mind. But nothing is more universal (though often nothing more puzzling) than
that characteristic of the female mind which, even in grave and thoughtful women,
and much more in the light and trifling, enables them to receive impressions, and
make observations, without bringing them before their minds in distinct conscious-
ness. Women feel and act with an intuitive wisdom far superior to that of men,
but they have not the same power of reflecting on their feelings and acts, and trans-
lating them into the shape of thoughts. The Queen's want of any clear and distinct
views and opinions on this occasion is in perfect keeping with her whole character,
and at the same time it helps the action of the Play far better than her admission to
a knowledge of Hamlet's designs, for it would have been madness for him to have
trusted them with so weak a person, and one so much under the influence of the
King.
[Page 84.] There is something very poetical in Ophelia sharing her Hamlet's
destiny, even in the very form, — a mind diseased, — in which it has come upon him.
Her pure and selfless love reflects even this state of her beloved ; no cup is so bitter
but that if it is poured out for him she will drink it with him. Nay, she, the gentle,
unresisting woman, drains to the dregs that which his masculine hand can push aside
(at least for a time) when he has but tasted it. United as their hearts were by love,
this madness of Ophelia brings her closer to Hamlet than any prosperity could have
done. So thoroughly feminine a being could never have understood the self-con-
scious wretchedness of Hamlet's gloomy moods, but now she is made \.o feel it in her
own person. I do not, of course, mean that this would practically be an additional
qualification for her as a wife to Hamlet, but that it heightens to the utmost
the beauty of the tragic picture of a love which is to end, not in marriage, but in
death. There is more to be felt than to be said in the study of Ophelia's character,
just because she is a creation of such perfectly feminine proportions and beauty.
174 APPENDIX
[Page 100.] Hamlet has come once more into the King's presence, not with any
plan for the execution of his just vengeance, but with what is much better, the faith
that an opportunity will present itself, and the resolution to seize it instantly. It
does present itself, when he finds that he has in his hand a deadly weapon, un-
bated and envenomed by the King's own device, and when at the same moment he
is spurred on by hearing that his mother and himself are already poisoned ; he sees
that the hour is come, recognizes the command he waited for, and strikes the blow.
If this be the true view of the closing act of Hamlet's career (and, as I have
asked before, does any other explain all the circumstances equally well?), we must
not only utterly reject the notion that Hamlet kills the King at last to revenge him-
self and not his father, — though we may allow that the treachery to himself helped
to point the spur which was necessary to urge him on to instant action, — but we must
also come to the conclusion which I proposed to prove by this inquiry into the whole
plot and purpose of the Play, — that Hamlet does not, as Coleridge and other great
critics have asserted, « delay action till action is of no use, and die the victim of
mere circumstance and accident.' True it is that he delays action till it is of no use
to himself, and has allowed his chains to hang on him till the time for enjoying lib-
erty and life is past : and it is doubtless a part of the moral of the Play that we
should recognize in this defect in Hamlet's character the origin of his tragic and
untimely fate. He ought to have lived to enjoy his triumph, but surely he has
triumphed, though only in death. If he had not triumphed, if he had not done his
work before the night fell, but had been a mere idler and dreamer to the last, could
we part from him with any feeling but that of the kind of pity which is half blame
and contempt? And is not our actual feeling, on the contraiy, that of respect as well
as sympathy ? Do we not heartily respond to Horatio's
Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince ;
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest I'
There is something so unpretending, and even homely (if I may apply the word to
such a state of things) in the circumstances of Hamlet's death, that it does not strike
us obviously that he dies for the cause to which he has been called to be the cham-
pion. Yet so it is.
REV. DR MOZLEY (1849)
{^The Christian Remembrancer, vol. xvii, January, 1849, p. 174.*) — [After the
revelation by the Ghost, Hamlet] has a vivid sense of a particular wrong which has
been committed, and he vows, as a religious task, its punishment. But now comes in
the philosophical element in him. It occurs to him that, after all, this dreadful act,
carried out with such successful artifice and self-possession, is but a sample of a vast
system of wrong and injustice in this visible state of things. The King and Queen
represent to his mind a great evil power, or tyranny, resident in the system. The
court of Denmark, the scene of their crime and prosperity, is the world ; its busi-
ness and festivity, in which his father's fate is forgotten, the world's stir and bustle
burying thought, and covering up wrong as soon as done ; its courtiers, the idle and
careless mass of mankind who look on as spectators of injustice, and do not con-
cern themselves with it. Now all things expand to his mind's eye, and no one
* For the admirable article from which these extracts are nade I am indebted to my friend, Df
Inclbiiv. Eu.
MOZLEY 175
wrong deed retains him; he rises from the single to the generic, and from the con-
crete to the abstract ; and he thinks of a system, and a wholesale scheme of things
beneath the sun. He can think of nothing but he instantly thinks of the whole
■world. Denmark is a prison, and the world is a prison. If the world is grown
honest, then is doomsday near.
' The time is out of joint ; — O cursed spite
That ever I was bom to set it right.'
In all his soliloquies he deals in generals, and harps upon the discords and buidens
in the order of things here as a whole. Upon this generalizing vein an unsettle-
ment of will with respect to his task of vengeance immediately follows. For, after
ail (he seems to say), what is the good of it when it is done ? This deed of vio-
lence is only one out of a thousand. You may adjust a particular case, but the wrong
system goes on ; it is out of your reach ; do what you can you cannot touch it ; and
true CNdl, impalpable and ubiquitous, still mocks you like the air. To set one case
right is only to commit yourself to do the same with respect to others, ad infinitum,
and to enter upon an impossible task. Thus the work of vengeance lags ; he takes
it up and lays it down again, according to his humor ; he plays with it, and, when
he might easily execute it, puts it off for an absurd reason, which had he been prac-
tically earnest would not have weighed a feather with him. Upon the basis of the
philosopher he erects the child again ; an assumed volatility, waywardness, and in-
difference express the hopelessness which a large survey of things has produced in
him. The lofty ruminator within exhibits himself as a jester and an oddity without ;
and, not content with levity, he assumes madness, as if to enable himself to enjoy a
fantastic isolation from the world and human society altogether, and to live alone
within himself. And when at last he does execute iis work, he seems to do it by
chance, and from the humor of the moment more than from any constancy of origi-
nal purpose. Such appears the explanation of Hamlet's weakness and irresolute-
ness. So true is it that a mind may easily be too large for effectiveness, and energy
'Suffer from an expansion of the field of view
For success in action a certain narrowness and confinement of mind is indeed
almost requisite. If a man is to do any work well, he must be possessed with the
idea of that work's importance. He has this idea of necessity strongly so long as
the particular scene in which he is is the whole world to him, and therefore, while
he thinks this, he is effective ; but once enlarge his vision, and show him that his
field of labor is only the same with a thousand others, and that he himself is one of
a class containing thousands ; make him, that is to say, realize the world and its
vastness, and he ceases to be absorbed in his task, and is tempted to unconcern and
disrelish for it ; and thus the class of what are called able men, in the departments
of public business or trade, may be observed as a whole to have the idea of the
immense importance of their several departments even to excess, and advantageously
so, — a wise providence, securing, by the exclusive pretensions of each department
of the world's business, a most effective pledge for the safe and careful administra-
tion of the whole, and converting the ignorance and narrowness of mankind indi-
vidually to their great benefit as a body.
The stimulus of narrowness, then, being requisite for vigor in action, Hamlet
wants vigor, because he is without it. His want of vigor does not proceed from a
want of passion, for he has plenty of that, but from a disproportionate largeness of
intellect. He has not too little feeling, but too much thought. He is never satis-
fied with, never rests in, feeling, however strong, but carries it up immediately into
1 76 APPENDIX
the intellectual sphere. The quickest impulse, by some twist of his mind, takes
immediately the expansive form of some general contemplation. He is always
thinking of the whole of things, and any one work seems nothing. As the air we
breathe is not all air, and true courage has an ingredient of fear in it, the intellect
should part with something of its own nature to qualify itself as proper human in-
tellect. It should yoke itself contentedly with a wholesome narrowness in a com-
pound, practical, and intellectual being. Its largeness tends, without such check, to
feebleness. The mind of Hamlet lies all abroad, like the sea, — a universal re-
flector, but wanting the self-moving principle. Musing, reflection, and irony upon
all the world supersede action, and a task evaporates in philosophy.
MRS LEWES (i860)
( The Mill on the Floss, Book VI, chapter vi, p. 355. New York, i860.) — « Oia-
racter,' says Novalis, in one of his questionable aphorisms — ' character is destiny.'
But not the whole of our destiny. Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, was speculative
and irresolute, and we have a great tragedy in consequence. But if his father had
lived to a good old age, and his uncle had died an early death, we can conceive
Hamlet's having married Ophelia, and got through life with a reputation of sanity,
notwithstanding many soliloquies, and some moody sarcasms towards the fair daughter
of Polonius, to say nothing of the frankest incivility to his father-in-law.
KENNY (1864)
{The Life and Genius of Shakespeare, London, 1864, p. 379.) — We cannot help
thinking that the perplexity to which we are thus exposed is founded on conditions
which, from their very nature, are more or less irremovable. It has its origin, as it
seems to us, in two sources. It is owing, in the first place, to the essential character
of the work itself; and in the second place it arises, in no small degree, from the
large license which the poet has allowed himself in dealing with his intrinsically
obscure and disordered materials.
All Nature has its impenetrable secrets, and there seems to be no reason why the
poet should not restore to us any of the accidental forms of this universal mysterious-
ness. The world of art, like the world of real life, may have its obscure recesses,
its vague instincts, its' undeveloped passions, its unknown motives, its half-formed
judgements, its wild aberrations, its momentary caprices. The mood of Hamlet is
necessarily an extraordinary and an unaccountable mood. In him exceptional influ-
ences agitate an exceptional temperament. He is wayward, fitful, excited, horror-
stricken. The foundations of his being are unseated. His intellect and his will
are ajar and unbalanced. He has become an exception to the common forms of
humanity. The poet, in his turn struck with this strange figure, seems to have re-
solved on bringing its special peculiarities into special prominence, and the story
which he dramatised afforded him the most ample opportunity of accotnplishing this
design. Hamlet is not only in reality agitated and bewildered, but he is led to
adopt the disguise of a feigned madness, and he is thus perpetually intensifying and
distorting the peculiarities of an already over-excited imagination. It was, we
think, inevitable th'ht a composition which attempted to follow the workings of so
unusual an individuality should itself seem abrupt and capricious ; and this natural
KENNY— HUDSON I 'J^
effect of the scene is still further deepened, not only by the exceptionally large
genius, but by the exceptionally negligent workmanship, of the poet
We believe we can discover in the history of the drama a further reason why its
details were not always perfectly harmonised. It was written under two different
and somewhat conflicting influences. The poet throughout many portions of its
composition had, no doubt, the old story which formed its groundwork directly
present to his mind ; but he did not apparently always clearly distinguish between
the impressions in his memory and the creations of his imagination, and the result
is, that some of his incidents now seem to his readers more or less inexplicable or
discordant.
[Page 384.] Hamlet is, perhaps, of all the plays of Shakespeare the one which a
great actor would find most difficult to embody in an ideally complete form. It
would, we think, be a mistake to attempt to elaborate its multiform details into any
distinctly harmonious unity. Its whole action is devious, violent, spasmodic. Its
distempered, inconstant irritability is its very essence. Its only order is the mani-
festation of a wholly disordered energy. It is a type of the endless perplexity with
tvhich man, stripped of the hopes and illusions of this life, harassed and oppressed
by the immediate sense of his own helplessness and isolation, stands face to face
with the silent and immovable world of destiny. In it the agony of an individual
mind grows to the dimensions of the universe ; and the genius of the poet himself,
regardless of the passing and somewhat incongruous incidents with which it deals,
rises before our astonished vision, apparently as illimitable and inexhaustible as the
mystery which it unfolds.
It is manifest that Hamlet does not solve, or even attempt to solve, the riddle of
life. It only serves to present the problem in its most vivid and most dramatic
intensity. The poet reproduces Nature ; he is in no way admitted into the secret
of the mystery beyond Nature ; he could not penetrate it ; he onlv knew of the in-
finite longings and the infinite misgivings with which its presence fills the human
heart.
[Page 385.] Hamlet is, in some sense, Shakespeare's most tj-pical work. In no
other of his dramas does his highest personality seem to blend so closely with his
highest genius. It is throughout informed with his skepticism, his melancholy, his
ever-present sense of the shadowiness and the fleetingness of life. He has given
us more artistically complete and harmonious creations. His absolute imagination
is, perhaps, mere distinctly displayed in the real madness of King Lear than in the
feigned madness, or the fitful and disordered impulses, of the Danish Prince. But
the very rapidity and extravagance of these moods help to produce their own pecu-
liar dramatic effect. Wonder and mystery are the strongest and most abiding ele-
ments in all human interest; and, under this universal condition of our nature,
Hamlet, with its unexplained and inexplicable singularities, and even inconsistencies,
will most probably for ever remain the most remarkable and the most enthralling of
all the works of mortal hands.
HUDSON (1870)
{Introduction to Hamlet, Boston, 1870, p. 512.) — Hamlet himself has caused more
of perplexity and discussion than any other character in the whole range of art.
The charm of his mind and person amounts to an almost universal fascination; and
Vol. II.— 13
1 78 APPENDIX
he has been well described as * a concentration of all the interests that belong to
humanity.' I have learned by experience that one seems to understand him better after
a little study than after a great deal; and that the less one sees into him the more apt
one is to think he sees through him; in which respect he is indeed like Nature her-
self. One man considers Hamlet great, but wicked; another good, but weak ; a third,
that he lacks courage, and dare not act ; a fourth, that he has too much intellect fo#
his will, and so reflects away the time of action ; some conclude his madness half
genuine ; others, that it is wholly feigned. Doubtless there are facts in the delinea-
tion which, considered by themselves, would sustain any one of these views; but
none of them seems reconcilable with all the facts taken together. Yet, notwith-
standing this diversity of opinions, all agree in thinking of Hamlet as an actual
person. It is easy to invest with plausibility almost any theory respecting him, but
very hard to make any theoiy comprehend the whole subject ; and while all are
impressed with the truth of the character, no one is satisfied with another's expla-
nation of it. The question is. Why such unanimity as to his being a man, and at
the same time such diversity as to what sort of a man he is ?
{Shakespeare : his Life, Art, and Characters. Boston, 1872, vol. ii, p. 268.) —
The Ghost calls for revenge, but specifies no particular mode of revenge. Hamlet
naturally supposes the meaning to be payment in kind, — • an eye for an eye, and a tooth
for a tooth.' Is this, from Hamlet's own moral point of view, right ? It is nothing
less than to kill at once his uncle, his mother's husband, and his king ; and this, not
in a judicial manner, but by assassination. How shall he justify such a deed to the
world? how vindicate himself from the very crime which he must allege against
another ? For, as he cannot subpoena the Ghost, the evidence on which he is to act
is available only in the court of his own conscience. To serve any good end, the
deed must so stand in the public eye as it does in his own; else he will be in effect
setting an example of murder, not of justice. And the crown will seem to be his
real motive, duty but ?. pretence. Can a man of his * large discourse, looking before
and after,' be expected to act thus ? His understanding seems indeed to be con-
vinced, but yet I suspect he feels a diviner power in the shape of a ' still small voice '
drawing the other way. He thinks he ought to do the thing, resolves that he will
do it, blames himself for not doing it ; still, an unspoken law, deeper and stronger
than conviction, withholds him. And his not doing it he imputes to 'craven
scruples, ' or some ignoble weakness in himself; just as the best men sometimes
charge themselves with acting only from a selfish fear of punishment, while their
whole course of life shows them to be actuated by a disinterested love of virtue,
and that they would rather be punished for doing right than rewarded for doing
wrong.
[Page 271.] Will it be said that, if strength of conscience is what keeps him from
killing the King, then the same strength should enable him to abandon the purpose
altogether ? I answer, that his mind is hedged off by similar scruples from that
side also. Conscience urges him different ways, and whichever way he takes he is
still haunted by the feeling that he ought to have taken the other. His will is in-
deed distracted between two opposing duties ; so that his conscience is divided, not
merely against his understanding, but against itself; while that very distraction
operates as a stimulus to his intellect. Nor can I think it just to speak of his course
as a failure. Morally, he succeeds, though, to be sure, at the cost of his own life.
He falls, as many others have fallen, a martyr to his own rectitude and elevation of
HUDSON— MOBERLY 179
BooL It is a triumph of the noblest virtue, through the most trying struggles, and
over temptation in the most imposing form. And it should be noted further, that
whenever he sees or even thinks of the King his calmness instantly forsakes him,
and a fury of madness takes possession of him, throwing his mind into the wildest
exorbitancy. The best instance of this is in the horrid excuses which he raves out
for sparing the King when he finds him praying; where it is plainly neither his
moral reason nor his understanding, but simply his madness, that speaks, and this too
in its fiercest strain.
[Page 276.] Koratio is one of the very noblest and most beautiful of Shakespeare's
male characters : and there is not a single loose stitch in his make-up; he is at all
times superbly self-contained; he feels deeply, but never gushes nor runs over; as
true as a diamond, as modest as a virgin, and utterly unselfish; a most manly soul,
full alike of strength, tenderness, and solidity. /But he moves so quietly in the drama
that his rare traits of character have hardly ' had justice done them, /^hould we
undertake to go through the play without him, we might then feel how much of the
best spirit and impression of the scenes is owing to his presence. He is the medium
whereby many of the hero's finest and noblest qualities are conveyed to us, yet himself
so clear and simple and transparent that he scarcely catches the attention. * . . . The
great charm of Horatio's unselfishness is that he seems not to be himself in the least
aware of it; 'as one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing.' His mild skepticism at
first, • touching this dreaded sight twice seen of us,' is exceedingly gracefiil and
scholarly. And indeed all that comes from him marks the presence of a calm, clear
head, keeping touch and time perfectly with a good heart.
REV. C. E. MOBERLY (1873)
{Iniroduction to Hamlet. Rugby edition.) — The main point to be noted in ref-
erence to the tone <rf reflection and sentiment which prevailed in Shakespeare's
time, and the circumstances out of which it grew, is this : that there was in those
times a conscious struggle in men's minds between cheerfulness and melancholy,
more real, natural, and widely felt by far than that which we remember in our own
days as springing from the conflict between. the poetical principles of Byron and
Wordsworth. On the one side, in these battles, stood the prodigious animal spirits
and mental vigor of the time manifesting themselves in a thousand wa3rs. It astonishes
OS in the wonderful cheerfulness with which men like Drake, Grenville, or Raleigh
could bear the most awful trials in carrying on our undeclared naval war with Spain ;
in the fervid spirit which the commanders threw into the thankless and unremitting
Irish struggle ; in the personal devotion of her people to Elizabeth which made
them cry, • God save the Queen !' under the very mutilating knife of the executioner;
perhaps, also, in the strenuous resistance to monopolies, and in the unsolicitous and
cheerful persuasion of Elizabeth's ministers, that, in spite of all adverse appearances,
she would always be safe against foreign aggression, because she could always hold
the balance between France and Spain. And so in the field of literature we are
amazed at the torrent-like flow of Lord Bacon's speeches, where image crowds on
image, and thought on thought, with a rapidity beyond oar conception ; at the vig-
orous and unflagging optimism of Hooker j~fct the well-spring of independent specu-
lation in Gilbert and Harvey ; and at the creative power of the Elizabethan drama-
tists. But all this light and vigor had its reverse. It maintained itself only by bat-
tling unremittingly against the dark spirit of melancholy. We get glimpses of this
I80 APPENDIX
fact in the bitter laments of Elizabeth's great statesmen at the failure of their best
conceived projects through her wilfulness and vacillation, and in the sad end of the
great queen herself. But in literature it is patent to view. As if conscious of the
danger, Sir Henry Sidney writes to his son Sir Philip, expressly desiring him first to
lift up his mind to Almighty God by hearty prayer, then to give himself to be merry;
'for,' says the great statesman, 'you degenerate from your father, if you find not
yourself most able in wit and body to do anything when you are most merry.' We
«ee the same thing in the unbounded popularity of the tale of Faustus, — the Doctor
death-wearied with the unprofitableness of all study ; and, in fact, in the general
taste for dramatic subjects in which the tragedy was partly mental, partly material.
Lastly, and above all, may the tendency be seen in the extraordinary Anatomy of
Melancholy, published by Robert Burton in 1620. In this strange work all the causes
and symptoms of melancholy are traced ; not indeed with the intuitive truthfulness
of a genuine psychologist, but with an immensity of knowledge and learning ; and
an attempt is made in it to discover and classify the remedies for every type of this
mental disease. It must be obvious to any one who reads this book, that attention
to the phenomena of melancholy must have been widespread and long continued in
England before any writer would have got together such a strangely combined mass
of materials on the subject, and attract to his work, when published, the singular
degree of esteem which Burton enjoyed.
Yet, as might be expected. Burton only dimly discerns what must have been the
real pervading cause for widespread melancholy at the end of the sixteenth century.
This was in reality the transition then in progress from an active out-of-door exist
ence to a sedentary student life. Those who studied did so without that physical
support against mental exertion which is derived from the habit of literary effort in the
generations immediately preceding. Just as at the present day it rarely happens that
the child of a laborer's family, whatever be his natural abilities, can stand the physi
cal exertion of much continued thought or study, so the men whose fathers and
grandfathers had been eternally on horseback, and engaged in quite other than
literary pursuits, could not, without suffering for it, give themselves up to study with
the devotion which they constantly displayed. Their only chance was to preserve a
due balance between the bodily exercises of their fathers and the studious habits
of their own time. Those who, like Sir Philip Sidney, succeeded in thus tempering
their occupations found life a well-spring of happiness. To them pre-eminently
belonged the 'mens sana in corpore sano.' Hard study supplied their minds pro-
fusely with objects of thought, while their energetic mode of life still absolutely
hindered them from losing practical ability and the force of action. But if this
balance was once disturbed, and bodily exercise gave way entirely to study, then
the aspect of life would alter to them at once. They would find, in George Her-
bert's words, that ' an English body and a student's body are pregnant with humors.'
And as the body, so also the mind would become incapable of discharging its func-
tions rightly ; it would lose itself in unpractical abstractions, in formulae of the per-
fect, in aspirations for the impossible. When men had thus become incapable of
action, they would feel how bitter a thing the divorce between action and thought
really is; and the more so, as they would be affording almost the first instance in
the world's history of such a separation. Not yet awakened by experience to the
fact that thought produces its fruit only after many days, they must have imagined
that on their thoughts and studies there was laid the prophet's curse of a ' miscarry-
ing womb and dry breasts.' Hence must necessarily have come melancholy in the
MOB E ELY l8l
trnest sense of the word ; the constant dwelling on the irremediable, on action and
duty undone, and now become impossible to be done ; which is, as the poet says,
' like the sighs of the spendthrift for his squandered estate.'
If this melancholy was a tendency of the time, we might have assumed before-
hand that it would find its place in Shakespeare's thoughts ; and if the best spirits
of the time were battling against it, we might have ventured beforehand to assert
that traces of the conflict would be found in him. That such is emphatically the
case many of his works show ; above all others, As You Like It and Hamlet. As
regards the former of these plays, Shakespeare, in imagining the character of Jaques,
wished to bring out to view the absurdity of an affected melancholy, and to compare
it with the genial light-heartedness of those whose soul is true and pure. This he
does with a repeated yet light touch of reproof, as if he was certain of his own vic-
tory over the fault reprehended. In Hamlet the note^ sounded is far deeper; the
melancholy is most entirely real, its effects most fully developed, both in the charac-
ter of Hamlet and in the action of the play. In fact, the character and the events
act and re-act upon one another throughout, and the theme or ground-tone of the
whole is the effect of melancholy upon the active energies, and the misery felt by a
man of melancholy temper when a task is laid upon him which he can hardly bring
himself to do from want of heart. If we could have conceived a later dramatist com-
posing such a tragedy, he certainly would have called it the Unwilling Avenger,
or some such name, so as thus to give the key to its method and order. Shakespeare
did not do this ; and hence arose a wonderful quantity of misunderstanding as to
the meaning of the piece, which is even now only partially dispelled as far as the
public is concerned
Hamlet is introduced to us at the age of thirty years Hamlet's grief is
increased by his mental habit of seeing all that goes on around him under the form
of reflection ; no act appears to him incomplete, single, and unconnected. He
would argue from the one evil act of his mother, first, that her motive must have-
been simple and unmixed evil ; then that her whole nature must be homogeneous
with this motive ; and, lastly, that all women must be as corrupt as she is. To this
we ought probably to add that he feels youth passing away from him ; he is no
longer ' the glass of fashion and the mould of form.' Those youthful accomplish-
ments, the vanishing of which would have seemed to him a trifle if he had been
engaged in ennobling and royal occupations, are sadly missed now that they are
passing, and have left nothing in their place. Finally, a cloud has come over his
hopes of being loved as he deserves. For Polonius, the father of the sweet Ophelia,
has taken, as we may safely conjecture from several indications, a most prominent
part in robbing Hamlet of his succession to the throne, and placing Claudius there
instead of him. The result is, that while Hamlet loves the daughter with the most
ardent passion, and has the kindest feelings to her brother Laertes, the sight of her
fathei fills him on every occasion with an angry contempt, which does not rise into
positive hostility only because the man is too old to be an adversary worthy of him.
.... He binds his friends to secrecy as to what they know, instead of calling on
them to assist him, and makes arrangements for assuming a feigned madness, such
as will dlsburthen him from the weight of silence and secrecy without any danger
of revealing his real purpose, as what he says will be considered only the raving of
a madman. He thus enables himself to escape from actions to mere words, as he
will always be able to say some cutting trutli to every one whom he hates and de-
spises, and so to relieve his soul from its burthen of hatred by means very far short
1 82 APPENDIX
of those which he ought to adopt. . • But above all other contrasts in the play
stands out that which Hamlet himself expressly recognizes, the one between himself
and Laertes ; the latter is as purely worldly in his thoughts as Hamlet is the reverse.
He is the man of Parisian training; no nurseling of grave and Protestant Wittenberg.
Fencing and music are his studies. He is false and treacherous as one trained at
the court of France in Shakespeare's time was likely to be ; while Hamlet is most
generous and void of suspicion. In all his utterances there is no single tinge of
Hamlet's reflectiveness. But, in spite of all this, there is one quality in which he is
immeasurably Hamlet's superior. This is that important one of instant energy and
decision. When his father is slain, he does exactly what Hamlet longs in vain to
be able to do, — he 'sweeps' home from France to his revenge. Nor is any need-
less moment of time allowed to pass before he is bursting open the gates of the
palace, with a crowd of partisans at his back, who are already proclaiming him king
of Denmark, — a more apt one, perhaps, for those rough days than poor Hamlet
would have been. Yet consider how different the real loss, when Hamlet's father,
the noble and the majestic, was foully and treacherously murdered, from what was
suffered when poor Polonius met the doom of a rat behind the arras where he had
gone to spy ; and how the difference between the sons is brought out by their oppo-
site lines of conduct under trial, as it had been nurtured and gradually formed by
their opposite courses of life.
D. J. SNIDER (1873)
{The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, St Louis, Jan. 1873, vol. vii, page 73.7
— Hamlet is never so mad as not to be responsible. Hence, with any ordinary
definition of insanity, he is not mad at all. He has undoubtedly weaknesses, so
has every mortal ; he possesses finite sides to his character and intelligence, other-
wise he could hardly perish as the hero of a tragedy. A definition of insanity
which includes Hamlet would sweep at least three-fourths of mankind into the mad-
house. That he is lacking in the element of will, that he is melancholy in his feel-
ings, that his reasoning is often unsound, and, in fact, so intended by Hamlet him-
self, is all very true, but does not make out a case of insanity.
[Page 74.] He was the self-chosen instalment of a mighty design, which, however,
for a time required concealment; concealment demanded cunning; cunning was the
reversal of his entire rational nature ; still, to carry out his end, he had to submit to
the circumstances, and, hence, to assume the garb of the Irrational. How perfectly
our poet has succeeded in portraying this disguise is shown by the fact that quite a
number of modem critics have been deceived as badly as Polonius.
[Page 75.] Hence we cannot but regard those persons who believe in the madness
of Hamlet as in the condition of Polonius in the play, — most completely befooled by
Hamlet's disguise. If, too, the characters of the play are considered, but little will
be found to justify the hypothesis of Hamlet's madness. Besides Polonius, only
the two women, the Queen and Ophelia, neither of whom was strong enough to
have an independent opinion, take Hamlet to be mad. The King knows better,
and acts upon his conviction to the end ; moreover, Horatio, the most intimate friend
and chosen vindicator of Hamlet, does not seem to have the remotest notion of the
insanity of Hamlet.
[Page 76.] First of all, the collision which constitutes the basis of the action of
the entire play is between Hamlet and the King. They form the most wonderful
HC'V
SNIDER 183
contrast, yet both exhibit sides of the same great thonght Hamlet has morality
without action, fte King has action without morality. Hamlet cannot do his deed
at the behest of duty, nor can the King undo, — that is, repent of, — his deed at the
command of conscience. Hamlet represents the undone which should be done, the
King represents the done which should be undone. Neither reaches the goal which
reason so clearly sets before them, and both perish by the inherent contradiction of
their lives. Each one seeks the death of the other, and, by the most rigid poetic
justice, they die by the retribution of their deeds.
[Page 83.] But it is not our purpose to maintain that Hamlet is excluded from
every species of action. On the contrary, there b only one kind of action from
which he is wholly excluded, though his tendency to procrastination is always ap-
parent. Just here occurs, perhaps, the greatest difficulty in comprehending Hamlet's
character. He is wonderfully ready to do certain things ; other things he will not
do, and cannot bring himself to do. In fine, he acts and does not act. Hence dif-
ferent critics have given exactly opposite opinions of him ; one class say he pos-
sesses no power of action, another class declare that he possesses a vast energy of
Will. How can this contradiction be reconciled ? Only by distinguishing the dif-
ferent kinds of action of which men are capable. Undoubtedly, Hamlet can do
some things, but the great deed he cannot reach. We shall attempt a classification
of the different forms of action, and point out what lies in the power of Hamlet.
1. Impulse has sway over Hamlet at times, as over every human being. This is
the first and lowest form of action, unconscious, unreflecting, and belongs to the
emotional nature of man, in which, as we have before seen, Hamlet is not wanting.
Under its influence people act upon the spur of the moment, without thinking of con-
sequences. Hence Hamlet's drawback, — reflection, — is not now present, and there
is nothing to restrain him from action. But the moment there is delay sufficient
to let his thoughts get a start, then farewell, deed; impulse possesses him no
longer. ....
2. Hamlet possesses what may be called negative action, the power of frustrating
the designs of his enemies. He exhibits an infinite acuteness in seeing through their
plans; in fact, this seems an exercise of intellectual subtlety in which he takes
especial delight ; he also possesses the practical strength to render futile all the at-
tempts of the King against his person. He is prepared for everything; his con-
fidence in himself in this direction is unlimited ; he knows that he can ' delve one
yard below their mines and blow them at the moon.' But here his power of action
ends. ....
3. It is what we term Rational Action from which Hamlet is excluded. Here
the individual seizes a true and justifiable end and carries it into execution. This
end Intelligence knows as rational, for it alone can recognize the worth ajid validity
of an end, — and the Will brings it to realization. Thus we have the highest union
of Intelligence and Will, which gives the most exalted form of action. This unity
Hamlet cannot reach ; he grasps the end and comprehends it in its fullest signifi-
cance, but there it remains caught in its own toils
Hamlet's capture by the pirates is a most strange occurrence, and has always given
great difficulty. Accident, contrary to the general rule of the poet, seems to deter-
mine the course of things in the most startling manner, and the whole poem to be
made to rest upon a most improbable event. Hamlet is sent to England, — a pirate
pursues his ship and grapples with it, — he boards the strange vessel, when it sud-
denly cuts loose with Hamlet alone, and afterwards puts him safely on shore. The
1 84 APPENDIX
whole proceeding is so suspicious that, were such an event to occur in real life,
everybody would think at once of collusion. This impression is much strengthened
by the confidence with which he speaks of his ability to foil all the machinations
of the King in sending him to England :
• Let it work,
For 'tis the sport to have the cnginer
Hoist with his own petar; and 't shall go hard
But I will delve,' &c.
Indeed, he rejoices in the prospect :
' O, 'tis most sweet
When in one line two crafts dh-ectly meet.'
Note how absolute his trust still is in his intelligence. Such confidence seems to be
begotten of preparation. One is inclined, therefore, to explain the occurrence in
this way : Hamlet hired the pretended pirate, and gave to its officers his instructions
before he left port ; indeed, he most probably had also some understanding with
the officers of the royal ship which was to convey him. Yet this view, apparently
so well founded, we must at once abandon when we read Hamlet's account of the
affair (V, ii). In that he ascribes his action wholly to instinct ; there was no pre-
meditation, no planning at all. But, what is more astonishing, he has come to prefer
unconscious impulse to deliberation ; he has renounced intelligence as the guide of
conduct. Yet before this event, how he delighted in his skill, in his counterplots, in
his intellectual dexterity ! Now, what is the cause of this great change in his
character ? In the first place, it ought to be observed that the expressions above
quoted were uttered by him when there might be still some hope of being brought
to action, before the last and strongest influence, the appearance of Fortinbras,
revealed to him that his case was desperate. But the great cause of his con-
version was this startling event, in which he saw that Accident, or some external
power, was mistress over the best matured plans of men. Here is an element which
had never been included in his calculations, upon which heretofore he had placed so
great reliance; suddenly they are swept down by this unknown force. He sees that
it is objectively valid in the world, but he knows that he himself is not, for he can-
not do the deed; hence he must believe in it more than in himself. Hamlet thus
becomes a convert from Intelligence to Fate, from self-determination to external de
termination. So must every person without will be, to a greater or less extent, a
disbeliever in will, for his sole experience is that man is controlled from without.
Thus it can be seen that the introduction of this accident is based upon the weight-
iest grounds, and is in the completest harmony with the development of the drama.
Accident appears here in a manner which is legitimate in Art, not to cut a compli-
cated knot, nor to create a sudden surprise, but to determine character.
W. MINTO (1S74)
{^Characteristics of English Poets. Edinburgh, 1S74, p. 379.) — We must not allow
the dazzling movement of lightning? in the atmosphere of Shakespeare's tragedies to
blind us to the vast firmament that overhangs the whole, and displays itself in quiet
grandeur when the hurly-burly of conflicting passions has stormed itself to rest.
The poet recognizes an overruling Destiny above all the tumult. It is not a cold,
remote power of marble majesty; it is estimated as being in intimate connection
with human affairs —
MINTO 185
* Reckoning Time, whose million'd accidents
Creep in 'twixt vows, and change decrees of Wings,
Tan sacred beauty, blunt the sharp'st intents.
Divert strong minds to the course of altering things.'— 5!Mr. xi$i
Nothing is more remarkable in Shakespeare's plays, and nothing contributes more
to make them a faithful image of life, than the prominence given to the influence of
chance, of undesigned accidents. The most tragic events turn on the most trifling
circumstances But the predominance of chance over human designs is most
powerfully brought home in Hamlet, whose fate turns on accident after accident.
The passage just quoted from the Sonnets reads as a commentary on the fortunes of
Hamlet, and should be printed at the beginning of all copies of the play, to in-
duce the lofty vein of reflection, designed by the poet as the main efiect of the whole,
and to undo the wretched criticism that would degrade it to the level of a sermon
against procrastination. The poet leaves us in no doubt as to his intention, although
one might easily have apprehended it from his treatment of slight turning-points
and weak beginnings of things in other plays. [See V, ii, 6-1 1.] That is Shake-
speare's poetical religion : a power variously denominated Destiny, Fate, Chance,
Providence, — supreme over mortal affairs. The varied energies of the world, which
no man has ever embodied with such force and subtlety of expression, are governed
and shut in by great sublimities of time and space.
[Page 408.] Why does Hamlet still delay when he has received strong confirma-
tion from the play? He gets an opportunity ; he comes upon his uncle kneeling in
prayer ; why does he withhold ? Not from fear ; not from irresolution ; but from
cold, iron determination, sure of its victim, and resolved not to strike till the most
favorable moment. He is tempted to the weakness of yielding to impulse ; but he
holds back with inflexible strength. His words are instinct with the most iron energy
of will (III, iii, 73) Hamlet still bides his time. Was this cowardice? In
his sharp self-questionings, he calls it so himself [IV, iv. 39-46].
His delay is inexplicable to Hamlet himself, though we are all so confident in ex-
plaining it for him. One might have pointed out to him, without seconding his own
morbid and unjustifiable accusation of cowardice, that he had still no means of satis
fying the people that he was a pious avenger, and not merely a mad or an ambitious
murderer ; more particularly after he had incurred the accidental taint of the murdei
of Polonius, whom he was not to know that the King would inter in hugger-mugger.
And the desire to be above suspicion, to have an unblemished reputation, was a
strong motive with Hamlet, as we see from his djring injunction to Horatio. But I
do not think that it was the dramatist's intention to represent this as the chief motive
for Hamlet's delay, otherwise he would have brought it out mere strongly. No ;
the above passage, taken in conjunction with Hamlet's communication to Horatio in
the beginning of the last Scene, supplies the real clue to the dramatist's intention in
the concluding Acts. Hamlet does not know why he delays ; he is not afraid,—
there is not the slightest trace of such a motive in his behavior from first to last, —
but he restrains himself in a blind, inexplicable, vague trust that some supremely
favorable moment will occur. Meantime, Destiny is ripening the harvest for him ;
a Divinity is shaping hb ends ; his indiscretions serve him when his deep plots do
paU. .... The supreme moment comes without his contrivance, and is more com-
prehensive in its provisions for justice than any scheme that could have been devised
by single wisdom, and executed by single power. Qaudius is at last caught by ven-
geance in an act that has no relish of salvation in it, is surpi ised in an infamous
1 86 APPENDIX
plot, and sent to hell with a heavier load of guilt upon his back; and others, brought
within the widening vortex of the original crime, are involved in the final ruin.
PROF. F. A. MARCH (1875)
At a meeting of The American Philological Association, held in July, 1875,
Prof. F. A. March, of Lafayette College, Easton, Pennsylvania, read an Essay on
The Immaturity of Shakespeare as shown in Hamlet, of which the following ab-
stract was published in the Society's Transactions :
An examination of the works of Shakespeare in the order of their composition
shows that he rose very slowly to the heights of his power. He worked for years
dramatizing popular tales with a comic vein, and then years more on patriotic parts
of English history, before he tried the grand tragic style. After the love-story of
Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet was his first tragedy, and it has some of the defects as
well as the merits of such a work. It was probably long in hand. The following
k)pics were discussed to exhibit traits of age or immaturity :
1. The metre. The formal metrical peculiarities of the early plays were pointed
out, and the later changes. In Hamlet, it was said, the early rhymes and formal re-
straints have gone, but there is still care and finish, perfect art without the negli-
gences of the latest period.
2. There are many things which are not natural utterances of the characters to
carry out the thought of the play ; but good things brought in to make hits :
Allusions to matters of the day, such as the talk about the children players, II,
ii; the actor who played Hamlet, 'fat and scant of breath;' and, perhaps, allu-
sions to Mary Queen of Scots.
Taking off the fashionable style of speech, as in Polonius's imitation of Euphues,
and the ranting passage of the player in the style of Marlowe.
Good things from his own commonplace book, such as the advice to players, and
large parts of the soliloquies, on the badness of the world in general, the effect of
prayer, and the like.
3. The want of lively characterization of the subordinate characters. Many of
them talk a good deal, but they leave no impression,
4. The youthful point of view from which the characters are seen. Ophelia is
ripe in age ; her sagacious father is a superannuated bore. Doubt is depth. Made-
up minds seem superficial. Not so with Miranda and Prospero, or Perdita and
Polyxenes.
5. Immature view of the problems of life and death. The writer is wrestling
with them. By and by Shakespeare quietly gave them up, and was a cheerful be-
liever that * we are such stuff as dreams are made of, and our little life is rounded
with a sleep.'
6. Immature treatment of the Ghost. In the later plays the ghosts are appari-
tions of unhinged minds ; the Hamlet Ghost is the simple ghost of the story-books,
visible to vulgar eyes, and what, with his poses and long-winded declamation on the
stage, and his moveable subterranean noises, is a commonplace creation, a ' poor
ghost.' Hamlet does not quite believe in him.
7. Immature treatment of insanity. Shakespeare had not so fully mastered this
subject as to give the reins to his imagination, but made Hamlet and Ophelia speak
by a theory, according to which the intolerable grossness of Hamlet was the neces-
MARCH— DOWDEN I '^^
sary atterances of madness n his circumstances. The writer f Lear would have
felt that such grossness was no subject for art.
8. The general atmosphere of lechery.
9. The character of Hamlet is not brought to unity. Some passages seem to have
been taken up from the old play, in which Hamlet has a different character from
Shakespeare's prevailing thought of him. This, combined with the defective hand-
ling of his insanity, is the solution of the enigma of his character.
PROFESSOR DOWDEN (1875)
{Shakespeare: A Critical Study of his Mind and Art, London, 1875, p. 125. j —
When Hamlet was written, Shakespeare had passed through his years of apprentice-
ship, and become a master-dramatist. In point of style the play stands midway
between his early and his latest works. The studious superintendence of the poet
over the development of his thought and imaginings, very apparent in Shakespeare's
early writings, now conceals itself; but the action of imagination and thought has
not yet become embarrassing in its swiftness and multiplicity of direction. Rapid
dialogue in verse, admirable for its combination of verisimilitude with artistic met-
rical effects, occurs in the scene in which Hamlet questions his friends respecting
the appearance of the Ghost ; the soliloquies of Hamlet are excellent examples of
the slow, dwelling verse which Shakespeare appropriates to the utterance of thought
in solitude ; and nowhere did Shakespeare write a nobler piece of prose than the
speech in which Hamlet describes to Rosencrantz and Guildenstem his melancholy.
But such particulars as these do not constitute the chief evidence which proves that
the poet had now attained maturity. The mystery, the baffling, vital obscurity of the
play, and in particular of the character of its chief person, make it evident that
Shakespeare had left far behind him that early stage of development when an artist
obtrudes his intentions, or, distrusting his own ability to keep sight of one uniform
design, deliberately and with effort holds that design persistently before him. WTien
Shakespeare completed Hamlet, he must have trusted himself and trusted his
audience; he trusts himself to enter into relation with his subject, highly complex
as that subject was, in a pure, emotional manner. Hamlet might have been so easily
manufactured into an enigma, or a puzzle ; and then the puzzle, if sufficient pains
were bestowed, could be completely taken to pieces and explained. But Shake
speare created it a mystery, and therefore it is for ever suggestive ; for ever suggestive;
and never wholly explicable.
It must not be supposed, then, that any idea, any magic phrase, will solve the dif-
ficulties presented by the play, or suddenly illuminate everj-thing in it which is
obscure. The obscurity itself is a vital part of the work of art, which deals not
with a problem, but with a life ; and in that life, the history of a soul which moved
through shadowy border-lands between the night and day, there is much (as in many
a life that is real) to elude and baffle inquiry The vital heart of the tragedy
of Hamlet cannot be an idea ; neither can it be a fragment of political philosophy.
Out of Shakespeare's profound sj-mpathy with an individual soul and a personal life
the wonderful creation came into being.
[Page 132.] Hamlet is not merely or chiefly mtellectual; the emotional side of
his character is quite as important as the intellectual ; his malady is as deep-seated
in his sensibilities and in his heart as it is in his brain. If all his feelings translate
1 88 APPENDIX
themselves into thoughts, it is no less true that all his thoughts are impregnated with
feeling. To represent Hamlet as a man of preponderating power of reflect'ion, and
to disregard his craving, sensitive heart, is to make the whole play incoherent and
unintelligible. It is Hamlet's intellect, however, together with his abiding sense of
the moral qualities of things, which distinguishes him, upon the glance of a moment,
from the hero of Shakespeare's first tragedy, Romeo.
[Page 145.] Hamlet does not assume madness to conceal any plan of revenge.
He possesses no such plan. And as far as his active powers are concerned, the
assumed madness is a misfortune. Instead of assisting him to achieve anything, it
is one of the causes which tend to retard his action. For now, instead of forcing
himself upon the world, and compelling it to accept a mandate of his will, he can
enjoy the delight of a mere observer and critic; an observer and critic both of him
self and of others. He can understand and mock, whereas he ought to set himselt
sternly to his piece of work. He utters himself henceforth at large, because he is
unintelligible. He does not aim at producing any effect with his speech, except in
the instance of his appeal to Gertrude's conscience. His words are not deeds.
They are uttered self-indulgently to please the intellectual 01 artistic part of him, or
to gratify his passing mood of melancholy, of irritation, or of scorn. He bewilders
Polonius with mockery, which effects nothing, but which bitterly delights Hamlet
by its subtlety and cleverness. He speaks with singular openness to his courtier-
friends, because they, filled with thoughts of worldly advancement and ambition,
read all his meanings upside down, and the heart of his mystery is absolutely inac-
cessible to their shallow wits. When he describes to them his melancholy, he is in
truth speaking in solitude to himself. Nothing is easier than to throw them off the
scent. 'A knavish speech sleeps in a foolish ear.' The exquisite cleverness of his
mimetics and his mockery is some compensation to Hamlet for his inaction ; this
intellectual versatility, this agility, flatters his consciousness; and it is only on
occasions that he is compelled to observe into what a swoon or syncope bis will
has fallen.
Yet it has been truly said that only one who feels Hamlet's strength should ven-
ture to speak of Hamlet's weakness. That, in spite of difficulties without and in-
ward difficulties, he still clings to his terrible duty, — letting it go, indeed, for a time,
but returning to it again, and in the end accomplishing it, — implies strength. He is
not incapable of vigorous action, — if only he be allowed no chance of thinking the
fact away into an idea But all his action is sudden and fragmentary; it is
not continuous and coherent. His violent excitability exhausts him ; after the night
of encounter with the Ghost, a fit of abject despondency, we may be certain,
ensued, which had begun to set in when the words were uttered : * The time is out
of joint ; O cursed spite. That ever I was born to set it right.' After he has slain
Polonius, he weeps ; after his struggle with Laertes in Ophelia's grave, a mood of
depression ensues : ' Thus awhile the fit will work on him, Anon as patient as the
the female dove,' &c. His feelings are not under control.
[Page 151. After speaking of Hamlet's interview with Ophelia in Act III, so. i,
and of his detecting the deceit that had placed Ophelia there as a decoy, Professor
Dowden continues :] One of the deepest characteristics of Hamlet's nature is a long-
ing for sincerity, for truth in mind and manners, an aversion from all that is false,
affected, or exaggerated. Ophelia is joined with the rest of them ; she is an impos-
tor, a spy; incapable of truth, of honor, of love. Hive they desired to observe aa
outbreak of his insanity ? He will give it to them w th a vengeance. With an al»
DOWDEN 189
most savage zea-, which underneath is nothing but bitter pain, he pounces upon
Ophelia's deceit: «Ha, ha! are you honest?' His cruelty is that of an idealist,
who cannot precisely measure the effect of his words upon his hearer, but who re-
quires to liberate his mind And to complete the startling effect of this outburst
of insanity, solicited by his persecutors, he sends a shaft after the Chamberlain and
a shaft after the King : —
'Ham. Where's your father?
Opk. [Coming out -with her dxiU little iie}. At home, my lord.
Ham. Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the fool
nowhere but in's own house.'
HanT'Iet bursts out of the lobby with a triumphant and yet bitter sense of havingf
turned the tables upon his tormentors. Ophelia remains to weep. In the pauses of
Hamlet's cruel invective she had uttered her piteous little appeals to heaven : * Hea-
venly powers, restore him !' * Oh help him, you sweet heavens !* When he abruptl/
departs, the poor girl's sorrow overflows. In her lament, Hamlet's noble reason,
which is overthrown, somehow gets mixed up with the elegance of his costume,
which has suffered equal ruin. He who was the ' glass of fashion,' noticed by every one,
• the observed of all observers,' is a hopeless lunatic. She has no bitter thought about
her lover. All her emotion is helpless tenderness and sorrow. Her grief is as deep
as her soul is deep There is a touching devotion shown by Hamlet to Horatfo
in the meeting which follows the scene in the lo^by with Ophelia ; a devotion which
is the overflow of gratitude for the comfort and refuge he finds with his friend after
the recent proof of the incapacity and want of integrity in the woman he had loved.
Horatio's equanimity, his evenness of temper, are like solid land to Hamlet, after the
tossings and tumult of his own heart.
[Page 157.] In the dawn of the following morning Hamlet is dispatched to Eng-
land. From this time forward he acts, if not with continuity and with a plan, at
least with energy. He is fallen in love with action ; but the action is sudden, con-
vulsive, and interrupted. He is abandoning himself more than previously to his
chances of achieving things ; and thinks less of forming any consistent scheme. The
death of Polonius was accidental, and Hamlet recognized, or tried to recognize, in
it (since in his own will the deed had no origin) the pleasure of Heaven [HI, iv,
173-175]. When about to depart for England, Hamlet accepts the necessity with
as resolute a spirit as may be, believing, or trying to believe, that he and his concerns
are in the hands of God : ' I see a cherub that sees them.' That is, my times are in
God's hand. Again, when he reflects that acting upon a sudden impulse, in which
there was nothing voluntary (for the deed was accomplished before he had conceived
what it was), he had sent his two school-fellows to death, Hamlet's thoughts go on
to discover the divine purpose in the event [V, ii, 7-1 1]. Once more, when Ho-
ratio bids the prince yield to the secret misgiving which troubled his heart before he
went to the trial of skill with Laertes, Hamlet puts aside his friend's advice with the
words, ' We defy augury,' &c., V, ii, 207-210.
Does Shakespeare accept the interpretation of events which Hamlet is led to
adopt ? No ; the providence in which Shakespeare believed is a moral order whicb
includes man's highest exercise of foresight, energy, and resolution. The disposi-
tion of Hamlet to reduce to a minimum the share which man's conscious will and
foresight have in the disposing of events, and to enlarge the sphere of the action of
powers outside the will, has a dramatic, not a theological, significance. Helena,
190 APPENDIX
who clearly sees what she resolves to do, and accomplishes neither less nor more
than she has resolved, professes a different creed : —
' Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie
Which we ascribe to heaven ; the fated sky
/ Gives us free scope, only doth backward pull
Our slow designs when we ourselves are dull.' — Alts Well, I, i, 231.
Horatio, a believer in the ' divinity that shapes our ends,' by his promised expla ■
nation of the events, delivers us from the transcendental optimism of Hamlet, and
restores the purely human way of viewing things : — ' let me speak to the yet un-
knowing world,' &c., V, ii, 366-373.
The arrival of Fortinbras contributes also to the restoration of a practical and
positive feeling. With none of the rare qualities of the Danish Prince, he excels
him in plain grasp of ordinary fact. Shakespeare knows that the success of these
men, who are limited, definite, positive, will do no dishonor to the failure of the rarer
natures, to whom the problem of living is more embarrassing, and for whom the
tests of the world are stricter and more delicate. Shakespeare ' beats triumphant '
inarches, not for successful persons alone, but also for conquered and slain persons.
Does Hamlet finally attain deliverance from his disease of will ? Shakespeare
has left the answer to that question doubtful. Probably if anything could supply
the link which was wanting between the purpose and the deed, it was the achieve-
ment of some supreme action. The last moments of Hamlet's life are well spent,
and for energy and foresight are the noblest moments of his existence ; he snatches
the poisoned bowl from Horatio, and saves his friend; he gives his dying voice for
Fortinbras, and saves his country. The rest is silence : — • Had I but time, — as this
fell sergeant, death. Is strict in his arrest, — Oh, I could tell you.' But he has not
told. Let us not too readily assume that we • know the stops ' of Hamlet, that we
can * pluck out the heart of his mystery.'
One thing, however, we do know, — that the man who wrote the play of Hamlet
had obtained a thorough comprehension of Hamlet's malady. And assured as we
are by abundant evidence, that Shakespeare transformed with energetic will his
knowledge into fact, we may be confident that when Hamlet was written, Shake-
speare had gained a further stage in his culture of self-control, and that he had
become not only adult as an author, but had entered upon the full maturity of his
manhood,
JOHN WEISS (1876)
( Wit, Humor, and Shakespeare, Boston, 1876, p. 156.) — After Hamlet's interviews
with the Ghost, the 'antic disposition' which tints his behavior is ironical; his re-
marks keenly cut down to where our laugh lies, but scarcely let its blood. The
mood docs not throw open the great valves of the heart as the sun-burst of Humor
does. We enjoy seeing with what superior insight he baffles all the spies, who
cannot play upon a pipe, yet expect to play upon him. This gives to the scene the
flavor of comedy. In the churchyard we taste the sub-acid of cynicism, so that
Yorick's skull is quite emptied of its humor, and is only an ill-savored text to a
chopfallen discourse upon mortality No wonder [after his interview with the
Ghost] that his wonted evenness of manner is shaken ; and we hear him writing
truisms in his tablet, in a flighty style, as for instance, that a man may smile and be
a villain. But let us also make a note of that, as he did ; it will interpret to us the
WEISS 191
tone of his subsequent demeanor, which everybody thought was madness. In the
mean time we are upon this spectre-haunted platform, seeking with his friends to
discover what news the Ghost brought. Hamlet trifles with them to put off their
curiosity ; but the scene soon rises to the solemnity of taking an oath, and one that
is extorted by the experience of a vision, which comes to so few that mankind has
only heard of such things. But just as the human voices are about to pledge them
selves to a secrecy which they must feel all their lives, and shudder in feeling, to be
reflected upon them from the glare and publicity of purgatorial fires, a voice comes,
building this terrific chord of a nether world up to their purpose, that it may unal-
terably stand : 'Swear!' The deep craves it of them; it has joined the company
uninvited, but they feel convinced that it is a comrade fated to go with them to their
graves. 'Swear!' it reiterates; no change of place can remove them from this im-
portunity. The centre of an unatoned murder is beneath every spot to which they
shift their feet.
[Page 159.] Not the faintest streak of Humor appears in this tragedy to reconcile
us with the drift of it. Polonius belongs to comedy, because he is an old counsellor
who was once valuable, whose wits have grown seedy on purpose to delight us
with his notion that he fathoms and circumvents the Prince. When a man's feeling
of importance has outlived his value, so that his common sense trickles feebly over
the lees of maxims, and his policies are absurd attempts to appear as shrewd as ever
before persons who are in better preservation, he belongs to the comic side of life.
We cannot help smiling at his most respectable recommendations ; for they are like
hats lingering in fashion, but destitute of nap. He wears one of these, and goes
about conceiting that his head mounts a gloss. There is not enough of Polonius
left to tide him through this tragedy, unless it might have been in dumb show ; he
must lurk behind an arras to get himself mistaken for a king; and as he does this
after sending a spy into France to watch his son's habits, we have not a tear to spare.
And we only think how delightfully bewildered he will be if his ghost gets out of
the body, escaping a politic convocation of worms, in time to help receive the other
Ghost, and to understand then, if any wit is left over in him, that his king was mur-
dered, and Hamlet is harping on something besides his daughter.
[Page 160.] The theories which undertake to explain the nature of the * antic
disposition,' which Hamlet hinted that he might assume, do not satisfy me that the
heart of that mystery has been plucked out. But the key to it may be read engrossed
upon his tablets. The subsequent behavior of Hamlet is the exact counterpart ia
Irony of the conviction that was so suddenly thrust upon him, and terribly empha-
sized by his father, that ' a man may smile, and be a villain.' In the first place, I
notice that the behavior of Hamlet, which has the reputation of being feigned, is a
genuine exercise of Irony, and consequently covers a feeling and purpose that are
directly opposite to its tone of lightness ; but it results organically from Hamlet's new
experience, and does not require to be premeditated as madness would be. We see his
vigorous and subtle mind set open by the revelations of the Ghost ; but it is too well
hung to be slamming to and fro in gusts of real madness, and its normal movement
shuts out the need of feigning. When his father first tells that he has been murdered,
we find that Hamlet thinks himself quite capable of decision ; there is no infirmity of
purpose in that early mood to sweep to his revenge * with wings as swift as medita-
tion or the thoughts of love.' What is it that converts this mood into an irresolute-
ness which contrives the whole suspense, and, in fact, gives us the whole tragedy ?
First partly, that his father tells Hamlet he was murdered by his own brother.
192 APPENDIX
Then the question of revenge becomes more difficult to settle, especially as it in-
volves widowing his mother; and it is noticeable that the father himself, who after,
wards deplored Hamlet's irresolution, had previously made suggestions to him [' nor
let thy soul contrive Against thy mother aught '], which hampered his action by con-
straining him to feel how complicated the situation was.
[Page 165.] The oblique and enigmatic style into which Hamlet has fallen is not
a deliberate effort to sustain the character of a madman, because such a person as
Hamlet could find no motive in it; he could not need it to mask his desire to avenge
the Ghost, for he is prince, an inmate of the palace, and supernaturally elected to
be master of the situation. He says he has ' cause and will and strength and means
to do't.' I conceive, then, that his mind, driven from its ordinary gravity, and the
channel of his favorite thoughts diverted, instinctively saves itself by this sustained
gesture of irony ; and it appears to be madness only to those who do not know that
he is well informed of the event, and is struggling to set free from it a purpose.
And why should a man of such a well-conditioned brain, a noticer of nice distinc-
tions, have selected for a simulation of madness a style which, nicely estimated, is
not mad ? He could not calculate that everybody would interpret this difference
from his usual deportment into an unsettling of his wits ; for the style shows uncon-
sciousness and freedom from premeditation. If he wished to feign distraction, he
would have taken care to mar the appositeness of his ironical allusions, which are
always in place and always logical. And if he was half unhinged without knowing
it, his speech would have betrayed the same inconsequence. Nowhere is he so
abrupt, or delivers matter so remote from an immediate application, that he seems to
us to wander, because we, too, have been admitted to the confidences of the Ghost,
and share that advantage over the other characters.
[Page 168.] The other passage upon which the theory of premeditated madness
rests occurs in the great scene with his mother, during which she becomes convinced
that Hamlet is out of his senses by seeing him kill the good Polonius, and hearing
him rave as if he sa>v a spectre. She was the earliest of the critics and experts who
are profoundly convinced of his madness. At the close of the scene it occurs to
him to avail himself of her misapprehension to procure continued immunity from
any suspicion of design against the King. How shall he do this, — how contrive to
clinch her conviction of his madness, and send her reeking with it to inform the
King? His subtle intelligence does at this point invent the only simulation of mad-
ness that the play contains. He is just about to bid the Queen good-night : ♦ So
again, good-night.* Then the device occurs to him: • One word more, good lady;'
and the Queen, turning, says : • What shall I do?' [See IH, iv, 181-1S8.]
This is the very craftiness of a madman, to try to convince people that, if he ever
seems to be insane, it is for a sane motive. Hamlet reckons that the Queen is so
deeply imbued with the idea of his insanity as to interpret this disclaimer of his into
the strongest confirmation. Hamlet, moreover, not only seems to be accounting for
symptoms of madness, but to be making a confidant of his mother; he begs her not
to betray the secret object of his strange behavior. This seems to her to be the
very quintessence of madness, to confess to her that he is feigning it out of craft,
and to suppose that she would not apprise her husband, who must be the special
object of that craft and most in danger from it. He must be, indeed, preposterously
mad; so, in parting, she pretends to receive his confidential disclosure: — ' Be thou
assured, if words be made of breath, And breath of life, I have no life to breathe
What thou hast said to me.' She may safely promise that, when she means to repair
IVE/SS 193
to the King with quite a different version of Hamlet's condition, the very one upon
which he counts to keep the King deceived She is the mother of the physio-
logical criticism which issues from insane asylums to wonder why Hamlet is not an
inmate ; and Hamlet himself, by deceiving his mother, furnishes to psychological
criticism the text that he was mad in craft. Between the lines of the genuine Hamhf
you can read that Shakespeare belonged to neither school.
[Page 176.] in the churchyard scene we observe that Hamlet recurs uncon-
sciously to his ordinary mental disposition, because he is alone there with Horatio,
whose grave and silent friendship is congenial. It is the foil to Hamlet's restless specu-
lation ; it calls a truce to the- civil war between his temper and his purpose. He is
pacified in the society of Horatio, who gives him a chance to recur to his native
mental habit. As he naively pours out his thoughts, how little does Horatio answer !
as little as the ground beneath their feet, less laconic than the lawj'er's skull. He is
a continent upon which Hamlet finds that he can securely walk, the only domain in
Denmark that is not honeycombed with pitfalls. Turning toward Horatio's loyal
affection, he feels a response that is articulated without words. As little need the
forest reply to her lover save in dumb show and in obscure reflex of feeling.
[Page 177.] It is by unconsciously remanding Hamlet to Irony that Shakespeare has
expressed the effect of an apparition, and of the disenchanting news it brought, upon
a mind of that firm yet subtle temper. Lear's noble mind tottered with age before
grief struck it into the abyss of madness. Constance stands before us, like Niobe,
all tears, or sits with sorrow ; but she was a too finely-tempered woman to drip
into craziness till health, hope, and life broke up. Shakespeare has not represented
any of his mature and well-constructed natures as capable of being overthrown by
passion the most exigent or events the most heart-rending. They preserve their
sanity to suffer, as all great souls must do to make us worship them with tears. So
Hamlet being incapable of madness, and lifted above the necessity of feigning it,
gives to everything the complexion of the news which has revolted his moral sense,
— that is, the King, his uncle, is not what he seems ; his own mother's husband does
not appear to be a murderer. The state of Denmark is rotten with this irony. No
wonder that his brain took on the color of the leaf on which it fed. Oh, everj-thing is
not what it appears to be, but only an indication of its opposite, and must be phrased
by contradiction ! He is really in love with Ophelia, but this irony conceals it.
With the mood into which he has been plunged, his own love is no more worth being
seriously treated than is old Polonius, whom he knows excellent well, — he is a fish-
monger ; that is, not that he is a person sent to fish out his secrets, as Coleridge
would explain it, but that he is a dealer in staleness. and yet not so honest as those
who only vend stale fish.
If we return to a period in the play which follows closely upon the scene of the
taking of the oath, Ophelia herself will discover for us the turning mood in Ham-
let's character. The time and action of the piece allow us to suppose that he soon
went from the oath-taking to visit Ophelia. Naturally, he turned from that bloodless
and freezing \'isitation to see life heaving in a dear bosom, and reddening in lips
which he had love's liberty to touch. The disclosures of the Ghost had worked upon
him like a turbid freshet which comes down from the hills to choke the running of
sweet streams, deface with stains of mud all natural beauties, and bury with the
washings of sunless defiles the meadows spangled with forget-me-nots. His love
for Ophelia was the most mastering impulse of his life ; it stretched like a broad,
rich domain, down to which he came from the shadowy places of his private
Vol.. II.-13
194 APPENDIX
thought to fling himself in the unchecked sunshine and revel in the limpid bath of
feeling. How often, in hours which only over-curious brooding upon the problems
of life had hitherto disquieted, had he gone to let her smile strip off the shadow of
his thought, and expose him to untroubled nature ! The moisture of her eyes re-
freshed his questioning ; her phrases answered it beyond philosophy ; a maidenly
submission of her hand renewed his confidence ; an unspoken sympathy of her re-
serve, that flowed into the slight hints and permissions of her body, nominated him
as lover and disfranchised him as thinker; and a sun-shower seemed to pelt through
him to drift his vapors off. But this open gladness has disappeared underneath the
avalanche of murder which a ghostly hand had loosened. He ventures down to the
place where he remelnbers that it used to expect him ; but we know that it has dis-
appeared. His air and behavior announce it to us. / The catastrophe seems to have
swept even over his person, to dishevel the apparel upon that ' mould of form.' la
this ruin of his life, Ophelia is the first one buried ; for she was always more resi-
dent in his soul than maintained within a palace, and his soul is no longer habitable.
[Page 357.] [At the grave of Ophelia Hamlet] is forced into disgust at hearing a
man vaunt love against his ovrn. All scruples are shrivelled up in anger; and he
instinctively assumes the tone he hears. The old ironical disgust for sham makes
the imitation perfect. Afterwards he acknowledges that he forgot himself, that * the
bravery of his grief did put me Into a towering passion.' And this passion broke
open his respect and prudence, and let loose the first cry of his love that had ever
reached the ears of others. Else it would have lain buried with Ophelia in the
silence of her lover's breast But his bosom secret has escaped. He turns
away, is followed by Horatio, to whom, before the next scene opens, we hear him
(though no Folio nor Quarto ever lisped a syllable of it) pouring out the confidences
of a fruitless passion to the only honest man of all the crowd, the still and trusty
comrade. This Shakespeare would have us understand, I think, by giving Hamlet
to say to Horatio as they enter the next scene together, * So much for this, sir.' So
much for what ? we think. Then it dawns upon us that the only other interest of
the moment must have been Ophelia's death. And we recollect that Horatio was
absent at the time of her death, having gone to meet Hamlet. So both of them
were ignorant of the occurrence. But now Horatio has been making inquiries
during the time that elapses between the burial and the next scene. He picks up all
the particulars, and has been detailing to the eager Hamlet all that we know. And
Hamlet's entry upon the next scene is timed exactly when Horatio has ceased nar-
rating. There is nothing more to tell. Hamlet enters, saying, ' So much for this,
sir. Now you shall see the other.' That is, I will relate what has happened to me
also, and how a divinity has shaped my ends to this return.
IS HAMIJET'S INSANTFY REAL OR FEIGNED?
[Dr Akinside was, I believe, the first to assert that Hamlet's insanity is reaL
See Steevens's remarks, p. 147. Ed.]
MACKENZIE (1780)
{77ie Mirror, No. loo, 22 April, 1780.) — ^The distraction of Hamlet is clearly
affected through the whole play, always subject to the control of his reason, and
subservient to the accomplishment of his designs. At the grave of Ophelia, indeed,
it exhibits some temporary marks of a real disorder Counterfeited madness,
in a person of the character I have ascribed to Hamlet, could not be so uniformly
kept up as not to allow the reigning impressions of his mind to show themselves in
the midst of his affected extravagance. It turned chiefly on his love to Ophelia,
which he meant to hold forth as its great subject ; but it frequently glanced on the
wickedness of his uncle, — his knowledge of which it was certainly his business to
conceaL
In two of Shakespeare's tragedies are introduced at the same time instances of
counterfeit madness and of real distraction. In both plays the same distinction is
observed, and the false discriminated from the true by similar appearances, Lear's
imagiTvition constantly runs on the ingratitude of his daughters and the resignation
of hi5 crown ; and Ophelia, after she has wasted the first ebullience of her distrac-
tion in some wild and incoherent sentences, fixes on the death of her father for the
subject of her song : * They bore him bare-faced on the bier,' &c. But Edgar pats
on z semblance as opposite as may be to his real situation and his ruling thoughts.
He never" ventures on any expression bordering on the subject of a father's cruelty
or a son's misfortune. Hamlet in the same manner, were he as firm in mind as
Edgar, would never hint anything in his affected disorder that might lead to a sus-
picion of his having discovered the villainy of his uncle ; but his feeling, too pow-
erful for his prudence, often breaks through that disguise which it seems to have
been his original, and ought to have continued his invariable, purpose to maintain,
till an opportunity should present itself of accomplishing the revenge which he
meditated.
DR FERRi.<R (1S13)
{An Essay towards a Tlieory of Apparitions , London, 1813, p. 114.) — ^The cha*
zacter of Hamlet can only be understood on this principle [of Latent Lunacy\. He
105
196 APPENDIX
feigns madness for political purposes, while tlie poet means to represent his under*
standing as really (and unconsciously to himself ) unhinged by the cruel circum-
stances in which he is placed. The horror of the communication made by his
father's spectre; the necessity of belying his attachment to an innocent and deserving
object; the certainty of his mother's guilt; and the supernatural impulse by which
he is goaded to an act of assassination abhorrent to his nature, are causes sufhcient
to overwhelm and distract a mind previously disposed to * weakness and to melan-
choly,' and originally full of tenderness and natural affection. By referring to the
book, it will be seen that his real insanity is only developed after the mock-play.
Then in place of a systematic conduct, conducive to his purposes, he becomes ir-
resolute, inconsequent, and the plot appears to stand unaccountably still. Instead
of striking at his object, he resigns himself to the current of events, and sinks at
length ignobly under the stream.
DRAKE (1817)
[^Shakespeare and his Times, London, 1S17, vol. ii, p. 396.) — In th's play, as in
King Lear, we have madness under its real and its assumed aspect, and in both in-
stances they are accurately discriminated. We find Lear and Ophelia constantly
recurring, either directly or indirectly, to the actual causes of their distress ; but it
was the business of Edgar and of Hamlet to place their observers on a wrong scent,
and to divert their vigilance from the genuine sources of their grief and the objects
of their pursuit. This is done with undeviating firmness by Edgar; but Hamlet
occasionally suffers the poignancy of his feelings and the agitation of his mind to
break in upon his plan, when, heedless of what was to be the ostensible foundation
of his derangement, his love for Ophelia, he permits his indignation to point, and
on one occasion almost unmasked, towards the guilt of his uncle. In every other
mstance he personates insanity with a skill which indicates the highest order of
genius, and imposes on all but the King, whose conscience, perpetually on the
watch, soon enables him to detect the inconsistencies and the drift of his nephew.
T. C. [THOMAS CAMPBELL?] (1818)
{^Letters on Shakespeare, Blackwood's Maga., February, 1818, p. 509.) — Most cer-
tain it is that Hamlet's whole perfect being had received a shock that had unsettled
his faculties ; that there was disorder in his soul none can doubt, — that is, a shaking
and unsettling of its powers from their due sources of action. But who can believe
for a moment that there was in his mind the least degree of that which, with physio-
logical meaning, we call disease ? Such a supposition would at once destroy that
intellectu.1l sovereignty in his being which in our eyes constitutes his exaltation.
Shakespeare never could intend that we should be allowed to feel pity for a mind to
which we were meant to bow; nor does it seem to me consistent with the nature of
his own imagination to have subjected one of his most ideal beings to such mournful
mortal infirmity. That the limits of disorder are not easily distinguishable in the rep-
resentation is certain. How should they? The limits of disorder, in reality, lie in
the mysterious and inscrutable depths of nature. Neither surely could it be intended
by Shakespeare that Hamlet should for a moment cease to be a moral agent, as he
roust then have been. Look on him upon all great occasions, when, had there been
INSANITY, REAL OR FEIGNED f 197
madness in his mind, it would have been most remarlcable ; look on him in his
mother's closet, or listen to his dj-ing words, and then ask if there was any disease
of madness in that soul.
BOSWELL (i82i)
{77k Plays and Poems of William Shakspeare, 1821, vol. vii, p. 536.) — That
the madness of Hamlet is not altogether feigned is, I think, entirely without founda-
tion. The sentiments which fall from him in his soliloquies, or in confidential com-
munication with Horatio, evince not only a sound, but an acute and vigorous, under-
standing. His misfortunes, indeed, and a sense of shame for the hasty and incestuous
marriage of his mother, have sunk him into a state of weakness and melancholy ;
but though his mind is enfeebled, it is by no means deranged. It would have been
little in the manner of Shakespeare to introduce two persons in the same play whose
intellects were disordered ; but he has rather in this instance, as in King Leer, a
second time effected what, as far as I can recollect, no other writer has even ven-
tured to attempt, — the exhibition on the same scene of real and fictitious madness in
contrast with each other. In carrying his design into execution, Hamlet feels no
difficulty in imposing upon the King, whom he detests ; or upon Polonius and his
schoolfellows, whom he despises j but the case is very different, indeed, in his in-
terviews with Ophelia : aware of the submissive mildness of her character, which
leads her to be subject to the influence of her father and her brother, he cannot
venture to entrust her with his secret. In her presence, therefore, he has not only
to assume a disguise, but to restrain himself from those expressions of affection
which a lover must find it most difficult to repress in the presence of his mistress.
In this tumult of conflicting feelings he is led to overact his part from a fear of fall-^
ing below it ; and thus gives an appearance of rudeness and harshness to that which
is in fact a painful struggle to conceal his tenderness.
HARTLEY COLERIDGE {Blackwood's Maga. 1828)
{Essays and Marginalia. London, 1S51, vol. i, p. 153.) — Let us, for a moment,
put Shakespeare out of the question, and consider Hamlet as a real person, a re-
cently deceased acquaintance. In real life it is no unusual thing to meet with cha-
racters every whit as obscure as that of the Prince of Denmark, — men seemingly
accomplished for the greatest actions, clear in thought, and dauntless in deed, still
meditating mighty works, and urged by all motives and occasions to the perform-
ance,— whose existence is nevertheless an unperforming dream; men of noblest,
warmest affections, who are perpetually wringing the hearts of those whom they love
best ; whose sense of rectitude is strong and wise enough to inform and govern a
world, while their acts are the hapless issues of casualty and passion, and scarce to
themselves appear their own. We cannot conclude that all such have seen ghosts ;
though the existence of ghost-seers is as certain as that of ghosts is problematical.
But they will generally be found, either by a course of study and meditation too re-
mote from the art and practice of life, — by designs too pure and perfect to be exe-
cuted in earthly materials, or from imperfect glimpses of an intuition beyond the
defined limits of communicable knowledge, — to have severed themselves from the
common society of human feelings and opinions, and become, as it were, ghosts in
the body. Such a man is Hamlet ; an habitual dweller with his own thoughts.
198 APPENDIX
[Page 162.] If it be asked, Is Hamlet really mad ? or for what purpose does he
assume madness ? we reply that he assumes madness to conceal from himself and
others his real distemper. Mad he certainly is not, in ^ne sense that Lear and Ophe-
lia are mad. Neither his sensitive organs nor the operations of his intellect are
impaired. His mind is lord over itself, but it is not master of his will. The ebb
and flow of his feelings are no longer obedient to calculable impulses, — he is like a
star drawn by the approximation of a comet out of the range of solar influence. To
be mad is not to be subject to the common laws whereby mankind are held together
in community, and whatever part of man's nature is thus dissociated, is justly ac-
counted insane. If a man see objects, or hear sounds, which others in the same
situation cannot see or hear, and his mind and will assent to the illusion (for it is '
possible that the judgement may discredit the false intelligence which it receives
from its spies), such man is properly said to be out of his senses, though his actions
and conclusions, from his own peculiar perceptions, should be perfectly sane and
rational. Hamlet's case is in some measure the reverse of this, — his actions and
practical conclusions are not consistent with the premises in his mind and his senses.
An overwhelming motive produces inertness,^ — he is blinded with excess of light.
[Page 166.] But for wringing the kind, fond heart of sweet Ophelia with words-
such as man should never speak to woman, what excuse, what explanation can be
offered ? Love, we know, is often tyrannous and rough, and too often tortures to
death the affection it would rack into confession of itself ; and men have been who
would tear open the softest breast, for the satisfaction of finding their own names
indelibly written on the heart within. But neither love nor any other infirmity that
flesh is heir to can exempt the live dissection from the condemnation of inhumanity.
Such experiments are more excusable in women, whose weakness, whose very virtue,
requires suspicion and , strong assurance ; but in man they ever indicate a foul, a
feeble, and unmanly mind. I never could forgive Posthumous for laying wagers on
his wife's chastity. Of all Shakespeare's jealous husbands, he is the most disagree-
able.
But, surely, the brave, the noble-minded, the philosophic Hamlet could never be
guilty of such cruel meanness. Nor would Shakespeare, who reverenced woman-
hood, have needlessly exposed Ophelia to insult if some profound heart-truth were
not developed in the exhibition. One truth at least it proves, — the fatal danger of
acting madness. Stammering and squinting are often caught by mimicry, and he
who wilfully distorts his mind, for whatever purpose, may stamp its lineaments with
irrecoverable deformity. To play the madman is 'hypocrisy against the devil.'
Hamlet, in fact, through the whole drama, is perpetually sliding from his assumed
wildness into sincere distraction. But his best excuse is to be found in the words of
a poet, whom it scarce beseems me to praise, and who nee'ds no praise of mine :—
* For to be wroth with one we love
Doth work like madness in the brain.'— 6". T. C.
Hamlet loved Ophelia in his happy youth, when all his thoughts were fair and
sweet as she. But his father's death, his mother's frailty, have wrought sad altera-
tion in his soul, and made the very form of woman fearful and suspected. His oest
affections are blighted, and Ophelia's love, that young and tender flower, escapes not
the general infection. Seemed not his mother kind, faithful, innocent ? And was
she not married to his uncle ? But after the dread interview, the fatal injunction, he
is a man among whose thoughts and purposes Jove cannot abide. He is a being
severed from human hopes and joys, — vowed and dedicated to other work than
INSANITY, REAL OR FEIGNED i 1 99
courtship and dalliance- The spirit that ordained him an avenger, forbade him to
be a lover. Yet, with an inconstancy as natural as it is unreasonable, he clings to
what he has renounced, and sorely feels the reluctant repulse which Ophelia's obe-
dience presents to his lingering addresses. Lovers, even if they have seen no ghosts,
and have no uncles to slay, when circumstances oblige them to discontinue their suit;
can ill endure to be anticipated in the breach. It is a sorrow that cannot bear the
slightest show of unkindness. Hamlet, moreover, though a tardy, is an impatient
nature, that would feel uneasy under the common process of maidenly delay. Thus
perplexed and stung, he rushes into Ophelia's chamber, and, in amazed silence,
makes her the confidant of his grief and distraction, the cAuse of which she must
not know No wonder she concludes that he is mad for her love, and enters readily
into what to her appears an innocent scheme to induce him to lighten his over-
charged bosom, and ask of her the peace which unasked she may not offer. She
steals upon his solitude, while, weary of his unexecuted task, he argues with him-
self the expediency of suicide. Surprised as with a sudden light, his first words are
courteous and tender, till he begins to suspect that she, too, is set on to pluck out
the heart of his mystery ; and then, actually maddened by his self-imposed necessity
of personating madness, he discharges upon her the bitterness of blasted love, the
agony of a lover's anger, as if determmed to extinguish in himself the last feeling
that harmonized not with his fell purpose of revengeful justice. To me, this is the
most terrifically affecting scene in Shakespeare. Neither Lear nor Othello are
plunged so deep in the gulf of misery.
GEORGE FARREN {1829)
{Ohervations on the Laws of Mortality and Disease, &c. London, 1829, p. X2.)
—It is not maintained in this essay that Hamlet was uniformly deranged, or that his
malady disqualified him altogether for the exercise of his reason, but that he was
liable to paroxysms of mental disorder. The death of his father, the marriage of
his mother, and the consequent overthrow of his royal hopes, aU these suddenly act-
ing on a mind predisposed to gayety and to youthful follies, impart a tinge of melan-
choly to it, which speedily but imperceptibly produces an instability of intellect j
and, by brooding over the Ghost's commandment, he nourishes a malady which at
first he intended merely to feign. All Hamlet's words and actions before he resolves
to feign insanity may be considered as those of a free agent, and it is by these that
we are to decide whether or not he has from the start a perfectly healthy mind.
Jfow, before he had any suspicion of his father's murder, and of course before he
intends to feign insanity, we find him deliberating on suicide, and intolerant of life,
— sure indications of mental disease. His mind was therefore affected from the first,
and it is to be further noted, that whenever Hamlet is alone the true state of his
mind reveals itself in melancholy soliloquies ; furthermore, Farren asks, whether
the assumption of the rflle of a madman be not, under the circumstances, a clear act
of insanity ? So far from aiding his design, it was the very way to thwart it, as, in
fact, it did. 'Madness,' says Qaudius, 'in great ones must not unwatched go.'
Hamlet's ' contumelious sarcasm ' in reference to the dead body of Polonius, and the
• language of defiance ' that he • hurls ' at the King, « must force the conclusion that he
was a senseless and abandoned miscreant, if charity and a nicer estimate did not urge
as to the commiseration of a masterless infirmity.' Again [p. 25] : • If Hamlet be
considered as not really mad, but merely feigning, his unmanly outrage on Laertes
200 APPENDIX
at the grave of Ophelia, and the despicable lie he utters by way of apology In the
presence of the King, whom he detests, must stamp him as the most cruel, ser.seless,
and cowardly miscreant that ever disgraced the human form.' Farren cites Djr
Mason Good's Shidy of Medicine, where, in treating of Ecphronia melancholia, it
is stated that: 'the disease shows itself sometimes suddenly, but more generally by
slow and imperceptible degrees. There is a desire of doifig -well, but the will is
wayward and unsteady, and produces an inability of frmly pursuing any laudable
exertion, or even purpose. Melancholia Attonita, the First Variety, most commonly
commences with this character, and creeps on so gradually that it is for some time
mistaken for a mere attack of hypochondrism, or lowness of spirits, till the mental
alienation is at length decided by the wildness of the patient's eyes, &c. The first
stage of this disease is thus admirably expressed by Hamlet : " I have of late, but
wherefore I know not, Lost all my mirth," &c. Grief (and particularly the loss of
friends) have frequently produced it.' .... 'The unhappy individuals are at the
same time not only sensible of what they do or say, but occasionally sensible of its
being wrong, and will express their sorrow for it immediately afterwards, and say
they will not do so again.' — Vol. iii, p. 86. * Hamlet's momentary regret,' adds
Farren, « for having killed Polonius, the expression of his sorrow that to Laertes
he did forget himself, and his more explicit declaration of repentance before the
King, are striking instances of the correctness of the medical opinions of Dr Good.'
* It may not be unimportant to point attention to the fact that feignijig madness is a
theory with many persons subject to mental aberrations.'
Farren devotes much attention to the inconsistencies in Hamlet's character and
expressions, and finds therein proofs of mental disease : How can that man be sane
who is deterred from suicide by God's canon 'gainst self-slaughter, and yet shortly
afterwards so forget this canon, « which can only be that which says : " Thou shalt
do no murder" ' as to meditate a murder of the most fiendish kind, where soul as
well as body of the victim is to be killed ? What sound mind would believe that
the Almighty had fixed his canon 'gainst self slaughter and not against murder f
• Will it be believed that the studious and virtuous Prince, who in the First Act con
sidered this world as an unweeded garden, and looked to other realms for a more
blissful state of being, but was deterred from seeking them by his steady belief in
the revelation which awards punishment for those who shall be guilty of self-
slaughter, could be so entirely divested of his religious impressions, and, indeed, of
his philosophy, as to utter, in the Third Act, a soliloquy in which his very existence
in a future state is made a subject of doubt ? Will it find belief, that in two Acts
such a change in the mind of man could be wrought without supervening malady
to effect the change ?' The belief is forced upon us ' that the poet intended to mark
the growth of Hamlet's mental disorder ' by ' contrasting the states of his thoughts
in the two soliloquies.' Not only is the defective logic which Farren finds in the
soliloquy, ' To be, or not to be,' an additional proof of Hamlet's insanity, but also
the confusion of his metaphors : ' It certainly would be extremely difficult to paint
as a metaphor on canvas : — Enterprises of pith, taking regard of the fear of a
dream, and turning their currents awry.' In the First Act Hamlet is fully impressed
with a belief in a future state, and is studious, religious, and virtuous. The inter-
view with the Ghost unsettles his reason, and « his mind takes a more horrid hent, but
in the Third Act he endeavors to recover his original train of thought, — and to be,
if possible, his former self. This IS A VERY common effort with those who
HAVE SUFFERED MENTAL ABERRATIONS ; and the result is the same in most cases,
INSANITY, REAL OR FEIGNED? 20I
flie sufferer either reasons correctly aa false premises, or makes erroneous deducticm
from correct premises, — so IT WAS with Hamlet.' Finally, Farren finds it « dif-
. ficult to imagine how the poet's intention could ever have been mistaken ; as, from
theyfrj/ scene to the last, he seizes every occasion to prepare his audience for a dis-
play of insanity by Hamlet, and when the mental eclipse has commenced, loses no
opportunity in which he can fix their belief in the nature of his malady.'
SIR HENRY HALFORD (1829)
In an Essay on Popular and Classical Illustrations of Insanity, read in June,
1829, and published in a volume of Essays, See, in 1833 (p. 47), Sir Henry Hal-
FORD adopted the same test for insanity proposed by Hamlet to his mother : • bring
me to the test And I the matter will re-word, which madness Would gambol from *
(III, iv, 142-144), and illustrated it by several striking examples which had occurred
in his own practice, ' serving to prove the correctness ' of Shakespeare's discrimina-
tion. This volume of Essays was reviewed in an article in the Quarterly Review,
from which the i"ollowing extracts are taken.
QUARTERLY REVIEW (1833)
{Review of Sir Henry Halford'' s Essays, vol. xlix, p. 184.) — Hamlet's criterion of
madness, however excellent as a mark for incoherence of intellect, will scarcely be used
in detecting the more intricate forms of this Protean malady. The Prince's testimony
in favor of his own perfect sanity is treated with as little ceremony by the commen-
tators as similar words from the lips of a staring lunatic would be by the phalanx
of modem mad-doctors. Some of them, however, are of opinion that the poet
means to describe a mind disordered, and that the feigned madness is a part of the
plot quite compatible with such a state of intellect ; while others see nothing but the
assumption of insanity in the inconsistencies of Hamlet. This discrepancy springs
from the difierent notions included by different men in their definitions of madness.
In fact, however, madness, like sense, admits of no adequate definition ; no one set
of words will include all its grades and varieties. Some of the existent definitions
of insanity would let loose half the inmates of Bedlam, while others are wide
enough to place nine-tenths of the world in strait-jackets. The vulgar error con-
sists in believing the powers of the mind to be destroyed by the malady ; but general
disturbance of the intellect is only one form. The aberration may be confined to a
few objects or trains of ideas ; sometimes the feelings, passions, and even instincts
of our nature may assume an undue ascendency over a mind not disjointed, but
warped, urging it with resistless force to the commission of forbidden deeds, and to
form the most consistent plans for their accomplishment.
[Page 186.] We have no doubt that Shakespeare intended to display in the cha-
racter of Hamlet a species of mental malady, which is of daily occurrence in our
own experience, and every variety of which we find accurately described by his
contemporary, the author of the Anatomic of Melancholy. ' Suspicion and jealousy,'
says Burton, ' are general sj-mptoms. If two talk together, discourse, whisper, jest,
he thinks presently they mean him, — de se putat omnia, — or, if they talk with him,
he is ready to misconstrue every word they speak, and interpret it to the worst.
Inconstant they are in all their actions ; vertiginous, restless, unapt to resolve of any
202 . APPENDIX
business ; they will and they will not, persuaded to and from upon every occasion ;
yet, if once resolved, obstinate and hard to be reconciled. They do, and by and by
repent them of what they have done ; so that both ways they are disquieted of all
hands, soon weary. They are of profound judgements in some things, excellent
apprehensions, judicious, wise, and witty ; for melancholy advanceth men's conceits
more than any humor whatever. Fearful, suspicious of all, yet again many of them
desperate hair-brains ; rash, careless, fit to be assassinates, as being void of all i-uth
and sorrow. Tadium vitce is a common symptom; they soon are tired with all
things, — sequitur nunc vivendi nunc moriendi cupido ; often tempted to make away
with themselves, — vivere nohint, mori nesciunt ; they cannot die, they will not live;
they complain, lament, weep, and think they lead a most melancholy life.' It
would be difficult to find a criticism more applicable to the character of Hamlet
than in this page of old Burton, who drew the picture as much from himself as from
observation made on others. This form of madness (the melancholia altonita of
nosologists) begins with lowness of spirits and a desire for solitude.
[Page 187.] Perhaps some may find it difficult to believe that Shakespeare ob-
served these minute and almost technical distinctions of madness, which appear to
belong rather to the province of the pathologist than that of the poet. But every-
thing is still to be learned concerning this extraordinary man's habits of study and
observation. The variety and individual clearness of his delineations of mental
malady leave on our minds no doubt that he had made the subject his especial study,
as both Crabbe and Scott certainly did after him, and with hardly inferior success.
The various forms of the malady he has described, — the perfect keeping of each
throughout the complications of dramatic action, — the exact adjustment of the pecu-
liar kind of madness to the circumstances which induce it, and to the previous cha*
racter of the • sound man,' leave us lost in astonishment.
^R MAGINN {Frttiti>s Maga. 1836)
{Shakespeare Papers. London, i860, p. 330.) — In a word, Hamlet, to my mind,
is essentially^a psychological exercise and study. The hero, from whose acts and
feelings everything in the drama takes its color and pursues its course, is doubtless
insane, as I shall prove hereafter. But the species of intellectual disturbance, the
peculiar form of mental malady, under which he suffers, is of the subtlest character.
The hero of another of these dramas. King Lear, is also mad ; and his malady is
traced from the outbreak, when it became visible to all, down to the agony of his
death. But we were prepared for this malady, — the predisposing cause existed
always ; it only wanted circumstance to call it forth. Shakespeare divined and
wrote upon the knowledge of the fact which has since been proclaimed formally by
the physician, that it is with the mind as with the body: there can be no local affec-
tion without a constitutional disturbance, — there can be no constitutional disturbance
without a local affection. Thus there can be no constitutional disturbance of the
mind without that which is analogous to a local affection of the body, namely,
disease, or injury affecting the nervous system and the mental organs, — some pre-
vious irregularity in their functions or intellectual faculties, or in the operation of
their affections and passions; and, again, general intellectual disturbance will always
be accompanied by some particular affection. But I am using well-nigh the words
of Esquirol. He says, • Presque tous ' (and by this qualification he only intends to
INSANITY, REAL OR FEIGNED? 203
exclude those in whom he had not the means of ascertaining the fact) — • Presque
tons les alienfe confies ^ mes soins avoient offert quelques irregularit^s dans lem
fonctions, dans leur facult^s intellectuelles, dans leur affections, avant d'etre malades,
et souvent de la premiere enfance. Les uns avoient it6 d'un orgueil excessif, les
autres tr^s col6r6s ; ceux-ci souvent tristes, ceux-lli d'lme gai6t6 ridicule ; quelques-
uns d'une instability d6solante pour leur instruction, quelques autres d'une applica-
tion opiniatre k ce qu'ils entreprennoient, mais sans fixite ; plusieurs vdtilleux minu-
tieux, craintifs, timides, irresolus ; presque tous avoient eu une grande activity de
facultds intellectuelles et morales qui avoient redoubles d'6nergie quelque temps
avant I'acces ; la plupart avoient eu des maux des nerfs ; les femmes avoient ipreuves
des convulsions ou de spasmes hysteriques; les hommes avoient 6t6 sujets ^ des
crampes, des palpitations, des paraljrsies. Avec ces dispositions primitives ou ac-
quises, 11 ne manque plus qu'une a£fection morale pour determiner I'explosion de la
ftireur ou I'accablement de la melancolie.'
Now, in all Shakespeare's insane characters, however slight may be the mental
malady, with the exception only of Hamlet, we have accurately described to us the
temperament on which madness is engrafted.
[Page 333.] But of Hamlet alone we have no account of any positive predis-
posing cause to mania or faulty temperament ; nor can we catch from the lips of any
third person anything which might lead us to question his sanity before the com-
mencement of the play. All is to his praise. He is the esteemed of Fortinbras,
the friend of Horatio, the beloved of Ophelias We are abruptly brought to con-
template the noble nature warped, the lofty mind o'erthrown, the gentleman ' in his
blown youth blasted with ecstasy.' To comprehend and account for this, we must
study the drama with the same pervading sweep of thought that we would passages
in human life occurring within our observation, from which we wished to wring a
meaning, and by which we hoped to solve a mystery. There is nothing beyond to
look to. We must judge Hamlet by what he said and did; I open the volume in
which this is recorded.
BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE
{On the Feigned Madness of Hamlet. October, 1839, p. 452.) — One very mani-
fest purpose of adopting the disguise of feigned madness was to obtain access to the
King in some moment of unguarded privacy The rambling of a maniac over
all parts of the palace, and at all hours, would excite no suspicion ; and thus an
opportunity might be afforded of striking the fatal blow The ordinary tone of
social intercourse would be the last he would willingly or successfully support This
feint of madness offered a disguise to him more welcome, and which called for less
constraint, than the labored support of an ordinary, unnoticeable demeanor. The
mimicry of madness was but the excess of that levity and wildness which naturally
sprang from his impatient and overwrought spirit. It afforded some scope to those
disquieted feelings which it served to conceal. The feint of madness covered all, —
even the sarcasm, and disgust, and turbulence, which it freed in some measure from
an intolerable restraint. Nor was it a disguise ungrateful to a moody spirit, grown
careless of the respect of men, and indifferent to all the ordinary projects and desires
of life. The masquerade brought with it no sense of humiliation, — it pleased a
misanthropic humor, — it gave him shelter and a sort of escape from society, and it
204 APPENDIX
cost him little effort. That mingled bitterness and levity, which served for the repre
sentation of insanity, was often the most faithful expression of his feelings.
[Page 454.] It is not to be supposed that this state of mind, thus prompting to
the choice of this disguise, would be one of long continuance ; and, accordingly,
we find, towards the close of the piece, that the feint of madness, which has never
in fact been very sedulously supported, is laid aside, and that without any seeming
embarrassment. As the excitement of his mind wears itself out, Hamlet assumes an
ordinary tone. He jests with Osric ; and, from that time to the conclusion of the
drama, he presents to us the aspect of one exhausted by the violence and intensity
of his feelings. The Ghost might appear to him now, we think, and have been
seen without a start, — the tragedy of life was becoming as indifferent as its pleasures,
—and the secrets of another world would soon have been as little exciting as they
had previously made the interests of this. The bidding of his father's spirit is still
remembered ; but we might almost doubt whether it would have been fulfilled if
the treachery of the King had not suddenly rekindled his wrath, and called upon
him to revenge his own as well as his father's death A mind unhinged, vexed,
tortured, and bewildered, adopts as a scheme of action what, after all, is- more im-
pulse than policy.
KNIGHT (1841)
{^Introductory Notice to Hamlet, p. 89.) — It is curious that in Burton's Anatomy
of Melancholy we have the stages of melancholy, madness, and frenzy indicated as
described by Celsus ; and Burton himself mentions frenzy as the worst stage of mad-
ness ' clamorous, continual.* In Q,, therefore, Hamlet, according to the description
of Polonius, is not only the prey of melancholy and madness, but * by continuance ' of
frenzy. In Q^ the symptoms, according to the same description, are much milder, —
a sadness — a fast — a watch — a weakness — a lightness, — and a madness. The reason
of this change appears to us tolerably clear. Shakspere did not, either in his firet
sketch or his amended copy, intend his audience to believe that Hamlet was essen-
tially mad ; and he removed, therefore, the strong expressions which might en-
courage that belief.
DR RAY (1847)
[This article, from which the following extracts are taken, first appeared in The
American Journal of Insanity, April, 1 847. It was afterwards reprinted in Con-
tributions to Mental Pathology, Boston, 1873, p. 485.] — It is not to be supposed that
[Shakespeare] was guided solely by intuition. He unquestionably did observe the
insane, but he observed them as the great comparative anatomist of our age observed
the remains of extinct species of animals, — from one of the smallest bones recon-
structing the whole skeleton of the creature, re-investing it with flesh and blood,
and divining its manners and habits. By a similar kind of sagacity, Shakespeare,
from a single trait of mental disease that he did observe, was enabled to infec the
existence of many others that he did not observe, and from this profound insight
into the law of psychological relations he derived the light that special observation
had failed to supply.
[Page 506.] Hamlet's mental condition furnishes in abundance the charactetistio
symptoms of insanity in wonderful harmony and consistency.
INSANITY, REAL OR FEIGNED? 205
[Page 509.] On the supposition of his real insanity we have a satisfactory expla-
aation of the difficulties which have received such various solutions. The integrity
of every train of reason is marred by some intrusion of disease ; the smooth, deep
current of his feelings is turned into eddies and whirlpools under its influence, and
his most solemn undertakings conducted to an abortive issue.
[Page 510.] With a skill founded on what would seem to be a professional know-
ledge of the subject, Shakespeare has selected for his purpose that form of the dis-
ease in which the individual is mad enough to satisfy the most superficial observer,
while he still retains sufficient power of reflection and self-control to form and pursue
if not to execute, a well-defined, well-settled purpose of revenge.
[Page 512.] The manner in which Hamlet speaks of and to the Ghost, while
administering the oath of secrecy to his friends, is something more than the natural
reaction of the mind after experiencing extraordinary emotions. It betrays the
excitement of delirium, — the wandering of a mind reeling under the first stroke of
disease.
[Page 513.] Although no single incident in his interview with Ophelia is incom-
patible with simulation, yet when we regard the whole picture which his appearance
presented, his pallid face, his piteous look, his knees knocking each other, his h^t-
less head and down-gyved stockings, his deliberate perusal of Ophelia's face, and
the sigh, * so piteous and profound as it did seem to shatter all his bulk,' — w^e
feel as little disposed to believe all this to be a well-acted sham as we should the
wail of a new-bom infant, or the flush that glows on the cheek in the fever of con-
sumption.
[Page 514.] In all Hamlet's interviews with Polonius the style of his discourse is
indicative of the utmost contempt for the old courtier, and he exhibits it in a manner
quite characteristic of the insane Nothing is more so than a fondness of
annoying those whom they dislike by ridicule, raillery, satire, vulgarity, and every
other species of abuse Had Hamlet been feigning insanity, it would have
been hardly consistent with his character to have treated in such a style the father
of one so dear to him as Ophelia.
[Page 515.] Towards his old friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstem, his discourse
and manner are suitable to his own character and to their ancient friendship. He
treats them respectfully, if not cordially, discourses sensibly enough about the players
and other indifferent subjects, occasionally losing his self-control and uttering a re-
mark strongly savoring of mental unsoundness : ' O God, I could be bounded in a
nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad
dreams.' It is a well-observed fact, though not generally known, that in a large
majority of cases the invasion of insanity is accompanied by more or less of sleep-
lessness and disagreeable dreams. I have not yet met with the case, however
sudden the outbreak of the disease, in which this first symptom did not exist for
some time before any suspicion of impending derangement was excited in the minds
of the friends. Although strongly suspecting, if not knowing, that they are in the
interest of the King, sent expressly for the purpose of observing his movements, he
makes no attempt to impress them with a conviction of his madness, as might have
been expected had he been acting a part. For certainly, if he had been anxious to
spread the belief that he was really mad, he would not have neglected so favorable
an opportunity.
[Page 517.] We next meet with Hamlet in his remarkable interview with Ophelia,
—remarkable not more for his language and conduct than for the difficulties which
206 APPENDIX
it has presented to commentators, to whom it has proved a perfect pons asinorum.
Some regard his treatment of Ophelia as unnecessarily harsh and unfeeling, even
for the purposes of simulation, and in this instance, at least, can see no * cause for
mirth ' in his pretended madness. If Homer sometimes nods, so may Shakespeare.
Others think that Hamlet's love for Ophelia was but lukewarm after all, and there-
fore he was justified in treating her in such a way as to lacerate her feelings and
outrage her dignity. The most natural view of the subject, — that which is most
readily and obviously suggested, — relieves us of all these difficulties, and reveals to
us the same strong and earnest significance which appears in every other scene of
this play. If Hamlet is really insane, as he presumptively is, and as we have much
reason to believe that he is, then his conduct is what might have been naturally ex-
pected. It discloses an interesting feature in mental pathology, — the change which
insanity brings over the warmest aflfections of the heart, whereby the golden chains
wrought by love and kindness are utterly dissolved, and the forsaken and desolate
spirit, though it continues anlong men, is no longer of them. Such aberrations
from the normal course of the affections were closely observed and studied by
Shakespeare, who saw in them that kind of poetical interest which master-spirits
like his are apt to discern in the highest truths of philosophy. The frequency with
which he introduces insanity into his plays shows that it was with him a favorite
subject of contemplation ; and from the manner in which he deals with it, it is
equally obvious that he regarded it as not only worth the attention of the philan-
thropist and physician, but as full of instruction to the philosopher and the poet.
.... If in this feature he differs from every other poet, it is not from that fondness
for dwelling on the morbid anatomy of the mind which is the offspring of a corrupt
and jaded taste, but from a hearty appreciation of all the works and ways of nature,
and a ready sympathy with every movement of the human soul. In no instance are
these views so strongly confirmed as in this remarkable scene.
[Page 523.] In this play, for the first and only time, Shakespeare has ventured on
representing the two principal characters as insane. His wonderful success in man-
aging such intractable materials the world has long acknowledged and admired.
They are never in the way, and their insanity is never brought forward in order to
enliven the interest by a display of that kind of energy and extravagance that flows
from morbid mental excitement. On the contrary, it assists in the development of
events, and bears its part in the great movement in which the actors are hurried
along as if by an inevitable decree of fate. Herein lies the distinguishing of
Shakespeare's delineations of insanity. While other poets have made use of it
chiefly to diversify the action of the play, and to excite the vulgar curiosity by its
strange and striking phenomena, he has made it the occasion of unfolding many a
deep truth in mental science, of displaying those motley combinations of thought
that are the offspring of disease, and of tracing those mysterious associations by
which the ideas of the insane mind are connected. Few men, I apprehend, are so
familiar with those diversities of mental character, that are in any degree the result
of disease, as not to find the sphere of their ideas on this subject somewhat enlarged
by the careful study of Shakespeare.
[Page 524.] Wisely has the poet abbreviated the duration of [Ophelia's] mad-
ness. The prolonged exhibition of this afflictive disease in one so gentle and lovely
would have distressed the mind of the beholder in a manner unfavorable to dramatic
effect. We see enough to understand that she is no longer conscious of her suffer-
ings; and after listening to the snatches of songs that flit through her memory, with
INSANITY, REAL OR FEIGNED? 207
the same kind of melancholy interest with which we hear the sighing of the autumnal
breeze through the limbs and leaves of the trees, we are willing that the finisher ol
all earthly sorrows should come. There is no method in her madness ; no quips
and cranks of a morbidly active ingenuity surprise and gratify the curious beholder,
and no bursts of passion such as madness alone can excite fall on his astonished ear.
Like one who walks in his sleep, her mind is still busy, but the sources of its
activity are within. Heedless of everything else, her mind wanders among the con-
fused and broken recollections of the past, deserted by the glorious light of the
Divinity that stirs within us, but which is soon to be rekindled with unquenchable
brightness.
W. W. LLOYD (1856)
{Critical Essay on Hamlet, contributed to Singer's Second Edition. London,
1856, p. 332.) — Whether the boundaries of sanity are really over-passed by Hamlet,
whether the very warning he gives of his purposed simulation may be but one of
the cunningnesses of the truly insane, are questions that belong to a class most dif-
ficult to treat, whether in life or literature. I confess to be inclined to take the
latter view, which by no means excludes the recognition of a main stream of sanity
running through the action, and comprising very much that was really but the simu-
lation of madness. But some such extremity of excitement seems to form part of
the supematuralism of the play ; such an effect was ordinarily ascribed to apparitions,
and in this sense Horatio alludes to it ; and it is noteworthy that Hamlet's manner is
already changed, and he has already given signs of an antic disposition without
obvious motive, before he has given notice that at some time thereafter he should
probably think meet to affect eocentricity as a disguise. His susceptibility of irri-
tation has received a wrench, and although he professes to his mother with every
appearance of conviction to be merely mad in craft, a suspicion of something more
is intimated in his thought that possibly the Ghost may have been but diabolical
abuse of weakness and melancholy,— ever subject to such ill influence ; and when
he excuses his injuries to Laertes on the ground of madness, distractions, it would
be, I think, unworthy of him to suppose that his apology was a mere and conscious
fabrication. Some palliation, moreover, must be borrowed hence for his treatment
of Ophelia, which otherwise more than verges on the brutal.
[Page 333.] Whatever energy in action, therefore, is manifested by Hamlet is in
the form of passionate outburst, or reply to sudden provocation, or the impulse of
the moment, and his liability to such accesses of excitement appears to have been
increased by the excitement of the apparition, — itself, from another point of view, a
consequence of the excitability, till it carries his mind over the balance that gives
fair claims to sane composure.
[Page 335.] Hamlet is ever reminded of the charge laid upon him by the Ghost,
to recognize it with a pang, to find some excuse for deferring, — now mistrust of the
Ghost, now inaptness of an opportunity, — to accuse himself of dullness and tardiness,
even to declare a resolution, but immediately to diverge into the generalities of a
philosophical deduction, and allow himself to be carried away from any definite
design entirely. He has the means, the skill, the courage, and what should be suffi-
cient motive, but the active stimulus is unequal to the contemplative inertia that op-
poses it, and never thoroughly masters and possesses his nature ; it gains no perma-
208 APPENDIX
nent hold on his attention ; his spirit is soon wearied and oppressed by the inconge.
mal intrusion, and he relapses into the vein more natural to him ^ it is cursed spite
to be called upon to bring back to order an unhinged world, — we may believe from
his manner that he finds no great hardship or disgrace either in having lost the
chance of governing the kingdom, of the foreign affairs of which at least he has not
cared to inform himself, and there is such entire absence of expressions of regret for
nis frustrate love that I am not sure he does not feel some relief in getting rid of
an importunate and interrupting passion. liamlet's mind is certainly unhinged, and
I would prefer to say unsettled. He is two entirely different Hamlets in different
scenes, and we see him in constant alternation of hurried and lucid intervals. If
we could assume for a moment that his madness is entirely feigned, we should
stumble oi er the inconsistency that it is so carried out as to answer no reasonable
purpose, excites suspicion instead of diverting it, covers not, and is not fit to cover,
any secondary design, and would amount at best to a weak and childish escapade
of ill-humor and spleen. This is the really difficult aspect of Hamlet's character,
and it is here, — perhaps we may say alone in the play, — that the poet has left us to
cur own resources, has placed the picture of nature before us, and called upon us to
read and interpret it with no aid from him of marginal interpretation. It is here
that the genius of a great Shakespearian actor, if ever such arise again, may be dis-
played, in so rendering these equivocal scenes as to blend them harmoniously with
those portions that in themselves are perfectly illuminated and defined, and bring
home enlightenment and conviction at once to the understanding and the heart.
[Page 339.] The players find nothing attractive in Fortinbras, and are too happy
to retrench the character and extirpate all possible allusions to him, but there is a
worse evil in thisvthan the curtain falling on an unking'd stage, with' four princely
corpses, and 05ric and Horatio only left alive ; these foreign incidents give range to
the thought that relieves them in this longest of all the plays, that renders the
voyage and return of Hamlet less abrupt and remote and exceptional, and the idea
which they communicate of the Norwegian prince, — the young and tender. leadei
of an adventurous expedition, — remains in the mind insensibly from essential con-
gruity with the theme of the play, so that his appearance and mastery at last is satis-
fying as the closing in of a grand outlying circuit and the fulfilment of an expeC'
tation.
DR BUCKNILL (1859)
{The Mad Folk of Shakespeare, London, 1859. Second edition, 1867, p. 60.) —
[* My tables ! meet it is I set it down,' &c.] We regard this climax of the terrible in
the trivial, this transition of mighty emotion into lowliness of action, as one of the
finest psychological touches anywhere to be found in the poet.
[Page 61.] When the mind is wrought to an excessive pitch of emotion, the in
stinct of self-preservation indicates some lower mode of mental activity as the one
thing needful. When Lear's passions are wrought to the utmost, he says : • I'll do I
VXdol I'll do/' But he does nothing. Had he been able, like Hamlet, to have
taken out his note-book, it would have been good for his mental health. Mark the
effect of the restraint which Hamlet is thus able to put upon the tornado of his
emotion. When the friends rejoin him, he is self-possessed enough swiftly to turn
their curiosity aside.
[Page 67.] His conduct to Ophelia is a mixture of feigned madness, of the sel-
INSANITY. REAL OR FEIGNED? 2 09
fisbness of passion blasted by the cursed blight of fate, of harshness which he
assumes to protect himself from an affection which he feels hostile to the present
purpose of his life, and of that degree of real unsoundness, his unfeigned 'weakness
and melancholy,' which is the subsoil of his mind.
[Page 69.] Hamlet's letter to Ophelia is a silly enough rhapsody ; of which, in-
deed, the writer appears conscious. It reads like an old letter antecedent to the
events of the drama. The spirit it breathes is scarcely consistent with the intense
life-weariness under which its author is first introduced to notice. The signature,
however, is odd : * Thine evermore, most dear lady, whilst this machine is to him ;'
and agrees with the spirit of Hamlet's materialist philosophy, which is so strongly
expressed in various parts of the play, and which forms so strange a contrast with
the revelations from the spirit-world of which he is made the recipient.
[Pago 78.] Hamlet is not slow to confess his melancholy, and indeed it is the
peculiarity of this mental state, that those suffering from it seldom or never attempt
to conceal it. A man will conceal his delusions, will deny and veil the excitement
of mania, but the melancholiac is almost always readily confidential on the subject
of his feelings. In this he resembles the hypochondriac, though not perhaps from
exactly the same motive. The hypochondriac seeks for sympathy and pity ; the
melancholiac frequently admits others to the sight of his mental wretchedness from
mere despair of relief and contempt of pity.
[Page 90.] The true melancholy and the counterfeit madness are strangely com
mingled in this scene [with Ophelia, III, i].
[Page 94.] When the crisis has come, and the King's guilt has been unkennelled,
and Hamlet is again left alone with Horatio, before whom he would not feign, his
real excitement borders so closely upon the wildest antics of the madness he has
put on in craft, that there is little left to distinguish between the two.
[Page 105.] The ideas which almost exclude from Hamlet's thoughts the wrong
he has done Polonius now become expressed with a vehemence inconsistent with
a sound mind Although he succeeds in his purpose of turning the Queen's
eyes into her very soul, and showing black and grained spots there, it must be ad-
mitted that this excessive vehemence is not merely so much out of the belt of rule
as might be justified by the circumstances, but that it indicates a morbid state of
emotion; and never does Hamlet appear less sane than when he is declaring:
* That I essentially am not in madness. But mad in craft.'
[Page III.] Hamlet, therefore, offers as tests of his sanity that his pulse is tem-
perate, that his attention is under command, and his memory faithful ; tests which
we are bound to pronounce about as fallacious as could well be offered, and which
could only apply to febrile delirium and mania. The pulse in mania averages about
fifteen beats above that of health ; that of the insane generally, including maniacs,
only averages nine beats above the healthy standard ; the pulse of melancholia and
monomania is not above the average. That a maniac would gambol from repro-
ducing in the same words any statement he had made is true enough in the acute
forms of the disease; but it is not so in numberless instances of chronic mania, nor
in melancholia or partial insanity. The dramatic representations which are in vogue
in some asylums prove the power of attention and memory preserved by many
patients ; indeed, the possessor of the most brilliant memory we ever met with was
a violent and mischievous maniac. He would quote page after page from the Greek,
Latin, and French classics. The IliaJ, and the best plays of Moli^re in particular,
be seemed to have at his fingers' ends. In raving madness, however, the two
Vol. II.— 14
2IO APPENDIX
symptoms referred to by Hamlet are as a rule present. The pulse is accelerated,
and the attention is so distracted by thick-flowing fancies, that an account can
scarcely be given of the same matter in the same words. It is, therefore, to this
form alone that the test of verbal memory applies.
[Page ii6.] Alas, for Hamlet! What with his material philosophy and his spir-
itual experiences, there was contention enough in that region of the intellect which
abuts upon veneration to unhinge the soundest judgement, — let alone the grief and
shame and just anger, of which his uncle's crimes and his mother's frailty were the
more than sufficient cause in so sensitive a mind.
[Page 127,] Although we arrive at the conviction that Hamlet is morbidly mel-
ancholic, and that the degree to v/hich he puts on a part is not very great; that, by
eliminating a few hurling words, and the description which Ophelia gives of the
state of his stockings, there is little either in his speech or conduct that is truly
feigned ; let us guard ourselves from conveying the erroneous impression that he is
a veritable lunatic. He is a reasoning melancholiac, morbidly changed from his
former state of thought, feeling, and conduct. He has 'foregone all custom of
exercise,' and Idngs to commit suicide, but dares not. Yet, like the melancholiacs
described by Burton, he is * of profound judgement in some things, excellent appre-
hensions, judicious, wise, and witty; for melancholy advanceth men's conceits more
than any humour whatever.' He is in a state which thousands pass through without
becoming truly insane, but which in hundreds does pass into actual madness. It is
the state of incubation of disease, ' in which his melancholy sits on brood,' and
which, according to the turn of events or the constitution of the brain, may hatch
insanity or terminate in restored health.
[Page 130.] Hamlet's character presents the contrast between his vivid intellec-
tual activity and the inertness of his conduct. To say that this depends upon a
want of the power of will to transmute thought into action is to do no more than to
change one formula of words into another. There must be some belter explanation
for the unquestionable fact that one man of great intellectual vigor becomes a
thinker only, and another a man of vehement action. That activity of intellect is
in itself adverse to decisiveness of conduct is abundantly contradicted by biography.
That activity of intellect may exist with the utmost powerlessness, or even perversity
of conduct, is equally proved by the well-known biographies of many men, * who
never said a foolish thing, and never did a wise one.' The essential difference of
men who are content to rest in thought, and those who transmute it into action,
appears not to consist in the presence or absence of that incomprehensible function,
that unknown quantity of the mind, the "will; but in the presence or absence of
clearly-defined and strongly-felt desire, and in that power of movement which can
only be derived from the exercise of power, that is, from the habit of action. It is
conceivable, as Sir James Mackintosh has well pointed out, that an intellectual being
might exist examining all things, comparing all things, knowing all things, but de-
siring and doing nothing. It is equally conceivable that a being might exist with
two strong desires, so equally poised that the result should be complete neutraliza-
tion of each o her, and a state of inaction as if no emotional spring to conduct what-
ever existed. Hence, inaction may arise from want of desire, or from equipoise of
desire.
INSANITY. REAL OR FEIGNED f 211
DR CONOLLY (1863)
{A Study of HamUt, London, 1863, p. 22.)— This first soliloquy seems distincUy
to reveal both Hamlet's mental constitution and the already existing disturbance in
his feelings, amounting to a predisposition to actual unsoundness.
[Page 23.] The circumstances are not such as would at once turn a healthy mind
to the contemplation of suicide, the last resource of those whose reason has been
overwhelmed by calamity and despair No thought of feigning melancholy
can have entered his mind ; but he is even now most heavily shaken and discom-
posed, indeed so violently that his reason, although not dethroned, is certainly well-
nigh deranged.
[Page 43.] The balance of his mind is lost ; the sovereignty of his reason is
really gone, as Horatio feared it might, in the retired colloquy with the spirit of
his father, so lately hearsed in death. He is left incapable of steady and defined
purpose.
[Page 51.] It is generally overlooked that the interpretation [of Hamlet's eccen-
tricity subsequent to the communication with the Ghost as mere acting] can scarcely
extend to the eccentricity previously manifested, or explain his conduct or language
before he had heard anything of the appearance of his father's ghost. Among his
confused resolves, that of feigning madness seems suddenly to have suggested itself,
either as subsidiary to some equally obscure plan of revenging his fathers death, or
merely to account for the wild words he had been uttering. The suggestion might
have arisen in his mind in the short interval between the departure of the Ghost
from his sight and his rejoining his friends. We shall find that it is never acted
upon as a part of a consistent plan, but recurs to him now and then, and fitfully, and
is at such times acted upon, not as a deliberately planned conduct, but as something
lost sight of amidst the real tumult of a mind vmfeignedly disordered.
[Page 53.] It certainly appears to me that the intention to feign was soon for-
gotten, or could not steadily be maintained, in consequence of a real mental in-
firmity ; that it subsequently recurred to Hamlet's thoughts only in circimistances
not productive of much emotion, but became quite unthought of in every scene in
which his feelings were strongly acted upon, and that in such scenes a real and
lamentable mental disorder swept all trivial considerations away.
[Page 54.] The very exhortations to secrecy, shown to be so important in Ham-
let's imagination, are but illustrations of one part of his character, and must be
recognisable as such by all physicians intimately acquainted with the beginnings of
insanity. It is by no means unfrequent that when the disease is only incipient, and
especially in men of exercised minds, that the patient has an uneasy consciousness
of his own departure from a perfectly sound understanding. He becomes aware
that, however he may refuse to acknowledge it, his command over his thoughts or
his words is not steadily maintained, whilst at the same time he has not wholly lost
control over either. He suspects that he is suspected, and anxiously and ingeniously
accounts for his oddities. Sometimes he challenges inquiry, and courts various tests
of his sanity, and sometimes he declares that in doing extravagant things he has
only been pretending to be eccentric, in order to astonish the fools about him, and
who he knew were watching him.
The young Hamlet has suddenly become a changed man. The curse of madness,
—ever fatal to beauty, to order, to happiness, — ^has fallen upon him ; deep vexatioii
212 APPENDIX
has undermined his reasort, and thoughts beyond the reaches of his sonl have agi«
tated him beyond cure. His affections are in disorder, and the disorder will increase;
so that he will become by turns suspicious and malicious, impulsive and reflective,
pensive and facetious, and undergo all the transformations of the most afflicting of
human maladies.
[Page 56.] From the time of the interview" with the Ghost to the end of th**.
play, Hamlet's conversation scarcely ever regains the composure and power of which
it was previously capable. There is an appreciable change ; often more brilliancy,
but always less coherence ; so that almost on all occasions his conversation is maiTed
by flightiness, and by cynical disdain, both of himself and others, until nearly at the
conclusion, when the agitations of life are ended, and he is dying. Then, indeed,
in his brief and last conversation with Horatio, the consciousness of approaching
death prevails over all temporal and minor influences, and his expressions are affec-
tionate and noble.
[Page 74.] It [Hamlet's letter] was probably written before his abrupt visit to
Ophelia in her chamber, and might have been the last she had received from him,
•written after his dreadful scene with the Ghost, and wrung from him as a kind of
remonstrance, consequent on the doubt of his truth and honor implied by the repul-
sion of his letters following immediately after that shock Except as the pro-
duction of a disordered mind, there is no meaning in it; but it is perfectly consistent
with what is observed in letters written every day by persons partially insane, both
in and out of asylums, who labor under impulses to express in writing the sentiments
occupying the imagination, but find the effort too much for them, and become be-
wildered, and unable to command words sufficiently emphatic to represent them.
In Hamlet's distraction, his thoughts have almost quitted the night-scene on the
platform; and in his complicated distress they have turned chiefly to Ophelia.
There is considerable risk of error in commenting on the precise application of many
words used two centuries before our time, but even the accidental substitution of the
word beautified, which Polonius condemns as a vile phrase, for the word beautiful, is
not at all unlike the literal errors occurring often in madmen's letters ; the writers
aim at force, and are not satisfied with ordinary words. Altogether, the style of the
letter has so singular a resemblance to that of insane persons of an intellectual cha-
racter, but disturbed by insanity, as almost to justify the supposition that Shakespeare
had met with some such letter in the curious case-books of his son-in-law, Dr Hall,
of Stratford-upon-Avon.
[Page 77.] This garrulity (Polonius's) details to us the order of the symptoms
already partly indicated in the action of the play, and might have been copied from
the clinical notes of a student of medical disorders. We recognize all the phenom-
ena of an attack of mental disorder consequent on a sudden and sorrowful shock ;
first, the loss of all habitual interest in surrounding things ; then, indifference to food,
incapacity for customary and natural sleep ; and then a weaker stage of fitful tears
and levity, the mirth so strangely mixed with * extremest grief;' and then subsidence
into a chronic state in which the faculties are generally deranged. These are occur-
rences oftei. noticed in pathological experience, and even in the sequence men-
tioned.
[Page 85.3 Hamlet knows, or suspects, that Rosencrantz and Guildenstem have
been sent for to test the sanity of his understanding, and perhaps for ulterior objects
which may concern him. He is not only desirous to ascertain the truth of this, but
to impress them with a conviction that he has been acting a part. If he were feign-
INSANITY, REAL OR FEIGNED? 213
mg Le would feign still; for if at first sight there was reason for feigning, the
reason yet remains, and he would rather strive to send them back confirmed that
his antic disposition was a real madness. But he is conscious that all is not well
with him; he perceives that he is watched; perhaps he is apprehensive that this
watching forebodes mischief to him, and he carefully endeavors to evade such an
inconvenient consequence. This is an often-noticed tendency in cases of mental
impairment, and this is not the only scene in which Hamlet manifests it.
[Page 88.] And even in this conversation with Rosencrantz and Guildenslem,
whilst he exhibits the acuteness with which an insane man will for a short time dis-
course, he also shows the unfitness of an infirm mind for consecutive conversation or
continued exertion. Every incidental trifle produces interruption, and drives thought
from its proposed course. He now proceeds to tell his friends why they were sent
for, but with a wish to prove to them that no valid reason existed for it. He con-
fesses peculiarities which have lately crept upon him ; some which he is conscious
must have been observed, but also some which have only been experienced by him-
self. In thus imparting himself, his expressions take the unhappy character of an
uneasy and oppressed mind, to which every ordinary source of pleasure has become
indifferent or presents itself in a morbid and joyless form. This is so precisely the
condition exemplified in the greater number of melancholy patients that we can
scarcely imagine it merely copied from observation, and feel inclined to refer the
eloquent description to some painful experience of the great poet himself.
[Page no.] In his conversation with Ophelia his words and his conduct are
simply those of a man distempered. For feigning such contempt and cruel disre-
gard as he thus expresses, and towards one for whom he had professed and had
really felt a lover's affection, there is no reason and no excuse except the sad excuse
that he is not in his perfect mind. To suppose him feigning is impossible. No man,
however resolved to act a cruel part, could be supposed to listen to words of trust
sincerely spoken by a gentle woman, diffidently addressing him, and returning him
the gifts he had in happier hours presented to her with honeyed vows, without cast-
ing away all predetermined simulation, and clasping her to his heart.
[Page 115.] The diff"usion of the element of tenderness over the whole of Ham-
let's character, however skilfully effected on the stage, is an unauthorized departure
from the delineation of his character by Shakespeare.
[Page 123.] This advice to the Players includes directions so judicious and admi-
rable as to seem to add to the difficulty of comprehending the real condition of
Hamlet's mind. Such variations of mood and manner of discourse present nothing
new to those whose painful duty it is to live with the insane. Hamlet has his days
of calmness and his days of excitement, and the presence of different persons affects
him differently, and sometimes excessively, — of some to contempt and anger, some to
ridicule, and some to quieter reflection. In the first interview with the Players,
Polonius is present, upon whom he exercises his customary jokes ; the second inter-
view is with the Players only, who know nothing of his suspected malady or of the
designs he entertains, and to converse with them is agreeable to him, and even in
some degree restorative of mental composure For a time the Players make
him almost forget the wretchedness, the thought of which has unsettled his reason.
[Page 126.] WTien the King and Queen, 5:c., enter with fleurishes' of trumpet
immediately after Hamlet's conversation with Horatio, it must be confessed that
Hamlet instantly betrays, or appears at once to feign, an extravagance of manner
and language at variance even with the deportment just maintained with Horatio.
214 APPENDIX
The real promptings of malady seem at this particular time to be mingled with a
wildness affected in order to bewilder the company or to deceive the King and tho
court ; but the affected wildness is further stimulated by the ungovernable excite-
ment of a brain too unfeignedly disordered to be made the subservient instrument
of a wish merely to seem to be disordered. Part of the wild talk of the Prince
sc^ms to be only put on to tease or to insult the King or Polonius, but from this he
soon passes on to expressions and conduct plainly dictated by a mind which, how-
ever cunning, he cannot control.
[Page 128.] Throughout the whole of the play-scene there is the same vein of crazi-
ness Sxs, Hamlet's language and deportment. Except his previous conduct to Ophelia,
there is nothing more offensive in Hamlet's expressions than those which he indulges
while speaking to her in this scene. Malady, and not feigning, has appeared to
change the refined Prince into an indelicate mocker, who addresses a young lady in
terms coarser than he would have employed if his controlling respect had not been
obscured and his habitual courtesy gone from his mind. In this disordered state he
has no apparent remembrance of his former repulse of her loving behavior, nor of
his denial of having ever loved her, and he has equally forgotten his violent conduct
and language, as insane persons alone do, and do so remarkably. Nor is what he
says or does consistent with a rational anxiety, however intense, to watch the success
of a device to which he attached, when shaping it, a great importance as the means
of solving a serious question, and of dissipating a horrible suspicion, and thus de-
termining his future course of action. All his actions and all his words are those of
a distempered man, unmindful of the respects and proprieties of life. He never
becomes composed ; never recovers himself. He goes on jesting with Ophelia, as
if incapable of deeper matter, and when the performance of the Players has af-
frighted the King and sent all the noble audience away, and he is left with Horatio
alone, before whom he has no motive for maintaining an antic disposition, he still
talks wildly. Since the sad night of his interview with his father's ghost he has, in
some quieter hour, entrusted Horatio with the whole revelation made to him ; but
now, even with Horatio, he speaks as strangely as he formerly did with Horatio and
Marcellus together, immediately after that unearthly discourse, and when he was
surfeited with horrors. As no gravity then resulted from that interview, so no gravity
now results from his conviction that the Ghost was a true ghost, the tale of the mur-
der true, and his uncle the murderer. He takes no counsel with his friend. He
exclaims that he will ' take the ghost's word for a thousand pounds,' just as reck-
lessly as he had said, * It is an honest ghost, that let me tell you.' His words are
now, as they were then, wild and hurling. No resolution springs up in his mind ;
it is all disordered and unbalanced. He quotes doggerel verses, and calls for the
recorders.
Just when he is in this unsettled humor, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern approach ,
they come to him, sent by the Queen. Their presence chafes him, and in the short
conversation with them he assumes a contemptuous air, and baffles them with scoff-
ing words, which amusingly and precisely resemble the expressions of certain per-
sons partially insane, who delight in the power of exercising a cultivated intellect
in bewildering plain people. This acuteness in putting their questioners out of
countenance, and averting their unwelcome inquiries, is well known to those expe-
rienced in the ways of the insane, and, although not combined with consistent and
reasonable actions, is often extremely embarrassing to the inexperienced.
[Page 139.] The speech of Hamlet upon finding the King praying is the speech
INSANITY, REAL OR FEIGNED? 21$
of a man uttering maniacal exaggerations of feeling. Such exaggerations of anger
or ferocity are occasionally recognized in the ravings of the mad, — of no other per-
sons, however enraged or depraved. The speech, it is also to be observed, has no
listeners ; there is nobody by to feign to. The terrible words are the dictation of a
mind so metamorphosed by disorder that all healthy and natural feelings, all good-
ness and mercy, have been forcibly driven out of it.
[Page 141.] The wild impulses of the night, in Hamlet's inter\iew with his
mother, are still acting on Hamlet's distempered brain, and exclude the natural
sorrow and remorse with which he would, if sane, have been affected on finding
that he had slain an innocent old man, once the friend and favorite of his father.
Every feeling seems incontestably perverted by sheer madness. Nor does he at all
recover himself all through his subsequent interview with the Queen. His self-
command is so utterly gone that he puts into words the bitterest and coarsest thoughts
th.it have passed through his mind in his previous reflections on her marriage, —
thoughts natural in a mind angrily revolving what has strongly moved it, but of
which a healthy mind would suppress or mitigate the expression No sense
of what he has done affects him ; he turns fiercely on his mother, regardless of her
natural horror at this wanton deed of blood. All through the interview with the
Queen it is not a sorrowing, princely, respectful son earnestly and passionately re-
monstrating with his mother, but an impetuous madman forgetful of the proper object
of his purposed revenge ; forgetful of the admonition of that unearthly being, who,
whilst exhorting him to revenge his murder, solemnly enjoined him not to contrive
against his mother aught; and now so deprived of all self-control and healthful
feeling as at the first to impress upon his mother's mind the idea that he has come to
kill her; and then almost exclusively to abuse and insult her on the subject of her
second marriage, — his first maddening grief.
[Page 143.] To the Queen's question, 'What have I done,' &c., her son's reply
is but further reproach and fnsult on the subject, not of his father's murder, but ot
her second marriage. The terms of hatred which he employs show that morbid
exaggeration on this subject which has so much to do with the explanation of his
whole conduct. His personal abhorrence of his uncle is dwelt upon with revolting
particularity, and as if his mother's acceptance of him was all that tortured his
mind. His reproaches dwell most on her affections having been weaned from her
late dignified lord, and even transferred, during his lifetime, to his more sensual
brother.
[Page 146.] The figures he draws of his hated uncle provoke him still more; he
forgets his mother as much as he has forgotten his father and his promise to his
father's ghost, abandons himself to mere abuse of his uncle, and almost riots in a
foul vocabulary.
[Page 155.] It is curious to observe that the arguments he adduces to disprove his
mother's supposition, [that he is delirious] are precisely such as certain ingenious
madmen delight to employ [Dr Conolly here confirms Dr Bucknill's assertion that
this test which Hamlet proposes to his mother only applies to cases of acute mania.
See p. 209.]
[Page 199.] If Hamlet is feigning here, our view of his character must become
low indeed. In the open grave before him lies the body of the fair Ophelia, of her
vhom once he certainly loved, with whose death he has only just become acquainted;
and which death, if he has been feigning, he must know was partly the result of his
murder of her aged father, and partly of his unfeeling treatment of herself. Hec
2 1 6 APPENDIX
distracted brother leaps into her grave, and if Hamlct feigns he insults the brother's
distraction, mimics it, outdoes it. The surer reading must be that the whole scene,
at once so unexpected and so a'gitating, has driven the Prince from his lately re-
gained tranquillity, and, acting on a brain yet strongly disposed to excitement, has
overcome his self-control. If, instead of this, we are to assume that he takes this
opportunity, already so colored with calamity, again to put an antic disposition on,
and act the madman, with no conceivable object but insulting death and grief,
we must be forced to the conclusion that Hamlet's real character was insensible
and contemptible. It is impossible to entertain the supposition that Shakespeare
would have made so worthless a moral being the principal personage of one of his
noblest compositions, and have wasted his genius to adorn such singular moral
deformity.
And this is the last paroxysm by which the mind of the unhappy Prince is shaken.
After this he shows no more madness; it has left him again, as madness does after
a reign of terror, we often know not how or why ; its invasion and departure being
equally mysterious, originating in causes lying too deep to be discerned and ex«
amined, among the equally hidden sources of feeling and thinking, and of sleep
and waking, and of life and death. When in a subsequent interview with Laertes
he makes a solemn apology to him, before their fatal fence commences, acknow-
ledging that he has done him wrong, he ascribes what he did to ' a sore distraction,'
even to a madness, which he affectingly alludes to as ' poor Hamlet's enemy.' This
is the pitiable truth. To treat this serious avowal as a falsehood is what all our
sympathies refuse us to permit.
DR KELLOGG (i860)
{Shakespeare's Delineations of Insanity, Imbecility, and SuiciJe, New York, 1866,
p. 36.) — Shakespeare .... recognized what none of his critics, not conversant with
medical psychology in its present advanced state, seem to have any conception of;
namely, that there are cases of melancholic madness of a delicate shade, in which
the reasoning faculties, the intellect proper, so far from being overcome, or even dis-
ordered, may, on the other hand, be rendered more active and vigorous, while the
will, the moral feelings, the sentiments and affections, are the faculties which seem
alone to suffer from the stroke of disease. Such a case he has given us in the
character of Hamlet, with a fidelity to nature which continues more and more to
excite our wonder and astonishment as our knowledge of this intricate subject
advances.
[Page 44.3 After the disappearance of the Ghost, the first words Hamlet utters
give the clew to his mental and physical state, and it is quite evident that the cord,
which has been stretched to its utmost tension, here snaps suddenly, and the conse-
quences are immediately apparent, and are evinced throughout his whole subsequent
career. Here enters the pathological element into his mind and disposition, and
the working of the leaven of disease is soon apparent, for it changes completely and
for ever his whole character. Up to this time we see no weakness, no vacillation
no want of energy, no infirmity of purpose. After this, all these characteristics are
irrecoverably lost, and though some faculties of his great spirit seem comparatively
untouched, others are completely paralyzed.
[Page 46.] The intimation that he conveys in this scene, that he may think it
INSANITY, REAL OR FEIGNED? 21 7
• meet to put an antic disposition on,' and upon which the theory of feigned madness
is mainly built, is quite natural, and quite as consistent with the theory of real' as
feigned madness, and may, in the commotion of his mind, have resulted as much
from a vague consciousness of what was impending, as from any intention to act a
part. This is quite clear to the expert, though he may not succeed in making it
so to those critics who take an opposite view of it-
[Page 48.] Hamlet's mind, as we have seen, had been made to reel and stagger
by the contending emotions excited in the former scene, but it has not been at any
time so completely overthrown as to deprive him, even temporarily, of self-control,
until it experiences the shock imparted to it by [Ophelia's] refusal to see him or
receive his letters. This, however, together with what has preceded, is more than
it can bear, and he becomes, for the time being, quite frantic. He rushes unbidden
into her presence, quite regardless of his personal appearance.
[Page 49.] Ophelia could not, and, as it is quite evident, did not, mistake the mi-
port of all this, and if we are to regard it as a well-acted shanty then let us forever
cease to draw a distinction between art and nature ; the two are identical, one and
the same.
[Page 50.] [Hamlet] appears to regard Polonius as all lovers, sane or insane,
are apt to regard a fond and perhaps too judicious parent, who stands between them
and their cherished idol, as a meddlesome old fool, over anxious as to consequences,
and quite incapable of appreciating their motives and feelings.
[Page 50.] [Hamlet] seems to take a morbid delight in annoying the old nan
Polonius. Nothing is more natural than for the insane to fix upon some one indi-
vidual, from whom they have, or imagine they have, received some slight or injury,
and endeavor to tease him by every means their sane ingentuty can devise.
[Page 51.] • O God ! I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king
of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.* Restlessness, imperfect
sleep, and dreaming are peculiarly incident to the initiatory stages of most forms of
mental disease, and this remark forms another link in the chain of evidence respect-
ing the real state of his mind. He interrupts the short metaphjrsical disquisition on
ambition which follows, with a remark which shows that he feels that his mind is
not in a fit state to reason on certain things, and can only act as it is directed by the
disturbed current of his feelings. • By my fay, I cannot reason,' says he ; yet in
the direction these lead see how he can discourse : [see II, ii, 288-295.]
[Page 52.] Hamlet's well-known apostrophe to man, many no doubt will think,
lujdly contains the thoughts likely to emanate from a mind at all tinctured with in-
sanity ; but such have yet to learn that the peculiar form of madness delineated by
Shakespeare in the character of Hamlet is quite compatible with occasional outbursts
of grand poetical inspiration. Such will no doubt persist in believing him when be
says, * I am but mad north-north-west ; when the wind is southerly, I know a hawk
from a hand-saw.* Those, however, who are familiar with the halls of an asylum
for the insane, and have repeatedly heard patients scout the idea of their insanity in
language almost identical with the above, will persist in holding a contrary opinion.
[Page 54.] The successive steps in the progress of his disease now become more
Hnd more marked, and we next perceive an upheaving and overthrow of those deep
moral feelings and affections so peculiar to his character before the invasion of the
disease. And here let those who maintain the theory of feigned madness be careful
to observe, that the very feelings and faculties of his soul which have been most
intensely exercised are the very ones which first give way and become most com-
2l8 APPENDIX
pletely upset by the diseased reaction which follows. This they may regard, if they
choose, as a mere coincidence ; it will, however, be somewhat difficult for them to
.show that it was more easy, natural, and convenient for Hamlet to assume this form
of madness than a form more readily calculated to deceive others, — one more easily
feigned to carry out his purpose of deception.
[P^ge 57.] Surely they must be blind to dramatic propriety who can perceive in
all this [the scene with Ophelia] nothing more than a well-acted sham, in which
the actor does violence to his own best feelings, and wounds and lacerates fearfully
those of her whom he had loved so tenderly, when the deception which he is thereby
supposed to attempt is attainable at so much less cost. Ophelia, certainly no incom-
petent judge under the circumstances, seems as before to have placed the proper
estimate upon his conduct. The lynx-eyed vigilance of woman's love could not be
deceived, and she has read correctly the riddle which has so perplexed all Shake-
speare's critics down to the present time.
[Page 64.] The scene with the Grave-diggers is not merely rich in v/it, humor,
philosophy, and morality, but it possesses a profound psychological interest, and it is
evident Hamlet acted very unnaturally under the circumstances, supposing him to be
sane or feigning; or supposing him to be insane, acted in the true spirit of his dis»
ease very naturally. The latter supposition is the more reasonable.
[Page 65.] The wild manifestations of sorrow on the part of Laertes at the grave
of his sister, which Hamlet has observed at a distance, very naturally excite in him
a paroxysm of his malady, and his conduct here establishes beyond all question
the existence of genuine madness. At times he could control himself completely,
and act and talk rationally, yet ever since the interview with the Ghost, even during
these intervals, we can detect the genuine manifestations of that disease, which is
ready to burst out in marked paroxysms upon occasions of unusual excitement
like this.
CARDINAL WISEMAN (1865)
( William Shakespeare, by His Eminence Cardinal Wiseman. London, 1865, p.
41.) — If a dramatist wished to represent one of his persons as feigning madness,
that assumed condition would be naturally desired by the writer to be as like as
possible to the real affliction. If the other persons associated with him could at
once discover that the madness was put on, of course the entire action would be
marred, and the object for which the pretended madness would be designed would
be defeated by the discovery. How consummate must be the poet's art who can
have so skilfully described, to the minutest symptoms, the mental malady of a great
mind as to leave it uncertain to the present day, even among learned physicians
versed in such maladies, whether Hamlet's madness was real or assumed.
This controversy may be said to have been brought to a close by [Dr Conolly.]
[Page 43.] But let it be remembered that in those days mental phenomena were
by no means accurately examined or generally known. There was but little atten-
tion paid to the peculiar forms of monomania, or to its treatment, beyond restraint
and often cruelty. The poor idiot svas allowed, if harmless, to wander about the
village or the country to drivel or gibber amidst the teasing or ill-treatment of boys or
rustics. The poor maniac was chained or tied in some wretched outhouse, at the
mercy of some heartless guardian, with no protector but the constable. Shakespeare
conld not be supposed, in the little town of Stratford, nor indeed in London itself.
INSANITY. REAL OR FEIGNED? 2I9
to have had opportunities of studying the influence and the appearance of mental
derangement of a high-minded and finely-cultivated prince. How, then, did Shake-
speare contrive to paint so highly-finished and yet so complex an image ? Simply
by the exercise of that strong sympathetic will which enabled him to transport, or
rather to transmute, himself into another personality. While this character was
strongly before him, he changed himself into a maniac ; he felt intuitively what
would be his own thought, what his feelings, were he in that situation ; he played
with himself the part of a madman, w^ith his own grand mind as the basis of its
action ; he grasped on every side the imagery which he felt would have come into his
.mind, beautiful even when dislorded, sublime even when it was grovelling, brilliant
even when dulled, and clothed it in words of fire and tenderness, with a varied
rapidity which partakes of wildness and of sense. He needed not to look for a
model out of himself, for it cost him no effort to change the angle of his mirror, and
sketch his own countenance awry. It was but little for him to pluck away the crow;i
from reason, and contemplate it dethroned.
Before taking leave of Dr Conolly's most interesting monograph, I will allow^
myself to make only one remark. Having determined to represent Hamlet in this
anomalous and perplexing condition, it was of the utmost importance to the course
and end of this sublime drama that one principal incident should be most decisively
separated from Hamlet's reverse of mind. Had it been possible to attribute the
appearance of the Ghost, as the Queen, his mother, does attribute it in Act V, to the
delusion of his bewildered phantasy, the whole groundwork of the drama would
have crumbled beneath its superincumbent weight. Had the spectre been seen by
Hamlet, or by him first, we should have been perpetually troubled with the doubt
whether or not it was the hallucination of a distracted, or the invention of a deceit-
ful, brain. But Shakespeare felt the necessity of making this apparition to be held
for a reality, and therefore he makes it the very first incident in his tragedy, ante-
cedent to the slightest symptom of either natural or affected derangement, and makes
it first be seen by two witnesses together, and then conjointly by a third unbelieving
and fearless witness. It is the testimony of these three which first brings to the
knowledge of the incredulous Prince this extraordinary occurrence. One may
doubt whether any other writer has ever made a gbost appear successively to those
whom we may call the wrong persons before showing himself to the one whom
alone he cared to visit. The extraordinary exigencies of Shakespeare's plot render
necessary this unusual fiction. And it serves, moreover, to give the only color of
justice to acts w^hich otherwise must have appeared unqualified as mad freaks or
frightful crimes.
DR ROSS (1867?)
{^SludUs, Biographical and Literary, London, n. d. p. 39.) — Filial love is the
starting-point of Hamlet's action, and this drives him to courses which the mature
men, who are his critics, deem puerile and inconsequential. So, indeed, they are ;
if they were otherwise, they would be incongruous with his character. With this
inconsequence there is a subtlety of thought ever characteristic of the opening fac-
ulties of youth. The passion for metaphysical speculation, like filial love, is strong-
est in young minds, and quickens the powers into rapid development. Hundreds
of men of genius have in their youth written quires of ingenious disquisition on the
nature and destinies of man, which, when they have reached manhood, they have
220 APPENDIX
discreetly burnt. Shakespeare is careful to tell that at the time the play opens
Hamlet wished to go ' back to school at Wittenberg.' ....
Hamlet was one of Shakespeare's early works ; it was afterwards strengthened
and enlarged, but it still bears the marks of immaturity and inexperience.
[Page 41.] Was Hamlet really mad, or was he not? This question is answered
by himself in the negative, and requires no discussion.
[Page 43.] Hamlet, then, is not 'essentially' mad, but only 'mad in craft;* and
now it will be curious to inquire how Shakespeare has managed this * craft ' in his
hero. The assumption is very simple, and consists, in relation to external action,
of extravagant gestures, noddings of the head, tremblings of the limbs, and care-
lessness of attire. In this respect it is similar to the assumption of Edgar. Intel-
lectually, it is evinced in the indulgence of a speculative train of thought always
natural to him, and in his serious moments exhibiting considerable ingenuity, and
bearing a relation to the difficulties of his position and the humiliating irresolution
of his character ; but, in the passages of affected insanity, it is less sustained and
abstract, and is generally charged with satirical and insulting inferences applicable
to the conduct of those he dislikes or has a purpose of annoying There is a savage
humor mingled with these speculations and argumentative qu.bbles which makes
them terribly scathing. His soliloquy, * To be, or not to be,' is delivered in his sane
character, and exhibits, with some infirmities as well as some marvellous beauties
of diction, a searching power of mental analysis and a pre-eminent faculty for con-
secutive argument. In the interview with Ophelia, which immediately follows the
evolution of his inmost feelings, he lapses or rather forces himself into his lunatic
mood, and then he indulges in paradoxes and a cutting insolence of demeanor
•which are characteristic of the assumption. Shakespeare, who, in the spirit of a
true dramatic genius, is fond of drawing contrasts, has here contrasted in one cha-
racter two antagonistic mental states, — Hamlet sane and Hamlet mad; and he has
put all his strength in the development of his masterly conception.
The question, yea or nay, of Hamlet's lunacy is connected with the prior question
of the necessity of feigning it. It has been said that the assumption was super-
fluous, inasmuch as it led to no consequences necessary to the development of the
plot. Most of the deaths occurred by accident, and the stabbing of the King re-
sulted from an impulse of revenge. This is true. We may add, however, that the
necessity did not exist in the circumstances, but in the character ; and this is a dis-
tinction that must be made when estiniating his art, not only in this, but in all the
plays by our author. He cared not for other consistencies, if the characters were
consistent. Hamlet was agitated by a deep wrong ; he was * very proud, revenge-
ful, and ambitious,' but he was also timid and irresolute. His philosophy had un-
nerved his will without tempering his passions. Although revengeful, he dared not
take his revenge ; he wished murder done, but was too irresolute to do it; and being
unused in the ways of the world, his passions had not yet hardened into reckless-
ness, nor his purposes matured into crime. Like most reflective and sensitive young
men, he was overawed by the presence of his elders, and, thrown back upon him-
self, he nursed his feelings in secret until they became morbid. He then sought
that relief in Words which he dared not obtain from action. Such was his timidity,
however, that he feared even to utter in his proper character the bitter taunts his
heart meditated ; he therefore affected insanity, that under its pretence he might
indulge, with comparative safety, a license in the use of cutting innuendoes and in-
•olent retorts. Had he not affected lunacy, the development of the character in iti
INSANITY, REAL OR FEIGNED $ 221
moral aspects would have been impracticable, because it would have been incon-
sistent. Shakespeare's aim was quite clear to himself, and he proves it by contrast-
ing the promptitude of Laertes, who has suffered the same injury, — the murder of
nis father. .... He [Hamlet] was a youth of tongue, not a man of performance,
— a clever tongue, indeed, had he, — superlatively clever ; but he was, at best, only
half-matured, — a giant in intellect, a dwarf in will, a wise idiot, a fool of nature,
who knew everything in the circle of being, — even himself, which is the highest
knowledge, — ^yet his very weakness mastered him, and made his wisdom the sport
of his imbecility.
RICHARD GRANT WHITE (1870)
{The Case of Hamlet the Younger. The Galaxy, April, 1870, p. 542.)— In the
consideration of Hamlet's case nothing should be kept more clearly in mind than
that from the time we hear of him until his death he was perfectly sane, and a man
of very clear and quick intellectual perceptions, — one perfectly responsible for his
every act and every word; that is, as responsible as a man can be who is constitution-
ally irresolute, purposeless, and procrastinating. They have done him wrong who
have called him undecided. His penetration was like light ; his decision like the
Fates' ; he merely left undone.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL (1870)
{Among My Books. Shakespeare Once More. Boston, 1870, p. 218.) — Anothet
striking quality in Hamlet's nature is his perpetual inclination to irony. I think this
has been generally passed over too lightly, as if it were something external and ac-
cidental, rather assumed as a mask than part of the real nature of the man. It
seems to me to go deeper, to be something innate, and not merely factitious. It is
nothing like the grave irony of Socrates, which was the weapon of a man thor-
oughly in earnest, — the boomerang of argument, which one throws in the opposite
direction of what he means to hit, and which seems to be flying away from the
adversary, who will presently find himself knocked down by it. It is not like the
irony of Timon, which is but the wilful refraction of a clear mind twisting awry
whatever enters it, — or of lago, which is the slime that a nature essentially evil
loves to trail over all beauty and goodness to taint them with distrust : it is the half
jest, half earnest of an inactive temperament, that has not quite made up its mind
whether life is a reality or no, whether men were not made in jest, and which
amuses itself equally with finding a deep meaning in trivial things, and a trifling
one in the profoundest mysteries of being, because the want of earnestness in its
own essence infects everything else with its own indifference. If there be now and
then an unmannerly rudeness and bitterness in it, as in the scenes with Polonius and
Osric, we must remember that Hamlet was just in the condition which spurs men to
sallies of this kind; dissatisfied, at one neither with the world nor with himself, and
accordingly casting about for something out of himself to vent his spleen upon.
But even in these passages there is no hint of earnestness, of any purpose beyond
the moment ; they are mere cat's-paws of vexation, and not the deep-raking ground-
swell of paasion, as we see it in the sarcasm of Lear.
The question of Hamlet's madness has been much discussed and variously de-
222 APPENDIX
cided. High medical authority has pronounced, as usual, on both sides of the
question. But the induction has been drawn from too narrow premises, being based
on a mere diagnosis of the case, and not on an appreciation of the character in its
completeness. We have a case of pretended madness in the Edgar of King Lear •
and it is certainly true that that is a charcoal sketch, coarsely outlined, compared
with the delicate drawing, the lights, shades, and half-tints of the portraiture in
Hamlet. But does this tend to prove that the madness of the latter, because truer
to the recorded observation of experts, is real, and meant to be real, as the other to
be fictitious ? Not in the least, as it appears to me. Hamlet, among all the cha-
racters of Shakespeare, is the most eminently a metaphysician and psychologist.
He is a close observer, continually analyzing his own nature and that of others,
letting fall his little drops of acid irony on all who come near him, to make them
show what they are made of. Even Ophelia is not too sacred, Osric not too con-
temptible for experiment. If such a man assumed madness, he would play his part
perfectly. If Shakespeare himself, without going mad, could so observe and re-
member all the abnormal symptoms as to be able to reproduce them in Hamlet, why
should it be beyond the power of Hamlet to reproduce them in himself? If you
deprive Hamlet of reason, there is no truly tragic motive left. He would be a fit
subject for Bedlam, but not for the stage. We might have pathology enough, but
no pathos. Ajax first becomes tragic when he recovers his wits. If Hamlet is irre-
sponsible, the whole play is a chaos. That he is not so might be proved by evidence
enough were it not labor thrown away.
This feigned madness of Hamlet's is one of the few points in which Shakespeare
has kept close to the old story on which he founded his play ; and as he never de-
cided without deliberation, so he never acted without unerring judgement. Hamlet
drifts through the whole tragedy. He never keeps on one tack long enough to get
steerage way, even if, in a nature like his, with those electric streamers of whim and
fancy forever wavering across the vault of his brain, the needle of judgement would
point in one direction long enough to strike a course by. The scheme of simulated
insanity is precisely the one he would have been likely to hit upon, because it enabled
him to follow his own bent, and to drift with an apparent purpose, postponing de-
cisive action by the very means he adopts to arrive at its accomplishment, and satis-
fying himself with the show of doing something that he may escape so much the
longer the dreaded necessity of really doing anything at all. It enables him to play
with life and duty, instead of taking them by the rougher side, where alone any
firm grip is possible, — to feel that he is on the way toward accomplishing somewhat
when he is really paltering with his own irresolution. Nothing, I think, could be
more finely imagined than this. Voltaire complains that he goes mad without any
sufficient object or result. Perfectly true, and precisely what was most natural for
him to do, and, accordingly, precisely what Shakespeare meant that he should do.
It was delightful to him to indulge his imagination and humor, to prove his capacity
for something by playing a part ; the one thing he could not do was to bring him-
self to act unless when surprised by a sudden impulse of suspicion, — as where he
kills Polonius, and there he could not see his victim. He discourses admirably of
suicide, but does not kill himself; he talks daggers, but uses none. He puts by the
chance to kill the King with the excuse that he will not do it while he is praying,
lest his soul be saved thereby, though it is more than doubtful whether he believed
it himself. He allows himself to be packed off to England without any motive,
except that it would foi the time take him farther from a present duty : the more
INSANITY, REAL OR FEIGNED? 22$
disagreeable to a nature like his, because it was present, and not a mere matter for
specolative consideration. When Goethe made his famous comparison .... he
seems to have considered the character too much from one side. Had Hamlet
actually killed himself to escape his too onerous commission, Goethe's conception
of him would have been satisfactory enough. But Hamlet was hardly a sentimen-
talist, like Werther ; on the contrary, he saw things only too clearly in the dry north-
light of the intellect. It is chance that at last brings him to his end. It would
appear rather that Shakespeare intended to show xis an imaginative temperament
brought face to face with actualities, into any clear relation of sympathy with which
it cannot bring itself. The very means that Shakespeare makes use of to lay upon
him the obligation of acting, — the Ghost, — really seems to make it all the harder
for him to act ; for the spectre but gives an additional excitement to his imagina-
tion and a fresh topic for his skepticism.
[Page 225.] If we must draw a moral from Hamlet, it would seem to be that
Will is Fate, and that Will once abdicating, the inevitable successor in the regency
is Chance. Had Hamlet acted, instead of musing how good it would be to act, the
King might have been the only victim. As it is, ail the main actors in the story are
the fortuitous sacrifice of his irresolution. We see how a single great vice of cha-
ractT at last draws to itself as allies and confederates all other weaknesses of the
man, as in civil wars the timid and the selfish wait to throw themselves upon the
stronger side.
DR STEARNS (1871)
{^The Shakespeare Treasury of Wit and Knowledge, New York, 1871, p. 352.)—
The majority of readers at the present day believe that Hamlet's madness was real.
I therefore find myself in the minority ; for I regard it as feigned A mad-
ness so skilfully feigned, and in so moderate and exact a degree as to deceive not
only those whom it was intended to deceive, but also to deceive alike spectators and
readers, who are always privileged to know more of the action and the real charac-
ters in a play than do the personages themselves, — such a feigned madness serves to
make the plot more ingenious and interesting than it would be if the hero's mental
aberration had been made to appear unmistakably real.
[Page 357.] Any young man bom and reared to large expectations with a like
natural temperament, over-educated to a degree that has rather weakened than
strengthened him for coping with great difficulties, and, moreover, prostrated under
a heavy affliction, might feel a rush of emotions such as Hamlet gives vent to in his
first soliloquy. For the first time in his life he has just had a view of the worst side
of the world, and of the people in it. He could comprehend it, too, at sight, be-
cause he had read of it in his books, but had never before any personal experience
of the reality. The result that follows indicates that his mind had been rather
unfitted for action by too much cultivation ; like the bow of the fable, that was so
weakened by ornamental carving, that it broke on the first severe trial. But that
Hamlet's faculties did not give way in like manner, I must try to prove.
Hamlet's passionate burst of' feeling the first time we see him left alone, is not
unlike that of Job in his distresses ; for he would welcome death as a release from
hopeless earthly trouble. That speech, at the outset so full of gloomy thoughts, can-
not therefore be considered as any proof of existing mental derangement, or as indi-
cating that it was likely to follow.
224 APPENDIX
[Pa^e 359.] He comes away from that fearful conference both more composed
and resolved than before, or is seen to be at any time after. He replies to his
friends in a manner half serious, half jesting,
[Page 363.] I will not, therefore, attempt to gain any support for the theory of
Hamlet's feigned madness by citing examples of his rare intellectual power, so
superior to that of all others around him. For I doubt not that those who have
made a study of the phenomena of insanity could demonstrate that the two were
not incompatible.
[Page 366.] Moreover, it is to be remarked that this particular friend, Horatio,
makes no reference to the Prince's insanity by any ' aside ' and sorrowing expressions
of regret and sympathy, as he most surely would do did he not know that his insan-
ity was counterfeited, and for a special purpose.
[Page 368.] Hamlet's own protestation to his mother of his sanity would, I sup-
pose, of itself be regarded as of little weight ; as known lunatics very often make
just such protestations, and support them, too, by the most cunning devices. Yet,
on this point, there are two other circumstances to be remarked. The Prince had
special reasons for wishing his mother might not continue to believe in his madness.
For such a belief would act as • a flattering unction ' to the wounds he wished to
make in her conscience by his severe reproof of her marriage with his uncle, which
was criminal on her part and dishonoring to him.
Again, though real lunatics often try to disprove their lunacy, it must happen much
more rarely that a real lunatic will beg that he may not be thought to be really in-
sane, 'but only mad in craft,'
It is also to be remarked, that in this interview with his mother, the Prince's man-
ner changes directly after the accidental killing of the old lord chamberlain, who
was listening behind the arras ; for then he knows that for this time he is freed from
all spies and listeners. In direct contrast to this is that early scene with Ophelia,
whom he has not met ' for this many a 'day,' and who was at that time specially * let
loose to him ' as a decoy, while, as he very well knew, there were concealed listeners
near by : so that his harshness to her on that occasion was intended to deceive her
father and the eaves-dropping King. In direct contrast with this, again, is his
friendly and confidential talk with Horatio, just before the performance of the court
play begins, when he has managed to send away his spies and followers on a brief
errand. Likewise, after the lord cnamberlain is discovered and killed in his place
of concealment, Hamlet knows that he is freed from further espionage for that time,
and straightway he makes use of the unexpected opportunity not only to charge his
mother with her disgraceful courses, but also proceeds to speak of other things with
a plainness he would not have used unless he had felt certain that there were no
more listeners about What special use Hamlet intended to make of the
King's betrayal of his guilt through the effect of the play upon his conscience, we
can only now surmise. Perhaps he meant it to serve more as public evidence of the
crime, than for the satisfying his own private judgement. But within an hour after
that, he happened to kill the old lord chamberlain, and the next morning, by order
of the King, he is far on his way to England, At this point, in the history or action
of the piece, our inquest of his lunacy or sanity comes to an end. For, from the
moment that Hamlet leaves for England, his vagaries of act and speech cease en-
tirely; with the single exception, after his sudden return, of his strife with Laertes
at Ophelia's grave ; where, indeed, his conduct is hardly more extravagant than that
of her brother.
I
INSANITY, REAL OR FEIGNED? 22$
Hamlet's after apology by a falsehood, — if his insanity was not real, — ^presents
another difficulty in the conduct of so noble and brave a man. But as we know it
was not prompted by cowardice or any selfish motive, but rather from a feeling of
kindness towards a man who was himself under great bereavements, this falsehood
should be judged of very lightly.
ARTHUR MEADOWS (1871)
{Hamlet: An Essay, Edinburgh, 1871, p. ro.) — But how this has ever come to
be a matter for dispute we are at a loss to understand. Had Hamlet kept his inten-
tion to play the madman to himself, there would have been room for doubt ; but after
having taken Horatio and Marcellus into his confidence, by stating plainly his resolve
to behave himself like a madman, it is inconceivable how any misconception of the
proper reading should exist. It is no proof that his madness is real to say that the
King, Queen, Polonius, and others, think and say he is mad ; this only proves he
imitated madness well when he succeeded in creating this belief. When David
scrabbled on the doors of the gate at Gath, and let his spittle fall upon his beard,
was he mad ? Surely not. But Achish and others thought him mad. So it is io
the present case ; such proof is no proof, and is not entitled to a moment's considera-
tion. There is not a whisper of Hamlet's madness up to the time when he warns
his friends, in future, to take no heed of his acts, — not even from Polonius. The
impression of his madness is created by his acts subsequent to this warning. In all
his soliloquies, in his conversation with Horatio, in his instruction to the Players, in
his interview with his mother, in his letter to Horatio, there is not the slightest trace
of unreason, while his interviews with the King, Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencrantz
and Guildenstem, are invariably and unmistakably associated with speech or actions
resembling madness. Now, if Hamlet was really mad he never could have pre-
served such an entire consistency throughout his behavior to so many people, only
acting like a madman to those whom he wished to deceive. As a striking example
of this fact, we would draw the attention of our readers to III, ii, and ask them to
observe attentively his clear instructions to the Players, followed by his conversation
with Horatio, and then note the remarkable change in his speech when answering
the King. If he was mad, how is it his soliloquies are not interpolated with a mix-
ture of irrelevant matter? Surely he must have betrayed himself at some time or
other. There is ample scope for him to be caught tripping. We have the most
secret thoughts of his heart placed before us. There is no attempt at concealment,
to use the language of the conjurers. He who knew him best, — his schoolfellow,
his dearest companion, the scholar Horatio, — does not think him mad. With Horatio,
Hamlet spent most of his time, and was with him for days together, at the very time
he was considered maddest. Horatio must have known well that Hamlet was thought
mad by others, yet there is not a word from him. And why ? Because he had
sworn to take no notice of Hamlet's assumed madness. Either that or this, that
Horatio failed to discover that he, whom he loved so well for his rare qualities of
heart and mind, was mad. A supposition so preposterous, — that Horatio's bosom
friend was mad, and Horatio knew it not, — is only worthy of a madman.
Vol. II.— 15
226 APPENDIX
HUDSON (1872)
{Shakespeare : His Life, Art ana Characters, Boston, 1872, vol. ii, p, 252.) — In
my own view of the matter, as deli\ ered more than twenty years ago, I used these
words : * After all, it must be confessed that there is a mystery about Hamlet which
baffles the utmost efforts of criticism.' This was true then, but I think it is not so
now. In plain terms, Hamlet is mad; deranged not indeed in all his faculties, nor
perhaps in any of them continuously ; that is, the derangement is partial and occa-
sional ; paroxysms of wildness and fury alternating with intervals of serenity and
composure.
Now the reality of his madness is what the literary critics have been strangely
and unwisely reluctant to admit ; partly because they thought it discreditable to the
hero's intellect, and partly because they did not understand the exceeding versatility
and multiformity of that disease. And one natural effect of the disease, as we see
it in him, is, that the several parts of his behavior have no apparent kindred or fellow-
ship with each other: it makes him full of abrupt changes and contradictions; his
action when the paroxysm is upon him being palpably inconsistent with his action
when properly himself. Hence some have held him to be many varieties of cha-
racter in one, so that different minds take very different impressions of him, and
even the same mind at different times. And as the critics have supposed that amid
all his changes there must be a constant principle, and as they could not discover
that principle, they have therefore referred it to some 'unknown depth' in his being;
whereas in madness the constant principle is either wholly paralyzed or eke more
or less subject to fits of paralysis ; which latter is the case with Hamlet. Accord-
ingly, insane people are commonly said to be, not themselves, but beside themselves.
And it is to be noted further, that in Hamlet the transpirations of character and
those of disease interpenetrate and cross each other in a great many ways, so that
it is often difficult and sometimes impossible to distinguish where they respectively
end or begin. Rather say, his sanity and madness shade ofiF imperceptibly into each
other, so as to admit of no clear dividing line between them. This has been a further
source of perplexity to the critics, who, because they could not see precisely when
the malady comes in and goes out, have been fain to deny its existence altogether.
Coleridge admits indeed, that ' Hamlet's wildness is but half false,' which seems to
imply that it is but half true, or that he is not downright mad. And that his mind
is full of unhealthy perturbation, thrown from its propriety and excited into irregular
fevered action, was evident to me long ago ; and I so stated it in my Introduction to
the play, written as far back as 1855; but as I did not then understand either the
fact or the possibility of a man's being himself and beside himself at the same time,
or of his alternating so abruptly between the two, I was not prepared for a frank and
clear admission of Hamlet's madness.
What was wanting in order to a just criticism of the delineation was a profound
and comprehensive science of the nature and genesis of mental disease.
[Page 256.] I will now briefly advert to an authority very different indeed from
that of scientific experts, but perhaps not less deserving of respect. It is well known
that Shakespeare's persons, like those in real life, are continually misunderstanding
each other, and misunderstanding themselves. It is also well known that on this
point his women make the fewest mistakes. Their perceptions of character and of
personal condition are apt to be quick and just, and in fact are seldom at fault. It
INSANITY, REAL OR FEIGNED? 227
IS the fine tact, ♦ surer than Suspicion's hundred eyes,' of a pure, simple, ingenuous,
disinterested mind ; rather say, the wisdom of a good heart, which, indeed, is the
divinest thing in human nature. Nor has any of them this wise and holy instinct
in larger measure than the heroine of this play. Now Hamlet loves Ophelia with
all his soul, and she knows it. She also loves him with all her soul, and he is him-
self right well assured of the fact. We have her word for it, that he has impor-
tun'd her with love in honorable fashion, and has given countenance to his suit with
almost all the holy vows of Heaven. But, indeed, a language deeper and stronger
than any spoken words has planted the mutual faith in them. And I must needs
think that love, especially the love of an Ophelia, is a better judge in such matters
than logic. It is to be noted, also, that when Ophelia speaks of • that noble and
most sovereign reason, like sweet bells jangled out of tune and harsh,' her meaning
tallies exactly with the conclusion of Dr Ray. This concurring voice of womanly
instinct and of scientific judgement might well suffice for closing the subject ; and
taking these, together with the belief of all the other persons in the play, except the
King, whose doubts spring from his own guilt, and also with the solemn declaration
of Hamlet himself to Laettes near the end, I must be excused for accepting them
as decisive of the question. But then it must be remembered that a mind diseased
is not necessarily a mind destroyed; and that it may be only a mind with some of
its 6obler faculties whirled into intemperate and irregular volubility, while others of
them are more or less palsied.
[Page 259.] Thus all the forms of human greatness may be, and indeed seem to
be, reciprocally transmutable. My own idea, then, is that the poet's design in
Hamlet was to conceive a man great, perhaps equally so, i^ aH the elements of
character, mental, moral, and practical ; and then to place him in such circum-
stances, and bring such influences to work upon him, that all his greatness should
be made to take on the form of thought. And with a swift intuitive perception of
the laws of mind, which the ripest science can hardly overtake, he seems to have
known just what kind and degree of mental disturbance or disease would naturally
operate to produce such an irregular and exorbitant grandeur of intellectual mani-
festation.
DR LATHAM (1872)
( Tkoo Dissertations on the Hamiet of Saxo Grammaticus and of Shaiespearif
London, 1872, p. 8r.) — The more we isolate the narrative of Saxo, and limit our
notions of his hero by the single account of him in the Historia Danica, the more
freedom and latitude we allow both ourselves and the dramatist in the estimate ol
his character. The more, however, we recognize additional sources for his history,
and the more we find that the evidence of these is uniform as fo the nature of his
mental ailment, the more we are constrained to treat him as a Dramatis Persona,
whose character has come to us, to a certain extent, ready-made; and, as such, one
which is not to be either tampered with or refined upon gratuitously. Common
sense tells us this, and the old Horatian rule reminds us of it. We are not to make
Medea mild; nor Ino cheerful; nor Ixion an honest man; nor lo domestic; nor
Orestes jovial ; neither must Achilles be' gentle and forgiving ; but, on the con-
trary, passionate, vindictive, and inexorable, — the moral of which is that we must
think twice before, in the way of either will or intellect, we invest the madness of
Hamlet with actual or even approximate reality. The pretendedness of Hamlet's
228 APPENDIX
malady is as genuine as the reality of that of Orestes ; and .... I am inclined to
think that long before it came under the cognizance of Shakespeare, his dramatit
chaiacter \i. e. as one who feigned madness] was as strongly stamped and stereo
typed as that of any one of the heroes or heroines in the Horatian list.
THOMAS TYLER (1874)
{The Philosophy of Hamlet, London, 1874, p. 7.) — * Polonius, after a remarkable
display of Hamlet's " antic disposition," says : " though this be madness, yet there
is method in't." Is it possible for us to discern this "method" ? Can we discover
any deeper meaning lying beneath what is outwardly so " odd " and " strange " ? '
[This 'deeper meaning,' and an explanation of Hamlet's assumed madness, Tyler,
in common with Doering and other Germans, finds in Hamlet's pessimistic phi-
losophy. Thus, Hamlet's conduct to Ophelia, as described by her to her father,
may be consistently explained on the supposition that Hamlet's pessimism had so
jaundiced his vision that in his eyes all humanity was diseased, and even his dearly
loved Ophelia, in that she was human, was diseased, and his treatment of her would
in several particulars not inaptly represent the behavior of a person towards a dear
friend in a hopeless condition from some fatal malady. Tyler goes even so far as
to find corroboration in the phrase in Q, : * he holds my pulse.'] * The reason why
the poet omitted from the later text the holding of Ophelia's pulse may have been
because, perhaps, he considered that such a circumstance, however suitable with
respect to a physician, would not be equally appropriate in the case of a layman
like Hamlet. I may add, that Hamlet's " going the length of all his arm " . . . ,
would seem to^accord with the idea that her disease was repulsive or offensive.*
Again, the emphasis given to ' the vile phrase " beautified " ' seems clearly to show
that Shakespeare used the word in its strict sense, appropriately representing the
idea that • Ophelia, though in reality, and beneath the surface, unsightly and re-
pulsive, was yet rendered externally attractive and beautiful.'
[Page 12.] It must not be, however, for a moment supposed that it was Shake-
speare's intention to depict Ophelia as singularly depraved, notwithstanding even
that in her aberration she could sing verses of a somewhat questionable character, —
a fact which Goethe has not inaptly explained. No ; the idol of Hamlet's heart
.... was not singularly depraved. Her disease was the disease of humanity. In-
deed, it would appear to have been the poet's intention to represent Ophelia as dis-
tinguished, in comparison with others, by a high degree of moral purity.
[Page 15.] ^Vhat is meant by these .'bad dreams' which made the world a prison?
This expression, as I take it, indicates those pessimistic views of nature which
Hamlet had forined as the result of philosophic observation and reflection.
[Page 16.] Hamlet's pessimism reaches its climax in the dialogue with Ophelia
which follows the soliloquy, ' To be, or not to be,' &c., .... and his excitement reaches
its highest pitch when he contemplates the fact that women artificially stimulate men
towards marriage, and towards that greatest of all abominations, to a consistently
pessimistic philosophy, the perpetuation of the corrupt race of mankind
Hamlet's pessimism appears even before the commencement of his assumed mad-
ness. See I, ii, 135.
[Page 21.] At Wittenberg, as we may reasonably suppose, much of Hamlet's
attention had been given to philosophy In the subtleties of such philosophy
INSANITY, REAL OR FEIGNED f 229
as we most suppose Hamlet had been studying, we may find in explanation of ' The
body is with the King, but the King is not with the body,' &c., IV, ii. In this sen-
tence, ' with ' cannot denote nearness or contiguity. Probably the sense is to be
given after this manner : * The body is, like the King, a thing of nothing ; therefore
it is wiih the King in worthlessness.' But worthlessness is the only quality you can
predicate of the body ; for such material qualities as weight appear to be excluded.
The body is not, as yet, ofifensive, though a month hence ♦ you shall nose him.' But
the King possesses other qualities besides worthlessness; he possesses, for example,
active malignity. But in these other qualities the King b not with the body; and
so the King as a whole, being a congeries of qualities, * the King is not with the
body,' though at the same time, as already said, • the body is with the King ' in its
one quality of worthlessness.
[Page 22.] There are several things in Hamlet's philosophy which may recall
some of the opinions of the Stoics, and among them is the doctrine of an overmas-
tering Fate or Destiny.
[Page 27.] During the interval before the soliloquy * To be, or not to be,' we may
suppose that Hamlet has reflected that his stratagem will probably be successful, and
that then it will be for him to execute the command of the Ghost, and to put his
uncle to death. At this juncture, as would appear probable, there arises in Hamlet's
* prophetic soul ' a mysterious presentiment that the act of vengeance will be closely
followed by his own death. If he takes arms against the * sea of troubles,' opposes
them, and, by opposing, ends them, he must die. This view appears to me prefer-
able to the suggestion [see TiECK and Friesen. Ed.] that Hamlet would be slain in
the mfilee consequent on the King's death. But even this latter view is preferable
to the interpretation that Hamlet contemplated suicide.
[Page 29.] Hamlet, though possessing both courage and energy, has nevertheless
a peculiarly reflective disposition, a mind ever prone to turn inwardly on itself. A
mind of such a nature, we may reasonably suppose, was regarded by the poet as
especially susceptible of impression and suggestion from unseen and supernatural
influence.
[Page 30.] We may then with probability conclude that we have in Hamlet a
dramatic representation of the will of man governed by a Higher Will, a Will to
which all actions and events are subordinate, and which, in a mysterious and in-
comprehensible manner, is ever tending to the accomplishment of inscrutable pur-
poses.
[Page 32.] The philosophy of Hamlet, with regard to the state of things in the
world, and especially with respect to the moral condition of mankind, is pessimistic.
Still, notwithstanding the general depravity and the harsh and ungenial conditions
of himxan life, all actions and all events are under the control of a superintending
Providence. Man must execute the purpose of a Higher Power. But what is the
nature of that purpose, what its intent, what its destined issue, is shrouded in mys-
tery. Calamity and disaster fall upon men without regard to individual character.
A retribution beyond death is possible ; but the future destiny of mankind is obsciure
and doubtful. Now, if such is the philosophy of this great tragedy, we may easily
see with what propriety it opens in the dark, cold, stiU midnight. I should think
it, however, not quite impossible that there is a symbolical meaning in the fact that
the darkness is not altogether complete, but that on the first night stars are shining,
and on the second there are ' glimpses of the moon,' the sky being apparently for
the most part concealed by clouds. Possibly we may look upon this mention of the
230 APPENDIX
' moon ' and ' stars ' as intimating that the condition of the world is not altogether
hopeless, notwithstanding the deep overhanging gloom.
GEORGE HENRY LEWES (1875)
{On Actors and the Art of Acting, London, 1875, ?• ^Zl^ — Much discus-
sion has turned on the question of Hamlet's madness, whether it be real or as-
sumed. It is not possible to settle this question. Arguments are strong on both
sides. He may be really mad, and yet, with that terrible consciousness of the fact
which often visits the insane, he may * put an antic disposition on ' as a sort of relief
to his feelings, or he may merely assume madness as a means of accounting for any
extravagance of demeanor into which the knowledge of his father's murder may
betray him. Shakespeare has committed the serious fault of not making this point
clear; a modem writer who should commit such a fault would get no pardon. The
actor is by no means called upon to settle such points. One thing, however, he is
called upon to do, and that is, not to depart widely from the text, not to misrepresent
what stands plainly written. Yet this the actors do in Hamlet. They may believe
that Shakespeare never meant Hamlet to be really mad; but they cannot deny, and
should not disregard the plain language of the text — namely, that Shakespeare meant
Hamlet to be in a state of intense cerebral excitement, seeming like madness. His
sorrowing nature has been suddenly ploughed to its depths by a horror so great as
to make him recoil eveiy moment from the belief in its reality. The shock, if it
has not destroyed his sanity, has certainly unsettled him. Nothing can be plainer
than this; every line speaks it. We see it in the rambling incoherence of his 'wild
and whirling words ' to his fellow-watchers and fellow-witnesses ; but as this may
be said to be assumed by him (although the motive for such an assumption is not
dear, as he might have put them off, and yet retained his coherence), I will appeal
to the impressive fact of the irreverence with which in this scene [I, v, 150-163] he
speaks of his father and to his father,— language which Shakespeare surely never
meant to be insignificant, and which the actors always omit,
[Page 141.] Now, why are these irreverent words omitted? Because the actors
feel them to be irreverent, incongruous ? If spoken as Shakespeare meant them to
be, — as Hamlet in his excited and bewildered state must have uttered them, — they
would be eminently significant. It is evading the difficulty to omit them ; and it is
a departure from Shakespeare's obvious intention. Let but the actor enter into the
excitement of the situation, and make visible the hurrying agitation which prompts
these wild and whirling words ; he will then find them expressive, and will throw
the audience into corresponding emotion.
But this scene is only the beginning. From the moment of the Ghost's departure,
Hamlet is a changed man. All the subsequent scenes should be impregnated with
vague horror, and an agitation compounded of feverish desire for vengeance with
the perplexities of thwarting doubt as to the reality of the story which has been
heard. This alternation of wrath and of doubt as to whether he has not been the
victim of an hallucination, should be represented by the feverish agitation of an un-
quiet mind, visible even under all the outward calmness which it may be necessary
to put on ; whereas the Hamlets I have seen are perfectly calm and self-possessed
when they are not in a tempest of rage, or not feigning madness to deceive the
King.
It is part and parcel of this erroneous conception as to the state of Hamlet's mind
INSANITY, REAL OR FEIGNED? 23 1
(unless it be the mistake of sutstituting declamation for acting), which, as I believe,
entirely misrepresents the purport of the famous soliloquy,—* To be, or not to be.'
This is not a set speech to be declaimed to pit, boxes and gallery, nor is it a moral
thesis debated by Hamlet in intellectual freedom ; yet one or the other of these
two mistakes is committed by all actors. Because it is a fine speech, pregnant with
thought, it has been mistaken for an oratorical display; but I think Shakespeare's
genius was too eminently dramatic to have committed so great an error as to substi-
tute an oration for an exhibition of Hamlet's state of mind. The speech is passion-
ate, not reflective, and it should be so spoken as if the thoughts were -wrung from
the agonies of a soul hankering after suicide^^n escape from evils, yet terrified at
the dim sense of greater_evils after death. Not only would such a reading oFthe
speech give it tenfold dramatic force, but it would be the fitting introduction to the
wildness of the scene, which immediately succeeds, with Ophelia. This scene has
also been much discussed. To render its strange violence intelligible, actors are
wont to indicate, by their looking towards the door, that they suspect the King, or
some one else, to be watching ; and the wildness then takes its place among the
assumed extravagances of Hamlet. Fechter also conceives it thus. I cannot find
any warrant in Shakespeare for such a reading ; and it is adopted solely to evade a
diflSculty which no longer exists when we consider Hamlet's state of feverish excite-
ment I believe, therefore, that Hamlet is not disguising his real feelings in this
scene, but is terribly in earnest. If his wildness seem unnatural, I would ask the
actors what they make of the far greater extravagance with which he receives the
confirmation of his doubts by the effect of the play upon the King? Here, it is to
be observed, there is no pretext for assuming an extravagant demeanor ; no one is
watching now ; he is alone with his dear friend and confidant, Horatio ; and yet
note his conduct [see IH, ii, 259].
Of course the actors omit the most significant of these passages, because they are
afraid of being comic ; but, if given with the requisite wildness, these passages would
be terrible in their grotesqueness. It is true that such wildness and grotesqueness
would be out of keeping with any representation of Hamlet which made him calm,
and only assuming madness at intervals. But is such a conception Shakespearian ?
DR MAUDSLEY (1875)
{Body and Mind, &c.. New York, 1875, P* 'S^- Hamlet. Westminster Review,
No. 53.) — The direct occasion of Hamlet's rude and singular behavior in the pres-
ence of Ophelia is, however, the inseparable blending of genuine affliction with his
feigned extravagance ; conscious dissimulation was almost overpowered by the un-
conscious sincerity of real grief. In the moody exaggeration of his letter to her
there is the evidence of true suffering; but he was compelled to dissimulate, because
he could not trust even her with his plans. No design, therefore, could have been
more skilful than that which he carried into execution ; the strange guise which he
purposely assumed was excellently well conceived to deceive the King and those
about him, initiating, as it did with consummate ingenuity, the systematic feigning
of madness. Nothing was so likely to make them believe in the reality of his mad
hess as the conviction that they had discovered the cause of it. Flatter a man's in-
tellectual acuteness, and he will be marvellously indulgent to your folly or your vice,
stone-blind to your palpable hypocrisy. Polonius fell headlong into the trap which
had been set for him.
232 APPENDIX
In truth, the character of Hamlet and the circumstances in which it is placed
make destiny; and, from the relations of the two, to display the necessary law of
the evolution of fate would seem to be the deepest aim of the drama.
This state of reflective indecision is a stage of development through which minds
of a certain character pass before they consciously acquire by exercise a habit of
willing. He who is passionately impulsive and has no hesitation at eighteen is,
perhaps, reflective and doubtful at twenty-five, and in a few years more he may, if
he develop rightly, be deliberately resolute. For the will is not innate, but is gradu-
ally built up by successive acts of volition : a character, as Novalis said, is a com-
pletely-fashioned will. Had Hamlet lived and developed beyond the melancholy
stage of life- weariness in which he is represented, and through which men of a
certain ability often pass, it may be supposed that he would have been affected very
diff'erently by a deed like that which was imposed upon him. Either it was a duty,
and, according to his insight into its relations, practicable, and he would then lay
down a definite plan of action ; or it was not, according to his judgement, practi-
cable, and he would then dismiss the idea of acting, and leave things to take their
course. As years pass on, they bring surely home to the individual the lesson that
life is too short for him to afflict himself about what he cannot help. There is a
sufficiency of work in which every one may employ his energies, and things irre-
mediable must be wisely left to take, unbewailed, their way. To rail at the events
of Nature is nothing else but the expression of an extravagant self-consciousness ;
it is the vanity which springs from an excessive self-feeling that finds the world to
be out of joint, and would undertake to set it right. He only would undertake the
government of the universe who cannot govern his own mind. The wisely-cultivated
man, conscious how insignificant a drop he is in the vast stream of life, learns his
limitation, and accepts events with modesty and equanimity.
[Page 140.] He ruthlessly strips off" the conventional delusions from things, and
lays bare the realities; he utters the severest home-truths with the greatest satisfac-
tion : ' These tedious old fools.' If any one in the full possession of his reasoning
powers refuses to accept the delusions of life, and persists in exposing the realities
beneath appearances, he is so much out of harmony with his surroundings that he
will, to a certainty, be counted more or less insane. Strange, too, as it may seem,
it is nevertheless true that such a one will commonly feign to be more eccentric or
extravagant than he really is. Though intellectually he can contemplate objects
and events in their extreme relations, his self-feeling incapacitates him from regard-
ing himself objectively ; and there is a certain gratification or vanity in acting ex-
travagantly and in being thought singular or mad. Doubtless there was some solace
to Hamlet's self-feeling in the mad pantomime by which he frightened and took
leave of Ophelia; he was miserable, but there was conceit in his misery. He per-
ceives the things of this world to be stale, flat, and unprofitable; but, by reason of
his great self-feeling, he feels them much also. Had he recognized himself as a
part of the stale, flat, and unprofitable things, he must have concluded that his in-
dividual feelings were of very little consequence to the universe, that there were
many more woeful pageants than the scene wherein he played, and have thereupon
attained to a healthier tone of mind.
[Page 143.] Let it not any longer escape attention that the deliberate feigning of
insanity was an act in strict conformity with Hamlet's character; he was by nature
something of a dissimulator, — that faculty having been born in him. Though it is
not said that his mother, the Queen, was privy to the murder of her husb.ind, yet
INSANITY, REAL OR FEIGNED? 233
from the words of the Ghost, who prefaces his revelations by stating how the uncle
had ' won to his shameful lust the will of my most seeming virtuous queen,' it would
appear that if she were not actual party to the crime, she was something almost as
bad But if Hamlet's character had received no taint from his mother, he
was not altogether so fortunate on his father's side ; for he was the nephew of the
' bloody, bawdy villain,' — the remorseless, lecherous, treacherous, kindless villain.
We see, then, the signification which there was in his speech to Ophelia: 'You
should not have believed me ; for virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock but we
shall relish of it.*
[Page 144.] As a heritage, then, Hamlet has that hatred of underhand cunning
and treachery, that sincerity of nature, which justify Laertes in describing him as
' free from cU contriving ;' and as a heritage, also, he has that faculty for dissimula-
tion which is evident in his character Strange as it may seem, we not un-
commonly observe the character of the mother, with her emotional impulses and
subtle but scarce conscious shifts, in the individual when young, while the calm de-
liberation and conscious determination of the father come out more plainly as he
grows older. Setting aside any necessity which Shakespeare might think himself
under to follow the old play, it is in Hamlet's inherited disposition to dissimulation
that we find the only explanation of his deUberately feigning madness, when, to all
appearances, policy would have been much better served if he had not so feigned.
But he has a love of the secret way for its, own sake ; to hoist the engineer with his
own petard is to him a most attractive prospect ; and he breaks out into positive
exultation at the idea of outwitting Rosencrantz and Guildenstem, with whom he
was to go to England.
[Page 161.] Struggle as earnestly and as constantly as he may, the reflecting mortal
must feel at the end of all, that he is inevitably what he is; that his follies and his
virtues are alike his fate ; that there is ' a divinity which shapes his ends, rough-hew
them as he may.' Hamlet, the man of thought, may brood over possibilities, spec
ulate on events, analyze motives and purposely delay action ; but in the end he is,
equally with Macbeth, the man of energetic action whom the darkest hints of the
witches arouse to desperate deeds, drawn on to the unavoidable issue. Mighty it
must be allowed is the power of the human will ; that which to him whose will is
not developed is fate, is to him who has a well-fashioned -wiW, power ; so much has
been conquered from necessity, so much has been taken from the devil's territory.
DR ONIMUS (1876)
{Revue des Detix Mondes, La Psychologie de Shakspeare, Paris, 1876, p. 12.) —
For ourselves, we reluct at the idea that Hamlet is mad or within a step of becom-
ing so. In the first place, Shakespeare would have shown us this tendency more
decisively ; it is his habit to indicate plainly what his personages are designed to be ;
but nowhere can we discover that it was his purpose to represent Hamlet as a mor-
bidly affected and diseased person on the point of succumbing to insanity. Can it
be affirmed that had he lived longer Hamlet would have become insane ? There
is no proof of it ; on the contrary, at the close of the drama his mind appears to
settle into a state of repose. There is no hallucination, no raving, no apparent pre-
monitory symptom of insanity; he shows only a great exaltation of mind at the grave
of Ophelia. On the other hand, if it is true that disease often begins with the pre-
234 APPENDIX
dominance of the ideas which are found in Hamlet, it is impossible to consider these
ideas as proofs of cerebral perturbations. They may exist in individuals who will
never become insane, who will never give the least real sign of intellectual disturb-
ance, but whose only peculiarity is that they are of a nature so sensitive and so im-
pressionable, that they are greatly affected by the wrongs of the world. They can-
not bear ' the whips and scorns of time, the oppressor's wrong,' &c. How many
choice spirits there are who have shared these very thoughts, and in whom the spec
tacle of the world has led to disenchantment and disgust of life !
Physical organization doubtless contributes to aggravate this tendency, which con-
sists in looking only at the dark side of things ; and Shakespeare has taken care to
show us Hamlet as ' fat and scant of breath.' In thus describing him, Shakespeare
surely did not refer merely to the actor who filled the r6le, as some foolish critics
have supposed. There are organizations less vigorous than that of Hamlet, morbid
natures with nervous and lymphatic temperament, having, even in the bloom of life,
none of the ardent and youthful qualities from which spring force and exuberant
health, and which accompany heedless and lively spirits, eagerness for pleasure and
for the work congenial to sanguine temperaments. Natures like Hamlet's are early
thoughtful and suffering; they are all nerves, enehusiastic at one moment, depressed
at another, according to circumstances ; but notwithstanding their eccentricity, their
originality and their conduct, oftentimes out of all ordinary rules, these persons never
become crazed ; as they were born, so they remain ; they are misanthropes, kindly
or morose, sympathetic or sneering, often rude and suspicious, but capable of fine
repartees and keen hits. Consequently, we do not believe, with Drs Brierre de Bois-
mont and Bucknill, that Hamlet was in one of those intermediary states between
reason and madness which have been named the period of incubation, a period in
which thousands succumb to disease, and from which hundreds are restored to health.
In our opinion Hamlet would become never really mad, but only more rational. His
is not an intermediary type, but a type real and complete in itself. If he has hallu-
cinations, it is when his soul is overwhelmed by grief and by the greatness of the
crime which he has caught sight of. His brain loses its balance, not from disease,
but from excessive thought and suffering. It should be borne in mind that he has
hardly had time to know where he stands, and to compare the world as it is with the
world as, in his native goodness, he believed it to be, — that he is obliged, he so lov-
ing, so respectful, to turn away from the world from horror at the conduct of his
mother !
There are children who are born musicians, whom a single false note irritates ;
Irom their earliest year they have the sense of harmony. Not a discord escapes
them, and they cannot comprehend how there should be others differently organized,
in whom the sense of harmony is wanting. Others again are born with an exquisite
sense of color and form, and everything at variance with their art wounds and repels
them. Hamlet is one of these artistic natures. He is an artist of the moral sense.
Born with a feeling the most delicate for whatever is virtuous and noble, he is en-
amored with loyalty and truth, as the musician is with harmony and the sculptor
with ideal forms; our vices and our weaknesses shock him; to him they are mon
strositics.
With what loathing he endures the contact of flatterers and hypocrites, and how
be loves to humiliate them ! It is with a secret pleasure that he torments the poor
courtier Osric, to whom he presents the sight of his ridiculous meannesses and flat-
teries. He amuocs himself by making Osric play in his own slime like some filthy
INSANITY, REAL OR FEIGNED? 235
animal. Here Hamlet recognises his natural enemy, who, in opposition to him, was
bom with a love of lying, and who * did comply with his dug before he sucked it.*
He hates the reprobates, or rather his heart revolts when they come in his way in
the midst of the court of his uncle. It is the involuntary shrinking of terror and
disgust which Marguerite feels in the presence of Mephistopheles. What joy is it,
on th* other hand, when he meets an honest man! His soul leaps to surrender itself
to the ideal. With what pleasure does he grasp the frank and loyal hand of Horatio !
Every time he finds himself with him, his heart is soothed, and humanity then appears
to him less hatefuL
NOTE
[On page 195, I have said that Dr Akinside was probably the first to pronotmce
Hamlet's insanity real ; since this was printed, I have noticed that Davies in his
Dramaiie Miscellanies, 1 784, vol. iii, p. 85, says that: 'Aaron Hill, above forty
years ago, in a paper called The Prompter, observed that besides Hamlet's assumed
insanity, there was in him a melancholy, which bordered on madness, arising from
his peculiar situation.'
Dr Kellogg's Essay on Hamlet's insanity, from which extracts are given on p.
216, first appeared in the yournal of Insanity for April, 1S60, as I have just been
kindly informed by the author himself. These extracts, therefore, should follow
those from Dr BucKNiLL, and precede those from Dr CoNOLLY. The stereotype
plates having been cast, the only change that could be made has been made in the
date: i860. Ed.]
NAMES AND CHARACTERS
JAMES PLUMPTRE (1796)
1t^ 1796, James Plumptre, M. A., published some Observaiwm on Hamlet, G^e.,
being an attempt (0 prove (/tat \^Shakespeare'\ designed \this tragedy] as an indirect
censure on Mary, Queen of Scots. In this volume the author assume^ that since
Shakespeare in 1592 did not hesitate, in the Midsum?ner-Night^ s Dreatn, to com-
pliment Elizabeth at the expense of Mary, he would have no scrapie^ in still further
flattering his royal mistress in 1596 (the • date when Hatnlet was written ')i by add-
ing his drop to the flood of calumny poured out over her rival. This hypothesis
obliges him to maintain that the Queen in Hamlet was an accessory to her husband's
death.
Plumptre adduces the following passages and allusions to show that Shakespeare
had Mary, Queen of Scots, directly in mind when he wrote them : * In second hus-
band let me be accurst! None wed the second but who kill'd the first,' III, ii, 169;
and • The instances that second marriage move Are base respects of thrift, but none
of love.' — Jb. 172. 'Which,' says the author, 'appear to be so strongly marked as
almost of themselves to establish the hypothesis.' Next, Gertrude's haste to marry
the murderer of her husband. Lord Darnley was murdered on the loth of Feb.
1567, and Mary was married to Bothwell on the 14th of May following, a space of
time but just exceeding three months. Lord Darnley was the handsomest young
man in the kingdom, but of a weak mind; it is remarkable that in Hamlet no com-
pliment is paid to the murdered king's intellectual qualities. Bothwell was twenty
years older than Mary, and is represented as an ugly man by the historians. He
was also noted for his debauchery and drinking, two circumstances which Shake-
speare seems never to lose sight of in his character of Claudius. Ophelia's allusion
to the ' beauteous majesty of Denmark,' IV, v, Plumptre says is inapplicable to Ger-
trude, because * she was past the prime of life, not to say, old,' whereas it applies
most justly to Mary, who was only forty-five when she was beheaded, and very
beautiful. In the beginning of Hamlet the hero is represented as very young, but
in the grave-yard we are told that he was thirty years old; 'James was just thirty at
the writing of this play.' Whereupon Plumptre remarks : ' Shakespeare seems to
have been so blinded by the circumstances he wished to introduce that he has fallen
into many im;)robabilities between his two plans.' Shakespeare mentions the King
as having been taken off ' in the blossom of his sin,' ' which,' says Plumptre, • is
incompatible with the ideas we have of the King's age in the play, but most truly
applicable tc Lord Darnley.' In Hamlet's delay Shakespeare had in mind the
236
NAMES AND CHARACTERS 237
backwardness of James to revenge his father's murder. ' Among other remarkable
coincidences between the plot of Hamlet and the circumstances attendant on Mary
and James, we may enumerate that of Dr Wotton being sent into Scotland by
Elizabeth as a. spy upon James, and who afterwards entered into a conspiracy to
deliver him into her hands.' Here we have the part of Rosencrantz and Guilden
stem. * The incident of Polonius being murdered in the presence of the Queen in
her closet bears a resemblance to the murder of Rizzio in Mary's apartment.* * Both-
well had poisoned Mary's cup of happiness, and it was her marriage with him that
was the cause of her sorrows and death.'
In 1797, PI umpire published axi Appendix /wi which additional parallelisms are
given, and great stress is laid on the effects of poison on Damley ; Knox and
Buchanan ' mention the black and putrid pustules which broke out all over his
body ;' this corresponds to the tetter which * bark'd about, most lazar-like, with vile
and loathsome cnist, all the smooth body' of Hamlet's father. Hume's description
of James (vol. i, p. 114,410 ed.) is cited to show that the character of Hamlet is
his character, • but it is a flattering likeness ; it is James drawn in the fairest colors ;
his harsh features softened and his deformities concealed.' Hamlet's love of the
stage and patronage of the Players resembled James's. Finally, from travellers'
accounts Plumptre infers that ' the shore on which Elsinor stands consists of ridges
of sand, rising one above the other;' there could not, therefore, be any 'dreadful
summit of a cliff that beetles o'er his base,' and 'looks so many fathoms down*
amid such scenery; but this description suits Salisbury Crags and Holyrood
Palace.
This theory of Plumptre's (who, by the way, apologizes in his Preface for any
typographical errors to be found in the volume, on the ground of his excessive
anxiety to publish his views before he could be anticipated' and robbed of the glory
of his discovery), — this theory was treated with silent indifference for nigh three-
quarters of a century, until a few years ago it was revived in Germany, apparently
without any suspicion that it was not novel. Carl Silberschlag, in the Morgen-
blatt, Nos. 46, 47, i860, brought forward the same arguments with which we are
familiar to prove that under Gertrude was veiled an allusion to Mary Stuart, that
Hamlet was James, and Claudius, Bothwell. But the ingenious German scholar
went farther, and found that other characters in the tragedy had their prototypes
among James's contemporaries. The Laird of Gowrie had a father's murder to
avenge, and had lived in Paris, and had a faithful servant named Rhynd, and met
his death in an attempt by stratagem on the life of the king. All this prefigures
Laertes and Reynaldo; unfortunately, an air of burlesque is cast over the theory by
the argument, gravely uttered, that Laird is pronounced just like {^ganz so klingi)
Laertes ! After the death of the Laird, his bride, Anna Douglas, became insane, —
hence Ophelia. In the * vicious mole,' I, iv, 24, Silberschlag finds cumulative evi-
dence of the truth of his theory. See note ad loc. Vol. 1.
MoBERLY noticed, though not in reference to this theory of Plumptre's, that the
language with which Hamlet speaks of the dead body of Polonius is almost exactly
the same as that used by the Porter at Holyrood in reference to the dead body of
Rizzio. See III, iv, 215.
Hunter {^New Illustrations, &c., ii, 204) says that if the composition of Hamlet
can really be carried back to a time before 1 589, * there may be some ground for the
opinion of those who have thought that there were strokes in it levelled at the Queen
of Scots, who was put to death in 1587.'
238 APPENDIX
GEORGE RUSSELL FRENCH (1869)
{Shakespeareana Genealogica, London, 1869, p. 301.) — Bearing in mind that
Belleforest's translation was published in 1560, and that the wonderful drama was
written in 1596, we will proceed to the notice of the personages believed to be indi-
cated by certain names in the play, who are nearly all in one way or other connected
with the history of Sir Philip Sidney, who seems by common consent to stand for
' young Hamlet.' This is the key-note to the rest. His honored father, the wise
and able Sir Henry Sidney, of Penshurst, is put down for the elder Hamlet, to
whom the poet does not assign any other name, but to whom he ascribes so high a
character, as when the son is looking on his portrait : ' See, what a grace was seated
on his brow,' &c. Dr Zouch says, ' a more exalted character than that of Sir
Henry Sidney can scarcely be found in the volume of history.' Of him, there-
fore, his son might say, as Hamlet of his father : * I shall not look upon his like
again.'
One of the parts supposed to have been filled by Shakespeare himself was that of
'The majesty of buried Denmark,' according to Rowe; and Shakespeare's only
son, who died when under twelve years of age, was baptized Hamnet, which is
considered synonymous with Hamlet ; his godfather most probably being Hamnet
or Hamlet Sadler, to whom the poet left a legacy of ' xxvj* viij<* to buy him a
ringe.'
It is worthy of remark that Sir Henry Sidney died (May 5, 1586) five months and
twelve days before his accomplished son, and that very date is reckoned by com-
mentators to have elapsed between the murder of the elder Hamlet and the final
catastrophe in the play, young Hamlet's death.
The usurping Claudius of the drama has been regarded as a satire on the Lord
Keeper, Sir Nicholas Bacon, not, of course, with reference to crime; nor has any
one ever ventured to link the revered name of Sidney's mother, Lady Mary Dudley,
with the guilty Queen Gertrude.
The next important personages in the play are the ' Lord Chamberlain,' Polonius;
his son, Laertes ; and daughter, Ophelia ; and these are supposed to stand for Queen
Elizabeth's celebrated Lord High Treasurer, Sir William Cecil, Lord Burleigh; his
second son, Robert Cecil, and his daughter, Anne Cecil. Hamlet's bosom friend,
Horatio, is said to be Hubert Languet (by Mr Julius Lloyd) ; Marcellus and Ber-
nardo are allotted to Fulke Greville and Edward Dyer; ' Francisco may, perhaps, be
intended for Harvey.' — (Lloyd.) Lamord, who is only, alluded to in the play, FV,
vii: 'he is the brooch, indeed, And gem of all the nation,' is meant for Raleigh;
young Fortinbras, ' of unimproved mettle, hot and full,' for the brave but impetuous
Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, then in the height of his fame; 'Old Norway,'
uncle to young Fortinbras, is ascribed to Sir Francis Knollys, whose daughter Let-
\ice married Walter Devereux, first Earl of Essex, and their son was Robert, just
noticed. ' Young Osric' is a specimen of the foppish gallants of Queen Elizabieth's
court, who jiffected the style of language called Euphuism, of which Sir Walter
3cott has given an amusing example in the person of ' Sir Piercie Shafton,' in The
Mctiastery.
With the exceptions of Horatio, Marcellus and Bernardo, the Compiler does not
seek to disturb these appropriations. But first to examine into the history of the
Cecils. It is well known that an alliance of marriage was proposed by their fathers
NAMES AND CHARACTERS 239
to take place between Philip Sidney and Anne Cecil, the ' fair Ophelia ' of the play ;
here is one link of resemblance in the story. Queen Gertrude says, — ' I hop'd thou
shouldst have been my Hamlet's wife.' Anne Cecil became the wife of Edward de
Vere, seventeenth Earl of Oxford. This was not a happy marriage for the lady, and
the only quarrel in which Philip Sidney ever engaged was with Oxford, who had
behaved to him with great rudeness, and the challenge between them was only frus-
trated by the Queen's interference. Did our poet bear this quarrel in mind when
be makes Hamlet leap into Ophelia's grave and grapple with Laertes ? ' I will fight
with him upon this theme.' In the drama, Polonius, on his son Laertes leaving him
for foreign travel, gives him his blessing and advice, telling him, ' And these few
precepts in thy memory Look thou character.' We have now come to a second
link 'in the chain of evidence. When Robert Cecil was about to set out on his
travels, his father (who lived till 1598) was careful to enjoin upon him 'ten pre-
cepts,' in allusion, as he explains, to the Decalogue, and in some of these the identity
of tje language with that of Polonius is so close, that Shakespeare could not have
hit upon it unless he had been acquainted with Burleigh's parental advice to Robert
Cecil, who was forty-six years old when the play was written.
[Page 304.] Among Lord Burleigh's * ten precepts ' [occur the following :] Pre-
cept 4. — * Let thy kindred and allies be welcome to thy house and table. Grace
them with thy countenance, and farther them in all honest actions. For by this
means, thou shalt so double the band of nature, as thou shalt find them so many
advocates to plead an apology for thee behind thy back ; but shake off those glow-
worms, I mean parasites and sycophants, who will feed and fawn upon thee in the
summer of prosperitie, but in an adverse storme they will shelter thee no more than
an arbour in winter. 5. Beware of suretyship for thy best friends. He that payeth
another man's debts seeketh his own decay. But if thou canst not otherwise chose,
rather lend thy money thyself upon good bonds, although thou borrow it. So shalt
thou secure thyself, and pleasure thy friend. Neither borrow of a neighbour or of
a friend, but of a stranger, whose paying for it thou shalt hear no more of it. 6,
Undertake no suit against a poor man without receiving much wrong. 7. Be sure
to make some great man thy friend. 8. Towards superiors be humble, yet generous.
With thine equals familiar, yet respective. Towards thine inferiors show much
humanity, and some familiarity. 9. Trust not any man with thy life, credit, or es-
tate. 10. Be not scurrilous in conversation, or satirical in thy jests.' [See I, iii, 59.J
The Lord Treasurer Burleigh, was not over fond of actors and the drama, whereas
Robert Dudley, the splendid Earl of Leicester, uncle to Philip Sidney, was the great
friend of the players. In 1573, ' the Earl of Leicester's players' visited the town of
Stratford-upon-Avon, when the future poet was nine years old. Burleigh was often
in antagonism to Leicester, and prevented his obtaining the appointment of Lord
Lieutenant of Ireland, and otherwise thwarted his ambitious views. Next to Lei-
cester, the most able and bitter of Burleigh's adversaries was Sir Nicholas Throg-
morton, father-in-law of Sir Walter Rhleigh, and uncle of the wife of Edward
Arden of Parkhall, Shakespeare's cousin on the mother's side, in whose condemna-
tion the Lord Treasurer concurred. Moreover, Burleigh neglected Sir Francis Wal-
singham, whose daughter Frances became the wife, first of Sir Philip Sidney, and
afterwards of the Earl of Essex. Hubert Languet on one occasion suggested to
his pupil Philip Sidney to affect more attachment than \iefeli to Cecil. Shakespeare's
inclinations would naturally take side with the great Warwickshire noble in remem-
bering the political skirmishes between Leicester and Burle'gh, and his covert satire
240 APPENDIX
on the latter, under the guise of Polonius, would be well understood in his day, and
probably relished by none more than by Queen Elizabeth herself, who could enjoy
a jest, though at the expense of her wise and faithful William Cecil,
[Page 306.] When Philip Sidney, who was born in 1554, was on his ' grand tour/
in 1572, he fell in at Frankfort with the famous scholar, Hubert Languet, *by whose
advice he studied various authors, and shunned the seductions of popery ' (Dr Zouch).
The friendship between them was very strong, and many letters are preserved writ-
ten in Latin from Languet to Sidney, which were first printed in 1639.
The writer of these remarks ventures to differ from those critics who assign Lan-
guet to Horatio, and in proposing Fulke Greviile instead, he brings forward the fol-
lowing arguments to support the change. In the first place, Hubert Languet was at
least thirty-six years older than Sidney. It is generally understood that Languet
was sixty-three years old at his death in 1581. In the second place, their tone
towaids each other, in their correspondence, is rather that of master and pupil, or
Mentor and Telemachus, than of bosom friends, equals in years
Now to apply the test to .Fulke Greviile as Horatio. He was a kinsman of Philip
Sidney; equally descended from the noble Beauchamps; bom in the same year, 1554'
educated with him at the same school, at Shrewsbury, which they entered on the
same day; and they studied afterwards together at one, if not at both, of the Univer.
sities, Oxford and Cambridge; they were the dearest friends through life; fellow-
travcrllers ; comrades in the tilt-yard. They had prepared to accompany Sir Francis
Drake in his expedition to the West Indies, but were forbidden to do so by Queen
Elizabeth, who would not spare two such promising youths from her court.
Let us now examine Shakespeare's language. At their first interview, Hamlet
recognizes his former comrade, Horatio, — ' Sir, my good friend, I'll change that
name with you ;' — and again acknowledges their early association in school at Wit-
tenberg,— ♦ I pray thee, do not mock me, fellow-student.'
Next we have the expression of Hamlet's strong regard for Horatio, Act III, so.
ii, in the passage ending, ' Give me that man That is not passion's slave, and I will
wear him In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart. As I do thee.' All these ex-
pressions, and the affectionate demeanor between the two friends throughout the
play, point to a companion of the same age and station, as was Greviile, rather than
to one so much older than Sidney as was Hubert Languet
One of Sir Philip Sidney's Pastorals, is addressed to his two most intimate friends
(Sir) Edward Dyer, and (Sir) Fulke Greviile, coupling their initials with his own.
.... To these two cherished friends and congenial spirits. Sir Philip Sidney in hU
will left a precious legacy of regard ; * Item, I give and bequeath to my dear friends,
Mr. Edward Dyer and Mr. Fulke Greviile, all my books.' In the play Hamlet ad-
dresses Horatio and Marcellus, evidently as his chief intimates : ♦ And now good
friends. As you are friends, scholars and soldiers. Give me one poor request.' With
some fair reason, therefore, it is urged that. Greviile and Dyer were intended for
Hamlet's friends, Horatio and Marcellus.
PROF. DR A. GERTH (1861)
{Der Havilet, Leipzig, 1 861, p. 223.) — This is the end and aim of the lesson
which Hamlet teaches. Protestantism will never fulfil its calling so long as its
adherents are content to oppose the inexhaustible strength and cunning of its ancient
evil foe with the mere consciousness of their righteous cause; so long as they will'
NAMES AND CHARACTERS 241
leara to unite to the virtues of the Christian, the calm dispassionate prndence and
consequent energy of the man ; so long as they continue to waste in foolish infat^
uation the power and aid which lie in their own bosoms, instead of using them.
Therefore, it is, that Shakespeare gave to this noble Prince, as a bosom friend, this
compatriot with a Roman name, a man contented and thoughtful, honorable and
learned, but who is silent and offers no counsel ; and therefore, it is, also, that he
represents Hamlet's love, Ophelia, C<}>EAEIA, the symbol of the union of strength
and help, as being destroyed by Hamlet himself.
RUSKIN (1872)
{Munera Pulveris, 1872, p. 126, foot-note.) — Shakespeare's names are curtously,—
often barbarously, — much by Providence, — but assuredly not without Shakespeare's
cunning purpose, — mixed out of the various traditions he confusedly adopted, and
languages he imperfectly knew Desdemona, dvcSaifioina, miserable fortune,
is plain enough. Othello is, I believe, the careful ; all the calamity of the tragedy
arising from the single flaw and error of his magnificently collected strength. Ophe-
lia, serviceableness, the true lost wife of Hamlet, is marked as having a Greek name
by that of her brother, Laertes; and its signification is once exquisitely alluded to
in tlut brother's last word of her, where her gentle preciousness is opposed to the
uselessness of the churlish clergy : * a ministering angel shall my sister be when
thou liest howling.' Hamlet is, I believe, connected in some way with homely, the
entire event of the tragedy taming on the betrayal of home duty.
C. ELLIOT BROWNE (1876)
{N'otes on Shakespeare's Names, The Athenaeum, 29 July, 1S76.) — Of the names
of Hamlet, only two are afforded by the prose story of Belleforest, — that of Hamlet
himself and his mother Geruthe, which Shakespeare has turned into Gertrude.
Horatio is probably the Horatio of the Spanish Tragedy, where he plays the rdle of
friend and best man to the hero. Andrea calls him, ' My other soul, my bosom, my
heart's friend.'
The origin of the association is probably to be found in the legend of the Horatii.
Marcellus, according to Camden, is a name ' martiall and warlike ' from Mars, and
therefote suitable for a military man. The names of Francisco and Bernardo, as-
sociated together in this play, had been previously associated in one of the greatest
crimes of the sixteenth century, Bernardo Bandini and Francesco de' Pazzi were
the assassins of Giuliano de' Medici in the cathedral of Florence. It is worth noting
that in the original Italian cast of Every Man in his Humour, to which Shakespeare
is said to have contributed, and in which he certainly performed, the principal per-
sonage was Lorenzo de' Pazzi, — no doubt chosen as a distinctively Florentine name.
Fortinbras is evidently Fortebras or Strongarm of the family of Ferumbras of the
romances, or may have come directly from Niccolo Fortebraccio, the famous leader
of the coftdoitieri, Guildenstem and Rosencrantz were both historical names of
Denmark : the first was borne by a chief actor in the melancholy history of Chris-
tian the Second, and therefore well suited by association to figure in Hamlet ; the
other, as Mr Thombury has pointed out [anticipated by Steevens; see II, i, i. Ed.J,
Vol. II.-16
2*42 APPENDIX
was the naJne of the ambassador sent to England at the accession of James the
First.
Much ingenuity has been expended upon Ophelia. Miss Yonge, in her book
upon Christian Names, hazards the conjecture that the word is a Greek rendering
of an old Danske serpent-name like Ormilda. [Mr Ruskin's suggestion is here
cited. Ed,] The fact is, however, that Shakespeare, or the writer who is to be
credited with the early Hamlet, probably adopted the name from the Arcadia of
Sannazaro, where, in the form in which it appears in the first quarto edition, Ofelia,
it is the name of one of the amorous shepherds of the ninth eclogue. This con-
jecture is greatly strengthened by the circumstance that Ofelia is introduced with
Montano, another of the first-Hamlet names. It is probably only a modem form of
(he Roman Ofelia, Horace's Ofellus.
Three characters in the first edition of Hamlet were re-named in the second im-
pression. Corambis was altered to Polonius, his servant Montano to Reynaldo, and
Albertus, the name of the murdered duke in the Play, became Gonzago. With the
exception of Falstaff, these are the only instances in which Shakespeare is known
lo have made any changes in the names of his dramatis persona. In the case of
Corambis we may infer, perhaps, that when the poet's magic had transformed the
low bufibon-courtier of the older drama into the highly-finished portrait of the
Danish chancellor which we now possess, it became necessary to rid him of old
associations by giving him a new name. Polonius is probably the typical Pole
' diplomatist and counsellor. The inhabitants of Poland at that time were known in
England as Polonians, and the elective kingdom, with its elaborate system of assem-
blies and diets, was pre-eminently the land of policy and intrigue. The traditional
Polonius, indeed, answers very nearly to the old marshals of Poland, who always
carried the wand of office before the king. Corambis sounds like a pastoral name,
derived, perhaps, from Corymbus. [See I, ii, 57. Ed.]
Reynaldo, both here and in AWs Well, is a servant or steward, and it is significant
that the best known of the historical Rinaldos, — and several probably went to the
composition of the Rinaldo of romance, — was high steward to Louis the Pious.
Albertus is clearly a more appropriate name for a duke of Austria (the scene i?
laid at Vienna) than Gonzago ; but the story of the Play is certainly taken from the
murder of the Duke of Urbano by Luigi Gonzaga in 1538, who was poisoned by
means of a lotion poured into his ears. This new way of poisoning caused great
horror throughout Europe, and we often meet with allusions to it. It is worth
noting, also, that the wife of the duke was a Gonzaga. Some of the commentators
have absurdly objected to Battista as a female Christian name. It was not only a
common female name at this period, but especially connected with Mantua and the
Gonzagas. [The remainder of these Notes will be found in connection with the
appropriate characters in the text in Vol. I. There is an article in The Comhih
Magazine for February, 1876, on Shakespeare^ s Greek Natnes, Ed.]
DURATION OF THE ACTION 243
DURATION OF THE ACTION
Heuss] {Skakespear^s Hamlet, Leipzig, 1872) : The First Act embraces the first
hight, the following day, and the next night.
The Second Act begins some little time (from two to three months) after the close
of the First ; for in the First Act Laertes goes to Paris, and at the beginning of the
Second, Polonius sends him money. The Second Act embraces one day.
The Third Act begins with the day following the close of the Second Act, and
continues, as is to be inferred from the apparition of the Ghost, until the middle of
the next night.
The Fourth Act ends with the death of Ophelia. The Fifth begins with the day
of her burial, and two or three days might be supposed to intervene. But since the
King reminds Laertes in the grave-yard of ' their last night's speech,' it follows that
Ophelia was buried on the very day after her death ; and the Fifth Act, therefore,
begins on the day immediately following the conclusion of the Fourth. The dura-
tion of the events of the Fourth Act cannot be exactly computed. The first three
Scenes take place on the day after Hamlet's interview with his mother. Not much
time can elapse between the Third and Fourth Scene, because in the Fourth Scene
Hamlet is on his way to England, which must have followed very close upon the
King's command ; the succeeding scenes continue without interruption. The Fourth
Act, therefore, occupies two days at the most.
Miss Kate Field {Fechter as Hamlet. Atlantic Monthly, Boston, November,
1870, p. 558) : After carefully scanning the play, we see that its entire action cannot
cover more than ten days. In the First Act Laertes leaves for France, and Hamlet
decides to ' put an antic disposition on.' The Second Act opens with Polonius
sending Reynaldo to keep watch over Laertes, after which comes Ophelia's descrip-
tion of Lord Hamlet with his doublet all unbraced ; this being the first symptom of
Hamlet's madness, not more than a day is likely to have elapsed between the con-
ception and execution of his plan. Concluding with the arrival of the Players and
Hamlet's arrangement for the performance of The Murder of Gotizago, which he
distinctly declares shall take place the following night, — * We'll have't to-morrow
night,' — there can be no questioning as to the date of the Third Act. And the
Fourth is like unto it. Hamlet kills Polonius in the Third Act. The Fourth Act
opens with the Queen's narration of the bloody deed, — 'Ah, my good lord, what
have I seen to-night ?' by which it is clear that the Fourth Act begins in point of
time as quickly as the Third Act closes ; that is, on the night of the third day.^ In
the Third Scene Hamlet is brought in guarded, and replies to Qaudius that ' you
shall nose him (Polonius) as you go up the stairs into the lobby.' The time still
remains the same, as proved by the King's immediately dispatching Hamlet to
England : ' I'll have him hence to-night.' In Scene Fourth Hamlet appears upon
a plain in Denmark, not yet having sailed. It may still be the night of the third
day, although the meeting with Fortinbras and his forces would rather indicate day-
light. If so, the fourth day has set in. Between this Scene and Scene Sixth four
days must elapse, as it is then that Horatio receives Hamlet's letter, in which he
says : • Ere we were two days old at sea, a pirate of very warlike appointment gave
244 APPENDIX
yx% chase These good fellows will bring thee where I am.* Two days out
and two days returning to Denmark make four, and adding the previous four days,
we have eight in all. The next and last scene follows speedily, therein Hamlet's
letter to the King being delivered. Well, but how is it with Laertes, who reappears
in Scene Fifth, proclaiming revenge for the death of his father? How can he re-
turn from France in four days, especially if he be in Paris, where Polonius has sent
Reynaldo to seek him ? Not leaving until the First Act, it is utterly impossible for
Laertes to have made very great progress in his journey, and travelling leisurely, as
would be likely, he is overtaken and brought back. Yes, but he sets sail for France,
and is it probable that, having such a start, he can be overtaken ? Of course he sets
sail, Elsinore being on an island ; but the route to Paris is far more direct by land
than by sea, and the time indicates that Laertes must have taken to horse on the
mainland, a mode of travelling in which he could be easily reached by forced post-
ing. Drowned at the close of the Fourth, Ophelia is buried in the last, Act, so that
but few days can intervene between the two events. How many one cannot assert ;
although, as Hamlet in his letter to Claudius, in the Fourth Act, says, * to-morrow
shall I beg leave to see your kingly eyes,' and the Fifth Act brings about this meet-
ing, twenty-four hours need not have elapsed. European Catholics bury their dead
speedily. It is, therefore, safe to declare that the Fifth Act could transpire on the
ninth day, and cannot in reason be delayed beyond the tenth.
[See EcKARDT, H, i, 75. George B. Woods {Essays, Boston, 1S73, p. 104)
reaches the same conclusion with Heussi : that the ' time of the action occupies be-
tween two and three months, no more and no less,' and cites in proof Hamlet's
statement in the First Act, that his father had been dead ' not two months,' and
Ophelia's assertion in the Third Act, that he had been dead at that time ' twice two
months.'
See also I, i, 158, for the season of the year when the action is supposed to take
place. Ed.]
GARRICK'S VERSION*
BoADEN {Life of y. P. Kevibh, London, 1825, vol. i, p. no): Having incident-
ally mentioned Garrick's strange alteration of the play of Hamlet, it may not be
improper to add here some account of it. In my youth I remember to have seen it
acted, and for many years I could not get the smallest information whether any copy
was preserved of this unlucky compliment to Voltaire. A strange story was in cir-
culation formerly, that it had been buried with the great actor; this, however, it was
said, was not upon the humane principle that a man's faults should die with him,
but as a sort of consecration of so critical a labor.
But Mr Kemble had in his library what I believe to have been the very copy ot
the play upon which Mr Garrick's alterations were made. He probably received it
as a curiosity from Mrs Garrick
[Garrick] cut out the voyage to England and the execution of Rosencrantz and
• In Bohn's Bibliography it is stated that this version was not printed. Ed.
GARRICICS VERSION— ACTORS' INTERPRETATIONS 245
Guildenstem, * who had made love to the employment, and marshalled his way to
knavery.' He omitted the funeral of Ophelia, and all the wisdom of the Prince,
and the rude jocularity of the Grave-diggers. Hamlet bursts in upon the King and
his court, and Laertes reproaches him with his father's and his sister's deaths. The
exasperation of both is at its height when the King interposes ; he had commanded
Hamlet to depart for England, and declares that he will no longer bear this rebel-
lious conduct, but that his wrath shall at length fall heavy on the Prince. ' First,'
exclaims Hamlet, * feel you mine !' and he instantly stabs him. The Queen rushes
out, imploring the attendants to save her from her son. Laertes, seeing treason and
murder before him, attacks Hamlet to revenge his father, his sister, and his King.
He wounds Hamlet mortally, and Horatio is on the point of making Laertes ac-
company him to the shades, when the Prince commands him to desist, assuring him
that it was the hand of Heaven, which administered by Laertes ' that precious balm
for all his wounds.' We then learn that the miserable mother had dropped in a
trance ere she could reach her chamber door, and Hamlet implores for her ' an hour
of penitence ere madness end her.' He then joins the hands of Laertes and Ho-
ratio, and commands them to unite their virtues (as a coalition of ministers) to ' calm
the troubled land.' The old couplet as to the bodies concludes the play.
ACTORS' INTERPRETATIONS
GARRICK
Fielding {Tern Jones, London, 1749, book rvi, chap, v.) — As soon as the play,
which was Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, began. Partridge was all attention, nor did
he break silence until the entrance of the Ghost ; upon which he asked Jones, ' What
man that was in the strange dress ; something,' said he, « like what I have seen in a
picture. Sure it is not armour, is it ?' Jones answered, * That is the Ghost.' To
which Partridge replied with a smile, ' Persuade me to that, sir, if you can. Though
I cannot say I ever actually saw a ghost in my life, yet I am certain I should know
one if I saw him, better than that comes to. No, no, sir, ghosts don't appear in such
dresses as that, neither.' In this mistake, which caused much laughter in the neigh-
borhood of Partridge, he was suffered to continue, 'till the scene between the Ghost
and Hamlet, when Partridge gave that credit to Mr Garrick which he had denied to
Jones, and fell into such a violent fit of trembling that his knees knocked against
each other. Jones asked him what was the matter, and whether he was afraid of the
warrior upon the stage ? ' O la, sir,' said he, • I perceive now it b what you told
me. I am not afraid of anything ; for I know it is but a play. And if it really was
a ghost, it could do one no harm at such a distance, and in so much company; and
yet if I was frightened, I am not the only person.' ♦ \Vhy, who,' cries Jones, ' dost
thou take to be such a coward here besides thyself?' 'Nay, you may call me a
coward if you will ; but if that little man there upon the stage is not frightened, I
never saw any man frightened in my life. Ay, ay ; " go along with you !" ay, to be
sure ! who's fool then ! Will you ? Lud have mercy upon such foolhardiness ?
246
APPENDIX
Whatever happens it is good enough for you. " Follow you!" I'd follow the devil
as soon, — nay, perhaps it is the devil, — for they say he can put on what likeness he
pleases. Oh ! here he is again. "No farther!" No, you have gone far enough already ;
farther than I'd have gone for all the king's dominions.' Jones offered to speak, but
Partridge cried, ' Hush, hush, dear sir, don't you hear him !' and during the whole
speech of the Ghost he sat with his eyes fixed partly on the Ghost and partly on
Hamlet, and with his mouth open ; the same passions which succeeded in Hamlet,
succeeding likewise in him.
When the scene was over, Jones said, 'Why, Partridge, you exceed my expecta-
tions; you enjoy the play more than I conceived possible.' 'Nay, sir,' answered
Partridge, 'if you are not afraid of the devil, I can't help it; but to be sure it is
natural to be surprised at such things, though I know there is nothing in them; not
that it was the Ghost which surprised me neither; for I should have known that to
have been only a man in a strange dress ; but when I saw the little man so fright-
ened himself, it was that which took hold of me.' ' And dost thou imagine then,
Partridge,' cries Jones, ' that he was really frightened ?' ' Nay, sir,' said Partridge,
♦did not you yourself observe afterwards, when he found it was his own father's
spirit, and how he was murdered in the garden, how his fear forsook him by degrees,
and he was struck dumb with sorrow, as it were, just as I should have been, had it
been my own case. But hush ! O la ! what noise is that ? There he is again. Well,
to be certain, though I know there is nothing at all in it, I am glad I am not down
yonder, where those men are.' Then turning his eyes again upon Hamlet, ' Ay, you
may draw your sword; what signifies a sword against the power of the devil ?'
During the Second Act, Partridge made very few remarks. He greatly admired
the fineness of the dresses; nor could he help observing upon the King's counte-
nance. ' Well,' said he, ' how people may be deceived by faces ! Nulla fides fronti
is, I find, a true saying. Who would think, by looking in the King's face, that he
had ever committed a murder ?' He then inquired after the Ghost ; but Jones, who
intended he should be surprised, gave him no other satisfaction, 'than that he, might
possibly see him again soon, and in a flash of fire.*
Partridge sat in fearful expectation of this ; and now, when the Ghost made his
next appearance, Partridge cried out : ' There, sir, now ; what say you now ? Is he
frightened now or no ? As much frightened as you think me, and, to be sure, no-
body can help some fears, I would not be in so bad a condition as what's his name,
'Squire Hamlet, is there, for all the world. Bless me ! what's become of the spirit ?
As I am a living soul, I thought I saw him sink into the earth.' ' Indeed, you saw
right,' answered Jones. 'Well, well,' cries Partridge,'! know it is only a play;
and besides, if there was anything in all this. Madam Miller would not laugh so;
for as to you, sir, you would not be afraid, I believe, if the devil was here in person.
There, there, — ay, no wonder you are in such a passion ; shake the vile, wicked
wretch to pieces. If she was my own mother, I should serve her so. To be sure,
all duty to a mother is forfeited by such wicked doings. Ay, go about your business;
I hate the sight of you.'
Our critic was now pretty silent till the play which Hamlet introduced before the
King. This he did not at first understand, till Jones explained it to him; but he no
sooner entered into the spirit of it than he began to bless himself that he had never
committed murder. Then, turning to Mrs Miller, he asked her, ' If she did not
imagine the King looked as if he was touched; though he is,' said he, 'a good
actor, and doth all he can to hide it. Well, I would not have so much to answe
ACTORS' INTERPRETATIONS 247
for as that wicked man there hath, to sit upon a much higher chair than he sits
upon. No wonder he ran away ; for your sake I'll never trust an innocent face
again.'
The grave-digging scene* next engaged the attention of Partridge, who expressed
much surprise at the number of skuUs thrown upon the stage. To which Jones
answered : ' That it was one of the most famous burial-places about town.' * No
wonder, then,' cries Partridge, ' that the place is haunted. But I nevftr saw in my
life a worse grave-digger. I had a sexton when I was a clerk that should have dug
three graves while he is digging one. The fellow handles a spade as if it was the
first time he had ever had one in his hands. Ay, ay, you may sing. You had
rather sing than work, I believe.' Upon Hamlet's taking up the skull he cried out,
* Well, it is strange to see how fearless some men are ; I never could bring myself
to touch anything belonging to a dead man on any account. He seemed frightened
enough, too, at the Ghost, I thought. Nemo omnibus horis sapit.^-
Little more worth remembering occurred during the play ; at the end of which
Jones asked him which of the players he liked best. To this he answered, with
some appearance of indignation at the question : ' The King, without doubt.' ' In-
deed, Mr Partridge,' says Mrs Miller, • you are not of the same opinion with the
Town ; for they are all agreed that Hamlet is acted by the best player who was ever
on the stage.' ' He the best player !' cries Partridge, with a contemptuous sneer ;
* why, I could act as well as he myself. I am sure if I had seen a ghost, I should
have looked in the very same manner and done just as be did. And then, to be
sure, in that scene, as you called it, between him and his mother, where you told me
he acted so fine, why. Lord help me, any man, that is, any good man, that had such
a mother would have done exactly the same. I know you are only joking with me ;
but, indeed, madam, though I was never at a play in London, yet I have seen acting
before in the country ; and the King for my money : he speaks all his words dis.
tinctly, half as loud again as the other. Anybody may see he is an actor.'
Franos Gentleman {Dramatic Censor, 1770, vol. i, p. 33.)— Where Hamlet
sajrs to his interposing friends : ' I say, away,' — then turning to the Ghost, * Go on,
I'll follow,' Garrick's variation from extreme passion to reverential awe is so forcibly
expressed in eyes, features, attitude,, and voice, that every heart must feel. Where
the Queen says the Ghost is but * the coinage of your brain,' his turning short from
looking after the apparition with wildness of terror, and viewing his mother with
pathetic concern, is most happily executed.
BETTERTON. GARRICK.
Thomas Davies {Dramatic Miscellanies, vol. iii, p. 35.) — I have lately been told
by a gentleman, who has frequently seen Betterton perform Hamlet, that he observed
his countenance, which was naturally ruddy and sanguine, in the scene of the Third
Act where his father's ghost appears, through the violent and sudden emotion of
amazement and horror, turn instantly, on the sight of his father's spirit, as pale as
his neckcloth ; when his whole body seemed to be affected with a tremor inexpres-
• This is noteworthy as showing that Garrick does not always merit the reproach, which is coo.
ManlJy cast upon him, of excluding this scene in representation. Ed.
24S APPENDIX
sible, so that, had his 'father's ghost actually risen before him, he could not have been
seized with more real agonies. And this was felt so strongly by the audience that
the blood seemed to shudder in their veins likewise ; and they in some measure par-
took of the astonishment and honor with which they saw this excellent actor affected.
[See Vol. I, I, iv, 39, for an additional account of Betterton's acting. Ed.]
[Page 55.] • For some must laugh \jic\, while some must weep \sic\. Thus runs
the world away.' — III, ii, 261. In the uttering of this line and a half it was Gar-
rick's constant practice to pull out a white handkerchief, and walking about the stage
to twirl it round with vehemence. This action can incur no just censure, except
from its constant repetition. He, of all the players I ever saw, gave the greatest
variety to action and deportment ; nor could I help wondering that so great an artist
should in this instance tie himself down to one particular mode, when his situation
would admit of so many.
[Page 65.] At the appearance of the Ghost [in the closet scene with his mother],
Hamlet immediately rises from his seat affrighted; at the same time he contrives to
kick down his chair, which, by making a sudden noise, it was imagined would con-
tribute to the perturbation and terror of the incident.
KEMBLE. GARRICK. HENDERSON.
BoADEN {^Life of John Philip Kemble, London, 1825, vol. i, p. 94*) : Kemblb
was instructed to say : * 'Tis an ««-weeded garden, that grows to seed.' But Kemble
thought, and justly, that ' unweeded ' was quite as intelligible with the usual and
proper .accent as the improper one ; and besides, that the exquisite modulation of
the poet's verse should not be jolted out of its music for the sake of giving a more
pointed explanation of a word already sufRciently understood.
'Sir, my good friend! I'll change that name with you.' Thus Kemble, upon
Horatio's saying to Hamlet that he was his poor servant ever. Dr Johnson conceives
It to mean, * I'll be your servant, you shall be my friend.' In which case the em-
phasis would rest thus : ' Sir, my good friend ! I'll change that name with you.'
Perhaps, it may be rather, ' Change the term servant into that of friend. Consider
us, without regard to rank, as friends.' Henderson evidently so understood it, for
he said, • I'll change that name with you.'
It was, I think, a novelty when, after having recognized Horatio and Marcellus*
by name, Kemble turned courteously towards Bernardo, and applied the * Good
even, sir,' to him. The commentators were too busy in debating whether it should
5e evening or morning, to bestow a thought as to the direction of this gentle salu-
tation.
It was observed how keenly Kemble inserted an insinuation of the King's intem*
perance, when he said to Horatio and the rest: • We'll teach you to DRINK deep, —
creyou depart.'
He restored, with the modem editors of Shakespeare, * Dearest foe,' and *Beteeme
• These extracts from Boadcn's Li/e of Kemble were kindly made for this edition by my friend,
Mr J. Parker Norris, who in his search for stray interpretations oi Hamlet has examined the
following volumes: Campbell's Li/e of Mrs SidJons ; Boaden's Li/e o/ Mrs Siddons: the Li/t
f Gar rick by Murphy; by Davics; by Fitzgerald; Macrcady's Reminiscences : and Hawkins's
li/e 0/ Kean. Ed.
ACTORS' INTERPRETATIONS 249
the winds of heaven,' and he was greatly censured for. doing so, because, as the first
tenn is unknown to the modems in the sense of most itnportant, or, as Johnson
thought, direst, and the word beteeme not known at all, the critic said, it might
show reading so to speak them, but did not show clear meaning • a thing of more
moment to a popular assembly. This is a question, I am sensible, on which a great
deal may be said; but let it be observed that it involves the integrity of a poef s
text.
* My father, — methinks I see my father.' Professor Richardson terms this ' the
most solemn and striking apostrophe that ever poet invented.' Kemble seemed so
to consider it : — the image entirely possessed his imagination ; and accordingly, after
attempting to pronounce his panegyric, ' He was a man, take him for all in all,' a
flood of tenderness came over him, and it was with tears he uttered : ' I shall not
look upon his like again.' I know the almost stoical firmness with which others
declaim this passage ; and the political opposition affected, between the terms KING
and MAN ; but I must be excused, if I prefer the melting softness of Kemble, as more
germane to ' the weakness and the melancholy ' of Hamlet.
•Did YOU not speak to it?' (7I> Horatio.) Not only personally put to Horatio,
for this must certainly be done, with emphasis or without, (as the others had said
they did not speak to the spectre, and had invited Horatio, that he might do so) but
emphatically and tenderly, as inferring from the peculiar intimacy between them, that
Ae surely had ventured to enquire the cause of so awful a visitation. Mr Steevens,
from a pique which Kemble explained to me, thought fit to annoy him upon this in-
novation, and, without naming the object of his sarcasm, has left it in the margin of
his Shakespeare. [See Vol. I : I, ii, 214.] .... Kemble, however, told me that
he had submitted this to Dr Johnson in one of those calls upon him which Boswell
has mentioned, and that the doctor said to him : • To be sure, sir, — YOU should be
strongly marked, I told Garrick so, long since, but Davy never could see it.'
' And for my soul, what CAN it do to that. Being a thing immortal as itself?' Gar-
rick here, with great quickness, said : ' WTiat can it do to THAT ?' There is, I think,
more impression in Kemble's manner of putting it. In Garrick it was a truism as-
serted ; in Kemble not merely asserted, but enjoyed.
Having drav/n his sword, to menace the friends who prevented him from following
the Ghost, every Hamlet before Kemble presented the point to the phantom as he
followed to the removed ground. Kemble, having drawn it on his friends, retained
it in his right hand, but turned his left towards the spirit, and drooped the weapon
after him, — a change both tasteful and judicious. As a defence against such a being
it was ridiculous to present the point. To retain it unconsciously showed how com-
pletely he was absorbed by the dreadful mystery he was exploring.
The kneeling at the descent of the Ghost was censured as a trick. I suppose
merely because it had not been done before : but it suitably marked the filial rever-
ence of Hamlet, and the solemnity of the engagement he had contracted. Henderson
saw it, and adopted it immediately, — I remember he was applauded for doing so.
These two great actors agreed in the seeming intention of particular disclosure to
Horatio : ' Yes, but there is, Horatio, — and much offence, too,' turned off upon the
pressing forward of Marcellus to partake the communication. Kemble only, how-
ever, prepared the way for this by the marked address to Horatio : • Did YOU not
speak to it ?'
In the scene with Polonius, where Hamlet is asked what is the matter which he
reads, and he answers, * Slanders, sir,' Kemble, to give the stronger impression of
250 APPENDIX
his wildness, tore the leaf out of the book. Even this was remarked, for he was of
consequence enough, at first, to have everything he did minutely examined.
A critic observed that, in the scene with Rosencrantz and Guildenstem, he was
not only familiar, but gay and smiling; and that he should be quite the reverse, be-
cause he tells them that he ' has lost all his mirth,' &c. This was pure mis-appre-
hension of the critic. The scene itself ever so slightly read would have set him
right. Hamlet, from playing on Polonius, turns to receive gaily and with smiles his
excellent friends, his good lads, who are neither the button on Fortune's cap, nor the
soles 0/ her shoe. And it is only when the conception crosses him that they were
sent to sound him, that he changes his manner, puts his questions eagerly and im-
portunately, and, having an eye upon them, gives that account of his disposition,
which rendered it but a sleeveless errand which they came upqn.
[Page 100.] ' The mobled queen.* Garrick repeated this after the Player, as in
doubt; Kemble, as in sympathy. And accordingly Polonius echoes his approbation ;
and says, that the expression is good : * Mobled queen is good.'
' Perchance to dream !' Kemble pronounced the word * dream ' meditatingly.
Just after, to Ophelia, he spoke the word lisp with one — lithp. A refinement below
him.
Henderson and he concurred, in saying to Horatio : ' Ay, in my heart of heart,
as I do thee.' Garrick gave it differently : * heart of heart* But I think would
have attained his purpose better by changing his emphasis to ' heart of heart,' as I
remember somewhere, I think iu Thomson : ' And all the life of life is gone ;' that
is, I cherish thee in the divinest particle of the heart, which is to that organ itself
what the heart is to the body.
[Page 102.] Kemble gave the argument of the [court-play] in the finest manner
possible : « They do but jest : POISON in jest,' in tone and observation at the time,
beyond all praise.
The reference to Rosencrantz, after Guildenstem, with the pipe, ' I do beseech
YOU,' is an innovation. It involves both persons in the disgrace ; but, if allowed at
all, it can only be permitted as a felicity of action in the performance. At all events,
the stately march from. Guildenstem to Rosencrantz always seemed to me a poor
thing, and. indeed chilling what was to follow : too formal, in a word, for the con«
dition of Hamlet's mind.
In the chamber of the queen, * Is it the king ?' was addressed to the million.
Hamlet's nature is so little vindictive I In this scene it was doubted whether, in
'speaking daggers' to the Queen, they were drawn and sharp enough
Kemble knelt in the fine adjuration to his mother [Kemble thus read the
following lines :] ' And when you are desirous to be blest, I'll blessing beg of you.'
Henderson read them differently : ' And when you are desirous to be blest, I'll bless-
ing beg of YOU.' In the grave-yard scene [Kemble] never entirely satisfied him-
self; he was too studiously graceful ; and, under his difficulties, seemingly too much
at his ease. The exclamation [' What ! the fair Ophelia !'] had not the pathos of
Henderson's ; who seemed here struck to the very soul. The tone yet vibrates in
my ear with which he uttered it.
[For an admirable description of some points in Garrick's acting, see LlCHTEM
BERG, in German Criticisms in this Volume. Ed.]
ACTORS' INTERPRETATIONS 25 1
KEAN. HACKETT. YOUNG. MACREADY.
J. H. Hackett* {Notes, Criticisms, &'c.. New York, 1863, p. 49.)— Edmund
Kean, as Hamlet, after concluding his words to Ophelia, *To a nunnery, go!' and
departing abruptly out of sight of his audience, used to come on the stage again,
and approach slowly the amazed Ophelia still remaining in the centre ; take her
hand gently, and, after gazing steadily and earnestly in her face for a few seconds,
and with a marked expression of tenderness on his own countenance, appeared to
be choked in his efforts to say something, smothered her hand with passionate kisses,
and rushed wildly and 6nally from her presence. [Edwin Booth does the same
thing. J. C] [See III, i, 149. Ed.]
[Page 79.] In my youth I had read the work called Wilhelm Meister's Appreri'
ticeship, and been struck with and remembered Goethe's idea of causing, in repre-
sentation, Hamlet's description and comparison of his father's and his uncle's respec-
tive persons to be painted as full-length portraits, and suspended in the Queen's
closet. With the aid of Mr Thomas Barry (a most capital stage-director, as well as
good and sound actor), I determined to try such an effect. Mr Barry, who acted
the Ghost, consented to change the costume [armour) worn when it was seen upon
the platform, and which, as it would seem, was designed to suggest surprise, and
increase Hamlet's wonder (• My father's spirit — in arms ! all is not well !'), and
to adopt one similar to that worn by ' My father in his habit as he lived,' and
painted for the portrait. The canvas was so constructed, by Mr Barry's direction,
and split, but backed with a spring made from whalebone, which rendered its prac-
ticability unperceived by the audience, that it enabled him at the proper juncture,
as the Ghost behind, to step apparently out of it upon the stage ; the rent through
which the figure had passed was closed up again, and the canvas, with a light behind
it, then looked blank and illuminated ; but the iiistant after the departure of the spirit
from sight of the audience, the light was removed, and the painting appeared as
before. The whole effect proved wonderful and surprising, and was vehemently
applauded.
[Page 133. Speaking of Charles Mayne YotWG, Mr Hackett says :] His con-
ception of the character of Hamlet seemed pretty just in the main, though I am
bound to take particular exception to Mr Young's marked hauteur in receiving the
Players, and to his dictatorial bearing while conversing with them ; his utterance
especially of, ' Com'st thou to beard me in Denmark ?' was characterized by a tone
of rebuke instead of that of a jocose and condescending familiarity, such as Hamlet
would be likely to use in welcoming ' the tragedians of the city, in whom he was
wont to take such delight, and who had come expressly to offer him their service.'
[Page 144.] Hackett takes exceptions to Macready's rendering of the Prince's
question, * Arm'd, say you ?' He thinks Macready hurried through the dialogue too
rapidly, making no pause before ♦ Arm'd, say you i' so that the audience might be
misled into supposing that Hamlet meant to inquire connectedly whether those who
should hold the watch would be armed : ' whereas, if after addressing the two soldiers
then on his right hand with, " Hold you the watch to-night ?" he had made a short
pause, and with the fixed eye of abstract and profound consideration turned his face
• These extracts from Hackett's volume were kindly selected for this edition by my friend, Mx
Joseph Crosbt. £o.
252 APPENDIX
from them towards Horatio standing at his left, and sinking his voice into a musing
and an undertone inquired of Horatio particularly, " Arm'd, say you ?" no one could
have been misled from this special reference to the Ghost.'
In the First Folio, and in the early Quarto editions, the answers to Hamlet's par«
ticular inquiries are printed differently; being in one copy ascribed to ' bothj and in
another to ' alP ; but whether these answers properly belong to the two officers only,
or to all three who were witnesses, is quite immaterial ; because in the acting of the
scene it is right and proper to use the most obvious method to convey to an audience
the dramatist's meaning And Hackett recommends the actor of Hamlet to
confine his questions concerning the Ghost 1 •> Horatio, for various good reasons.
[Page 148.] ' His beard was grizzled ? No ?' Mr Macready after ' grizzled,'
allowed the witnesses not a moment for reflection, but impatiently and rather com-
ically stammered, • N' — n' — no ?'
'Pol. Will you walk out of the air, my lord? Ham. Into my gravel' Mr
Macready uttered Hamlet's reply interrogatively, which was new to my ear upon
the stage; but, though it is the punctuation of the Folio 1623, I would prefer that
it should be given as an exclamation.
Mr Macready's style wanted the philosophic sententiousness requisite for an har-
mon-ious delivery of the analysis of ' man ;' besides which he adopted the late John
Kemble's omission of the indefinite article • a ' before * man ' / an omission not war-
ranted by any of the original and authentic editions : the true text is, when Hamlet
would analyze God's animated machine, • What a piece of work is a man !' The
article 'a' prefixed to the word 'man' is essential here, because Hamlet descants
particularly upon the male sex and their attributes as constituting the ' paragon of
animals,' and in contradistinction to the female portion of human kind, enumerates
the peculiar and highest order of men's intellectual gifts combined with a perfection
of pereonal formation, and when he has summed them all up, he adds, 'Man delights
not me !' The courtier then smiles, and he rebukes him with, ' Nor woman neither,'
&c. Now had Hamlet begun with ' What a piece of work is man /" such a general
term, man, in his premises would have signified the genus Homo, and been under-
stood by the courtier as comprehending woman also, and thus the point of Hamlet's
rebuke at this imagined impertinence been lost.
[Page 149.] Mr Macready's emphasis and intonation of the word 'southerly,^ 'I
am but mad north, northwest ; when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a
handsaw,' were such as to imply to a listener that when the wind may be from the
south the atmosphere is clearer than when from the north, northwest ; whereas the
very reverse, according to Shakespeare elsewhere, is the fact; for example, see As
You Like It, HI, v : ' You foolish shepherd, wherefore do you follow her, Like
foggy south, puffing with wind and rain.' Hamlet, as I understand the passage,
means to reflect gently upon the conceited cleverness of those clumsy spies, Rosen-
crantz and Guildenstern, whose ill-concealed designs are transparent to him, by
intimating to them that their employers are deceived in respect to the point or
direction of his madness ; that, figuratively, his brain is disordered only upon one
of the clearest points of the compass, to wit, north, northwest; but that even when
the wind is southerly, and his intellectual atmosphere in consequence most be-
fogged and impenetrable, his observation is not so mad or erratic as to be unable to
distinguish between two such dissimilar objects, for example, as 'a hawk and a
handsaw* &c.
[Page 151.] In the sentence • To die ? to sleep, — No morel' Mr Macready to my
ACTORS' INTERPRETATIONS 253
Burprise, but not satisfaction, punctuated by his tone of voice the words ' no more '
(?) as an interrogatory, and as though they involved the continuity of a question, in-
stead of that denoting an emphatic and responsive exclamation (!) of a conclusive
rffiection upon his own preceding answer to his self-inquiry.
[Page 159.] ' Cuil. The king, sir, is in his retirement, marvellously distempered.
Ham. With drink, sir?' Mr Macready, instead of as an interrogation, uttered the
words rapidly and in a tone of exclamation, denoting an unquestionable conclusion.
It was good and not objectionable, for the reason that the sneer at the habits of • the
bloat king ' is practically conveyed to the listener by either punctuation.
[Page 168.] * That skull had a tongue in it and could sing once.' Mr Macready,
like every other actor seen by me, by his emphasis rendered * tongue ' and * sing '
antithetical, which fails to point to the listener the moral intended. Hamlet begins
moralizing to Horatio as they enter'the graveyard, upon the grave-digger's habit of
singing whilst engaged in so melancholy an employment ; when they have approached
him more nearly the grave-digger sings a second verse, and with his spade at the
same time throws up a skull ; Hamlet then remarks, ♦ That SKlTLL had a tongue in
it and could sing once !' to convey the idea that the skull now so mute, and knocked
about by the rude clown, once had a tongue in it, and could do that which he (the
grave-digger), is then doing, namely singing; this »:<7ra/-painting of Hamlet's re-
flection can be most clearly conveyed to an auditor's comprehension by special em-
phasis and intonation, rendering the words, 'skull' and * once J strongly emphatical
as antitheses, thus, ' That SKULL, had a tongue in it and could sing ONCE.'
[Mr Barry Sullivan, when playing Hamlet during his recent tour of the United
States, uniformly rendered the passage ' When the wind is southerly I know a hawk
from a handsaw,' thus, ' When the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a heron.
Pshaw r
I have heard the late Charles Kean, and other actors, emphasize the following
passage thus, ' Hor. I saw him once ; he was a goodly king. Ham. He was a MAN !
Take him for all in all,' &c. J. C]
FECHTEP>
Miss Kate Field {Fechter as Hamlet. Atlantic Monthly, November, 1870) :
* I'll cross it though it blast me.' Heretofore Horatios have senselessly crossed the
Chosf s path, as if such a step would stay its progress. Not so with Fechter, whose
Horatio makes the sign of the cross, at which the Ghost stops, as a Catholic ghost
should
He is gloomy enough, is Fechter's Hamlet, as he sits beside his mother, starting
when the King addresses him as ' our sonj yet gently exclaiming, while kissing the
Queen's hand with courtly grace, and giving by an almost imperceptible accent a
key to the estimate in which he holds his uncle-father : * I shall in all my best obey
you, madam.' Left to himself, he gazes fondly at his father's portrait, worn about
his neck, and illustrates his beautiful apostrophe by reference to it
Fechter, meditating on the startling intelligence that the apparition wore his
heaver up, murmurs : ' Very like,' as if the sentence read : « Very like — my
father! ....
When Horatio calls without, < Heaven secure him,' — meaning Hamlet, — Fechter,
intent upon the Ghost, prayerfully adds, • So be it.' . . .
254 APPENDIX
* Conception is a blessing ; but as your daughter may conceive, — friend, look to't.
It is a mad laugh that follows • friend.' Hamlet points to his open book as he
mutters ' look to't,' and Polonius, literal in all things, runs his eye over the page to
learn the • cause of this defect,'
Hamlet's reception of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern is most cordial until he sees
his uncle's portrait around the neck of the latter; then the expression and manner
change Hamlet's rejoinder, 'And those that would make mouths at him
while my father lived give twenty, forty, fifty, an hundred ducats apiece for his
picture in little,' is illustrated by his taking up the picture pendent from Guilden-
stem's neck. Upon dropping it, he crosses to the right, and makes an ' aside ' of
the succeeding scHtence, ' There is something in this,' &c
Fechter points the moral of the soliloquy, • To be, or not to be,' by bringing on
an unsheathed sword, as if he had again been contemplating the suicide that would
free him from his oath
[When the Players enter, Fechter] was the first to introduce a boy with chopins,
m lieu of a woman actress '[sic] ....
[Hamlet] never forgets to spare Polonius in the presence of others 'It ■war.
a brute part of him,' Hamlet replies ; and then, walking away, adds as an aside, « to
kill so capital a calf there !'....
• That's wormwood ' is addressed to Horatio.
Before the sobbing Queen retires, she once more turns to her son, exclaiming,
• Hamlet !' — this is Fechter's introduction, — and stretches out her hands for a filial
embrace. Hamlet holds up his father's picture, the sight of which speaks volumes
to the wretched woman, who staggers from the stage. Kissing this picture, Hamlet
murmurs sadly, * I must be cruel only to be kind ;' then, taking light in hand and
raising the arras, gazes at Polonius, exclaiming : ' Thus bad begins, and worse re-
mains behind.'
When Fechter produces Hamlet in his own theatre, the time of the churchyard
scene is that of a brilliant sunset, making a fine contrast between the thoughtless joy
of Nature and the grief of humanity
♦ What, the fair Ophelia /" and, overwhelmed with agony, Hamlet falls on his
knees beside a tomb, and buries his head in his hands. In the controversy between
Hamlet and Laertes, Macready and Kemble leaped into the grave, and there went
through the grappling in true Punch and Judy fashion. The illustrious example
[see the stage-direction in the First Quarto. Ed.] has been often followed ; but
Fechter wisely abstains from the absurdity, hot approaching the grave until his last
word is spoken, when, gazing in agony at the gaping void and at Ophelia's corse*
he is dragged off the stage by Horatio.
Fechter's arrangement of the stage [in the last scene] is admirable. In the back-
ground runs a gallery, to which a short flight of stairs leads on each side of the
stage, and by which all exits and entrances are made. To the left stands the throne
where sits the King. The moment Hamlet exclaims, ' Ho! let the ddor be locked;
Treachery ! seek it out,' the King exhibits signs of fear, and, while Laertes makeb
his terrible confession, he steals to the opposite stairs, shielding himself from Ham*
let's observafion behind the group of courtiers, who, paralyzed with horror, fail to
remark the action. Laertes no sooner utters the words, • The king's to blame,' than
Hamlet turns suddenly to the throne in search of his victim; discovering the ruse,
he rushes up the left-hand stairs, meets the King in the centre of the gallery, and
stabs him Descending, the potent poison steals upon Hamlet, who, murmur»
ACTORS' INTERPRETATIONS 255
ing, • The rest is silence,' falls dead on the corpse of Laertes, thus showing his for
giveness of treachery and remembrance of Ophelia.
MACREADY
( The Hamlets of the Stage. Atlantic Monthly, August, 1869.) — In the scene be-
fore the [court-play,] where the Prince says to Horatio, «They are coming to the
play ; I must be idle,' all other Hamlets had taken ♦ idle ' in the sense of being list-
less and unoccupied. Macready gave it a much more liberal construction [see III,
ii, 85, and note. Ed.], counterfeiting a foolish youth, skipping across the stage
in front of the footlights, and switching his handkerchief, which he held by one
comer, over his right and left shoulder alternately, until the King asked after his
health.
EDWIN FORREST*
In the line, ' I shall in all my best obey yoa, madam,' Mr Forrest has the good
taste not to emphasize ' you.'
' Niobe ' was pronounced Nibbe, not N^«)be.
The line, * Thrift, thrift, Horatio,' was read so as to convey the idea of haste, not
the motive of economy which the word seems to imply, in making ' funeral-baked
meats furnish forth the marriage-tables.'
The line, • Then saw you not his face ?' was given as a soliloquy.
By Forrest's instruction, no doubt, the Ghost read : ' So art thou to revenge when
thou shalt hear I am thy father's spirit,' no pause being made after the word ' hear.'
In the line, i Than are dreamt of in your philosophy,' the last word was empha-
sized, not ' your.'
• Sea of troubles ' was read ♦ siege of troubles.'
The line to Ophelia, ' Nymph, in thy orisons Be all my sins remembered,' was
read as a tender question : ' Be all my sins remembered ?'
The instructions to the Player, * Speak the speech,' &c., were made a great point
by Forrest. It was subdued and wholly conversational. After speaking a few sen-
tences he turned his back on the Player, and walked toward a chair. He then faced
him, and again approached, again retired and seated himself, delivering the greater
paij of the speech in this attitude.
In the interview with the Queen large pictures on the wall were used, instead of
miniatures.
The line to Polonius, ' Do you see yonder cloud ?' was addressed to him at the
wing, the wand pointing oflf the side scene, as through a window
EDWIN BOOTH
{Atlantic Monthly, May, 1S66.) — Where a burlier tragedian must elaborately pose
himself for the youth he would assume, this actor so easily and constantly falls into
beautiful attitudes and movements, that he seems to go about, as we heard a humor-
^ This extract is from an old newspaper cutting, from which all indication of it* date or title has
been cut away. Ed.
256
APPENDIX
ist say, 'making statues all-over the stage.* No picture can equal the scene where
Horatio and Marcellus swear by his sword, he holding the crossed hilt upright be-
tween the two, his head thrown back and lit with high resolve.
Lucia Gilbert Calhoun {The Galaxy, Jan. 1869) : 'O that this too too solid
flesh would melt,' was given moving from side to side of the stage, or half flung
down upon his chair in an attitude of utter abandonment. The story of the appear-
ance of the Ghost he hears with feverish eagerness, but with extreme quiet.
In the scene with the Ghost, Hamlet is turned away, when Horatio suddenly ex-
claims, * Look, my lord, it comes !' He catches sight of the vision, staggers toward
Horatio, falls against him, gasping, * Angels and ministers of grace, defend us !' It
is not terror of the supernatural alone. It is the appalling confirmation of his fears.
It is the presence of his father hovering on some awful border-land, which is not
life nor death, but wherein is seen the horrible image of both. His voice is husky
and far away. He shivers as if the cold of the grave were upon him. Then rever-
ence for the majestical presence banishes fear. His voice gathers power and sweet-
ness as the words struggle forth. When he utters the one word father, his love
seems to overflow it, and expand it into volumes of tenderest speech as he falls on
his knees and stretches out eager hands to the solemn shade. [See I, iv, 45. Ed.]
The * Oh, answer me !' was incredibly imploring and persuasive.
In the Third Act, the scene is handsomely set as an audience-chamber. A stately
double staircase leads to a gallery, from which small doors open on the corridors
without. In a deep embayed window Ophelia kneels. From a low arched door
beneath the stairway glides the Prince, his head bent, his hands clasped before him,
his step slow and uncertain. He steadies himself by the balustrade, moves on again
mechanically, is stopped by a chair, sinks into it, — still silent, utterly absorbed. In
another moment the ' To be, or not to be,* is uttered in a voice at first almost inaudi-
ble Rising suddenly and crossing toward the window, he sees Ophelia. His
whole face changes. A lovely tenderness suff"uses it. Sweetness fills his tones as
he addresses her. When, with exquisite softness of manner, he draws nearer to her,
he catches a glimpse of the * lawful espials ' in the gallery above. .... When he
says suddenly, ' Where's your father?' he Inys his hand on Ophelia's head, and turns
her face up to his as he stands above her. She answers, looking straight into the
eyes that love her, « At home, my lord.' No accusation, no reproach, could be so
terrible as the sudden plucking away of his hand, and the pain of his face as he
turns from her. The whole scene he plays like one distract. He is never still. He
strides up and down the stage, in and out at the door, speaking outside with the same
rapidity and vehemence. The speech ' I have heard of your paintings, too, well
enough, he begins in the outer room, and the contemptuous words hiss as they fall.
' It hath made me mad,' was uttered with a flutter of the hand about the head more
expressive than words. As he turned toward Ophelia for the last time, all the bitter-
ness, all the reckless violence seemed to die out of him ; his voice was full of un-
utterable love, of appealing tenderness, of irrevocable doom, as he uttered the
last ' To a nunnery go !' and tottered from the room as one who could not see for
tears.
During the court-play, Hamlet lies at Ophelia's feet, watching the guilty King
with ever fiercer regard. As the action proceeds he creeps toward him, and, as th©
mimic murder is accomplished, he springs up with a cry like an avenging spirit. It
seems to drive the frightened court before it. In an instant he is alone with Horatio,
ACTORS' INTERPRETATIONS 257
and, staggering forward, he falls on his neck with the long, loud, mirthless laugh of
a madman. When he lifts his face it is one over which ten years have passed, yet
with a fierce gladness on it as of a man to whom a blocked way is open, though it
lead through blood. Rosencrantz and Guildenstem, coming suddenly upon him
while in this mood, are received no longer with the courtly kindness of the friend,
but with the haughty courtesy of the King's successor The greeting in this
scene to Polonius, ' God bless you, sir,' is one of the finest single lines. There is
such utter weariness, there is such scorn of this miserable, dishonest, luxurious court,
there is such despair of a noble nature set upon by ignoble natures, there is such
impatience of this last crafty, imscrupulous, lying courtier, that the grace of speech
is more bitter than a curse.
The wild hope of the cry ' Is it the King ?' as he stands with the lamp he has
snatched up flickering above his head and his hand on the parted arras, makes the
air shudder. .... Looking down at the old man, he utters ' Thou wretched, rash,
intruding fool, farewell,' with accumulating emphasis of bitterness, not more repent-
ing the blow bestowed than deploring the failure of the blow intended.
The whole stage is open for the graveyard scene. From the shadow of the gloomy
trees in the distance Hamlet and Horatio come slowly forward; Hamlet sits down
to rest on a low knoll, and talks with the Clown. Here, again, the grace and deli-
cate breeding of the Prince are finely shown. From the lighted chapel wails a
funeral dirge ; the sad procession enters ; the two friends withdraw and stand un-
covered in the shadow of a tall monument. When Laertes says, ' A ministering
angel shall my sister be,' Hamlet starts back, muflBes his face in his mantle, and falls
on Horatio's neck with a despairing cry, in which all words are lost. In the scene
that follows there is the agony of a wounded soul, but no artificial frenzy ; there is
the wrestle with Laertes, but no pothouse wrangling ; there is the sad appeal to the
old affection and the memory which should make them friends, but it is the appeal
of a proud and clear soul, not of a weak nor sullied one.
( The New York Triburu, 21 November, 1876) : If we were to pause upon special
points in Booth's interpretation of Hamlet, we should indicate the subtlety' with
which, almost from the first, the sense of being haunted is conveyed to the imagina-
tion ; the perfection with which the weird and awful atmosphere of the ghost-scenes
IS preserved by what may well be called the actor's transfiguration into supernatural
suspense and horror ; the human tenderness and heart-breaking pathos of the scene
with Ophelia; the shrill, terrific cry and fate-like swiftness and fury that electrify
the moment of killing Polonius ; and desolate calmness of despairing surrender to
bleak and cruel fate, with which Hamlet, as he stands beside the grave of his love,
is made so pitiable an object that no man with a heart in his bosom can see him
without tears Nor does it detract from the loveliness of the ideal that it is
cursed with incijMent and fitful insanity The insanity is a cloud only, and
only now and then present, — as with many sane men whom thought, passion, and
suffering urge at times into the border-land between reason and madness. This
lurid gleam is first conspicuously evident in Mr Booth's Hamlet after the first appa-
rition of the Ghost, and again after the climax of the play-scene ; but, flowing out
of an art-instinct too spontaneous always to have direct intention, it plays intermit-
tently along the whole line of the personation, and adds weight, and weirdness, and
pathos to that immedicable misery which we feel can find no relief this side of the
grave.
Vol. II. — 17
258 APPENDIX
[In the fencing-scene, the wounding of Laertes with his own weapon is this
skilfully managed by Mr Booth : Hamlet secures Laertes's foil by a powerful parry
of his thrust in carte, by which Hamlet disarms him ; catching his foil as it leaves
his grasp with the left hand, Hamlet uses it as a dagger, being too close to him for
a free use of his own weapon. Should a stickler for the ' code ' object to this ♦ pass
of practice,' it may be urged that the men are ' incensed,' and excitement must ex-
cuse it, and Laertes is estopped from demanding fair play, since his own has been
foul from the start. Ed.]
HENRY IRVING
Frederic Wedmore {^The Academy, 12 Dec, 1874): Notice the half-indulgent,
yet half-jeering sigh of relief which follows Hamlet's hearing Polonius's praise of
the little speech which he delivers as an example to the Players. Here and else-
where, Irving suggests to you, that among all great troubles, there is always this
nagging little one, of the 'tedious old fool's' presence and commendation. Many
things weigh upon Hamlet, one thing worries him, — to be praised by Polonius
Probably Irving is right in treating Polonius's death quite lightly at first. Hamlet
is pre-occupied, he hardly understands it; he is foiled in his task Then comes,
with great significance, the after reference to it. After bidding his mother good-
night, he steps back, stops a moment with an after-thought, — the dead Polonius.
And with a now regretful gravity : — ' For this same lord, I do repent.'
Edward R. Russell {Irving as Hamlet, London, 1875, p. 13): Irving has
noticed that Hamlet is not merely simple-minded, frankly susceptible, and naturally
self-contemplative, but has a trick, — not at all uncommon in persons whose most
real life is an inner one, — 0/ fostering and aggraziating his own excitements. This
discovery of Irving is a stroke of high genius, and will identify his Hamlet as long
as the memory of it endures The vivid, flashing, half-foolish, half-inspired
hysterical power of Irving in the passages where it is developed is a triumph
of idiosyncrasy For factitious mystery, Irving substitutes natural suscepti-
bilities.
Upon the entrance of Horatio with Bernardo and Marcellus, it is at once seen
that Irving has chosen the right tone for his intercourse with the courtiers. This is
of immense importance It is rather difliicult to hit the medium between the
beetle-browed ' distance ' of the ordinary leading tragedian and the back-slapping,
rib-poking sort of familiarity of [other actors] ; but Irving, like Edwin Booth, has
accomplished the feat to a nicety, to a glance, to a tone, to a gesture, with incalcu-
lable benefit to the reality and domestic interest of the play.
When Horatio tells him that he thinks he saw his father yesternight, Hamlet doe^
not start. He has enough to think of, and cannot quite keep his mind on chit-chat.
•Saw! who?' he says, almost casually, barely following the tliscourse. Then, with
a perfect and most artistic truth to nature, he hears the story of the apparition. He
has not anticipated it, but the misgivings of his mind and the intensity of his dis-
tress have prepared him for anything He will watch to-night, not announcing
his resolve in a thunderous voice with the practised aplomb of a veteran tragedian,
but in tones full of rapt, nervous excitement.
The extreme and plaintive beseechingness of Irving's address to the Ghost is thf
distinctive novelty of his reading. It has been complained that Irving does nol
ACTORS' INTERPRETATIONS 259
Jook so frightened as a man would who saw a ghost ; but this is in reality a fine
and true touch of character. To Hamlet this is not a ghost, but the Ghost.
[Page 30.] Does Irving discard the tablets? By no means. But he makes the
use of them lifelike and probable. His snatching them from his pocket, and writing
on them, is the climax of an outburst hardly distinguishable from hysteria. Hamlet
is evidently one of those who, though capable of any amount of acting and reticence
in company, finds in solitude a license and a cue for excitement, and who, when
alone and under the influence of strong feelings, will abandon themselves to their
fancies.
At the words, ' With arms encumbered thus,' it is usual for Hamlets to fold their
arms and look mysterious, Ir\'ing takes the arm of one of his companions, as he
supposes they may take each other's hereafter, and assumes a confidential air, as if
the two were comparing their past recollections.
[Page 35.] A silly practice has prevailed amongst Hamlets of uttering the words,
•The play's the thing Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king,' as if the idea
had just struck them. Irving makes them partly the culmination of a line of
thought, and partly the natural accompaniment of a most striking action. With an
exuberance exactly corresponding in another groove of feeling with the quasi-hysteri-
cal use of his tablets in the First Act, he rushes to a pillar, and, placing his note-
book against it, begins, as the Act-drop descends, to scribble hints for the speech he
means to write.
In Hamlet's inter\'iew with Ophelia in the Third Act, we learn that there are cir-
cumstances which may bring out, even when he is not alone, the strange ecstasy
which it is Hamlet's nature, as Irving reads it, to expatiate. When he begins to
talk with Ophelia, he is on his guard. An instmct warns him to shun the distrac-
tions and wooings of the passion. Yet the fair Ophelia is before him, and the love
of forty thousand brothers is in his heart. He has no shield, no disguise, but his
• antic disposition ;' and he puts it on. The rule with modem Hamlets is to pretend
to be mad later, when they have perceived the ' lawful espials.' This is not Irving's
idea. It is in the coolness of the opening conversation that he affects the forgetful-
ness, the eccentricity, the insensibility of derangement The excitement,
however, as it mounts is evidently too much for him Then suddenly he sees
Polonius and the King, and the climax comes. But not in the shape of pretended
madness. Rather does his lunacy become all but real and pronounced. "....' Let
the doors be shut on him,' &c. — these are the last words he can say with any degree
of sanity. His first sudden 'farewell' is a frantic ebullition of all-encompassing, al«-
racking pain. What was till now histrionic, passes, as the histrionic phase of highly-
strung natures easily does, into real frenzy. His words come faster and wilder.
His eyes flash with a more sinister lightning as he gives Ophelia the plague of in-
evitable calumny for her dowry. Again, * farewell ;' and now he rushes forth, but
only to return laden, as it were, with a new armful of hastily-gathered missiles of
contumely. He is getting now to the very leavings of his mind. He has nothing
to hurl at his love but the commonplaces of men against women A flash of
frenzy, and he has quitted the scene.
The key [to Irving's conduct during the quiet parts of the court-play] is in the
remark made to Horatio before it begins: ' I must be idle.' Irving is idle. Before
the spectators enter, his demeanor is not subtle and contriving, but anxious, and his
looks are haggard. He has set more than his life upon the cast. But when the
King and Queen and courtiers enter, he becomes gay and insouciant. Ophelia's
20O APPENDIX
fan, with which he plays, is of peacock's feathers, and as he lies at her feet, patting
his breast with it, at the words, ' Your majesty, and we that have free souls,' the
feathers themselves are not lighter than his spirits seem. In his double-meaning
replies to the King there is none of that malignant significance with which it is the
custom for Hamlets to discount the coming victory. His ' no offence i' the world '
is said drily, and that is all. His watching of the King is not conspicuous. He
does not crawl prematurely towards him or seize his robe. Even up to the crisis,
though his excitement rises, his spirits bear him almost sportively through. But
when once the, King and Queen start from their chairs, Hamlet springs from the
ground, darts with a shrill scream to the seats from which they vanished like ghosts,
flings himself, — a happy thought, — into the chair which the King had vacated, his
body swaying the while from side to side in irrepressible excitement, and recites
there, — though the roar of applause into which the audience is surprised renders it
barely audible, — the well-known stanza: ' Why, let the stricken deer go limp' \sic\.
A still greater, because wild and bizarre, effect follows as Hamlet leaves the chair,
and in a sort of jaunty nonsense rhythm chants the seldom-used lines :
' For thou dost know, O Damon dear.
This realm dismantled was
Of Jove himself, and now reigns here
A very, very — peacock.'
At the last word, said suddenly after a pause, he looks at Ophelia's fan, which he
has kept till now, and throws it away, as if it had suggested a word and was done
with. There is infinite significance in the apparent inconsequence of this last boyish
burst, and it is very suggestive of the force and truth of Irving's conception, that
the audience receive it with as much enthusiasm as if it were a perfectly logical and
intelligible climax. The doggerel has only the faintest, if any, connection with the
event, but it is evidently introduced by Shakespeare as another example of Hamlet's
constitutional exuberance, and upon this Irving has worked.
[In DoWNEs's Roscius Anglicanus, reprinted in Waldron's Literary Museum, on
p. 29 it is stated that Hamlet was the third play acted at Sir William Davenant's
new theatre in Lincoln's-Inn-Fields after the Restoration, in the spring of 1662, and
Downes adds : ' No succeeding tragedy for several years got more reputation or
(Doney to the company than this.' Ed.]
COSTUME 261
COSTUME
BOADEN {Life of y. P. Kemble, London, 1825, vol. i, p. 104) : We have been
accustomed for so many years to see Hamlet dressed in the Vandyke costume, that
it may be material to state that Kemble pJayed the part in a modem court- dress of
rich black velvet, with a star on the breast, the garter and pendent ribbon of an
order, — mourning sword and buckles, with deep ruffles ; the hair in powder, which,
in the scenes of feigned distraction, flowed dishevelled in front and over the
shoulders.
As to the expression of the face, perhaps the powdered hair, from contrast, had a
superior eSect to the short curled wig at present worn. The eyes seemed to possess
more brilliancy. With regard to costume, correctness in either case is out of the
question, only that the Vandyke habit is preferable, as it removes a positive anachron-
ism and inconsistency. The ghost of Hamlet's father appears in armor ; a dress
certainly suited to a warrior, but to one of other times. Now this was not at all
incompatible with the dress called after Vandyke, in whose time armor was undoubt-
edly worn, as he has shown in a great variety of portraits. But a completely modem
suit upon young Hamlet, with his father in armor, throws the two characters into
different and even remote periods.
Knight: It has been conjectured, and with sufiBcient reason, by Strutt and
other writers on the subject of costume, that the dress of the Danes during the tenth
and eleventh centuries differed little, if anything, in shape from that of the Anglo-
Saxons ; and although from several scattered passages in the works of the Welsh
bards and in the old Danish ballads we gather that black was a favorite color, we
are expressly told by Arnold of Lubeck, that at the time he wrote (circa 1 127) they
had become ' wearers of scarlet, purple, and fine linen ;' and by Wallingford, who
died in 1 214, that 'the Danes were effeminately gay in their dress, combed their
hair once a day, bathed once a week, and often changed their attire.* Of their pride
in their long hair, and of the care they took of it, several anecdotes have been pre-
served A young Danish warrior going to be beheaded begged of an execu-
tioner that his hair might not be touched by a slave, or stained with his blood.*
In a MS register of Hide Abbey, written in the time of Canute, that monarch is
represented in a tunic and mantle, the latter fastened with cords or ribands, and
tassels. He wears shoes and stockings reaching nearly to the knees, with embroi-
dered tops, or it may be chausses or pantaloons, with an embroidered band beneath
the knee ; for the drawing being uncolored leaves the matter in doubt. Wnen
Canute's body was examined at Winchester in 1766, it was adorned with several
gold and silver bands, and a wreath or circlet was round the head. A jewelled ring
■was upon one finger, and in one of his hands a silver j>enny.f Bracelets of massive
gold were worn by all persons of rank, and their most sacred oath before theii con-
version to Christianity was by their ' holy bracelet ;' a sacred ornament of this kind
being kept on the altars of their gods or worn round the arm of the priest. Scarlet
was the color originally worn by the kings, queens, and princes of Denmark. In
• Tomvwinkinga Saga in Bartholinus t Archaeologia, toI. iii.
2b2 APPENDIX
the ballad of Childe Axelvold we find that as soon as the young man discovered
himself to be of royal race, he ' put on the scarlet red,' — the word red being used
[in this and other instances] to distinguish the peculiar sort of scarlets, as in those
times scarlet, like purple, was used to express any gradation of color formed by red
and blue, from indigo to crimson. It thus happens, curiously enough, that the
objections of the Queen and Claudius to the appearance of Hamlet in black are
authorized, not only by the well-known custom of the early Danes, never to mourn
for their nearest and dearest relatives or friends, but also by the fact that although
black was at least their favorite,* if not, indeed, their national color, Hamlet, as a
prince of the blood, should have been attired in the royal scarlet. Of the armour,
of the Danes at the close of the tenth centuiy we have several verbal descriptions.
By the laws of Gula, said to have been established by Hacon the Good, who died
in 963, it is ordered that every possessor of six marks should furnish himself with a
red shield of two boards in thickness, a spear, an axe, or a sword. He who was
worth twelve marks, in addition to the above was ordered to procure a steel cap;
whilst he who had eighteen marks was obliged to have also a coat of mail, or a
tunic of quilted linen or cloth, and all usual military weapons, amongst which the
bipennis, or double-bladed axe, was the most national. The Danish helmet, like
the Saxon, had the nasal, which in Scandinavia is called nef-bi6rg (nose-guard)
and to which the collar of the mail-hood, which covered the chin, was frequently
hooked up, so as to leave little of the face unguarded except the eyes.
E. W. Godwin ( The Architecture and Costume of Shakespere^ s Plays. The
Architect, 31 October, 1874.) [From the reference in the First Scene of the Third
Act to the ' neglected tribute,' the author of this essay infers that the date of the
play should be about the year 1012, when England paid tribute to the Danes; to be
■historically correct, therefore, the architecture and costume of this play should con-
form to that period] : The play itself gives us no references to Elizabethan architec-
'ture, for ' the sepulchre's ponderous and marble jaws ' might apply to any time from
(this back to the age of cromlechs. The stage-directions give us :
1. A platform before the royal castle, Elsinore.
2. Platform further removed.
3. A room of state in Elsinore Castle, with a lobby or arcade to it at a highei
level.
4. A hall in the same.
5. The Queen's closet.
6. The hall in Polonius's house.
With ' the plain ' and ' the churchyard,' architecture need not interfere, unless, in
deed, we give to the first a background among sea and cliff of the ramparts and
towers of Elsinore, and to the last a church of wood quaintly carved, with shingled
roof and turret. There are really only eight scenes wanted for the play in its com-
pleted form, and these may be reduced, for the platform can l.e the same in both
cases if the back cloth, or scene, is changed to one showing a more distant view of
the castle. Nor can I see why the ' room of stale ' should not be the same as ' the
hall,' and why the Second Scene of Act Third should not be continuous of the First.
The Queen's closet in 1012 was simply the l)ed chamber where the chief dignitaries
of the court were received.
♦ Black bordered with red is to ihis day common amongst the Nortliern peasantry
/ COSTUME 263
We have then external views of Ekinore Castle from the platform, and two pUin
and internal views of its hall (or room of state) and its bed-chamber ; besides these
two rooms, a king's house in 1012 would have a kitchen, a larder, a sewery, a cellar,
and a chapel. Into these Shakespeare does not conduct us, so that we have only
to think of them in picturing the external views. Before the year 1000, as most of
us know, there was a prevailing belief that that year was to be the last in this world's
history. Building (for there was more done in this way than heaping together thatch
and mud) had come to be looked on as a vain employment, and except to gain the
common necessaries of life, men's strength fa.led them for lack of hope. When,
however, the awful year had passed, and nothing unusual had occurred, an unwonted
activity succeeded to the former laggard state, and everywhere masons, carpenters,
and other craftsmen were loudly called for. It is improbable that the royal castle
of Elsinore would have remained unchanged from locx) to 1012, and we may there-
fore conclude that what was not stone before was now rebuilt in the strongest
masonry then known in Denmark. Now, among the features of the buildings of
that day which we may note as architectural are :
1. Pyramidal -shaped roofs and plain gable roofs covered with wood, shingle, 01
tile of stone or clay, the overlapping part being shaped triangularly or cmvilinearly,
having the appearance of fish-scales.
2. Tall, thin pilasters, with capitals and bases of rude structure, occurring at the
angles of walls, sometimes covering the entire wall-space, and sometimes united by
arches forming continuous arcades.
3. Enclosing walls or ramparts with crenellations, or, as more commonly called,
battlements.
4- Elaborate carving, especially on the wood-work, — flat intertwining of foliage
and dragons.
5. Large open pinnacles inside as well as outside the hall.
6. Florid iron-work on the doors.
7. Windows had square heads, semicircular or triangular, and if grouped were
divided by shafts with swelling mouldings, from which we derive the name baluster
shaft
8. Broad string courses and angle pilasters, or courses of long and short stones,
were used when the walls were of rubble or flint, as was commonly the case.
9. Loopholes for arrows are distinctly shown in the illuminated MSS of the
period.
10. Doors are of rare occurrence ; they are generally folding, and the common
doorways are usually closed by a curtain looped back on a hook.
11. Curtains across arches in the hall, and dividing the aisles from the centre,
were OLual. These served the purpose of modem partitions, and cut up the large
hall into numerous apartments, for we must remember that almost every one slept
in the hall, — the principal lords in the centre, round about the hearth, and the re-
tainers and others in the aisles, curtained off from the nobility and gentry.
It is fortunate that we possess a manuscript copiously illustrated, and produced
wnthin a few years of 1000 ; it is the MS of Caedmon, preserved in the Bodleian
Library, and published by the Society of Antiquaries. Of course, the drawings are
crude, very crude, but in the hands of a fairly-educated antiquary they can be turned
to immense practical use. In these illuminations we see the walled town and the
crenellated castle, the floriated hinges, the arcaded hall, the shingled roofs, the plat-
forms before the castle, the rich carving of pillar and lintel, the curtains, the seat?
264 APPENDIX
the beds, the harp, the tools of the laborer, and the weapons of the soldier. From
this source and from the tombs of Vikings and Danes that have been hitherto ex-
plored, we find that their instruments of warfare were spears, bows, and arrows for
the common men, — Francisco, for instance, — and for their officers and nobles swords
of large size with cross-hilts often inlaid with gold, daggers, and heavy double axes.
For defence, conical helmets with nasal pieces, shirts or coats of mil sewn on
leather, quilted cloth or linen, and shields were worn by the chiefs. The common
folk were both bare-legged and bare-armed, and in battle wore pieces of hide sewn
on their coarse frieze clothing. The shields were of two forms, one completely
round, and the other what would have been round if two curved segments, equal to
one-half the circumference, had not been cut out of it. These shields were made
of wood, strengthened with an iron boss and sometimes with iron margins, the sur-
face often ornamented with interlaced carved patterns, and painted red as a rule.
One other defence they had was a spiral iron armlet or bracelet, about a foot long,
which they wore upon the arm. The colors of the hose, the tunic, &c., were
originally black, except for members of the blood royal, who wore red. Indeed,
red, white, and black were for a long time their favorite colors, although in 1012,
when Christianity and a degree of civilization had toned down these sea-robbers to
something more inviting, the black was given up, — except among the lower orders,
where, I believe, it is still retained, decorated more or less with red, and in its place
all sorts of gay colors were adopted, as both in England and France. Their long,
wavy hair, of which they were so prodigiously proud, was another Danish fashion;
but it gave way in Canute's time, when already the fashions were governed by
France, and was worn very much as we wear it at the present time. A small tri-
angular banner, fringed, bearing a black raven on a blood-red field, was the war-flag
at this time, and was known and written of as ' The Raven.'
Such, then, are some of the generalities of the architecture and costume of the
Danes in 1012. To go further, we know that the Roman manner of building was
that which France, Germany, Denmark, and England endeavored to follow as well
*s they could. We see it in the MSS of Hamlet's time, and we see it, moreover, in
the buildings which have been spared us. So that about the architecture in this
play of Hamlet there can be no more doubt than about the architecture in King
John.
Of the costume, on the other hand, we have only two sources of information, both
of which are sometimes questionable, — I mean the descriptions in the poems, or
sagas, and the drawings in the MSS. Of implements of warfare, and of metal-work
generally, we meet occasionally with unimpeachable evidence in exhuming the re
mains contained in Danish and English tombs. The conclusion to which we arrive
from these discoveries is, that the spear, shield, with knife and sometimes javelin,
were common to the people generally ; that the large-headed spear belonged to the
minor officers ; and that the sword was so honorable as to be entrusted only to the
very highest nobles, who as landowners served in the cavalry, a form of service
which was absolutely necessary for the use of this long, broad, heavy weapon. The
blades of these swords were from thirty to thirty-seven inches long, and double-
edged ; the guard was curved away from the handle ; the pommel was large, and
these last were inlaid sometimes with copper, silver, or gold, and sometimes
with all three. This conclusion is supported by the laws and by the illuminations
in the MSS. Of the shape and qu.ility of the destructible m.iterial of dress, we
learn from the illuminations the first, and from the sagns, &c., the second. Thui,
COSTUME— WAS THE Q, UEEN AN A CCESSOR Yf 265
royal and ecclesiastical robes were often of silk embroidered with gold, and even
enriched with pearls. Shoes were always worn by the better classes, and were made
to fit the feet, laced up from the toe to the ankle. The stockings reached to just
below the knee, had sometimes bordered and embroidered tops, and were sometimes
strained over the leg and sometimes in folds or wrinkles, the long fillets bound cross-
wise over the leg having become outri in the best society of 1012. A linen shirt
was worn next the skin ; over this came a tunic, very full in the skirt, high up in
the shoulders, and reaching to the knees. It was cut down in the middle of the
neck to give room to put it over the head, and this, with the neck-piece, was not
uncommonly enriched by a border. The waist was girded in by a broad sash-like
belt, usually of the same material as the tunic, and the sleeves were ruffled or
wrinkled up from the wrist nearly to the elbow. Over the tunic was worn (for
battle) the coat-of-mail, and for State occasions the mantle or cloak, fastened by a
fibula on the right shoulder, and not reaching much lower than the tunic. The
female dress had full sleeves ; the skirt, trailing a little on the ground, was girdled
as in the male costume, and over the head and shoulders, in plenitude of fold, was
worn the hood and cape. The very highest class wore golden bracelets or armlets,
and bands of gold encircling their hair. The crowns were merely hoops of gold,
with a few ornaments placed crestwise on them. The Phrj-gian cap and the simple
fillet were the only other apparel for the head in times of peace, and these were by
no means commonly worn. For the ornaments and patterns of the time we have
abundant evidence, but the most common were the spiral, the chevron, the dot, and
the interlaced pattern, which stretches across Denmark to the farthest shores of
Scotland and Ireland.
WAS THF QUEEN AN ACCESSORY BEFORE THE FACT?
ANONYMOUS (1856)
{Hamlet. An Attempt to Ascertain whether the Queen were an Accessory, before
the Fact, in the Murder of her First Husband. London, 1856.) — For the purposes
of discussion the author of this very able essay reserves to the close the direct testi-
mony furnished by Q^ as to the Queen's innocence (see lines 1532, 1533 of the Re-
print in this volume), and discussing the question as it is presented in the received
text, virtually decides it in the negative ; even if he leaves it still a question. For in
this case we are bound to give the Queen the benefit of the doubt. But I think the
conclusion, drawn solely from the received text, to which the writer comes is de-
cisive, and leaves unquestionable the Queen's innocence of the murder of her first
husband.
Eleven facts and passages, 'heads of accusation,' — all that can be alleged against
the Queen as an accomplice of the King in that crime, — are thoroughly examined
in tkis Attempt, and shown to be without positive or cumulative weight. The charge
against his mother which Hamlet dwells upon is her second and 'incestuous' mar-
riage. The Ghost ascribes his death exclusively to Claudius. The King never
trea^ the Queen as a sharer with him in the guilt of that murder. Nor, unlike the
^66 APPENDIX
King, does the Queen betray any consciousness of having acted that part. If shr
was the accomplice of Claudius, then her self-command proves her to be the strong-
est character in the play, while everything else shows her to be the weakest.
' If I had to narrate in prose,' says the author of the Attempt, ' the argument of
the play, so far as it affects the subject of my paper, I should do it in the following
manner:
♦ Before it opens, Claudius and the Queen have been guilty of adultery, and Clau-
dius alone of murder.
• 1 he Queen's uneasiness and anxiety are sufficiently accounted for by her remem-
bi ance that she had sinned most grievously against her former husband during his
lifetime, and was insulting his memory, when dead, by her incestuous mafriage with
his brother.
' Her uneasiness about the changed state of Hamlet proceeds from her belief that
it was occasioned in part by her " o'erhasty marriage," coupled with her recollection
that he had I een the most frequently a witness of her expressed great love for his
deceased father, as he has told us in the words : " Why, she would hang on him As
if increase of appetite had grown By what it fed on." Also, from her reflection
that she had bastardized and injured Hamlet as far as a mother who is subsequently
faithless to her husband can do ; and, moreover, that Claudius was keeping him from
the crown. Also, from her great natural fondness for Hamlet, and the consequent
conflict in her mind in attempting to reconcile her grief at his changed state with
her desire to continue in her incestuous union with Claudius, and her wish that the
latter should retain his crown and kingdom.
' Seeing her own sin of fickleness mirrored in the play-scene, and her consequent
infidelity suggested, she might naturally conclude that, as she recognized that part
of the representation, Claudius, as the cause of his visible alarm, might have recog-
nized his part in the poisoning scene ; which suspicion would be strengthened by
her remembrance of the very sudden death of her late husband.
' Thus, " in great amazement and admiration," as Rosencrantz and Guildenstem
describe her directly after the play-scene, — amazed at the dreadful fear suggested to
her by the play-scene ; for if one part were true, why not the other ? — amazed at the
fear that her husband had been murdered, and that she had linked herself to the
murderer, Hamlet comes and confirms to her this awful suspicion, and leaves in
her mind no doubt of its truth.
' Upon this, for the first time, she revolts from Claudius and sides with Hamlet.
' Upon this, " To her sick soul, as sin's true nature is. Each toy seems prologue to
some great amiss." Claudius, now fearing her discovery, and evidently suspecting
it, treats her with even less confidence than before; plans to murder her son; and,
V hen the poison mixed for Hamlet is swallowed I y her, cares nothing about it, and
hopes yet to live himself: " Oh, yet defend me, friends; I am but hurt !" doubtless
not sorry that she, whom he suspects to be now informed of his crime, is reni.<ve«^
oy death.
' And finally tastes of his own venom ; and " The rest is — silence." '
GERMAN CRITICISMS
LESSING
{Hamburgische Dramaiurgie, Dtn t^ten Junius, 1767, Leipsic, 1841.) — [Voi-
t.ire's Semiramis having been performed at Schroeder's theatre, Lessing, who
was the dramatic critic to the theatre, and whose masterly criticisms created a
revolution in taste throughout Germany, and elevated the Hamburg stage to the
highest position for a while in dramatic culture, has thereupon the following re-
marks :]
The app>earance of a ghost [of Ninus\ in a French tragedy is so bold a novelty,
and the poet, who ventures it, defends it upon such peculiar grounds, that it is worth
while to pause over them for a moment.
' People cry out on all sides,' says M. Voltaire, ' that ghosts are no longer believeu
in, and that the apparition of the dead in a drama must be regarded as childish
by an enlightened nation. Why so ?' he replies. ' All antiquity believed in this
miracle, and should it be forbidden to follow antiquity ? Our religion has conse-
crated such extraordinary visitations of Providence, and must it be ridiculous to
repeat them ?'
These appeals, it seems to me, are moie rhetorical than rational. Above all
things, I could wish that religion had been left out of view. In matters of taste
and criticism, arguments drawn from religion serve very well to silence one's oppo-
nents, but they are not equally effective in convincing them. Religion as religion
can here decide nothing ; only as a sort of tradition from antiquity has its testimony
any weight, and it has no more and no less weight than other ancient testimonies
And therefore it is only with antiquity that we have here to do.
Very well ; all antiquity believed in ghosts. Then the dramatic poets of antiquity
were right in availing themselves of this belief; when in their works we find appa-
ritions introduced, it is unreasonable to judge them by our better views. But has
the modem dramatic poet, who shares in these our better /lews, the same right ?
Certainly not. How if he lays his history back in those superstitious times ? Then,
too, not. For the dramatic poet is not an historian. He represents not what -/as
formerly believed to have happened, but he lets what happened happen again before
our eyes, and lets it happen again, not for the sake of mere historical truth, but with
■rother and higher view ; historical truth is not his aim, but only the means to
267
2 68 APPENDIX
his end ; he sets an illusion before us, and through the illusion moves us. If it is
true, then, that we now no longer believe in ghosts, if this unbelief must necessarily
prevent the illusion, if without the illusion our sympathy cannot be awakened, then
the dramatic poet defeats himself in dressing up for us such incredible tales ; all the
art he expends upon them is lost.
Consequently ? Consequently, is it not permitted to bring ghosts and apparitions
on the stage ? Consequently, is this source of the terrible and the pathetic dried up
for us ? No, it were too great a loss for poetry ; and has it not in its favor examples
which show how genius defies all our philosophy, and knows how to make things,
which cold reason ridicules, fearful to the imagination ? Hence the consequence
must be otherwise, and the supposition is simply false. Do we no longer Lelieve in
ghosts ? WTio says so ? Or rather what does this mean ? Does if mean so much
as this — namely, that we have reached such a point of enlightenment that we can
demonstrate that such things are impossible; that certain indisputable truths, in
direct opposition to the belief in ghosts, having become so universally known, so
ever-present to the commonest man, that even to him whatever contradicts those
truths must necessarily appear ridiculous and absurd? This cannot be meant. That
we now do not believe in ghosts means only so much as this, that upon this question,
upon which almost as much may be said for as against — a question which is not and
cannot be decided, and upon which the present prevailing mode of thinking has
given the preponderance to the arguments for the negative — some few really disbe-
lieve in ghosts, and the many would fain disbelieve in them, and the latter it is
whose voices are heard and who set the fashion. They are silent and indifferent,
and think now in this way, now in that, laugh at ghosts by day, and shudder at
ghost-stories at night.
The dramatic poet is therefore not prevented by our unbelief in ghosts, thus
understood, from making use of them. The seeds of faith in them are in us
all, and most frequently in those for whom the poet writes. It is the part of his art
to make these seeds germinate. If he is able to do this, we may in every-day life
believe what we will ; in the theatre we must believe what he wills.
Such a poet is Shakespeare, and Shakespeare almost singly and alone. Before
his ghost in Hamlet the hair stands on end, whether it cover a believing or an unbe-
lieving brain. M. Voltaire is not wise in referring to this ghost ; it only makes
him and his ghost of Ninus laughable.
Shakespeare's ghost comes really from the other world. It comes in the solemn,
shuddering stillness of night, with the full accompaniment of all the gloomy, mys
terious accidents, with which, and at the very hour when, we were taught by our
nurses W- think of and expect ghosts. But Voltaire's ghost is not even so much as
a bugaboo to frighten babes withal : it is nothing but an actor disguised, who has
nothing, says nothing, does nothing that can make it probable that he is what he
gives himself out to be; all the circumstances under which he appears disturb
the illusion, and betray the work of a cold poet who is trying to delude and
frighten us, but does not know how. Just consider this one thing: in broad
day, in the midst of the assembled dignities of the realm, announced by a clap of
thunder, Voltaire's ghost comes forth from his grave. Where has Voltaire ever
heard that ghosts are so bold ? What old woman could not have told him that
ghosts shun the sunlight, and will not visit large companies? Voltaire must
certainly have known that ; but he was too timid, too fastidious to make use of
these vulvar circumstances; he would show us a ghost, but it must be a ghoKt
LESSING—LICHTENBERG 269
oi a genteel kind, and by this gentility he ruined all. The ghost that liehaves con-
trary to the customs and good manners among ghosts seems to me to be no true
ghost ; and what does not help the illusion destroys the illusion.
If Voltaire had for a moment thought wherein a pantomime consists, he would
have felt the awkwardness of making a ghost appear before the eyes of a multitude
of persons. At the first sight of the ghost, all to whom it appears have to express fear
and horror ; they must express these emotions in different ways, if the spectacle is not
to have the frosty symmetry of a ballet. Suppose a number of stupid mutes should
be properly arranged, it is evident that the diversity of expression must distract the
attention from the chief characters. If these are to make the right impression, we
must see them not only alone, but we should see nothing else. In Shakespeare,
Hamlet is the only person to whom the Ghost speaks ; in the scene with Hamlet's
mother, his mother neither hears nor sees the Ghost. Our whole attention is fixed
upon Hamlet, and the more signs we observe in him of a mind excited by horror, so
much the more ready are we to hold the apparition that has this effect upon him for
what it really is. The Ghost afiiects us more through Hamlet than by itself. The
impression which it makes upon him is communicated to us, and the effect is tot«
instantaneous and too powerful to permit us to doubt the extraordinary cause which
produces it. How little Voltaire understands this art ! His ghost frightens many,
but not much. Semiramis cries, ' Heavens ! I die !' and the rest make no more
ado about the apparition than one would if a friend, supposed to be far away,
should suddeidy appear before us.
G. C. LICHTENBERG {1775)
{Brie/e aus England, London, October, 1775. Works, vol. iii, p. 214, ed.
1867.) — [In this letter Lichtenberg describes to a friend Garrick's performance of
Hamlet.]
Hamlet appears in black. Horatio and Marcellus are with him, in uniform ; they
are expecting the Ghost. Hamlet's arms are folded, and his hat overshadows his
eyes : the theatre is darkened, and the whole audience of some thousands is as still
and all faces are as immovable as if they were painted on the walls ; one might hear a
pin drop in the remotest part of the theatre. Suddenly, as Hamlet retires somewhat
farther from the front to the left, turning his back upon the audience, Horatio starts,
exclaiming, ' Look, my lord, it comes !' pointing to the right, where, without the specta-
tors being aware of its coming, the Ghost is seen standing motionless. At these words
Garrick turns suddenly about, at the same instant starting with trembling knees two
or three steps backward ; his hat falls off; his arms, especially the left, are extended
straight out, the left hand as high as his head, the right arm is more bent, and the
hand lower, the fingers are spread far apart ; and the mouth open ; thus he stands,
one foot far advanced before the other, in a graceful attitude, as if petrified, sup-
ported by his friends, who, from having seen the apparition before, are less unpre-
pared for it, and who fear that he will fall to the ground ; so expressive of horror is
his mien that a shudder seized me again and again even before he began to speak ;
the almost fearful stillness of the audience which preceded this scene, and made one
feel that he was hardly sure of himself, contributed, I suppose, not a little to the
effect. At last Hamlet exclaims, not at the beginning, but at the end of an expira-
tion, and with an agitated voice : ' Angels and ministers of grace, defend us I' —
words which complete all that this scene could want to render it one of the greatest
2/0 APPENDIX
and most terrible. His eyes are fixed upon the Ghost even while he speaks with
nis friends, from whom he struggles to free himself. But at last, as they will not
let him go, he turns his face to them, tears himself violently from them, and with
a quickness which makes one shudder draws his sword upon them : ♦ I'll make a
ghost of him that lets me,' he exclaims. That is enough for them. He then ex-
tends his sword towards the Ghost : ' Go on, I'll follow thee.' The Ghost leads the
way. Hamlet, with the sword still held before him, stands motionless in order to
gain a wider interval. At last, when the Ghost is no longer visible to the spectators,
he begins slowly to follow it, pausing, and then advancing, with the sword still ex-
tended, his eyes fixed upon the Ghost, his hair all disordered, and still breathless,
until he disappears behind the scenes. In the soliloquy, • O that this too too solid
flesh,' &c., the tears of most righteous sorrow for a virtuous father, for whom a light-
minded mother not only wears no mourning, but feels no grief, — of all tears the
hardest, perhaps, to be kept back, as they are the sole solace of a true man in
such a conflict of duties, — these tears completely overpower Garrick. Of the
words, • So excellent a king,' the last is uttered inaudibly ; it is caught only from
the movement of the lips, which close upon the word firmly and with a quiver, ii
order to suppress an expression of grief which might seem unmanly. Tears of this
kind, revealing the whole weight of grief and the manly soul suff"ering beneath it,
fell without cessation through the soliloquy. At the close, righteous indignation
mingled with the sorrow, and once as his arm fell forcibly, as if giving a blow, in
order to emphasize a word expressive of his indignation, this word, unexpectedly
to the hearers, is choked by tears and is uttered only after some moments, with the
tears at the same time flowing.
In the celebrated soliloquy, ' To be or not to be,' Hamlet, having already begun
to assume the madman, appears with hair all in disorder, locks of it hanging down
over one shoulder, one of his black stockings has fallen down, allowing the white
understocking to be visible, and a loop of his red garter hangs down midway of the
calf of his leg. Thus he slowly comes to the front, wrapt in thought, his chin rest-
ing on his right hand, and the elbow of the right arm in the left hand : his looks
are bent, with great dignity, sideways to the ground. Taking his right hand from
his chin, but holding the arm still supported by his left hand, he utters the words,
• To be or not to be,' &c., softly, but, on account of the profound stillness, audible all
over the house.
Before the soliloquy begins which follows the Ghost's disclosure to Hamlet, Gar-
rick stands as if he were Hamlet himself, stupefied almost to utter ruin, and when
at last the stupor gradually ceases, into which yawning graves, horror without com-
pare, and the cry of a father's blood, have cast the noble soul, and when, his pained,
stupefied sensibilities awakening to thought and speech, Hamlet collects himself for
secret resolves, Shakespeare has taken care that every thought and word shall bear
witness to the depth and the tumult from which they burst forth, and Garrick also
fakes care that every gesture shall tell, even to a deaf spectator, of the earnestness
and weight of the accompanying words. One only line excepted, which, according
to my feeling as it was then spoken by Garrick, could not have satisfied either
the dumb or the blind. He uttered the physiognomical remark, which he also noted
down in his tablets, ' That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain,' with a look
and tone of petty mimickry as if he would represent the man who always smiled,
and smiled, and yet was a villain. Upon the second representation, however, he
pronounced these words entirely in accordance with my idea of them — namely, witk
LICHTENBERG 27 1
the turn of a well- considered note for immediate use. The smile of the villain, to
which Hamlet alludes, was in his case too serious on the one siae and too horrible
on the other to permit him to relieve himself in a soliloquy with a mimicking mock-
ery ; the lips which had so smiled must be taught seriousness by death at Hamlet's
hands, and by death only, and the sooner the better.
[P. 235.] I think I have told you that Garrick acts the part of Hamlet dressed in
modem French fashion. It certainly appears odd. I have often heard him blamed
for it, never, however, between the acts, nor upon the way home from the playhouse,
nor at supper afterwards, but always after the first impression was worn off, and when
the brain was cool again, in calm conversation, in which, as you know, the erudite is
given and received for the true, and what is strikingly said passes for evidence ol
Muteness. I must confess I have never been disposed to give into this fault-
finding. You may judge whether it was very hard to withhold one's assent to it.
I knew that Garrick is a very sharp-witted man, who keeps the exactest register
of the taste of his countrymen, doing nothing on the stage without reason, and
having a house full of antique properties — a man, moreover, with whom daily ex-
perience results not in an excessive indulgence of mere talk, but in silently adapt-
ing to the proper places the harmonious products of a healthy brain. And should
not such a man be capable of perceiving what every London macaroni fapcies he
knows how to seize by the handle ? — he who stood thirty years ago at a point to
which most of these carping critics have now barely begged their way. Instead,
therefore, of agreeing with them, I began to query what it was that moved him to
dress as he does. I thought long about it simply to satisfy myself. At the second
representation of Hamlet I fancied I caught Garrick's feeling on this point, just at the
moment when he drew his sword against Horatio. According to my system, not only
is he excused, but he would have lost in my opinion had he been otherwise dressed.
I grant every one his liberty, damus petimusque. I know very well that in such
things one is too often led at last, by over-refining, into the same error into which
another falls by a more convenient overhaste. But let every one think as he pleases,
I must needs give you my reasons, which, although they may not be Garrick's, may
yet lead intelligent actors, here and there, to something better.
It occurs to me that antique costumes on the stage are to us, if we are not too
learned, a sort of masquerade habit, which indeed, if it is handsome, gives us plea-
sure, but a pleasure so small that it can hardly add to the sum of all else that goes
to increase the effect of the piece. It is to me like German books printed in Roman
characters : I regard them always as a sort of translation. The moment which I
employ in translating these characters into my old Darmstadt ^ JJ C is unfavorable
to the impression. An epigram would lose, to my mind, all the force of the first
effect, if, for example, I had to spell it out in a book upside down. Of the subtle
threads upon which our pleasures hang here below, it is a sin to sever one without
necessity. I should think then, when our modern dress in a play does not offend
the sensitive dignity of our scholastic learning, we ought by all means to retain it.
Our French dress-coats have long since attained to the dignity of a skin, and their
folds have the significance of personal traits and expressions, and ail the wrestling
and bending and fighting and falling in a strange costume we may understand, but
we do not feel. The falling off of a hat in a combat I feel completely, but the same
accident to a helmet I feel far less, — it might happen from the awkwardness of the
actor, and look ridiculous. I do not know how firmly a helmet ought to set on the
head. When Garrick in the above-mentioned scene partly turned nis back to the
2 72 APPENDIX
spectators, and I saw m his attitude the weil-Known diagonal fold from the shouldei
to the opposite hip, I for one was ready twice over to give up a sight of his counte-
nance. In the inky cloak of which Hamlet speaks, I should not have seen what
I then saw. An actor with a good physique (and such all actors should have who
undertake this tragedy) always loses in a dress too far removed from that which to
every one in life, earlier or later, is not the least of our wants and the sweetest sat-
isfaction of youthful vanity, and in which the eye knows how to give the too much
and too little to things not the breadth of a straw. Understand me, I am not say-
ing that Caesar and the Henries and Richards of England should appear on the stage
in the uniform of the guard, with epaulettes and gorgets. To feel and resent these
and similar departures from a universal custom, every one has got sufficient know-
ledge and antiquarian pride, got at school and from engravings, ccins and stove-
plates. I only mean that when the antiquarian still slumbers in the heads of the
public in regard to a cerliiLr. article, the actor ought not to be the first to awaken
him. The little episodical pleasure, if 1 may so speak, which the poor pomp of a
masquerade habit gives me does not atone for the injury which the piece suffers on
the other side. The spectators all feel the injury, only they do not know the cause
of it. But herein is the taste of a gifted actor, who knows the strength and the
weakne§s of the eyes before which he appears. London is in the condition which
I suppose, in relation to the Danish Hamlet, and is it necessary that Garrick should
make them wiser at the cost of both parties ? On the one hand, Garrick denied
himself a little bit of reputation for learning, while on the other hearts by the thou-
sand became his.
GOETHE (1795)
[Wilhelm Meister,'Bodk-v.) — [Carlyle's Trans.; slightly varied. Vol. i, p. 26».
Boston, 1851.]
I sought for every indication of what the character of Hamlet was before the
death of his father; I took note of all that this interesting youth had been, inde-
pendently of that sad event, independently of the subsequent terrible occurrences,
and I imagined what he might have been without them.
Tender and nobly descended, this royal flower grew up under the direct influences
of majesty; the idea of the right and of princely dignity, the feeling for the good
and the graceful, with the consciousness of his high birth, were unfolded in him
together. He was a prince, a born prince. Pleasing in figure, polished by nature,
courteous from the heart, he was to be the model of youth and the delight of the
world.
Without any supreme passion, his love for Ophelia was a presentiment of sweet
needs. His zeal for knightly exercises was not entirely his own, not altogethei
natural to him; it had rather to be quickened and inflamed by praise bestowed
upon another. Pure in sentiment, he knew the honorable-minded, and could prize
the repose which an upright spirit enjoys, resting on the frank bosom of a friend.
To a certain degree he had learned to discern and value the good and the beautiful
in arts and sciences; the vulgar was offensive to him ; and if hatred could take root
in his tender soul, it was only so far as to make him despise the false and fickle
courtiers, and scornfully to play with them. He was calm in his temper, simple in
his behaviour, neither content in idleness, nor yet too eager for employment. An
academic routine he seemed to continue even at court. He possessed more mirth
GOETHE 273
et numor than of heart ; he was a good companion, compliant, modest, discreet, and
could forget and forgive an injury ; yet never able to unite himself with one who
overstept the limits of the right, the good, and the becoming.
[Page 294.] Figure to yourselves this youth, this son of princes, conceive him
vividly, bring his condition before your eyes, and then observe him when he learns
that his father's spirit walks ; stand by him in the terrible night when the venerable
Ghost itself appears before him. A horrid shudder seizes him ; he speaks to the
mysterious form ; he sees it beckon him ; he follows it and hearkens. The fearful
accusation of his uncle rings in his ears ; the summons to revenge and the piercing
reiterated prayer : ' Remember me !'
And when the Ghost has vanished, whom is it we see standing before us ? A
young hero panting for vengeance ? A bom prince, feeling himself favored in being
summoned to punish the usurper of his crown ? No ! Amazement and sorrow over-
whelm the solitary young man ; he becomes bitter against smiling villains, swears
never to forget the departed, and concludes with the significant ejaculation : ' The
time is out of joint : O cursed spite. That ever I was bom to set it right !'
In these words, I imagine, is the key to Hamlet's whole procedure, and to me it
is clear that Shakespeare sought to depict a great deed laid upon a soul unequal to
the performance of it. In this view I find the piece composed throughout. Here
is an oak tree planted in a costly vase, which should have received into its bosom
only lovely flowers ; the roots spread out, the vase is shivered to pieces.
A beautiful, pure, noble, and most moral nature, without the strength of nerve
which makes the hero, sinks beneath a burden which it can neither bear nor throw
off'; every duty is holy to him, — this too hard. The impossible is required of him, —
not the impossible in itself, but the impossible to him. How he winds, turns, ago-
nizes, advances, and recoils, ever reminded, ever reminding himself, and at last
almost loses his purpose from his thoughts, without ever again recovering his peace
of mind.
[Page 296.] Of Ophelia there cannot much be said, for a few master-strokes com-
plete her character. Her whole being floats in sweet, ripe passion. Her inclination
to the prince, to whose hand she may aspire, flows so spontaneously, the good heart
obeys its impulses so unresistingly, that both father and brother are in fear, — both warn
her directly and harshly. Decorum, like the thin lawn upon her bosom, cannot hide
the movement of her heart : it is rather the betrayer of this light movement. Her
fancy is touched, her still modesty breathes an amiable longing, and should tha
accommodating goddess Opportunity shake the tree, the fruit would at once fall.
And then, when she sees herself forsaken, cast off", and despised, when in the soul
of her crazed lover the highest has changed to the lowest, and instead of the sweet
cup of love, he off^ers her the bitter cup of woe, her heart breaks, the whole structure
of her being is loosened from its joinings, her father's death breaks fiercely in, and
the beautiful edifice falls into a ruin.
[Page 304.] It pleases, it flatters us greatly to see a hero who acts of himself, who
loves and hates as his heart prompts, undertaking and executing, thrusting aside all
hindrances, and accomplishing a great purpose. Historians and poets would fain
persuade us that so proud a lot may fall to man. In Hamlet we are taught other-
wise : the hero has no plan, but the piece is full of plan. Here is no villain upon
whom vengeance is inflicted according to a certain scheme, rigidly and in a peculiar
manner carried out. No, a horrid deed occurs ; it sweeps on in its consequences,
<lragging the guiltless along with it ; the perpetrator appears as if he would avoid
Vol. II.— 18
2 74 APPENDIX
the abyss to which he is destined, and he plunges in, just then when he thinks
happily to fulfil his career. For it is the property of a deed of horror that the evil
spreads itself out over the innocent, as it is of a good action to extend its benefits to
the undeserving, while frequently the author of one or of the other is neither pun-
ished nor rewarded. Here in this play of ours, how strange ! Purgatory sends
its spirit and demands revenge ; but in vain ! All circumstances combine and hurry
to revenge ; in vain ! Neither earthly nor infernal thing may bring about what is
reserved for Fate alone. The hour of judgement comes. The bad falls with the
good. One race is mowed away, and another springs up.
[Page 305.] Should not the poet have furnished Ophelia, the insane maiden,
with another sort of songs ? Could not one select out of melancholy ballads? What
have double meanings and lascivious insipidities to do in the mouth of this noble
maiden ? In these singularities, in this apparent impropriety, there lies a deep sense.
Do we not know from the very first what the mind of the good child was busy with ?
Silently she lived within herself, scarcely concealing, however, her longing, her
wishes. Secretly the tones of desire were ringing in her soul, and how often may
she have endeavored, like an unwise nurse, to sing her senses to sleep with songs
which only kept them more wide awake ? At last, when all command of herself is
taken from her, when her heart hovers upon her tongue, her tongue turns traitress,
and in the innocence of insanity she solaces herself, before king and queen, with the
echo of beloved, loose songs.
[Page 353.] In the composition of this play, after the most exact investigation
and the most mature reflection, I distinguish two classes of objects. The first are the
grand internal relations of the persons and events, the powerful effects which arise
from the characters and proceedings of the main figures ; these, I hold, are severally
excellent, and the order in which they are presented cannot be improved. Through
no kind of treatment can they be destroyed or essentially changed in form. These
are the things which stamp themselves deep in the soul, which every one desires to
see, which no one ventures to meddle with, and which, I hear, have been almost all
retained upon the German stage. But our countrymen have erred, in my opinion,
with regard to the second class of objects, which are observable in this piece; I
allude to the external relations of the persons, whereby they are taken from one
place to another, or connected together in one way or another, by certain accidental
incidents ; they have been regarded as quite unimportant, have been mentioned only
in passing, or left out altogether. It is true these threads are slender and loose, yet
they run through the whole piece, and hold together what otherwise would fall apart
and does actually fall apart when you cut them away, and think you have done
enough in leaving the ends hanging.
Among these external relations I include the disturbances in Norway, the war
with young Fortinbras, the embassy to his old uncle, the settling of that feud, th^
march of young Fortinbras to Poland and his coming back at the end ; of the sam»:
sort are Horatio's return from Wittenberg, Hamlet's wish to go thither, the journey
of Laertes to France, his return, the despatch of Hamlet into England, his capture
by pirates, the death of the two courtiers by the letter which they carried. All
these circumstances and events would be very fit for expanding a novel, but they
injure excecdmgly the unity of the piece, especially as the hero has no plan, and are
extremely faulty. These errors are like tem])orary props of an edifice; they must
not be n-nioved till we have built a firm wall in thei'' stead.
[Page 357. To the suggestion thai Rosencrantz and (^uildenstern might be com-
GOETHE— GARVE 275
pressed into one, Goethe replies :] What these two persons are and do, it is impussible
to represent by one. In such small matters we discover Shakespeare's greatness.
This lightly stepping approach, this smirking and bowing, this assenting, wheed-
ling, flattering, this whisking agility, this wagging of the tail, this allness and empti
ness, this legal knavery, this ineptitude and insipidity, — how can they be expressed
by a single man ? There ought to be a dozen of these people, if they could be had ;
for it is only in society that they are anything: they are society itself; and Shake-
speare showed no little wisdom and discernment in bringing in a pair of them.
Besides, they are needed as a couple that may be contrasted with the single, noble,
excellent Horatio.
[Page 361.] Shakespeare introduced the travelling players with a double pur-
pose. The player who recites the death of Priam with such feeling, in the first
place, makes a deep impression on the prince himself; he sharpens the conscience
of the wavering youth ; and accordingly the scene becomes a prelude to that other,
where, in the second place, the little play produces such effect upon the king.
Hamlet sees himself reproved and put to shame by the player, who feels so deep a
sympathy in foreign and fictitious woes ; and the thought of making an experiment
upon the conscience of his stepfather is in consequence suggested to him. What a
royal monologue is that which ends the second act : ' O what a rogue and peasant
slave am I !' &c.
[Page 364.] The repose and security of this old gentleman [Polonius], his empti-
ness and his significance, his exterior agreeableness and his essential tastelessness,
his freedom and his sycophancy, his sincere roguery and pretended truth, should be
represented in due elegance and proportions. This genuine, gray-haired, enduring,
time-serving half knave should be shown in the most courtly style, which will be
greatly helped by our author's somewhat coarse and rough strokes. He should
speak like a book when prepared beforehand, and like a fool when in good humor, —
insipid in order to chime in with every one, and always so conceited as not to observe
when people are laughing at him.
[Page 365.] Although it is not especially expressed, but by comparison of passages
I think it incontestable that Hamlet, as a Dane, as a Northman, is fair-haired and
blue-eyed. The fencing tires him ; the sweat is running from his brow ; and tht.
Queen remarks : ' He's fat and scant of breath.' Can you conceive him to be other-
wise than plump and fair-haired ? Brown-complexioned people, in their youth, are
seldom plump. And does not his wavering melancholy, his soft lamenting, his
irresolute activity, accord with such a figure ? From a dark-haired young man one
would look for more decision and impetuosity.
[Page 367.] Hamlet is endowed more properly with sentiment than with a cha-
racter; it is events alone that push him on ; and accordingly the piece has some-
what the amplification of a novel. But as it is Fate that draws the plan, as the
piece proceeds from a deed of terror, and the hero is steadily driven on to a deed
of terror, the work is tragic in the highest sense, and admits of no other than a
tragic end.
CHRISTIAN GARVE (1796)
\ Ueber die RolUn der WahnwUzigen in Skakfspeares Srhauspielen, &c., in Versucke,
tc. Breslau, 1796, vol. ii, p. 433.) — In this thoughtful essay the author discusses
the reason why Shakespeare is so fond of introducing in his dramas characters who
2'] 6 APPENDIX
are either mad or touched in their wits. This he finds arises from two causes ; first :
Shakespeare liked to deal, like Michael Angelo, in grand effects that verge on the
monstrous ; the passions he depicts are always in extreme : Lear's rage, Othello's
jealousy, Macbeth's ambition, Hamlet's thirst for revenge, &c. ; thus the vay is pre-
pared for a very gradual, almost imperceptible, lapse from sanity to insanity, and
expressions that would be deemed exaggerated and unnatural become eminently
befitting when uttered under such conditions. Secondly : Shakespeare gained, ip
depicting madmen and fools, this great advantage, that he could put into theii
mouths his own philosophy, clad in an elevated and poetic garb. A man of sound
understanding keeps back much of what he thinks, and utters no more than will
serve the occasion, moderating his fancy and eschewing poetic flights. The insane
man, on the contrary, loses himself in his ideas ; he is always as though he were
alone and talking with himself. His fancy is always on the alert, and he speaks in
pictures. His speeches are a series of riddles, from which we can decipher more
of the circumstances of his life than the mere words alone would give. Hence it
is that when we discern the signs of truth or observation in such a character, it
makes a deeper impression. The wise remarks of a fool are like lightning in the
collied night. Thus it is that Shakespeare, the greatest philosophical poet that ever
lived, and in whose philosophy is found the greatest originality, delights in portray-
ing characters that hover betwixt sanity and insanity.
Too much use, however, must not be made, in a single play, of this effect, produced
by insanity. Two insane characters, like Hamlet and Ophelia, would be inadmis-
sible where the circle of dramatis personas is so small. Now we know that Ophelia
was certainly insane ; Hamlet therefore was not. Moreover, when insanity is intro-
duced in a tragedy, there must always be given a sufficient cause therefor, either in
the past or the present. In Hamlet's case no sufficient cause is given.
There can be no question that the source from which Shakespeare drew his plot
represented Hamlet as feigning insanity; and there can be no doubt that Hamlet
feigns insanity in the present play. At the same time it is equally undoubted that
he speaks and conducts himself on several occasions as he alone would, whose mind
was already more or less shattered : for instance, in the first monologue, where he
dwells on suicide; again, in his behavior to Ophelia, in III, i, &c.
Garve asserts that a man really insane cannot feign insanity ; to assume insanity
as a mask demands complete presence of mind and a high degree of mastery ovei
one's self. ' When, therefore, sanity and insanity are mingled in Hamlet's case, 1
cannot avoid the conclusion that there is a departure from nature and truth.'
HERDER (i8oo)
(Literattir unci Kunst, 12.*) — After learning the cause of his father's death, Why
does not Hamlet instantly go and murder the murderer? He is not wanting in will,
and certainly not in strength, as his thrust at Polonius, his fight with Laertes, and
hU soliloquies show. But his killing the king would have served neither the poel
nor his tragedy, which is to lead us into the very soul of Hamlet; for from the
moral nature and the opinions of a man springs his character.
Hamlet is as tender as he is reflective : from Wittenberg he comes home a scholar.
* For this extract from Hekdrk I am indebted to Hackh, page xxlv of the P'-'rface to his transtei
boa of Hamlet Ka
HERDER 277
Tke death of his father, the marriage of his mother, have sickened him with the
world, with man and woman ; then comes the apparition of his father, and lifts the
gates of his soul, as it were, quite off their hinges ; so that the young metaphysician
now hovers between two worlds. Do we not know, from many instances, how some
strange, extraordinary incident, either happy or unhappy, bereaves sensitive souls of
calm self-possession, so that they recover it again late or never ? Hamlet now looks,
as from another world, at everything in this, even at his Ophelia. The future,
and indeed the whole spectacle of humanity, hangs confused and mournful before
him. Hence is it that, besides being given to study, he now feels himself only a
guest in his orphaned paternal home. What an influence the academic enthusiasm
for metaphysics has upon young men of Hamlet's character is well known. The
Queen thinks he has become melancholy in Wittenberg, and entreats him not to
return thither. In this mood he belongs now most assuredly more to the speculative
than the active portion of mankind, — happy idea which the poet takes from our
Wittenberg, from the German fondness for metaphysics ! To it we owe the meta-
physical strain running through the whole piece, and also the celebrated soliloquy,
' To be or not to be.' From France, Hamlet's friend, Laertes, brings a livelier
character. In this metaphysical mood even the apparition of his father becomes,
as Hamlet reflects, a matter of suspicion : ' The spirit that I have seen may be a
devil.' The testing piece is played ; Hamlet, with due caution, calls an observing
fnend to his assistance. It was not base cowardice, then, which delayed his re-
venge, but, as Hamlet himself often says, a metaphysical and conscientious scruple.
This the thoughtful Orestes [in the Introd. to this Essay, Herder styles Hamlet,
Shakespeare's Orestes] resolves to dispose of before the deed, that it may not tor-
ment him after it. The plot succeeds ; the black conscience of the King rises to
the light at the theatrical representation of his crime; the mouse-trap falls; and
now may Hamlet sing, • Why, let the stricken deer go weep,' &c. Relieved of his
doubts, he finds the King, — but at prayer. To send the criminal praying out of the
world, the intellectual feeling of Hamlet does not permit, still less the tender feel-
ing of the poet, who watches over this darling of his, this noble spirit, the courtier's
eye, the soldier's sword, the scholar's tongue, the expectancy and the rose of a fair
state. He goes quickly to his mother, burning with the fire of his just wrath;
even from purgatory must his father's ghost come and seek the chamber of his
fake wife, and step between mother and son. Wound her, but only with words ;
leave her ' to the thorns that in her bosom lodge.' How stand ye in this scene,
Orestes, Electra, Clytemnestra ! The criminal anticipates Hamlet, and politely ban-
ishes him, — politely sends him to death in a foreign land. Fate steps in the way.
It rescues him and drives him back to expiate a deed, vengeance for which had
fallen, in Polonius, on an innocent head. This guiltless act he must himself first
atone for with the bitterest pain : his Ophelia is dead. After delivering a lecture
{^Collegium) in the churchyard upon a skull, he finds himself in the grave over
her coffin, with her brother, his friend, in a rivalry of love, which the cunning of
the criminal, Qaudius, changes into a duel that shall prove fatal to Hamlet. Then
Fate decides. Weapons and cups are exchanged; Hamlet's mother drinks of the
poison; the criminal must drink the rest. Thus is his father's murder ^«z7!'//?jj/>»
avenged by this Orestes,
But all, criminal, wife, and son, — all are dragged down together. Destiny has
done the work of vengeance by the unstained hands of him to whom the work was
committed. The criminal himself fills the measure of his crime, according to his
278 APPENDIX
character, and becomes the instrument of vengeance. Even the ghost of his father
notwithstanding all that had gone before, could not drive the good Hamlet from
being true to his character.
Hamlet was at first written by Shakespeare as a brief sketch ; slowly, by degrees,
it was amplified. With what love the poet did this, the work itself shows : it con-
tains reflections upon life, the dreams of youth, partly philosophical, partly melan-
choly, such as Shakespeare himself (rank and situation put out of view) may have
had. Every still soul loves to look into this calm sea in which is mirrored the
universe of humanity, of time and eternity. The only piece, perhaps, which the
pure sensus humanitatis has written, and yet a tragedy of Destiny, of dark, awful
Fate.
F, W. ZIEGLER (1803)
ACTOR TO THE ROYAL AND IMPERIAL COURT
{Hamlet's Character, &c., Wien, 1803.) — Physically speaking, Hamlet's tempera-
ment is melancholic. Oldenholm [Polonius] in Hamlet's eyes had committed, first,
a crime, in that he helped Claudius to the throne, and, second, a folly, in that he
attempted to be a chop-logic ; but he had one merit, he was Ophelia's father
The mere announcement to Hamlet in Wittenberg that his father had died suddenly
implied that he had been murdered ; such a phrase applied to a king's death in those
days always meant murder After the Ghost had vanished, having told Hamlet
that Claudius was the murderer, Hamlet was athirst for revenge; which at that
instant was impossible. The King was surrounded by his guards. But as this thirst
for revenge must be gratified in some way, Hamlet relieves his feelings by hanging
his uncle in his tables in effigie. This touch is true to nature and beautiful, although
it is highly improbable that one could write at night in his tables. ... If Hamlet
were only at the head of an army in the field, he would go to work quickly enough
and with no delay.
[Page 75.] Hamlet's soliloquy, ' To be or not to be,' follows just after he has in-
structed the player how to speak his dozen or sixteen lines [Ziegler adopts
Schroeder's arrangement of scenes. Ed.], and he is reflecting on the eff"ect these
lines will have on the King, and on the consequences to himself that may, nay, must
follow. If the King's occulted guilt unkennel itself, Hamlet's sword must be
plunged in the murderer's heart. If the royal bodyguards do not instantly cut him
down, which is to be expected, he will certainly have to justify the assassination of
the King before a legally constituted court; and even though Gustav [Horatio] and
Barnfield [Marcellus] can testify that they had seen the Ghost, and heard the
' Swear !' from under their feet, yet this would constitute no legal ground for Hamlets
acquittal. He puts his mother, whom his father had commanded him to spare, in a
frightful position, — she must accuse herself if she wishes to acquit her son, and he
has everything to fear should she attempt to screen herself. .... The issue of the
court play in all its frightful proportions is before his soul, — he sees the quick
glittering swords of the bodyguard, or else the cold array of judges condemning
the slayer of the King Thus surrounded by peril, he utters his despairing
reflections on life and death,— not on taking his own life, but on meeting death in
the attempt on the King. [This extract is remarkable in that it anticipates TiECK,
and Klein, and Wkrdkr. In the interview between Hamlet and Ophelia, in III, i,
ZIEGLER—SCHLEGEL 279
ZlEGLEK. finds a sufficing :ause for Hamlet's contemptuous treatment of the poor
maiden, in her privately visiting him unattended by a chapexone. Hamlet's excla
mation of ' A mouse !' [sic] when he kills Oldenholm [Polonius] is, according tc
this author, an instance of great presence of mind. On the trial for the murder the
Queen could testify that her son had no intention of killing a human being. Ed.]
A. W. SCHLEGEL (1809)
[^Lectures on Art and Dramatic Literature, trans, by John Black. London, 1015,
vol. ii, p. 192.) — Hamlet is single in its kind : a tragedy of thought inspired by con-
tinual and never-satisfied meditation on human destiny and the dark perplexity of
the events of this world, and calculated to call forth the very same meditation in
the minds of the spectators. This enigmatical work resembles those irrational equa-
tions, in which a fraction of unknown magnitude always remains, that will in no
manner admit of solution.
[Page 193.] The only circumstance in which this piece might be found less fitted
for representation than other tragedies of Shakespeare is, that in the last scenes the
main action either stands still or appears to retrograde. This, however, was inevi-
table, and lies in the nature of the thing. The whole is intended to show that a
consideration, which would exhaust all the relations and possible consequences of a
deed to the very limits of human foresight, cripples the power of acting ; as Hamlet
expresses it : ' And thus the native hue of resolution,' &c.
Respecting Hamlet's character, I cannot, according to the views of the poet as 1
understand them, pronounce altogether so favorable a sentence as Goethe's. He is,
it is true, a mind of high cultivation, a prince of royal manners, endowed with the
finest sense of propriety, susceptible of noble ambition, and open in the highest
degree to enthusiasm for the foreign excellence in which he is deficient. He acts
the part of madness with inimitable superiority ; while he convinces the persons who
are sent to examine him of his loss of reason, merely because he tells them unwel-
come truths, and rallies them with the most caustic wit. But in the resolutions
which he so often embraces and always leaves unexecuted, the weakness of his
volition is evident : he does himself only justice when he says there is no greater
dissimilarity than between himself and Hercules. He is not solely impelled by
necessity to artifice and dissimulation ; he has a natural inclination to go crooked
ways; he is a hjrpocrite towards himself; his far-fetched scruples are often mere
pretexts to cover his want of resolution : thoughts, as he says on a different oc-
casion, which have but one part wisdom and ever three parts coward. He has been
chiefly condemned for his harshness in repulsing the love of Ophelia, to which he
himself gave rise, and for his unfeelingness at her death. But he is too much over-
whelmed with his own sorrow to have any compassion to spare for others : his in-
difference gives us by no means the measure of his internal perturbation. On the
other hand, we evidently perceive in him a malicious joy when he has succeeded
in getting rid of his enemies more through necessity and accident, which are alone
able to impel him to quick and decisive measures, than from the merit of his
courage ; for so he expresses himself after the murder of Polonius, and respecting
Rosencrantz and Guildenstem. Hamlet has no firm belief either in himself or in
anything else : from expressions of religious confidence he passes over to skeptical
doubts ; he believes in the ghost of his father when he sees it, and as soon as it has
28o APPENDIX
disappeared, it appears to him almost in the light of a deception. lie has even got
so far as to say, ' There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so ;' the
poet loses himself with his hero in the labyrinths of thought, in which we neither find
end nor beginning. The stars themselves, from the course of events, afford no
answer to the questions so urgently proposed to them. A voice, commissioned as it
would appear by Heaven from another world, demands vengeance for a monstrous
enormity, and the demand remains without effect ; the criminals are at last punished,
but, as it were, by an accidental blow, and not in a manner requisite to announce
with solemnity a warning example of justice to the world; irresolute foresight, cun-
ning treachery, and impetuous rage are hurried on to the same destruction ; the less
guilty or the innocent are equally involved in the general destruction. The destiny
of humanity is there exhibited as a gigantic sphinx, which threatens to precipitate
into the abyss of skepticism whoever is unable to solve her dreadful enigma.
[Page 197.] This speech [of the Player about Pyrrhus] must not be judged of
by itself, but in connection with the place where it is introduced. To distinguish it
as dramatic poetry in the play itself, it was necessary that it should rise above its
dignified poetry in the same proportion that the theatrical elevation does above
simple nature. Hence Shakespeare has composed the play in Hamlet altogether in
sententious rhymes full of antitheses. But this solemn and measured tone did not
suit a speech in which violent emotion ought to prevail, and the poet had no other
expedient than the one of which he made choice : overcharging the pathos. The
language of the speech in question is certainly falsely emphatical ; but yet this fault
is so mixed up with true grandeur, that a player practiced in calling forth in himself
artificially the emotions which he imitates may certainly be carried away by it.
Besides, it will hardly be believed that Shakespeare knew so little of his art as not
to be aware that a tragedy, in which ^neas has to make a lengthened epic relation
of a transaction that happened so long before as the destruction of Troy, could
neither be dramatical nor theatrical.
C. A. H. CLODIUS (1820)
( Ueber Shakespeare'' s Philosophie besonders im Hamlet, Urania, Leipzig, 1820, p.
297.) — Grant that Hamlet's insanity, as it is revealed in his speeches, is occasionally
assumed, it eventually becomes a habit; the appalling apparition of his father's
spirit, which suddenly broke in upon his somewhat soft and gloomy nature, made
him really melancholy and insane. His father's ghost whimpering for revenge
becomes 2^ fixed idea in his brain, to which everything else is baser matter
[Page 301.] Hamlet's spiritual pride, mingled with philosophical pride, pride
of rank, and of genius, and of ambition, is hurried on by the appearance of his
father's spirit to the most violent thirst for revenge, and then to insanity, which,
though it was at first assumed, becomes afterwards real, almost by way of punish-
ment, and which prompts his imagination to ridicule everything, and distort every
natur.1l aspect and all harmony of proportii n. Herein we may find the true tragedy
m tht piece.
HORN 281
FRANZ HORN (1823)
[^Shakespeare ErlSutert, Leipzig, 1823, vol. ii, p. 20.) — It is commonly understodi
that Hamlet and Horatio were friends in the higher sense of the word, but such is
not the idea of the poet. Horatio is an honest, loyal subject, very modest, con-
tented in the humblest sphere, without any great elevation of mind, without indeed
any uncommon degree of intellect, yet using well all he has learned.
But why has not Shakespeare made Horatio a person of high intellectual ability ?
Because it would have distorted the whole piece. Were Horatio a strong, able
man, he would either have had an undue influence over his friend, or he would
have acted for him, and all would then have been different. But as it is, he does
not help the prince to act ; in many respects, in acuteness, wit, imagination, elo-
quence, he stands below the prince, although he excels him in his way of thinking,
morally considered. It is, moreover, very tragic that the poor prince, among all
around him, finds no greater friend than this Horatio, and must cling to him, as no
other is at hand. Horatio is, however, at least an honest man, which is certainly
very much ; but Hamlet has to console and content himself with Horatio's intel-
lectual mediocrity. Perfect love and reverence he has had for one only, his father,
whose loss can never be supplied.
[Page 30.] 'As I, perchance, hereafter shall think meet To put an antic disposi-
tion on,' I, V. WTiat a plan, or rather what a half-plan ! for the word ' perchance ' is
not to be overlooked. It seems as if Hamlet himself had an idea that nothing
special would be gained in this way, and as if it only flitted as a vague dream before
his eyes that thus he would be able to watch his uncle.
[Page 54.] We see the King busy with the arrangements for the departure of
Hamlet for the country where he is to meet his death. The King's instruments,
Rosencrantz and Guildenstem, manifest special zeal in this service, and it is note-
worthy that Rosencrantz, whom Hamlet pronounces a fool [IV, ii, 25], holds forth
in a manner almost inspired in behalf of the King's safety. His speech really con-
tains excellent things, but in reference to Claudius it sounds like the most fearful
irony. But this is just one of the most characteristic features of the whole piece,
that often the best things are said by oflicious flatterers seeking favor of the criminal.
The poet has an eye to this, and makes use of this tragic irony only to refine the
passion of the spectator.
[Page 58.] This moment [the death of Polonius] forms a tragic epigram, the
deepest, perhaps, which a poet ever conceived. One would willingly have granted
years or a score of years to the poor, half-honest, half-wise, witty fool of a man, who
would so gladly live on in his happy and ornamental fashion ; and now he must be
suddenly hurried off, so entirely without preparation, as it were, in the intoxication
of his clumsy intrigue, caught in the pitiful attitude of an eaves-dropper, which he
had just volunteered to take, in order to win a new word of praise from a king rich
only in phrases. But not merely for poor Polonius's sake do we speak of the tragically
epigrammatic point of this moment ; it is far more so on account of Hamlet, whose
best opportunity is now lost, since he effects nothing but that wretched thrust, a
crime that begets nothing but new misery. He would hurl the terrible usurper from
the throne, and now when he might do so, for he has (perhaps for the first time) col-
lected all his strength for the blow, Fate plays a bitter jest with the unfortunate
282 APPENDIX
temporizer, who applies the whole fulness of his power to the killing of a fly, that
he might just as well have brushed away with his handkerchief.
[Page 62.] That with the fourth act the piece begins to drag has, I believe, often
been remarked ; but it has not been observed that it could not be otherwise. ' The
hero has not merely let slip the moment for putting forth the highest power of
which he was capable, in that very moment he has done a pitiable and criminal act ;
and although he tries again and again to deceive himself, and in a harsh fashion to
be witty about it, such a mood cannot suffice. He gradually comes to see what he
has done ; after this moment he withdraws so deeply into himself as almost to give
up the possibility of ever acting at all. Hence the fourth and fifth acts proceed
almost wholly after the manner of an epic or a romance ; we see hardly anything
else but incidents, situations, glimpses of character, profound observation, and things
done without or even against the will ; and in this awful work, in which nearly all
the persons are sick, there appears the Gravedigger, as a Ckoragus, sound, healthy,
and odd, with very delightful witticisms upon kings' crowns and graves, making
jests of the gallows and of madness, of genteel and not gentle suicides, of dead
court-jesters, and living, unhappy princes.
[Page 63.] The first thing which we cannot but a little wonder at in the begin
ning of the fourth act is the almost wholly unchanged relation of Gertrude to the
King; but on further consideration all wonder vanishes. Only in thorough re-
pentance can a change of character, or new birth, be possible; half-repentance
renders men only worse, — it disables them ; and the horrible tedium which Gertrude
carries with her causes her at last to give up all repentance. This, Shakespeare,
who one might say knew everything, well knew. We think of the great scene, so
fully presented, in which Hamlet, summoning all his power, crushes the heart of
his guilty mother, and how she, overwhelmed and agonized, promises amendment.
What impression does Hamlet's eloquence and his mother's half-repentance leave ?
When we see her again she is on as good terms as ever with the King ; yes, even
on better. She is only more firmly fixed in the delusion that she no longer has
the power to amend ; the great difficulties in the way of a thorough amendment
terrify and deter her ; she pursues her course as before, — indeed, she is worse than
before, for she has coquetted with the thought of amendment, and then thrown it
aside as not the proper thing. From now on there is only one step to the conclusion
(in the silence of her own mind, at least), that all amendment would be a prepos-
terous extravagance, and we do not err in believing that this step she would have
taken had not an unlooked-for death suddenly come in her way,
[Page 67.] But it is time for another and a higher person to appear, for without
him the piece were surely at an end. To quiet us, there comes forward a blooming
young hero, beautiful and sound to the core — Fortinbras, Prince of Norway. We
see him now upon his march against the Poles, availing himself of the permission
to pass through Denmark. Superficial readers may say, ' Does he come in here
merely as a deus ex ntachin& ?' To which the only answer is, that every intelligent
reader must have recognized him as such long before. The wise poet lets him pass
before our imagination in the first scene, and indeed in the story of Horatio, imme-
diately after the first appearance of the Ghost. He comes still nearer to us in the
audience-scene with the King, in the going to and fro of Voltimand and Cornelius,
until in IV, iv, he actually apjieare in person, and in a few words announces him-
self, and his captain adds all that is necessary. Indeed, should we omit all these
histc'ic references, and let the prince appear only at the conclusion, he would l>e
HORN 283
nothing more than a puppet, who can neither bury the dead nor pretend to live.
But why is this young hero represented so sparing of words, almost monosyllabic ?
I think there was a most excellent reason for it. Upon a closer study of this inex-
haustible drama, almost all the persons in it appear to suffer from a plethora of
words, and for this reason the spoken word loses for them its healing efficacy. If
the State is to be saved and a new life begun, all this must be changed, and the
simple word, accompanied by fit action, must regain its power. We are to be made
aware that such a time will soon appear ; all in the last scene that we see of Fortin
bras points to it.
[Page 79.] The gravedigging scene has always highly delighted thousands upon
thousands. Who can fail to be diverted by this philosophical thinker, laughing at
philosophy, — this witty fellow, throwing out his wit as his shovel throws out the
earth. Only one must not merely enjoy his wit ; there is underneath it all a deeply
tragical idea. To my thinking, it is as if at the close of the fourth act the whole
soil, upon which this great drama is acted, were about to yawn and crumble ; it
quakes at every step, and naphtha-flames already burst out, the instant a heavy
foot steps on it. Hence it is that Hamlet's words, • The time is out of joint,'
become realized, and there is no one there who is able to set the time right, Fortin-
bras excepted, who, however, is on his expedition against the Poles. The miserable
usurper is in partnership with the no less miserable Laertes in a new poison-mixing ;
they have both shown very special talents in the practice, on a large scale, of this
horrible art. A country in which such things can be is most assuredly without a
king and without a government, and is stiff and stark for decay. What now can
follow ? It seems to me one can look for nothing else or other than a churchyard,
and the appearance among all these persons, diseased through and through, of a
man thoroughly sound and healthy, at whose hyper-originality we take no offence,
and all whose fantastic impertinences we forgive in the lump, because he is so
genuine and harmless, and has the courage to jest over the grave and all the world
as well. In the scene with his underling, and afterwards with Hamlet and Horatio,
this vigorous old Gravedigger seems like one who is bold enough to incline to
be king himself. In fact, he tries at least to bear himself like one. He settles
things for all time, upon what principles self-murder is to be judged, pronounces
himself and his office the noblest things in the world, treats his man as if he were
his body-servant with a jest, expresses himself very freely as to Hamlet's madness,
and still more freely about the people living in England, which in his arrogant
view lies, as it were, at his feet ; all which the merry, insolent fellow presumes to
do, because, among so many sick, he is the only sound one. He has, indeed, to
retreat when the bedizened King appears in the funeral train ; but through three
scenes he is very king, and, although with no right, yet with better right than
Claudius, who stole the crown from the shelf and put it in his pocket.
It may well be asked, what does Hamlet want in the churchyard ? And how
comes he there, — that the funeral of his beloved is to take place he is ignorant,- -
he who appears to trouble himself no longer about what is going on ? But such ques-
tions embarrass neither the poet nor the critics. Hamlet is intent upon only one
thing, the punishment of the King; but, fully conscious of his own weakness, he
appears to give over the execution of vengeance entirely to fate, or rather to acci-
dent,— he, who has never really been alive, is now more than half dead, and so he
finds himself best among graves and in the midst of the dead. With a true pleasure
he riots in thoughts of death and dissolution, yet even here his particular individua'
284 APPENDIX
interest is never forgotten in his meditations, as is seen by his allusion to the jaw
bone of Cain, the first fratricide.
[Page 85.] This courtier, who is never otherwise named than as the 'young'
Osric, as if this pleasant word were his nickname, is painted by the poet with special
love and truth. Consider the situation : ruin is striding triumphantly on ; the ground
under our feet does not merely tremble, it is already sinking; one fancies he hears
the subterranean muttering that precedes the earthquake : it is as if we heard the
rushing wings of Fate. The King and the Queen, Hamlet and Laertes, already,
like the doomed, wear the mark of near death upon their foreheads ; but the young
Osric, naturally enough, perceives nothing of all this, and cannot therefore share in
the tragical mood of the reader or spectator ; he knows nothing of any overruling
Fate, lives in the common order of the day, rejoices in the honor of serving the
King, appears before the prince jaunty and dainty and fulsome. This young Osric,
whose fatality it is never to be simple in his speech, never to be able to stick to the
unvarnished truth, serves to give the spectator great comfort ; for we see with joy
how this strange stripling succeeds in drawing from the gloomy prince the last spasm
of wit, humor, and scorn.
TIECK (1824)
{Dratnaturgische Blatter^ 1824. Kritische Schriften, iii, 248. Leipzig, 1852.) —
Claudius, descended from an heroic line, has many great and excellent qualities,
heavily overbalanced, however, by as many bad and degrading traits. In one re-
spect he is through and through regal; his bearing is always dignified; evil and
depraved he may be, but never little. Treachery is his nature ; duplicity and faith-
lessness his very being ; but a lofty, winning deportment clothes all these detestable
vices. He is a strong, large, and handsome man ; the Ghost, even in his vehe-
ment denunciation of him, styles him seductive ; Hamlet, behind his back, depicts
him as altogether hateful and base, but, in his presence, is always constrained and
embarrassed, quite unable to make good a word of the contempt which he pours
upon him in his soliloquies. The usurper is not altogether as bad, nor the murdered
king quite as excellent, as the son, in his excitement, in that extraordinary scene
with his mother, describes them.
[Page 251.] While waiting for the play to commence, the King is friendly
towards Hamlet ; he jests with the Queen or with other ladies and persons of the
court; he is so absorljed in merry talk that he does not observe the dumb show
by which, after the fashion of the old English theatre, the plot is foretold; Hamlet'f
repeated hints and the accents of Hamlet's voice at last arrest the King's notice.
As Hamlet is no longer able to control himself, the King must needs become aware
that something peculiar, something concerning himself, is going on. Then when the
poisoner appears and murders the sleeper, as Claudius had murdered his brother,
the King observes it, and is forced at last to ])erceive that his sin is no longer a
secret ; his conscience breaks through all his hypocrisy ; he retreats, horror-struck,
as before a ghost. The development, the preparation for this event, its suddenness,
ill truly represented, must needs be of the greatest interest, and make the King
unquestionably the chief figure in this scene. In order to give the scene its fullest
effect, it were well if the scenery could be arranged as it was in Shakespeare'*
theatre
TIECK 285
[Page 255.] Although (as neither Shakespeare nor his contemporaries paid any
attention to the elucidation of their dramas, which were simply acted, and not easily
to be read by any one who had seen them played only once) — although, as has already
been remarked, these stage-directions have no weight, yet this oldest one {^Laertes
wounds Hamlet, then in scuffling they change weapons, and Hamlet wounds Laertes),
which the actors found it necessary to write down, de5er\'es some consideration.
According to the present mode of speech, to scuffle is to tussle. Even Shakespeare
himself uses it thus ; but its primitive derivation is from to shuffle : it is one with
this word. In scuffling or shuffling then, in tussling one with the other, in the
dash, they exchange rapiers. Why must the they refer to Hamlet and Laertes ? Is
it not much more intelligible that one of the judges of the combat, at the bidding
of the King, changes the weapons? or the King himself? or a page at a hint from
the King ? It must be had in mind that after each essay at arms there came a
2>ause, when the combatants walked up and down to rest, their weapons being laid
aside together in one place, and at the last pause the weapons were thus changed by
the direction of the King, that Hamlet might kill Laertes. [This shrewd but erro-
neous explanation of the exchange of rapiers was probably devised before the dis-
covery of Q,, but it was not printed until just after. In a footnote, TiECK refers to
the stage direction in Q,, ' They catch one another's rapiers, and both are wounded,'
and adds that the word ' catch ' does not in the least disturb his explanation. By
stretching a point this might be granted, but no stretching will force ' one another's '
to bear out this theory ; which I have inserted because it has been, not infrequently,
accepted by German commentators. Ed.]
[Page 257.] I see in Polonius a real statesman. Discreet, politic, keen-sighted,
ready at the council board, cunning upon occasions, he had been valued by the
deceased King, and is now indispensable to his successor. How much he suspected
as to the death of the former king, or how sincerely he accepted that event, the poet
does not tell us.
When Polonius speaks to Ophelia of her relations to Hamlet, he pretends igno-
rance ; he has only heard through others that his daughter talks with the prince,
and often and confidentially. Here the cunning courtier shows himself, for the
visits of the prince to his house could not have been unknown to him. But these
visits were made in the time of the late king, and afterwards in the interregnum
before the new ruler ascended the throne. The election was doubtful ; Hamlet, as
we know, had the first right, and the prospect of becoming father-in-law to the king
was tempting. But Hamlet, who had no faculty for availing himself of circum-
stances, or even for maintaining his rights, allowed himself to be set aside, and
Polonius saw, even whon the great assembly was held, that Hamlet's position at
court was Hamlet's own fault. Consequently, for double reasons, Polonius forbids
his daughter to have any intercourse with the prince ; first, because the prince was a
C)rpher, and then again, because the King might become suspicious if he learned
that such intercourse existed.
C)i)helia calms her father with the report of the madness of the prince, who was
cruel enough to begin the r6le with her, but she innocently imagines that it is her
withdrawing herself from him which is the cause of his unhappy disease. Polonius
is beside himself: ' Come, go with me; I will go seek the King,' he cries; for he
fears that Hamlet in his insanity will betray his passion, and that thus the matter
can no longer be kept secret. He explains for us his real opinion : ' I am sorry that
with letter heed and judgement I had not quoted him,' &c., II, i. III. Hamlet is
286 APPENDIX
nothing : it is a matter of indifference should the prince be offended ; but he dares
not keep silence to the King ; it might have serious consequences.
Ir this state of mind he goes to his majesty; on the way, however, the difficulty
of the affair which he is to manage becomes more apparent. The cause of Hamlet's
madness is his love for the daughter of the minister, of the King's confidential
servant. The father then must have permitted, nay, encouiaged, the prince's
addresses, which have been kept from the knowledge of the King until they can co
longer be concealed. What appearance would the old courtier make in the affair?
Since a shadow of suspicion must fall upon the father of Ophelia, the disclosure
must be made to the King when his majesty is in a good humor. Fortunately, the
ambassadors have returned with good tidings from Norway ; this is the feast which
Polonius prepares for the King, — the explanation is to be the dessert. As he cares
little for the Queen, he ventures to represent the prince in a ridiculous light, —
the prince's jesting allusions exposing his weakness, while Polonius himself acts the
part of a true-hearted, unsuspecting character, so that, after all these preliminaries,
the King shall be put in the happy humor in which he may be told how the case
stands. ' But how hath she received his love ?' is the first question which the King
gravely asks. The King wants instant satisfaction upon the point which alone is
of interest to him. And then out of half truth and prevarication the old man is to
spin a lie, that shall set himself in the most blameless light, but which, however,
does not satisfy the King. Conscious that he has not been innocent of ambitious
designs, and anxious to set himself fully right, Polonius, all too eagerly, proposes
\that his daughter and the prince be brought together, while he himself and the
King listen, concealed, to what passes between the two.
How much of fine observation is there in what is said of Ophelia in Goethe's
^-JVHhelm Meister ! But if I do not entirely misunderstand Shakespeare, the poet
V has meant to intimate throughout the piece that the poor girl, in the ardor of her
passion for the fair prince, has yielded all to him. The hints and warnmgs of
Laertes come too late. It is tender and worthy of the great poet to leave the
relation of Hamlet and Ophelia, like much else in the piece, a riddle; but it is from
this point of view alone that Hamlet's behavior, his bitterness, and Ophelia's suffer-
ing and madness, find connection and consistency ; and we perceive why it is that
all in this young creature, hell itself, as Laertes says, is turned to favor and to
preltiness. While the riddle is thus solved, the representation of this character on
the stage is rendered all the more difficult.
When she first appears with Laertes, who tells her that Hamlet's love-making is
only a violet in the youth of primy nature, conscious that it was a great deal more,
she naively and smilingly asks, ' No more but so ?' After the speech of her brother,
she answers: ' But, good my brother. Do not as some ungracious pastors do,' &c., I,
iii, 46-51. I do not understand how an innocent girl could thus answer, — an answer
wide of that warning. But she believed she knew her brother; she felt deeply how
contemptible it was that these lessons should never have been addressed to her until
after her acquaintance with the prince had been permitted or ignored. Towards
her father she has already been reserved ; she takes care not to say too much ; she
contents herself with a few general expressions, and is painfully av/are that, all of a
sudden, as a stern parent, he treats the prince with contempt.
Terrified, deeply moved, well nigh distraught, she mentions the visit of the prince.
Here we are made prophetically to see upon what a dizzy height her whole being
totters. This scene is always represented too coldly and thoughtfully.
TIECK 287
In this condition she suffers herself to be used that her mad lover may be over-
heard. An actress in this character must employ all her skill, in order to show how
painful to Ophelia this unworthy part is ; to know that, in this interview with her
lover, her father and the King are listening to every word ; that she is to see him no
more, when she had so much to say to him ; and to feel herself forced to show her
self to him in this strange, unnatural attitude, compelled to bear all his reproaches,
his bitterness, bordering on brutality, and not daring to breathe a word in vindication
of herself, until at last, when she is no longer observed, she breaks out into lamenta-
tion. Certainly, a most involved task for the artist ! Instead of this, one commonly
sees on the stage, in Ophelia, a maiden taking everything very quietly, while the
prince is suffering, complaining, and sentimental, and thus the poet is completely mis-
represented.
[Page 266.] At the acting of the play before the court, Ophelia has to endure all
sorts of coarseness from Hamlet before all the courtiers ; he treats her without that
respect which she appears to him to have long before forfeited. The prince is sent
away, her father has been killed by him, and her anguish, long pent up, her deserted
state, the remembrance of happy hours, — all overwhelm her and overpower her tat-
tering understanding.
Of Laertes less is to be said. It is enough that the actor does not allow himself to
be misled into representing him as a noble and affectionate son and brother. In the
beginning he appears merely as a gallant of those days. He warns Ophelia in beau-
tiful set phrases, in which he loves to hear himself speak, as indeed is the case with
all the persons of the drama.
[Page 270.] The Ghost must have been one of Schroeder's most artistic and im-
pressive representations. I am convinced of it, although I never saw him in this
part. But what has since passed on the German stage for an imitation of this great
artist is certainly not to be conmiended. I mean that slow, dull, monotonous reci-
tation, accompanied by hardly a gesture, whereby the scene drags, and the illusion
is greatly disturbed. The old Hamlet no longer has flesh and blood ; but he has all
human passions, anger, revenge, jealousy. Although modified, his utterance should
be felt to be pathetic. He must express himself in intonation and by gestures. In
both theatres in London the Ghost was simply ridiculous, stalking up and down,
without grace or dignity, and speaking his part as if it were a cold-blooded lecture.
Is it necessary to consider this soliloquy [• To be or not to be,' &c.] as having
reference to suicide ? Did Shakespeare really mean it so ? It could not have been
so understood in Shakespeare's time, although we have no evidence bearing on the
point. As often as Hamlet was acted by the poet's contemporaries, this character
and this soliloquy were made subjects of criticism and ridicule. [The course of
Hamlet's feelings is here traced by TiECK, from the beginning of the tragedy until
it reaches the intense dissatisfaction with himself, expressed in the monologue after
the Player had recited the passage about the ' rugged Pyrrhus ;' this dissatisfaction,
however, is soothed by the prospect of the play wherein the conscience of the King is
to be caught ; this relief lasts only for a moment, and Hamlet begins to ask himself
why it is that he cannot carry out his revenge ; and it is in this self-searching mood
that we next see him. TiECK finds fault with the present division into Acts. The
iJecond Act, he says, should end with what is now III, i, whereby the two mono-
logues should be brought into closer connection. He then proceeds to give the
following explanation of ' To be or not to be,' &c. ; an explanation that I believe
has never found favor with any one, except Tieck's warm personal friend anc*
288 APPENDIX
admirer, Freih. v. Friesen, who acknowledges that TiECK was anticipated by
ZlEGLER. See p. 315. Ed.]
[Page 282.] It comes to this, he says to himself (the spectator is understood to
keep in mind all that precedes, and to follow this apparent leap in Hamlet's
thoughts) : the only point is whether a man live or do not live, i. e. more than life I
cannot risk and lose, so that the only thing is life, whether I set all upon that. This
consideration is altogether just; it has often been expressed, who fears not Death
need fear nothing else. But, he continues after a pause, it may be the greatest
magnanimity calmly to bear the worst, to practice that patience which is commended
as Christian, and which requires as much strength and greatness of soul as positive
resistance : • Or to take arms against a sea of troubles. And, by opposing, end them*
i. e. these troubles : but how ? By suicide ? What then is meant by this ' opposing,'
this positive resistance ? Would taking arms, then, be fitting, if the arms were to
be directed against him who took them up ? No, it is these troubles that I seek to
annihilate ; it is my opponent that I am to put an end to. This must I accomplish,
in case my patience does not suffice, if I do not possess strength enough, to keep
from valuing my own life too highly; for that may be imperilled; but I dare to
meet this peril the more readily, as dying is only a release from all earthly
burthens.
[Page 288.] By forcing the meaning somewhat, the common interpretation of the
soliloquy may be justified, until we come to: 'And enterprises of great pith and
moment With this regard,' &c. Here, if one goes candidly to work, is a passage
difficult, if not impossible, to be reconciled with the idea that self-murder is the one
great topic of the soliloquy. Is self-murder an enterprise of great pith and moment ?
And could Hamlet deceive himself so egregiously as to give such honorable names
to the miserable cowardice that prompted him to destroy himself, in order to escape
the heavy task imposed upon him ? He is no hero ; he shows, as he confesses to
Ophelia, weaknesses of all sorts ; almost everything good and bad in man has been
contended for in his character. But it is sinking altogether too low to think seriously
of destroying himself, and this out of base fear. I wonder that his friends and ad-
mirers can allow him to be thus degraded without turning away with disgust.
A certain disposition to suicide and to a contempt for life, which existed for
a while, is partly, perhaps, the cause why this soliloquy has been misunderstood and
so excessively admired. But now looking back from its conclusion to all that goes
before, and reading it once more according to my understanding of it, we find thai
all is natural, significant, and fitting. Enterprises of great pith and moment, e.g. to
hurl an usurper from the throne, to avenge a murdered father, to take the position of
A king, to which birth and the law of the land entitled him, to gain over the army,
the nobles, and the people to this revolution, — and these, like all similar great under-
takings, are turned awry, and die in the intention, because he who attempts them
hesitates, because it is not a matter of indifference to him whether or not he himself
perishes in the contest.
PROF. J. F. PRIES (1825)
{Ueber Shakespeare^ s Handel. Rostock, 1 825, p. 54.) — Fault has been found with
Hamlet's conversation with Ophelia before the court-play begins, and very properly,
if it is read without reference to what precedes and what follows. There is one
exDlanition which fully justifies it, although it is true Shakespeare gives no intima-
PRIES— HERMES— BO ERNE 289
tion thereof. Hamlet is now, as never before, acting at the King. Claudius has
attained to his present good fortune through woman's love. Surrounded by court
beauties, would he have neglected the chance of casting the lustful eye of an old
fop at the fairest of them all ; indeed, such a course on the part of her husband
would have proved an additional stimulus to the love of such a woman as Gertrude.
Hamlet may have suspected it; for he observes keenly. Woe be it, if the uncle
succeeds to the thousandth degree in the case of the son as he has been altogether
successful in the case of the father. Distracted by such jealous thoughts, Hamlet
otters bis coaise jests.
K. H. HERMES (1827)
( Ueber Shakespeare's Hamlet und Seine Beurtheiler, Goethe^ A. W. Schlegel, una
Tuck. Stuttgart, 1827, p. 20.) — ' I see a cherub,' &c., IV, iii, 50. In these words
is the key to Hamlet's character. He is not precipitate, because, conscious of his
worth, he does not despair of the result. He does not overestimate himself, and
attribute this result to himself, but he confides in a higher guidance, — without know-
ing that he has it in his own breast, — he trusts to the hand of the Highest, by which
that will happen that must. Only in moments of depression, when the flame of
passion blazes wildly up in him, does his revenge seem to lag, only then does he
reproach himself that his thoughts are not bloody enough. But is this hesitation,
dodging, skulking ? Does he on this account ever lose sight of his purpose ?
L. BOERNE (1829)
{Gesammelte Schriften, Dram. Blatter, 2d Abth., p. 172. Hamburg, 1829.) —
Among the plays of the British poet, the scenes of which are laid neither in history
nor fable, Hamlet is the only one that has a Northern soil and a Northern heaven.
Shakespeare, in his sympathy with Nature, well understood what atmosphere best
harmonized with his various characters. To lively wit, to light-winged joy, to
quick passion, to the clear, decisive deed, he gave the blue sunny South, where
night is only day asleep ; the melancholy, brooding, dreamy Hamlet he places in
a land of clouds and long nights, under a gray sky, where the day is only a sleep-
less night. This tragedy holds us imprisoned in the North, the damp dungeon of
Nature, and we are cheered, as by a sunbeam penetrating the darkness through a
fissure in the wall, when, of a sudden, we hear the glowing word, Rome, and the
bright word, France.
The most exact admirers, as well as the warmest friends, of the poet have declared
Hamlet his masterpiece. We must define this estimate. Hamlet is not the most
admirable of Shakespeare's works ; but Shakespeare is most admirable in Hamlet.
That is, an extraordinary force astonishes us, not when its activity begins, but when
it ceases; only the endurance of a force testifies of its greatness. So here. We
wander along the brilliant path of the poet, and as our wonder, having reached the
end, turns, wearied, around, we are affronted by Hamlet, whom we had not expected,
on our way back. To create him, Shakespeare had to double himself, had to step
out of himself; herein he has surpassed himself. But this is not said in the rhetorical
language of eulogy, but in the sober terms of description. The play of Hamlet is a
colony of Shakespeare's genius, lying under another zone ; it has another nature,
and obeys other laws than the motherland.
Vol. II.— 18
290 APPENDIX
Before the painting hangs a curtain. Let us draw it aside, to examine the painting
aiore narrowly ; but the curtain itself is a picture. The nearness of the eye must
rompensate for the feebleness of the light. First, we cast a look upon the surround-
ings of our hero, the hero of suffering. Hamlet is not the central point, we have to
make him that; we first form his circle, and then place him in it. But, above all
things, we must arm ourselves manfully against the error which so often conquers in
life as well as on the stage. In life we judge men by their repute ; on the stage we
believe, without examination, what the virtuous people in the play say and think of
he persons represented. This is not the right way; we must ourselves observe
and try them. Hamlet is by no means so noble and amiable as he appears to
Ophelia; the King is not by far so worthless as Hamlet describes him. Indeed,
we must take care lest we prefer the bad uncle to the good nephew.
[Page 178.] When the King suddenly leaves Hamlet's play, it is not because he
cannot master his emotion ; if that be the reason, he would have left just after the
pantomime, which must have taken him by surprise the more, as it was the first thing
to startle him. He withdraws simply to save himself, fearing that the play might
end seriously, and execution follow upon Hamlet's condemning sentence. Herein
he mistook Hamlet; he did not reflect that a strong man, who has once determined
upon an act, never threatens beforehand.
[Page 179.] The Queen is a weak thing; she is Hamlet's mother. Her share in
the crime remains doubtful ; she is a receiver of stolen goods, buys stolen things
cheap, and never asks if a theft had been committed. The King's masculine art
overpowers her ; her son's lamp of conscience, not lighted till midnight, bums only
until morning, and she awakes with the sins of the day before.
[Page 182.] Hamlet had seduced Ophelia, and she saw not what she had lost
until, by the murder of her father, the loss became irreparable. Happily for her
virtue, the etiquette of piety, the policy of morality came to her aid. She loses both
her wits and her life, and knows not why.
Is the Ghost really as lofty a personage as he has so often been described ? He
enters in armor, but, as it seems to me, only his hull is mailed, his soul is soft and
bare. The family likeness between him and his son Hamlet is not to be mistaken.
He is a weak, philosophic, winged Ghost, whose home is in the air. Beings of this
sort sing like the birds, whose utterance has no word for its body, Hamlet's father
speaks fluently, says much and says it rhetorically ; we may easily imagine that we
are listening to a glorified play-actor. The time permitted to him to walk is so very
short, and yet he lets it pass unused. Instead of beginning with the business on hand,
his murder, he tells first of his toiments in hell, and manifests the greatest pleasure
in giving a great poetical picture thereof. He is bent upon making a regular climax,
and ending with the greatest horror, his murder by a brother. But this is a fault.
The terrible thing about a ghost is, that it appears and speaks ; what it does and says,
were it never so horrible, is childish in comparison.* The Ghost, moreover, in that
other world does not appear to have improved his knowledge of men ; if he had,
he would have chosen any other than Hamlet to avenge him. Perhaps that was not
• The description which the Ghost gives of the world whence he came, and which precedes the
important communication, — is it not a proof of Shakespeare's art? The Ghost could not be made to
look like a real ghost on the st.ige ; if he could have been, he would have so startled the ^pectatoni
that his bare appearance and three or four words would have sufficed. As it was, the <i"-<>sl had to
:ell what he was, and where he came from -n order to supply what w.is wanting and produce the ftiU
•ffect ()( a ({host — "'ranslator.
BOERNE—GANS 291
at all the intention of his appearance. He wanders forth into the upper air, seeking
some one to be his avenger, but unfortunately in all the court Hamlet was the only
one who could communicate with spirits, a Sunday-bom child. The Ghost must
have Horatio and the other witnesses swear that they would not talk of what they
had seen; but he lingers, which was much the more important, to enjoin silence
upon his son. His son prates and babbles, and thereby baulks his father's wish and
his own purpose. It is true the King is killed at last, yet he is not condemned as
the murderer of his brother, but as the murderer of his nephew. The old mole was
blind.
[Page 186.] Hamlet is a philosopher of death, a scholar of the night. If the nights
are dark, he stands there irresolute, immovable. If they are clear, is it only a
moon-dial that shows him the shadow of the hour, he acts unseasonably, and goes
about distracted in the deceptive light. Life is to him a grave, the world a church-
yard. Therefore the churchyard is his world, his kingdom, — there he is lord.
How amiable he appears there ! Everywhere else melancholy, there he is cheerful ;
everywhere gloomy, there he is serene ; everywhere else distraught, there he is com-
posed ! How excellent, how bright and witty, does he show himself there ! Every-
where else depressed by his thoughts on death, among graves he gives us ghostly
comfort. While he sneers at life as a dream, he sneers at death as nothing.
There is he not weak, — who is strong in the presence of death ? There ends all
force, all worth, all calculation, all esteem, all contempt, all difference. There
Hamlet may, unreproved, forget his father's command. There he need not avenge
his father's death. Shall he drag to the scaffold a criminal lying in the last pains
of disease ? How cruel ! To kill in the presence of death, how ridiculous ! what
childish impatience ! It is as if a snail were to affront the coming wind.
[Page 192.] Does Hamlet ^i^ himself mad? He is so. He thinks he is play-
ing with his madness, and it is his madness that plays with him.
[Page 198.] Had a German written HamUt, I should not have wondered at the
work. A German needs but a fair, legible hand. He makes a copy of himself, and
Hamlet is done.*
EDUARD GANS (1834)
{Vermischte Schriften. Berlin, 1834, vol. ii, p. 270.) — If Shakespeare's HamUt
is to be characterized in a word, it is tht tragedy of the Nothingness of ReJUction,
or, as even this phrase may be varied, it is the tragedy of the Intellect. The tragic
element of the intellect lies herein, that the intellect appears to be the true, and yet
it is the untrue ; that it is neither the substantial nor does it tolerate the substan-
tial, but that it is only the disintegrating force before whose onslaughts the world
would go down, were it not that reason converts this negative power to her service,
and makes it organs of true completeness. But, on the other hand, the intellect
is the highest, strongest, and greatest power, that which makes man, man ; manS
jewel and his crown ; and therefore the contest between the intellect and the sub-
stantial and reasonable is the sphere in which everything true succumbs, and every-
thing true is bom again. Hence it is that, next to Faust, Hamlet is the profoundest,
boldest, most characteristic tragedy that has ever been written, because its hero sue
cumbs not through that which otherwise is well named human weakness, but through
that which one must perforce call human strength, [&c. &c.]
* Dr Doring says that this was written in 1816. Eo.
292 APPENDIX
[Page 274.] Hamlet has no confidant, and dares not have one. Had he a confi-
dant, the whole action would be, on the side of Hamlet, withdrawn from thi sphere
of pure subjectivity ; that which ought to have lodged in Hamlet's breast alone
would have taken external shape. Horatio is his confidant only as he offers a
vent to Hamlet's humor, and no further. Hamlet never asks counsel of Horatio,
who is only a bystander, so far intimate with the prince that the latter is not
always compelled to think aloud in soliloquy.
[Page 279.] It is certainly one of the profoundest characteristics of this f)iece, that
Hamlet resolves that he will have certainty through confession, by means of the play,
which, while it is the pretext to save Hamlet in his own eyes, it at the same tim**
elevates to truth and certainty what is wholly uncertain.
[Page 330.] Polonius is certainly a shrewd, intelligent man ; but many a fool is
that. The King knows perfectly well what he has to look for from Hamlet, but
Polonius does not know. This ignorance, this beating about the bush, must make
him appear a comic personage to those who know how the case stands, and to this
class belongs the public. For the comic consists partly in missing the right, when
one is confident that he has hit it.
F. MARQUARD (1839)
{Ueber den Begriff des Hamlet, 1839, p. 15.) — The explanation of the piece is
apparent, if we keep in mind the ghostly background. Hamlet, like Macbeth, is
encompassed by a ghostly world, only it is not so glaringly so in Hamlet's case ; the
catastrophe is hence brought about by ghostly agency. The notorious exchange
of rapiers, by which Hamlet is forced, just before his death, to fulfil his work,
appears to be the work of spirits ; the punishing and, at the same time, guiding
hand is thrust in to bring on the end, as in the planetary system the force of
physical law rules with an iron necessity, although the event is accomplished,
apparently, by accident.
[Page 26.] The second scene of the fifth act is almost abominable. Hamlet
shows himself in a naturalness most repugnant. We look into a soul which seems
not to hesitate, but rather to act from an inborn baseness ; and Horatio, who at the
last has degenerated into a sttpe, is in this scene ridiculous : he does nothing but
open his mouth and cry out, ' Why, what a king is this !' It is very fine and inter
esting that Hamlet, so young, amiable, and innocent, has to share in expiating the
sins of his house, only he need not on that account be made a Gurli of.
DR HERMANN ULRICI (1839)
{^Shakespeare' s Dramatische Kunst, Halle, 1839. Translated by Rev. A. J. W.
Morrison, I-ondon, 1846, p. 215.) — Hamlet does not lack courage nor energy, nor
docs he lack will or resolution : it is only in having the will guided by the judge
ment that he is slow to act and backward in resolve. He is by nature a philosophi
cal spirit, having the desire and power to accomplish great things, but it must be in
obedience to the dictates of his o^vn thoughts and by his 07vn independent, original,
and creative energy. On this account it goes against his disposition to execute a
deed whose springs are external to himself, and which was enjoined on him by out-
ward circumstances, even though the execution of it be by no means beyond hit
powers.
ULRICI 293
[Page 218.] The backwardness to give immediate creaence to the word of the
Ghost would perhaps look like skepticism, were it not that the whole fabric, as ex-
pressly intimated in the first scene, is based on the religious ideas and moral doc-
trines of Christianity. According to these ideas, it cannot be a pure and heavenly
spirit that wanders on earth to stimulate his son to avenge his murder. Even when
Hamlet has assured himself of the King's guilt by the device of the play, he still
hesitates, and forms no resolve ; he is still beset with doubts and scruples, — but pre-
eminently »i<?ra/ doubts and /w^TTfl/ scruples ! Most justly. Even though the King
were trebly a fratricide, in a Christian sense it would still be a sin to put him to
death with one's own hand, without a trial and without justice. In Hamlet, there-
fore, we behold the Christian struggling with the natural man, and its demand for
revenge in a tone rendered still louder and deeper by the hereditary prejudices of
the Teutonic nations. The natural man spurs him on to immediate action, and
charges his doubts with cowardice and irresolution ; the Christian spirit, — though,
indeed, as a feeling rather than as a conviction, — draws him back, though still resist-
ing. He hesitates, and delays, and tortures himself with a vain attempt to reconcile
these conflicting impulses, and between them to preserve his own liberty of will and
action.
[Page 221.] The mind of Hamlet, — not more noble and beautiful than it is strong
and earnest, and as great as human greatness can reach to, — is throughout struggling
to retain the mastery which the judgement ought invariably to hold over the will,
shaping and guiding the whole course of life. This aim he nevertheless misses.
For in spite of all its grandeur and excellence, his mind is engrossed with this earthly
existence ; nay, more, the ignorantly cherished and presumptuous Tvish, to be able, by
the creative energy and perfection of thought, to rule and shape at pleasure the gen-
eral course of things bears on its very face the foul taint of sin, for it is nothing less
than the desire to reject the guiding hand of God, and to make of man's will an
absolute law, — to be a very god. Accordingly, whenever Hamlet does act, it is not
upon the suggestion of his deliberate judgement, but hurried away rather by the
heat of passion or by a momentary impulse.
[Page 223.] Horatio alone is without any ends of his own ; he does not aim at
making any profit of life for himself, but devotes himself entirely and unreservedly
to his friend. And for this disinterested conduct he gains that which all the others
lose. It is clear that Fortinbras, young and unacquainted with the circumstances of
his new kingdom, will select Horatio, — the friend of Hamlet, and named by the
dying heir to the throne to be his exculpator and the defender of his fair fame, —
tor the high but responsible ofiice of restoring peace arid order to the racked and
disjointed kingdom.
[Page 226.] Why, in the last act, a noble and powerful race of kings is given up
entirely to destruction ought to have its reason, its intrinsic necessity ; and so it has.
Fortinbras, in whose favor Hamlet gives his dying voice, possesses an ancient claim
and hereditary right to the throne of Denmark. Some deed of violence or injus-
tice, by which his family were dispossessed of their just claims, hung in the dark
background over the head of that royal house which has now become extinct. Of
this crime its last successors have now paid the penalty. And thus, in this closing
scene, that idea of the overruling justice of God, which pervades all the other
tragedies of Shakespeare, impresses on the whole play its seal of historical signifi-
cance.
294 APPENDIX
DR H. T. ROETSCHER (1844)
{Cyclus Dratnatischer Charaktere, Berlin, 1844, p. 103.) — Hamlet, outraged it
his better feeling by his mother's conduct, has come to look with bitterness upon the
whole female sex. This is an important point ; it reveals to us the moral basis upon
which Hamlet stands : the filial relation has been cherished by him in its greatest
purity. Accustomed to look up to his mother with the profoundest respect, the
levity which she has manifested affects him most painfully.
[Page 104.] The Ghost only makes that an absolute certainty which already existed
as a strong suspicion. The Ghost can communicate only with Hamlet, because
Hamlet alone is capable of believing in the certainty that a crime had been com-
mitted. The Ghost can appear also to those who have kept themselves free from
moral blight, who deplore the condition of Denmark, and who have thus naturally
become the adherents of the prince.
[Page 105.] Hamlet is a great specific character. For in him is individualised
nothing less than the fault of the theorising consciousness , which is unable to resolve
upon acting, unable to pass from the broad expanse of thought to the narrow and
self-confining path of action, because it is lost in the boundlessness of reflection,
and only wills to act when thought has become entirely clear, i, e. when it is assured
of the absolute purity of its action and of all the consequences thereof. It is thus
doomed to inaction.
[Page 106.] The character of Hamlet is, from its truth, an eternal one, continu-
ally repeated in the world. In him, Shakespeare has, like a prophet, seized the
nature of the German character in its deepest significance. Hamlet's strength and
weakness are the strength and weakness of the German people. Like Hamlet, it
■stands high among all the nations through its profoundly reflective, ideal nature. It
tas investigated, more deeply than any other, the nature of the mind ; it has de-
scended into the abyss of self-consciousness, and measured its depth ; it has thrown
itself into the conflict of theoretic contradictions, and made itself their master; it
has delivered itself from the power of ecclesiastical authority, and shivered into
ruin religious institutions ; through the universality of its intellect, it has made the
treasures of all nations its own ; although high toned, and a foe to all that is base in
word and deed, it yet has not the spirit and the strength to conform actual reality
to the picture, which it carries in itself, of the greatness and grandeur of freedom.
It cannot fill up the chasm which separates its knowledge from the real world ; like
Hamlet, it would fain act ; it would, like him, accomplish what is necessary, but it
cannot break through the network of considerations that separate it from action, [&c.
&c. &c.]
MORIZ RAPP (1846)
{Amleth der D&ne. Shakespeare's Werke. Stuttgart, 1846, vol. vi, Einleitung, p
7.) [A critical comparison of the first and second Quarto results, according to Rapp,
greatly in favor of the earlier edition, on the score of dramatic power; its movement
is not buried under a mass of reflections ; and there is more harmony between its
action and its plot ; it is therefore more complete, more effective dramatically, than
Q , which was enlarged by its author in consequence of the immense applause with
which Q, was received.]
RAPP 295
It is Dy no means a paradox, 1 or will the reader misunderstand me, when, after
what has been said, I hazard the opinion, that while of all the poet's works, and
indeed of all works in the world, Hamlet appears to me to be the richest in thought
and the profoundest, yet regarded in a dramatic light it is the most unsatisfactory,
indeed the very worst. For through the whole piece there runs a discord most pain-
ful to the mind and feelings. Poetry has never fashioned anything grander than th'
beginning of this drama. From the first word on the platform before the castle tht
hearer, be he who he may, is riveted. The supernatural is the most popular motive
which modem tragedy can employ; even our over-cultivation, even our tough
lationalism, cannot resist the appeal so powerfully made in this scene to faith in the
supernatural ; or if there is any one who can withstand it, let him quietly turn his
back upon all poetry ; for him poetry is not. The mystery of the supernatural goes
deepening on more and more powerfully through the whole first act. But after the
Ghost appears and speaks, the piece no longer advances in interest, and with the
first act ends also all effective power. It is therefore in reality the first act to an
impossible drama, and if it is permitted to judge of a work piecemeal, the height
of the poetry of Shakespeare is here reached. The faults, which become visible
from the second act on, are the following. The tragic centre of the whole action
lies behind us, and what elsewhere in Shakespeare's works is wont to affect us so
irresistibly, instead of growing upon us, is here rather presupposed. The dramatic
knot of the piece is the murdered father of the hero. After the Ghost has related
the fearful story, nothing more remains for the stage.
[Page 8.] In Act II, as soon as Polonius produces the mad love-letter, the reader,
still under the influence of Act I, feels as much puzzled about Hamlet as the latter is
afterwards about himself, and we see, instead of the youthful chivalric prince, bound
to avenge his father, nothing more than a hypochondriacal misanthrope, — nay, to say
it boldly in one word, but yet not too strongly, nothing but a life-wearied stage-
manager. For that from now on the poet entirely forgets the hero of his fable, and,
with all the bitterness at his command, entertains us with his own personal trials,
who can for a moment doubt? That the complete transformation and destruction
of the first plan of the piece made a different and yet powerful impression upon his
public is readily understood: there is nothing here but the contest of the hour
against all his antagonists, — against the actors who reduced him to despair, against
the poets who were jealous of him, against the public who neglected his works and
ran after a troop of children and dancers, — in fine, against everything which could
make such a sensitive and poetic nature miserable.
Comparing the piece as it now stands with the first Quarto, we come to the con-
clusion that the scheme of the work was from the beginning wrongly contrived — i.e.
undramatically ; but only upon repeated amplifications did the ill adjustments of
the parts become really visible; the poet then indulged himself in elaborating with
h'3 rich genius single scenes, which took weight and energy from the coloring
given them, standing in no relation to the lightly-planned dramatic motives of the
piece; but these last he left as they were. The power with which details are carried
out overpowers the hearer so entirely that he finds himself more and more caught
in the magic circle of the poem, and comes at last to find pleasure in the purely im-
possible.
29t> APPENDIX
L. KLEIN (1846)
{Berliner Modenspiegel, 1846.*) — There is no drama, as all the world knows, upon
which so much has been written as Shakespeare's Hamlet. Quick-witted heads
(Herr Rotscher's excepted) have 'all had their say about it. After all sorts of
fashions, lofty, profound, radical, superficial, polished, crude, desultory (Hen
Rotscher's lucubrations not excepted), it has been sestheticised about, romanced
about, dogmatized about, bemastered, berated, cut up, quibbled at, be-Hegeled, and be-
Rotschered. A critical tower of Babel of amazing height and breadth has been reared,
and for the same purpose as in the Scripture : to scale celestial heights, and, as
people see, with the same result. The celestial heights remain unsealed. A glib
little sophomore [Schulfuchs) clambering up over the shoulders of Goethe, Gans,
Tieck, and others, has reached the loftiest pinnacle of the tower, and there he is
waving high in the air a school-programme with the device, ' The Nothingness of
Reflection^ but showing only the nothingness of his own reflection ; for his motto
assumes that the all-powerful imagination of Shakespeare was impregnated by a
miserable scholastic abstraction that has not virility enough to engender anything.
It assumes that it was Shakespeare's design to portray in Hamlet a German half-
professor, all tongue and no hand, for ever cackling, and hatching nothing, like a
dog wagging his tail at the sound of his own barking, whom one would fain help
out of his dream, like Polonius, with a 'Less art and more matter!' It assumes
that Shakespeare had in mind a pedant who perchance likes to scrawl flourishes
and arabesque abstractions in the school-room dust, but who is found at heart to
be good for nothing when summoned to action, to the business of life, instantly
losing all presence of mind, darting now here and now there, bobbing now to the
right and now to the left, instead of doing, trying how not to do, running from cook
to tapster, from shop to shop, hoping thus, with the devil's aid, to make his hobby
go, — in the end, however, bringing nothing to pass, but at the last, as at the first,
hanging, silly dunce that he is, tangled in ' the nothingness of reflection' of his own
brain. In the place of the prolific genius of the most original of poets, there is
foisted upon us that dogmatic art-criticism which ignores life and history alike, the
mere shell of a great system, but barren and impotent; an empty scholastic formula,
a stereotyped phrase. The Fortunatus cap of the latest metaphysic is drawn so com-
pletely over Shakespeare's ears that the poet is hidden under it, and becomes in-
visible. His conceptions are covered all up with a web of metaphysical phrases of
the Hegelian stamp, with very modern fringes and facings of the livery of the
school; so furious is the rage against all modern notions of poetry. Does Aristotle's
Art of Poetry wear philosophism pinned on its sleeve ? Does Lessing's Draniaturgie
deal in metaphysical scholastics, or in solid coin rather? But a birch-rod rider,
tricked out with scrappy abstractions, fashions Hamlet right scientifically, and makes
him show himself to be the schoolmaster, the turner out of formulas, befooled by
phrases, a Do-nothing, a ruminating theorist, a moral weakling, whose tragic end it is
to die of an undigested Hegelian catchword. It is proved also, from the Hegelian
Bible, that Shakespeare was a right orthodox Hegelian, who created Hamlet in
strict accordance with the orthodox doctrine of identity. It was the split between
thought and action, that, according to the Hegelian idea, Shakespeare had in mind
• I am indebted to Mr Mbcrt Cohn, of Htr'.in, for a MS copy of thli extract. Ed.
KLEIN 297
in Hamlet ! According to a ready-made category of Hegel's stamping, Hamlet was
fashioned ! But let tlie stamp go ! How about the split ? How ? \N'hy, does not
every word 'n the play speak of this split ? Does not the essence of the tragic lie
in this hunting down of thought and act, this hide and seek of willing and doing,
sclf-stmging at one moment, and then limp, languishing away into lazy melancholy ?
O strange, strange, supremely strange ! The tragic ? The comic, you mean ! . . . .
[In thus inserting the above extract, I have broken my rule of admitting no
criticism on fellow-critics. The temptation was too strong for me. The fun is too
sparkling to be lost; even those against whom it is directed cannot feel hurt, I
imagine, but will be ready to join the laugh. Besides, this extract is introductory to
the position which is taken in the next extract, wherein is found the germ of that re-
markable theory which has been lately very fully developed by Werder. Lastly, it
IS with no slight pleasure that I am able to give so good a specimen of the brilliant
style of a writer too little known here and in England, whose forthcoming volume
on the English Drama is eagerly looked for. Ed.]
The tragic root of this deepest of all tragedies is secret guilt. Over fratricide,
with which history introduces its horrors, there rests here in this drama a heavier
and more impenetrable veil than over the primeval crime. There the blood of a
brother, murdered without any witness of the deed, visibly streaming, cries to
Heaven for vengeance. Here the brother in sleep, far from all witnesses or the
possible knowledge of any one, is stolen upon and murdered. And how mur-
dered? 'With juice of cursed hebenon in a vial, and in the porches of my ears
did pour the leperous distilment.' Murder most secret, murder, as it were, in its
most primitive shape, murder in^-isibly committed ; the most refined privy murder,
the most subtle regicide ; a thief-like murder, such as they only commit who steal a
crown. The victim himself is all unconscious. He slumbers in unsuspecting repose ;
upon his securest hour murder steals. And as the eye of the murdered king is for
ever closed, so is the eye of discovery sunk in the sleep of death. In the ear
were poured some drops of poison, and with the ear of the murdered man the ear
of the world is deadened. For this deed of blood there is no human eye, no
human ear. TTie horror of this crime is its security ; the horror of this murder is
that it murders discovery. This globe of earth has rolled over it. The murdered
man is the grave of the murder. ' O horrible, O horrible, most horrible I' Ch-er
the first fratricide the blood of the slain cries for vengeance. This murdered brother,
dispatched without a trace, has no blood to cry woe ! o/er him, except his blood in the
ideal sense, his son. But ' Oh, cruel spite !' the blood of the murdered father cries
in the son, and only in the son. This Cain's deed is known to no one but the mur-
derer, and to Him who witnesses the murderer's secret remorse. The son has no
other certainty of the unwitnessed murder than the suspicion generated by his ardent
filial love, the prophecy of his bleeding heart, ' O my prophetic soul !' — no other con-
viction but the inner psychological conviction of his acute mind ; no other power of
proving it but that which results from the strength of his strong, horror-struck under-
standing, highly and philosophically cultivated by reflection and education ; no
other testimony than the voice of his own soul inflamed and penetrated by his filial
affection ; no other light upon the black crime hidden in the bosom of the murderer
than the clear insight of his own soul. . Vengeance is impossible, for its aim hovers
in an ideal sphere. It falters, it shrinks back from itself, and it must do so, f'jr it
lacks the sure basis, the tangible hilt; it lacks what alone can justify it before God
and the world, material prcof. The act being unpi ivable has shattered the power to
298
APPENDIX
act. In this tragedy the centie of gravity in the conscience is displaced. It lies in the
soul of him who is to punish the crime, not, as in the other tragedies of Shakespeare,
in the soul of him who ha^ committed the deed. This change of the ' spectrum ' is
the ghostly point of the tragedy, and one of the most terrible consequences of the
assassination, indeed the most terrible ; the all-ruinous crime destroys even the pun-
ishment ; like the sword of Pyrrhus in the speech of the player, it ' seemed i' the
air to stick. And like a neutral,' between power and will, it does nothing. The
nature of the crime has, as it were, paralyzed vengeance, which grows not to execu-
tion, because, in collision with the unprovable deed of blood, it is shattered to pieces,
— its wings are broken. The soundless, silent deed has blasted vengeance itself and
struck it dumb. The vengeance of the son, — O horrible ! — must thus be the seal of
the murder of the father. His power to act festers in contact with the secret ulcer
of the crime, and the poison, which with sudden effect wrought upon the pure blood
of the father, works on in the son, and corrodes the sinews of his resolution.
But how then ? Is the subjective, moral conviction which, for the popular sense,
is reflected from without by the poet in the Ghost, — is not this motive suflScient to
give wings to the revenge of the son ? Is not this inner conviction the catchword,
' the cue to passion,' which must spur him on to take public vengeance upon a crime
which no one suspects but himself? No! if Hamlet is not to be pronounced by all
the world to be what he feigns, stark mad. No ! if he is not to appear to all Den-
mark, with all its dignitaries and nobles at its head, otherwise than a crazy homi-
cide ; not though he appeals ten times over to the • Ghost ' that appears to him ;
not unless he would appear to be that which he undertakes to punish, a parricide !
No ! if he would not appear in his own eyes as a black-hearted John-a-dreams,
as a visionary, a crazy ghost-seer; he the free-thinking, knightly prince, with his
powerful understanding. In the nature of the crime, I repeat, the solution of the
riddle is to be sought. The assassination, for which there is no evidence to satisfy the
popular mind, is the veil of the tragedy. The quality of the deed necessitates the appa-
rent inaction of Hamlet and his subtle self-tormenting ; they come not from cowardice
nor any native weakness of character, not from an idle fondness for reflection.
It is the only one of all Shakespeare's tragedies in which the crime to be avenged
lies outside of or beyond its sphere. In Hamlet, Shakespeare has illustrated his
great historical theorem by modes of proof different from those employed in his
other tragedies : that punishment is only gu'lt developed, the necessary consequence
of a guilt voluntarily incurred. As the genius possessing the profoundest insight
into human history, it was incumbent on him to set the truth of this dogma above all
doubt in a case in which no outward sensible sign appeared against a deed of blood.
The dogma, that • Foul deeds will rise though all the earth o'erwhelm them to men's
eyes,' is proved here with fearful import. By this fundamental idea is Hamlet to be
explained. This it is that renders the portraiture clear. The tragic action is here
the hot conflict of the divining mind with an invisible fact. Hamlet's apparent in-
action is a prodigious logic {Dialektik). His supposed weakness has in reality the
character of the heroic pathos of the antique tragedies, for here as there this weak
ness is a stormy struggle against the overwhelming pressure of an imposed expiation;
the atl Icticism of a bitter agony every moment at its utmost tension, and this is the
real ai ion, the movement in the tragedy, but which our prating critics have not
learned, who are in criticism just such shovellers as the Gravedigger, and know
nothing more of whyt action consists in than that it is action at work, action
uispUching business Argai, in Hamlet nothing less is personified than 'the fault
HOFFMANN— GER VINUS 299
of the theorising consciousness,' which is unable to act, even were it run throogfa
with a spit (gespiesst).
HOFFMANN (1848)
{Stttdien zu Shakespeare's Hamlet. Archiv fiir das Studiam der neueren Sprachen,
1848, p. 394.) — To each form of the query, whether Hamlet's madness were real or
pretended, one may say yes and no. If by madness be understood the want of
consciousness, Hamlet was by no means insane. His self-consciousness is rather
increased and made more keen. It might be said that he had become all con-
sciousness. The particular becomes to him the universal ; while he analyzes life,
he takes in view only what is peculiar, and then flings it into the abyss of despair,
in which his own life perishes. But if madness be the want of freedom, the ruin
or the restriction of the active powers, then may the prince be said to be insane.
He himself sees that he has no power over his actions ; on this ground he explains
to Laertes the death of Polonius. A lie in this case would have been as mean as it
was inconsistent with his whole character. All who have had occasion to observe
the insane know that such a fettering of the will may easily co-exist with great
uprightness and a morbid keenness of insight and judgement. Only, indeed, there
is usually observable that obstruction to freedom of action which is called a fixed
idea. In Hamlet there is certainly nothing of this kind. Its place is supplied by
his deep melancholy, which, like a heavy veil, lies over all things, and deadens
their natural colors.
[Page 412.] In the business with the players, the shattered soul of Hamlet has
its longest respite from the torments which continually beset it, and the introduction
of the court-play is the only thing m which, during the whole piece, Hamlet shows
some degree of interest. This act alone, contradicting all the rules of prudence,
appears in a moment to decide the fate which, all resistance notwithstanding, leads
the royal house to destruction. It increases the remorse of the King almost to
distraction.
Into the scenes with the players, Shakespeare, it seems to me, has put his whole
soul. How small, how mean does the theatre in all its exterior conditions appear, —
a plaything of the great, an amusement of fops, subject to the fickle humors of the
ignoran; rabble ! And then again, how mighty in its effects, how great in its aim,
from the speech of the player, who is so deeply moved by the imaginary griefs of
Hecuba that his emotion communicates itself to his whole body, and with silent re
proaches punishes Hamlet for being so quiet under the greatest real injuries, to thost
deeply significant words upon the nature of Art !
How noble and how strong must have been the soul which, under all these exteriot
and apparently vulgar circumstances, kept so lofty an aim immovably in view, and,
in pursuing the same, solaced himself over the riddles and contradictions of lite
which, as this work especially shows, no one felt so deeply as himself.
DR G. G. GERVINUS (1849)
[^Shakespeare Commentaries, 1849; trans, by Miss Bunnett, 1863, ii, 126.) — 'When,
surprised by the tidings of Ophelia's death, Hamlet hears Laertes's ostentatious
lament over her grave, a storm of passion rises within him, and finds vent in a bursl
ti. exaggerated language. By this excess of excitement Hamlet blunts the edge of
300 APPENDIX
purpose and action, which the habitual tardiness of his nature renders dull ; he
alternately touches the chords of the two different moral themes of the drama:
namely, that intentions, conceived in passion, vanish with the emotion ; and that
human will changes, and is influenced and enfeebled by delays.
[Page 134.] We become acquainted with Hamlet as the friend and judge of act-
ing, as a poet and a player. He has seen the players before, and has had closer
intercourse with them ; he inserts a passage in the piece they are playing ; he de-
claims before them; he gives them instructions. His praise of the fragment of
Pyrrhus, sustained in the old Seneca-like style, is perfectly serious ; it distinguishes
him from Polonius, whom a jig pleases better. This, as well as his instructions to
the players, exhibits him as a man of cultivated mind and taste, as the judge whose
single appreciation is worth more than that of all the rest of the theatre. It is,
therefore, natural that the idea should occur to him of 'catching' the King's
conscience in a play ; he seeks, as it were, an ingenious revenge, and to accomplish
this under the touching effect of the presence of his conscience-stricken mother had
evidently a kind of theatrical charm for him. When this trial of the King by means
of the play succeeds, it is extremely characteristic that it is not the fearful evidence
of the crime which occupies him at first, but the pleasure in his skill as actor or
poet ; not the result so much, as his art which has effected it. ' Would not this,'
are his first words, ' get me a fellowship in any cry of players ?' This question,
still more than the performance itself, would certainly appear to mark his aptitude
for the position. It is from this same inclination of Hamlet's, as much as from his
character, that he adopts the strangely indirect course of feigning himself mad ; and
that he is able to sustain his part naturally and ingeniously. He had the power of
disguising himself artfully and artistically, and of skilfully remaining his own
master behind the mask, averse as he is to dissimulation in life.
Immediately after the departure of the Ghost, still agitated by the apparition,
he receives his friends with a falcon-call, as if in the most joyful mood, and knows
how to conceal his emotion at first as well as his secret at last. To imagine himself
in the position of the player, and on all occasions to study ' the word,' is a natural
trait, resulting from his intellectual life and pursuits. He goes with a kind of joyful
preparation to rouse his mother's conscience by a moral lecture and a flood of im-
pressive eloquence, to speak daggers rather than to use them, whilst he neglects the
deed of vengeance, which would of itself have gained his object. When Laertes
bursts forth in the bombastic outpouring of his brotherly grief, he receives it as a
challenge for a war of words. Hamlet is aware of the fault in himself; he recog-
nizes it as a hindrance to his active emotion, and blames it in himself with the same
vehemence as he declaims against the conscientiousness of his cowardice and the
cowardice of his conscience.
[Page 144.] He appears to us as an idealist, unequal to the real world, who, re-
pelled by it, not only laments in elegiac strains over its deficiencies and defects, but
grows embittered and sickly about it, even to the injury of his naturally noble cha-
racter. If Hamlet on the side of his sensibility is an anticipation of the feeble
generation of the former century, on the side of this bitterness of feeling he is a
type of our German race at the presenf day. And this it is which has made Hamltl
the most known of all Shakespeare's plays, and the most discussed among us for
now nearly a hundred years; because the conditions of the soul, which are here
depicted, seem to us the most expressive and the most living. We feel and see our
own selves in liim, and, in love with out ow^ def ciencies, we have long seen onlf
GERVINUS—ECKARDT—VEHSE 301
the bright side of this character, until of late we have had a glimpse of its shadows
also. We look upon the mirror of our present state as if this work had first been
written in our own day ; the poet, like a living man, works for us and in us in the
same way as he intended to do for his own age.
[Page 151.] The conversation between Hamlet and Ophelia, in III, i, affords the
actor scope sufficient to intimate indirectly the nature of Hamlet's feelings for
Ophelia. It is the farewell of an unhappy heart to a connection broken by fate ; it
is the serious advice of a self-interested lover, who sends his beloved to a convent
because he grudges her to another, and sees the path of his own future lie in hope
less darkness.
[Page 152.] At Hamlet's first advances, Ophelia, inexperienced and unsuspicious,
has given him her heart ; she has been free in her audience with him, so that neigh-
bors jjerceiving it have warned the family, and the family have warned her ; his
conversation with her is equivocal, and not as either Romeo, Bassanio, or even
Proteus, have spoken with their beloved ones. This has affected her imagination
with sensual images, and inspired her in her quiet modesty with amorous passions ;
this is seen in the songs which she sings in her madness, and in the significant
flowers which she distributes, as clearly as anjrthing so hidden in its nature can and
may be unveiled .
DR L. ECKARDT (1853)
^ yorUsungftt Uber Shakespeare's Hamlet. Aarau, 1853, p. 8.) — Faust is the great
poem upon tfie opposition and reconciliation of the divine and human natures
Hamlet is the great poem upon the opposition and reconciliation of necessity and
human freedom.
Thus Faust and Hamlet are the modem Titans, who, at war with the Christian
heaven, pile up each his colossus of thought, and at last perish on the ruins of these
presumptuous structures. They teach humanity, renunciation.
[Page 41.] Hamlet is a character of the North, where all life is more earnest and
intense ; where man has to rise out of a deeper soul, in order to get into contact
with the outer world ; where, consequently, the danger is far more imminent of
sinking one's self in the objects one sees around him, and all the more, as in scant
sunlight and under cloudy skies all things are perceived in a gloomier aerial per-
spective. The South leads us out of ourselves; the North fosters subjectivity, sepa-
rates us more from Nature, withdraws us from external impressions, causes us to
grow up in a one-sided way, too much engrossed with ourselves. The flute Ls an
instrument of the North, which in sweet solitude breathes its soul into it; it there-
fore does not surprise us to find the flute in the hands of Hamlet. He certainly
knew how to make it speak. He who prefers this instrument shows a thoughtful
spirit and a self-contented imagination. It is not pain which the flute expresses, but
a sigh for love, a sweet earthly desire, a longing such as may steal over the happiest.
But a happy, inner life it was that blest the young Hamlet [&c. &c.].
DR EDUARD VEHSE (1854)
{Shakespeare a Is Protestant, Poliiiker, Psyckolog. Hamburg, 1854, vol. i, p. 293.)
— Hamlet is the poesy and tragedy of the melancholic temperament just as Lear is
erf the choleric. Hamlet is the drama that utters the most startling, the most touch*
302 APPENDIX
ing, the saddest truths ovei this deep riddle, this fearful sphinx, called life,— <i
drama that reveals to us what a heavy burden this life is when a profound sorrow
has robbed it of all charm.
[Vol. ii, 141.] In Hamlet's character the melancholic temperament is the natural
pedestal whereon his moral figure rests. It is not to be denied that phlegm must be
reckoned as an element of this melancholic temperament. Hamlet is a phlegmatic
Northman. His sadness, 'his weakness and his melancholy,' for which he upbraids
himself, are the essential elements of his activity, or rather of his very decided in-
activity. His phlegm is a recurring product of his melancholy, and he constantly
recurs to his melancholy over this phlegm. However deep may be the philosophy
which his meditating soul evolves while watching the compass of the times, and dis-
cerning something rotten in the state of Denmark, his melancholy temperament for
ever keeps him from letting his sails fill with the powerful wind of passion.
F. KREYSSIG (1858)
( Vorlesungen uber Shakespeare, 1858. Berlin, 1862, vol. ii, p. 235.) — From tnc
rich troop of his heroes, Shakespeare has chosen Hamlet as the exponent, to the
spectators and to posterity, of all that lay nearest to his own heart. It is Hamlet to
whom Shakespeare has confided his confession of faith as an artist. Through him
the opponents of the Globe Theatre get their lecture, the boys of St. Paul's, ' little
eyases, who cry out on the top of question, and are most tyrannically clapped
for 't.'
The public also is made to know how by its bad taste it encourages falsehood,
how it delights in scandal, in passages in which poet and actor maul their opponents.
In his talk with the players, Shakespeare makes Hamlet utter his own deepest con-
victions. He puts in Hamlet's mouth the finest, most striking, in all simplicity the
wisest, things, that have ever yet perhaps been said upon the actor's art,
[Page 239.] The whole interest is concentrated, so to speak, on the interior of
the drama, on the soul's life of the hero. In opposition to most of Shakespeare's
tragedies, it is the conflict of duties in its labyrinthine windings, which engrosses us,
far more than the pathology of passion lifting existence from its foundations. When
It is considered that Shakespeare was about to write Hamlet when the opposite
solution of a similar conflict in Julius Casar was still fresh in his mind, and at the
very time when, in the comedy As You Like It, he poured forth the whole rich
humor of a soul in full harmony with itself and with life, one must needs be amazed
at an objectivity, at a sovereign command of creative force, which appears to pa.ss
ihe natural boundaries of human power.
[Page 250.] According to my view, wrong is done to the poet in dignifying Ham-
let's relation to Ophelia by the sweet and honorable name of love. It were more like
an lago, than like the highly-gifted, tender prince, thus to treat one who had formerly
l)een an object of genuine deep devotion; there must have been some cause which
in times past was suflScient to convert love into hate. And in Ophelia, i\s well as in
Hamlet, hardly a trace is to be discerned of that which would indicate a tragic love.
Kven that love-letter which the obedient daughter handed over to papa is anything
but a passionate outburst of love from a man as tender and refined and warm-hearted
OS Hamlet. Every doubt on the suliject is set at rest by that t4te-i-tfite before the
rourt-play begins. How could a man of Hamlet's scope and culture, even in private,
to behave towards a girl whom he had once really and deeply loved, and whose
KREYSSIG—STOBFFRICH 303
holiest feelings he thus purposely outraged ? Only Jove turned to hate is capable of
such refined cruelty, not love merely grown cold under alien influences.
[Page 263.] The horrible harvest of death in the fifth act shows that aimless
weakness, even though clad in the finest garb of intellectual keenness, spreads around
far more misery than the most inconsiderate violence.
D. B. STORFFRICH.*
{^Psychologische Aufschlusse uber Shakespeare's Hamlet. Bremen, 1859.) — [This
author examines the tragedy on psychological principles, and finds that although
Hamlet's spiritual organization is the centre around which the drama revolves, yet the
range of this spiritual organization includes not Hamlet alone, but all the other cha-
racters, so that the whole drama presents a group of sharply-defined psychical figures.
The psychological traits which characterize this group have their origin in the false
moral atmosphere of the Danish court, clothing each one's inner nature with a false,
sham character, or, as Shakespeare expresses it, ' a frock or livery that aptly is put
on.' Everywhere throughout the drama we find clear references to this hollow life :
' That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain ;' * My most seeming virtuous
queen ;' * You call your ignorance your wantonness,' &c. Except in monologues,
in asides, in extreme excitement, in madness, where the true character is displayed,
in feigned madness behind which Hamlet masks himself, — nowhere are words the
direct outpourings of the soul. The only exceptions are Horatio and Fortinbras,
The key to Hamlet's character, Storf&ich, in common with many English critics,
finds in * the vicious mole of nature,' I, iv, 36, and also in * the dram of eale,' which
Apparently does not present the same difficulties to the German as to the English
mind.
Storffrich thinks that when Polonios undertakes to read to the King and Queen
Hamlet's letter to Ophelia, he adroitly interpolates the words, *in her excellent
white bosom these.' The Queen, instantly detecting the deceit, asks, ' Came this
from Hamlet to her?' Polonius, disconcerted at being detected, replies, 'Good
madam, stay awhile; I will he faithful,' — and then reads the genuine letter.]
[Page loi.] Had the court-play been, even in Hamlet's own eyes, a means to a
predetermined goal, a circuit, no matter how roundabout, leading to some action, it
would have served Shakespeare to show how unpractical such a mode of proceeding
was ; had there been any course decided upon by Hamlet, which had to follow in
case the play was successful, then the task which was before him would have stood
revealed like a mountain overtopping all others. But the play was no more the
result of a well-concerted plan than was the feigned insanity ; there is no syllable
of an intimation whither it would lead Hamlet. It was a mere pretext to get the
very absolutest last [allerletzt-letzten) degree of certainty about his uncle's guilt. It
was the only way he knew to have that spoken by another which he dare not speak
himself. He wanted to make himself believe that he was going to do something.
[Page 109.] Here [where Hamlet kills Polonius], in the middle point of the
drama, Shakespeare offers us the key to it. Why is it that Hamlet, a man so rarely
gifted, at home in the highest realms of knowledge, so eloquent in his soliloquies,
should have been elsewhere so mute ? What is it that thus palsies the arm of a
* This is said to be a pseudonym for G. D. Bamstorff, vrbo is immortalized by his conjecture that
the * Mr. W. H.,' to whom the Stmnett are dedicated, is ' Mr. William Himselil' £o.
304 APPENDIX
man thus desperately thirsting for revenge? // is the ban which those near him lay
upon him, the psychic-physical ban tmder which the personal presence of others holds
him. Had not Polonius been behind the arras, or had Hamlet, on turning round at
the cry of ' Help !' caught sight of Polonius or the King, his arm would have abso-
lutely failed him. To Polonius he would merely have thrown a sarcastic remark-
To the King he would have behaved precisely as he did when they next met.
CARL ROHRBACH (1859)
\Shakespeare' s Hamlet erlaiitert, Berlin, 1859, p. II.) — When the Ghost actually
appears, Hamlet's whole being gathers itself up, and he not only fearlessly addresses
the apparition, he is even ready to follow it, and he actually does follow it in spite
of the opposition, even the active opposition, of his friends. But how does this
consist with his previous lack of resolution ? Perfectly well. Had there been any
serious thing to be done on the terrace, a battle to be fought, Hamlet would probably
not have gone there, and he -would have been * ill about his heart,' as before the
fight with Laertes. But it was only a Ghost that was to be conjured, and that did
not require in him so very much courage, especially as he saw at once that the
officers and his friends had stood face to face with the Ghost and suffered no harm,
and as he knew, moreover, that they would be at hand. So his following the Ghost
is explained. That his courage does not fail him when he stands before the Ghost
is natural ; like all weak men, he is obstinate ; the opposition of his friends only
makes him more and more set in his purpose.
[Page 13.] Upon the arrival of his friends Hamlet plays the madman, full of merri-
ment and jests. Thus quickly does his humor change, or, better, thus quickly is he
able to represent himself other than he is. He was a good actor, for his conduct with
his friends is a play, and he continues it subsequently before everybody. He feigns
to be crazy. What a pity he was bom to a throne 1 He would have made his for-
tune on the stage, and Polonius's praises of his speech to the players are certainly
just. Even the prince knows this perfectly well, and he is proud of it. He under-
stands such matters better than the performance of the smallest act. Had he reached
the throne, he would have been a crowned play-actor, and at his death he might
with justice have said with Augustus, * Clap, friends, for the play is over.'
But where does he begin his making believe insane ? We should think that he
would begin and end it with his uncle, and at all events with his mother. By no
means ! He begins it with the innocent Ophelia, who is not at all within the range
of his revenge. There, farthest off, he begins. His aim is for the east, but he steers
warily westward. And why ? out of cowardice !
[Page 15.] Observe how the hardness of his behavior towards Ophelia increases in
the different scenes. In spite of all this, he indulges in the most inflated phrases over
her coffin. This is heroic with a witness 1 And what else is it ? It is cheap, and
costs nothing but a little breath. And, so far as words go, Hamlet knows how to
act with distinction, as he boasts, at the grave, against Laertes.
[Page 16.] The celebrated soliloquy, ' To be or not to be,' to which much too much
value is commonly ascribed, as it is superior to the others [II, ii, 575, and IV, iv, 31]
in nothing save that it is altogether general, without anything personal in it, gives us a
new insight into his character. Hamlet fears death, or rather what comes after death,
— the unknown 1 One is amazed at the clearness and depth of his thoughts, and the
knowledge he shows of his own situation. He justifies himself, and then weakens
ROHRBACH 305
his justification by declaring it only a cover for cowardice. This soliloquy is often
called the point of the drama, probably because it is so purely philosophical, or because
it gives at the close the key-note of Hamlet's character. But, as has been said, alto-
gether too much importance has been ascribed to it, and why ? Because it begins
so like a conundrum : ' To be or not to be !' That sounds very interesting ! People
are peculiar, and have their fancies. Many do not know even what these words
specially mean, and think of the murder of the old Hamlet. When on the stage
this soliloquy is reached, it is observable that the audience instantly set themselves
to listen very attenrively to see how it is delivered. It has become a tradition to
consider this as the most important passage, and everybody knows the passage, that
is, the beginning of it. The interest taken in it decreases greatly towards the end;
there are no conundrums there
As to his feigned madness, prudent it certainly is not, for it draws upon him the
attention of the whole court. But still more strange is it, and a shot beyond the
mark, that he tells his three friends that he means to represent himself as crazed.
What was the use of that ? They might think him really crazy ! What harm would
that do him ? Was it not enough that they had vowed to him not to blab about the
Ghost ? Why let them into his secret ? But he always talks more than is necessary :
the very opposite of Qaudius. Besides, his madness would help to excuse him in
case he should kill his uncle. At all events, he can under this mask give free play
to his tongue, and that, and not the use of his hands, suits him above all things.
Were he a whole man and no weakling, and if he would go wisely to work, why
does he not at least keep his mouth shut ? * Meditation and the thoughts of love '
are not only quick, but also still and silent There is an inexhaustible consistency
in this work of Shakespeare's.
[Page 18.] Immediately after the play and Polonius's murder, the King, learning
from these events what was in Hamlet's mind, gives orders for Hamlet's execution.
He does not wait two months and a half, as Hamlet does after the appearance of the
Ghost, — not like a cat, that just for play lets the mouse run to and fro between hei
claws, to see it escape in the end, — but his first clutch is death.
[Page 20.] Immediately [after killing Polonius] Hamlet turns to his favorite busi-
ness, a thing for which he always has time and means, — namely, making a speech !
This time to his mother. He neglects his own special duty, — for so he regards it, —
perpetrates a murder, and then sets himself to read his mother a lecture upon the sixth
commandment. In so doing he falls, as always, to reviling his uncle, and when the
Ghost again appears to him, he can do nothing else but come down on his marrow-
bones. And his cause, which would animate stones, can draw from him nothing, at the
best, but • tears.' He does not see, or is not able to see, that his fate reminds him by
this apparition that it is the very time for action. As he knows that his departure is
fixed for the next day, he has not a minute to lose. But, instead of acting, he preaches
to his mother. He should have been, if not a play-actor, a preacher, as this scene
bears witness, for his sermon has hands and feet, and could not be better.
[Page 21.] On his way to the haven yet one last warning is sent him by Fate.
Fortinbras passes by on his march to gain honor by the conquest of a Polish village.
That ought to have startled the dreamy prince from his slumber, but nothing has any
effect upon him. As the second appearance of the Ghost is as unavailing as the
first, so this powerful warning, which he recognizes as such perfectly well, is of no
use; he still makes believe, still makes it plain in an ingenious soliloquy, which is
distinguished by its perfect repose, that he is a special coward ; recollects that for
Vol. II.— so
306 APPENDIX
the sake of both his parents he must stride on to revenge j and then he goes, — not
back to the court sword in hand, but, — on board ship for England, cheered on in his
thoughts, to seek for blood. As if he had no arms to his body wherewith at last to
make an assault ! Always his head, and only the head of him, is active. It is a
pitiable spectacle to see him so steadily plunging himself and others into destruction,
but the picture is, alas ! only too exactly taken from life. Hamlets there are by the
legion on this earth, — rare in North America, but in Germany more numerous.
And it is evident why so many people are unwilling to grant that Shakespeare meant
to portray in Hamlet a sickly talking hero, and are for regarding the prince, with
Ophelia for witness, as a model of manly virtue : they fight for their own skin !
Hence they style Fortinbras the gloomy heathenish barbarian, Hamlet the accom-
plished Christian, If Master William could hear them, he would probably open his
own work, and, pointing to it with his finger, ask, • Have you eyes ?'
[Page 26.] In concluding all that has been said of the chief person of the piece,
it is necessary briefly to recapitulate. Hamlet philosophises well, knows how to
speak, knows himself, can control himself (but does not always do it), has no self-
confidence and no courage ; from anything to be done shrinks back, especially if it
is to be done in the light of day. He loves night and its privacy. He is without
gratitude and love towards Ophelia, and shows this to coarseness. He is cruel and
vindictive, as seen in his murder of Rosencrantz and Guildenstem. He is child-
ishly silly at the grave of Ophelia, in that he does not tolerate Laertes's emphasis,
which does not concern him, as he was there unseen. He is a weakling. When he
says, * Frailty, thy name is woman,' he might have used his own name here. He is
the worthy son of his wordy father and weak mother. Ambitious he is not, or he
would not have allowed the crown to slip from him to his uncle. Neither was he
by nature desirous of glory, yet he was envious of the renown of others, as the King
twice intimates (IV, vii).
[Page 27.] Two opinions of his character may be adduced from the piece as ap-
pearing to contradict all this, — the judgment of Ophelia and that of Fortinbras. Let
us look into them. Ophelia strews rich praises over the loved one, and this is natural.
All that she says may be granted, and Hamlet remain the same. For she does not
speak of his defects ; she leaves out the heart. She praises his eye, good ! his tongue,
ay, indeed ! his arm, which is really skilful, only the driving force is wanting ! When
she calls him ' the flower of the state,' there is nothing to be said against that. If it
is not youthful admiration merely that renders her praise extravagant, why, then per-
haps Denmark had not at that time anything better to show. At least the piece shows
none (Fortinbras is a Norwegian), and Hamlet might thus be the best, 'the flower
of the state.' In a field of stinging nettles a solitary thistle is really a distinguished
sight. Everything on earth is relative ; and, moreover, in all countries and at all
times complete men are a great rarity. Just look around. When the most are only
tolerable, we must be content. Thus it is with the persons of the drama. Ophelia
says nothing of his courage, and therefore she is entirely right, and Hamlet is, in
spite of her praises, a weakling.
It stands otherwise with the judgment of Fortinbras. It rather pains me to refer
to this, because I would almost rather submit to the objection that the Norwegian's
opinion condemns as erroneous that which I have expressed above. But let it be
so. I must here lift a veil, and I know not but that Shakespeare would be angry,
were he here to perceive that in so doing I am giving my readers a sight of his
cards. But it is a truth which ought to sec the light, and as I have gone so far as
ROHRBACH 307
to say what I have said, in order to animate and enliven the right feeling for Hamlet,
I may as well go on. Whoever does not know what I am about to say will laugh
at this long introduction to a brief word, the worth of which, moreover, may seem
to be very small. For things of this sort have value, for the most part, in the eyes
of the finder and not in those of the buyer. Be it so. Fortinhras concludes the
whole with, ' Let four captains bear Hamlet, like a soldier, to the "stage; for he was
likely, had he been put on, to have proved most royally.* Here lies the pearl.
(Whoever perceives it may skip what follows.) First, observe that Fortinhras pro-
nounces no judgment ; he only makes a supposition. But let it be that it is a judg-
ment. He says, therefore : * Bear the prince to the stage, in order to exhibit the
corpse to the people, for were he alive and crowned, he would probably have proved
most royally.' This is the Norwegian's plain opinion ; he thinks nothing but good
of the prince, and now that he is dead, is all the more disposed to think so. I
look somewhat closer into tlie eyes of the youth; he turns aside and lifts his helmet,
as if he were hot. I see he has a mask, and, as he thinks no one sees him, he lifts
that also. Whom do I now see ? — Shakespeare ! He looks at me with a waggish
smile, and suddenly mask and helmet are again in their places. But this look says
infinitely much. Ought I put it into words ? ' Let fotur captains bear Hamlet, like
a soldier, to the stage, for he was likely, had he been put on, to have proved most
royally.' Bear Hamlet, like a soldier (not as a soldier), to the stage ; for had he
been placed there, had Fate called him to the stage instead of the throne, he would
have proved most royally. For that was he created. Such was the meaning of
the smile of the poet behind the mask, — and when ? At the eonclnsion of the
whole I It is as a seal set thereon. But, enough ; Fortinhras knows nothing of it,
and we would (ain seem to know nothing of it also. D'ye imderstand ?
[Page 92.] In obedience to the repeated urging of his friend, Horatio speaks to
the apporitioa. The apparition is ofiended. Why ? Because they do not take him
for a real ghost, but for a piece of mummery. The two Hamlets, father and son,
have their peculiar humors. The son is offended because in his presence another,
who does not, however, see him, talks big and vaunts himself, when he (Hamlet, Jr.)
can, as he thinks, do that sort of thing so much better ; and Hamlet, Sr,, is offended
because they won't believe he is a ghost when he is one. People, he thinks, ought
to have penetration enough, in spite of their studjang at Wittenberg, to see that he
is a genuine ghost from the other world. It is a point of honor with him to pass for
nothing else. Perhaps, also, his royal blood is up at the idea of being taken for a
common man imder a mask. And so when he is thus addressed, he is not going to
answer. When, however, Horatio calls him ' Ghost,' and speaks of the fate of his
country, then he observes that he is held to be a ' king ' and ' a ghost,' and he raises
his head and is about to speak. What a pity it is that just at that moment the cock
crows, and he has no time ! He should have come to the point sooner. Like father,
like son ; always too late ! On this occasion it is wounded vanity that causes the
loss of time. Shakespeare has here portrayed character with a minuteness that is
hardly to be described.
[Page 98.] Hamlet's first soliloquy, in I, ii, ends with, * But break, my heart ; for
I must hold my tongue,' — thus concluding, as with a prophecy which exactly fulfils
itself, the sad utterances of his pain. Indeed, at his death we hear these self-same
words, which refer back to this early scene and to his first appearance. After
Hamlet has talked much too much the whole drama through, he concludes, as after
this monologue, *-The rest is silence;'' whereupon Horatio says, 'There breaks a
308 APPENDIX
noble heart r Thus at the close sounds literally on the ear the echo from the be.
ginning. As in a good opera the last chord is the same as the first.
[Page 104.] Hamlet comes with Horatio to await the Ghost. He is not in a good
humor. He complains of the eager air and the nipping cold. It is, however, right
comfortable and warm and stirring where the King is, who honors Hamlet's com-
plaisance with a feast, the mention whereof by Hamlet sharpens our sense of the
still, weird darkness that surrounds Hamlet himself. The uncle is enjoying full
draughts of the pleasures of this world; the nephew is anxiously waiting for intelli
gence from the torments of the next.
[Page 107,] * I find thee apt.^ The iron was warm, but the old Hamlet was a
poor smith. Just think only of his long, useless introduction, his call to his son,
four times repeated, to hearken to him. He keeps so long mixing with the glowing
metal the ill-flavored fluid of wailing and emotion, that it runs cold and gray. He
tells of his torments, and if any one is disposed to doubt whether or not he be a
genuine ghost, the doubt will be set at rest by the botanical observation from the
nether world. Only an eye-witness can speak of the vegetation of the Lethean
wharf.
[Page 108.] Hamlet's railing expressions, after the Ghost has vanished, signify
nothing. They are a fire of straw, soon burnt out. For how otherwise could he
be so childish as to write down in his pocket-book what he is resolved not to forget,
— namely, that his uncle, in spite of his smile, is a villain ? He has only just said
that he will write down the command of the Ghost in the book of his brain, and
•wipe out and forget everything else. "Why then set down a general philosophical re.
mark in his pocket-book ? If, after such startling communications, one has composure
enough to make general remarks and write them down in his pocket-book, just as an
insect-collector catches and keeps a beetle that happens to come droning by, the
aforesaid communications cannot have made much of an impression. This peculiarity
of Hamlet's to bring out, under such circumstances, what he has learned at college,
he possesses in common with Horatio, — they both got it at Wittenberg, — who has
also learned, as we have remarked, that ghosts dread the crowing of the cock.
These Wittenberg students are a cold-blooded, phlegmatic folk, eager for learning.
When the house is burning over their heads, they consult the thermometer to ascer-
tain the degree of heat, or make observations on the consuming eflfect of the fire.
[Page 140.] There is here, moreover, a new little bit of art. Polonius acts the
spy upon his son with the help of his servant ; the King and Queen are spies upon
Hamlet with the help of Rosencrantz and Guildcnstern; the King and Polonius are
eavesdroppers to the prince with the help of Ophelia; then Hamlet and his mother
are spied upon in like manner; Hamlet is a spy upon the King with the help of
Horatio. It is the design of the poet. The people at the Danish court all resemble
one another. The Hamletian art is visible everywhere. It is a genuine race of
molclike pioneers.
[Page 158.] Hamlet, who has thus far always hesitated, now draws his sword for
the first time against the fratricide : ♦ Now or never !' might his good angel have
said to him; and his father's ghost appears once more just after; why not five
minutes sooner, behind the praying Claudius? But that would have been just at the
right time, and the Hamlets are always too late ! Shakespeare is fine in the web
he weaves : it is delightful to follow him.
[Page 162.] The King stands up, and has not really prayed; he still clings to the
world and its joys. Hamlet's scruples, therefore, were ill timed.
VISCHER 309
DR FRIEDR. THEOD. VISCHER (i86i)
{Kritische Gartge, Stuttgart, 1861. Zweites Heft, p. xvi.)— Hamlet's fault lies in
that twilight, into which every true tragic poet throws the fault of his hero. Though
•we are angry at Hamlet, yet we must pity him, and we know not which we must
feel the more ; we must gaze into that dark abjrss where responsible freedom and the
insuperable natural barriers of character are secretly confounded.
[Page XX.] I agree with Kreyssig and Gans in ascribing Hamlet's procrastination
to an excess in him of a reflective, meditative habit of mind : it is only necessary
that this point should be set forth more fully than has yet been done. By the way,
Kreyssig's analysis confirms me in the conviction, that I have done well to take the
part of the much-abused hero, and to show how Fate, while it condemns him, justi-
fies him also; for how wretchedly is the poor, hesitating youth represented, — as
sophisticated all over, a courtier without conscience, a frivolous prince, a bloated,
intellectual aristocrat ! No, this is not Hamlet ! In every stage of his distracted
condition the true Hamlet is always great, genuine, noble, one of those chastened
and chosen ones of the Lord, above whom we are to learn not to exalt ourselves,
and who are too good and too unfortunate for the world to appreciate.
[Page 73.] Hamlet lives in a world surpassingly bad; court-vermin, false show,
eye-service, lip-service, surround him on every side, and he sees the refinement of a
hollow culture allied to rude barbarous customs He was right in despising
such a world, and because it was his world, we can understand and pardon him
when he extends too widely his impression of loathing, and embraces the whole
world in his field of vision.
[Page 89.] Shakespeare has ventured to make, as the central figure of a drama, a
hero who is for ever hesitating and delaying. The success of this bold attempt is
commonly ascribed to the fact that the more the hero hangs back, the more does his
environment press him on, until at last, while it crushes him, it drives him, never-
theless, to the goal. This is certainly the one great crisis whereby a tragedy with
such a hero becomes possible. It is, as it were, a huge screw, ever turning closer
and closer in, and compelling the passive hero at last to such reaction that both
the screw and its victim, all are crushed and shivered into atoms together. It
is a horrible machine, in which the cog-wheels, running in opposite directions,
catch in one another, and steadily and straightly work out the course of fate. But
this is not all ; in this view a hero, always shrinking back, would still be undramatic.
Shakespeare has taken still another way to make a drama out of such unusual mate-
rials. He has given to his hero all the fire and force consistent with his keeping to
his dilatory gait. Look more closely at the man, and you discern a nature passionate,
violent, relieving itself in fierce ebullitions, stem, occasionally, even in its frenzy,
malicious. Hamlet is a volcano, only, as we may indeed see, his violence is inward,
not outward ; outwardly he emits merely many-colored, tantalizing lights, sparkles
of wit, even sharp lightning-flashes, and from time to time the deadly lava-stream
bursts forth with fatal effect, while the inner rumble and roar is always heard, telling
us that the pent-up force can find no outbreak.
[Page 98.] I see a tender violet, a sincere, modest German maiden, a thoroughly
Northern woman's nature, poor in words, shut up in herself, unable to bring the.
deep rich heart to the lips ; she is kindred to Cordelia and Desdemona, and in these
three I beheld the veiled beauty of the soul. The life ineloquent enhances their
310 APPENDIX
grace, their hidden wealth ; the concealed treasure is brought to light only by suffer-
ing, for they know not and speak not of it,— one must read between the lines. Still
waters are deep is true of Ophelia, and: no fire, no coal, so hotly glows, as the secret
love of which nobody knows. Thoroughly German, old German, is she in her
household relations. Her obedience as a daughter is implicit ; only to her brother,
who warns her, does she reply with that dry coolness which belongs to true natures,
and which is also apparent, in the first scenes, in Cordelia and Desdemona. We
know not what it costs her when she promises obedience to her father's stricter and
weightier authority. * I will obey, sir ;' further she says nothing, "What is passing
within her a good actress must tell us by a tone that reveals to us that under this
obedience her heart is breaking, when she says, • With almost all the holy vows of
Heaven.' In this patriarchal submission to her father, in this touching defenceless-
ness, this inability of resistance, which characterizes natures that are boundlessly
good and created only for love, she allows herself without demur to be used, when
she is sent in Hamlet's way, that they may talk together, while her father and the
King privily listen ; Hamlet, under the mask of madness, treats her rudely ; the
pure nobleness of her true, unstained tenderness speaks in the sorrowful words with
which the return of his gifts is accompanied ; unsuspicious, she believes in his feigned
madness; and then her pain breaks out into a lament that points to an abyss from
which comes no speech. The deepest tone of the heart, of which a voice is capable,
is demanded in this soliloquy ; there are few tragic passages sadder or more moving
than, « And I, of ladies most deject and wretched. That suck'd the honey of his
music vows.' If it ever can be said of a poetical creation that it has a fragrancy in
it, it is this picture of the crazed Ophelia, and the inmost secret of this bewitching
fragrancy is innocence. Nothing deforms her; not the lack of sense in her sense,
not the rude naivet6 of those snatches of song : a soft mist, a twilight is drawn
around her, veiling the rough reality of insanity, and in this sweet veil, this dissolving
melancholy, the story of her death is also told.
[Page 109.] Thinking alone never leads to action; there is no bridge from it to
the fulfilment of the thought. Thinking goes on in an endless line. When all is
thought out in regard to the deed to "be done, all that remains is to seize the right
moment. There comes a moment which appears to be the fit one. But who will
say that a succeeding moment may not be a fitter ? The idea of fitness is relative ;
thought seeks an absolutely fit moment, and there is none, it never comes. To him
whose inmost nature is given to thinking, the Now is formidable. In a decisive,
bold deed, what we specially admire is, that the man who ventures it has seized the
Now, taken his stand upon the knife-like edge of the Instant. The transition from
thinking to acting is irrational ; it is a leap, a jerk, a breaking off of an endless
chain. How does this leap become possible ? Through another force than thought,
but a force that must be connected with thought, — a force that is blind face to face
with thought, and which works unconsciously. This force no longer asks, whether
the moment may not be so favorable that a more favorable one may not be thought
of. Enough, it is favorable ; seize it then by the forelock, and up and away ! Have
I deceived myself? does the act miscarry? I cannot have any regrets, for I say to
myself, that under the circumstances, so far as human discernment reaches, I was
bound to regard that moment as the right one. It is only this venturous force that
gives resolution, expansion, so that the door at last flies open, and what is within
breaks forth as action, and becomes real
The absence of this force Hamlet calls dullness, beastly oblivion, and in a pre-
VISCHER 311
ceding soliloquy he says, 'I am pigeon-livered, and lack gall.' It is not true that
he lacks gall, but the gall does not flow out at the right moment upon the point
where it lifts the arm to strike, for that too much thinking of his is in the way, his
rage is not discharged with a duly measured thought into the act. After all that is
necessary has been thought out, his thinking is not, as it were, quenched in that
other force which is to actualize the thought.
[Page 1 1 1.1 That otlier force, into which thought should be lifted, we call in-
stinct ; we call it passion, or the native force of the mind : it is ultimately nature in
the mind. Passion, specially considered, Hamlet does not lack, but it is force in
the core of his being that is wanting. It accompanies thought in the organism of
our nature in endless forms ; an act arises only when the two meet at the right
moment, and thought is lost in an impulse of native force
Only just when the supreme interest, the one great object of his life, is concerned,
does Hamlet's nature waste away, caught in the net of thought, confined within the
charmed circle of reflection ; a proof, indeed, that the incongruity of thought and
instinct in him, — the fact that they never hit together — ^lies deeply seated in his
inmost organization.
[Page 131.] We have now found the positive reason why he resolves to wear the
inappropriate mask of madness, and thus is completed what we have said above.
As a means to his end it is wrong, but, in fact, it is not a means, but an object of his
own. It is Hamlet's taste to play the part of a fool ; it is a pleasure to him in itself.
First of all, because he delights in the theatre, in acting. He goes among play-
actors, he understands their art ; he has doubtless often had the pleasure of acting
himself. This is so perfectly human in him that nothing more need be said of it.
But the main thing is, that under this mask he can draw out the vermin of the court,
give free play to his wit, — that is his glory, and it is a still greater glory that he can
thus lash out freely, and parody the consciousness of his own madness. The earlier
English critics, with a narrowness in dialectic questions peculiar to the nation,
seriously entertained the query, whether Hamlet really were crazy. He is just as
insane as all men of genius are, who do not find that everything is so perfectly clear
to them as it is to ordinary heads ; just as insane as all deep natures are, in whom
particular faculties are developed in such strength that the harmony of their being
is disturbed, and Hamlet knows that, and yet cannot make it otherwise ; that is,
as he himself says, enough to drive one mad ; but he is not, therefore, mad in the
medical sense of the word; he knows infinitely more about himself than many a
critic who seeks to analyze him to his very heart and reins. In this sense, then, it
may be said of him, that he plays the fool because he is one.
[Page 136.] Justice to Hamlet demands that it should be clearly seen how easy
it is to say that the right is the higher union of the thinking and active powers, and
how hard it is to accomplish this union. One must take care what he is about in
demanding the higher unities. A man without depth may easily seize the right
moment, and act right ofl"j when the depth reaches a certain degree, then the
good fortune of this lightmindedness ceases. Men with brains have in their weak-
ness a strength which should well save them from ridicule ; we pity them, but in
their misfortunes there is a tragic greatness, which mingles reverence with our pity.
In Hamlet there has justly been found the tj-pe of the German character; ths
Frenchman, the modem Englishman, laugh at us for our irresoluteness. The former
is more lightminded, more versatile in his organization, and the latter narrower and
harder ; and both, while they ridicule us, have a dim suspicion that there is some.
312 APPENDIX
thing in us for which they have no plummet. Moreover, nations are not individuals.
The Hamlet, who is a people, will survive the ridicule, and there will come, per-
haps, a time when we may say, ' He laughs the longest who laughs last.' Briefly, a
genuine Hamlet-irresolution has exposed us to the laughter and contempt of the
rations: but when the Laertes, France, makes a lunge at us with the poisoned
dagger, then will the Hamlet, Germany, survive both the thrust and the counter-
thrust.^'
[Page 155.] The question has been asked, whether modern poetry can have a
tragedy of Fate after the false form of it, the imitation of the Antique, has been
entirely overcome. Here, without doubt, is such a tragedy, and a genuine one;
that is, such a tragedy of the kind as is, at the same time, a true tragedy of character
also. All is motived from within, from the actors and especially from the hero.
All teaches us that circumstances are stronger than man, the whole infinitely greater
than the individual, and yet that the whole of the circumstances is developed only
from individual men. Therefore it is, on account of the depth of this involution of
man and fate, that Shakespeare's most wonderful creation is his Hamlet.
PROF. DR A. GERTH (1861)
{Der Hamlet von Shakespeare. Leipzig, 1 86 1, p. 60.) — When Hamlet calls
Polonius a ' fishmonger,' he refers to the English proverb, • Fishes and guests smell
when they are three days old,' and means thereby to say that, since Polonius has
found out that a prince, without expectations and yet dangerous, is in love with his
daughter, he will probably barter her away as quickly as possible, with no more
honorable motives than a genuine fishmonger disposing of his wares.
[Page 74.] People now begin to talk. They suspect, they put things together,
they whisper, they tell of hints of fearful things ; the old king was a Hercules, hale
and hearty, — such a man does not die from merely sleeping in the garden (for
nobody believes the story of his being bitten by a serpent), — and, since he thus lives
in all hearts, the excited people now see him ; his ghost walks ! But the people, that
is, the watch, the friends of Hamlet, tell him of it. Thus the prince receives the
idea of the Ghost at secondhand, but the nearer he was to it, in the fever-heat of
his own suspicions, the more powerfully does it seize hold of him "and possess him.
Tlius it comes to him from without, and yet it is within, in his own mind. To others
it has appeared and vanished in silence eight times ; to him alone it speaks. Why ?
because, while the others are moved only by grief and love, he has thoughts ot
vengeance.
[Page 77.} The poet thus gives us the voice of the Ghost, by no means as a voice
speaking with divine authority, but rather presents the whole apparition, as an illusion
of the mind of his hero, rendered vivid to him by reports from without.
[Page 99.] This word ' slings * [' the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune '] sig-
nifies the strong cables or chains which are bound round the buoys, commonly barrels^
that float upon the surface of the water, holding fast the anchors to which they are
attached. They serve, first, when a ship has let slip her anchor, to mark the place
where she may find it again, and, secondly, to mark shoals or reefs. Imagine such
a buoy afloat, tossing on the water, and you will perceive how well the poet indi-
cates Hamlet's constrained situation in the midst of his stormy passions. The picture
• When the date of the above ts hoted, it has a ring of prophecy. Ed.
GER TH—SCHIPPER
(^
is continued in the line following : • To arm oneself against a sea of troubles.' " The
arrows are consequently the missiles which, like the vultures of Prometheus, all
the more painfully lacerate the hero fast bound with slings.
[Page lo6.] Hamlet's coarse sarcasttis, addressed to Ophelia in the presence of
the King and Queen, are nothing more than an intentional parody of the * wicked
wit ' with which Claudius inflamed the amorous Queen,
DR L. SCHIPPER (1862)
{^Shakespeare s Hamlet. Munster, 1862, p. 58.) — ^The morally reflective character
of Hamlet, looking at things on all sides, the character which the poet has kept
always before us and portrayed with the greatest care in every word and deed,
would be departed from at the very point of accomplishing the one great task of
•setting right a world out of joint,' had Hamlet thought only of assassinating
Claudius, and not of a purely moral expiation of the crime. Had Shakespeare re-
garded the murder of the murderer as the sole business of Hamlet, had he wished
to show in what a hesitating, irresolute, tortuous manner Hamlet proceeded to ac-
complish it, — had such been the poet's purpose, why is it that, throughout the whole
tragedy, only one single opportunity appears, and that only for one moment, favor-
able for the commission of the deed, — an opportunity which, moreover, for good
reasons, and not for lack of resolution, Hamlet lets pass unused ? Several oppor-
tunities might easily have been introduced, of which Hamlet might have been rep-
resented as refusing, without sufficient reasons, to avail himself, and which would
have shown him to be an incorrigible and vacillating procrastinator. This simple
fact, that Shakespeare has not introduced a single opportunity of the kind, may well
satisfy us that it is not the design of the piece to show that Hamlet's delay proceeded
from want of resolution. [On the contrary, incidents are introduced, showing with
what promptness and energy Hamlet could act. Trans.] A satisfactory solution
of this point is found in the supposition that the poet intended, as the task imposed
upon Hamlet, something more than a simple assassination. The punishment which
Claudius in full measure merited, and which poetic justice demanded, was that for
his wickedness and hypocrisy he should, so to speak, be publicly put in the pillory,
and that, finally, for seduction he must be deprived of the love of her whom he had
seduced, and for murder and usurpation must lose both crown and life, all that he
had sought to secure.
[Page 67.] Thus while in the course of the action of the piece, there is no evi-
dence of indecision or hesitation on the part of Hamlet, neither does the final
accomplishment of his aim furnish any proof of the kind. The task is * to set the
world right,' i.e. to punish the hypocritical seducer and murderer; and the whole
course of the piece shows incontestably that this task is fully executed, and that it is
not left unfulfilled through any moral imbecility.
[Page 69.] Consequently, neither during the course of the action, nor in the com-
pletion of his task, with its attendant results, do we come upon any circum-
stance which justifies casting the slightest reproach upon Hamlet, on the score of
indecision in the punishment of the criminal. It may, indeed, be aiBrmed, if one
insists upon it, that the drama shows delay and hesitation ; but it is Claudius, most
obviously, who manifests this weakness. From the very beginning Claudius be-
lieves, and naturally too, that Hamlet alone is the sole obstacle in his way, and that
Hamlet alone is dangerous. Although his attempts to find out what Hamlet means
314 APPENDIX
often fail, and although he has already stained his hands with blood, yet he hesitates
for a long time to make any attempts upon Hamlet's life. This is the punishment
of wickedness, that it is blind and insensible to the nearest and most decisive oppor-
tunities, as experience often shows.
[Page 79.] Thus, in accordance with real life, our tragedy shows how the hypO'
critical seducer, and secret murderer, and plunderer of a crown, in consequence of
circumstances, comes to be suspected, and how he is completely unmasked and destroyed
by the retributive justice which never rests, and this mainly by the means which in*
iqiiity plans and uses for its own security.
PROF. DR J. L. F. FLATHE (1863)
[Shakespeare in seiner Wirklichkeit. Leipzig, 1863, vol. i, p. 28.) — Hamlet is
no sensualist. Of a decidedly opposite character does he appear to be.
[Page 31.] As we find no weak or cowardly Hamlet, neither is there here before
us a Hamlet so morbidly conscientious that he torments himself with moral consid-
erations, and is unable to free himself from them.
[Page 37.] The relation between Hamlet and Polonius is emphatically the most
important point in the tragedy Claudio [jzV] and his crime with its con.
sequences, and the vengeance which Hamlet seems resolved to inflict, stand in the
background in comparison with Polonius. This readily appears from the fact, that
long passages of the piece occur in which there is not a single mention of Claudio's
affair. Especially is this the case in Act II. There, Hamlet. has forgotten the
matter, and it would scarcely have recvirred to him had not an event in his outward
world recalled it.
[Page 42.] When once we begin to regard mankind and human life as an empty
nothing, a mere vapor without any connection with a higher world, it will not be
long before we come to look upon all thinking and doing in like manner, as without
use or purpose, whatever direction they take, whether to heaven or to hell. Lies will
run in the same line with truth, guilt rank with innocence, the one having no more
worth than the other, both being bound together by a common worthlessness. And
this is Hamlet's case, and must needs be so. And therefore it is that he declares
that nothing is good or evil in itself, — that it is only our thinking that makes it so.
[Page 47.] The family of Polonius have not thrown themselves on the side which
in the Danish court seeks only pleasure. They are ambitious of splendor and great-
ness. What they aim at stands perfectly clear before them. It is royal power and
majesty which they strive for. First of all, the love of Hamlet for Ofelia [j/<r] i»
to be used for this purpose. For the wise, moreover, everything that life and cir-
cumstances afford exists only to be taken advantage of. The family of Polonius \the
Polonii? Trans.] see Hamlet's sorrow over his father's early and sudden death.
It does not trouble them in the least, and they even hasten to prepare another sorrow
for him, which they have found out, as they imagine, to be necessary in order to
establish the daughter of the house in the king's palace. Their hearts are cased in
ice ; they care not for human sorrows ; their sole object is to succeed in their machv
nations.
But the old Polonius and his Ofelia have to pay dearly. Their sins break upoD
their own heads, and, through the very madness which they thought to have turned
to their advantage, they must go down into the darkness of the grave, where they
receive a stem answer to their question as to their dreams of earthly greatness.
FLA THE—FRIESEN '3 1 5
[Page 68.3 The whole conrse of the tragedy shows as clearly as light that
Polonius could sooner doubt the existence of the world than Hamlet's love for
Ofelia. This conviction, upon which hang all his royal hopes, is fixed firm as a
rock in his heart. Even when proof to the contrary storms upon him, he still clings
convulsively to this faith until he himself draws into his breast the fatal sword.
[Page 70.] The Polonius people speculate in Hamlet's sufifering. From the pain
of ahumanbeingthey would fain extract the splendor of their house. .... The one
purpose is to wring out of life, success. With useless sensibilities they have nothing
to do. Even Ofelia cares not for the grief of the youth whom she calls her lover.
On the contrary, she soon catches the aim and purpose of her father's talk, and feels
bat, in truth, it involves no great danger. On this account she does not complain
over the destruction of her royal hopes, but, dry and hard, she promises her father
her obedience The men of the family, so far as decency permits, make their
half-satanic calciilations vivi voce. Ofelia observes silence, and in silence carries
them out.
[Page 86.] As Rajrnaldo [«V] retires, Ofelia appears, terrified, as she herself says.
In no other part of the piece is it so plain as here that Ofelia is a traitress to the
sanctity of true love. She does not love Hamlet ; she orHy speculates in him, aims
through him at the throne. Had she loved him ever so lightly, she could not stand
there, frosty, cold, beholding his pain and even his madness. When in England
Ofelia has been regarded as a maiden as tender and sweet as if she had been made
op of rose-perfume and lily-dust, it is simply ridiculous, Ofelia is a frail creature
with a tragic fate.
[Page 151.] The reason is obvious enough why Ofelia became insane. The
death of her father by the hand of Hamlet put the fimshing stroke to her ambitious
hopes.
[Page 173.] Before the Queen dies, Laertes had thrust the poisoned sword-point
into Hamlet's breast. But the evil deed made his hand tremble, and he had to let
his sword drop. Hamlet let his sword fall, also, as he received his deathblow
Hastily seizing at the fallen swords, Hamlet caught hold not of his own, but of the
poisoned one, and Laertes received from Hamlet's hand the deadly blow in his boobv
{bubische) breast.
HERMANN FREIHERR VON FRIESEN (1864)
{Briefe uber Shakespeare's Hamlet. Leipzig, 1864.) — [In this admirable volume,
of over three hundred pages, will be found a thorough discussion of various topics
of interest pertaining to Hamlet, the sources of the plot, the state and corrupnons
of the text, the theatrical representations in England and Germany, German criticism,
an analysis of the characters, &c. &c. I know nowhere any single volume, not an
edition of the play itself, that contains more valuable matter relating to this tragedy.
To a German student it must be simply invaluable, I have already mentioned (p.
288) that V. Friesen adopts TiECK's and Ziegler's theory, that the soliloquy, ' To
be or not to be,' refers not to suicide, but to the hazard of an attempt on the life of
the King ; and on this interpretation v, Friesen lays great stress : • Because,' as he
says on p. 236, ' if we suppose Hamlet to be here asking himself in all earnestness,
whether or not he is brave enough to meet his death in a perilous undertaking, we
shall have a very different idea of his character than we should have if we believe
3 1 6 APPENDIX
him to be merely discussing the idea of suicide, in order to escape by a blow his all-
tormenting doubts.' Ed.]
[Page 264.] But while we contemplate Hamlet in the church-yard, and hear him
exchanging keen queries with the gravediggers, and making ironical remarks upon
the skull of the court-jester, Yorick, and at last pondering over the change of all
human greatness into dust, — where is the philosophic insight which so many admire ?
where the flight of those thoughts which would soar into the infinite ? where the
great heart that bleeds for rage at the shame of hi<; mother and the crime of the
King ? After all that has been said of this scene, I have never contemplated it
otherwise than with a feeling of the deepest sadnesK over the ruin in Hamlet's soul
of all that is great, and noble, and elevated, and this, feeling becomes only the more
intense as I recognize in the captious criticisms of the clown the idle aberrations of
the human understanding ; it is to me as if Shakespeare meant to say, « Take from
what Hamlet says the varnish with which education, and rank, and skill in speech
have overlaid it, and you will find that it has no higher worth than the talk of the
clowns, to which you have scarcely listened.' It is, in a word, the beginning of the
catastrophe approaching us here with overwhelming power. I do not mean that
there is a peculiarity in this great tragedy in this respect, as if I saw in it an excep-
tion to the method which Shakespeare usually follows in his tragedies. In all his
great tragic works you may observe this same preparation for the final blow. It
would lead me too far should I undertake to show you in Lear, Coriolanus, Anthony
&= Cleopatra, or in Macbeth and yitlius C(xsar, the very moment when this feeling
is awakened in us of ruined greatness, with the mysterious power of utter hopeless-
ness. Only here in Hamlet this transition is veiled in such a wondrous form that we
are liable to overlook its significance.
[Page 284.] Old servants, like Polonius, are always in possession of the secrets
of the family. Even though they are not the most intimate friends of the prince
and his household, it is nevertheless impossible that things, which do not reach the
ear of the world, should be concealed from them. Claudius and the Queen, as the
Ghost intimates, have long lived in criminal intercourse. This could have been no
impenetrable secret to Polonius, and Claudius was unquestionably too cunning to
flatter himself that it was unknown to Polonius. Has Polonius, perhaps, at earlier
periods, in order to find out some secret, made use of the very means which he
recommends to the King, or has he before now crept behind the very tapestry where
he finally meets his death?
[Page 285.] We must not forget that Polonius is convinced of the insanity of
Hamlet, and hence he takes no offence at the insulting speeches of the latter, as he
would have done under other circumstances Such a man as Polonius could
hardly have stood very high with the old king. It is at least quite credible that
Hamlet would have put some restraint upon himself had he known, as he must
have known had it been the case, that Polonius was esteemed and honored by his
father.
[Page 323.] The essential indication of what is tragic in Hamlet's nature, I find
in the fact that Hamlet, under the stress of his destiny, assumes the r6le of a mad-
man. I reject the idea that real insanity is to be supposed. By supposing Hamlet
really insane, we most directly contradict what Shakespeare's genius conceived and
represented ; in other words, the essential demands of tragedy. Two instances, out-
side of this piece, are before us, in which Shakespeare represents real derangement
of the mind, — King Lear and Lady Macbeth. But in these two, insanity is the
FRIES EN 317
consequence of a tragical event which has passed before our eyes, and which took
from the persons their native freedom and led to that catastrophe. And Ophelia ?
With her, as with them, madness ensues at the end of her career, and is" a means to
the catastrophe that overtakes her; in other words, madness comes when her free-
dom is overthrown in conflict with passion. But in Hamltt the career is yet to
be begun, and accordingly it is inconceivable that Shakespeare has put the hero of
the drama in a condition which destroys that freedom of action, and with it all
soundness of mind. Indeed, the essentially tragic character of the whole would
then be destroyed The longer and the more attentively we consider this
repulsive idea of assuming the rSle of a madman, the more difEcult and embarrassing
is the question that presses upon us : how was it possible that a finely-cultured man,
the same man whose incomparable advantages we have just been considering, an
honored prince, the offspring of an heroic king, a member of the regal court, could
take upon himself the shame of a disordered brain ? Here there certainly lies before
us a riddle, which we strive in vain fully to solve, the secret of a soul into whose
abyss only the greatest of poets was able to look. But what the soul of Hamlet
must have suffered, what agonies it must have undergone, before it came to this
fatal conclusion, at least no understanding, however keen, will be able to fathom.
Every attempt, I conceive, to find an explanation in any parallel drawn from ordi-
nary life, or by any analysis of the several faculties, be it ever so ingenious, must
appear useless. We have before us an individuality, standing high above common
life, and yet connected with our human nature by innumerable and most tender ties.
And what forever fascinates the heart anew is, that, as we glance into this depth,
all the great and elevated qualities of Hamlet, so far from being lost to sight, erased
by madness, or maimed and mutilated by a morbid excitement, fashion themselves
into a picture in which passion holds the reins, and our sympathy, stirred to the
deepest, hears forever sounding the tones of a noble soul, notwithstanding they are
jangled, out of tune, and harsh.
[Page 327.] The certainty that Hamlet is not what it is his purpose to appear;
the positive certainty that he is not mad, and that he obeys his highly-endowed
nature in defiance of a power which seems the more formidable because, although
working similarly to madness, it does not destroy the means by which it could be
mastered : — this is the ground upon which the profoundest tragical effect rests. There
is carried on here before our eyes a combat, in which all that is most noble and most
elevated in this finite human existence of ours is ranged in opposition to the decrees
of an infinite power; and the combatant unceasingly hastens to his defeat, because,
erring in the means chosen, by every step which ought to lead to victory his down-
fall is only the more accelerated. What word can be spoken in such a case but in
sympathy and fear?
[Page 331.] Let us now, in conclusion, once more consider that, however our
weak words may attempt to elucidate the great mystery of these world-wide compli-
cations {IVeltgeschichten), we must nevertheless bow down before its depth and
tinfathomableness. What is here felt and wrought out and contemplated, — the un-
conscious germ of it all dwells in the still breast of universal humanity, and there-
fore this tragedy strikes with equal power the coarse strings of the least sensitive, as
well as the finer and more tender sympathies of the more susceptible. It carries
both alike too far away into the realm of the most mysterious of our feelings to
leave them the power of ever expressing them. The mysterious power of a great
crime, which stalks through the world like a fearful apparition, and in the vengeance
3i8
APPENDIX
which visits it involves whole generations, — that has been felt by many who have
given themselves to the study of life and the world ; but that a single human mind
should be able, with the power of a prophetic enchanter, to produce this feeling in
us by a dramatic creation, — this is the great mystery, which is here before our eyes,
and which takes captive our senses in wonder, reverence, and admiration.
PROF. C. HEELER (1864)
{Aufsatze iiher Shakespeare. Bern, 1864, p. Z^)-^ — There would not be such a
difference of opinion about this tragedy, and especially ab'^ut the hero of it, were it
only borne in mind that it is a tragedy written simply for the stage. But how has
the poor prince been taken to task the last ten years I He could not help it that
things went all askew in Germany in 1848. 'Hamlet is Germany' in a most in-
dubitable sense, in that the German attempts at elucidating Hamlet are the contem-
poraneous history of the German mind in miniature. It has long ago been evident
that it is an error to run into sesthetics when the matters in hand are State affairs ;
and for a long time we have been talking politics, when the thing we have sought
to understand was a work for the playhouse. But this fault must be avoided, and
we must render to the State the things that are the State's, and to Hamlet the things
that are Hamlet's. Only thus can Hamlet come to be understood, for where politics
are mixed up with sesthetics, there will always be the danger that aesthetics will be
mixed up with politics, — the very thing that is objected to in Hamlet so strongly.
That our hero should 'have his share in this mingle, we have recently had set off
against the political Hamlet a religious and Protestant Hamlet, and, for example,
the words: ' The time is out of joint; — O cursed spite. That ever I was bom to set
it right !' — are explained to have this significance, namely, * It never should have
become necessary for a party to break off from the Romish Church.' Hamlet repre-
sents the principle of Protestantism. The shama were for the Church, the sorrow
for him.* No ; the sorrow is for the purchaser of a ticket. The opposite of this
Interpretation is afforded us by that romanticist, who, on the other hand, finds in the
words, 'You cannot speak of reason to the Dane' [I, ii], a blow at Protestantism, and
a proof that Shakespeare was a Catholic. In opposition to these judgments, that
Hamlet is Germany, or Hamlet is Protestantism, there is a third, which, little as
it enlightens us, appears to me to possess an undeniable advantage: Hamlet is
Hamlet,
[Page 125.] When Hamlet accuses himself of timidity, or even of cowardice, he
does not deserve the least credence, in view of such facts as the killing of Polonius,
or the boarding of the pirate, but he merely exposes himself to the suspicion that be
occasionally inclines to the opposite extreme. But, forsooth, why does energy desert
him at the very moment when it can be best displayed? Or not to put it too
strongly, why does it reveal itself so late ? No more favorable moment could be
hoped for than that immediately fifter the court-play ; Claudius had as good as con-
fessed his crime by the involuntary and improvised rCle that he had there enacted.
, . . , Why did not Hamlet force him to repeat in words the confession that he had
just made by his actions ? When Claudius calls for lights, why did not Hamlet
volunteer to light him home? Hamlet is not to be reproached with thinking too
•-This allusion can be appreciated only by reference to the German translation of these lines: 'Die
Zeit ist aus den Fugen : Schmach und Cram, Dass ich zu>' Welt, sic cinzurichtcn, kam.' £0.
HEBLER 3 1 9
nach here, but rather with letting his * reason fust in him unused.' Even more
favorable for tius view is the second opportunity, when Hamlet comes upon the
criminal all ready for the death-blow, but withholds his hand at the thought that
death to a man at prayer is hire and salary, not punishment. NVhat does it concern
the judge, forsooth, how a criminal stands with heaven ? Furthermore, why does
not he who reflects so much also reflect that there is a difference between salvation
and praying, and between praying and kneeling ? Meanwhile, we have presented
to us what is undoubtedly a positive, but at the same time a per\-erted, habit of re-
flection, which might even be styled transcendental, since it transcends the sphere
of every reasonable, practical consideration. That Hamlet should here deliberate
is not to be censured, — for, afler all, the opportunity is favorable chiefly in a physical
sense ; neither are we to blame the result of his reflecting, which holds back his
sword, but rather most we blame the grounds of his inaction, which cut off all hope
that he will act in the future any more practically than he acts here and now, because
he does not put the question to himself thus : ♦ Shall I with any probability find
another opportunity more favorable than this ?' The chance was offered awhile ago
before a large assembly, when the King was driven to an unequivocal confession, —
it is offered here again, in solitary, silent prayer. Both situations embrace, and to a
certain extent represent, all possible favorable chances ; Hamlet was prepared for
neither. At one time ' cowardice and bestial oblivion,' the next time ' a thinking
too precisely on the event ;' both times ' a thinking' that led to nothing, but wherein
the former is to be fairly inferred from the latter, and demands none the less a
reference to the passionate element in the hero.
[Page 132.] No one who does not know Hamlet's strength has a right to talk about
his weaknesses. Let it be that, judged by an ordinary standard, he is nothing, yet this
nothing is ' more than something.' His critics forget that a very extraordinary task
is imposed upon him, that he is in an extremely peculiar situation, and therefore he
is not to be unceremoniously classed with people who have never seen a ghost, nor
had a royal father to avenge. He stands, indeed, surrounded by the Danish court,
almost as a human being in a circle of beasts (one or two persons excepted) ; it is not
accidental that he repeatedly commends the peculiarly human gift, the most human
thing in man, distinguishing him sharply from the brute — namely, the capacity for a
disinterested devotion to an object, without which there is not merely no scientific and
no artistic work, but no sound practical activity possible; this capacity it is which
Hamlet possesses in an exceptional degree. In the midst of the masculine villainy
of the King, the senile cunning of PoloniuB, the base eye-service of the court-rabble,
and the boyish blustering of Laertes, there is Fortinbras alone, following only the
call of honor, who could have served Hamlet in any practical sense as a model ;
and Fortinbras, at the close, bids him be buried like a soldier, and bears a testimony
to our hero which richly indemnifies him for all our modem rough treatment.
[Page 137.] From the way Hamlet receives the commands of the Ghost, and is
affected by the apparition, we should suppose that his uncle will never again see the
sun. But the hero first contents himself with t>-ing a knot in his handkerchief, i. e.
makes a memorandum in his pocket-book of what has happened; for what one has
down in black and white, one is comfortably sure of carrying home with him, — this he
learned in his Wittenberg. Truly he could not worse travestie the • Remember me '
of the Ghost, or more quickly eacoffin his purpose. The only fault was that he did
not ask the Ghost for his address, or hand him a little leaf from his note-book. One
may try to find an answer to the question, whether the poet has not here suffered his
320 APPENDIX
hero to speak out his (the poet's) opinion of him too decisively and too early, as it
has been objected to Shakespeare, with or without reason, that he does with his
villains. He lets the prince perpetrate such sillinesses, but elsewhere only among and
towards others. The actual writing in his note-book had not, to the taste of those
days, the singularity which it has for us. Elsewhere Shakespeare makes use of an
outward action, when a poet now-a-days would content himself with words. Thus,
Richard II upon his dethronement asks for a looking-glass, to see what a countenance
he has when deprived of majesty; Bolingbroke directs one to be brought, — certainly
not in ridicule, but to gratify the king who makes use of it. But a little littleness
the poet intends to delineate in both cases, and in the case before us it is to be
considered, in connection with the disturbed state of Hamlet's mind at the time, as
a dim, colorless counterfeit of the previous frenzy, and even as such is it to be justi-
fied. At the same time the poet designs, by the odd form which he gives to this
folly, to intimate beforehand, in a very intelligible way, that his hero is a man with
whom memory will occasionally take the pLace of action, and wear the appearance
of a mere memorandum.
DR AUGUST DOERING (1865)
( Shakespear^s Hamlet seinem Grundgedanken und Inhalte nach erldutert. Hamm,
1865, p. 34.) — In this first soliloquy we undoubtedly have the germ of Hamlet's
fault ( Verschuldung), which may be termed the perversion of an undeceived
idealism into an embittered and passionate pessimism. The first inciting cause of
this perversion was the marriage of the Queen, the second was Ophelia's treatment
of him.
[Page 49.] When Hamlet comes before Ophelia, as she was sewing in her closet,
there is no attempt on his part to feign insanity. He comes in fearful excitement,
forced by his anguish to assure himself whether or not her exquisitely chiselled
features proclaim a noble, free soul, and in her dumb embarrassment, unrelieved
by a single heart-throb of sympathy, he reads the confirmation of his fears. With
that sigh that seemed to shatter all his bulk he parted from his love, and thereafter
felt for Ophelia only bitter scorn.
[Page 64.] Hamlet's call for music and the recorders, after the King has fled dis-
comfited from the court-play, is the joy which every habitual pessimist feels over a
fresh confirmation that the world is really as bad and that men are really as depraved
as he maintains. This perverted idealism has its origin not so much in the objective
side of human nature, in the intellect, as in the subjective side of excessive senti-
ment. His pessimism is not a conviction, but a mood ; it is not the result of a uni-
versal observation, but only of a few lively impressions. Nevertheless, this mood
places him in antagonism to all human kind ; he shares none of their interests, but
is separated by a high barrier from all their ends and aims. His sole interest is to
find food for this scornful feeling, and to live in this perverted world only as long
as he absolutely must. And can he mingle in the affairs of this world, where every-
thing is bad ? Can he feel tempted to avenge outwitted virtue, when there is no
such thing as virtue ? Shall he feel impelled to restore an interrupted moral order,
when he does not recognize the continuance of any such ?
[Page 68.] When Hamlet finds Claudius at prayer, his passion knows no bounds,
and he longs not for a human, but for a devilish, revenge. While the most ruthless
criminal code of past ages always treated its victims with tenderest reference to their
DOERING^SIEVERS 321
Hereafter, Hamlet wished to make his revenge eternal. In order to perceive how
naturally this train of thought springs from Hamlet's disposition, we need but re-
member how prominent was the share that the Hereafter took in all his reflec
tions, and furthermore, that death itself was far from being abhorrent to him, but on
the contrary was vehemently longed for.
[Page 70.] His passion leads- him to reproach his mother with killing her hus-
band, a reproach which could have been meant as only so far true as, by her yielding
to the seducer, she had, without her wish or will, inspired his impulse to commit the
murder The appearance of the Ghost in the midst of the interview is to be
explained by the fact ttiat the midnight hour was past, during which the spirit, freed
from purgatorial fires, hovers around the appointed executor of revenge. He had
seen how Hamlet had suffered the praying King to escape, and he comes to whet
his almost blunted purpose.
[Page 72,] The Queen remains true to her promise, and gives a distorted account
to the King of Hamlet's killing Polonius. She says that he was mad as the raging
sea (against her better .knowledge she here implies genuine insanity) ; and then that
he heard not a human voice, but something stir behind the arras ; so that, according
to her report, Hamlet might readily be supposed to nave made a pass at a rat. She
naturally keeps back that Hamlet had supposed that he had killed the King, and
she further adds, falsely, that he weeps for what he has done, &c. But the King is
not deceived : * It had been so with us had we been there.*
[Page 87.] The faith in Providence, with which Hamlet dared to comfort himself
in recounting to Horatio his treatment of Rosencrantz and Guildenstem, is by no
means a symptom of a healthy tone of mind ; in the whole tragedy there is no trace
in Hamlet of any want of faith in the fundamental truths of religion. Rather is
the appeal to this faith in this connection a proof of weakness, which finds com-
fort in the belief of a wonderful interposition of a higher power in cases Where
daring is required, and where the issue is uncertain, and where, therefore, the in-
terposition of Providence, so far as it can be affirmed to exist at aU, may just as well
favor the opposite party Rosencrantz and Guildenstem are the only persons
in this tragedy who die an innocent death.
[Page 91.] The change of rapiers is to be thus explained. The same thrust with
which Laertes gives Hamlet his mortal wound also disarms him, — that is, jerks
Hamlet's weapon out of his hand. The courtesy of a contest merely for exercise,
or as a trial of skill, obliges him who disarms his opponent to pick up the fallen
weapon, and then offer both weapons to his antagonist to take which he pleases.
Through this accident, on which Laertes had not counted, he was caught in his own
springe, for the semblance of a trial of skill had still to be kept up. Hamlet
chooses the envenomed rapier, and in the following fourth bout Nemesis overtakes
Laertes.
DR E. W. SIEVERS (1866)
( WUltatn Shakespeare. Sein Leiben und Dichten. Gotha, 1866, p. 441.) — Goethe
did not, in his later years, rest satisfied with his explanation. When, in the year 1828,
he was looking over Retsch's ' Gallery of Shakespeare's Dramatic Works,' and came
to Hamlet : ' After all is said,' he remarked, ' that weighs upon one's soul as a
gloomy problem.' And it must be confessed that Goethe did not solve • the gloomy
problem,' although he came nearer to the solution than any one else. The gift of
Vol. II.— 31
S22 APPENDIX
poetic intuition which he carried with him into this domain of criticism, at first
foreign to him, enabled him to apprehend correctly the ground-tone of Hamlet's
Character, and thus the beautiful figure by which he illustrates it may, with a slight
Change, be retained. Hamlet is indeed a costly vase full of lovely flowers, for he is
a pure human being, penetrated by enthusiasm for the Great and the Beautiful, living
wholly in the Ideal, and, above all things, full of faith in man ; and the vase is shiv-
ered into atoms from within, — this and just this Goethe truly fell, — but what causes
the ruin of the vase is not that the great deed of avenging a father's murder exceeds
Its strength, but it is the discovery of the falseness of man, the discovery of the
contradiction between the ideal world and the actual, which suddenly confronts him
as a picture of man : it is, in fact, what he gradually finds in himself as the true
portrait of the human nature which he once deified, — in short, Hamlet perishes be-
cause the gloomy background of life is suddenly unrolled before him, because the
sight of this robs him of \C\% faith in life and in good, and because he now cannot act.
Only that man can act, act for others and for all, who is inwardly sound ; and Ham-
let's mind is ' out of joint,' after he has been robbed of his earlier faith. This it is
that Goethe correctly felt, and it is just this 'ruin of the costly vase' which more
recent critics have entirely disregarded, giving their attention to that point alone,
where Goethe's idea of Hamlet is erroneous or inadequate, — namely, to the • great
deed,' to which Hamlet is alleged to be unequal. The drama is emptied of all its
rich, purely human contents, if Hamlet be reduced to a bloodless shadow, 'the
hero of reflection,' who, from mere abstract reflection upon the deed, never arrives
at the deed.
[Page* 442.] Let us first look a little more closely at Hamlet's way of viewing
things, at his ideal nature. While Romeo and Juliet find their ideal, each in the
other, and keep the world with all that it morally imports at a distance, Hamlet's
aspirations, on the other hand, are intimately connected with the world ; he seeks
the ideal directly in life, in the moral relations of man to man, in the supremacy of
the spirit, and, above all, in the moral sense of individuals. He goes directly to the
world, and demands that it shall show him his ideal actualized. He wcJuld find
in the world a warrant for his deepest consciousness, for his faith in man and in
goodness; there must be harmony 'hti^ttn spirit and life, and such a necessity of his
nature is it that it is the very condition of his existence. In short, Hamlet is the
representative of the spirit in man, conscious of its divine capacity. In this con-
sciousness he dares to set himself above the world, and apply to it his subjective
standard; he is the champion of the highest moral demands which the human mind
makes upon life, and is far removed from everything weak, sentimental, sickly ; he
is through and through a brave, truehearted man, and by the preponderance of the
spiritual element he is a radically energetic person, and the declaration which Shake-
speare at the close puts into the mouth of Fortinbras, who stood outside the circle
of the opposing parties : ' He was likely, had he been put on, to have proved most
royally,' — this declaration gives us Shakespeare's own opinion, and is confirmed by
Hamlet's tragic end. Indeed, we Germans have a special interest in not admitting
the representation of Hamlet as a pei-son originally of a morbid character, defective
at the core ; for, turn and twist as we may, we must confess that it is the German
mind that presents itself to us in Hamlet; the saying of Freiligrath, 'Germany is
Hamlet,' which, in reference to Hamlet's dread of action, is repeated ad nauseam,
and is yet only half true, is wholly true in respect of the intellectual principle rep-
resented in Hamlet, the self-conscious, subjective intellect, which here, for the
• SIEVERS 323
first time, independently opposes the world, and subjects it to its own standard.
That Shakespeare makes his Hamlet study in Wittenberg has often been attributed
to the fact that the Reformation originated there, and we ourselves trust in the
sequel to prove that this xiiama is intended to represent the peculiar, fundamental
principle of Protestantism, — although we are of opinion that Shakespeare, when
he placed his hero in connection with the city of Luther, was influenced rather
by Marlowe's Faust than by the historical significance of Wittenberg; he meant,
we think, to set in contrast with Marlowe's Faust another purely intellectual
Faust. But be this as it may, it is certain that Shakespeare's Hamlet, like no other
of his characters in this first period of the poet's genius, is created in a thoroughly
German spirit; he is a spiritual brother of Werther and, most emphatically, of
Goethe's Faust.
[Page 445.] When Hamlet first appears, before he has seen, or even heard ot
the Ghost, he stands on the brink of despair. We note this fact particularly, be-
cause it alone suffices to show how inadequate is the common representation of
Hamlet, according to which it is the • great deed ' that lies heavy upon his soul.
Shakespeare here most explicitly assigns the marriage of Hamlet's mother as the
one cause of the melancholy of his hero, which drives him to wish that ♦ the Eternal
had not fixed his canon against self-slaughter.' And how it is that the marriage of
his mother has afiected him so deeply plainly appears : it has destroyed his faith in
his mother; he perceives what it is that has impelled her to a second marriage, — that
it was not love, nor any pure motive, but base sensual desire ; and now the world is
to him ' an unweeded garden that grows to seed ; things rank and gross in nature
possess it merely.' He cries fie! fie! upon it: it is the first look into the actual
world of men which Hamlet takes, and what a spectacle is it that is presented before
him ! He stands before nothing less than an utter contradiction in the being of
man, before an abortion, by which his whole previous view of things is inverted,
and it is rendered impossible for him ever after to have faith in the moral nature
of man.
[Page 454.] The solution of the riddle of this powerful tragedy, which may be
described as the peculiarly classic work expressive of the Protestant aspect of the
world ( Weltanschauung), is as follows : What the poet here represents is the torture
and weakness of a nature that has fallen out with the world, and lost its hold ; it is
the break of the consciousness which robs the soul of faith, and renders it incapable
of all self-forgetting devotion, of all elevation above self. TTu great Protestant idea
»f man's need of faith, of faith as the condition of his peace, and of the fulfilment
of his mission as a moral being, — this it is to which this profoundest and most
moving of all the works of Shakespeare's genius owes its origin. Hamlet is the
human being who seeks his hold, his resting-place, in the interior nature of man.
Shakespeare lets him go to destruction because he has nothing to hold to after his
purely idealistic faith in man is shivered into atoms. This is the vivifying motive
in Shakespeare, which has passed from his soul into his work, and thus is it clear
what is the idea upon which is based his representation of humanity, as he unfolds
it in the King and Queen : against the idealistic way of looking at things and the
deification of man, he has sought to set the sinfulness of the human being, which
first appears in history in Protestantism ; accordingly, out of the rude Hamlet of the
legend, he has fashioned a being who represents, in fact, the Incarnation of Idealism,
and for the same purpose he contrasts him with the characters which, in the King
and Queen, are the actual personifications of the essential corruption of human
324 APPENDIX
nature. But in the foreground is represented the internal instability of the soul
when not rooted in God as the only sure source of life, and the weakness and suffer-
ing to which it is in consequence given over.
GUSTAV RiJMELIN (1866)
{Shakespearesttidien. Stuttgart, 1866, p. 75.) — The truth of the matter is this;
Hamlet's conduct is confused, and his actions are inadequate to the end proposed ;
he chooses strange and unintelligible means to gain his point. But the reason is not
that the poet intended so to represent him ; conduct of this sort belongs only to
comedy, not to tragedy. The unmistakable inadequacy of Hamlet's practical
methods is characteristic, not so much of Hamlet as of Shakespeare. It could not
possibly have been the design of the poet to depict a mere incapacity of rightly and
intelligently carrying out a purpose. Aristotle long ago mentioned among the ex-
amples of dramatic action those, as the most useless for the poet, in which the tragic
hero has an object in view which he never attains.
But if Shakespeare ever had attempted this problem, he would have been com-
pelled to solve it in a very different fashion. Shakespeare is by no means one of
those poets who draw in lines all too fine and uncertain; his faults are rather on
the side of excess than of deficiency. But where are we to find the clear proofs of
Hamlet's irresolution? Retarding moments are as indispensable in a tragedy as
the escapement in a watch. Had Hamlet, immediately after the appearance of the
Ghost, executed the act of vengeance, the drama would have ended with the second
scene. But, in fact, Hamlet is acting uninterruptedly throughout ; his feigned mad-
ness is an act, and a very strong and intensive act, too. That he repeatedly re-
proaches himself, that he finds examples that condemn him, — in the player who
weeps for Hecuba, and in young Fortinbras, — only shows how completely he is filled
with the thought of his task With how much plainer colors would Shake-
speare have painted, had he intended to depict an incapacity for decisive action
made m.orbid by too much thinking !
May it be permitted briefly to contribute to the numerous interpretations of
Hamlet yet another, which appears to elucidate much, although not all, but which
cannot, however, be acceptable to the aesthetic ideologists ?
In the old legend of Hamlet, which directly calls to mind Livy's story of the
elder Brutus, one thing appears as the essential and specific point. In order to lull
the usurper and murderer of his father into security, and to draw upon himself no
suspicion, Hamlet feigns to be insane, but in this pretended insanity there is evidence
of great intelligence, which, according to the northern legend, is shown by an
uncommon acuteness of mind, by an instinctive suspicion of the concealed con-
nections of events. To put deep sense and hidden wisdom into speeches and
actions, which are apparently insane, was for him who sought to treat this subject
dramatically the one special task, and while it was difficult enough to deter all
mediocre talent from attempting it, it would naturally charm and attract a great and
highly gifted poet.
But for Shakespeare this problem had something more than the charm of affording
him an opportunity to let his light shine, and his mind and wit disport themselves in
new forms. Before he undertook it, he had grown from youth to manhood, and
through manifold errors and conflicts without and within gathered a treasure of
RUMELIN 325
serious experience, to which he was moved to give poetical expression. It occurred
to him to make the legend of Hamlet the vessel from which to draw the wisdom of
his own experience, hidden under the wild utterances of insanity, and to produce
his own moods and thought before the public in a strange and unsuspected form.
The idea of thus using the subject of Hamlet lay not so far from a poet of so pro*
lific a faculty as may at first sight appear.
As the young prince of Denmark, returning home, unsuspicious of evil, from the
German high-school, hears the startling news, — that his noble father has miserably
perished, that he himself has been cheated out of the crown, that his mother has
given her hand to the fratricide, and that the court and the people had consented to
this new order of things, — as he himself is now to live and work and avenge himself
in this base world, and as all this works in him a sudden change of his whole view
of life, a change reaching to the very borders of insanity, so also the poet hinoself,
perhaps, had passed, unsuspiciously and with ideal aspirations, from a fair dream-
world into the actual world, and there had opened before him an abyss of degen-
eracy, weakness, and iniquity, from which he could not withdraw, in which he was
summoned to live, and work, and contend with malignant opponents. To him, too,
a stupid and prejudiced present refused a throne, the poet's throne to which he was
the bom, rightful heir. From this experience, also, his soul was filled with melan-
choly, a sharp and bitter contempt of the world, a humor of despair, which sought
to vent itself in utterances imintelligible to the multitude, and to all appearances only
the ravings of a maniac.
Other characters he had sent forth as fugitive apparitions from his rich dream-
world ; this figure he nourished with his heart's blood, and caused it to throb with
the warmest pulsations of his own bosom. Do we not hear his very self, the melan-
choly poet of the Sonnets, when Hamlet says : ' I have of late (but wherefore, I
know not) lost all my mirth,' &c. [II, ii, 288-301] ? How manifest, moreover, is
the accord, with Hamlet's well-known soliloquy, of the 66th Sonnet : ♦ Tired with
all these, for restful death I cry,' &c.
[Page 81.] But if we find it easy to admit that in a dramatic treatment of the legend,
the main thing appears to be, under cover of pretended madness, to conceal a deep
wisdom, and that the poet used the occasion to give, in an unwonted guise, poetical
expression to his passing mood and to his own views of life, while we freely grant that
this peculiar view of the poet's purpose renders his Hamlet the most interesting, the
most intellectual and profound of his dramatic works, we nevertheless must not fail
to see that this use of the legend enters into the dramatic subject and into the course
of the action as a somewhat foreign and disturbing element ; we must perceive that
the legend, whose essential features the piece still keeps, is in itself little fitted for
the interpolation of an element so subjective and so modem ; that the poet has taken
no special pains, or, at all events, has not succeeded, in setting aside the inconve-
niences necessarily resulting from his peculiar use of the legend ; and that, finally,
on this account, the piece, in respect of the consistency of the characters, and on the
pragmatic side, in the course and arrangement of the action, presents the greatest
discrepancies ; nay, it is from precisely this point of view that it must be numbered
among the most imperfect of the poet's works.
The same Hamlet, to whom the poet gives the tender sensibility, the melancholy,
the spirit, and the wit of his own soul, is no longer suited to be the Northern hero,
a bloody avenger of a bloody deed, a fivefold murderer. When the poet sought to
introduce the elements of modem culture and feeling into the old legend, he should
326 APPENDIX
have done as Goethe has done in his Iphigenia, fashioned the subject humanly and
symbolically. When Shakespeare adopts from the old legend the killing of the
courtier listening behind the tapestry, the cunning treachery towards the com-
panions of Hamlet on the voyage to England, when the same tender nature, that
feels so deeply for the moral weakness of others and for the degeneracy of the
world, takes the lives of three innocent persons, and this, too, as if it were nothing
strange, about the same impression is made upon us as would be made if Goethe
had represented Iphigenia as, between the acts, slaughtering a couple of prisoners on
the altar of Diana.
The most striking instance in point is the scene with the Queen. With what
moral nobleness and fire, in what stirring and dagger-like words, does Hamlet arouse
the conscience of his mother, and yet the sword-blade of this wise preacher of re-
pentance is smoking at the time with the fresh blood of an old man, — the father of
his beloved, — who had done him no harm. He excuses himself therefor pretty
much as one would apologize for treading on another's foot. Where has the noblest
language of moral indignation ever been introduced in a more unfitting situation, or
put into the mouth of a more unsuitable Father Confessor ! This very scene with the
Queen, which the poet has painted with such evident art and care, and wrought up
so powerfully, is at the same time an evidence of how easily, while seeking to
exhaust to the very bottom the poetical contents of single situations, it happened to
him to transcend the mark. The reproaches Hamlet addresses to his mother prove
altogether too much, — that her crime was not only inexcusable, but that it was in-
conceivable. If the contrast between Hamlet's father and Claudius, in personal
beauty, in mind and character, was so infinite that only a downright madman could,
in any one respect, give the preference to the latter, if, from the age of the Queen,
the mother of a son thirty years old, sensual passion were out of the question, if her
first husband loved her so that he would not beteem the winds of heaven visit her
too roughly, what was it then that drove her to violate her marriage vows and to an
incestuous marriage? An action for which we can see no conceivable motive
evaporates and loses all reality. It is only from the Ghost, in the first act, that we
gather some hints towards an understanding of the case; but of these Hamlet
makes no use.
It is by a comparison of the piece with the Hamlet of the legend that its realistic
defects are brought out into full light.
In the old legend all hangs together. Hamlet there feigns to be, not crazy, but,
like Junius Brutus, stupid and weak-minded ; he does it in order to appear harmless
to the King. It is there understood that Hamlet's object is not by a sudden blow to
execute vengeance upon the King, but, in the presence of the army and of the people,
to prove himself the competent and true heir to the crown. This is accomplished
by the covert proofs which he gives of his intelligence and cunning, as well as by
his heroic behavior in the war in England. In Shakespeare no good reason appears
why Hamlet pretended madness. He is not threatened ; rather is the King afraid
of him; and his conduct as a madman was far more fitted to excite suspicion than
to lull the King into security. The effect upon the people and the army is not at all
considered, and if one puts himself in the place of an intelligent citizen of Elsinore,
he must surely say that it is fortunate for Denmark that the crown of the old Hamlet
had fallen to his brother Claudius, and not to this foolish, crack-brained prince,
whose behavior one can make nothing of, who kills a faithful old servant as he
RUMELIN 327
would kill a rat, to vhose daughter he makes love, and then, without any apparent
reason, deserts her, and drives her to madness and suicide
[Page 86.] If he had killed the King, what was to be done next? How is he
to justify the act before the people ? Can he refer to the communications made to
him by a ghostly apparition ? or to the looks and conduct of the King at the play ?
And why does he suffer himself to be sent off to England ? The Hamlet of the
legend goes thither with an army, gains it to his side, and returns at its head as a
claimant to the crown and an avenger of blood. This is intelligible, but Shake-
speare's Hamlet suffers himself to be sent away from the theatre of his work, and
returns only by a series of the strangest accidents. His modes of proceeding are
throughout incalculable, and irrational from beginning to end, and no one has yet
been able to discover any reasonable connection between his object and his means.
We are by no means disposed to maintain that our hypothesis of an unsatisfactory
interlacing of an episodical, modem, subjective element with the old Northern
legend is a sufficient key to the solution of these difficulties. We must admit that
in many a scene the poet has, at least, so woven the two together that we cannot dis-
cover the seam. His imagination was prolific enough to accomplish in the task of
combination what was apparently impossible. In introducing the players into the
piece, the primary aim evidently was to bring out those allusions to the con-
dition of the London theatricals and to his own stage experiences, and we may
easily picture to ourselves what a jubilee and what a stirring effect upon the ^tage
as it then existed, this scene must have produced. But the question arose, — how
could players be interpolated into the old legend ? There occurred to the poet the
plausible idea of testing the veracity of the Ghost by the effect upon the King of a
play, in which his alleged crime should be represented, so that now the interviews
of Hamlet and the actors appear only as a secondary matter, a mere episode. It
could not escape the poet that the acute and witty dialogue of the subjective Hamlet
being allowed so much space, the retarding moments in the action were all too
strong. The legendary Hamlet had from time to time to accuse himself of delay
and inactivity, and thus the representation of an intellectual, irresolute dreamer came
in as a means of reconciling inconsistent elements, — a representation which then,
here and there, and especially by the contrast with the resolute Laertes, gave the
appearance as if the whole had been devised at one stroke, an appearance which
upon further reflection by no means holds good.*
• Even the celebrated soliloquy, ' To be or not to be/ we reckon among the episoiies introduced,
and as one of the proois of the double character of Hamlet. It stands in no necessary connection
with what suceeeds or what goes before. The poet himself signifies as much, since he makes Hamlet
come in reading in a book. There runs through the soliloquy a religious vein quite different front
that of the rest of the piece. The rest of the piece stands upon the ground of a very massive popular
Ciith. The old Hamlet wanders at night after death until the cock crows, and thenspends the day.
time in purgatory. Hamlet wiO not kill the King at prayer because his soul may fly to heaven. How
is it to be reconciled that the same person, who has such solid views upon things invisible, and whosa
&ith has been accredited by the apparition of a departed spirit, at the same time treats as unsolved
problems the questions, whether to be or not to be, and whether in the sleep of death dreams may
not comet How can he talk about the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveller rettims,
whea the night before he had been and spoken with such a traveller, and has received from him the
most important intelligence concerning the Hereafter? Who does not see that there are here two
independent trains of thought having no relation to each other? Evldendy in the soliloquy and in
the graveyard it is the poet who is speaking, and who contemplates death as it appears to the natural
van without any dogmatic coloring. The 'course of thought in the soliloquy has something, more*
over, quite peculiar. Fcom the two premises : that the evils of the present life axe great and certato.
328
APPENDIX
Our view of Hamlet does not indeed clear away the difficulties and obscurities in
the action of the piece; it leaves them standing just where they are, but it explains
how they arose, how a poet, who elsewhere never leaves us in doubt of his inten-
tions, and who is wont to paint with the brush of a Rubens, has given us here a
production which creates an impression of intricacy and artificiality, and the con-
sistency of which the after-world, in volumes of critical and hermeneutical essays,
in vain endeavors to trace
[Page 91.] The characters in Hamlet hs.v^ a certain changeable coloring, which
on the whole is not at all after Shakespeare's manner. It is not only the case with
Hamlet himself, the most enigmatical and incomprehensible figure ever represented
upon the boards of any stage, to such an extent that it is often very doubtful whether
he is only playing the fool or is really a little crazed, but the other characters are also
somewhat ambiguous. . . ,
Laertes is a fresh, brave, knightly figure ; but when at the close he does not hesi-
tate, in a sham conflict, to use a weapon with a sharpened and poisoned point, and
thus to kill his unsuspicious opponent, this base, villainous trick, this most unknightly
assassination, is in vain attempted to be made consistent with the character previously
attributed to him. Here the old Northern idea of the duty of avenging blood, reck-
less of the means, plays as a foreign element into the action of the piece, which is
otherwise based upon the laws of chivalry. Were it not so, the fact that Polonius
had been killed unintentionally, and by the hand of a person mentally diseased,
would have demanded some notice.
One is bound to infer, from the different representations that are given of it, that
the poet has not drawn the character of Ophelia with any particular distinctness.
.... But one thing we certainly do find, and that is, that the poet has not indicated
with sufficient clearness the cause of her insanity.
It may be a subjective judgment, but we certainly do not stand alone when we
advance a very strict theory in regard to the liberty of the poet, as to allowing his
dramatis personse to become insane, and to bring them in this condition upon the
stage. We know, indeed, only one instance in which the finest use of this liberty
has been made, and the most powerful effect produced. It is the dungeon scene in
Faust. Gretchen's mind there appears not hopelessly overthrown; her despair
mounts only to the borders of insanity, and passes lightly over them; her words
still hint- in intelligible visions at her position and state of mind, and their dreamlike
symbolism is impressively beautiful. Otherwise is it when consciousness appears
utterly and irrevocably gone, when the connection of ideas is no longer perceptible,
and there is poured out upon us a multitude of senseless speeches. In this case the
poet no longer discloses to us interior, mental processes, of which he himself has
had experience, and which he is competent to make us feel with him. This is dis-
ease, and does not belong to the stage. As little does it become the poet to present
us with cases of epilepsy and St Vitus's dance.
Shakespeare observes this limit most exquisitely in Lady Macbeth, and what has
and that what comes after death is uncertain, one would expect the conclusion, then the exchange is
to be ventured. Foi, for the same reason that we prefer a certain good to an uncertain, one should
choose rather the evil that is only questionable to one that Is present and certain. Hamlet draws tho
opposite conclusion, r.nd could in no more na'ive way betray how the pleasure of living can witl«
victorious sophistry delude even the worst pessimist. Still more simply and strikingly Is thto
apparent in the brief and lovely dose of these melancholy mediutions : ' Soft you, now I The fcif
Ophelia r
RUMELIN— NO-PHILOSOPHER 3^9
jiist been said about the psychological treatment of insanity by the poet does not
prevent our admiration of those scenes. In King Lear it is the breadth and ex-
pansion given to the phenomenon of insanity that disturbs us ; it is intolerable 3
whole piece through ; the situation thus appears to be habitual, endless ; death only
can deliver Lear and the spectator, and we have to wait for it so long, and it cannot
be brought about otherwise than by accident. Ophelia's madness comes before us
as a natural consequence, the causes of which are not given, and which we have
simply to receive as such. That a person should lose his wits upon receiving bad
news is a very unusual case, and one dependent upon a combination of many at-
tendant circimistances, and it seems, moreover, to be entirely removed from a
dramatic treatment. In the previous scenes Ophelia is not so portrayed as to produce
in us the impression that she will not be able to meet the blows of fate with the
ordinary degree of human endurance. She appears to be affected not more than we
should expect by the mental condition of Hamlet. The death of her father is cer-
tainly a new blow, but it is in the course of nature that parenis should die before
their children, and father Polonius is not so represented by the poet, that his daughter
must think it impossible to live any longer without him. That he should have fallen
by the hand of her lover is assuredly the heaviest blow of all, yet it was accidental
and without design. That Hamlet, in case of his restoration, might not marry
Ophelia is at least nowhere intimated by the poet, and, under the circumstances, by
no means self-evident ; it may even be said that he could make good what had mis-
chanced in no better way, or more effectually console the orphan.
[Page 96.] There remains almost nothing further to be said than that a charm-
ing maiden, who, crazed by the heavy blows of fate, appears fantastically arrayed in
weeds and flowers, singing loose songs, and dealing out her flowers with half-sensible
speeches, is in itself a touching genre picture that cannot fail of its effect, although
the dramatic How and Wherefore remain hidden in the dark.
Among the changes which Shakespeare has made of the material which he had
m hand, the most important concerns the conclusion. In the legend, Hamlet, after
killing the King, calls the people together, relates and justifies what he has done, is
thereupon made king, and reigns long and gloriously. To such a destiny the Hamlet
of Shakespeare was not called ; he had to end tragically, like all the figures into
which poets have infused their own morbid, spiritual affections, such as Werther,
Clavigo, Faust, Eduard. They must, as it were, die as vicarious sacrifices, while
the poet draws upon other registers of his genius, and plays new melodies. Thas
the Hamlet-nature in Shakespeare was only a part of his inner life, although per-
haps the ruling ground-tone of his personal temperament; but there were at his
command yet other accords upon other strings of his genius, and in the same years
in which he created Hamlet, he found the material for the Midsummer- Nighf t
Dream, for Henry IV, and for the Merchant of Venice.
NO-PHILOSOPHER (1867)
{Hamlefs Traits of Character, by A No-Philosophzr, Jahrbuch der deutschen
Shakespeare-Gesellschaft, vol. ii, 1867, p. 16.) — In most of Shakespeare's pieces the
characters are easy to be understood and true to life, although their outlines and
salient points alone are prominent. But with Hamlet it is otherwise. The moving
and retarding power, upon which the progress of the piece depends, resides in Ham-
let's character; and hence the mirror which the poet holds up in his other dramas to
SSO APPENDIX
the world and to men, but at a distance, lie has to bring closer to a single individual,
in order to delineate in detail his personal qualities and what passes within him;
and with this, also, to show the motive of the piece. Only in portraying the subordi.
nate characters does Shakespeare hold to his usual great manner ; by the less minute
way in which they are drawn, and by their inferior worth, they give as the idea that
they are only added to adorn and illumine the otherwise strongly-marked character
of the chief personage. Hence it is that Hamlet, who is described to us even to
the most delicate recesses of his being, and is thus meant to be understood, notwith-
standing an objective knowledge of man is so difficult, has become a subject of the
most animated controversy. But further, to increase the difficulty, the direct path
of inquiry has, it appears to me, been neglected, inasmuch as the general question
as to the character of Hamlet has been merged in the question, why is Hamlet
nnable to act ? and this point it has been sought to settle by some magical word, as
one solves a riddle.
But suppose that all the instances in which Hamlet shows his inability to act are
brought together, and suppose that for all these instances an explanation has been
found in some peculiarity of character in Hamlet, a manifold incongruity will never-
theless be apparent when we put this one explanation to the test of all.
What quality is it which is held to be an exhaustive explanation of Hamlet's in-
action? Is it his being too much given to thinking? He follows the Ghost quickly,
bravely, recklessly. He stabs Polonius without a moment's hesitation. In the sea-
fight he alone is the first to board the hostile vessel. These are not the acts of a
man who from too much speculation cannot bring himself up to the point of action.
Should not power to act and passion always agree, the one with the other ? Even
of quick, cool decision, Hamlet is not incapable. With what despatch, for instance,
does he determine to send Rosencrantz and Guildenstem to their death ! Whatever
other quality of Hamlet's may be brought to view, there is no one that necessarily
involves an inability in him to act, and no quality that purports to explain his inac-
tion, which will so explain it as, at the same time, to throw a satisfactory light, as it
should, upon his action.
It may happen rather that what is at one time a reason for not acting, at another
will prompt to action ; what operates negatively here will work reversely there. How
then can it be said that here is a cause which acts only obstructively in a man's life,
when elsewhere its influence goes directly the opposite way? A cause, moreover,
which impedes activity is not itself always active; a passion, an impulse of feeling,
or some other motive, will emerge from the deep, and a second, a third, suddenly
or gradually rising, will in an instant neutralize the first, or combine with it. Who,
proceeding systematically or in accordance with some theory, can select from the
surging passions that impel a man to act some one particular quality, as explanatory
of a certain failure to act, without hitting upon an intellectual defect rather than upon
a personal quality ? The ground of Hamlet's hesitation is to be found, not in selecting
some one quality and inferring from that what takes place, but in Hamlet's whole
character, in studying out the several elements of it as they manifest themselves.
But, above all, his action and his inaction should not be separated; for in doing and io
not doing combined is his character to be discerned. Separate the two, inquire for t
special reason for his not doing, and you will come upon a fault, a moral defect,
which stood in the way of his desire for revenge. But Shakespeare certainly would
not have chosen a moral defect as the cardinal point upon which his whole piece
is to move, or rather hang suspended. Rather to the will and the struggles of a
NO-PHILOSOPHER— TSCHISCHWITZ 331
man, as Sbakespeare here depicts him, the obstacle is a concatenation of peculiari-
ties of mind and character, which in their extremes, mutually conditioning one
another, hold him captive as in a net ; a single defect, as, for example, a tendency
to subtilizing, Hamlet, with his keen intellect, would soon have discovered and con-
qaered. [He has discovered, but not conquered, it. — The Ed. of the Yearbook.'\
It is not in Hamlet, as in other pieces of Shakespeare's, the history of a single
passion, the development of a few mental qualities, good or bad, that is set before
us. In this drama Shakespeare sets himself a greater task : to make clear and in-
telligible, from the whole structure of the piece, a himian soul in its totality, in
its fluctuating action, and in the finest vibrations by which the nerves are thrilled.
This drama may not, indeed, be a mere portraiture of character, but yet a develop-
ment, or rather a self- unfolding, of a character face to face with the misery of this
world. According to this design of the whole, Shakespeare does not mark single
defects, but, painting and adding, he unfolds, partly by action and partly by inaction,
the lineaments which combine to form a piquant and original portrait.
It is a peculiarity of Hamlet, which weakens his power of action, that the Real,
nearest to him, so often fades from his view. Excited by his imagination or by the
external world, he seizes upon a thought, which, once seized, he spins out, and
busies himself with to the utter forgetfulness of things around him. The instances
of his thus withdrawing into himself and into the subject of his musing ard numerous.
On the platform, e.g., he forgets that he is to see his father's ghost, in a digression
upon the drinking customs in Denmark. To the players whom he has suiomoned
as the instrument of his purpose, forgetful of that, he holds forth in a sound lecture
upon their art. In talking with Rosencrantz and Guildenstem, who wish to know
the cause of his melancholy, there stream from his lips wailings over the darkening
of all the joys of this world. Frequently he relieves himself in soliloquies, which
lead him from their special occasions away into generalities. The inner world is
even more to him than the outer world; it is the real world to him, into which he is
always retiring. It is natural, therefore, that the substance of his contemplations as
such should become for him a reality, the activity of mere thought his ultimate end.
He hovers from one Subject to another; but the conclusion to which his meditations
lead him is not that which the law of an energetic action yields, but the result of his
thinking, in and for itself, contents him ; it is equivalent to an act.
[Page 19.] Who can doubt that Hamlet is at home in the intellectual world?
He reigns royally there by insight, imagination, wit, and by the boldness with which
he confronts whatever is to be comprehended. That is to him the real world, his
home, — a world, indeed, very strictly bounded. In the outer world, lying far away
from him, he is a stranger, and as a stranger he wanders in it w^ith uncertain step,
never finds his latitude, now going too much, now too little, to the right and to the
left. Thus clear and secure is Hamlet in himself, in his own ideal world ; from the
foreign outer world comes bewilderment darkening his inner being. The more he
is thus disturbed from without, the more does the inner beauty disappear, and in its
place comes a mysterious darkness, which hides good and evil in wild confusion.
DR BENNO TSCHISCHWITZ (1868)
{Shakespeare's Hamlet, vorzugsweise naeft histdrischen Gesichispuncten erlSutert,
Halle, 1868.) — TscHlscHWiTZ maintains that Shakespeare drew much of the phi-
losophy in Hamlet from Giordano Bruno, a learned Italian, who lived in London
332 APPENDIX
from 1583 to 1586, and was patronized by Sir Philip Sidney, Leicester, and by
Queen Elizabeth. He finds a similarity even in phraseology between Hamlet and
// Candelajo, a comedy written by Bruno. To me this similarity of phrases, or of
the principles of philosophy, is of the faintest. More importance might attach to
it had Shakespeare written no play but Hamlet ; and if we did not know that
he was myriad-minded. The most striking of all the analogous passages that
TscHisCHWiTZ adduces is perhaps the following : in Candelajo, Octavio asks the
Pedant Manfurio, * Che e la materia di vostri versi ?' Manfurio replies, * Litterae,
syllabse, dictio et oratio, partes propinquse et remotse.' Whereupon Octavio asks
farther, ' lo dico, quale 6 il suggetto et il proposito ?' It is needless to refer to the
passage in Hamlet that recalls this ; it will occur, I should suppose, quickly enough.
According to Bruno's atomic theory there is no such thing as death, but merely a
separation and combination of atoms : * Seest thou not that what was seed becomes
stalk, what was stalk becomes ear, what was ear becomes bread, what was bread
becomes blood,' &c. Tschischwitz here finds a parallel with Hamlet's imaginary
traces of the noble dust of Alexander. Klein states, in his admirable History of
the Drama, (unfortunately I have not at hand my reference to the volume and page,
and therefore quote from memory), that Giordano Bruno delivered lectures at Wit-
tenberg during the very year that Hamlet was a student there, and that Hamlet might
have attended them, supposing that Hamlet, like most of Shakespeare's characters,
was a contemporary of the poet's.
Although Tschischwitz is evidently convinced of the genuineness of his discov-
ery, he is moderate in his demands of those who are inclined to be skeptical, and
(p. 59) says that he does not wish to maintain that Shakespeare went any deeper
into Bruno's system than served his immediate purpose in Hamlet ; but that such
instances of parallelism, as he adduces, prove that when Shakespeare wrote Hamlet,
he had ascended to the height of the consciousness that had been attained in those
days [Zeitbewusstseiri), and had become familiar with the most abstract of sciences,
W. OEHLMANN (1868)
(/)/<? Gemuthsseite des Hamlet-Charakters. Jahrbuch der deutschen Shakespeare*
Gesellschaft, 1868, vol. iii, p. 205.) — Whenever I observe how our German men of
letters labor to distil fundamental ideas from dramatic works, I am reminded of
Heine's witty words, « Reason ! When I hear this word, Dr Saul Ascher always
comes up before me with his abstract legs, his tight, transcendental, gray body-coat,
and with that hard, freezingly cold face of his, which might serve for a frontispiece
to a manual of geometry. This man, far in the fifties, was a straight line personi-
fied. In striving after the positive, the poor man had philosophized all that is noble
out of life, all the sunbeams, all the faiths, and all the flowers, and had nothing left
but the cold, positive grave.' For ' the positive,' read ' fundamental idea,' and
we have a portrait of the above-mentioned distillers at their dry, abstract labors.
Shakespeare's Midsummer- Night^s Dream, for example, they call : Imagination,
the Creative Spirit •= abstract leg. The Comedy of Errors: Critique on the Power
of the Human Mind = transcendental body-coat. Muck Ado About Nothing: Force
of Temperament, raising man above his Finite and Individual Being «=Dr Saul Ascher
from top to toe !
A prince is said to have asked, when he found the frescoes of his court-painter
full of ugly ladies, whether the man in all his life had ever seen beautiful women?
OEHLMANN 333
So I would ask, wlictLer these profound thinkers have ever had feelings and
passions ? How little has the excellent dictum of our old Goethe to Eckermann
been taken to heart : ' Ideas ! The Germans are a strange people ! \\Tiat with their
thoughts and ideas, which they are everywhere seeking and introducing, they burthen
their life more than they need. Do pray have the courage, once for all, to give your-
selves up to impressions, allow yourselves to be moved, to be delighted, to be ele-
vated, yes, and to be taught, inflamed, and inspirited to something great ; but do not
be forever thinking that all is vanity, unless there is some abstract thought and idea
everywhere! They come and ask me, "What idea I meant to embody in my
Famt?^ As if I knew and could tell! To depict the region of love, of hatred,
of hope, of despair, and whatever the states and passions of the soul may be, is
native to the poet, and it is his success simply to represent them.' Must one seek
for a fundamental idea in a drama? And not rather for a fundamental passion ?
And, moreover, such a practical stage-manager as Shakespeare, who knew he had
among his spectators men from the army and navy, men hardened by fights with
Spanish Armadas, and not only these rough fellows, but weather-beaten tars of all
sorts, from the commonest sailor up to ships' captains, and mingled with these the
honest London shopkeepers and a free and easy {leichtlebig), passionate jeumsse
dorle of the high aristocracy, — surely he had to amuse these people with an}'thing
else rather than with a mere mess of literary Alexandrines, served up with perverted
sesthetic principles. What to such a public was the caviare of fundamental ideas ?
They wanted to be pleased, delighted, moved, and for such purposes representations
of passions, pieces full of blood and horrors, with highly-spiced plots, were indis-
pensable. Even the better heads among the spectators were to be satisfied less by
the material than by the form of the play. A stage-manager, even though he were
no Montesquieu in intellect, certainly knew quite as well as the French philosopher,
that la raison ne produit jamais de grands effets surT esprit des hommes. It is rather,
as Goethe says, passions and feelings that are needed for that. This point of view
is recommended not only by good sense, it is the true aesthetic standpoint. Indeed,
like Luther's drunken boor, who, when he was helped up on one side of his horse,
fell off on the other, German, and still more French, critics and poets, even when
they undertake to ignore fundamental ideas, or, in fact, any ideas at all in dramas,
tumble, by their abstractions of other sorts, into the second position of the drunken
boor; thinking it is enough if a drama only shows passion, and if the persons of the
drama ' rave and rant as if they had just escaped from bedlam.' It is evidently only
another form of Strauss's well-known * fruit in the abstract' As there is no such
thing as abstract fruit, but simply apples, pears, cherries, &c., so there are no passions
in the abstract, but only ambition, pride, avarice, jealousy, and whatever passions
there may be, single or complex. And because the Beautiful is heightened in pro-
portion as it is expressed by an intense individuality, it follows that the dramatic
poet (and the epic also) can only attain to the highest eflects when selecting charac-
tets stamped with the most decided passions ; in short, when he represents these
passions as maintaining themselves, and effecting themselves in opposition to the
deepest thinking, to the most comprehensive, sharpest, clearest understanding ; then
his characters, in spite of the sublimest reflections, in spite of situations the most
significant, and in spite of the most manifest means of attaining the goal, are, never-
theless, true to their own individuality, — feeling like Medea: video meliora proboqtte,
deteriora sequor.
[Page 208.] Are we then to look even in Hamlet for the passions that charao
334 APPENDIX
terize him, Hamlet, who passes with so many for a person of mere intellect and
abstract reflection, a genuine German, who has received and finished his education
in a meagre university city ? By all means, I say ! I would rather ask, on the other
hand, how can we help making this inquiry? What! a man with no passion I a
man who denounces as vile the act of his mother in marrying again so quickly, — a
man who wishes his heart may break, who is plunged into the deepest grief, for t^
death of his father, who would rather meet his dearest foe in heaven than see the
funeral baked-meats so soon coldly furnishing forth the marriage-tables ; a man who,
at the communication made to him by the ghost of his father, well nigh goes mad,
and cries out, ' O all you host of heaven ! O earth ! what else ? And shall I couple
hell ?' &c. ; a man who says of himself that he has the motive and the cue for passion
not like a mere player; a man who reproaches himself for lack of gall, and pours
out the most biting irony upon an egotistical court-circle seeking only its own advan-
tage, and owning no law but external decorum ; a man who knows how, with words
like daggers, to pierce the conscience of his mother, — is such a man to be said to
possess no passion ! Truly, I think, for the sake of the pit, if even for no other
reason, Stage-Manager Shakespeare would have had to lend a passion to his
hero. But we will not waste another word upon such a question. Let us rather
proceed at once to inquire : Of what kind was Hamlet's ruling passion, what was its
special object, and to what class of feelings did it belong? Hamlet's chief and
fundamental passion is that which, as Kreyssig says, is the sign of nobility in so
many of the Shakespearian heroes, the sincerest truthfulness and conscientiousness,
the feeling for the Befitting, the Right. He is through and through a genuine noble
nature, conscientious and true, ' the glass of fashion and the mould of form ;' and
on this account it is that he is beside himself at the sudden marriage of his mother ;
this is the reason that the world seems to him out of joint, when he learns of his
father's murder from the Ghost It is this same feeling which makes him
appear hard and indifferent in regard to the killing of the old hypocrite Polonius,
and to the fate of Guildenstem and Rosencrantz, because he believes that he has
discovered that they are contemptible ' vipers,' while the sterling honesty of Horatio
has his heartiest sympathy.
But why does he not strive, above all things, to punish the capital crime, the
murder of his father? Why, indeed, out of the Hamlet of the legend, who goes to
work so systematically, why has the poet with evident purpose created this tardy
procrastinator, this man who is without any plan, and who leaves everything to take
care of itself? Is this lack of resolution inherent in the great, wonderful under-
standing with which Shakespeare has endowed his hero? I say, unconditionally,
nol A brilliant understanding never makes a man a waverer ! Were it otherwise,
then all the greatest, most energetic heroes, a Caesar, Frederick the Great, and, above
all. Napoleon I, would have suffered from irresolution. Observation teaches us rather
that there are characters that are unable to come to a decision, because it is in their
temperament (^GemUth) to begin to deliberate when they ought to begin to act; not
only had Fabius Cunctator and Field Marshal Daun this quality, or, if you please, this
failing, but it is found in the most familiar conditions of life, — in ladies, who take
so long to decide upon their purchases, that they are the despair of shopkeepers;
in stupid boors, whose 'distrust,' after they have had the opinion of the village
parson, who knows them thoroughly, is their only weapon against injury, since it is
just their lack of understanding that affords them no means of seeing the whole
matter in dispute ; in that over-anxious official again, of whom Gall tells, who pre*
OEHLMANN—ELZE 335
saved whole heaps of documents because he thought, in every case that came up, he
might possibly hit upon points in them which might affect his decision ; in that over-
jealous clergyman to whom Luther said, ' O thou good man, whilst thou wouldst
fain make the church as pure as an angel, thou wilt make it as black as the devil ;'
in those members of the assembly who cannot sleep in their beds, unless to every
•amendment' they have moved ten more, — all these, and whosoever else resembles
them, are only pendants to the crane in the fable, that, despising all the good fishes,
had to take up at last with worms ; they all preach the same lesson, that, with or
without much understanding, a man may let slip the offered opportunity from mere
deliberation, distrust, excessive caution, carefulness, — in short, from some bent of
his nature which neutralizes the power of a strong understanding, or which, at all
events, in many a character, forms an element quite independent of the underetanding,
and in regard to which one must comfort himself with the saying of Goethe's, ' The
great secret of all our defaulting Is that we waver 'twixt running and halting !' At
least every one suffers somewhat in this way, for almost every one knows how reluc-
tantly matters are settled that have been long deferred, and how every postpone-
ment makes the task harder, even when it is ever so urgent.
Now it is this excessive deliberation which is the second main ingredient of
Hamlet's character, and upon which his first passionate abhorrence of shams and his
love of right, honesty, and good morals, suffered such disastrous wreck ! He wills
only summum jus, but, alas ! he does not know that he who clings too exactly to
that runs into summam injuriam ; he strives, indeed, for the Right, but without
knowing that he, who undertakes to put it through, only too often must not shrink
back, but be willing to cry, Pereat mundtts, for an imperfect right. His is a nature
that paralyzes all realization of the Right. Thus he has, as his second trait, only too
easily united with his striving for purity, conscience, and right, a readiness to find
objections to every decision, every plan which demands decisive action.
[Page 214.] But Shakespeare is never contented with one or two traits of cha-
racter ; he always shows us personalities true to life, and the more eminent they are,
the more various the qualities with which he endows them. Therefore, with his
quick conscientiousness and the sense of right resulting from it, Hamlet has, with a
painful caution resulting in the greatest irresolution, the secretiveness and talent
for mystifying so closely related to the above traits, and these qualities it is that
render him so much interested in the players, and form a key to so much in his
character. With his sense of justice is combined, also, a sense of honor. \Vhen
Fortinbras passes by, he holds it right, where honor is concerned, to fight to the
death for a straw. And these chief elements of his character are combined with
and overshadowed by an astonishing intellect, which enables hin^and here is the
tragedy) to see through all and judge all rightly, — all, only not himself, only not his
invincible propensity to hesitate, with its necessary consequences I
DR KARL ELZE fiSeg)
{^Introduction to Trans, of Hamlet. Berlin, 1869, p. xii.) — Hamlet has exerted
an incomparably greater influence upon the history of literary development in France
and in Germany than in England. It stands alone in this respect among the dramas
of Shakespeare, and it may be said, without exaggeration, that in both of the former
countries the history of Hamlet is the history of the poetry of Shakespeare ; in all
cases, as his most original and peculiar work, it has been the pioneer, breaking the
33^ APPENDIX
path to the poetry cf its creator. In Germany especially it has produced an extensive
literatare cf its own. In France there are evidences that the piece was known before
Voltaire led to a. more intimate acqtiaintance with it by translating passages of it
fas, for example, the great soliloquy), and by various critical remarks thereupon.
'Voltaire,' as Boeme happily remarks, 'measured the mammoth bones of this
to him uiiknown giant-spirit by the dainty taille of a French marquis, and, of
course, found them ridiculous and unnatural.' Yet Voltaire admitted that pearls vere
to be found on this muck-heap, worthy of being worked up in accordance with the
classic rules of French poetry Various French translations have gradually
led to a more correct understanding of the poet, v/hich was furthered by the critical
labors of the Sorbonne, and by the influence of the historical drama of the English
upon the romantic school, imtil at last Victor Hugo, in his work upon Shakespeare,
reached to a deification of Shakespeare no less unreasonable than was Voltaire's
depreciation of the poet. The conspicuous rfile which Hamlet has played in all
these phases is owing mainly to the attraction of the Mysterious and Incommensu-
rable, for of all Shakespeare's dramas this, piece it is which always strilces the French
as the strangest and most unintelligible, and in spite of their present better under-
standing of the poet, they do not feel to this day quite at home with him.
It is far otherwise in Germany. Gervinus with much acuteness distinguishes
Hamlet as a poem, which has wrought upon "our modem German life, and which
has grown into it, as no work of the kind of our own times and nation has done,
if we except Faust The character of Kamlet, as is well known, has been
in manifold ways regarded as the personification of that superabundance of thinking,
that sickly irresoluteness, and that lack of power to act, which, in political afiaini
especially, disadvantageously distinguish the Germans; Hamlet has even come to
be represented as a symbol of Germany, and Freiligrath has sharpened this idea to
a point in the exclamation, ' Kamlet is Germany !'
[Elze here speaks of the early Hamlet acted by the English comedians in Ger-
many in 1626.]
It is certainly a proof of the greatness and immortality of this work, that, from
such corruption and mutilation, it has, step by step, and hand in hand with advancing
intelligence, been restored to its original purity ; all the valuations and changes of
its form (even Shroeder's with its happy ending), — all have proved to be temporary,
while the imperishable original survives them all. But it is the leading minds of otw
nation, Lessing, Schlegel, Tieck, and others, who have carried on this work of purifi-
cation, and no less a person than Goethe was the first to throw open the doors of
this mysterious temple. Hamlet has accompanied us, as of our own kith and kin,
through all the stages of our intellectual development; and the knowledge of
Shakespeare, especially promoted by him, is now reflected back from Germany to
England, so that the present understanding and oesthetic criticism of Shakespeare in
England is in no small degree based upon the German,
CARL KARPF (1869)
(TJ tI 1p) thai. Die Idee Shakespeare^ s und deren Verwirklichung.* Hamburg,
1869, p, 127.) — The Myths. The Myths used by the poet as the foundation of
* [It Is difficult, very difficult, to treat this volume of i66 pages charitably. And I have failed in
the endeavor inasmuch as I have here given some extracts from it. The greatest charity would bavo
been silence ; the author, however is so thoroughly convinced of the truth and wisdom of his theoiy
KARPF 337
Hamlet, we interpret in rfeference to the different activities personified in Hamlrt
and Laertes, dje speculative and the active, the theoretic and the practical, the in-
tensive and the extensive (Reason and Force). In reference to Hamlet. The
First Myth, which may relate to the divine Thonght, founded' upon the One, the
first Being.*
From the union of the god Odin and the giantess Jordh, the union of Spirit and
of Matter, sprang Thor. Thor carries Orvandill in a basket upon his back, wading
through the floods, the wintry ice-streams, the Elivagar, which separates the kingdom
of the giants from the world of gods and men. One of Orvandill's toes, sticking
out of the basket, is frozen, and thrown by Thor at the heavens, where it is made a
star, which is now called Orvandill's Toe. Some myths relate how Thor (the flash
of lightning) waded through the sacred glowing water of heaven, the flaming clouds.
In winter these became snow, frozen into ice, strange waves (Elivagar). But spring
comes, and with it the faithful Thor bears the Lightning-spark Orvandill (/. e. the
Beam) upon his shoulders through the icy streams, the seat of all wintry horror, to
the earth, to the expectant wife of the same, Groa, i. e. to the vegetable green, which
seeks to spread its covering over the rocks, to set loose the stones from the head of
the building god. In the purified, clear heaven of spring shines Orvandill's Toe, which
is ill winter frozen; the lightning god gives again their brightness to the lights of the
firmament, kindles it anew with the lightning-spark, and fixes the company of stars
high above.
Orvandill (the Frozen Toe), the chilblain {Frostbeule), is, as the lightning-spark,
the hypostasis of Thor. But Thor is the god of peasants, in reference to which the
Myth says, the race of slaves (thralls), oppressed in this life by the burthen and
trouble of labor, will find a resting-place after death with their friensl Thor.
That the poet was acquainted with this myth, and had special reference to it,
appears from the very significant remark of Hamlet, in the graveyard, in relation to
the tragic singer, the first clown, and to his ambiguity and equivocation.
After recognizing the absolute, revealed in the tragic figure, and after emphasizing
the equivocation {^Doppelsinnigkeii), which points to annihilation, Hamlet says, * By
the Lord, Horatio, these three years I have taken note of it, the age is grown so
picked f that the toe of the peasant comes so near the heel of the courtier, he galls
his kibe ' {^Frostbeule).
that no criticism of mine can at all disturb him, and others can read and judge for themselves. I am
willing to confess, in character, that an 'exposition of sleep' comes over me when I hear any dis-
cussion, conducted by men below Grots or Jowett, of Plato's to ri Jiv tXvai., or forma! cause, but when
it comes to reading it in German, I think I would prefer to meet my dearest foe in heaven. I there-
fore make no apologies for the above translation. If Germany has given us a Karpf, England has
gijen us a Mercadb. Ed.]
* In Bernardo's allusion [I, i] to the star in the west, which he connects with the appearance of the
Ghost, as the clock strikes ' one,' and of which he says, that it makes its course, in order 'to illume
the part of the heavens,' — not sky, — where now it shines, there lies a very significant image which is
to be referred to the first myth of the star Orvandill (the father of the mythical Hamlet). At the
words of Bernardo, ' the bell then beating one,' the free Ghost first steps forth before our eyes. Here
is the One which the clock has announced. He is the Star in the West, the first reality ( IVeitnJuti),
which will run its course (q v<JtfyijfievT) y-iOoSov), in order to found the science of the creative essence,
by means of the drama of Hamlet. That the striking of the clock at the first sight of the Ghost is
designed to intimate something special is clear, otherwise the poet would have put the entrance of the
Ghost, on the evening before, and Bernardo's remark, at the midnight hour, the appropriate time for
ghosts to appear, and not have let them occur just after that hour had passed.
fSteevens here remarks that this word is taken from the preening of birds, and we think that there
is here also an allusion to self-evolution for the purpose of purification {Katharsis, pur£:ation).
Vol. II,— S3
33S APPENDIX
In the relation which the star (the Frozen Toe, the chilblain) Orvandill stands to
Thor as hypostasis, Hamlet may be regarded as standing to the time idea and de-
structive moment of the force immanent in matter, ' nature ' (comp. Sonnet 126) per-
sonified in the First Gravedigger (Chronos, or ^Eon), and Hamlet appears to intend
to say that the tragical, personified activity, its own hypostasis, seeks to injure and
annihilate himself.
[Page 129.] The poet may have referred his conflict with the passions, or rather the
representation of them, by identification therewith, which was his ground for exist-
ence in purgatory, the thymosis and the thymopathic circumstance (see the image of
the ' fretful porcupine,' used by the Ghost), this conflict the poet may [&c. &c. &c.]
HERMANN FREIHERR VON FRIESEN (1869)
{^Die Fechtscene im Hamlet. Jahrbuch der deutschen Shakespeare-Gesellschaft,
1869, p. 376.) — How is it possible that Laertes and Hamlet could have exchanged
rapiers ?
There is only one way, I conceive, of solving this problem on the stage, and that
is by reference to the Rules of the Fencing-school, and the lesson that relates to
Disarming with the Left Hand.' The French translator possibly knew this lesson,
as he paraphrases the stage-direction (' They catch one another's rapiers, and both
are ■wounded''^ with the following words, ' Laerte blesse Hamlet, et dans la chaleur de
I'assaut ils se desarment et changent de fleuret, et Hamlet blesse Laerte.' The lesson
upon disarming, if I may depend on the memory of my schooldays, is somewhat
this : As soon as your opponent has made a pass, and is about to return to his guard,
you strike the most powerful battute possible (?'. e, a blow descending along the blade
of your opponent), in order to throw your opponent's blade out of its position, if
possible, with its point downwards, at the same instant you advance the left foot
close to the outer side of the right foot of your opponent, seize with the left hand
the guard of your opponent's rapier, and endeavor to wrest the weapon from his
fist by a powerful pressure downwards; if this manoeuvre succeeds, you put the
point of your dagger to the breast of your opponent, and compel him to confess him-
self vanquished. When your opponent does not succeed in withstanding the battute,
which makes it impossible for him to keep back his assailant with the point of his
dagger, there is nothing for him to do but to meet the attack with the same manoeuvre,
and get his assailant's weapon in his hand in the same way. With persons of equal
skill this is the usual result, whereby they change places, and the combat is continued
without delay. It is obvious that in the execution of this manoeuvre on the stage,
the greatest skill is required, that the whole thing may not prove a mere scuffle, as
Tieck says he has seen it in English theatres.
FRIEDRICH BODENSTEDT (1870)
{Introduction to Trans, of Hamlet, Leipzig, 1S70, p. viii.) — Notwithstanding the
wonderful manner in which Shakespeare has sublimated the material, the stufl" of
the old legend, there yet remains something of its original rudeness, and must always
remain, because the fruit never can disown the soil out of which it has sprung.
BODENSTEDT 339
As chief foes, and consequently as the chief representatives of the play and
counter-pky in the piece, stand opposed to each other Hamlet and King Claudius.
Claudius is a bad man, but a monarch who understands how to rule, and in practical
prudence and force of will far excels Hamlet. Arrived at the throne by a crime,
he does not, like Macbeth, go.from one murder to another, but seeks by intrigue to
strengthen and establish his power. Against the pretensions of young Fortinbras he
prepares for war, but avoids useless bloodshed, as the difHculty permits of being
peacefully settled. He is identified with the interests of the country, for which
Hamlet has neither eye nor ear, and accordingly, notwithstanding his superior cul-
ture, is not qualified to reign.
The courtiers, from their position, are all of the party of the King. They are
neither better nor worse than the courtiers in the time of Elizabeth, or the average
of the same class to-day. ....
[Page X,] Hamlet's first utterances in the drama are keen, cutting phrases. He is
at this time about thirty years of age, and, while his country is in danger, he cherishes
no wish but to go back to "Wittenberg He resolves to play before the King and
the court the part of a madman. His talent for acting enables him to do this ex-
cellently well. Instead of exulting in his success in this particular, and taking
advantage of it, he is vain enough to be offended, and indeed to fall into a passion,
because he is thought to be really crazy. The scenes in which all this is represented
are very effective on the stage ; but, closely considered, they show the prince in no
very favorable light, for a true man will never avail himself of a safe position to
wound defenceless opponents. And besides it strikes us that the prince acts with
very little prudence in betraying at every turn that he is not really crazy, but only
making believe.
[Page xi.] Ophelia's eloquent praise of Hamlet is referred to by most of the com-
mentators as a proof of what a combination of excellent qualities, as a statesman,
soldier, and scholar, &c., he was possessed. We see in it only the natural ex-
pression of the enthusiasm of a young maiden to whom everything about a Prince
appears glorified. Otherwise, her relation to him is to be regarded as perfectly
pure. As a philosopher Hamlet loves to generalize, to establish a universal expe-
rience upon a particular case. Because his uncle has committed a murder, which
be has to avenge, he looks upon the whole world as out of joint, and himself as
bom to set it right. Because his mother is a weak woman, he exclaims : * Frailty,
thy name is woman!' Because she was unfaithful to her first husband, he accounts
the whole sex false, and misunderstands Ophelia even. It is in the nature of imagi-
native idealists, that they exalt the object of their love to such a height that the
disillusion is all the more violent.
Old Polonius is befooled with the cloud ; which, by the way, might have happened
to a far wiser man at the hands of a prince supposed to be mad.
[Page xii.] Hamlet's behavior after the killing of Polonius evinces, almost as if
he were proud of it, the deep-lying barbarian element which in weak, sensitive
characters, so frequently crops out in connection with the highest intellectual culture.
The madness of Ophelia, who was hardly of a nature to be thus powerfully affected,
does not appear to us to be sufficiently accounted for and explained. After passing
beyond the turning-point, the poet, we suppose, felt the need of a freshening up in
the progress of the action.
The graveyard scene in Act V has been found much fault with, yet it is as neces-
sary to the conclusion of the whole as the rafters are to the roof. The poet takes
340 APPENDIX
his hero through all possible situations to show that he was averse to all consistent,
concerted modes of action With full consciousness Hamlet always takes a leap
away from his object, which is often brought close before his eyes; and then vents
his ill humor in soliloquies against himself, or in battles of bitter words with others.
Even if he had not been supposed to be crazy, respect for his rank would have
blunted the possible wit of the courtiers. Thus he has had easy encounters with
Polonius, Guildenstern, and Osric, but in his fight of words with the hair-splitting
old Gravedigger he gets rather the worst of it ; the Gravedigger, not knowing who
he is, of course gives free play to his tongue.
[Page xiv.] Up to the climax of the drama we are on the stretch to know how
the task imposed on Hamlet is to be executed ; after, our only curiosity is to see
how it will always be evaded.
His misfortune is that his talents and inclinations demand a very different sphere
from that in which he was born. This gives to his fate its tragic background and
the motive of all the strange contrasts between his speech and his conduct He has
artistic tastes and philosophic endowments. Nevertheless, it is evident that neither
as an artist nor as a philosopher would he ever have achieved any considerable
work, because the energy required in both is wanting in him. From the clouds of
Lis melancholy there flash out brilliant lightnings, but there bums not the steady
fire which alone gives soul to great works and deeds. From his want of energy
comes his want of character. Instead of being the master, he is the slave of his
gifts, and in a false position ; his talents are his ruin. At first he plays the part of
a fool, which is offensive to all sound feeling, and he is soon in a fair way to become
a fool in earnest, until fate severs his life-strings, and uses him, dying, as the in-
strument of its plans, permitting him to accomplish blindly the work, which he
would never have accomplished with a clear eye and clear consciousness. But, by
means of the long delay of punishment, the King is more severely punished than if
he had been struck at once by the avenging steel, and herein lies the tragic expiatioa
and justice of the piece,
W. OECHELHAUSER (1870)
{^Introduction to Trans, of Hamlet. Berlin, 1870, p. 5.) — I cannot accept as
such those biographical hints, which, together with the Sonnets, are alleged to indi-
cate in Hamlet the expression of Shakespeare's personal views of life. The poet
lives unquestionably in his collective ideal figures ; every one of them reflects a part,
a side of his personality; from every one of them sounds one of the ground-tones
of his being. But as every scion of the Germanic stock, — and only such, — is able to
enter into Hamlet's thoughts, and perceive how near akin this character is to the Ger
manic archetype, without, therefore, necessarily manifesting in his own views of life
any specific relationship to the character of Hamlet created by Shakespeare, so is
this certainly true of the poet himself. I can, indeed, represent Shakespeare to my-
self, in his perfect insight into the Real and the Ideal, as the pure counterpart of Ham-
let, but I have no faith in the bitterness and contempt for mankind ascribed to him.
But that which, of all the treasures it contains, has through all these centuries so
extraordinarily enhanced the charm and attractiveness of this remarkable tragedy,
is the mystery of the Insolvable, which still rests upon it, notwithstanding all the
mountains of commentary that have been written. . . . Goethe's indication of
the fundamental idea of the piece is, alas ! no key, opening to us a correct view
OECHELHAUSER—ZIMMERMANN 34I
of the sqjarate passages and characters. Shakespeare did not work ont his characters
after models, but for the most part lets them act from mixed motives. In respect of
these very much is still obscure, and Ulrici is right in putting c^ the final conclusion
of all controversy about Hamlet to an indefinite distance.
[Page 32.] According to my view, which corresponds substantially with Ulrici's,
Hamlet is not at all of a melancholic or phlegmatic temperament, nor anything of
the sort, but of a powerfully and healthily endowed natxire, with the most brilliant
gifts of mind and heart, and an instinctive abhorrence of lies, hypocrisies, and shams.
[The various blows, that shatter his ideal,] fall upon him so heavily that the balance
of his nature is lost, and then, in boundless exasperation and passionate pessimism, he
plunges into errors the very opposite of his high personal qualities, not only wiKully,
but, we may almost say, with a wild joy ; his wit nins into sarcasm, his self-conscious-
ness into self-torture, his good-will to men into contempt and recklessness, his love
into indifference, his self-forgetfulness into self-seeking, his religious sensibility into
apparent levity But in death his character again appears in its original purity,
which has never been wholly lost, but only overshadowed and darkened.
ROBERT ZIMMERMANN (1870)
{StudUn und Kritiken zur Philosophie und ^ithetik. Wien, 1870, p. 96.) — Why
should not Hamlet have caught something, externally at least, from the persons
among whom he lived, while, in his inner character as a student, preserving his
superiority ? He is the Queen's own son, the King's own nephew ; from childhood up
he has lived and moved in this family, receiving impressions in this court atmosphere
and making impressions, as we see in the case of Ophelia; it fannot be but the man-
ner of life of those around him should be his manner of life ; the views by which he
saw them act should be those by which he also should be actuated. Hitherto almost
all the commentators have committed the error of conceiving of Hamlet as isolated, as
apart from his surroundings. They have overlooked the fact, that while his talent was
trained in stillness, his character was formed in the current of the world, of course
the Danish world. But one usually takes his ways of life from the influences that
immediately act upon him, and these modes of living become imconsciously perma-
nent traits of character. Family relationship appears plainly recognizable here.
His weakness, his self-abandonment, Hamlet gets from his mother. By his foolhardy
courage in boarding the pirate we are reminded of his father, who in an angry parle
smote the sledded Polacks ; his passion for crooked ways, intriguing, and under-
mining, hints to us of him whom he hated so mortally, — herein he bears only too
close a resemblance to his uncle. They are alike, also, in that, while Hamlet is
unable to execute the deed so long resolved upon, Claudius is just as unable to repent
to any purpose of his crimes. The amusements and favorite pleasures of the court,
—of which theatrical representations were one, — for whence, at the first hint, came
the players, and how was it that Rosencrantz, when the question was how to pass the
time, fell at once upon the idea of introducing a troop of actors ? — the pleasures of
the court, I say, are a speaking sign of Hamlet's acclimatization, the finer pleasures,
at least, had become his, and it is wrong, so it seems to me, to treat his fondness for
the stage, which he shared with the whole court, as peculiar to him. The idea of
using the play to entrap the King, — that alone is Hamlet's ; the proposal to have a
theatrical entertainment comes from the courtiers.
342 APPENDIX
H. A.. WERNER (1870)
( Ueber das Dunkel in der Hamlet- Tragodie, Jahrbuch der dentschen Shakespeare-
Gesellschaft, 1870, vol. v, p. 40.) — In this drama the attempt has been made to study
the hero exclusively, and to regard liis character as the key to the whole tragedy.
The reverse method would be the right one. It is an error, but an error arising
from the fortunes of our nation and from the tendency of our time, to suppose that
the hero creates and conditions his world and all his environment. He influences
his century, but his century, with its loves and its hates, its virtues and its vices, its
hopes and its trials, influences him, and has him in its leading-strings. And herein
is Shakespeare the profoundest and the most faithful painter of nature, that he sees
and depicts the mutual influence of the individual and of the masses.
[Page 43.] The relationship between Lear and Hamlet is striking even in form. Only
compare the principal persons in their doing and being, their passive connection with
the world around them ; compare the respective groups of persons by whom they are
surrounded, observe the like moving passions, the apparently hopeless results, upon
which, however, a comforting beam of light is not wanting, and withal the soothing
ending of each. A careful observer will be able to add to the number of points of
resemblaftce even in particulars. It will be seen by him that these resemblances in
situation and arrangement are due directly to the similar purposes of the poet in
both these pieces. He will find that both these tragedies treat substantially the same
theme, only with different applications. In both he will find pictures of the dis-
turbance of social order, of the loosening of sacred ties, by which the whole collec-
tive life of human society is made impossible, sins which extend from the throne to
the serf, and put in jeopardy all estates. From the first word of the age-bewildered
Lear to his last breath over Cordelia's pale countenance, it is the corruption of
domestic life, which is not only the key-note, but the impelling power, of the action
of the piece, and just so is the corruption of the civil life of society in Hamlet. As
in the former the poet breaks out in a mighty elegy over the grave of parental
and filial love, so here in Hamlet we have the awful denunciation of a generation
that has lost the conditions of a well-ordered society. Yes, like two members of one
great whole, are these two songs of woe over humanity, whose whole suffering they
take in, for between the State and the family springs up our whole collective life and
being, and when both are diseased, then man is hurled back into the primeval chaos;
where they are destroyed, there reigns eternal night.
Such are the mighty tasks which the poet set himself as the herald of a new
epoch. Leaving all beaten paths far behind him, he created the tragedy of the
masses, which, upon a newly bom popular consciousness, has founded the sovereignty
of society over the individual. But as the new law is yet struggling, even till now,
not indeed for existence, but for exclusive jurisdiction, and therefore lives only in
a broken, indistinct form, we cannot wonder if the prophetic revelations of the
poet still sound as a dark word, whose import is doubtful and uncertain. His
work cotnes to us like an oraclC; which is first fully understood only when it is
fulfilled.
[Page 81.] To us this tragedy, to state this one result, seems to be a question
addressed to Fate. It is the first part of a work similar to the Arabian poem, the
book of Job, an earnest, solemn setting in opposition, the one to the other, of the
g"od and the evil in the world, neither coming off victorious; a true riddle without
WERNER— STEDEFELD 343
answer, so intended by the poet ; and the longer he meditated it, the more distinctly
did it take this shape. He paints a dark, mysterious side of man's being, a gloomy
night-piece, putting into it everything that is dark in his otherwise clear souL
And, therefore, he chooses those mournful colors, the northern sky, the lonely sea, the
sluggish, weedy brook, the sandy grave. Therefore he makes the dead awake,
therefore he lets madness pass over the stage, — madness real, feigned, and doubtfuL
Where the Highest, the Holiest, is imcertain, confounded, out of place, where the
cry for God and for Justice rings unanswered and unheard, there everything gathers
that acts both on soul and body with a dark, weird effect, with the coldness of death.
Over the misery of the shattered family of Lear the lightning flashes, the avenging
thunder rolls ; over the gloomy waste in which the state of Denmark is sunk [lite-
rally, swamped. Tr.] settles hyperborean night with clammy horror. Only beyond
these graves glimmer the ruddy streaks of a new dawn.
G. F. STEDEFELD (1871)
{Hamlet, ein Tendenadrama Sheaksptaris [sic *] gegm die ikeptische und kosmO'
politische Weltanschauung des Michael de Montaigne. Berlin, 1871, p. 9.) — Hamlet
is, according to the intention of the poet, in his whole bearing a noble, manly, chiv-
alrous presence, with moral and religious feeling; an intellectual hero, a Titan, who
is far above his whole surroundings, rising thus above them by insight, learning,
culture, wisdom, and knowledge of men and the world ; there is lacking in him
only the Christian godliness, faith, love, hope. He has no firm, positive faith,
no love and no hope! Once they were his, but he lost them when his ideals
melted away, and he discovered in his own family how evil reigns in the world.
He has become a skeptic in regard to a righteous Providence, and has fallen out
with himself, with God, and the world, although, together with his native truthful
ness and manliness, with his hatred of everything base and false, and of the lies
end hypocrisy which he sees busy at court, he still keeps his filial piety towards his
mother and his devotion to his ifriend Horatio. This filial piety and this capacity of
friendship and of recognizing the worth of others, this personal nobleness and
knightly fashion of thinking, which never forsake him, even in his utter despair of
the world, and in the deepest embitterment of his spirit, are certainly fine qualities
adorning his character, but they are no longer hallowed by a firm faith in a just
Providence. His love for Ophelia, which, as appears from his confession to his
mother, in the churchyard scene, he has felt; but, imlike Laertes with his fra-
ternal love, he makes no show of it at her grave, nor does he shriek it out to the
world in big-sounding phrase, — ^yet is it no true passion, animated by virtue and
religion, but only a sensual pleasure in the beautiful, finely cultured, charming
maiden, a pleasure which ceases to be felt when he discovers by observation that
her love is not for him perscnally, but is the offspring of design, and that she re-
pels his advances under the instruction of her father and brother, who had directed
• It is altogether beneath the dignity of an editor to notice what might be a trivial misspelling on a
title-page, most especially when it occurs in the came of Shakespeare. But in the present instance
this spelling is maintained, with but a few exceptions, throughout Herr Krcisgerichtsrath Stebepeld's
volume. I am therefore bound to believe it intentional. There is in my library a volume, sad monu-
ment of wasted time, containing t^e name of Shakespeare spelled in four thousand different ways.
Uerr Stedefeu>'s makes the four thousand and first. £o.
344 APPENDIX
her so to bear herself towards him, in order to draw him more surely into her net,
and win from him a promise of marriage, and thereby the prospect of the crown.
[Page II.] Hamlet plays the part of a madman, because, doubting the moral order
of the world, he has lost faith, love, and hope, those saving sentiments, which, with
his deep moral sensibilities, and his ideal of life and the world, he urgently needed.
Here lies his tragical defect and the ethical reason for sympathy with his fate. He
must perish, because he will not see that evil, the passions of men, the tortures
of this life, are only instruments of divine Providence to stimulate the moral energy
of good. He will not see that every rational being is called upon to reconcile the
Ideal with the Real on this earth.
[Page 24.] One need not seek far for the reason why this drama, in all times
and in all nations, commands such a wondrously mysterious interest, whether when
acted or read. The contrast between the Christian view of God and the ideal or
materialistic pantheism which leads to skepticism, this opposition and this conflict,
of which every man has experience in his own soul, this great question, ' To be or
not to be,' the great riddle which the Sphinx puts to every man to guess, and for
which he and others are sacrificed, when he attempts to solve it without faith in a
higher power, — this pride of the old Adam, that would be like God and know all
things, would fain pluck the fruit of the tree of knowledge without putting forth
strength and resolution, without much spiritual and moral labor, to do the good
and to leave the evil, or when the evil presses upon us powerfully, with love and
merciful forbearance to render it innocuous ; — this great Riddle it is which Shake-
speare in Hamlet presents in the life of a man highly endowed with all intellec-
tual and moral gifts, but he shows us also how that life was wrecked in the
attempt to solve it.
[Page 31.] It is, I think, extremely probable that Shakespeare sought by the
drama of Hamlet to free himself from the impressions left upon his mind by the
reading of the book of the French skeptic, Montaigne. It is known that a copy of
Florio's translation of this book was in the possession of Shakespeare.
If traces of Giordano Bruno's philosophy may be found in Hamlet's soliloquies,
with much more confidence may we suppose that the reading of Montaigne furnished
considerable material for the conception of the enigmatical Hamlet, or is it at all
improbable that the legend of Hamlet^ the idea of the prince whose thoughts were
given to enigmas, and who acted the madman, may have shaped itself in the mind
of Shakespeare for the hero of a drama, who, as a skeptic, was consequently in-
eflBcient, hypochondriac, although intellectually gifted, and incapable oi z. great act f
OTTO LUDWIG (1872)
{Shakespeare- Studien. Leipzig, 1872, p. 138.)— Shakespeare carefully avoids the
appearance of everything sketchy, rectilineal, hurried. The branch ramifies. The
situation is hollowed out. Here is an example : Hamlet appears, led by the Ghost
to a more lonely part of the terrace. He asks, ' Where wilt thou lead me ? Speak ;
I'll go no further,' The Ghost does not begin his story right off. He only says,
•Mark me.' Hamlet replies, ' I will,' And yet the Ghost does not begin; he is
still preparing for the impression to be made : • My hour is almost come, When I to
sulphurous and tormenting flames Must render up myself,' Hamlet says, ' Alas,
poor ghost !' Still the Ghost does not begin ; Hamlet does not even urge on the
communication. The Ghost says, ' Pity me not, but lend thy serious hearing To
LUDWIG 345
what I shall unfold.' Hamlet replies, merely filling np the time, • Speak ; I am
bound to hear.' The Ghost adds, ' So art thou to revenge, when thou shall hear.'
Hamlet asks, '\Vhat?' Even now the Ghost communicates nothing; he only tells
•who he is, which as » mere piece of intelligence would be unnecessary. All the
while the due tone of feeling is in course of preparation, and is furthered when
Ac Ghost describes his condition in Purgatory more strikingly by telling of the
efiiect which a knowledge of it would have on Hamlet, did he dare unfold it to
him. At the same time opportunity is given the Ghost for the employment of a
style wondrously poetical. After a long period, his ' List, list, O, list!' makes an
impression tending wonderfully to produce the due tone of mind. There are sighs
at the same time. What must that be which the Ghost has to tell ? A state of
expectation is aroused, sweet, -weird, in the spirit of the old popular ballads. But
still the communication has not yet come. It is as if the Ghost himself purposely
delays, that expectation may be still higher strung. But now comes only, • If thou
didst ever thy dear father love — .' Hamlet breaks in, ' O God !' and his excite-
ment is betrayed thereby. How can the Ghost ask snch a question ? And now ?
How can Hamlet now declare how he loved his father, when the deepest, the most
overwhelming sjTnpathy and the burning impulse to avenge him kindle his love to
a flame ? He is to avenge his father, but it is not told even yet upon whom. The
Ghost tells only the cause therefor : ' Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder !'
Hamlet exclaims, ' Murder ?' And then the murder is described merely in general
terms : ' Murder most foul, as in the best it is. But this most foul, strange, and unnatu-
ral.' Hamlet: ' Haste me to know't, that I, with wings as swift As meditation or the
thoughts of love. May sweep to my revenge.' Observe how the question : Upon
whom ? that I may kill him !' is insinuated. The vehement impulse is here ex-
pressed not in words swift and violently ejaculated. The swiftness is described.
He saj-s he will be quick, but he does not say it quickly. Even if the actor speaks
this speech quickly, it will produce a greater effect than if the speech were short,
and thereby directly expressive of swiftness. Not e\'en yet does the Ghost say
upon whom he is to be revenged. He says, * I find thee apt ; And duller shouldst
thou be,' &c. Thus we have in anticipation the idea of Hamlet's character and of
the whole piece. For Hamlet actually proves to be thus dull in his revenge. But
once more : • Now, Han:ilet, hear.' Then the Ghost tells about his sudden death,
and how the whole ear of the kingdom has been abused, and then at last he sajrs
upon whom he would be revenged. If of anything, it is of Beethoven's modula-
tion that we are here reminded. But there still comes a delayed cadence; the
Ghost does not speak out the name without further ado ; he says, • Know, The ser-
pent that did sting thy father's life Now wears his crown.' Then Hamlet speaks
out that he had suspected it : ' O my prophetic soul !' And at last, uttering the
name, asks: 'My uncle?' 'Ay,' then finally says the Ghost, and begins his story.
The heightening of the interest by keeping back the word is a high stroke of art in
Shakespeare. After all this preparation the word thus has the greatest effect possible.
"While a mere bald narration is avoided, the impression is all the more artistic. The
Ghost might have told it all right off; Hamlet knows it from the apparition alone
and the demand for revenge. But the delay of both, deferring the horror, brings
the spectator into full sympathy with the scene, producing, before the utterance of
the word, the same state of terror which is felt at the beginning of the piece. Won-
drously versatile is the genius of Shakespeare in devising these preliminary steps ;
one must anatomize almost every scene in order to perceive how firmly they are all
34^ APPENDIX
constructed. Thus is the tone {Stimtnung) of the separate scenes struck, and the im-
pression of each scene completely secured, and stamped into the heart and memory
of the hearer, which, in the wealth of his pieces, is necessary ; were it otherwise, tlie
impression of one scene would obliterate that of the others. And thus also, in the
most important scenes, a due proportion of power is possible. A piece of Shake-
speare's is a continuous preparation for the catastrophe, and every separate scene
has its minor catastrophe, for which the previous dialogue is the preparation.
EDUARD AND OTTO DEVRIENT (1873)
{Denischer Buhnen und Familien Shakespeare. Leipzig, 1S73. Introd. p. 7.)—
When Q, is candidly and thoroughly studied in the interest of stage effect, (and,
according to its title, it has had the test of the stage,) it will show, amidst all the
abbreviations, absurdities, garblings, and whatever other faults there may be, an
abundance of marks, which, apart from the fact that they follow much more exactly
the even course of the original novel, cause the effective representation of the action,
as well as of the characters themselves, to appear more distinct and logical.
[Page 9.] Taking Hamlet to be in his minority [on the authority of QJ, we have
the fact explained that, gifted with no mean understanding, he has not yet at the
beginning of the piece, with all his diligence, completed his studies, but resolves to
return immediately to Wittenberg.
Upon this supposition of the minority of Hamlet is explained also the murderous
scheme conceived by his uncle Claudius. If he wished to gratify his ambition, it be-
hooved him to lose no time. While Hamlet is still a minor, the death of his father
raises to the throne the widow whom Claudius had already won before his brother
was put out of the way. With the consent of the nobles, she chose her husband
co-regent. Claudius is compelled by Hamlet's reversionary right to the throne,
which is unquestioned, to educate the young philosopher for political life. Hence
he opposes his return to Wittenberg, and keeps him nearest to himself as the first
person of his court. The character of guardian in which he meets the prince, and
the sullen obedience whi'ch Hamlet renders to his uncle, are clearly significant of
the relations between the two. Hamlet, as a full-grown man, silently submitting to
such reproofs as he receives in the first scene at court, must at the outset forfeit our
respect, while as a youthful enthusiast, under age, he wins all our sympathy.
But all those facts which go to show Hamlet's unripe youth first derive their full
force from his inner qualities: this all-embracing pain {Welischmerz), this pes-
simism, which springs from idealism, this blazing up of qxuckly-excited passion,
this irresolute endurance of evil treatment, this yearning for the superlative and
overlooking the positive, this continual carping and wanting everything better, this
self-esteem with constant self-disparagement, and all the thousand little things which
betray youth and excuse it, all show Hamlet as a very young prince, most lovable,
trnripe, enthusiastic, upon whom is imposed a man's task.
[Page 13.] According to the arrangement of Q,, Hamlet, helplessly dispirited, and
turned, after the command of the Ghost is laid upon him, from the half-wish to
escape the task by suicide, and excited by the plottings of the King more and more
to the thirst for revenge, finds at last in the players the means whereby he is not only
enabled to see that his despair is wrong, but to have his uncle at the same time in his
power; thus the dramatic interest goes increasing on and on to the catastrophe of
the third act. According to the common arrangement, the passion drives on, breaks
DEVRIENT— SCHMIDT 347
o^ drives on, breaks off again, in order to appear again at the climax. A perfect
impossibility has resulted for the actor from this alternating fashion of the play, which
deprives the r6le of its original life. Passion. And what demands upon the intelli-
gence of the public does not the common text make ! Polonius tells the King that
the cause of Hamlet's madness is love for Ophelia : ' How may we try it further ?'
Ophelia is to meet Hamlet in the gallery, and be overheard by the King; Hamlet
comes, but the plan is not carried out. On the contrary, Hamlet charges Polonius
with being a pander. How does he get that idea, when Polonius has just forbidden
his daughter to have anything to do with Hamlet ? The two courtiers come ; Ham-
let receives them with bitter scorn, and knows what they are sent for. From what
source ? The players conie ; Hamlet wakes at last out of his lethargy, — only again
to appear immediately, wishing to escape his task by death. The whole court,
having to retire without any reason, comes back again without any reason, in order
to do at last what it purposed to do at the beginning of the act. Then, after Hamlet
expresses the most complete distrust of Ophelia, and has declared her father inte-
rested in their intimacy, comes a scene which begins with the fullest confessions of
love.
[Page 15.] Furthermore the text of Q, presents the rflle of the weak-minded
Queen in a much softer light than in the ordinary reading, where it is only sketched.
Her over-indulgent love for her son outweighs her love for her seducer. She is
shocked at the suspicion of the fratricide, protests her ignorance of the crime, and
shows abhorrence of the King when she learns from Horatio of the plots against
Hamlet's life. Her rude behavior to the King, and the suspicion that she is poisoned,
to which she gives instant expression in the last scene of the fifth act, are first fully
explained in Q,. How much the character of the Queen gains hereby with the
public, and as a part for an actress, is evident.
[Page 18.] That Horatio has not prepared the prince for the sudden death of
Ophelia is explained in Q^ by the simple fact that he was ignorant of it himself
whereas the common version represents him as attending the crazed Ophelia,
[Page 19.] If finally the poet should be hj-percritically censured for a want of
care in regard to the external accompaniments of this drama, we reply that Shake-
speare never, in any one of his dramas, introduced to his public a new subject, a
new plot, and as he thus dealt with known materials, he did not need to put
them together so carefully as a modem dramatist does, who has to make the public
acquainted with the subject which he selects, and which lies far out of their know-
ledge. While Goethe and Schiller complain in their correspondence that the Ger-
man public (it was so even in their day) desired nothing on the stage but the objec-
tive gratification of their curiosity, Shakespeare wrote for a public that, with a true
artistic devotion, listened only for a new treatment of well-known subjects, and like
the classic public of the Greeks, exalted in his lifetime, above all the great poets,
the master who was able to set forth, in the loftiest form of art, events that were
real and li^-ing in the popular heart.
JXn.IAN SCHMIDT (1873)
{Netu Biider atis dem gdstigen Leben unserer Zeit. Leipzig, 1S73, p. 25.) — I
believe that a critic who thoroughly and with the understanding studies and analyzes
this piece, if he goes to work honestly, must come at last to the conclusion that it is,
indeed, admirably thought out and designed, and in single scenes brilliantly exe-
34S APPENDIX
cuted, but that the composition and structure do not by any means correspond wilh
the first plan, and that the poet, even like his hero, loses his way. Even allowing
the value of the retarding moments, caused by the given characters of the persons
represented, the critic will, nevertheless, mark many single scenes (the Gravediggers,
&c.) as superfluous and retarding. He will conclude that the whole, as it now
stands, must be tedious and wearisome.
The only thing is, that facts by no means bear out this conclusion. The piece
ought not to have a tragic effect, but it actually has a tragic effect in the highest
sense, which were impossible if the effect depended only upon single scenes. The
feeling of the world has continued for a long time to distinguish whether it has here
a fragment or a whole, although of the Why and the Wherefore it has taken no
account. Among all Shakespeare's pieces there is no other that for three hundred
years, both on the stage and in the closet, has made so profound an impression,
and so occupied the feelings and thoughts of men. A transient influence of this
kind may be a matter of chance, but an influence of three hundred years' duration
is a fact which must have substantial grounds. And, furthermore, this effect is not
confined to the blind multitude, but the first minds of all nations have been the most
deeply impressed by it, and I venture to aflUrm that even the faithful critic, who,
with pencil in hand, finds something to explain in almost every scene, — an obsciire
passage here, a contradiction there, — will, if he will lay down his pencil for a mo-
ment, and give himself up freely to the piece, come under the same influence with
all the rest of the world.
Hence the idea is suggested that the supernatural element in the piece is not to be
explained by the understanding. For the understanding can in this respect go no
further than Goethe has gone. To analyze is the business of the understanding only.
The question then is : Cannot the supernatural element at least be made manifest 1
I will endeavor indirectly to show it.
Every one is acquainted with the representation of the Midsummer- NighVs Dream
as arranged by Tieck with Mendelssohn's music, which obtained so much applause,
and so long held command of the stage. With the exception of the tableaux at the
beginning and end, which form, as it were, the outer frame, Tieck compressed the
piece into one stage-scene, which remained unchanged throughout : it is a wood, seen
by moonlight, in which the three groups, the fairies, the lovers, and the blockheads,
appear first on the one side, then on the other. Fantastic chords, in the spirit of
this green, moonlight night, mark the various changes : it is like a fugue, in which
now one and now another voice rises above the rest. The tones and colors grace-
fully harmonize, we yield ourselves, idly dreaming, to be borne along by the serene
melody of the piece with all its varied movements.
This effect would not be produced by the music and scenery alone, but the
piece in itself is expressed with a heightened sensuousness by the arrangement;
before we were acquainted with the representation, by the mere reading of the piece,
we had the feeling of a green moonlit night, and heard the songs of the fairies.
What passes in this night is a bright dream; the mortals are under the charm of the
fairies, of Puck, of the moonlight, of the woodland solitudes. They dream or are
dreamed about, it matters not which. A strong passion has driven them into the
enchanted wood ; they have forgotten it, another has taken its place, to vanish again
in like manner; it is a mad chase after the impossible, and the more crazed they
are, the more confident is their consciousness of being infinitely wise. The fairies
make meny over the feelings which are sacred to these silly mortals, but they too
SCHMIDT 349
safier under the oower of Venus ; their queen fancies herself in love with a boor,
on whom an ass's head has been set, and this dream of love is expressed as vividly
as if it were real.
Leave out the coloring and pervading air of the piece, and the comedy would
make only an ordinary impression. Indeed, whoever requires Tieck's scenery, in
order to be sensible of the color and atmosphere of the play, — to him the scenery
would be no help. One can no more appreciate Shakespeare than Murillo or
Rubens by the understanding alone. The harmonious intermingling of the coloring
tones {Farbenione) is as important in a work of art as the firmness of the drawing.
It is true the color in a work of art would be inadequate without an intellectual
background. The Midsummer-Nighf s Dream has a symbolical character, which
wholly prevents it from being reduced to homely commonplaces. In order to un-
derstand the fun of this piece, one must have in mind the curse which, after the
death of Adonis, Venus pronounces upon Love :
' It shall be fickle, false, and full of fraud.
Bud aTidbe blasted in a breathing-^vhiU :
The bottom poison, and the top o'er-straw'd
With sweets, that shall the truest sight beguile;
The strongest body shall it make most weak.
Strike a wise dumb and teach the fool to speak.'
Shakespeare meant not to say that love was altogether this and nothing else,
nothing but a dream as Demetrius and Lysander dreamt it ; but he meant that it is
this besides ; all love is this, although not merely this. He did not mean that life is
only a dream, but that life is also a dream ; it is indispensable to a full understanding
of life that we should understand that whatever else it is, it is a dream.
[Page 28.] To return to Hamlet. Taking our stand at a distance, and in thought
letting the scenes of the tragedy pass in swift succession before us, we perceive that
there is something else going on besides the particular fable. As distinctly as in
the Midsummer- Nighf s Dream, we are made aware of a certain expressive coloring.
Again it is night, but no friendly moonlit night, no trace of green, no color that
hints at life. It is a cold, gray, weird night, overcast and darkly shaded. No
wonder that ghosts appear ; the place is made for them. No wonder that we linger
so long in the churchyard ; the whole earth is a churchyard. The skulls which the
Qown throws out are the only realities that survive of the living world, and as to
those who still live, — what is true? what is real ? Again we hear melodies ringing,
but brokenly, — fragments vainly seeking to unite, as the Clown, as the crazed Ophelia,
takes them up. Hamlet appears as a highly gifted man, intellectually far above the
others around him, delicately strung ; and now, as his eyes are opened, what are his
feelings? what his thoughts? He has cherished a strong and earnest love for
Ophelia; it has vanished, — he can be rude, and rough even, to the once beloved; he
understands himself as little as he understands the world. Is this only this Danish
prince, whose head has been somewhat turned by German philosophy in Wittenberg,
and whom his mother's infidelity, as well as the crime of his uncle, has rendered
quite distraught ? There is something more behind.
As in the Alidsummer- Night'' s Dream, the love-witchery is not explained merely
by the peculiar natures of Lysander and Demetrius, Helena and Hermia, so in this
tragedy, while the character of Hamlet is indeed a very significant representative of
the universal tone ( IVeltstimmung), yet this is not wholly expressed by him. Under
the green surface of life deep abysses lie hidden, to which at times a cleft opens : it
350 APPENDIX
is the realm of death and madness. Even to the clearest and firmest mind come
moments when consciousness and will seem but a vanishing appearance, a self-
illusion, and chaos the only reality. Then has it a sharp eye for characters like Polo-
nius, who passes with people for a shrewd man, — and, in fact, he is not so bad as
recent commentators would fain make him out, — when Hamlet quizzes him, Hamlet
casts contempt upon himself also ; thus it is, he thinks, with the world universally.
A miserable wretch like the King leads it by secret strings and to chastise such poor
creatures, — can that be a worthy task for a thinking and feeling man ? * I have no
pleasure in man, — or woman either.' The Gravedigger, who plays at loggats with
skulls, — he is the only realist, and even death, — is it a reality ? Is he not perhaps
the dupe of dreams that lead to madness even in the Beyond ?
There have arisen in Germany in recent times philosophers who have, in simple
earnest, declared this to be the final result of all human wisdom. The idea in itself
is not void. It is the dark background of life, which the philosopher has to rise
above, and which the poet may represent. How an individual man, how Shake-
speare, could feel in himself with such power and express all those deeper move-
ments of the soul {Seelensiimmungett), which at times pass over life and rule it, this
no one may well be able to explain, but the fact remains unshaken : the world of
Hamtet is as little the poet's whole world as is the world of the Midsummer- Night'' s
Dream, but it is a part, a moment of his world ; he had times when that which
Schopenhauer names Nirwana vibrated through him to the inmost. It was at such
a moment that he produced the traditional fable of Hamlet, and fashioned it to the
shape which we know. At a similar moment he created Lear and Timon, and it is
because something of this demon slumbers in every human breast, that these trage-
dies of the world's pain have everywhere made so powerful an impression, although
no one has been able to interpret it. Let Hamlet be analyzed from this standpoint,
namely, that the poet wished to turn out and make visible, as it were, every side and
shade of this precise form of feeling, and then the scenes which appear most refrac-
tory to the logic of the drama will be the most clearly understood.
The world of Hamlet is a dream as truly as that of the Midsummer-Night, but it
is a horrible, tormenting dream. In both pieces Shakespeare concludes with the
awaking. As in the latter, Theseus comes at the break of day, with his attendants,
for the hunt, and with the shrill summons of the horn awakens the sleepers, so also
at the close of Hamlet the fanfare sounds, the drums beat, and Fortinbras appears at
the head of his army, the man of a new world, in the freshness of youth, vigorous
and resolute, inaccessible to the ghostly visions of the world of dreams. The dead
are buried, the good as well as the bad, the simpletons and the knaves, the earth
closes over them, the cock really crows, and the earth ceases to be the theatre for
masks.
WILHELM KOENIG (1873)
{Shakespeare ah Dichter, Weltweiser, und Christ. Leipzig, 1873, p. 33.) — Espe-
cial emphasis should be laid upon the fact, that nowhere in any of his numerous
speeches does Hamlet intimate that he feels himself restricted by any definite con-
sideration, by any external hindrance, or any moral scruple, and whatsoever can be
understood elsewhere in the play as implying the contrary is to be regarded as erro-
seous. We are thus compelled, in our search for this hindrance, to return ever and
again to Hamlet himself and to his own powers.
BEN ED IX 351
DR RODERICK BENEDIX (1873)
{Die Shckespearomanie. Stuttgart, 1873, p. 274.)— All these ingenious theories
of numberless critics for solving the mystery of Hamlet's character are wholly
superfluous ; the inexplicable mystery is simply due to Shakespeare's having fallen
into a couple of gross faults of composition.
These faults of composition furnish us with the key by which we may explain
this mysterious unintelligibility of Hamlet. Take out these, and his character is as
plain and simple as any other.
These faults are pre-eminently a series of unusual, superfluous episodes, which
have not the slightest influence on the action of the tragedy, nay, have scarcely any
connection, or none, with it, and which must be pronounced, without qualification,
faults.
There is, first, the despatch of an embassy to Norway, and its return. Neither
the purpose nor the result of this proceeding has the slightest interest for us. But
weeks, perhaps months, pass before the return, which we have to wait for, of this
embassy.
The second episode is the journey of Laertes to Paris, with which the third is
connected, the sending of Reynaldo after Laertes. All the long-winded instructions
given by Polonius to Laertes and to Reynaldo are wholly devoid of any dramatic
character ; they have not the remotest relation to the action of the piece, and ac-
cordingly they leave us perfectly indifierent. Until the return of Laertes, months
must pass away. And this return, we have also to wait for.
The fourth episode is the journey of Fortinbras through Denmark to Poland. As
this is not possible without ships, months must go by before he returns. And this
return abo we have to wait for.
The fifth episode is the embarking of Hamlet for England, which comes in just
when the action promises to be lively, and is tending towards a conclusion. This
departure of Hamlet is flung, like a drag-chain, right around the action. And we
have to wait for Hamlet's return also. We thus see four persons travel away out
of the piece, and not till late do they come back again. These journeys are wholly
superfluous episodes.
They cause the time of the action to be extended through many months, and to
these episodes, and to them alone, is it due that Hamlet's slowness becomes such a
mystery. When Hamlet, most urgently summoned as he is to avenge his father's
death, wanders about for months without doing anything, it is indeed unintelligible,
and, to speak politely, mysterious and profound. But strike out those five episodes,
which have not the least connection with the essential action of the piece, and all
becomes clear and simple. The action then takes only a few days, and of Hamlet's
m)rsterious irresolution there is no trace. It is true he proceeds only hesitatingly,
but for this there are very good reasons In order to do away with all doubt,
Hamlet gets up the play. He obtains certainty, and immediately sets to work, stab-
bing Polonius, whom he mistakes for the King. Where now is the irresolution?
The Ghost appears to him again, and now we look for him to proceed against the
King, whereupon the poet shoves in the journey to England, and creates a new
delay. The whole fourth act looks like an interpolation, introduced to make out
five acts.
352 APPENDIX
[Page 278.] Shakespeare is inconsequent in the delineation of character, and in
Hamlet more than anywhere else. This inconsequence often appears strange enough,
but as people do not venture to pronounce their idol inconsequent, they call his in-i
consequence, profundity. But let me mention some instances.
There is, in the first place, Hamlet's behavior to Ophelia. He has truly, ardently
loved the maiden, but in his feigned madness he treats her shamefully. Here the
poet has, allowed himself to make a blunder. In the story from which this drama is
fashioned, there is an intriguing lady of the court who endeavors, at the instance of
the King, to act the spy upon Hamlet. This person is probably the prototype of
Ophelia. The poet has added the incident of Hamlet's being in love with Ophelia,
and thus comes the false stroke in the drawing. Hamlet's behavior would have
been perfectly justifiable towards that court lady, but it was not justifiable towards
Ophelia,
The second false stroke is Hamlet's rage at the way in which the courtiers treat
him. The Shakespearomaniacs have not failed to find this rage very fine, and to
applaud the poet for the surpassing skill with which he has delineated the pitiable
behavior of the court people. But how is it ? Hamlet represents himself as crazy,
and they treat him accordingly. They do not contradict him, they flatter him, give
in to his wildest conceits. But does not every sensible person do the same when he
has to deal with a madman ? Who would excite an insane person, and drive him
to acts of violence by contradiction?* This groundless rage is most fully spoken
out when he has killed Polonius So is it also with Laertes. He first
appears before us as a true and noble knight. In his demand of vengeance for
his murdered father, he is seen in the finest light. And yet this noble person
enters into a plot to allow, in a sham fight, the point of his rapier to be secretly
sharpened, and even poisons the point. Horrible baseness ! Here is the greatest
inconsequence in character-drawing that can possibly be. The delineation of
character is certainly not the strong side of the piece. There is not a person in
it, save Hamlet, who knows how to awaken in us any interest. The King is an
unmitigated rascal, and we can find no passion in him that renders his rascality
intelligible.
The Queen is one of the — well, least agreeable of women. Polonius, with his
pedantic garrulity, is one of the prettiest figures that the poet has drawn. Only his
verbosity is somewhat wearisome, Ophelia is a maiden not so very agreeable, but
her madness has made the r6le a favorite one. In representing insanity, an actress
can make use of all the tones which she has in her power; she can utter any trifles,
and draw upon all the registers. Thus some impression may be made, and it is not
particularly difficult. Horatio is a thoroughly agreeable, graceful person, one of
the best of Shakespeare's characters. Here we have done. The remaining per-
sons of the piece belong to the supernumeraries, and are mostly very dull r6les.
In them the actor must be every inch an artist, if he would awaken in us the slight-
est interest.
[Page 282.] I will grant that the death of Polonius serves a dramatic purpose,
inasmuch as it is the cause of Ophelia's madness, although it is not a sufficient cause.
No girl ever becomes insane because her father dies, least of all Ophelia, whose rela-
tion to her father we know was rather formal, lacking all heartiness. Besides, insanity
* The writer is unconsciously showing how well Shakespeare delineates the people about Hamlet,
and how naturally they treated him.— Tkans.
BENEDIX 353
IS a physical evil. If we are to believe that it is due to psychological causes, they must
be very strong and manifest. We can see how Gretchen, in Faust, becomes insane
upon psychological grounds ; but not Ophelia. Yet granting that it is so, why, I
ask, does she become crazy and die ? She is wholly guiltless. I ask still further,
why does Hamlet die ? WTiat conceivable guilt has he incurred ? The Shake-
spearomaniacs say, indeed, his weakness of will, his irresolution, was his fault, and
he atones for it by dying. Without regard to the fact that weakness of will is a
quality and no sin, I have shown that this is not in the character of Hamlet. In
letting Hamlet perish, Shakespeare departs from the story upon which he constructed
his drama. In that story Hamlet is a bold, energetic man, who comes back vic-
torious from England, conquers the king and his party, and gains the throne. It is
from this deviation from the original legend that the uncertainty, the inconsequence
in Hamlet's character comes. It is one half the good, substantial hero of the old
story, and the other half the creation of the poet. Shakespeare was not perfect
master of his materials. That he lets Hamlet die without any necessity is simply
unintelligible. No, there is not a syllable of poetic justice here. Fortinbras says
at the conclusion : ' O proud Death ! What feast is toward,' &c. This is the solu-
tion of the riddle. A banquet for death it was, suited to the steeled nerves of a
public delighting in blood.
Notwithstanding all I have said, there is still much good in the piece. But as
the Shakespearomaniacs seek out the good, and even endeavor to turn the bad into
good, I seek, on the contrary, to set forth the bad. Of the poor economy of time,
ot the inconsequence of the characters, of the tediously long episodes, I have now
spoken. But, apart from all these, the piece is badly constructed. The Ghost
appears twice in the first act. Why ? Once were enough. It has to speak to
Hamlet only, therefore the first appearance of it, as it is described at length in the
second scene, is all the more superfluous.
[Page 284.] Hajnlet appears with the actors, and delivers a long lecture to
them upon the art of speaking and acting. In this lecture Shakespeare, at all
events, sets forth his own principles in regard to the player's art. But does this
belong to a deep tragedy ? And these very respectable principles Shakespeare has,
as a poet, by his bombast and verbosity directly contradicted, for these characteristics
of his must needs produce the very manner of delivery which he blames
In Act IV, the King and the Queen, Rosencrantz and Guildenstem, are on the
stage. The Queen says at the beginning to the two latter : ' Bestow this place on
us a little while,' whereupon they retire. After eight-and-twenty verses they are
again called in, receive a commission, and go off again without speaking a word.
This is clumsy. Are the actors puppets, drawn hither and thither by wires ?
[Page 287.] The result of the fight between Hamlet and Laertes is brought about
m the strangest manner. In the heat of the fight the combatants exchange weapons.
Is this a conceivable possibility ? When a man knows how to handle a weapon, he
never in a fight lets it go. And had it been possible, would not Laertes have stopped
the fight under one pretext or another, since he knew that the slightest wound from
the poisoned rapier in the hand of Hamlet would be certain death ?
[Page 288.] After Hamlet is dead, there are fift}' more lines spoken ; persons alto-
gether unknown appear. I find this conclusion as clumsy as that of Romeo and yiiliet.
What do we care, after Hamlet's death, for Rosencrantz and Guildenstem ? WTiat,
for English ambassadors? for Fortinbras? What is to us the succession to the
throne m Denmark ? We have concerned ourselves only with Hamlet. With his
Vdi.. II.-a3
354 APPENDIX
death our interest is at an end, entirely at an end. We do not want to know any-
thing more.
[Page 289.] It is true this drama has been a stock-piece on the German stage for
a century. Its influence is easily explained. In the first place, the subject of it is
very interesting. It had already been used by others before Shakespeare. In the
second place, the chief character is a rOle unusually telling. Hamlet feigns mad
ness, and so makes many striking and acute speeches, which are the chief charm of
the piece, and have always given especial pleasure. This part pleases all the more,
because the poet has so portrayed the other parts, the court people particularly, thai
they furnish food for Hamlet's satire. Furthermore, the piece has considerable
dramatic effects. I reckon Hamlet's feigned madness among them, although it is
too much spun out ; Ophelia's insanity, on the other hand, is a mere theatrical effect.
Such purely theatrical effects are numerous in the piece, and have always charmed
play-goers. Among these effects belong the three appearances of a ghost with the
necessary, imposing accidents, a play upon the stage, a churchyard with graves and
a burial, a fight and half a dozen corpses, and an abundance of fustian phrases
withal.
That it is not the piece itself particularly which impresses the public is evident
from the fact, that for several decades the play has been given in different places in
different shapes. Every one who has undertaken to alter the piece has picked out
such parts as he considered especially effective, and left out other portions
The fact that a piece has admitted of so many alterations shows how very loosely it
is constructed.
[Page 290.] The tragic issue of a drama must be in the drama itself, in its essen-
tial necessity ; there must be no other possible. Richard III and Macbeth must
needs end tragically, — a reconciliation is in them not possible. In Hamlet no tragic
issue is necessary.
KARL WERDER (1875)
( Vorlesungen uber Shakespeare's Hamlet. Berlin, 1875, p. 32.) — The critics one
and all, (with two exceptions,) Goethe at their head, have taken up the idea that,
personally from the beginning, throughout the piece, Hamlet is at fault, on account
of some subjective deficiency, failing or ill-desert. Were he not unfortunately foi
his work and for himself just what he happens to be, — had he been by nature fitted
for what he had to do, then all would instantly, from the outset, have taken another,
and indeed, according to its nature and its spirit, a more direct course. Thus he is
the obstacle ; he it is, who, through his natural disposition, drags everything out of
place, and gets everything in confusion by giving it a direction wrong in itself and
ruinous to himself and others.
Now from all this I must, for my part, utterly dissent.
One thing, I deny, first of all, the one point upon which all the rest depends, and
with which it all stands or falls, this one point, namely, that it is possible for Hamlet
to dare to do what all the critics, notwithstanding their nuances, almost unanimously
require of him. Whether or not he were naturally capable of doing it is a question
altogether impertinent. For it simply was not possible, and this for reasons entirely
objtctive. The situation of things, the force of circumstances, the nature of his task,
directly foibid it, and so imperatively, that he was compelled to respect the prohibi-
WERDER 355
tion, if he were to keep his reason ; above all, his poetic and dramatic, aye, and hia
human, reason. The critics have been so absorbed in the study of his character,
that the task imposed upon him has been lost sight of. Here is the fundamental
mistake.
What is it they require of him ?
Why, that he should assault the King immediately, directly, — make short work with
him, nay, the shorter the better ; such has been the loudest and most unanimous
demand. He is not to feign to be crazy. He is to draw out, not his tablets, but
his dagger; not to cry, ' Farewell ! remember me!' but, ' Death to the murderer''
He is to go right in and slay the King at once. That he can do the very first time
he catches sight of him, in the very next hour ; the opportunity is always at hand ;
there is nothing easier than this procedure. But after the dagger- stroke, what then ?
Why, then he is to call the court and the people together, and justify his deed, and
take possession of the throne which belonged to him alone. But how is he to go to
work to justify his deed ? By telling what the ghost of his father had communicated
to him? One must have a strange idea of Hamlet's public, of the community
before which he was to conduct his case, of the people and nobility of Denmark,
if one supposes that the people are going to believe him, that they will suffer them-
selves to be convinced, by evidence of this sort, of the justice of his action.
The critics are pleased to assume that he was the bom sovereign judge in the
land, and the legitimate heir to the throne, his right to which had been wrested from
him by a usurper. But where stands it so written ? Not in Shakespeare ! It is a
pure fiction. . Hamlet himself breathes not a syllable of complaint [' Who stole the
diadem?' Ed.] of any wrong that he had suffered. But of that wrong, if such
wrong there were, had there been a usurpation, Hamlet must needs have spoken,
and not only he, and not only Horatio, but the King and others also. The courtiers,
for example, when they were seeking to explain his madness, would certamly have
hit upon this as the cause of it. And in the very first scene of the piece, where
matters of State are mentioned in connection with the appearance of the Ghost, this
fact, if it existed, would not have gone unnoticed.
[Professor Werder here goes on at some length to prove that none of Hamlet's
rights to the throne were infringed, and, misled through the translation of ' imperial
jointress,' by the German word Erbin, asserts that the Queen was the legitimate heir-
ess and successor to the crown, and that the most that Hamlet could hope for would
have been his election as co-regent. And in a footnote the learned Professor pro-
poses the following astonishing parallel : ' Suppose Queen Elizabeth had had a son,
thirty years of age, by a" former marriage, and had then taken a second husband, it
never would have occurred either to her or to her subjects that her son must be
King, and that she must descend from the throne.' To an English student, anxious
to admire German criticism, few things are more discouraging than to note how
frequently it ignores the labors of English scholars. Had Professor Werder looked
into any good annotated English edition of Hamlet, he would have found that, nigh
a hundred years ago, Steevens called attention to the fact that Denmark was an
elective monarchy, and he would have found, also, that a great legal authority, Mr
Justice Blackstone, had disproved the supposition that Claudius was a usurper. 1
should not have called attention to this slip of Professor Werder's were it not that
his volume on Hamlet is one of the most noteworthy that has appeared in Germany,
although its main idea is to be found in Klein, and in several minor details he has
*>een anticipated. Since the foregoing sentences were written, and while these pages
356 APPENDIX
are going through the press, the news reaches us of the death of Ki.ElN. His
History of the Drama must unfortunately remain a fragment. In the thirteenth
volume, just published, the course is traced of the English Drama down to the time
of Shakespeare, Whatever may be the estimate, by those most competent to judge,
of the preceding volumes, no one who has read the last but will regret the loss of
remarks keen and original which we had a right to expect from a writer whose style
is never drowsy. Ed.]
[Page 38.] But the mass of the people ! Would they believe the prince's stcry ?
Perhaps; but perhaps not. Hamlet then, — this, too, has been suggested, — if it
seemed to him the thing to be done, instantly to fall upon the King, should have
employed the time, which he wasted in pretending to be crazy, in winning over the
people. How ? He should have spread among them a report of the communication
made by the Ghost. For this proceeding he should have made use of Horatio,
Marcellus, and Bernardo ; they, too, had seen the Ghost, — they could, indeed, swear
to that. But if after that the common people should ask further about what the
Ghost disclosed, there was no one but Hamlet to answer, — he alone had received
the disclosure from the mouth of the Ghost. His friends can only swear that they
had seen the Ghost, and heard a voice from under the earth admonishing them to
take the oath which Hamlet desired of them, not to blab about what they had seen
except, of course, with Hamlet's consent. So the hope of gaining the people 's
very doubtful ; for they must be supposed to have enough sense to say to themselves
Hamlet, the only one personally interested, is party and judge at the same time, —
judge in his own cause. It is an absolute impossibility, if he kills the King, that
upon his testimony alone, for no other existed, the people could have a conviction,
'ir the shadow of a conviction, of the justice of his act.
And now as to the rest, the nobility, the court, the collective dignitaries of the
realm, — would they not all have risen at once against Hamlet as the most shameful
and impudent of liars and criminals, who, to gratify his own ambition, had, wholly
without proof, charged another, the King, with the worst of crimes, that he might
commit the same crime himself? A man who sought to possess himself of power
after such a fashion, they are to be ready to acknowledge as their king, — a notorious
regicide ! The shame alone that he put upon them, in holding them to be such
fools as to believe his story, must have stirred up their wrath against him. As a
worthless wretch must he appear to them, murdering the King, and covering his
victim at the same time with a charge most shameful and incapable of being proved.
The least they could do in the case would be to pronounce him a madman, and put
him in confinement and in chains.
[Page 39.] His own position Shakespeare's Hamlet understands very well, and
accordingly takes better care of his fame than the critics, by not stabbing the King;
had he done that, such heroism would have proved him a most egregious sim-
pleton.
Even the ghost of his father understands the state of things better (han the critics.
He requires his son to avenge his murder, but he by no means requires it with
their hot bloodthirstiness. He is in no such haste, and manner and time he leaves
to his son : ^Howsoever ihou pursuest this act,' says he. That merely the thrust of
a dagger will suffice, the Ghost does not intimate; the Ghost is quite too judicious
for that. Even when he comes the second time, his visit is only to whet the blunted
purpose; but he does not blame his son, nor read him a lecture because he has done
* WERDER 357
nothing, as the critics would have it, nor does he make a crime of his delay, as they
do. Only Hamlet himself does that.
[Page 40.] Kreyssig has said quite truly, ' that, according to our feeling, Hamlet
could, without further circumstance, make short work with the King.' • According
to our feeling,* — oh, yes ! But according to poetic principle ? — oh, no ! According
to our feeling, certainly ; for we know, indeed, — although not with full certainty till
Act in, — that Claudius is the murderer of his brother, and that the prince is per-
fectly in the right. We are in the secret, we sit, as the public, in the council of the
gods. But the Danes do not know it, and are never to be convinced of it if Hamlet
slays the King, and then appeals for his vindication to a private communication
which a ghost has made to him. They, the Danes, in the intricate case before them,
will never get at the right and the wrong of it in the way in which the critics would
have matters decided ; but all depends entirely upon the Danes finding out that, and
not upon the right and wrong, what ought to be done or left undone, ' according to
our feeling.' This is the great difference between the public before and the public
behind the curtain ; between us who see the play and those who act therein. These
stand in the first line, and we in the second. What is right and wrong, truth and
justice among them and for them, — the judgment of the stage, — this is the law for
us, and to the supremacy of this judgment ours must submit.
Denmark is Hamlet's objective world. If that condemns him, and it must in
justice condemn him, because it is impossible for him to justify himself before that,
should he commit the murder which the critical spectators demand of him, if before
that world he must needs appear as a brutal ruffian, as the most impudent and bare-
faced of liars, or as a maniac, — then are his honor and reason, dramatically and
humanly considered, gone forever, even though his friend Horatio believed in him
ten times over.
But what now has Hamlet in truth to do ? What is his real task ?
A very sharply-defined duty, but a duty very different from that which the critics
impose upon him. Not to crush the King at once, — he could commit no greater
blunder, — but to bring him to confession, to unmask, and convict him : this is his
first, nearest, inevitable duty.
As things stand, truth and justice can be known only from one mouth, the mouth
of the crowned criminal, or at least from the King's party, or they remain hidden
and buried till the last day.
This is the point ! Herein lie the terrors of this tragedy, — its enigmatical horror,
its inexorable misery ! The encoffined secresy of the unprovable crime : this is the
subterranean spring, whence flows its power to awaken fear and sympathy.
That this point, so simple, so humanly natural, that when once seen it is forever
present, — that this point for a century long should nruer have been seen, is the most
incomprehensible thing that has ever happened in aesthetic criticism from the very
beginning of its existence.
[Page 47.] What Hamlet has nearest at heart, after the Ghost appeared to him, is
not the death, but, on the contrary, the life, of the King, — henceforth as dear to him
as hh own life ! These two lives are the only means whereby his task is to be accom-
plished. Now that he knows the crime, now that he is to punish it, nothing could
happen to him worse than that the King should die, unexposed, and so escape jus-
tice ! .... If by killing the King on the spot, he only deprived him of the fruits
of his crime, or if he lost his own life in so doing, or if the Danes had been so
insane as to set him on the throne after he had murdered Claudius, — would that be.
35^ APPENDIX
in the tragical sense, the true revenge ? Wherein would there be any essential differ-
ence between such an ending and the accident of the King's dying a natural death,
and thereby being deprived of the fruit of his crime ? To a tragical revenge there is
necessary, punishment, to punishment justice, and to justice the vindication of it
before the world. And, therefore, Hamlet's aim is not the crown, nor is it his first
duty to kill the King ; but his task is justly to punish the murderer of his father,
unassailable as that murderer is in the eye of the world, and to satisfy the Danes of
the righteousness of this procedure. This is the point.
[Page 58.] Can we hear this interview between Hamlet and his mother, hear
it only once, and not be satisfied that it is the voice of truth itself that here speaks ?
or do we misunderstand it, as if it were a particular that need not be, or indeed a
mere negative that ought not to be ? For both persons, considering their respective
position and their fate, it is the indispensable, all-essential scene that must needs
take place between them ! And yet here come the gentlemen critics, and talk of
the part full of genius, and the tragic scene that Hamlet plays with his mother, like
a comedian to show himself off! _ Good God ! Must Shakespeare be forever fixed
upon to write schoolboys' compositions about ? I should think there were others
enough for that purpose !
[Page 70. • O, that this too too solid flesh would melt,' &c.] "What Hamlet, — 1
cannot say, has a presentiment of, but nevertheless what is in him, dark, voiceless,
but yet there, wholly undefined, but not to be banished, and inborn, as it were, in his
nature, — he does not understand, can form no idea of it, but he feels it ! The atmo-
sphere of murder which he inhales, which breathes upon him from the person of
the murderer, the shuddering sense of the Ghost hovering near, all that awaits him,
all that stands ready at the door, all that his friends have brought to his knowledge,
all that the Ghost has upon its lips to say to him; the terror, terrible as Past and as
Future, — all that is for him here and is his : all this is in him ! This is the burthen
which oppresses him, the immovable weight which he does not yet understand, but
•vhich he feels ! Hence the tone and coloring of this soliloquy.
[Page 77. ' My tables ! meet it is I set it down,' &c.] These words are an avis
of the poet, but, with a view to the fundamental point of his piece as I understand
it, not to the character, but to the situation of his hero. Instead of telling us what
Hamlet can do first, he lets him do what he first can, namely, bring out, expose to
view the character of the King. This is the symbolic act by which he, the poet,
shows us the way to understand Hamlet, — the pantomime which is to give us to see
the difficulty of Hamlet's task. These words, jotted down, are the expression of
that which is at the first possible and impossible to him, — and not only subjectively,
but objectively, — the possible and impossible not only to him, but in and for them-
selves, under the circumstances. He can at the first only take passing note of th»
King, only point him out to himself: 'So, uncle, there you are!' — beyond thi»
nothing else, absolutely nothing! Upon the one side, a well-defended fortress, and
without, a single man, who is to take it, he alone. So stands Hamlet confronting
his task !
[Page 80.] But will it not, however, be thought that he literally writes down the
j)hrase ? Must it still be said, — what even the poorest actor in Hamlet would not
misunderstand in this fashion ? Hamlet pulls out his tablets, and jabs the point of
his pencil once or twice into the leaf, — because he cannot do the same to the King
with his sword, as he would like to, — nothing further, — only such marks, such a
»ign does he make. That stands for ' So, uncle, there you are !' And although he
WERDER 359
says he must write it down for himself, he does not literally write, — that does not
2ccord with his mood and situation.
[Page 89.] As soon as Hamlet has heard what the Ghost tells him, and is alone
by himself, his clear head instantly takes in the whole dire pass to which Truth and
Right, hopelessly beyond all human power, have come. The imminent agony, aye,
the shudder of certainty that must seize him as to the impossibility, as things stand,
of solving the difficulty ; (for, let the case only be considered, it is such a task as ex-
ceeds the power of a single individual, exceeds every effort and every sacrifice
that he, upon whom it devolves, can from his own resources bring and apply;)
the horror and the crime, coming so close to him ; his murdered father's cry for
revenge ; the triumphant murderer, who, if the task can be achieved, is certainly
not to be reached by force, and hardly by cunning, with scarcely a glimmer of hope
of success, so sagacious and artful is he ; — all this forms a condition of things so dark
and dread, a dilemma of so terrible and monstrous a nature, that for a man involved
in it to break through it alone by his own unaided strength, — this is, indeed, a task
which may well cost him the loss of his understanding !
This feeling, this sense of the situation ! and Shakespeare has considered the task
with this feeling, and has given it to his hero, so that the spectators also shall have
it, and shall not, without it, look upon the prince from the outset as a shuffling,
crackbrained fellow, who seeks to humbug himself and us, in order to hide his lack
of energy, — this, too, is again, thoroughly positive and not negative, not a blamable
personal defect, but the monstrous, real, objective, trouble and dilemma ; — this feel-
mg, this natural, immediate feeling, is the inmost impulse to his purpose of putting
* an antic disposition on.' This instinctive motive is the first original motive. His
action is the direct outcome of this his full sense of the situation.
Thus, upon a sound nature is laid what is fitted to destroy it ! And, in fact,
it does destroy it, all except the mind, all except the knowledge and freedom of the
mind.
Because he knows that all in him of happiness and peace is already destroyed by
the situation in which, perfectly innocently on his part, he is placed, — for even w^ere
he to fulfil his task, how shall he ever again be glad ? — and because he knows at the
same time that the demon of his task is ceaselessly menacing the last thing which is
left to him unshattered, his mind, ever helplessly imperilled also, — ^because this entire,
utter suffering has come upon him, nothing being left in him which is not affected
by it, and because it wholly possesses him, therefore he can do nothing else but give
expression to this his condition, and this, too, out of the inmost core of his nature,
and out of the strength and fineness of his understanding ! . . . .
That from which he actually suffers, the truth of his position, he manifests ; he
moves in the element which his fate has made for him, and within which alone all
that he may undertake is henceforth to go on. Others see this fact, viz : his blighted
heing and his clear head; but they do not understand it. And they are not to
understand it. The appearance, the simple fact, fills them; the inner being, the
suffering of the inner nature, the agony and the conflict of the free, strong mind,
they do not miderstand.
But, — and this is the second point, — that instinctive motive instantly makes itself
influential in him as an advantage. So it becomes effective as design.
The behavior, for which, as a matter that may chance to be serviceable to him, he
prepares his friends, and the connection of which with the appearance of the Ghost
iliej were not to tattle about, is in fact of the greatest possible service to him. Do
36o APPENDIX
not our practical gentlemen see now how practical it is ? They would certainly
see it, if only they did not think that the true practical way is to cut the King down
at once. For this behavior enables him at least to give some vent to what is raging
within him, and what he would fain shriek out, while at the same time it leads atten
tion away from the true cause of his trouble, away from his secret, and secures it.
To behave in his natural manner in the circle that surrounds him, after the change
wrought in him by the communication made by the Ghost, that, — putting wholly out
of sight whether he could have done so or not, — that would be of no service, a very
bad role. Besides, by the behavior he adopts, he has no need any longer to show
respect for those whom he despises — despises ? ay, indeed !
And possibly also, if he is supposed to be crazy, he can, under this cover, should
any favorable opportunity offer itself, make use of it for more active operations
against the enemy than would be permitted to a sane man ; play a more active game,
be perhaps foolhardy, and in case of failure still keep room, under the protection of
his supposed imbecility, for a new attack. This also may occur to his mind when
he finds himself suddenly caught in the clutch of his terrible fate, — may occur ! but
it is not such an inducement as is certainly included in his thoughts. No matter
of detail can he take account of at the first. That would require a plan, and a plan
he neither has, nor can have. He does what he must, — takes the step which is
directly before him, — does what alone is actually at hand, does it without any other
reflection ; does what he in his situation must feel is to be done, and what he must
recognize as most advantageous to his cause. And therefore, in thus acting, his
thought must be that it will lead him the most surely and faithfully through the
night of his task. Of the How, of the manner and preliminary steps of the work
before him, he cannot by any means have an idea.
The third point, finally, the main point for a right understanding of the piece. In
this : that it cannot be said, without qualification, that Hamlet plays the madman.
Such play, in the primary sense of the word, actually feigning, belongs to the mere
novel, but not to him, not to Shakespeare's Hamlet ! The degree of feigning, the
kind of play, — that is the nice and grand point to be considered.
Here again we have to do with Shakespeare's chief strength as a poet, which is
to re-mould a given subject, and give it a finer shape, the best in spirit and in truth.
Thus here he takes the fable from Saxo's chronicle and the novel of Belleforest.
There Amleth really pretends to be crazy ; he crows like a cock, flaps his wings,
jumps upon the mattress under which the listener is concealed, and stabs him, and
then hacks him into pieces, which he cooks and throws to the swine. He is the
fellow to strike his foe dead at once, — the very man the critics want; they stand
with him on the same level, — he actually does all that they require of Hamlet.
But it is by no means that history which Shakespeare's work represents. He uses
it, and makes something entirely different out of it. His criminal, through his appa-
rently impregnable position, bears a charmed life, and his Danes are not Saxo's
Jutes. The subject, the problem, in his hands has become wholly different, some-
thing much deeper than a mere act of revenge, and consequently the character of
the prince is another thing.
As we said, the behavior of Hamlet, which is the most natural for him in his
situation, and which springs directly from it, is also the most serviceable for the
Accomplishment of his work. To foresee that when he gives himself out as insane,
others will so regard him ; and to desire that they should do so, and therefore to
•ustain the delusion, which they put upon themselves, by conduct which should tend
WERDER j6j
to strengthen it, — seems to him to amount to the same thing. Therefore, to this de-
gree, which is relatively slight, he makes believe, he plays the madman. But because
it is essentially his truth, the eflfect of his real suffering, of his shattered being, to which
his mind, still ever free, gives vent so far as it dare, without betraying his secret, —
because it is his torture, his rage, his cry of woe, his agony, thus outwardly expressed,
thus fully and entirely become known : therefore this play of his is not merely feigning,
and because not merely, therefore not feigning at all, in the strict sense of the word.
[Page 95. J How loosely does he wear his mask! How transparent is it! He
is always showing his true face. Not himself, only his secret, is hidden. And
therefore is his mask so soon used up. For so soon as the first opportunity offers
for action, — and how soon it comes through the court-play ! — the King knows his
secret ; that the madness was no real madness, the King must naturally have seen
even earlier. From the beginning his evil conscience scented under this madness a
design against himself. He applies to Hamlet's behavior/ even before he had clan-
destinely listened to him, the same word that Hamlet himself uses, ' puts on,' —
' why he puts on this confusion.' After he listens, his suspicion is certainty ; but
now, after the play, he sees, also, out of what knowledge and to what ultimate end
the madness has been feigned. Hamlet knows very well, at the point which he has
reached, that the old method is worn out. A new one must be found. But, first,
his mother is to be enlightened, and her conscience appealed to. This is now, after
he has convinced himself of the guilt of the King, her husband, the most important
thing, the actually urgent duty which lies nearest to him, nearer than killing the
King ! But this, in fact, seems to have escaped all observation, viz : the inexorable
necessity, according to the meaning and character of the piece, of just this action.
That Shakespeare lets this action be introduced by the agency of others, and not by
Hamlet, by the interest of Polonius, as a part of his machination against the prince
and the Queen, — this action, which is in itself for both of them the most imperative
necessity ; and that, moreover, not merely notwithstanding this external agency, but
rather for the sake of it, the impersonal Power (the Ghost) intervenes, as the power
instantaneously helping all forward : this it is that impresses this scene so powerfully
with the stamp of that unequalled power of invention which characterizes the work,
and makes this scene the centre and turning-point of the whole.
Here, here comes in a circumstance which changes everything, Hamlet kills
Polonius. He must now submit to be sent away. Thus, as the opportunity to adopt
some new method of proceeding is cut off, the old one, although somewhat worn
out, must be continued, because it suits both the King and the prince ; it suits the
King to consider the prince as really insane, and so to get rid of him, and it suits
the prince to continue his peculiar behavior, although more carelessly than before,
and without taking any special pains to dissemble, even wearily, because he has
given the death-stroke
It may be said, however, that Hamlet feigns only so far as is necessary to make
the others show themselves. The real feigning is, in fact, always on their part;
they all pretend to be honest, and play false comedy. He tells them only his truth
and their lies, and makes them tell their lies. The case of Amleth in the novel
does not necessitate the feeling that it was a case to lose one's understanding about :
therefore he pretends to be mad, Hamlet, on the contrary, has that feeling, and
therefore is his feigning so transparent, unreal, after an ideal fashion. The gravity
of his fate is ever far more to him than his solicitude abou*. his mask. It is only Lt
die way, and is soon played. . ■ • •
362 A '^PENDIX
[Page 119.] Hamlet, I have said, chooses the best means to his tnd. Ay, In-
deed! For the court-play, by the vividness and transparency with which it repre-
sents the deed, — this, rather than any other conceivable thing, this surprise at finding
himself confronted with his secret in the full light of the lamps of the theatre, —
this, if he committed the crime, must bring the King to confession, although at first
only to Hamlet's eye and satisfaction. How much is thus hereby gained ! The
first indispensable step towards the solution of his task is actually taken; now, in-
deed, he first knows his way. And that Hamlet knows without doubt that confessiof
is the point upon which all depends is seen here, — here at the close of this soliloquy
he speaks out the word, ' That guilty creatures sitting at a play have pro-
claimed their malefactions !' Confessed, — and on the spot : herein is the effectiveness
of this mode of proceeding.
[Page 121.] II, ii, 576-598, is said to mean, forsooth, that thus far Hamlet has
mistaken and blundered about the whole thing. Pray, have people no ears for the
agony of a human being, which is so intolerable that it drives him to the extremity ot
falling out with himself, no appreciation of a situation in which righteous indigna-
tion, because it cannot reach its object, turns against itself, in order to give itself
vent and to cool the heated sense of the impossibility of acting by self-reproach and
all manner of self-depreciation ? Is it his will then to be a dull and muddy-mettled
rascal, and peak like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of his cause ? Does he condemn
himself thereto out of cowardice, incapacity, morbid scrupulousness, weakness of
will, and all such-like fine motives ? Is he not rather forced to be so ? Is he not
doomed thereto ? I thought I had shown plainly enough the iron grasp in which
he is held. That he can say nothing for a king upon whose property and most dear
life a damned defeat has been made : that is the very horror of his position, — to be
forced to speak not a syllable directly and to the point ; if he had chosen to do only
that, most assuredly and instantly he would have lost the game. And the critics
insist upon condemning him, because he knows that and declares it, and doei
nothing ! The actor, h' can talk of Priam's death and Hecuba's grief — talk of them
so movingly ! Had he his (Hamlet's) motive, his cue for passion, he would drown
the stage with tears, and make mad the guilty, &c., because he, in the freedom of
the actor, of the objective, can act! But Hamlet cannot do that, he can act no
play, but a real thing, directly, out of his own consciousness, and must suffer wreck,
because he can adduce no proof of its reality ! He must be silent, he can operate
only indirectly, by means of a reflected image, must let play-actors speak and act
for him, and can himself only look on and observe ! . . . .
And when he says further, ' it cannot be But I am pigeon-livered, and lack gall
To make oppression bitter,' &c. ; this also is an outbreak of his wrath at not being
permitted to follow the first impulse, the immediate prompting of the thirst for re-
venge. He is thus enraged, because his reason is so strong as to restrain him, and,
because he restrains himself, he has to suffer such pain. To smite down the King,
to sacrifice his own life by the blow, in order to be quit of his task at once, instead
of fulfilling it, that were the first, the easiest, the happiest thing for him ; but he
wills to fulfil it, wills to fulfil it faithfully, and not shamefully avoid it. His gall
does not affect his head, his will tames his heart, the gnashing hunger for revenge,
the storm of the blood ; and that is the agony that makes the blood boil, from that
nature revolts, every fibre quivers in rebellion and anguish : so strong is the will in
him, whom people would make out to be a weakling, that he endures this torture in
the fear and virtue of his duty. What he rails at as ' pigeon-livered,' when the
WERDER 363
mortal nature, impatient of pain, weary of suffering, cries out in him, — all this is
enduring courage, the courage of reason, springing fr )m reverence for a holy duty
and from devotion thereto.
[Page 154.] On his way to his mother, Hamlet finds the King at prayer, — the
King, who here for the first time makes verbal confession before us that he is
the murderer, while confessing the crime to himself in soliloquy. So far have
Hamlet and the poet brought him, by means of the play. Here is progress in the
rOle of the King, and, from the negative side, in the piece ! ! There is a depth or
power of invention here which has not its like ! The wisdom in the rhythm of the
development, — this it is which, if I may speak for myself, moves me the most deeply !
the tempo of the onward movement in the piece, how measured is its step, — the
course it takes, appearing to drag, and yet chased by the storm of God, Heaven,
and Hell thundering together !
[Page 156.] Now, after the court-play, Hamlet knows, indeed, that he is discov-
ered. As he knows his enemy, so after this attack his enemy knows him, and will
strain every nerve to destroy him, to get clear of the pursuer, the avenger. This
Hamlet knows, and must be prepared for, must expect, and, — trust to his righteous
cause. Just this it is which is his motive, his absolute motive ! his only support I
And if, to the result just arrived at, nothing further should come to advance his aim,
nay, even if the remoter consequence should prove injurious and outweigh the
present advantage, and cause all to come to nothing, it must not be he himself
through whose action it comes to naught. That would be the case should he now
stab the King. He can never, by his own testimony alone, complete his work if
he s'lences the guilty one forever.
Hamlet, it is true, does not himself say this, — no ! But the state of the case says
it instead. Perhaps Shakespeare meant not to take from us entirely the idea of the
possibility of his yet saying something himself; has meant, — and not perhaps, but
certainly, meant, — that we shall learn it from the piece itself, that our Judgment
should give heed to his plot, as well as our ear to the words of his characters !
How if the poet should reserve the explanation of his plot for some other one of
his dramatis personae, who is to come forward at the end of the piece ? How if
his prince is not to be our interpreter of the plot beforehand, but rather is himself
to be included in it ? — the general idea, hidden in him, in the individual and the
concrete, in the movement and the passion, in the disjecta membra, which do not
yet recognize their master ?
[Page 157.] Is it thought to be a mere subterfuge of Hamlet's irresolution, that
he considers the moment when the King is praying as not the favorable moment
for him to die ? a refinement of Hamlet's subtle theorizing about revenge, by which
he imposes on himself; that the avenging sword must know a more horrid bent?
Are the critics struck with blindness ? It is, I insist, the purpose of the poet, his
determination the whole piece through, his decree, his judgment, — the object in
view, to show how he himself understands it, and wishes it understood ! instead of
a lie, it is the truth which he wishes to make manifest, — it is his wisdom, his under
standing, his idea of justice, that we are to receive ! With this design upon us, he
builds up his piece. [See, « WTien he is drunk asleep, or in his rage,' &c.. Ill, iii,
89-95.] Well. — and how then does the King fall at last? He so falls that we see
that every other way would be more lenient, would be ' hire and salary,' not ven-
geance ! not the vengeance to which he is doomed. Not in a sudden fit does he
fell, not while drunk asleep, not while gaming, or swearing, &c. ; then his fate would
364 APPENDIX
have been all too easy ; but, in fact, at a moment, and when in the very act of
doing what puts him so utterly beyond all hope of salvation, that even from the
threatening words of Hamlet, terrible as they are, we neither can nor should, when
he utters them, anticipate the catastrophe ! we, even as little as Hamlet himself, have
no premonition of the result ! The King falls in perpetrating a crime, even greater
than his first, at the moment when he is committing a threefold murder, — rather than
be betrayed he suffers even his own wife to drink the poison which he had prepared
for Hamlet, — in this moment, utterly hopeless of salvation, he falls: so 'that his
soul may be as damned and black As hell, whereto it goes.'
Thus \h.^ poet fulfils the words of Hamlet ! Thus do they express his idea, Shake-
speare's idea to the letter, of vengeance, of punishment, of judgment, in such a case
as this, his way of dealing justice to this transgressor
And it must not be forgotten that Hamlet it is who brings the King to this end.
He alone does it, by his hits and by his misses, by the play and by the killing of
Polonius.
[Page 161.] Enraged, frantic, he rushes in wildly to his mother, and here, hear-
ing the voice behind the tapestry, here, now supposing the King to bt hidden there,
he allows himself to be carried away by his hot blood, by rage ; here, in this place
and in this still hour, close by the bed where he himself was begotten, and which shall
by his will be no couch for luxury and damned incest; here, where the worst per-
sonal dishonor which has been inflicted upon him, the living son, by the seducer of
his mother, comes so near to him ; here, where the whole air is full of it ; here,
the voice of the wretch (he is thinking only of the King, and therefore believes that
it is the King whom he has heard), the voice of the wretch calls up all his shame,
and, forgetting the strict obligation of his task, he gives full course to his thirst for
vengeance (after the proof he has had by means of the play, he is, of course, morally
free to kill the King), he is carried away into the grave error of plunging his sword
through the tapestry. A grave error, indeed ! For here his moral right and power
are not at all concerned.
This is the turning-point of the piece, which includes in itself the second cardinal
moment for the understanding of the whole. The first, that which I call the funda-
mental point, is the conditio sine qua non, that guards the treasure, which can be
exhumed only with the help and by the power of the second
Only with this second point do we get an insight into the tragic depth of the piece,
into the plot. To understand this turning-point is to understand Hamlet.
Something new is here before us, something surprising, for which we were not
prepared. Hamlet commits an error ! And this error is Hamlet !
But from now on, all hinges on this error, and only of this error shall we have to
speak.
That Hamlet stabs at the tapestry is no proof forsooth that he was a coward, and
would not have ventured the act face to face with the enemy (even this silliness
has been suggested!); but it is the expression and the act of his blind passion.
Without stopping to consider whether he hit or miss, he stabs, like lightning, blindly
into the dark (the tapestry corresponding to the veil within, in which the storm of
his blood wraps his reason for the moment) ; he looks neither to the right nor left, —
only hears, and falsely 1 the foe without, and hears wrongly his own thirst for ver.
geance within, and is deaf to his duty.
He has made the thrust at last, — and what is the consequence? What has h<
accomplished? He has committed a murder! Instead of being freed from the olc
IVERDER 365
barthen, he has brought np ya. his soul a new one ; instead of accomplishing what he
is bound to do, he has become guilty. Thus the error punishes itself.
' But,' say the critics, ' if he had only slain the King before, which would have
been no crime, he would have saved himself from this real crime now^. That was his
error, and for that error he commits this, — for that he is punished by this P By no
means! For then he would have committed a far greater jerror. Now there lies
upon his soul a crime, a death-blow, — ^but an undesigned blow, more an unfor-
tunate than a guilty act, — but, in the other case, had he killed the King, he
would, indeed, have kept himself pure, morally pure, but his duty, the one great
object or aim of his being, he would have ruined, shattered into atoms, and his
father would have remained forever unavenged. It is for this, for this, his cause,
he becomes a criminal ; so wild, so narrow and precipitous, so fatal is the path in
which his destined task urges him, that he has become a murderer in its service, be-
cause for once he has not kept in the course which it prescribed, because for once he
has forgotten his true work. But he has not rendered himself wholly incapable of
fulfilling its behests. He is still able to serve his cause, and is held in reserve.
Therefore is the opinion which Gervinus expresses so false : ' This failure of
vengeance must now compel him most powerfully to act at last in earnest.' Jus!
the reverse is true. If anything could occur to bring him to his senses, to impress
upon him the necessity of checking the pace of his task, it is this failure, this mis-
thrust, precisely this ! Instead of Poloniu.^, had it been the King whom he had
stabbed, what would he not have brought upon himself! What a disgraceful,
wretched, irretrievable blow would he have struck ! Fearfully near has he come,
out of blind rage, to ruining his whole cause, ruining it in the most shameful and
blundering manner. Accident alone, so to speak, has saved him. This consider-
ation above all things must be brought home to him by the serious mistake which
he has made, with overpowering and humiliating irony, warning him and bidding
him beware how he comes any nearer to so fatal an end; more pressingly and
emphatically than ever must he feel himself obliged to proceed gently, with re-
doubled foresight, with still more marked ' procrastination ' ; he must, in fact, pro-
ceed so carefully that he must feel himself, with a shudder, driven to a stand-still,
since he has suffered himself by a senseless burst of passion to stumble over the
abyss to which he had rolled down, driven to a full pause from the shock in his
own mind, even though he perceives no circumstances forcing him thereto.
And yet forward all goes with him, rapidly forward ! And therefore is the idea,
that the error, which he has committed, must alone move him to fall at once upon
the King, doubly wrong and false.
And thus he quietly submits, — as, indeed, he must, — to be sent off to England ;
still more passively than ever does he bear himself; ay, verily, he has become
timid. He has, by a blunder, almost lost the game ; has played into the hands of
his opponent ! He must begin anew, and from a worse position than before. The
guilt of bloodshed lies upon him, which his madness, now become so transparent,
does not conceal. In the eye of the world he is a dangerous character, to be con-
fined, and watched, and kept from doing harm. In the power of the King is he !
But the enemy, this he sees, will not aim directly at his life. He is to be got rid
of by cunning. ' Hide fox, and all after,' — this is the game which is now offered
him. His head may well be trusted to accept the game, against the heads of his
opponents. The enemy means to attack him with snares and pitfalls, and h^ must
try for his part to delve a yard below their mines.
366 APPENDIX
[Page 172. « How all occasions do inform against me,' &c., IV, iv, 32.] Weary
is Hamlet, weary under his burden. Now, when he is shipped off to England, the
charge of murder resting on him through his own fault, — comparing his lot, chained
as he is to his task, with that of Fortinbras, who is so free in all his movements, — now
comes the fear, — now at this passing moment, which puts him at a distance, and
separates him from his foe and from the object and aim of his revenge, through hu
own fault, — now comes nearer to him than ever the fearful apprehension that, not-
withstanding all his trouble, all his patient endurance, his task has at last become
impossible. This horrible dread penetrates him to the quick, and weighs down his
soul. Would it not be better to strike the blow at once, and ruin his cause, sacrifice
it, become a traitor to it, than still to go on hoping and waiting, and yet not succeed
after all, not be able to succeed, because success is impossible, because he himself,
to all appearances, has already in part rendered it so by his bungling, and because
no help comes to him from above ? How, — considering the character of his task,
which is unapproachable, not to be got at, — how he is to satisfy the reason of the
thing, he cannot conceive, but he can at least content his blood, should he strike the
decisive blow. And how it shrieks in his ear, how it surges over his soul ! This
horrible doubt, which is a very different thing from the cowardly complaining temper
which is ascribed to him, — this horrible doubt, which has for its background the
remorse which he feels for the error he has made, and which turns doubt into
despair, the doubt whether he shall throw all the dictates of reason to the winds, —
this is the demon that rules this soliloquy, and runs wild therein ; and therefore I
have said it is the shriek of Hamlet's agony which here relieves itself. And while
he raves with this demon, and endures tortures, his cause is already ripening forwards
its accomplishment ! ay, already is it as good as fulfilled, without any suspicion on
his part or on ours, through his error !
[Page 176.] I should only like to know what they who criticise Hamlet would
have done in his place ? All intolerable torture does he endure for his cause, in
order to accomplish it thoroughly and worthily. On his life depends the possibility
of its success, the revelation of divine justice upon earth in tnis capital case. And
now he is led to death ! As surely as Rosencrantz and Guildenstem deliver their
letter, his head falls. That letter, then, they must not be allowed to deliver, they
mtist deliver a different one. That is clear, absolutely clear. If Hamlet suffers
them to deliver that, he may well, with the strictest truth, say of himself, ' O what
an ass am I !' But, do you say, he could have spared them ? He could have written
something that would endanger neither him nor them ? Does he know, or can he
discover from them so that he may depend upon their word, how far they are cog-
nizant of the purport of their errand ? whether they are not charged with some oral
message? What if they should contradict what he might write of a harmless cha-
racter ? What if the king of England, being in doubt, should send back to Den-
mark for further directions, detain all three, and then, as surely was to be expected,
put Hamlet to death ? No, there is no expedient possible, no evasion, no choice be-
tween thus or otherwise, no, not here, nor at any point in the whole destined course of
Hamlet I Just this is again the point upon which a right understanding of the piece
depends ! Rosencrantz and Guildenstem, — or he ! Those two, — or that which weighs
more with him than he himself, that which is most sacred to him, for which he
endures a life full of torture; not for a moment does any but the one possible course
lie between. He must sacrifice them, and even without allowing them time to con-
fess,— must do this even I For if only they are rllowed time for confession, aftei
WERDER 367
diey are seized and made sensible of their position, there is no foreseeing what turn
things may take for him ; * any, the very least pause, the most insignificant delay,
may have for its consequence an embassy to Denmark for instructions, and it might
be thus, even if Rosencrantz and Guildenstem were disposed of, and only their con-
fession, if it contained anything compromising the prince, came to the ears of the
English king. We may pity Hamlet, then, for this act, if we will, but we must
take care how we blame him.
[Page 179.] But are they gnilty to a degree 'worthy of death?' This question
need not be pressed. It is not at all necessary. They have done what puts them
in peril of death, an act fatally thoughtless, such an act as may only too easily ex-
pose to death any one who commits it, — that is sufficient, amply sufficient. That
the letter which they are to deliver contains nothing of advantage to Hamlet ; that
the journey is not for his welfare: so much it is certain, beyond all doubt; that
Rosencrantz and Guildenstem knew. All that can be said in their vindication is
that they may have believed that Hamlet, the assassin, deserved nothing good ; it
cannot be said in their behalf that their duty as subjects required them to render to
the King the desired service, for this is not the motive which the poet represents
them as determined by. Their willingness to do the business was the consequence
of their nature, of their sort of character Whoever, from his position, or
bom his zeal and officiousness, or whatever it may be, undertakes the office of
carrying the letter and Hamlet to England must suffer whatever of harm to himself
iniayTje connected with such an errand. The business is dangerous ; such affairs
always are ; here are • the fell incensed points of mighty opposites,' — it has been
made clear enough through the court-play what a conflict has been here enkindled ;
and if Rosencrantz and Guildenstem do not see or fear it, the fault is in their short-
sightedness, or their levity ; but they are only short-sighted and light-minded because
they have minds and eyes only for the favor and gratitude of the King, — such a King !
Because, out of the littleness of their nature, they court that, their baseness is their
ruin ; they promenade, so to speak, in the sphere of a fate which involves damna-
tion, without scenting or wishing to scent the sulphur; instead of fleeing from it,
they plunge into the baleful atmosphere as into their native element ! And, only
because of this same fate, Hamlet is compelled to sacrifice them ; to this fate, and
not to Hamlet, who is only its instrument, they fall victims. WTiere such a king
bears rule, his servants are always exposed to the very worst that can befall, and, as
!S self-evident, at any moment their ruin may come through circumstances and causes,
from which nothing may seem more remote than the catastrophe ; for the main thing
is overlooked, because it is always present, even the ground on which all concerned
live and move, upon which all rests, and which is itself Destruction. WTioever
serves such a king, and, without any misgiving of his crime, serves him with ready
zeal; upon him Hell has a claim, and if that claim be made good, he has no right
to complain. That he does not observe the seriousness and the peril of his position
avails nothing, for of such a peril men ought to take note.
These are things in which Shakespeare knows no jesting, because he is so great
an expounder of the Law, the Divine Law, and he holds to it as no second poet
has done.
[Page 185.] But that stab through the tap)estry, — as the death of Polonius was the
disastrous consequence of that grave error, so also was the destruction of Rosen
• Does not the letter of the King give him an ejcample of such foresight T
368 APPENDIX
crantz s.nd Guildenstem. Therefore, on account of that error into which he allowed
himself to fall, the original plot of the King is changed ; therefore, instead of the
commission to demand the arrears of tribute, the death-sentence of Hamlet is
sent to England; therefore, Hamlet has to work against it, as he actually does;
therefore, after an accident has rendered his counter-plotting useless, and made it
impossible for him to nullify it, these two fall. Therefore, also, he falls himself. For
that one error, which has, also, for its consequence, the madness of Ophelia, the
poet lets him atone -with his life ! But not, I doubt, for the blood of these gentle-
men ; he has very little of that upon him, for that flows on the King's account, and
serves to fill up his measure ; but Hamlet atones for the offence committed against
his cause, which can now be crowned with success only by his blood's being shed
for it.
And now one question more in conclusion.
Why do not Rosencrantz and Guildenstem sail back to Denmark, after Hamlet
has escaped from them ? To take him to England is the purpose of their journey.
To deliver the letter without him, what is the use of that ? The same chance that
favors Hamlet's return they might take advantage of also, yes, and they would do
so if they knew what threatens them. What have the critics thought about this, or
rather have they thought about it at all ?
Their fate does not suffer Rosencrantz and Guildenstem to turn back, — the fate
that, on account of their connection with the King, has them as well as him in its
clutch, and drives them to their death.
From their quality, their nature, their habit, from their way of thinking, they keep
on to England : from their servility and officiousness. For fear of being thought
stupid, they do not desire to show themselves after the miscarriage of their errand ;
the written commission with which they are charged is a royal one, that they must
deliver, they must discharge their function as ambassadors to a tributary court. All
this one can imagine as passing through their minds; but the chief motive that
governs them is yet another, one which is originated not in themselves, but for
which their employer has given occasion. On this account, above all, they pursue
their way, viz : because they do not know what is in the letter which the King has
entrasted to them ; therefore they have no choice ; they must deliver it, because they
are not initiated into the business. That is evident from their continuing on their
voyage. Had they been made acquainted with the real object of their mission, they
would not, perhaps (the King must at least have foreseen this possibility), have
delivered the letter. Therefore he left them in the dark. He is thus accountable
for their death, immediately so; because, designedly kept in ignorance by him, it is
possible for them to conclude that, besides what relates to the prince, the letter
makes mention of other matters, — there had been talk about demanding tribute, —
which they are bound to attend to. The substituted letter does, indeed, cause their
death, but only because the royal letter takes them to England, and because, after
the escape of the prince, it could do so only by the writer's having kept them in
ignorance of its contents, in order to make sure of their pliability. At the door of
this writer, then, they must in truth lay their destruction.
[Page 230.] In what tragedy (I do not believe the very poorest could be guilty
of such stupidity), in what tragedy, I ask, does there occur the assassination of the
guilty, without proving their guilt for the truth of the piece and the satisfaction of
the persons concerned ?
^>But It is the difficulty of producing this evidence, this proof, the apparent impossi-
WERDER 369
bilKy of convicting the guilty person, that constitutes the cardinal point in Hamlet !
And therefore killing the King before the proof is adduced would be, not killing the
guilty, but killing the proof; it would be, not the murder of the criminal, but the
murder of Justice ! It would be Truth that would be struck dead, through such an
annihilation of its only means of triumph ; the tragic action would degenerate into
the action of mere brutes ; a strange, outrageous, brutal blow across the clear eyes
of the understanding, would be this senseless stroke, — for which the critics are so
importunate !
[Page 232.] It has been objected that the ac^n of the tragedy pauses in the
fourth act and in the beginning of the fifth ; but it is precisely here that we find the
tragic and dramatic element. For when Hamlet is made inactive, then the King
acts ! and thereby maintains himself as that which, for the sense and economy of
the drama, he is, namely, the second person in the piece. He now seizes the offensive,
the fatal rdle, so propitious for the avenger, and decisive of the result. The assailant
has well nigh paralyzed himself; the first movement comes to a rest; at this rest the
second movement takes fire and is kindled, — the second movement, no less important
than the first, which unfolds the peculiar action of the criminal, — wherefore, the
fourth act belongs to the King, — and it is these two movements of the persons, inter-
changing one with the other, which constitute the action of the piece, and which
are united and concluded in each other, the persons making these movements neither
understanding nor controlling the action.
This is the ' main action P To look for it, as Schlegel does, only in what Ham-
let does, proves that he had no understanding of the piece, and that he supposed
that it must be here as it is elsewhere ; quod nan '
[Page 234.] Through Hamlet's action, fatal to himself, his cause is ripe for the
final act. Hamlet is needed no more to conduct it. Only for the execution of the
judgement is he to be further used : his arm and his life ; only these are still re-
quired ; — no longer is vhere need of his mind, his wit, his patience ; — Another, who
never errs, has stepped into his place and released him. He has reached the goal, —
though he himself knows it not !
Hence the mood in which he appears in the churchyard, his repose, the tone of a
man who has done all he can and has nothing more to do, the disgust at the finite
nature of things, the melancholy, and sickening sense of mortality, which fill him.
This feeling it is which finds expression in his meditation upon the skull, in his re-
torts, in his horribly witty, bitter-sweet talk. With this feeling he follows Alexan-
der's dust until it stops a bunghole.
[Page 237.] And what are the circumstances by which the criminal is lured forth
to judgement, and by which the higher Helper, in the form of accident, assists the
avenger, and carries him forward, without his being able to see how surely and
quickly the end is attained ? By the players coming to Elsinore, — by the pirates
meeting Hamlet, and conveying him back to Denmark, — and, above all, by the acci-
dent of Polonius's falling by his hand ! — that is the decisive thing! That gives to
Hamlet's cause the victory ! To the Indian the gods are recognizable by their eyes,
which never wink; thus out of this accident looks the eye of the goal, — the pure light
of the Solution, — undazzled, without shadow, sure, eternally firm, not an eyelid
quivering.
The miss that Hamlet makes, that it is which hiis ; but, — because it is his miss, —
not his hit, but the hit of Fate! That is the secretest point in his fate-guided
course, the most secret, the most completely hidden from him ; that is the bright
Vol. II.— 24
370 APPENDIX
point in the invention of Shakespeare, and the turning-point of the piece, the thing
inwardly accomplished, but only made visible outwardly in the catastrophe.
This blind death of Polonius is the death of all ; but it also unmasks the criminal !
Through that thrust, by which Hamlet in blind passion tries to hit the King and
does not hit him ; by this thrust the King is really hit ! But only because Hamlet
has not in downright reality hit him, is he in truth hit, — so hit that the truth comtt
to light ! On this account, it is true, Hamlet himself falls, — but his task is ful-
filled
By the death of Polonius, Hamlet stirs up against himself a vengeance similar to
that which he has to inflict ; but only similar, — it has no righteous claim to his life,
— and since, nevertheless, it is fulfilled, and he suffers death theeefrom, it assists
him to do what he is bound to do.
And it thus assists him : because the criminal whom he is to punish avails himself
of it, and directs it, in order to secure himself and destroy Hamlet. ....
Such is the wonderful combination here before us. Hamlet stands involved in
the Cause : he cannot choose his plan, for it strides on before him. And this it is
that is described as ' the hero's having no plan !' This is the positive content of
that negative proposition. He suffers himself to be led ; for that, he is intelligent
and passive enough, — passive in the large sense that he understands the difficulty of
his task, understands in fear and agony ; and thus he goes straight to the mark, —
straight into the heart of the crime. And by no means slowly I This preposterous
idea, that he goes slowly, has come to be a settled notion, only from the silly desire
that he should slay the King right off. The piece knows of no delay.* It drives
ahead in storm ! The fulfilment, the judgement, — and the death also of the King,
come even quicker than Hamlet and we can foresee. With one stroke all is ful-
filled,— in overwhelming surprise !
Now may Hamlet strike the King down, now at last when he himself is dying;
now may he hearken to his blood when his blood is flowing ! And now his thrust
cannot injure the Cause ; it seals and fulfils it. But never till now, only in this
fast moment, when Laertes and the Queen also have fallen.
And this is what is considered a needless blood-bath ! Justice and her poet know
better what blood she demands in expiatior, and who is her debtor.
Indeed, even now the King makes no confession ; even Death opens his mouth
only for a lie, not for the confession of the truth ; but his own confession is no
longer indispensable. Laertes confesses for him, and the corpse of the Queen and
the blood of the prince, all these victims proclaim aloud the murderer to all the
world ; now also Ophelia, and Polonius, and Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern, testify
against him ! All these dead now form the chorus to the solo of the Ghost ; and
when Horatio comes forward as the reporter to tell Hamlet's story, and to explain
his cause to the unsatisfied, he will produce in all his hearers the conviction which
he himself has and which we have, and the story which the Grave tells will be an
unquestionable truth for the world, — nov/, when Hamlet himself exists no more or
earth, and is no more a party to the scene
When the piece is thus understooi, — its foundation, its progress, its aim, — when
the purpose of the action and its method, — when its meaning is thus conceived, then
• Let it only be considered how short the time occupied is : from the beginning of the second act,
only a fnu dayt I I'his escapes notice, because the contents of the piece are so rich and deep, tht
•ubject so great, and the tasit of Hamlet so hard, and his suffering so intense. This interior infiiiJt»
oess it is which makes it appear as if the process lasted long.
WERDER— GRIMM 37 ^
those significant passages ring out with the power of a refrain, with the clear tone
of a catchword : ' Our wills and fates do so contrary run,' and ' That our devices still
are overthrown,' — 'Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well. When cor deep plots
do pall.'
HERMAN GRIMM (1875)
{Hamlet. Preussische Jahrbflcher, April, 1875, p. 386.) — The labors which have,
up to this time, been bestowed upon the play of Hamlet, so far as they are known
to me, have had this in common, that they treat Hamlet as a self-included individual,
whose nature is to be studied in connection with his actual life, even outside of what
is represented on the stage. As Goethe's homunculus owes his origin to the creative
effort of a bungler, who distilled an impossible individual from the noblest ingre-
dients, Hamlet, on the other hand, represents the perfectly successful experiment.
Shakespeare has introduced into the world a real human being, a sort of supplement
to the divine Creation, for nowhere as yet has there been found a being run in the
same mould with this Hamlet. There he is, living and moving. He is answerable
for himself. He and his fellow-players are summoned directly before his judges.
Whoever in this drama passes over the stage, and speaks only a couple of words, is
regarded as one who knows, and is interrogated accordingly. Every one of these
persons has, for the commentators, a life of his own, and an opinion of his own in
regard to Hamlet, which must be brought out and elucidated. We thus have a view
of an extended process, in which the various witnesses are of greater or less weight
in the judgement of the different critics. Rosencrantz and Guildenstem, for example,
are by some esteemed to be very important persons, whose secret is to be discov-
ered, and whose final destruction is a very serious matter. Every critic constitutes
himself presiding judge in an ideal court of justice, endeavoring according to his
best conscience to examine and to render a righteous judgment.
But the truth is, the ships which were to take Hamlet to England sailed only in
Shakespeare's imagination, and the echoes around Elsinorehave never really answered
back the thunders of the cannon, with which King Qaudius accompanied his
carousals. And the heavy trouble which oppressed Hamlet has, in truth, never
moved any human heart, unless it were the heart of the playwright, Shakespeare,
who, when he brought out Hamlet and the other dramatis persotue on the stage,
knew, just as precisely as in his other dramas, what he was to represent and what
his players were to represent. Shakespeare certainly knew his audience to the last
fibre. The poor Danish prince appeared to him, — not in a night, as the ghost of his
father appeared on the terrace to the prince himself, — whispered the secret of his
sufferings in Shakespeare's ear, and made him his poetical historiographer and testa-
mentary executor. But Shakespeare, from elements, of which no one will ever have
any knowledge, gathered the stuff for the figure of Hamlet, began to model it,
worked it out more and more fully, in hours, in nights, in days, of which again no one
can ever know, and at last the work stood living there, just as he willed it. We
conjecture not how this process went on. Goethe, here and there, has communi-
cated to us how it went with his own labors ; his work as a whole stood plainly before
him from the very first ; but afterwards, for ten years through, at long intervals, ad-
ditional particulars were suggested, to be wrought into the work not without arduous
and repeated labors. Shakespeare has not disclosed anything on this point. We know
nothing < f the way in which he worked. But we may conclude, not only from his
372 APPENDIX
other dramas, but also from the peculiar nature of the work of writing for the stage,
that the poet looked very carefully to all the effects to be produced, and that, before
this piece was brought out, his players received from him the most minute instructions.
And for this reason his work contains contradictions which seem irreconcilable, but
which are not accidental ; Shakespeare intended that they should be there, and put
them purposely into the scene. The poet knew how all hung together. It is not
to be supposed that Shakespeare stood amazed at last before his own creation, as if
it contained mysteries to which he himself possessed no key. To him the economy
of the plot was entirely familiar. He knew the places where he was to allow things
to be acted out visibly, and where they were only to be narrated. He knew how the
action was to be gradually evolved, and he calculated what would be the immediate
impression upon the spectator. He knew, also, that his public were not prepared
with book in hand to call him to account, for his dramas were arranged not to be
read, but to be acted directly on the stage. And therefore the best way to arrive
at an understanding of the piece seems to be, to inquire, step by step, what Shake-
speare intended in his Hamlet, how the situation of affairs, as seen on the stage,
must have fashioned itself to the public.
[Herr Grimm here traces the tragedy as it unfolds itself, scene by scene, before
the spectator, and shows how surprises occur at every turn ; nothing is to b« guessed
beforehand. At one time we are convinced that Hamlet is going to act with vigor,
the next moment we are sure that he is insane, then again he appears most sane,
and so on, first one way and then the other, until we give up conjectures and resign
ourselves to Shakespeare's lead, content to await the result in his good time, Ed.]
[Page 391.] Had Shakespeare wished us to perceive that Hamlet was playing the
madman for the first time in his interview with Ophelia, as described by her to Polo-
nius, he would, somehow or other, have given us a hint of it. When Shakespeare's
characters have plots, upon the knowledge of which the understanding of the piece
depends, he does not leave us a moment in doubt. Claudius lets us know in the
most open-hearted manner what he thinks of himself, as well as his villainous plans
to get Hamlet out of the way. From Ophelia's relation every spectator must feel
that Hamlet acted thus strangely towards her from deep depression of spirits, not
because he wished to give Ophelia the idea that he had lost his wits. But this
view of things is immediately set aside by the poet himself; for in the following
scene Polonius persuades the King and Queen that Hamlet has become crazed
from his love to Ophelia. That this absurdity is an error, every spectator knows,
and this better knowledge is so far productive, that our opinion, without our need-
ing to know in what way it happens, must again turn in favor of Hamlet. Hamlet
is, therefore, not yet insane, — he has his plans ; the King and Queen are already
aware of it !
People really reflect so little in the theatre. What has just passed is scarcely re-
membered, yet judgement is pronounced upon what is directly before their eyes ; the
public depends upon v/hat it sees, and is so engrossed with that, that it is led without
thought into the greatest violations of logic. To consider Hamlet insane, then again
immediately to believe that it is mere feigning, and then to return to the first im-
pression, and to continue changing thus backwards and forwards, is nothing that a
poet like Shakespeare might not count upon in a susceptible public. He com-
mands, and his audience follow him obediently like children, to whom he tells a
story, making then laugh and cry by turns.
[I'.nge 395.] The design of the poet is less, we think, to unfold the plot of the
GRIMM 373
drama in due form than to prepare for us the highest enjojinent by the exhibition
of a rare, and, intellectually, a highly gifted man. Hamlet deserves no reproaches,
only study. But he is doomed. For when a man thus philosophizes, his energies
become so corroded by excess of thought, that he lacks strength for action even
under the simplest and most favorable circumstances.
And thus, independently of the crime of Hamlet's parents, of the appearance of
the Ghost, and of Hamlet's plans of revenge, Irom quite another side the impression
upon the mind of the spectator is renewed, that this figure is simply the embodiment
of a spirit doomed to destruction from the first.
Surely it was the design of the poet to confirm this faith. Hamlet's dialogue
with Ophelia, as well as his behavior during the court-play, are of that foolish, nay,
repulsive, character, that we give up the idea of determining whether it were caused
by real or pretended folly. Why make such cynical remarks to a maiden that he
loves?
[Page 398.] In the fifth act the final effects are realized. Hamlet again appears.
He philosophizes in the churchyard. We know that beforehand. Over Yorick's
skull he forgets himself and the world around him. In a house on fire, instead of
saving himself, he would have been absorbed in scientific observations upon the
flames consuming the wood-work ; in a sinking ship he would have calculated the
time it would take in going down. The public have long before given up every
hope of a favorable turn in outward circumstances, as well as every hope of such a
character as this. King, Queen, Fortinbras, might all lie there dead, and Hamlet
be called to be king ; but, instead of mounting the steps to the throne, he would
philosophize upon a fly buzzing about the golden circlet on his brows. It is true
Fortinbras, at the conclusion of the piece, says that if Hamlet had ascended the
throne, he would have reigned royally, but these verses belong as a last trump in
that category of intended contradictions, by which the poet designed to render a
final, decisive judgement impossible. In the mind of the spectator, since no decision
between madness and sanity is to be permitted, there has been created a certainty,
comprehending the one as well as the other, and supporting both possibilities, viz :
ruined ! A sorrowful riddle, that was not to be solved.
It is this riddle that the poet intended to present before his public. Thus was
his task fulfilled. He had shown, symboUcally, a process obser\'ed with especial
frequency in England : first, over-excitement of the brain, then distrust, whether the
mental equilibrium be preserved, next, diversion of this distrust to the surroundings ;
then come waiting, watching, violent means employed to ward off mischief; disso-
lution ; and, at last, for survivors the feeling of a sad problem, of which the decisive
final solution will never be found. Hamlet's fate concerns every one, because every
man feels thankful that Fate has not placed him in the situation in which he is re-
quired to resort to the last, extreme, uncertain resources of his spiritual strength.
Every one who goes deeply into the questions of his own spiritual existence must
feel that he is wandering on the brink of the abyss into which Hamlet plunged ;
and how many are there who have not, once in their lives, looked down into that
abyss with a shudder ?
In no other piece has Shakespeare employed in such measure all the means ot
his art. The earlier acts are among the most powerful in all dramatic literature.
The epic dtutus of the last two must not be considered as a defect. We find the
same mode of comjxsition in his other dramas.
[Page 400.] A drama requires a crisis. A number of figures, rvery one of whom
374 APPENDIX
is recognizable as representative of one, or of several, of our human, spiritual forces,
are, by a decree emanating from the upper powers, set one against another. A con-
flict arises, to be fought out to a decision. The public is satisfied when every single
figure is absolutely qualified for the conflict, and when their several modes of action
correspond at every moment to our highest demands.
These figures can have but little that is peculiar and individual; they are, as it
were, principles clothed in human forms. What they do and suffer is far beyond
anything which the spectator himself has ever been in a situation to experience.
Antigone, Creon, CEdipus, &c., reveal to us the life of a soifl, whose concentrated
simplicity lies outside of all particular human experience. Without this simplicity
the inexorably logical structure of a tragedy would not be possible; in a tragedy, as
in a mathematical example, all must accord.
To produce dramas of this kind was to the Greeks, and, among modern nations,
to the French, a necessity. The poets of these nations were in a position to produce
such ideal conflicts with abstractions in human shape, and their audiences were inspired
thereby. To the Germanic races, on the other hand, it is in general wholly impos
sible, when human beings are poetically represented, to fashion them otherwise than
in the semblance of individuals. The spectator wants to see in the drama, not any-
thing transcending his experience, but he requires that his experience shall furnish
the measure for what he sees before his eyes on the stage ; figures must appear, the
very first condition of whose existence is, that they are human beings like ourselves ;
characters, individuals, although, it may be, in peculiar circumstances. We regard
the ideal forms of Grecian art as more individual than the Grecian poets and sculp-
tors themselves conceived of them. Not the simple, but the complex, is what we
demand and understand.
But such figures, when they engage in conflict, do not bring about the catastrophe
of their collective development in a single battle ; they must carry on long wars,
with alternations of fortune. And these wars are to be occasioned by some exciting
problem, hurled down among them by a higher hand : a necessary revenge, an irre
sistible temptation (as in Macbeth), a fearful incitement to arrogance (as in Coriolanus)
a political inducement to deadly ingratitude (as in Brutus) ; but the matter is not
brought to an end by a single outbreak of the first cause of the conflict. In con
tinned contest only does the character begin to unfold, and this unfolding the Ger
manic spectator requires to see before his eyes. The Greek was able to show it only
in the epos. The development of Achilles step by step is the subject of the noblest
epic poem which has ever been composed. Shakespeare, the only true Germanic
man, who has labored as poet for a healthy national stage, sought to meet this want,
and devised the union of the drama and ihe epos, which accomplished his purpose.
Wherever he really makes the development of an extraordinary individuality the
theme of his tragedy, he begins by giving us in the first three acts the urgent cause
of the first great conflict, in which the character of his hero reveals, as it were, the
deepest fundamental elements of his being; in the fourth and fifth acts the slow
unfolding of the contest, to the fall of the one or the other of the parties, or to the
destruction of both, is virtually only narrated, although put in the form of scenes
dramatically constructed. To tlie dramas already mentioned, in which this is exem-
plified, we may add Timon of Athens, Lear, and Richard III. Of the imitators
i>f Shakespeare, Goethe alone, in his Goetz and Egmont, has adopted this method,
paying tribute in both pieces, as he himself says, to the great master.
[Page 402.] In the first three acts, Shakespeare lets the tragedy rej^^Bent wW
GRIMM— WOELFFEL Zll
Goethe recognized as the inmost nature of Hamlet; but this was only the point at
which he began. The prince falls into a vacillating condition not always to be distin-
guished from insanity, — the art consists in keeping the spectator in doubt whether it
is the finest policy or mere folly that he sees before him. In the fourth and fifth acts
the course of the piece is dramatically arranged; the character has passed the full
bloom of its development, and is going to decay. Hamlet has received such a ter-
rible shock that he is spiritually wasting away. The clockwork of his spirit, instead
of counting twenty-four hours to the day, runs to ninety-six or more, and when
occasionally, in this wild career, the hands point for a second to the true time, this
correctness works only the more tragically. In the same way we see the arrogance of
Coriolanus, the extreme political honesty of Brutus, the brutal ambition of Macbeth,
Timon's grand liberality, becoming in each a consuming fire, which slowly turns to
ashes the souls of these royally endowed characters. With them all, however, the
reckoning at the end yields a clear sum-total. We have nothing more to ask of the
poet that he has failed to let us know. His heroes take away with them no secret
which was necessary to an understanding of their conduct. But Hamlet is an ex-
ception, and the poet intended he should be so. To the end and beyond, the spec-
tator is to repeat the vain attempt to unite opposites, for which no union is possible.
A complete contradiction has been embodied in Hamlet, and ' a perfect contradiction
remains alike mysterious to the wise and to the foolish.' So surely as it is proved
that such was the intention, so surely will this tragedy, as a work of art, forever have
its effect, and, by the will of the poet, appear a riddle.
DR HEINRICH WOELFFEL (1853)*
{^Ueber Shakespeare' s Hamlet. Album des lit. Vereins. NUmberg, 1853, p. 62.)
— Dr WOELFFEL pronounces this the tragedy of the moral ideal, and believes that the
critics of it have not given sufficient prominence to Hamlet's love for Ophelia. Her
failure to respond to Hamlet's love in all its depth and ardor is the turning-point of
the tragedy. When Hamlet, in the presence of the Ghost, does not set his life at a
pin's fee, it is because, just before he came to watch for the Ghost, Ophelia has
refused him admission to her presence, and has returned his letters unread (pp. 79,
80). Hamlet's revenge cannot be put in execution until he tests Ophelia's love for
him, — if her love prove genuine, his faith in human nature is restored, and he can
advance to his revenge. Ophelia does not stand the test, and the sigh that escapes
from Hamlet does in truth shatter all his bulk.
Hamlet is not surprised that a company of children have forced the actors to travel ;
where his uncle reigns, sound taste must needs be perverted, and men prefer the
false to the true.
Hamlet quietly submits to be sent to England, because he intends to enlist sym-
pathy and an army there, and return to overthrow the usurper.
A CLERGYMAN (1864)
In the EVANGELISCHE Kirchen-Zeitung, Berlin, May, 1864, appeared a senca
of criticisms on Hamlet by K Clergyman, in which the tragedy is strongly recom-
• This, and the following criticism from the Evangelical Church Gazette, I obtained too Lats te
insert in their chronological order. Ed.
376 APPENDIX
mended to all German pastors as a most improving study, — one that will enlarge
their views of human life, freshen their minds, and aid them to the better discharge
of their clerical duties, by supplying them with deep lessons of the Christian sanc-
tity of marriage, of sin, of repentance, of judgement, and of grace. What though
' a sinner may have written the tragedy, a saint may learn from it.' An analysis is
given of each act and scene, and all are shown to have been written in the interest
of the loftiest Christian morality.
FREILIGRATH *
(AlRIL, 1844)
Yes, Germany is Hamlet ! Lo !
Upon her ramparts every night
There stalks in silence, grim and slow.
Her buried Freedom's steel-clad sprite,
Beck'ning the warders watching there.
And to the shrinking doubter saying :
' They've dropt fell poison in mine ear,
Draw thou the sword ! no more delaying !'
He listens, and his blood runs cold ;
The horrid truth, at length laid bare,
Drives him to be the avenger bold, —
But will he ever really dare ?
He ponders, dreams, but at his need
No counsel comes, firm purpose granting,
Still for the prompt, courageous deed
The prompt, courageous soul is wanting.
It comes from loitering overmuch,
Lounging, and reading, — tired to death ;
Sloth holds him in its iron clutch,
He's grown too ' fat and scant of breath.'
His learning gives him little aid,
His boldest act is only thinking;
Too long in Wittenberg he stayed
Attending lectures, — may be, drinking.
• This translation, which it does not ' licseem me to praise, and which needi no piatte of mine,'
«at made for this edition by my sister, Mrs A. L. Wister. Eb
FREILIGRA TH 377
And so his resolution fails,
Madness he feigns, thus gaining tune.
Soliloquises too, and rails,
Abu curses ' time ' and ' spite ' in rhjrme
A pantomime must help him, too.
And when he does fight, somewhat latCT,
Why, then, Polonius Kotzebue
Receives the stab, and not the traitor.
So he endures, thus dreamily.
With secret self-contempt, his pain :
He lets them send him o'er the sea.
And, sharp in speech, comes home again ;
Jeers right and left, — his hints are dark, —
Talks of a • king of shreds and patches,*
But for a deed ? God save the mark !
No deed from all his talk he hatches.
At last he gets the courage lacked,
He grasps the sword to keep his vow, —
But ah ! 'tis in the final Act,
And only serves to lay him low.
With those his hate has overcome,
Scourging at last their black demerits.
He dies, — and then with tuck of drum
Comes Fortinbras, and all inherits.
Thank God ! we've not yet come to this.
The first four Acts have been played throa|^
See, lest the parallel there is
Be in the Fifth Act borne out too.
Early and late we hope, we pray :
O hero, come, — no more delaying, —
Gird up your loins, act while you may.
The spectre's solemn call obeying.
Oh, seize the moment, strike to-day.
There still is time, — fulfil your part
Ere with his poison'd rapier's play
A French Laertes find your heart.
37^ APPEND/A
Let not a Northern army clutch
Your rightful heritage beforehand.
Beware ! And yet I doubt me much
If next the foe will come from Norland
Resolve, and put fresh courage on !
Enter the lists, make good your boast !
Think on the oath that you have sworn ;
Aj/engc, avenge your father's ghost !
Why thus for ever dilly-dally ?
Yet, — dare I scold ? — a poor old dreamer;
I'm, after all, ' a piece of thee,'
Thou ever-loitering, lingering schemer '
PROF. DR KARL ELZE (1865)
{Essays on Shakespeare. Hamlet in France, 1865. Trans, by L. DoRA SCHMITZ,
London, 1874, p. 193.) — It is generally supposed that Voltaire first introduced
Shakespeare into France ; at least he has boasted loudly enough that this immortal
.service, — to his countrymen or to Shakespeare? — is due to him. If, however, Mons.
de Voltaire be cross-examined, as has been done in Germany, particularly in Al.
Schmidt's excellent treatise,* the popular proverb, • Much cry and little wool,' will
be found applicable to his case. Long before Voltaire's time we meet in France
with various traces pointmg to Shakespeare, and they might probably be multiplied
by a careful searching of the Imperial Library at Paris. It may suffice to mention
Cyrano de Bergerac's tragedy of Agrippina, in which reflections and even turns of
language from Cymbeline, The Merchant of Venice, and Hamlet are to be found, f
This much in the mean time is correct, that it is only since Voltaire, and for the
most part through him, that the general attention of the French literary world has
been directed to Euj,.and, and that since then the French drama, which during the
seventeenth century had borrowed its naterial and suggestions from the Spanish,
commenced to turn its attention to Shakespeare. Since that time there has arisen
an intellectual struggle for conquest, in which the English have gradually acquired
larger possessions in the domain of the French mind than they once actually pos-
sessed in the ' fair land of France.' What they have once been forced to surrender
to the Maid of Orleans, Shakespeare has re-conquered for them in a higher sphere.
It is a curious fact that in this struggle Hamlet, the very play the subject of which
csaie to England from, or at least through, France, is always found in the vanguard.
* Al. Schmidt, Voltaire's Verdiemt um die Einfilkring Shakespeare' i in Frankreich, 1864.
t According to Lacroix, Histoire de I' Influence de Shakespeare lur le TkeMre Fran^ais, 346,
\athery io the Revue Contemporaine , and Uaron in the Athenttunt Francois (1855), have proved
this in detail. Shakespeare seems lo have been known, and perhaps even acted, at Paris as early a*
1*04. See The Athenaum, 1865, 1, 96; Notes and Queries, 1865, No. 174, p. 335.
ELZE 379
Whenever Shakespeare s spoken of, he is styled the author of Hamlet^ Hamlet being
to a certain extent regarded as the embodiment not only of Shakespeare, but of the
English drama in general.
Whenever, in France, we meet with an investigation into the nature of Shake-
speare's poetry, a criticism of its beauties or of its barbarous irregularities, it is
always Hamlet from which the discussion proceeds, or to which it leads in the end.
Hamlet has been, so to speak, the pioneer destined to break the ground for English
taste in France, as well as elsewhere. The same, it is well known, was tne case in
Germany.* Doubtless, this liistorical part which Hamlet has had to play is by no
means accidental. Hamlet, more than any other play, reveals the specific Germanic
mind, which sets itself the task of solving the deepest problems of all existence.
In no other of Shakespeare's plays do we see such a struggle to get at an understand-
ing of the world and life, and for this very reason it lays hold of all minds with a
mysterious force which charms them within its own magic circle. In English poetry
in general, and especially in Shakespeare, characterization is the principal object,
whereas in the French classic drama abstract generality predominates over concrete
individuality. In no one of all Shakespeare's plays is this individuality so emphat-
ically brought forward as in Hamlet, where the whole tragic conflict centres in it.
In this respect Hamlet forms the culminating point of Shakespeare's poetry, and the
most prominent representative of that Germanic element which is penetrating into
France. Thus, Hamlet appears as the sharpest contrast to the classic drama of the
French. In the latter, discreet moderation was considered as a fundamental law,
whereas Hamlet, resisting every classification, exercised the attractive power of the
Inscrutable and the Incommensurable; in substance as well as in form it was incom-
prehensible, and opposed to the French mind as one pole to the other. Instead of
action, which, since Aristotle, has been considered the substance of everj' legitimate
drama, non-action was here made the subject of tragedy. In regard to form, Hamlet
was the very play that gave the greatest offence to the classic taste of the French,
although from the verj' first they could not be insensible to some of its striking and
overpowering beauties.
Nowhere were the sacred rules so trampled upon as here ; nowhere were the thro*,
unities violated in so revolting a manner; nowhere did the subordinate personages
taken from among the people, — who on the French stage were scarcely permitted to
appear as dummies, — play such important and talkative parts as here ; and nowhere
were courtly manners more thoughtlessly disregarded. Nay, the French feeling of
propriety is not even yet quite reconciled with the notorious fossoyeurs, great as is
the change which has since taken place in the literary taste and criticism of the
French.-}- In a word, the prevailing influence of Hamlet in France seems to us to
rest principally upon the m}'sterious charm of contrast, as well as upon the charm
of the Non-comprehended and the apparently Incomprehensible. It is said of the
rattlesnake that it fascinates with its glance the birds which it has selected for its
prey; in much the same manner Hamlet has fascinated the most eminent minds of
the French nation, till step by step it has penetrated into wider and wider circles.,
and won them for itself.
At the time when Voltaire wielded the sceptre of the French Parnassus, the clas-
sical literature of the French resembled a garden laid out with hedges of yew, flower
• Hamlet is also the first of Shakespeare's plays which have been translated into Webh.
t I»Toix.
38o APPENDIX
parterres, statues, and basins, according to the strictest rules of Lenfltre. It was
Voltaire who brought into the garden a pailful of the waters of English, especially
of Shakespeare's, poetry, which were rushing past outside in the wilderness. He
did this partially as a warning to his countrymen, to show them how wild and
muddy this water was. Hamlet was uppermost in the pail. The wild water, —
without Voltaire's either knowing or wishing it, — began to bubble as if by some
magic power; it burst the pail, overflowed the marble basin, gradually formed a
sepaiatc bed for itself, and refreshed the lawn and flower-beds in an almost marvel-
lous manner. Shrubs, hedges, and avenues began to sprout and shoot forth so ex-
uberantly that the scissors could no longer keep them in trim ; enough, the wild
water will not come to rest till it has transformed the stiff French garden into a
natural and luxuriant English park.
[Page 251.] Voltaire, the representative of the French mind in the eighteenth
century, threw dirt upon Shakespeare ; Victor Hugo, a representative of the French
mind in the nineteenth century, idolises him, — both in an equally senseless manner.
The migration, however, has not yet come to an end, but is vigorously proceeding.
.... Through Hamlet the Germanic mind has penetrated into French literature,
which has already begun to modify its character. The influence is, however, a
mutual one ; the Germanic mind is already no longer like Hamlet, any more than
the French mind is its opposite In the way of mutual intermixing the French
learn how to think like Germans, and the Germans how to enjoy themselves and to
act like the Romance nations. May the mixture ever be a prosperous one, and may
it result in genuine Corinthian metal !
[The foregoing extract from Dr Elze's Essay, I have not put in its chronological
sequence, but have reserved it to the last, that it may serve as the connecting link
between the German and the French Criticisms, and as forming somewhat of an in-
troduction to the latter. The volume of Essays, of which this Hamlet in France is
one. is a highly valuable contribution tc Shakespearian literature. Ed.]
FRENCH CRITICISMS
VOLTAIRE (1768)
{TTuaire CompUt, ii, 201. Geneve, 1768.) — Englishmen believe in ghosts no
more than the Romans did, yet they take pleasure in the tragedy of Hamlet, m
which the ghost of a king appears on the stage. Far be it from me to justify every-
thing in that tragedy ; it is a vulgar and barbarous drama, which would not be tole-
rated by the vilest populace of France, or Italy. Hamlet becomes crazy in the
second act, and his mistress becomes crazy in the third ; the prince slays the father
of his mistress under the pretence of killing a rat, and the heroine throws hersell
into the river ; a grave is dug on the stage, and the grave-diggers talk quodlibets
■worthy of themselves, while holding skulls in their hands; Hamlet responds to their
nasty vulgarities in sillinesses no less disgusting. In the meanwhile another of the
actors conquers Poland. Hamlet, his mother, and his father-in-law carouse on the
stage ; songs are sung at table ; there is quarrelling, fighting, killing, — one would
imagine this piece to be the work of a drunken savage. But amidst all these vulgar
irregularities, which to this day make the English drama so absurd and so barbarous,
there are to be found in Hamlet, by a bizarrerie still greater, some sublime passages,
worthy of the greatest genius. It seems as though nature had mingled in the brain
of Shakespeare the greatest conceivable strength and grandeur with whatsoever wit-
less vulgarity can devise that is lowest and most detestable.
It must be confessed that, amid the beauties which sparkle through this horrible
extravagance, the ghost of Hamlet's father has a most striking theatrical effect. It
always has a great effect upon the English, — I mean upon those who are the most
highly educated, and who see most clearly all the irregularity of their old drama.
VISCOUNT DE CHATEAUBRIAND (1837)
{Sketches 0/ English Literature, &c. London, 1837, second edition, vol. n, p.
274.) — Hamlet: this tragedy of maniacs, this Royal Bedlam, in which every cha-
racter is either crazy or criminal, in which feigned madness is added to real madness,
and in which the grave itself furnishes the stage with the skull of a fool ; in this
Odeon of shadows and spectres, where we hear nothing but reveries, the challenge
of sentinels, the screeching of the night-bird, and the roaring of the sea, — Gertrude
thus relates the death of Ophelia, &c.
381
382 APPENDIX
[Page 279.] To read Shakespeare from beginning to end is to fulfil a pious bat
wearisome duty to departed genius.
[Our estimate of the value of this criticism is lessened when we find its author
asserting, as he does on p. 313, that Hamlet speaks of Yorick as of a woman, becaus*
Hamlet says : • Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft!' Ch/-
TEAtJBRiAND (whom on this occasion it seems scarcely disrespectful to call, after
Charles Lamb, ' Chatty Bryant ') adds : ' Hamlet speaks of Yorick as Marfraret
of Scotland did of Alan Chartier.' Ed.]
iROF. PHILARETE CHASLES (1867)
{Atudes Contempor nines. Paris, 1867, p. 93. 1 — The Greek theatre has nothing
analogous to this terrible dreamer, Hamlet ! Follow him from his entrance on the
scene ; he is, says Shakespeare, very negligent in his dress ; his • stockings down
gyved to his ancle,' and his doublet all unbraced ; he dreams, waits, rests. The
moment to act has not come, let him mourn and meditate ; later he will act, be as
sured, and when the hour shall strike, all scruples will disappear, blood will cover
the path where you will see him march. There are two forces in him, and these
two forces are in conflict : first, Passion which excites him to vengeance, whicn boils
even to delirium, which fills his veins with feverish and tumultuous blood, which
tears him from sleep, and makes him wander frenzied among the tombs of the dead ;
next, Thought which tortures him and stirs him to his inmost depths, phantom-
thought, pale spectre [the pale cast of thought), which interposes itself in the moment
of the catastrophe, which holds back his arm, and paralyzes action [sicklied over).
He has to punish the murderer, and he will not hesitate ; life is nothing to him ; but
he is a philosopher also, and he demands the solution of these problems, the answer
of these enigmas: • Why so many crimes? Why is Evil ? — Why is Life?'
Such is the question ; as he well says : that is the question ; the question by which
Pascal and St Augustin, by which the disciples of Jansen and of Buddha, have
found themselves affronted. By a combination, the highest perhaps, or at least the
most complex that the human mind has realized on the stage, this meditative person
is a hero ; this barbarian has studied at Wittenberg ; this man who contrives nothing
is a mystic. Such is the double Hamlet.
[Page 97.] Polonius ! one of the most curious god-sends of the stage, — the petri
faction of morality, the monument of commonplace, sententious drivel, discipline of
sterility, the passion of formalism, the echo of ancient wisdom, the bit and the bridle
upon a courser that does not go, the treasury of gabbling aphorisms, the sublime
of stupidity! Polonius is not the little, old, dried-up graybeard that they would
represent him to be. He is solemn, he speaks sJowly, he steps squarely. He is
dignified, he is ofificial, he is sure of himself. The good Shakespeare had a pro-
phetic idea of our M. Prudhomme, who is nothing but a bourgeois Polonius. For
this beautiful invention alone I should be tempted to adore Shakespeare. Some of
Moliire's ideas appear in the insipid personages, Guildenstern, and Rosencrantz, and
Osric, mannikin men, nullities of the court, instruments de salon, otherwise amiable,
greatly resembling the petit marquis and pretty viscounts of Moliftre, — those of the
Misanthrope, for example.
[Page loi.] Hamlet, which has never been fitly and perfectly played and never
will be and never can be, Hamlet the intranslatable, Hamlet that twenty volumes
of notes scarcely elucidate, — Hamlet is Shakespeare, as the Misanthrope is MoHAre.
CHASLES—Mi:ZlkRES 383
There is in the work of every man of genius some special production which repro-
daccs the distinct impress, and the inmost depth, of his thinking. Such is the Mis-
anthropt, such is Candide ; works of love, which are not always the most complete
nor the most irreproachable, but the most personal. Racine reveals himself in Bi-
rhtice with less of grandeur and elegance, but with a more touching ingenuousness,
than in Athalie. For those who are weary of the formula of art, there is always a
great charm in these personal creations, which are the very cry and profound accent
of the superior man, nay, his most secret inspiration.
PROF. A. MfeZlfeRES (i860)
{Shakespeare, ses (Euvres et ses Critiques. Deuxiime Edition, Paris, 1865, p. 317.)
— The tragedy of Hamlet, which of all pieces, ancient and modem, has been mos«
studied and commented upon, issued almost entirely from the brain of the poet. In
his other dramas he follows the text of an Italian novel, or of some legend, with as
much fidelity as if he were preparing an historical document. Here he found only a
bare canvas, whereon there is no sign of Laertes nor of Ophelia. There were already,
»s is known, two Hamlets before that of Shakespeare, — one appeared in 1587, inter-
larded with sentences after the fashion of Seneca, the other in 1594; but it does not
appear that the poet took anything from them for his work.
Evidently what attracted Shakespeare in this subject is the character, already
marked out, of Hamlet. He seized this occasion to pour into a single r6le the
philosophical ideas and the irony with which his own soul was filled ; he draws
with pleasure the portrait of this young man so irresolute, so sombre, so unhappy,
but at the same time so generous and so tender; he retouched his work three several
times, and every time added something to the soliloquies of Hamlet and to the con-
versations of the prince with Horatio.
The characters of Shakespeare are not drawn solely with a view to the dramatic
action, for the heroes, whom he puts on the stage, do not concentrate upon it all
their force, nor give it their whole attention. While, upon our theatre, the person
ages are presented only in their connection with the drama, upon the English stage
they exhibit themselves in all the extent and complexity of their sentiments. They
have an independent existence; they live outside of the tragedy. No charactei
serves better to illustrate this than that of Hamlet. The prince of Denmark re-
quires no events to drive him to think and to suffer. The evil which consumes him
docs not proceed from the circumstances in which he finds himself placed ; whatever
had been his fortune, he would have been filled with disgust at life and contempt fui
terrestrial joys. Before he had learned of the murder of his father, — listen to his
first soliloquy ; what bitterness ! what sadness !
[Page 318.] Hamlet belongs to that class of unhappy spirits, who know only the
dark side of human life, whom a melancholy temperament and a very keen pene-
tration render more sensitive to the evils which afflict our nature than to the good
things which are bestowed on us. These romantic heroes from the very first contem-
plate existence with an ironical contempt or with profound despair ; wholly disen-
chanted, even before they have made acquaintance with misfortune, they bring to the
battle of life the jiower to suffer, without the force to conquer the suffering.
[Page 320.] If Hamlet had never seen the terrible apparition that reveals ttr^im
a crime, and commands him to avenge it, he would have been neither happier rii^r
more calm ; he would not have desired any the less ardently to escape from cart
I
384 APPENDIX
and soar to loftier regions where shines a purer light; he would have earned thithet
none the fewer of those tempestuous doubts which try his courage and poison even
his love. Incessant labor of thought, passionate reflection exhaust this morbid
spirit. The pleasures of youth no longer bring him any enjoyment ; the external
world inspires him only with contempt and disgust. Had he no hard duty to fulfil,
his career would not be less unhappy and brief. The ghost of his father does not
decide his fate ; it was decided long before ; the apparition only gives a new direc-
tion to his meditations.
[Page 323.] Hamlet, in his quality as a Christian, must needs hesitate to stab his
uncle, the husband of his mother, upon the faith of a vanished apparition, which,
perhaps, was only the dream of a disordered imagination.
[Page 324.] It is demanded, why does not Hamlet act; why, when the crime is
manifest, does he not punish it on the spot; why does he not seize his sword the
moment he perceives the effect of the representation upon the countenance of the
King? But think for an instant of the responsibility which falls upon him, and of
the remorse which must follow his action, if he be mistaken ! The feeling which
he experiences is that of a jury about to condemn a criminal to death upon merely
probable evidence. If all men hesitate then, if the firmest and most severe tremble,
at the thought of striking the innocent, what must not a young prince feel who is
charged with the execution of a sentence which he himself must pass, and who
has to judge, not a stranger nor indifferent person, but the brother of his father, and
the husband of his mother ?
At this moment, doubtless, the hero is open to a reproach. Hamlet fails in good
faith with himself; he does not avow to himself his secret pangs. In the soliloquy
of Act III, while yet full of the rage which the strange agitation of his uncle before
the players has excited in him, he finds his uncle alone and at prayer, when he
might justly kill him ; and when he has the desire to do so, he does not tell the true
reason that arrests his arm. In still shrinking from the deed, it is not because he
fears that he will send the soul of Claudius to heaven ; no, the reasons of his hesi-
tation are neither so specious nor so cruelly refined, — he does not strike, because
he fears to commit a murder, and because his generous heart disdains an assassi-
nation.
[Page 326.] When Hamlet perishes, is it not the only dinoHment which fits his
character ? Death delivers him from all uncertainty. Had he survived his mother
and his uncle, he would have killed himself immediately after. It is best that he
should die, and by his death add to the tragic horror by staining with one crime
more the memory of Claudius.
VICTOR HUGO (1864)
' William Shakespeare. Paris, 1864, p. 308.) — Hamlet. One knows not what
fearful being, — complete in the incomplete. Everything in order to be nothing. He
is prince and demagogue, sagacious and extravagant, profound and frivolous, mas-
culine and neuter. He believes little in the sceptre, sneers at the throne, has a
student for comrade, talks with the passers-by, argues with the first that comes, un-
derstands the people, despises the rabble, hates force, suspects success, interrogates
obscurity, tkees and thous mystery. He communicates to others maladies which he
has not. His feigned madness inoculates his mistress with real madness. He is
familiar with ghosts and players. He plays the jester, with the axe of Orestes in his
HUGO 385
band. He talks literature, recites verses, composes a piece for the theatre, plays
with bones in a graveyard, thunders at his mother, avenges his father, and terminates
the redoubtable drama of life and death with a gigantesque mark of interrogation.
He terrifies ; then puts out of countenance. Nothing more overwhelming has ever
been dreamed. It is the parricide saying, ' TiNTiat do I know ?'
Parricide? Let us pause over this word. Is Hamlet a parricide? Yes, and no.
He restricts himself to threatening his mother, but the menace is so savage that his
mother quakes : ♦ Thy word is a dagger ! What wilt thou do ? Thou wilt not
murder me ? Help ! help ! holla !* — and when she dies, Hamlet, without mourning
her, stabs Claudius with the tragic cry : ' Follow my mother !' Hamlet is this sinister
thing, a possible parricide.
Instead of the North which he has in his brain, put some of the South, as in
Orestes, in his veins, and he will kill his mother.
This drama is severe. Truth doubts in it. Sincerity lies in it. Nothing more
vast, nothing more subtle. The man here is the world, and the world here is zero.
In this tragedy, which is at the same time a philosophy, all is fluid, all hesitates, delays,
wavers, is decomposed, scattered, dissipated, the thought is mist, the will is vapor,
resolution is crepuscular, the action changes every instant, the compass rules the
man. Work bewildering and vertiginous when of everything one sees the bottom,
where there exists for the thought no other link but from the King killed to Yorick
buried, and where that which is most real is royalty represented by a phantom, and
gaiety by a death's head.
Hamlet is the chef-d" csuvre of tragedy.dreaming.
[Page 311.] One of the probable causes of Hamlet's feigning madness has nevex
yet been indicated by the critics. Hamlet, it is said, played the madman to hide his
thought, like Brutus. In fact, it is easy to cover a great purpose under apparent im-
becility ; the supposed idiot carries out his designs at his leisure. But the case of
Brutus is not that of Hamlet. Hamlet plays the madman for his safety. Brutus
cloaks his project; Hamlet, his person. The manners of these tragic courts being
understood, from the moment that Hamlet learns from the ghost of the crime of
Claudius, Hamlet is in danger. The superior historian that is in the poet is here
manifest, and we perceive in Shakespeare the profound penetration into the dark
shades of ancient royalty. In the Middle Ages and in the later empire, and even
more anciently, woe to him who discovered a murder or a poisoning committed by
a king. Ovid, Voltaire conjectured, was exiled from Rome for having seen something
shameful in the house of Augustus. To know that the king was an assassin was
treason. When it pleased the prince to have no witness, one must be shrewd enough
to know nothing. It was bad policy to have good eyes. A man suspected of sus-
picion was lost. He had only one refuge, insanity. Passing for an * innocent,' he
was despised, and all was said. Do you recollect the counsel which Oceanus gives
to Prometheus, in yEschylus : To pretend madness is the secret of the wise ? WTien
the chamberlain Hugolin found the iron spit with which Edric the ealdorman had
impaled Edmund II, * he made haste to appear stupid,' says the Saxon chronicle of
1016, and in this way saved himself. Heraclides of Nisibis having, by chance, dis-
covered that Rhinometer was a fratricide, caused himself to be pronounced insane
by the physicians, and succeeded in having himself shut up in a cloister for life.
Thus he lived in peace, growing old, and awaiting death with an air of insensibility.
Hamlet ran the same danger, and had recourse to the same means. He had him-
self pronounced mad like Heraclides, and he appeared stupid like Hugolin. This
Vol. 11.-25
386 APPENDIX
did not prevent the disquieted Claudius from making two attempts to get rid of
him, in the middle of the drama, by the axe or the dagger, and at the close by
poison.
The same thing is found in King Lear : Gloucester's son takes refuge in apparent
madness. Here is the key to open and understand the thought of Shakespeare. In
the eyes of the philosophy of art the pretended madness of Edgar explains the pre-
tended madness of Hamlet.
H, TAINE (1866)
{Histoire de la Literature Anglaise. Paris, 1866. Deuxi^me Edition, vol. ii, p.
254. Trans, by H. VAN Laun, Edinburgh, 1871, vol. i, p. 338.) — Do you under-
stand that, as he says these words, ['Well said, old mole!' &c., I, v, 160,] his teeth
chatter, and that he is 'pale as his shirt, his knees knocking each other' ? His in-
tense anguish ends in laughter akin to a spasm. Thenceforth Hamlet speaks as
though he had a chronic nervous attack. I grant that his madness is feigned ; but
his mind, as a door whose hinges are twisted, swings and bangs to every wind with
a mad precipitance and with a discordant noise. He has no need to search for
strange ideas, apparent incoherences, exaggerations, nor for the deluge of sarcasm
which he gathers. He finds them within him ; he does himself no violence, — he
simply gives himself up to them. During the court-play he gets up, he sits down,
he asks to lay his head in Ophelia's lap, he talks to the actors, and criticises the play
to the spectators ; his nerves are strung, his excited thought is like a waving and
crackling flame, and cannot find fuel enough in the multitude of objects around it,
upon all of which it seizes. After the King is unmasked, Hamlet laughs terribly,
for he is resolved on murder. It is clear that this state is disease, and that the man
will not live What Hamlet's imagination robs him of is the coolness and
strength to go quietly, and, with premeditation, plunge a sword into a breast. He
can only do the thing on a sudden suggestion ; he must have a moment of enthu-
siasm; be must think the King is behind the arras, or else, seeing that he himself
is poisoned, he must find his victim under his foil's point. He is not master of his
acts ; occasion dictates them ; he cannot plan a murder, but must improvise it. A
too lively imagination exhausts energy by the accumulation of images, and by the
fury of intentness which absorbs it. You recognize in him a poet's soul, made not
to act, but to dream, which is lost in contemplating the phantoms of its own creation,
which sees the imaginary world too clearly to play a part in the real world; an artist
whom evil chance has made a prince, whom worse chance has made an avenger of
crime, and who, destined by nature for genius, is condemned by fortune to madness
and unhappiness. Hamlet is Shakespeare, and at the close of a gallery of portraits,
which have all some features of his own, Shakespeare has painted himself in the
most striking of them all.
PROF. V. COURDAVEAUX (1867)
(Caractires et Talents. £tudes sur la Littirature Ancienne et Modeme. Paris, 1 867,
p. 305.) — Let us put aside altogether the idea that Hamlet, with his delays, was, in the
mind of the poet, the type of the German race. In the first place, Hamlet is not Ger-
man ; he is a Dane, which is not the same thing ; ask the Danes of the present day.
Besides, are there not around him persons of the same race with him who do not, for
COURDAVEAUX 387
their part, delay at all, — Qaudius, for example, and Laertes also, and Fortinbras ?
By what right is he alone, in the piece, the representative of his race ? And what,
in fine, was there in the legend that could suggest to Shakespeare the idea of attrib-
uting these delays to him, in order to make him a type of his nation ? If other per-
sonages created by the poet appear to reproduce the spirit of their respective coun-
tries ; if lago and Juliet, for example, resemble Italians, it is not because the poet
was scientifically engrossed with the character of races, but it is simply because he
drew his plot from an Italian novel, and because he restricted himself to raising to
the third or fourth power the qualities and defects which the Italian story-teller has
given to his personages. To talk of historical truth in Shakespeare, after Cym-
beline, after the Winter's Tale, after King Lear, is to be very complaisant. If his-
torical truth is found in Shakespeare, it is to be accounted for by his fidelity to the
legend ; it is merely an accident, and nothing else. The German Gervinus, re-
buking the torpor of his compatriots, may be permitted to cry out to them : ' Hamlet
is you !' but to believe that the poet intended this resemblance, is to go contrary to
all the facts.
Neither is it the interpretation which has prevailed in France. People here are
more inclined to make a Werther out of Hamlet. And what a fine field is thus
opened for moral amplifications 1 ^Vhat a magnificent occasion to read young folks
B lesson upon the seriousness of life, which has been given us for action, not dream-
ing I and what superb reproaches for effeminacy and idleness have been eloquently
addressed to the poor Hamlet !
[Page 313.] ' Exactly so,' it is said, ' it is elasticity that Hamlet lacks ; the courage
is wanting in him to discharge his duty ; he has not sufficient daring to strike
Qaudius ; it is faint-heartedness that renders him unequal to the heroic act required
of him. If any one deserves to be believed in regard to him, it is assuredly him-
self; just listen how he reproaches himself with cowardice after his inter\-iew with
the players, and in the long soliloquy after meeting with the army of Fortinbras, — a
soliloquy which is not in the First Quarto, and which the poet added in the Second,
for the better elucidation of Hamlet's character.' But why, we reply, is Hamlet to
have the privilege of being the best judge of himself? Why shall he have the gift,
which no one else has, of appreciating himself exactly upon the impulse of the mo
ment, without being deceived as to the good or the evil in himself? Hamlet is in a
state of great excitement when he thus accuses himself of weakness and cowardice.
After having learned of the murder of his father, there are in him two opposing cur-
rents, equally honorable to his nature : the filial sentiment, prompting him to strike
Claudius, and repugnahce to a murder. He speaks differently, as one or the other rules
him. At a distance.from the act to be done, it is the filial sentiment that is uppermost ;
he swears then to punish, and he thinks that, were the criminal there, he would kill
him without hesitation. When the opportunity occurs, it is the repugnance to strike
that overpowers him ; he lets the chance go ; when it is gone, then the filial senti-
ment again predominates, and he is vexed that he has not acted, he reproaches him-
self bitterly, he accuses himself of weakness and faint-heartedness, so culpable does
he regard himself at that moment, but at the same moment also, he is deceived
about him.self : he sees himself with the eyes of passion, and he sees wrongly. We
must not bring up his own words against him ; we must not take him to the letter
against himself; he must be judged by the rest of his conduct, and by what those
say of him who have known him for a long time. Now does there fall from the
lips of any one whomsoever, saving from his own, a word that accuses him of a
388
APPENDIX
want of courage ? Observe how, in Q^, Ophelia speaks of liim when she no longer
had any doubt of his madness: *0 what a noble mind is here o'erthrown! The
courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, sword ; The expectancy and rose of the
fair state, .... quite, quite down !' In Q^ she restricts herself to saying : • Great
God of heaven, what a quicke change is this ? The courtier, scholler, souldier, all
in him. All dasht and splintered thence,'
What a difference between these two eulogies ! And how does that in Q^ show
the settled purpose of the poet to exalt Hamlet !
[Page 315.] And what is there so noble in an assassination in cold blood, even
though thereby a father's death is to be avenged, that it should be styled an heroic
action, to which Hamlet, in default of courage, was not equal ? No, it is not that,
as is too often said, and as Goethe himself has wrongfully said, — it is not an heroic
task, which Hamlet is not strong enough to accomplish : it is a horrible obligation
for which he is not made, which is something very different, and against which,
without his taking account of it, the honesty of his conscience, the instincts of his
nature, all the habitudes of his education, all that, in other situations, would be his
strength, revolt. A delicate soul, that education has still more refined, — it was
utterly repugnant to him to devise an assassination long beforehand, and still worse
to strike in cold blood. It is not the fear of danger that arrests him, and no per-
sonal self-concern enters into his delays ; but at the moment of throwing himself
upon his victim, his arm, already raised, refuses to descend ; for a murder delibe-
rately planned, the steel remains suspended in his hand. Where is the cowardice
here ?
[Page 320,] To speak of the natural indecision of Hamlet and of the general in-
constancy of his resolution may seem at first sight a convenient expedient, but it is
an expedient that does not hold good in the presence of facts, any more than the
alleged cowardice of our hero. Nowhere, it is true, does Hamlet say a word of this
repugnance to strike in cold blood, by which we explain his hesitation and his
delays. At first, he wishes to be sure that Claudius is really guilty. Afterwards,
he will not strike him at prayer lest he should send his soul to heaven. On each
occasion he gives no other motive for deferring action. There is a difficulty here,
according to our way of understanding Hamlet, which we are the first to ac«
knowledge. But no one takes in earnest the motive with which he satisfies him-
self when he sees Claudius at prayer; every one sees that it is a mere pretext which
he hastily accepts to dispense with acting at that moment, and every one is right,
since among the new reproaches which he heaps upon himself immediately after, he
makes not the slightest allusion to this excuse. At that moment there certainly
passes in his inmost soul something of which he takes no account ; an influence
makes itself felt there, which he does not analyze nor distinguish, but to which he
submits none the less. But it is not faint-heartedness, nor a natural inconstancy of
will, since everything else, both in himself and in those around him, is opposed to
these two interpretations. Why then may it not be what we suggest, namely, the
secret voice of conscience, and the shrinking of a delicate soul from an assassination
in cold blood ?
Seek, outside of this explanation, one that explains everything, and you will seek
in vain. The character of Hamlet must be accepted as we have represented it, or
we have here only a work of bits and pieces, to which the poet contributed a scrap
here and a scrap there, without troubling himself to fit together so many pieces of
different manufacture, and to make of them a whole. Either our explanation is the
COURDA VEA UX 389
trne one, or the rdle which has engrossed the attention of markind for three cen-
times is a work of chance and an indecipherable enigma. For ourselves the choice
b not difficult.
[Page 323.] If Shakespeare were to return to life, and hear all the discussions to
which the character of his hero has given rise, he could not suppress a smile, and
he would say to us :
' To what purpose do you dispute thus to ascribe to me a profundity of thought
which I never had ? I am, perhaps, a great poet and an admirable arranger of tales
for the stage, but I never was the profound philosopher that you make me out. Wit-
ness my life as an actor and the insufficiency of my early education. As to the
subject which particularly occupies you, I found in the Chronicles of Belleforest a
story which struck me as dramatic, and I endeavored to turn it to account for the
theatre, just as I have done with so many others. As the public would not have
tolerated the hero of my Chronicle, I had to modify him. In place of the savage,
half sorcerer, with which the legend furnished me, I began by making out of Hamlet
a gentleman of my own time, the flower of the courtiers of Queen Elizabeth, with all
the intellectual culture of the sixteenth century ; then, by a process sufficiently fami-
liar to poets, I gave to this intelligent being, refined by education, sentiments which
I myself entertained both by nature and by circimistances. Suffering from men and
things, I have taken advantage of the situation of my hero to put into his mouth the
troubles and disenchantments of my own heart, and feeling how I should recoil
from a murder to be committed in cold blood, however obliged to enact it I might
have felt myself, I have ascribed to him the hesitation which would have been
mine in his case. Should I have been therefore a coward, or possessed of a mind
fatally undecided ? No more, I think, than I should have been a sick dreamer, fit
only for suicide, because, at certain moments of my life, I have had the titter senti-
ments which I ascribe to Hamlet.'
So, we believe, Shakespeare would speak. It is his life, in fact, which is the
final explanation of the character of Hamlet, as it is that of the character of Timon,
which was conceived at the same epoch.
[Page 326.] The drama of Timon was for a long time a problem, and for many
of the critics at this day it is still a mere chaos, without cohesion or moral unity,—
something resembling the dreams of a drunken man. But all this ceases, and the
drama of Timon recovers its signification and its unity, if you understand it as the
outburst of all the bitterness and disgust at life which had accumulated in the soul
of Shakespeare Between Timon and Hamlet there is only a difference in
shading. Timon hates life; Hamlet finds it burthensome. Timon execrates society;
Hamlet regards it with aversion and contempt. In Timon the misanthropy of the
poet has reached its apogee ; in Hamlet it has not yet gone so far. The former saj-s
Raca ! to the world ; the latter confines himself to Aias ! The latter finds more
echoes than the former, because the sentiment which he expresses, being less ex-
treme, is in accord with the disposition of a much larger number. But both these
two are of the same family, branches of the same trunk ; both were bom of the
same sadness and of the same weariness of life from which Shakespeare appears to
have siiffered for some two-thirds of his career.
390 APPENDIX
FRAN<;:OIS-VICTOR HUGO (1873)
{^Introduction to Trans. Paris, 1873, p. 77.) — Erudite critics, while acknow-
ledging the fine wisdom of Hamlet's counsels to the players, have nevertheless
stoutly denied the dramatic propriety of introducing these counsels at all. The two
scenes, in which Hamlet makes the actors rehearse, have been regarded by these
critics as hors-d'ceuvre, very magnificent, it is true, but none the less as hors-d''ceuvre.
Herein lies, in my opinion, a very grave error. Hamlet wishes to have a piece
acted, the sight of which will force the guilty King to reveal his crime. It is
readily perceived that the manner in which this piece is to be interpreted is of
great importance to him. Hamlet has before him mere strolling players, buffoons
addicted to low clap-trap or grotesque contortions, decked out in ridiculous cos-
tume. Wherefore, if the scene to be acted before Claudius has not due decorum,
if one of the actors mouths it like a town crier, if another has his periwig be-
frouzled, if the clown, just at the most important point, cuts some of the wretched
jokes that clowns are so fond of, why then, forsooth, the whole effect that Hamlet
is aiming at is ruined. The terrible tragedy, whereof the last scene is to be acted
off the stage, will end like a farce in a market-place amid peals of laughter. But
if, on the other hand, the acting proceeds smoothly, the result is sure. The more
natural the actor, the deeper will be Claudius's emotion ; the truer the acting of
the fictitious murderer, the more manifest will be the panic of the real one. It is,
therefore, essential that Hamlet should have the piece rehearsed with the greatest
care before it is performed in public.
[Page 97.] Hamlet is not, in my view, a courtier, he is a misanthrope; he is not
a prince, he is more than a prince, he is a thinker. What occupies his thoughts are
no beggarly matters, but eternal problems. * To be or not to be, that is the ques-
tion.' In his ceaseless dreaming, Hamlet has lost sight of the finite, and sees only
the infinite. He is forever contemplating this boundless Force which governs nature,
and which men sometimes call Providence, and sometimes Chance ;. and before this
Force he feels himself crushed, — he renounces his individuality, he abjures his will,
and declares himself a fatalist Whenever he acts, he obeys an impuke which
drives him not from within, but from without.
[Page 98.] Hamlet believes himself to be no more master of his fate than is a
sparrow. And it is on this passive creature that the mission has devolved of over-
throwing a tyrant. Hence all this wavering that we see, this uncertainty, these inner
struggles. Hamlet looks upon himself as powerless, — he has to overthrow a Power;
he does not look upon himself as free, — he has to make a whole nation free; he has no
faith in his own strength, and he has to force punishment on a royal assassin. Sublime
idea ! Shakespeare has made Hamlet a fatalist avenger ! This struggle between
Will and Fate belongs not alone to the history of Hamlet, — it belongs to the history
of us all. It is your life, — it is mine. It was that of our fathers, — it will be that
of our sons. And hence the work of Shakespeare is eternal.
VON STRUVE 391
PROF. DR HEINRICH VON STRUVE (1876)
{Hamlet, Eint Charakterstudu, Weimar, 1876, p. 52) : How are we to regard the
Ghost ? It is self-evident that it can be regarded in no other light than as an hallu*
cinatlon.
Through the sudden death of his father, and its attendant circumstances, Hamlet
was thrown into a state of excitement so intense, and dwelt upon his father's memory
so tenderly, that it could not be but that his imagination, forever searching for the
causes of the shocking event, should be in the highest degree liable to visions and
hallucinations. At all events, it is much more natural to assume that the young
Prince, excited and mentally tortured as he was, should have been ^he victim of
an hallucination, at night, and in a retired spot, in which he saw his father's ghost,
than that the canonized bones of his parent, hearsed in death, should really burst their
cerements, and that the sepulchre in which they were quietly inum'd should have
oped his ponderous and marble jaws to permit them to visit the pale glimpses of the
moon. Before the appearance of the Ghost, Hamlet had seen his father in imagina-
tion, and it needed but the trifling incitement from some superstitious soldiers to trans-
form the figment of his fancy into the lively colors and plasties outline of reality.
We see, therefore, in the apparition of his father, nothing but the reflection of
Hamlet's own mental exaltation, and the words addressed to him by the Ghost are
merely the words which Hamlet, in the name of his father, says to himself. Ham-
let's talk with his father is merely a soliloquy. If it were necessary, this could be
proved down to the smallest particular, for everything that Hamlet's father says cor-
responds to a hair with the known traits of Hamlet's character ; it contains nothing
individual, nothing novel, nothing peculiar to a character of a difierent mould, but
everything bears the stamp of Hamlet's inmost nature, — is the mere reflection of
himself. Many an observation, made by chance and lost to memory, of his uncle's
and his mother's conduct after his father's death ; many a piece of gossip, which
here and there reached his ears, and which by itself was insuSicient to give his
suspicions shape ; many a significant shaking of the head by one or another of his
father's faithful servants ; many a fleeting observation which he had made uncon-
sciously in connection with the nimiberless reports concerning the details of this
mysterious event, — had worked night and day in Hamlet's mind, and struggled into
shape not less effiectively because unknown, or only half known, to himself; until at
last all these separate items, insignificant in isolatior suddenly took consistent shape
in Hamlet's mind, and stood out before his consciousness as an external image, un-
modified by any conscious mental exertion. And thus it follows that the apparition
of Hamlet's father, with its precise and distinct accusation of Claudius and the
Queen, is nothing else than the objective and personified result of a mental process
in Hamlet, long antecedent and unconsciously carried on.
The Ghost appears. How does Hamlet act in its presence ? Is he drawn by love
to his father ? is he rejoiced once more to behold the long-lost one ? does he incline
himself to him as a loving son assuredly would who actually saw his father bodily
[sic, Uibhaftig'\ before him ? No, nothing of the kind ! For all Hamlet was con-
cerned, the apparition came to answer a flood of questions which have long agitated
the son, and which he has long sought to answer for himself in vain. He seeks from
the Ghost nothing else but that it inform him why it appears, what it requires of him,
what he must do to allay its tormenting disquiet. At first he does not even know
392 APPENDIX
who it is ; he himself first makes it his father, addresses it by this name to obtain
more readily the answers to all his questions.
[Page 148.] Hamlet enters into life with the most beautiful ideals. The bitter
experiences of life have shattered his ideals. He saw evil, murder, treason, false-
hood, where he hoped to find good, self-sacrifice, love, and truth. He came upon
meanness, where he sought nobleness; cunning hypocrisy and hidden treachery
affronted him, where he looked to meet friendship and open-heartedness. This dis-
illusion has taught him to regard life and mankind as of little worth. But his moral
nature would not suffer him to be crushed by his experience. He lost not faith in
the moral order of the world. He did not allow the germs which stirred down deep
in his breast to be choked. With moral energy he devoted himself to a high mission,
to the restoration of the disturbed order of the moral world, to the punishment of
the bad, to the vindication and victory of the right. In firm faith in his mission, in
the faith that he has to fulfil it in the name of Providence, he finds strength to engage
in the conflict with evil, and he seeks above all things to keep himself pure. In the
wild storm of passion his strong purpose is to keep firm hold of the helm, and keep
his course straight towards the bright goal of his life.
DR H. BAUMGART (1877)*
{Die Hamlet- Tragodie und ihre Kriiik. Konigsberg i. Pr. 1877.) [The subject
of this volume of 165 pages is a critique of the criticisms that have been passed on
Hamlet by German Shakespeare scholars, but mainly of Werder, whose idea, as we
have already seen, is that the tragic interest of the Play lies not in the character of
Hamlet so much as in the nature of his task, which is, not to dispatch the King, but
to unmask him, that justice and truth may be brought to light. Should he kill the
King without doing this, he would strike like a simpleton, and kill his own cause.
Such is the point affirmed by Werder. Thus Dr Baumgart :]
But what is the thought or purpose of an avenger, who by a monstrous act of violence
has been wounded in his dearest, most sacred interests ? If he be of a quick, fiery
temper, disposed to revenge, he does not wait even for full proof of the wrong. He
is often carried away to deeds of blood only upon strong suspicion. Is he of a
cooler, more deliberate character, he waits, even if the strongest evidence lies before
him, until he has an irresistible conviction of the injury. Then he acts with an
energy only the more reckless, according to the force of his aroused will, whether
others justify him or not, heedless even of his own destruction. When has a man,
deeply wronged and thirsting for revenge, ever waited till he could lay his case be
fore the great public? No, he keeps it hidden rather.
Revenge is a strictly personal afi"air, having nothing in common ■w'lih punishment,
which satisfies the simple sense of justice. And where does the Ghost or Hamlet
speak of punishment merely, and of the necessity of a previous unmasking? It is
• This and the preceding volume, Dr Struvb's, come to hand while these pages are going through
the press. The printers are upon mc, and I cannot stop to read the volumes throueh. From the
former I have selected the most striking passage that has caught my eye; of the latter I have not
had time even to cut the leaves. The few pages, however, that I have read here and there, give
promise of an essay of unusual power, and of forebodings to the soundness of Wehder's theory.
Probably under any circumstances but few extracts could have been made from Dr Baumgart'S
volume, so much of it is, professedly, criticism on criticism, which, as is stated in the Preface to
Vol. I, has been excluded in the selection of extracts. Ed.
BAUMGART 393
revenge alone that the Ghost calls for, and swift revenge that Hamlet promises.
There is not a word about handing the King over to punishment, nor of punishment
at all, but the first word with which Hamlet again recalls the warning of the Ghost.
is a call upon himself, his own passion, that it may drive him at last to the ven.
geance which he has postponed.
Everything impels him to vengeance, his father's ghost, his own boundless excite-
ment,— and yet there is something in him which checks him, in him, not out of him,
— something that drives him to despair, to the bitterest self-reproaches, but, in spite
of all, not to action. Thus, as he only thinks of what has befallen him, his soul
rises in a storm, venting itself in the most violent expressions, and then immediately,
aware of this empty rage, the more unsparing is his condemnation of himself for being
so made as, in spite of all, to be unable to proceed to action. He should hold his
tongue and act. He is not equal to the deed, and yet his sensibility, responsive to
the slightest touch, breaks out into the wildest expressions, but yet he scolds him-
self for unpacking his heart with words, and then he resolves. But what does he
resolve ? To what does his thinking lead him ? Does he seek how he shall dis-
cover the murder to the world, that at last, without another moment's delay, he may
sweep to the act ? Nothing of this sort ! To secure certainty y<?r himself, he re-
solves upon the court-play. What his ♦ prophetic soul ' has told him from the very
beginning, what the nightly apparition has stamped in fearfid characters on his soul,
that he will confirm by proof; which, indeed, is all very well for a cool, deliberate
judge, but which would never be done in such a situation by one in any degree dis-
posed to revenge. But then, when he has laid the last doubt, will he, without hesi-
tation, proceed to act ? That the conviction wrought by the play is to lead to any
measure looking to the public arraignment of the King, there is not a word to in-
timate.
There is nothing in the whole piece which hints at any plan of Hamlet's, or at
any intention to form one. His talk is of nothing but of taking immediate revenge,
to which, however, he never makes up his mind until the hour of his death.
LIST OF EDITIONS COLLATED IN THE
TEXTUAL NOTES
The Second Quarto (Ashbee's
Fac-simile)
The Third Quarto (Ashbee
Fac-simile)
The Fourth Quarto
The Fifth Quarto
The First Folio
The Second Folio . .
The Third Folio . .
Players' Quarto , .
Players' Quarto . .
The Fourth Folio . . . .
Players' Quarto . .
Players' Quarto . .
ROWE (First Edition)
RovvE (Second Edition) . .
Pope (First Edition)
Pope (Second Edition) . .
Theobald (First Edition)
Theobald (Second Edition)
Hanmer (First Edition)
Warburton
Johnson
Capell
Hanmer (Second Edition)
Jennens
Johnson and Steevens
Johnson and Steevens
Johnson and Steevens
Malone
Steevens . .
Rann
Reed's Steevens . .
Reed's Steevens . .
Boswell's Malone
Singer (First Edition)
Caldecott . .
Knight (First Edition)
394
[QJ
Q3I
[QJ
:Qs]
FJ
F3]
1604
FJ
Q'95]
[Q'o3]
Rowe i] 1709
'Rowe ii] I7H
'Pope i] 1723
'Pope ii] 1728
Theob. i] I733
"Theob. ii] 1740
. . 1605
. . 1611
no date.
. . 1623
. . 1632
. . 1664
. . 1676
. . 1683
. . 1685
.. 1695
• . 1703
Han. i'
Warb.'
1744
1747
Johns.] 1765
;Cap.]
1768
Han. ii] 1770
Jen.]
Steev. *73]
'Steev. '78]
'Steev. '85]
Mai.] . .
Steev.] . .
Rann] . .
Reed '03]
Reed '13]
Var.] . .
Sing, i] . .
Cald.] . .
[Knt. i] ..
. . 1773
. . 1773
.. 1778
. . 1785
. . 1790
. • 1793
(?) 1794
. . 1803
. . 1813
. . 1821
. . 1826
, . 1832
(?) 1841
EDITIONS COLLATED IN TEXTUAL NOTES 395
Collier (First Edition) . .
Hudson (First Edition) . .
Singer (Second Edition)
Elze
Dyce (First Edition)
Collier (Second Edition)
Staunton
Richard Grant White
The Globe Edition (Clark and
Wright)
Charles and Mary Cowden
Clarke ,
The Cambridge Edition (Clark
and Wright)
Delius
Halliwell (Folio Edition)
Knight (Second Edition)
Keightley
Dyce (Second Edition) . .
TSCHISCHWITZ
Hudson (School Edition)
Heussi
The Clarendon Press Series
(Clark and Wright) . .
The Rugby Edition (C. E. Mo-
berly)
[Coll. i] 1843
[Huds. i] 1856
[Sing, ii] 1856
[El.] 1857
[Dyce i] 1857
[Coll. ii] 1858
[Sta.] i860
[White] 1861
[do.] 1864
[Qarke] (?) 1864.
[Cam.] 1865
[Del.] 1865
[Hal.] .. .. .. .. 1865
[Knt. ii] 1865
[Klly.] 1865
[Dyce ii] 1866
[Tsch.] 1869
[Huds.] 1870
[Heus.] 1872
[Cla.] 1872
[Mob.] 1873
The First Quarto having been reprinted in full, there is no collation of it recorded
in the Textual Notes, except where an editor has adopted one of its readings.
The agreemant of Q,, Q , Q^, and (X is indicated by the symbol Qq.
In like manner, the accord of the four Folios is indicated in the Textual Notes by
Ff. Manifest misspellings in both Qq and Ff are recorded, as an aid in estimating
the value of these editions. I have referred to these early copies at some length in
The Date and the Text at the beginning of this Volume, and on p. 36 to a pecu-
liarity of the Second Folio, to which, by the way, Steevens, out of what I cannot but
think was mere antagonism to Malone, imputed a value above that of the First
Folio.
The Flayers^ Quartos are recorded only in exceptional cases where it is well to
have at hand all possible evidence. As a rule, the Quarto of 1676 includes them
all ; and even it is not noted when it agrees with the four earlier Quartos.
As in the former volumes of this edition, the agreement of RowE, Pope, Theo-
bald, Hanmer, Warburton, and Johnson is indicated by Rowe + . Occasion-
ally, where they all agree with F , I have used, to save space, F^+. RowE did not
print from F^ in this tragedy, as he did in Macbeth.
When the Globe, the Cambridge, and Clarendon editions agree in the same
reading, I have used the symbol Glo. + .
The abbreviation (subs.) indicates that trifling variations in spelling, in punctua-
tion, or in stage-directions are not noted, but that one edition follows another sub-,
stantially.
• Var.' stands for Boswell'S edition of Malone, or, as it is usually called, the
396 APPENDIX
Variorum of 1821, and for Malone's edition of 1790; where its editor, Bos-
WELL, here and there adopted his own text, it is indicated by Bos. ; and so trifling
is the difference between Singer's First Edition and the Variorum of 1 821 that
« Var.' might stand for this edition also. Where Singer's readings are noted, they
refer, as a rule, to his Second Edition.
The work of collation was well advanced before it was discovered that Calde-
COTT's two editions of 1820 and 1832 differ somewhat from each other both in
text and notes; there is no intimation on the title-page that the editions are not
identical. To revise and change involved more labour and more time than it was
thought worth while to bestow on it ; • Cald.' therefore refers generally to Caldecott's
Second Edition of 1832.
« Coll. (MS) ' refers to Mr Collier's annotated F,.
* Quincy (MS) ' refers to Mr QuiNCY's annotated F^.
The abbreviation et cet. after any reading indicates that it is the reading of all
editions other than those specified. Be it remembered that, to save space, the read-
ings of some of the above enumerated editions are^ not recorded in every trifling
instance, but only in obscure passages.
An Emendation or Conjecture which is discussed in the Commentary is not repeated
in the Textual Notes; nor is ' conj.' added to any name in the Textual Notes unless
it happens to be that of an editor, in which case its omission would be misleading.
In the matter of punctuation the colon is used, as it is in German, as equivalent
to ' namely.' Only when thus used does it indicate any appreciable difference from
the semicolon.
A dash at the close of a sentence indicates that the speaker changes his address
from one person to another.
The Commentary, to be intelligible, must be read in connection with the Textual
Notes. For instance, see I, iii, 74.
To save space in the Commentary, all phrases like ' I think/ ' it seems to me,*
&c. have been omitted from the notes there cited.
In the preceding volumes of this edition I have given lists of * Books quoted and
consulted ' in their preparation. Instead thereof, in the present volume will be
found in the following pages what is almost the same : a Bibliography cf Hamlet^
as complete as may be. The number of books, essays, &c., there recorded, which
have not been consulted for this edition, is comparatively small.
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF HAMLET
ENGLISH *
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
The Tragicall Historic of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke 1603
Reproductions .'
The First Edition of the tragedy of Hamlet, by William Shakespeare.
Reprinted at the Shakespeare Press by William Nicol for Payne and
Fobs. [' A remarkably accurate reprint of the first-discovered copy,
in which even the broken letters are reproduced.' — Timmins.'\ . . 1 825
Hamlet: First Edition (1603). The Last Leaf of the Lately Discov-
ered Copy, carefully reprinted, with a Narrative of its Discovery, &c. by
M. W. R [ooney], Dublin. [' Unfortunately, in one edition this " care-
fully reprinted" "last leaf" showed on collation no less than nineteen
errors in twenty-five lines.' — Timmins. See N. <&» Qu., 27 Sept. 1856;
The Athencsum, 1856, p. I168, 1537; p. 1191, letter from Rooney; p.
1220, from Collier; p. 1221, from Jones; p. 1303, from Halliwell.]
[See also p. 13 of this Volume. — Ed.] 1856
Fac-simile of the Last Page of the First Edition of Hamlet, 1603. [Only
six copies of this were lithographed by Mr Ashbee. Two of these (one
on India paper) occurred at Halliwell's sale, June, 1859. N. 6* Qu.,
2d Sen, vol. ix, p. 379.]
Photographic Fac-simile. [Forty copies for the Duke of Devonshire,
under the supervision of Mr Collier.] . . . 1858
Timmins's Reprints of Quartos 1603, 1604. The Dn-onshire Hamlets.
[A very valuable contribution to Shakespearian study.] i860
The Ashbee-Halliwell Fac-simile. [Thirty-one copies.] 1866
Reprinted in The Cambridge Edition, vol. viii, p. 1 97 1 866
Reprinted in the present Volume, p. 37 1877
The Tragical! Historie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke 1604
Reproductio7is :
Photographic Fac-simile. [Forty copies for the Duke of Devonshire, under
the supervision of Mr Collier] 1859
* This ' Engush Bibuografht ' has been most kindly prepared for this edition by my friend,
BIr A. I. Fish. Ed.
397
398 APPENDIX
Timmins's Reprints of Quartos 1603, 1604. The Dn/onshtre Hamlets . . i860
The Ashbee-Halliwell Fac-simile. [Thirty-one copies.] [See p. 13 of
this Volume. — Ed.] 1867
The Tragicall Historic of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke 1605
Keproductiom
Halliwell's Fac-simile. [Twenty-six copies, made under the superin-
tendence of Mr Halliwell to show the identity of the two editions of
1604 and 1605. — Bohn's Lowndes."] i860
The Ashbee-Halliwell Fac-simile. [Thirty-one copies. See Halliwell's
Dictionary of Old English Plays, p. 1 13.] [See p. 33 of this Volume. —
Ed.] 1868
The Hystorie of Hamblet. London. Imprinted by Richard Bra-
docke for Thomas Pauier » 1608
Reproductions :
Collier's Shakespeare's Library, vol. i. [Reprint of the ' Hystorie.'] . . 1843
Halliwell's Folio Edition, vol. xiv, p. 122 1865
Hazlitt : Shakespeare's Library, vol. ii, Pt. i, p. 212, 2d ed. [Reprint of
Collier.] 1875
The Tragicall Historic of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke. [This edition
is mentioned by Lowndes and Halliwell, Shakespeareana, p. 18 (1841), but
its existence is very doubtful. No fac-simile is found in the Ashbee-Halli-
well Series, and no. copy is known in any collection of Quartos.] . . , . 1609
The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke 1611
Reproductions :
Steevens's Reprint of Quarto 1611. Collated with Quarto 1605, 1607,
1637. [Knight praises Steevens's Reprints of 1766, but the experience
of the present writer is not so favoraole ; a careiul collation of this par-
ticular play with Jennens's ed. and Halliwell's Fac-simile disclosed a
number of discrepancies. — A. I. F. ] 1766
The Ashbee-Halliwell Fac-simile. [Thirty-one copies.] [See page 34
of this volume. — Ed.] 1870
The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke. [See p. 34 of this
Volume. — Ed.] , n. d.
The First Folio, [Tragedies, p 152.] 1623
Reproductions :
Booth's Reprint of Hamlet from First Folio, 1623 1864
Stratmann : Reprint of Hamlet from the First Folio, collated with Quar-
tos 1603, 1604, 1605, 1607, i6ii, 1637, and folios 1623, 1632 . . . . 1869
TAe Second Folio. [Tragedies, p. 272.] 163a
BIBLIOGRAPHY— ENGLISH 399
The Tragedy of Hamlet. [The earliest Quarto known to Theobald when
writing his Shakespeare Restored, and none earlier was known to Dr John-
son.] [See page 35 of this Volume. — Ed.] 1637
The ' Grave-Makers,' from Shakespeare's Hamlet [This is the 9th piece
in the curious collection of drolls and farces, such as were presented in old
times by strollers at Bartholomew and other fairs, edited by the bookseller
Francis Kirkman, and entitled The Wits, or Sport upon Sport, 8vo, 1662. A
second edition appeared in 1673 with frontispiece. See Baker and Jones's
Biog. Dram., vol. iii, p. 414.] 1662
The Third Folio. [Tragedies, p. 730.] 1664
Hayers' Quarto. [See page 35 of this Volume.] 1676
Player's Quarto 1683
The Fourth Folio. [Tragedies, p. 59.] 1685
Players' Quarto 1695
Dr Ingleby in his * Centurie of Prayse,' 1 874, chronicles Hamlet allusions in—
Gabriel Harvey. [Ingleby, p. 8.] 1598
The Two Angry Women of Abington. [Rimbault's ed., 1841, pp. 73, 81.
Ingleby, Postscript, p. 361.] 1599
Anthony Scoloker. [Ingleby, 46.] 1604
Sir Thomas Smithe's Voiage and Entertainment in Rushia , . . . . . 1 605
Ratseis Ghost. [Ingleby, p. 48.] 1606
The Puritan. [Ingleby, p. 331.] . . 1607
Bel-man's Night Walkes. By Thomas Dekker. [Ingleby, p. 358.] . . 1 61 2
The Night Raven, by Samuel Rowlands. [Ingleby, p. 358.] . . ' . 1620
Shakerley Marmion : Cupid and Psyche. [Singer's Ed., 1820, pp. 32, 33.
Ingleby, Postscript, p. 362,] . . , , 1637
London Post. [Ingleby, p. 336.] 1644
John Evelyn. [Ingleby, p. 248.] Nov. 26, , . 1 661
Samuel Pepys. [Ingleby, p. 247.] Aug. 31, x668
Edward Phillips. [Ingleby, p. 281.] 1669
John Dryden. [Ingleby, p. 273.] . . . . . . 1679
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
Players' Quarto. There are two editions ot this date. [See p. 35 of this
Volume.— Ed.] . . . . 1703
Ditto, edited by the 'late accurate Mr John Hughs.' [See p. 35 of this
Volume. — Ed.] 1703
Rowe's First Edition , . , 1709
Hamlet, Prince of Denmark 1710
Hamlet, an Opera, as it is performed at the Haymarket. [This piece, which
IS very rare, is founded rather on the old Historie of Hamlet than Shake-
speare's tragedy. N. &* Q. 2d Ser. vol. ix, p. 379.] . . . . . • . . 17^3
Rowe's Second Edition .« .. * 1714
400 APPENDIX
Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Lond., T. Johnson 1720
Hamlet : Bettesworth. [Catalogued in the Birmingham Shak. Mem. Lib. ; not
in Bohn's Lowndes,"] 1723
Pope : First Edition 1725
Shakespeare Restored ; or a specimen of the many errors, as well committed,
as unamended, by Mr Pope in his late edition of this poet. By Mr Theo-
bald. [• This, although the title does not say so, is entirely devoted to the
play of Hamlet.' — Timmins.'] 1 726
Pope: Second Edition 1728
Theobald: First Edition 1733
Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. 1734
The Dramatic Historiographer, or the British Theatre delineated. Contains
an account of Hamlet . . . . . . . . . . 1735
Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, written by
William Shakespeare. [Reprinted in 1864. See p. 80 of this Volume. —
Ed.] . . 1736
Theobald: Second Edition I740
Hanmer: First Edition 1744
Upton: Observations, &c 1746
Warburton 1747
Hamlet. Collated with the best editions. Dublin 1 750
Miscellaneous Observations on the Tragedy of Hamlet 1752
Grey : Notes, &c . . . . 1754
Hamlet. Players' Edition . . . . 1754
Hamlet. Players' Edition 1759
Johnson <. 1765
Steevens's Twenty Plays. Hamlet. Vol. iv. [See cw/^, 1 611.] .. ..1766
Capell 1767
Hanmer 1770
Hamlet altered by Garrick. [Not printed, Lowndes.] . . . . . . . . 1771
Jennens. Collated with Ancient and Modem editions, [This collation em-
braces Quartos .1604, 1611, 1637, the Four Folios, and Modern Editions
down to 1768.] 1773
Johnson and Steevens ^773
Richardson's Essays. Reprinted 1780, 1785, 1797, 1812 1775
An Essay on the Character of Hamlet, as performed by Mr Henderson at the
Haymarket. Lend., n. d. (1777?), 8vo, [By Frederick Pilon, but as-
cribed to Thomas Davies in the Bodleian Catalogue. Second Edition, Lon-
don (1777?), 8vo. — Bohn^s Lowndes.] 1777
Johnson and Steevens 1778
Capell : Notes and Various Readings 1779-81
Mackenzie: Criticism on the Tragedy of ^aw/^/ 1780
Steevens 1785
Robertson: Essay on the Character of Hamlet. [Printed separately, from
Transactions of the Edinburgh Society, vol. ii. — Lowndes^ by Bohn.] . . 1788
Hamlet. By W. Shakespeare, Esq. [Not in Lowndes, but in Birm. Mem.
Lib., with qy.] J788
Hamlet. [Manager's Book, Drury Lane.] 1789
Criticism on Mr Kcmble's Hamlet I7?9
BIBLIOGRAPHY— ENGLISH 40I
Ritson ! Remarks, p. 190 • • • 1783
Players' Edition, taken from the Manager's Book at Druiy Lane 1789
Malone »790
Ritson: Cursory Criticisms, p. 97 ^792
Steevens ^793
Rann ^794
Pye : Sketches, p. 57. ^794
"Whiter : Specimen of a Commentary 1794
Kemble : Altered from Shakespeare; acted at Dmry Lane. Players' Edition, 1796
Ireland : Miscellaneous Papers and Legal Instruments, &c. Including a small
fragment of Hamlet. 179^
Plumptre : Observations on Hamlet, and the Motives which induced Shake-
peare to fix on the Story of Amleth 179^
Plumptre: An Appendix to Observations on Hamlet; being an Attempt to
prove that Shakespeare designed that Tragedy as an indirect Censure on
Mary Queen of Scots 1797
Mason : Comments, p. 61 179^
NINETEENTH CENTURY.
Barker: Players' Edition. Regulated from the Prompt- Book. [No date.] . . 1800
Kelly: Hamlet's Letter to Ophelia versified 1 800
Kemble: Players' Ed., as acted at Covent Garden. [Reprinted 1804, 1815.] 1800
Remarks on Kemble's Hamlet. 1803
Reed's Steevens 1803
Lord Chedworth : Notes, p. 342 , 1805
Seymour : Remarks, vol. ii, p. 138. 1805
Hamlet. Printed complete from the Text of Johnson and Steevens, and re-
vised. , . . . . . . . . . . . 1806
Pye : Comments on the Commentators, p. 308 1807
Mason : Comments, pp. 427, 599 1807
Douce : Illustrations, vol. ii, p. 200. [Reprinted 1839.] 1807
Inchbald : Players' Edition, as performed at the Theatres RoyaL [Reprinted
1827.] 1808
Weston : Short Notes, p. 18. [Privately printed.] 1808
Croft: Annotations, p. 21. [Privately printed.] 1810
Poole : Hamlet Travestie. [Reprinted 1811,1812, 1814, 1817, 1866.] . . 1810
Deverell : Discoveries in Hieroglyphics and other Antiquities by Robt. Deve-
rell, Esq. 6 vols. 8vo; 2d ed., 1816. [The second and third volumes of
this very curious work relate to Shakspeare. In these will be found reprints
of Hamlet, Lear, &c. Copiously illustrated with notes and woodcut?. See
London Monthly Rev., 1816, vol. iii, p. 108; N, 6» Q^ 1st Ser., vol. ii, p.
61 ; Ibid., vol. ix, p. 379.] 1813
Reed's Steevens. , 1813
Becket: Shakespeare's Himself Again, vol.M, p. I. 1815
Hazlitt : Characters, p. 103. . . .. , , 1817
Jackson : Shakespeare's Genius Justified, p. 340. 1817
Oxbcrry's Drama, Players' Edition. [Reprinted 1823.] 1818
Vol. U.-36
402 APPENDIX
Caldecott: First Edition. [Also in 1820.] , 1819
Bicknell : Analysis of Hamlet .. ,. 1820
Barker: Players' Edition, regulated from the Prompt-Book 1820
Boswell's Malone. .. 1821
Cumberland's British Theatre. Players' Edition. 1823
Mackenzie : Criticism on Hamlet 1823
Oxberry's Drama. Players' Edition. 1 823
Skottowe : Life of Shakespeare, &c., vol. ii, p. I. 1824
PlanchS : Costume of Hamlet. , ., 1825
Reprint of Quarto 1603 1825
Graves : Essay on Genius of Shakespeare, with critical remarks on Romeo,
Hamlet, Juliet, Ophelia, &c,, p. 30, &c. 1826
Singer: First Edition. . 1826
Oxberry's Drama. Players' Edition. 1 827
Inchbald, Mrs : Players' Edition 1827
Farren, [See 1833.] 1829
Caldecott: Second Edition 1832
Mrs Jameson: Characteristics of Women. [Reprinted 1833, 1836, 1846, 1858,
&c.] 1832
Hamlet in English and French, with a description of Costume. Paris. . . 1833
Farren : Essays on Mania. Including Hamlet and Ophelia. [First printed
in 1826, and again in 1829.] 1833
Rush, James : Hamlet, a dramatic Prelude, in five acts, pp. I22 1834
S. T. Coleridge : Literary Remains, vol. ii, p. 202 1 836
Burlesque : Hamlet. [Mentioned in Birmingham Shak. Mem. Lib., Part I,
Sec. ii, p. 106.] 1838
The Barrow-Diggers, a Dialogue in Imitation of the Grave-diggers in Ham-
let, with Notes.' 4to. [Only a limited number printed. It contains many
plates of articles found in tumuli in Dorsetshire. N. &* Q. vol. ix, p. 379,
2d Ser.] 1839
Hind's Acting Edition. 1839
Very, Jones : Essays on Epic Poetry, Shakespeare's Hamlet, &c., pp. 39-104. 1839
Douce: Illustrations, p. 438. [See 1807.] 1839
Wade : What does Hamlet mean ? A Lecture, &c. [Printed at the office of
The British Press, Jersey,] 1840
Knight : First Edition 1841
Macdonell : An Essay, &c 1843
Collier : First Edition. 1843
Collier : Shak. Library. [See 1608 and 1875.] 1843
Adams, John Q. : Hackett, James H. The character of Hamlet, pp. 7. [Re-
printed in Griswold's Prose Writers of America.'] 1 844
Dyce: Remarks, p. 204. . . . . . . . . 1844
Hunter: New Illustrations, vol. ii, p. 202. 1845
Adiard, Jones. [Mentioned in Birmingham Shak. Mem. Lib., Part I, Sec. ii,
p. 106.] 1845
French's Modem Standard Drama. Players' Edition 1846
Ray : Shakespeare'* Delineations of Insanity. Contributions to Mental Pathol-
ogy 1847
Strachey : An Attempt to find a Key to Hamlet. 18I4S
BIBUOGRAPHY— ENGLISH 403
Iladson : Lectares, toL ii, p. S6 1848
Webster's Acting Edition- [Mentioned in Birmingham Skak. Mem. Lib., Pt.
I, Sec. ii, p. 106.] 1849
Travestie. [Mentioned in Birmingham 5"/4ai. .^w. Zi^., Pt- i. Sec ii, p. 107.] 1849
Knight: Studies, pp. 57, 321. [Reprinted 1850, 1857, 1876.] . . . . 1849
Dawson : Two Lectures on Hamlet- [First published^ in Tki Monthly Liter-
ary and Scientific Lecturer, voL i.] 1850
Grinfield: Remarks, &c., with Illustrations from Hamlet. 1 850
Webster: as performed at Windsor. 1850
Rofie: Essay on the Ghost-belief of Shakespeare. [Privately printed-] . . 1851
Coleridge, Hartley: Essays and Marginalia, voL i, p. 15 1. [First appeared
\a. Blackwood's Mag., y^T^.,^. ^o\^ 1851
Canston : On * Esile.' [• An able defence of the •♦ River" reference, but very
scarce, and apparently withdrawn soon after publication, on account of its
libellous character.' — Timmins.'\ .. .. 1851
Rice, George Edward : An Old Play in a New Garb (Hamlet, Prince of Den-
mark). In three acts. With Illus. Boston, 1852; 2d ed., 1853 1852
Collier: Notes and Emendations. [Reprinted 1853.] 1852
Lacy : Players' Edition. 1853
Dyce : Few Notes, p. 134. 1853
White: Shakespeare's Scholar, p. 407 1854
Walker, W.S.: Shakespeare's Versification- 1 854
An Attempt to ascertain whether the Queen "was an accessory, &c. . . . . 1856
Hudson: First Edition- 1S56
Singer: Second Edition- 1856
Rooney. [See ante. Quarto, 1603-] 1856
H. Reed: Lectures, p. 241. .. .. 1856
Badham: Cambridge Essays, p. 261. 1856
Dyce : First Edition 1857
Elze, Karl : The English Text, with an elaborate Commentary in German.
[A careful study of this volume will show it to be a very valuable contribu-
tion to Shakespearian scholarship. A. L F.] 1857
Bathxirst: Shakespeare's Versification. 1857
Lioyd: Elssays, [Privately printed, also, in Singer's Second Edition of Shake-
speare.] 1858
Collier: Photographic Fac-simile, 1603- [See ««/?, 1603.] 1858
Bucknill : Psychology- Hamlet, p. 40. 1859
Dyce: Strictures, p. 186 1859
New Exegesis of Shakespeare, p. 66 1859
Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, by W. Shakespeare, with notes Glossarial, Gram-
matical, and Explanatory. Routledge & Co 1859
Collier: Photographic Fac-simile of Quarto 1604. [See ante, 1604.] . . 1859
Halliwell: [Mentioned in Shak. Mem. Lib., Part I, Sec. ii, p. 107.] . . i860
Staunton- i860
Bucknill : Medical Knowledge i860
Timmins's Reprints of Quarto 1603, 1604. [A very valuable contribution, in-
cluding a bibliography, to which the present writer is indebted-] i860
W. S. Walker: Critical Examination. i860
Maginn : Shakespeare Papers, pp. 232, 27s i860
404 APPENDIX
White i86x
Cartwright: Footsteps of Shakespeare, pp. 34, 87. 1862
Nichols : Notes, Part I, pp. 24, 27. 1862
Bailey : The Received Text, vol, i, p. 27; vol. ii, pp. i, 302. . . 1862-66
Hackett: Notes, Criticisms, &c ^ pp. 13, 63, 118, 191 1863
Conolly: Study of Hamlet 1863
Clark and Wright 1863
Kenny : Life and Genius, &c., p. 367 1864
Edited by Griffiths Wrexam. 1864
Booth : The Text from the Folio of 1623. With Notice of the known editions
previously issued 1864
Clarke's Edition. ., ,, 1864
Globe Edition 1864
Mahoney: Was Hamlet Mad ? ,. , 1864
Remarks on Hamlet, reprinted from Edition 1736. [See ante, 1736.] . . 1864
S. T. Coleridge : Table-Talk, p. 40 1865
Heraud : Inner Life, pp. 21, 67, &c. .. .» .. 1865
Wellesley : Stray Notes, p. 33 . . . . 1865
Delius 1865
Halliwell : Folio Edition 1865
Knight's Second Edition 1865
Keightley 1865
Hunter : Hamlet for Schools and Private Study 1865
Cartwright: New Readings, p. 36. 1866
Staunton : Photolithograph of First Folio 1866
Ashbee's Fac-simile of Quarto 1603. 1866
Dyce : Second Edition. 1866
Hinton : Booth's Acting Hamlet 1 866
Kellogg, A. O. : Delineations of Insanity. [These essays first appeared in
The American Journal of Insanity between 1859 and 1864.] . . . . 1866
Poole: Travestie. New York. [Privately printed.] 1866
Forsyth : Some Notes, p. 95, &c 1867
Keightley : Expositor, p. 286. 1867
Ashbee's Fac-simile of Quarto 1 604. 1867
Bucknill, John Charles : The Mad Folk. [2d Ed.] 1867
Ross, George: Mad Characters 1 867
Was Hamlet Mad ? 8vo, pp. 34. [Melbourne] [London, 1871,] .. ..1867
Ashbee's Fac-simile of Quarto 1605. 1868
Hunter: lamo, London 1869
Stratmann: Reprint of First Folio. [This copy collated Quartos 1603, 1604,
1605, 161 1, 1637, and the First and Second Folios, but does not embrace the
Third and Fourth Folios.] 1869
An Opera 1869
Lacy : Players' Edition. Cumberland's British Theatre. 1869
Tschischwitz, Halle : English Text. [This is an elaborate commentary on the
play in German, with a collation of the Folios and Quartos, including an
attempt at a bibliography, and is intended for the use of both English and
German scholars. It contains much that is valuable, and something that is
worthless. A. I. F.] 1869
BIBUOGRAPHY-^ENGLISH 405
Lofil : Remarks on Hamlet
Hunter.
French : Shakespeariana Genealogica, p. 299
Honter.
Rnggles : Method of Shakespeare, p. 52
Ashbee's Fac-simile of Quarto of 1611
Miles : A Review of Hamlet, [First printed in the Southern Review for April
and July, 1870.]
Rugby Edition, by Moberly.
Wood : Hamlet from a Psycholo^cal View.
Daniel : Notes, p. 73. 1 •
Griffin: Studies in Shakespeare. Booth's Hamlet, p. 167
Hall : Shakespearian Fly-leaves, p. 35
Home: Was Hamlet Mad?
Hudson : Second Edition.
Hudson : School Shakespeare, 2d Series, i2mo, Boston.
Meadows : An Essay.
Clark and Wright. Clarendon Press Series
Y^fTiaTTi : Two Dissertations, 8vo, London. [From the Transactions of the
Royal Society of Lit., vol. x, New Series.]
Rushton : Passages in Hamlet, &c Illustrated from the Toxophilus of Ascham.
Part L
Hudson : Life, Art, and Characters, voL ii, p. 243
Durand : Contribution to Shakespearian Study. Hamlet.
Moberly : Rugby Edition
Taylor : Acting Edition
Corson : On a Disputed Passage in H, ii, 1. 180, 181. [Privately printed.] . .
Ray : Shakespeare's Delineations of Insanity. [Reprinted from The American
Journal of Insanity, April, 1847.] ••
Woods: ♦ How Old was Hamlet?' Essays, &c Boston, i2mo, pp. 399. . .
Salvini : Acting Edition. ,.
Corson : Jottings on the Text. [200 copies privately printed,]
Shakespeare Burlesque. Hamlet. \_Lcnd. Soc. for Dec. 25, 1874.] . .
Elze : Essays, 8vo, pp. 380. Hamlet, p. 193
Tyler: The Philosophy of Hamlet
Minto : Characteristics of English Poets, p. 403. . «
Maudsley : Mind and Body. Hamlet, p. 123
Ingleby : Centurie of Prayse.
Coleridge, S. T. : Notes and Lectures, p. 201
Collier: Trilogy, Part IH, p. 53. [Privately printed.]
Dyce : Third Edition.
Collier : Fourth Edition. [Privately printed.]
Mahony : Hamlet's Mission. A Critical Inquiry, &c
Uoyd : Critical Essays. .. .,
Marshall : Study of Hamlet
Mercade : Shakespeare's Philosophy
Russell : Irving as Hamlet .. .. ,. ,, ,. ,, ,, ..
Scott: Study of Hamlet
869
869
869
S70
870
870
S70
870
870
870
871
871
871
871
871
871
872
872
872
872
873
873
873
873
873
873
873
874
874
874
8-4
874
S74
874
874
S74
87s
875
875
875
875
875
S75
875
406 APPENDIX
Study of Hamlet, by E. B. H . . . . 1875
Dowden: Shakespeare, his Mind, &c., p. 125 1875
Ingleby : Shakespeare Hermeneutics 1875
Weiss, Wit, Humor, &c. Hamlet, p. 151. .- 1876
ILLUSTRATIONS IN ENGLISH AND AMERICAN PERIODICALS
[Tliese are necessarily so numerous that a complete list can scarcely be hoped
for. — Timmins.'\
The Academy : Age of Hamlet, vol. viii, pp. 629, 651 ; vol. ix, p. 243.
Allusion in Hamlet, vol. vi, pp. 638, 658, 687.
Allusion to Hamlet, vol. vii, p. 4S1.
Anonymous article on Ii-\'ing in Hamlet in Macntillan^s Magazine, vol. vii,
p. 25.
Article in Kolnische Zeitung on Irving in Hamlet, vol. vii, p. 102,
Cessation of Irving in Hamlet, vol. viii, p. 23.
Creswick in Hamlet, vol. vii, p. 360.
Graf on Hamlet, vol. ix, p. 309.
Irving in Hamlet, vol. vi, pp. 519, 546, 644.
Madame Sophie in Hamlet, vol. vi, p. 468.
Marshall's Study of Hamlet, vol. viii, p. 569.
Mercade's Hamlet, or Shakespeare's Philosophy of History, vol. viii, p. 569.
Passage in Hamlet, vol. vii, p. 16.
Rossi in Hamlet, vol. viii, p. 652.
Russell on Irving in Hamlet, vol. vii, p. 24.
• Some Dozene or Sixteene Lines,' vol. v, p. 13.
Werder's Vorlesungen iiber Shakespeare'' s Hamlet, vol. viii, p. 569.
Albion: The Stage-Hamlet. Dec. 24, p. 613 1864
All the Year Hound : Irving's Hamlet. Dec. 5, p. 179. 1874
Amer. jfour. of Insanity : YizxiAtt. April, 1847
Hamlet. April, p. 409 i860
Athenaum : Review of Halford's Essays: Hamlet's Madness. P. 359. . . 1831
Mr Butler as Hamlet, p. 684 1832
Mr George Jones as Hamlet, p. 788 1835
Mr Charles Kean as Hamlet, pp. 35, 91. 1838
Mr Charles Kean as Hamlet, p. 438 1839
Mr Morris's Hamlet, p. 58. 1840
Mr Macready as Hamlet, p. 238. 1840
Miss Horton as Ophelia, p. 238. 1840
Mr Charles Kean as Hamlet, p. 462 1840
Master Webster as Hamlet, p. 1 9. 1843
Mr Gregory as Hamlet, p. 66. . . 1843
What does Hamlet mean? Review of Wade's Lecture, p. 713 1844
Dumas's Translation, p. 78. . . 1848
Mr Brooke as Hamlet at Marylebone Theatre, p. 459. 1850
Schlegel's Hamlet at St James's, p. 683. 1853
Review of Dr Eckart's Dramaturgic Studies : A Course of Lectures on the
Single Play of Hamlet, p. 1 1 87 1853
BIBLIOGRAPHY-ENGLISH 4^7
Athetueum (continued) :
Hamlet Quarto, 1603 ; Letter from Rooney, p. 1 191 ; Letter from J. Payne
Collier, p. 1220; Letter from I. Winter Jones, p. 1220 ; Letter from Henry
Foss, p. 1277 ; Letter from J. O. Halliwell, p. 1308; Letter from J. Payne
Collier, p. 1310. pp. 1 168, 1404, 1537 i8s5
V, ii, 369: 'Now cracks a noble heart,' p. 1221. . . . . . . . . 1856
Halliwell : V, ii, 407 : ' Bear Hamlet like a soldier to his grave! P- 1308. 1856
Mommsen: Hamlet Quarto 1603, p. 182 1857
Hamlet Quarto 161 1, found in Germany, p. 183 1857
Review of Elze's Hamlet. Part I, p. 418 1859
Review of New Exegesis. Part II, p. 808 1859
Allen's Reprint of the Quartos of 1603, 1604. Part I, p. 137 i860
Letter from J. O. Halliwell on the Hamlet of 1604. Part I, p. 272. . . i860
Hamlet explained by Rohrback. Part I, p. 253 1861
Review of Gerth's Hamlet. Part I, p. 529 . . . . 1862
Review of Conolly's Study of Hamlet; his madness. Part II, p. 104. . . 1863
Donbavand: I, ii, 6$ : 'A little more than kin,' &c. Part II, p. 6S3. . . 1863
Donbavand : II, ii, 397 : ' I know a hawk from a handsaw.' Part II, p. 6S3. 1S63
Atkinson : II, ii, 397 : ' I know a hawk from a handsaw,' Part II, p. 722. 1863
Mitford : II, ii, 397 : ' I know a hawk from a handsaw.' Part II, p. 8S4. 1863
Hausenbeth : II, ii, 397 : ' I know a hawk from a handsaw.' Part II, p.
765. 766 1863
Chatelain's French Translation of Hamlet. Part I, p. 298 1864
II, ii, 397 : ' I know a hawk from. a handsaw.* Part II, p. 928 1865
Eke : I, iv, 36 : « dram of eale.' Part II, p. 186 1866
Elze : III, iv, 169 : * And either . . . the devil or throw him out.' Part II,
p. 186 1866
Elze: IV, v, 10 : 'They aim at it,' &c. Part II, p. 186. . . \ . . . 1866
Elze : V, ii, 42 : * And stand a comma 'tween their amities.' Part II, p. lS6. 1S66
I, iv, 36: 'dram of eale.' Part II, p. 217 1866
III, iv, 169 : ' And either .... the devil or throw him out.' Part II, p, 218. 1866
III, iv, 162 : 'Of habits devil, is angel yet in this.' Part II, p. 218. . . 1866
I, iv, 36: 'The dram of eale.' Part II, p. 687 1866
Street : V, i, 314 : ' The cat will mew, and dog will have his day.' Part II,
p. 314- . . 1868
Forrest: V, i, 314: « The cat will mew, and dog will have his day.' Part
II, p. 346 1868
Elze : rV, vi, 21 : ' Convert his gyves to graces.' Part I, p. 284. . . . . 1869
Elze : V, i, 108 :' tenures.' Part I, p. 284. 1869
Hall : IV, vii, 21 : • Convert his gyves to graces.' Part I, p. 318 1869
Tschischwitz's Hamlet reviewed. Part II, p. 430 1S69
Wetherill : I, iv, 36 : « dram of eale.' Part II, p. 672 1869
On Fortinbras. PartI, p. 114. 1872
Staunton: I, 1,94: 'And carriage of the article design^.' Confusion of
final d and e in old dramatists. Part I, p, 530 1872
Staunton : III, iv, 121 : ' Your bedded hair,' &c. Part I, p. 530 1872
Staunton : V, ii, 7 r ' And praise be rashness for it.' Confusion of final d
and e in old dramatists. Part I, p. 530, 1872
Staunton : II, ii, 421 : ' for the law of writ.* Part I, p. 867. . . . . 1872
408 APPENDIX
Athenemm (continued) :
Mr Bandmann as Hamlet. Part I, p, 221 1873
A Spanish Hamlet— Sefior Coellos El Principe Hamlet. Part I, p. 385. . . 1873
Staunton : II, ii, 121 : ' O most best.' Part I, p. 474. 1873
Hamlet at the Crystal Palace. Part I, p, 609. 1873
Mr Mackaye as Hamlet. Part I, p. 610 1873
Clarke : Rossi's Hamlet at Genoa. Part I, p, 737 1S73
Staunton: IV, v, 155 : • Bum out the sense and virtue of mine eye.' Part
I, p. 358 ' 1874
Mr Irving as Hamlet. Part II, p. 616. 1874
Rouvidre as Hamlet. Part II, pp. 725, 761 1874
Russell on Irving's Hamlet. Part II, p. 800 1874
A Spanish Translation of Shakespeare, — Sefior Moratin's Translation of
Hamlet. Part II, p. 60 1874
Hamlet the Hysterical. Part II, p. 761 1874
Latham : The Fencing-scene in Hamlet. Part I, p. 170 1875
M. Faure as Hamlet. Part I, p. 461 1875
Hamlet in Paris and Brussels. Part I, p. 497. 1875
Madame Nilsson as Ophelia. Part I, p. 497 1875
Madame Miolan-Carvalho as Ophelia. Part I, p. 497. « 1875
Signor Salvini as Hamlet. Part I, pp. 698, 761. .. ^ 1875
Amleto. Tragedia in Cinque Atte. Part I, p. 761. .. 1875
Salvini and Fechter as Hamlet compared. Part I, p. 761 1875
Greenwood : III, v, 71 : ' Sense sure you have, else could you not have
motion.' Part I, p. 302. 1875
Hamlet by Mercade, Reviewed. Part II, p. 319 1875
Marshall's Hamlet Reviewed. Part II, p. 449. 1875
Nicholson: III, v, 71 : 'Sense sure you have, else could you not have
motion.' Part II, p. 449 1875
Mackay : III, ii, 148 : ' Miching mallecho.' Part II, p. 509. . . . . 187$
Paper read before the Shak. Soc. by Dr Todhunter on Hamlet and Ophelia.
Part I, p. 270 1876
Review of Marshall's Hamlet. Part I, p. 339. 1876
Daniel : III, iii, 12 : ' With all the strength and armour of the mind.' Part I,
p. 427 . • 1876
Review of Dowden's Shakespeare's Scenes and Characters. Part II, p. 312. 1876
Atlantic Monthly : May, p. 585 , . . ,. x866
Hamlets of the Stage. June, p. 66$. . . o 1869
Hamlets of the Stage. Aug., p. 188. . . • 1869
Fechter's Hamlet, Nov., p. 1 1870
Belgravia : Irving in Hamlet. Dec ■ •t. •• •• l874
Blackwood's Magazine : letters on Hamlet, ii, 504.
Critique on Hamlet, v, 228.
Danish Translation of Hamlet, x, 174,
French Version of Hamlet, x, 449.
Ghost in Hamlet, xxi, 782.
Inconsistency of Hamlet, xxxiii, 35.
Hamlet and Jaques compared, xxiv, 558,
Character of Hamlet, xxiv, 585.
BIBLIOGRAPHY— ENGLISH 40g
Biackwood^s Magatitu (continued) :
Mr Young's acting of Hamlet, xxiv, 559.
Retzsch's illustrations of Hamlet, xxiv, 668,
John Kemble's acting in Hamlet, xxxi, 674.
Tragedy of Hamlet, xxxiii, 398.
Hamlet's love for Ophelia, xxxiii, 400.
Hamlet and Goethe's Faust, xxxvi, 236, 269.
Schroeder's version of Hamlet, xxxvii, 242.
German critics on Hamlet, xxxvii, 243.
Goethe on Hamlet, xxxvii, 246.
Tieck and Horn on Hamlet, xxxvii, 247.
Hamlet compared with Romeo and Juliet, xxxvii, 523.
Garrick's changes in Hamlet, xlv, 396.
Ducis's French version of Hamlet. xlVl, 339.
Feigned madness of Hamlet, xlvi, 449.
Play represented in Hamlet, xlvii, 146.
Passages in Hamlet. Ixvi, 252; Ixvii, 634-635.— [ 7wn»»«M.]
Chicago Medical Journal: Hamlet's Insanity. Sept., p. 7. . . . . . . 1873
Christian JVorld Magazine : Hajolet & "Prohlem. April, .. .. ..1875
Colbum's New Monthly Mag. : The Lost Hamlet. April, p. 279. . . . . 1873
Cornell Review : Antic Disposition. Dec, • • 1876
Comhill Magazine : Haxaitt. October, p. 452 . . 1869
Edinburgh Review: Garden at Elsineur in Hamlet xiv, 1 7 1.
Character of Hamlet, xxviii, 483.
Goethe's Analysis of Hamlet, xlii, 433.
Le Toumeur's Translation of Hamlet, li, 230,
Closing Scene of Hamlet. Ixxi, 490.
Texts of Hamlet. Ixxi, 366-367, 370-371. 377-384-
Authorities of Saxo Grammaticus on Hamlet. Ixxxii, 287.
Wailly's Translation of Hamlet. Ixxxiii, 57-58. — \_Timmim.1
Evangelical Quar. Review : April, p. 210, « . . . 1870
7X# Ja/axy .• Hamlet the Younger. April, p. 535 1870
April, p. 507 1873
Gentleman's Magazine : The Saga of Hamlet, from the Swedish. Oct., p. 369,
New Series. 1847
Philosophers and Jesters. March and June, . . . . 1873
Literary and Philosophical Society 0/ Liverpool: 51st Session, on Hamlet and
Faust. 1861
London Magazine : Hamlet worn out. Aug., ». ,. 1876
London Society : Hsxaltt ihz 'iiy%icnQ.3l. Dec, 1874
London University Magazine : Hamlet Criticism. 1 858
Macmillan : On the extract from an Old Play in Hamlet, H, ii. Dec, p. 135. 1874
The New Hamlet and his Critics. Jan., p. 236 1875
The Elder Hamlet. Aug., p. 351 1876
The Nation: l.\.2x.2(j 1866
Notes and Queries: I, i, 63: « Sledded Polacks.' [Leo] . . 3d Ser. vi, 410
I, i, 63 : «« " 3d •* vii, 21
I, i, 113 : ' Palmy state.' , , . ist " viii, 409
I, i, 117: 'As stars,' &c , . . . 3d " viii, 126
4IO
APPENDIX
Notes and Queriei (continued) :
I, i, 117: * As stars,' &c. [Brae]
I, 1,117; " " [Hickson]
I, i, 117: " " [Brae]
I, 1,117: " " [Henderson] .,
I, i, 117: " "
I, i, U7: « *• [Easy]
I, i, 117: " " [Duane]
I, i, 127 : Re-enter Ghost
I, ii, 65 : ' A little more than kin, and less than kind.' [Rushton]
I, ii, 67 : ' Too much i' the sun.' [Fumivall]
I, ii, 146 : * Frailty, thy name is woman.' [Buckton] . ,
I, ii, 147 : ' Shoes.' [Ingleby]
I, ii, 147 : " [Roffe]
I, ii, 150: 'Discourse of reason.' [Brae]
I, ii, 150: " " [Brae]
I, ii, 167: ' Good even, sir.' [Cristini]
I, ii, 167 : " " " [Swifte]
I, ii, 167 : " " " [Kennedy]
I, ii, 175: 'We'll teach you to drink deep.' [Viles] ..
I, iii, 36 : ' Chariest.'
I,iii, 36: "
I, iii, 74 : * Are of a most select and generous chief in that.'
[Ingleby]
* Are of a most select,' &c. [Kausten] » .
istSer. V, 75
1st " V, 164
V, 210
vi, IS
vii, 21
vii, 126
viii, 275
i, 23
X, 331
iv, 223
xii, 220
i, 88
1,384
vii, 497
vii, 546
iii, 444
I, iii. 74
I, iii, 74
I, iii, 74
I, iii, 74
I, iii, 74
I, iii,. 74
I, iii, 74
I, iii, 117
I, iv, 8
I, iv, 9
I, iv, 9
I, iv, 9
I, iv, 9
I, iv, 36
I, iv, 36
I, iv, 36
I, iv, 36
I, iv, 36
I,iv, 36
I, iv, 36
I, iv, 36
I.iv, 36
I, iv, 36
I, iv, 36
I, iv, 36
[Beale] . .
[Beale] . .
[Whiston]
[Beale] . .
' These blazes.' [Nicholson]
' The king doth wake.'
' the swaggering upspring.'
' the dram of cale." [Brae]
[Cornish]
[Cartwright] . .
[Prowett]
[Corson]
[Leo] ..
[Keightley]
[Prowett]
[Rosctti]
1st "
3d "
3d '•
3d "
3d "
1st "
4th "
5th "
1st "
2d "
2d "
1st "
1st "
5th "
5th "
5th "
5th "
5th "
5th "
2d "
2d "
2d "
4th "
4th "
Sth "
5th "
5th "
4th "
3d "
1st "
1st "
3d "
4th"
1st "
1st «
1st "
4th"
3d "
3d "
3d "
3d "
4th"
4th "
4th"
4th"
iv, iSl
iv, 183
ii, 484
vi, 345
vi, 405
ii, 206
ii, 283
ii, 369
X, 468
x,5iS
iv, 182
V, 143
V, 444
ii, 573
ii, 502
viii, 3
viii, 195
xii, 3
viii, 51
V, 169
V, 236
v,377
iv, 559
ii, 269
ii, 502
iii, 42
iii, 464
iv, 250
iv, 339
iv. 367
iv,4»7
BIBLIOGRAPHY— ENGLISH
411
Notes and Qutriu (continued) :
l,'vr, 36
I, »▼, 36
I, ▼, 77
I, V, 80
I, V, 107
I, V, 108
I V, 108
I, V, loS
I, V, 135
n. i, 65
II, i, 181
II. ii. 337
n, ii, 397
n, ii, 397
II, ii, 397
U, ii, 397
II, ii, 397
II, ii, 397
II, ii, 397
II, ii, 397
II, ii, 397
II, ii, 397
II, ii, 451
II, ii, 525
II, ii. 525
II, ii, 529
II, ii, 632
III, i, 59
III, i, 59
III, i, 59
III, i, 67
ni, i, 67
III, i, 67
III, i, 67
III. i, 67
III, i, 67
ni, i, 67
III, i, 67
III. i, 76
III, i, 79
* the dram of eale.' [Leo] 5th
" «< " [Davies] 5th
♦ Unhousell'd, disappointed, unanel'd.' . . . . ist
' Oh, horrible.' [Cornish] ist
' My tables.' [Brae] 1st
* That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain.' ist
u « « It « jst
l< « <( « « j3(
' There needs no ghosL' 2d
« Windlasses.' [Comey] 4th
• For if the sun breed maggots,' &c. [Corson] . . 4th
• tickled o' the sere.' [Nicholson]
' I know a hawk from a handsaw.'
Ser.
. . 4th
. . . . 3d
. . . . 3d
. . 4th
" " " " .... 4th
« " " " [Addis] 4th
«• " " ** [Chattock] 4th
^ «' " " [Addis] 4th
" " " " [Chattock] 4th
" " " " [Addis] 4th
«« " " «« [Pickton] 4th
Parallel passage. [Addis] 5th
' the mobled queen.' . . . . . . . . 3d
" «« " 3d
• With bisson rheum.' 4th
• Abuses me to damn me.' 3d
' a sea of troubles.' [Brae] 1st
" " " 5th
" " '« 5th
' this mortal coil.' [Ingleby] 1st
" " «• 2d
" " " [Ingleby] 2d
« It « 2d
" " " [Ingleby] 2d
" " " [Riley] 2d
« « « 2d
« <( « 2d
'These fardek,' reading of First tolio 2d
' The undiscover'd country from whose bourn.'
[Addis] 5th
III, i, 175: 'for to prevent.' Sth
III, ii, 137 : 'a suit of sables.' 2d
III, ii, 137: " " [Warwick] 2d
III, ii, 146 : ' miching mallecho.' 1st
III, ii, 146: " " [Collier] ist
III, ii, 146 : *« " 1st
III, ii, 146 : " ** 4th
ui, 103
V, 201
vii, 8
viii, 19s
V, 241
v,28s
vi, 270
vii, 449
xi, 196
iv, 386
xii, 201
viii, 62
xii, 3
xii, 122
ix, 189
ix, 358
X. 57
^. 135
X, 195
X, 262
X. 375
X, 425
ii, Z^Z
vi, III
vi, 66
xi, 320
v,338
vi, 382
iv, 366
vi, 104
i, 151
i, 221
ii, 207
ii, 284
ii, Z(>^
ii, 368
ii, 368
vi, 228
iv, 263
ii, 303
ii, 405
iii, 62
iv, 43
ii, 358
iij, 3
iii, 213
iii, 386
412 APPENDIX
Notes and Queries (continued) j
III, ii, 146 : ' miching mallecho.' [Rosetti] 4th Sen iv, 368
III, ii, 253 : ' let the galled jade~wince.' 4th " xi, 359
III, ii, 253 : " " *' " [Rushton] . . . . 4th " xi, 192
III, ii, 253 : " " " " [Mac Grath] . . 4th " xi, 359
III, ii, 253 : «' " " « [Thombury] . . Sth " iv, 106
III, ii, 295 : * A very, very — ^pajock.' 3d " v, 232
III, ii, 295 : " " « 3d « V, 387
III, ii, 295 : " " " 3d •• V, 426
III, ii, 295: " " " 3d " vii, 51
III, ii, 295: " '« •' [Warwick] .. ..2d " xii, 451
III, ii, 295 : " " «* 3d " v, 232
III, ii, 295 : " " " 3d " v, 387
III, ii, 295 : '« " " [Prowett> . . . . 3d " v, 426
III, ii, 295 : " " " [De Morgan] . . . . 3d " vi, 66
III, ii, 29s : " " " [Leo] 3d " vii, 51
III, ii, 295 : " " " [Davies] . . . . 5th ♦« v, 201
III, iii, 88 : ' hent.' [Davies] 5th «' v, 201
III, iv, 19: 'you go not till I set ycu up a glass.' [Rushton] 4th " xi, 192
III, iv, 161: 'That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat.'
[Keightley] 3d " iv, 121
III, iv, 161 : 'That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat.'
[Roffe] 3d " iv, 367
IH, iv, 162 : 'of habits devil, is angel yet in this.' . . . . 3d " x, 427
III, iv, 162: " " " " " [Comey] 3d « x, 446
III, iv, 162: " " " " " .. ..3d " 3c, 503
III, iv, 162: " " « " " ,. ..3d " xi, 22
III, iv, 162 : " " " " " [Prowett] 3d " xi, 383
III, iv, 162: " " " " " [Nicholson] 4th " ii, 574
IV, iii, 4 : ' Who like not in their judgement, but their eyes.'
[Pickersgill] Sth " iv, 365
IV, v, 71 : 'my coach.' [Nicholson] 3d " vi, 409
IV, V, 105 : ' The ratifiers and props of every word.' [Cart-
wright] 4th " i, 576
IV, V, 146 : ' Pelican.' [Forrest] 4* " iii, 594
IV, v, 183: 'Wear your rue with a difference.' [Prowett] ..4th " iv, 249
IV, V, 183 : « «« «« 4th " iv, 338
IV, v, 183: " " " [Skeat] ..4th" iv, 559
IV,vii, 139: 'Aswordunbated.' 2d " xii, 264
IV.vii, 169: 'garlands.' [Skeat] 4th " iv, 559
IV, vii, 170: 'long purples.' [Strachey] 1st " x, 226
V, i, 19: 'if the water come to him.' 1st " vii, 550
V, i, 19: " " " [Falconer] .. . . ist " viii, 123
V, i, 33 : ' even.' [Connolly] 5th " iv, 365
V, i, 68 : ' Yaughan.' 2d " xii, 264
V, i, 68: " [Nicholson] 4th " viii, 8l
V, i, 105 : ' O, a pit of clay for to be made.' [Rule] . . 5th " ii, 484
V, i, 108: 'quillets.' [Jaltalin] S^^i " i. »57
V, i, 108: " 5th " iv, 223
BIBUOGRAPHY— ENGLISH 4 1 3
Notes and Queries (continued) :
V, i, 149: 'by the card.' . 2d Ser. i, 77
V, i, 149: « " [Easy] 3d " 11,503
V, i, 198: «Yorick.' 2d " xii, 264
V, i, 236 : * Imperious.' . . . . . 4th " x, 292
V, 1,236: « [Rule] 4th " xi, 72
V, i, 236: " 4th " xi, 106
V. 1,236: " [Nicholson] 4th " xi, 166
V, i, 255 : ' crants.' [Charnock] 5th " vi, 345
V, i, 263 : ' violets.' [Johnston] ist " v, 492
V, i, 299 : * eiseL' [Singer] .. . . Ist " ii, 241
V, i, 299 : " [Braybrooke] 1st " ii, 286
V, i, 299: « [J. R-N,] 1st " ii, 315
V, i, 299 : " [Hickson] 1st " ii, 329
V, i, 299 : « 1st « iii, 66
V, 1,299: " [Hickson] 1st " iii, 119
V, 1,299: " [Singer] , .. . . 1st " iii, 120
V, 1, 299 : " [Causton] 1st " iii, 210
V, i, 299 : *« 1st " iii, 225
V, i, 299 : *« [Rock] 1st " iii, 397
V, 1,299: « 1st " iii, 474
V, i, 299 : «« 1st " iii, 508
V, 1, 299 : « 1st " iii, 524
V, 1, 299 : " [Hickson] ist " »▼. 36
V, i, 299 : « [Kamphin] ist " iv, 648
V, 1, 299 : «* 1st " iv, 155
V, 1, 299 : « 1st " iv, 193
V, 1, 299 : " [Bede] 2d « vii, 125
V, 1, 299 : " [De Soyres] 4th " x, 108
V, 1,299: " [Skipton] 4th " X, 150
V, 1,299: " [Williams] 4th " x, 151
V, 1, 299 : " [Williams] 4th " x, 229
V, 1, 299 : " [Kershaw] 4th " x, 282
V, 1, 299 : " [Hackwood] 4th " x, 292
V, ii, II: ' Rough-hew them how we wilL' 5th " 1,484
V, ii, 42 : * a comma.' [Cartwright] 4th " 1, 576
V, ii, 42 : " [Wetherill] 4th « 1, 619
V, ii, 200 : ' fond and winnowed opinions.' [Nicholson] . . 3d " v, 50
V, ii, 232 : ' if it be not to come, it will be now.' [Warwick] 3d " i, 266
V, ii, 298 : ' He's fat, and scant of breath.' [Dixon] . • 3^ " ^'» 52
V, ii, 298 : " " « [Kennedy] . . 5th " i, 484
V, ii, 298 : ** « « [Jaydee] . . . 5th " ii, 64
V, 11, 298 : " " " 5th " ill, 224
V, 11, 298: " " «• [Wylie] . . Sth « 111,273
V, 11,3x7: ' as a woodcock to mine own spnnge.* .. .. 5th " 1,485
V, 11, 317: " *« «* .. ..5th" ii, 103
V, ii, 353 : ' Give me the cup.' 3d « ii, 50^
Hamlet's madness in Saxo-Gram. [Buckton] ist " xii, 238
Hamlet, Burbage first actor in 2d Ser. iii, 408, 490
414 APPENDIX
Notes and Queries (continued) :
Hamlet Queries. [Ehronbaum} . . . , 2d Ser. viii, 267
Hamlet allusion 2d " viii, 285
Hamlet Bibliog 2d '« ix, 378
Hamlet allusion. 2d " xi, 128
Hamlet's Grave. [Papworth] 3d " v, 50
Hamlet mentioned in Shakespeare's will in an interlineation. 3d *' v, 230
Hamlet's ' retort courteous ' and ' countercheck quarrelsome ' in
V, i. [Nicholson] 3d *« vi, 409
Hamlet, The Plot of. [Algar] 3d " vi, 467
Recovery of a lost word. [446, Comey ; 503, WetherillJ . . 3d " x, 427
Recovery of a lost word. [383, Prowett] 3d " xi, 22
King Claudius, his title to the throne. [Rex; 263,Chamock;484] 5th " i, 2$
Hamlet and Mary Queen of Scots. 5th " iii, 321
Authenticity of a passage in the First Quarto. [Pickersgill] . . 5th " iv, 103
Hamlet healths. [Fumivall] 5th " iv, 223
Hamlet's melancholy. [Kennedy] . . 5tli «• iv, 305
Was there a pre-Shakespearian Hamlet ? [Browne] . . . . 5th *• iv, 421
The name Hamlet 5th " v, 461
The name Hamlet. [Bailey; 156; 233, Wright; 475, Char-
nock] 5th " vi, 91
<?/.!/ <7«rf iV<rw .• Fechter as Hamlet. April, p. 514. 1870
Philadelphia Port-folio: On the Madness of Ophelia, pp. 187-193 1824
Philadelphia Press : Mar. 23, ., .. 1870
Quarterly Review : Hamlet's Story in Saxo Grammaticus, ii, 291.
Speech of Gertrude in Hamlet, xi, 178.
Causes of Unfitness of Hamlet for the French Stage, xvii, 449.
Hamlet acted at Pittsburg, xxi, 151.
Ducis's Version of Hamlet, xxix, 46, 47.
Criterion of Madness of Hamlet, xlix, 184, 185.
Dr Johnson on Hamlet, Ixxix, 313-321.
Hamlet: Miscellaneous, x, 492; xvi, 185; xyii, 219; xx, 403; xxi, 391^
xxvi, 398; xxviii, 98; xxix, 429.
Character of Hamlet, li, 183, 184.
History of Hamlet in Saxo Grammaticus, li, 461, 462. — [ Timmins']
in, ii, 146: • miching mallecho.' March, p. — 1850
Speculative Philosophy, jtournal 0/: pp, 67, 71, 78 1 873
Hamlet. January, pp. 71-87; April, pp. 66-87; J^^Yt PP" 78-88; vol. vii.
Southern Review: Hamlet. April, p. 271, and July, p. Il6. [Subsequently
reprinted in pamphlet form.] 1870
St jfameis Magazine : Hamlet's Grave, January , , , . 1874
Temple Bar : Hamlet oXYioraG ani. Abrodid.. March 1 875
Tribune: Lxclnre on Hamlet. New York, February •. ,. 1873
Westminster Rexnew: Hamlet. January, p. 30. .. •• •• •. 1865
BIBUOGRAPHY— GERMAN 41$
GERMAN
TRANSLATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE'S COLLECTED WORKS*
Wieland: Shakespeare's theatralische Werke. Hamlet, vol. viiL Zarich, .. 1766
Eschenburg: Shakespeare's Schauspiele, Hamlet, vol. xii. Zfirich, .. 1782
Schlegel, A. W. : Shakespeare's dramatische Werke. Hamlet, vol. ill. Berlin, 1798
Benda, J. O. W. : Shakespeare's dramatische Werke. Hamlet, toL xiii.
Leipzig, 1826
Voss, J. H. : Shakespeare's Schauspiele. Hamlet, vol. viiL Stuttgart, . . 1827
Meyer, Joseph: Shakespeare's simmtliche Schauspiele. Hamlet, vol. zzz.
Gotha, 1829
Schlegel nnd Tieck: Shakespeare's dramatische Werke. Hamlet, vol. tL
Berlin, 1833.
Shakespeare's simmtliche Werke, Qbersetzt von A. BOttger, &c. Hamlet von
Karl Simrock. Leipzig, 1836
Kdmer, Julius : Shakespeare's dramatische Werke. Hamlet, iibersetzt von N.
Blrmann. Schneeberg, 1836
Fischer, A. : Shakespeare's dramatische Werke. Stuttgart 1837
Ortlepp, E. : Shakespeare's dramatische Werke. Hamlet, voL i. Stuttgart, 1838
Keller, A., and Rapp, M. : Shakespeare's Schauspiele. Hamlet, voL vL
Stuttgart, 1846
WoUT, O. L. B. : Familien Shakespeare. Leipzig, 1849
Sievers, E. W. : Shakespeare's Dramen filr weitere Kreise bearbeitet. Leip>
zig [Thimm], 1851-52
Schlegel und Tieck, Hamlet, vol. iv. Fifth edition. Berlin, . . . . 1854
Jencken, Dr F. : Shakespeare's Dramen. [Zweite umgearbeitete Auflage, 1 856.]
Mainz, 1853-55
Heinichen, C. : Shakespeare's Dramen. Bonn, 1859
Dingelstedtische Ausgabe : Hamlet, Qbersetzt von L. Seeger, voL viL Hild-
burghausen, 1867
Deutsche Shakespeare-Gesellschaft : Hamlet, Qbersetzt von A. W. Schlegel.
Durchgesehen, eingeleitet, imd erllutert von K. Elze. Berlin, . . . . 1869
Bodenstedt, Fr. : Shakespeare's dramatische Werke. Hamlet, vol. xxv. Leip-
zig, iSTO'
Moltke, Max.: Shakespeare's sSmmtliche Werke. Hamlet, voL vL Leip-
zig, no date.
Oechelh&user, W. : Shakespeare's dramatische Werke flU' die deutsche Biihne
bearbeitet. Hamlet, vol. iii. Berlin, 1 870
Devrient, Eduard und Otto : Deutscher Bahnen nnd Familien Shakespeare.
Hamlet, voL L Leipzig, 1873
• Ia this list, compiled mainly from the E<litor's library, are to be found only those that asstuie
to be original and independent translations. The legion of republications is omitted. £0.
41 6 APPENDIX
SEPARATE TRANSLATIONS OF HAMLET
Hamlet. [Die Bearbeitung von Heufeld. Gedruckt in : Neue Schauspiele,
aufgefiihrt in den K. K. Theatem zu Wien. — Gen6e.] Pressburg, . . 1773
Hamlet. Ein Trauerspiel in sechs Aufziigen. Zum Behuf des Hamburgischen
Theaters. [Diese Bearbeitung wird in mehreren Recensionen, in Meusel's
Schriftsteller- Lexicon (so sagt Gen6e), und selbst von Thimm in seiner
Shakespeare Bibliographic dem J. C. Bock als Verfasser zugeschrieben, aber
Gen6e (p. 238) ist iiberzeugt dass sie die Schroederische sei. Ed.] Ham-
. burg, 1777
Hamlet. [Schroeders Zweite Umarbeitung. Andere Ausgaben sind in 1781,
1795, 1804, erschienen. Zuletzt in Schroeders dramatischen Werken,
herausgegeben von BUlow mit einer Eintheilung von Tieck, Bd iv, S. 279.
Berlin, 1831. Ed.] 1778
Hamlet. Zum Behuf des Frankfurter Theaters. [Gen6e sagt : In dieser Aus-
gabe, trotz des Verfassers Zuriickweisung solchen Verdachtes, ist die Heu-
feld-Schroeder'sche Bearbeitung fast durchweg beibehalten. Ed.] . . . . 1779
Mauvillon : Der neue Haml?t, worin Pyramus und Thisbe als Zwischenspiel
gespielt wird. [In ♦ Gesellschafts Theater,' Leipzig. — Gen^e.] .. . . 179O
Schink, J. F. : Prinz Hamlet von Danemark. Marionettenspiel. Berlin, . . 1799
Schutz, K. J. : Hamlet, fiir das deutsche Theater bearbeitet. [Die ganze
Schluss-scene dieser Bearbeitung ist, wie Gen6e sagt, folgendermassen um-
gewandelt : ' Laertes verwundet Hamlet, ohne zu wissen, dass die Degen-
spitze vergiftet war; dann stiirzt Horatio herein und meldet, ein Page habe
ihm so eben die Vergiftung der Waffe bekannt. Die Konigin ist unterdessen
durch die Wirkung des Trankes niedergesunken, und Hamlet ersticht den
K5nig. Im Sterben spricht Hamlet den Wunsch aus, die Wahl des Reiches
moge sich auf Laertes lenken. Das Volk dringt herein, Horatio verkundet
den letzten Willen Hamlet's und huldigt dem Laertes mit den Worten:
" Hier steht der neue Herrscher Danemarks." ' Ed.] Leipzig, . . . . 1806
Hamlet, Prinz in Danemark, Karrikatur in 3 Acten. [Mit Gesang in Knittel-
reimen, von Joachim Perinet, Dichter, Schauspieler. Dem Andenken des
17 May, 1803, gewidmet. — Thimm.] Wien, 1807
Sonnleithner, J. : Hamlet. Wien [Thimm], 181I
Klingemann, Aug. : Hamlet. Trauerspiele in sechs Aufziigen. Nach G5thes
Andeutungen in Wilhelm Meister und A. W. Schlegel's Uebersetzung fur
. die deutsche Biihne bearbeitet. Leipzig und Altenburg, 1815
Doring, H. : Hamlet. [ — Thimm, von Gen6e nicht erwShnt.] Gotha, . . 1829
Mannhart, Dr J. B. : Hamlet, Qbersetzt. Sulzbach, 183O
Hamlet in deutscher Uebertragung. [Die Vorrede, datirt London, 1828, ist
Ferdinand Jencken unterzeichnet. — Gen6e.] London und Hamburg, . . 1834
Samson von Himmelstiem, R. J. L. : Hamlet, tibersetzt. Dorpat, . . . . 1837
Moltke, Max. : Hamlet, Englisch und Deutsch. Neu tibersetzt und erlSutert.
Leipzig [Cohn] 1839
Ruhe, A. : Die erste Ausgabe (1603) abersetzt. Inowraclaw, 1844
Hagen, W. : Hamlet, libersetzt n. d.
KChler, Dr F. : Hamlet, Deutsch. Leipzig 1856
Lobedanz. H. : Hamlet, Deutsch. Leipzig, 1857
BIBLIOGRAPHY—GERMAN 417
Plehwe, Herman von : Kamlet, Deutsch. Hamburg, 1862
Hackh, C. : Hamlet In Wort- imd Sinngetreuer Prosa-Uebersetztmg. Stutt-
gart, 1874
ENGUSH TEXT WITH GERMAN NOTES
Pierre, J. M. : The Plays of Shakespeare accurately printed ftom the text of
Mr Steevens's last edition, with Historical and Grammatical Explanatory
Notes in German. Hamlet, vol. iii. Frankfort-on-the-Main, . . . . 1833
HoSa, Dr J. : Hamlet. Grammatisch und sachlich zum Schul- und Privatge-
brauch eriautert. Braunschweig, 184$
Francke, Dr Carl Ludwig Wilhelm : Hamlet, A Tragedy. Mit Sprache und
Sachen eriautemden Anmerkungen, fur Schiller, hSbere Lehruistalten und
Freunde des Dichters. Leipzig, 1849
Delius, Prof. Dr N. : Shakspere's Werke. Herausgegeben und erkllrt. Ham-
let, vol. i. Elberfeld, 1854
Elze, Prof. Dr : Shakespeare's Hamlet. Leipzig, 1857
Tschischwitz, Dr Benno : Shakespeare's sammtliche Werke. Englisher Text,
berichtigt und erklirt. Hamlet, vol. i. Halle, 1869
Moltke, Max. : Shakespeare's Hamlet, Englisch und Deutsch. Text von 1603
und 1604. Quellen. Varianten. Noten. Excurse. Commentar. Liter-
atur. Glossar. [Leider sind nur vier Hefte dieses Werkes, wovon man so
viel hoffen liess, erschienen. Ed.] Leipzig, 1871
Heussi, Dr Jacob : Shakspeare's Hamlet, ErklSrt. [2te Auflage.] Leipzig, 1872
Delius, Prof. Dr N. : Shakspere's Werke. Herausgegeben und erklSrt. Dritte,
revidirte Auflage. Hamlet, vol. ii. Elberfeld, 1872
ENGLISH TEXT WITH ENGLISH NOTES
Fiebig, Dr Otto: Hamlet. With copious English Explanatory Notes. Leipsic, 1 857
Stratmann, F. H. : The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet. Edited according to
the first printed copies, with various readings, and critical notes. London
andKrefeld. .. .. ..1869
ESSAYS, CRITICISMS, &C»
Lessing: Hamburgische Dramaturgic. 5 Junius, 1767
Wieland : Der Teutsche Merkur. Ausziige aus dem Hamlet, vol. iii. Weimar,
July. 1773
Schink, J. F. : Ueber Brockmann's Hamlet. Berlin [Cohn], 1778
Schink, J. F. : Shakespeare in der Klemme, oder Wir woUen doch auch den
Hamlet spielen. Wien, 1780
* This list, necessarily imperfect, is also made tip almost exclusively from the Editor's library;
where a title is given at second-hand, I have endeavored in every case to give credit to the source
whence it is obtained. The number of a page following a title indicates the page on which the articto
or chapter on HantUt is to be found. £o.
Vol. II.— 27
41 8 APPENDIX
Engel, J. J. : Ideen zu einer Mimik. Erster Theil, S. 130 ; Zweiter Theil, S. 62.
Berlin, 1785
Wamekros, Dr Henrich E. : Der Geist Shakespear's. Zweiter Theil, S. 23b.
Greifswald, . . ; 1786
Lessing: Hamburgische Dramaturgic. Berlin, 1794
Goethe : Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, Berlin, 1795
Garve, Christian : Ueber die Rollen der Wahnwitzigen in Shakspears Schau-
spielen und iiber den Charakter Hamlets ins besondere. Versuche u. s. w.
2ter Theil, S. 431. Breslau, 1796
Gieseke, K. L. : Der travestirte Hamlet, in Kniittelversen mit Arien. Wien
[Cohn], 1798
Henry, L., Balletmeister der Konigl. Theater von Paris und Neapel : Hamlet.
Grosses Ballet in fiinf Acten. Musick von Herm Grafen W. Robert von
Gallenberg. "Wien,* n. d.
Ziegler, F. W., K. K. Hofschauspieler : Hamlet's Charakter, &c. Wien, , . 1803
Schmidt, F. L. : Sammlung der besten Urtheile iiber Hamlets Charakter.
Quedlinburg, 1808
Schlegel, A. W. von : Ueber dramatische Kunst und Litteratur, vol. ii, part ii,
p. 146. Heidelberg, 181 1
Pries, Prof. J. F. : Ueber Shakespeare's Hamlet. Rostock, 1825
Kries : Ueber Hamlet. Programm. Rostock. [Thimm, qy Pries ?] . . 1825
Horn, Franz : Shakespeare's Schauspiele erlautert. Hamlet, Zweiter Theil,
S. I. Leipzig, 1825
Hermes, K. H. : Ueber Shakespeare's Hamlet und seine Beurtheiler, Goethe,
Schlegel, und Tieck. Stuttgart und Munchen, 1827
Holtey, K. v.: Beitrage zur dram. Kunst und Literatur. Hamlet. May,
p. 126. [Thimm.] 1828
ESrne, Ludwig : Hamlet von Shakespeare. Gesammelte Schriften, 2ter
Theil, S. 172. [Der Aufsatz iiber Hamlet soil in 1816 geschrieben worden
sein. Ed.] Hamburg, 1829
Echtermeyer, Henschel und Simrock : Quellen des Shakspeare in Novellen,
&c., vol. i, S. 67. [Zweite Auflage, Bonn, 1870.] Beriin, 1831
Trahndorff, Prof. : Ueber den Orestes der alten Tragodie und den Hamlet.
(Programm. des Freidrich Wilhems-Gymnasiums.) Berlin, . . . . 1833
Cans, Eduard : Vermischte Schriften. Der Hamlet des Ducis und der des
Shakespeare. Vermischte Schriften, vol. ii, p. 269. Berlin, . . . . 1834
Gutzkow, Karl: Gesammelte Werke. Hamlet in Wittenberg, 1832. [The
author prefaces this ' dramatische Phantasie ' with the following note : Tieck
hatte die Hypothese aufgestellt, dass Hamlet bereits zu Ophelien im aller-
nachsten Verhiltniss gestanden hatte, ehe er nach Wittenberg gegangen.
Ich wollte, ermuthigt durch meine Lecture der Romantiker, eine Art geist-
iger Vertmahlung mit Ophelien schildern. Goethe trat in dem erst nach
seinem Tode (1832) bekannt gewordenen zweiten Theil des Faust mit einer
solchen mystischen Ehe zwischen Faust und Helena heraus.] Vol. i, p. 369.
Jena, [no date. 71838]
Heine, JL : Shakespeare's Midchen und Frauen mit Eriauterungen. Ophelia.
Paris und Leipzig. [Vol. v, p. 315, Philadelphia, 1856.] 1839
• As this has no date, for the credit cf this century I have relegated it to the last, Eb.
BIBLIOGRAPHY— GERMAN 4 1 9
Marquard, F. : Ueber den Begriff des Hamlet. Berlin, 1839
Ulrici, Dr H. : Shakespeare's dramatische Kunst. [Second edition, 1847;
third edition, 1868; English translation. Second edition, 1876.] Halle, .. 1839
Schmidt, Dr Al. : Sacherklarende Anmerkangen zu Shakespeare's Dramen, p.
184. Danzig, 1842
Monnich, Dr W. B. : Album des lit. Vereins. Ophelia, p. 75. Niimberg, . . 1844
Rotscher, Dr H. Th. : Cyclus dramatischer Charaktere. Hamlet, p. 99. Ber-
lin 1844
Delius, Dr N. : Die Tieck'sche Shakespearekritik beleuchtet, p. 62. Bonn, 1846
Canis, C. G. : Mnemosyne. Hamlet. Das Princip dieser Trag5die, 1827. S.
42. Pforzheim, 1848
Francke, C. L. W. : Probe eines Commentar zu Hamlet. Programm. Bern-
burg, 184S
Gervinos, G. G. : Shakespeare. [3te Auflage, 1862.] Leipzig, .. 1849-1850
Job: Beitrag zur Erklirung des Hamlet. Annaberg [Thimm], . , . . 1850
Sievers, Dr E. W. : Hamlet fur weitere Kreise bearbeiteL Leipzig, . . 1851
Vehse, Dr Eduard: Shakespeare als Protestant, Politiker, Psycholog, und
Dichter. Hamlet, vol. i, p. 293 ; vol. ii, p. 141. Hamburg, .. .. 1851
BrSker, Ulrich : Etwas fiber Shakespeare, 1780. [In 'Der arme Mann im
Tockenburg,' herausgegeben von Eduard Bulow. S. 405.] Leipzig, . , 1852
Delius, N. : Shakespeare Lexicon. 2te Abth. Zur Textkritik und Erklarung
der einzelnen Dramen. S. 176. Bonn, 1852
Tieck: Dramaturgische Blatter. Zum ersten Male vollstindig gesammelt.
Bemerkungen iiber einige Charaktere in Hamlet, &c. Erster Theil, S. 243.
Leipzig [first printed in 1826], 1852
Eckardt, Dr Ludwig : Vorlesungen fiber Hamlet. Aarau, 1853
Janicke: Eine franzSsische Abhandlung fiber Hamlet. Programm. Grau-
denz, 1853
Wolffel, Dr H. : Ueber Hamlet. Album des lit. Vereins, p. 62. NUmberg, . . 1853
Levinstein, S. : Faust and Hamlet. Berlin [Thimm], 1855
Heintze, A. : Versuch einer Parallele zwischen dem sophocleischen Orestes und
dem shakspearischen Hamlet. Oster-Programm. Treptow a. d. R., . . 1856
Hulsmann, Eduard : Shakespeare. Sein Geist und seineWerke, p. 25. Leipzig, 1856
Noir6, Dr Louis : Hamlet. Mainz, 1S56
Janicke: Observations sur Hamlet. Potsdam [Cohn MS] 1858
Kreyssig, Fr. : Vorlesungen fiber Shakspeare, vol. ii, p. 215. Berlin [second
edition, 1862] 1858
Rohrbach, Carl : Shakespeare's Hamlet Berlin, 1 85 9
Storffiricb, D. B. : Psychologische Aufschliisse fiber Shakspeare's Hamlet. Bre-
men, 1859
Gerth, Prof. Dr A. : Der Hamlet von Shakspeare. Acht Vorlesungen. Leip-
zig, 1S61
Vischer, Dr Friedr. Theod. : JCritische Ginge. Neue Folge. Hamlet, p. 63.
Zweites Heft. Stuttgart, 1861
Meissner, Alfred : Charaktermasken. Die Unschuld der Ophelix [This is not
a Shakespearian disquisition, but a clever little story, in which the presump.
tive evidence of Ophelia's guilt comes uncomfortably home to a German
Professor (the father of a very pretty daughter), who was a strong advocate
cf Tieck's theory. Ed.] Vol. i, p. 149. Leipzig, 1862
420 APPENDIX
Schipper, Dr L. : Hamlet. Aesthetische Erlauterung des Hamlet hebst Wider,
legung der Gothe'schen und Gervinus'schen Ansicht Uber die Idee und den
Haupthelden des Stiickes. Miinster 1862
Flathe, Prof. Dr J. L. F. : Shakspeare in seiner Wirklichkeit. Erster Theil,
S. 279. Leipzig, . . 1863
Loffler, Dr Karl : Dramatische Charactere. I Hamlet. Leipzig [Thimm], 1863
Cohn, Albert : Shakespeare in Germany in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Cen-
turies. Berlin and London, , , , . 1864
Friesen, H. V, : Briefe liber Hamlet. Leipzig, 1864
Doring, Dr August : Hamlet seinem Grundgedanken und Inhalte nach erlau-
tert. Hamm, 1865
Flir, Alois : Briefe iiber Hamlet. Innsbruck, 186$
Hebler, Prof. C.: Aufsatze iiber Shakespeare, p. Z^. [Zweite, betrSchtlich
vermehrte, Ausgabe, 1874.] Bern, 1865
Klix, Dr G. A. : Andeutungen zum Verstandniss von Hamiet. Programm.
Gross-Glogau, 1865
Neumann, Prof. Dr Heinrich ; Ueber Lear und Ophelia. Breslau, . . . . i856
Rumelin, Gustav : Shakespearestudien. [Zweite Auflage, 1874.] Stuttgart, 1866
Schindhelm : Ueber Hamlet. Programm. Coburg 1866
Sievers, Dr E. W. : William Shakspeare. Sein Leben und Dichten, p. 438.
Gotha, 1866
Brachvogel, A. E. : Hamlet. Roman. 3 vols. Breslau, 1867
Lichtenberg, G. Chr. : Vermischte Schriften. Briefe aus England. [Es sind
dieselben zuerst im deutschen Museum, Jahrgang 1776 und 1778 gedruckt.]
Vol, iii, p. 199, GSttingen, 18B7
Rodenberg: Hamlet's Grab (Vier Wochen in Helsingor). Berlin [Thimm], 1867
Schirmer, Adolph : Ein weiblicher Hamlet. Novelle. Wien und Leipzig, 1867
Petri, Moritz, Pastor : Zur Einfiihrung Shakespeare's in die christliche Familie,
p. 7. Hannover, 1868
Schmalfeld, Prof, Dr: Einige Bemerkungen zur Elektra des Sophokles mit
einem Seitenblick auf Hamlet. Programm. Eisleben, 1868
Tschischwitz, Dr Benno: Shakspere-Forschungen. I Hamlet, vorzugsweise
nach historischen Gesichtspuncten eilSutert. Halle, , . . . . . , . 1868
Tschischwitz, Dr Benno : Hamlet in sinem VerhSltniss zur Gesammtbildung,
namentlich zur Theologie und Philosophic der Elizabeth-Zeit. Halle
[Thimm],
Saupe, Prof. Julius : Hamlet fUr obere Gymnasial-CIassen eriautert. Programm.
Gera, 1868
Freymann, Julie : Kritik der Schiller-, Shakespeare-, und GSthe'schen Frauen-
charaktere, p. 117, Giessen 1869
Goltz, Bogumil : Vorlesungen, Shakespeare's Genius und die Trag5die Ham-
let. Berlin [2d edition, 1871], 1869
Heussi, Dr J. W. : Hamlet erklart. Parchim, 1869
Karpf, Carl : To t< tjv elvac. Die Idee Shakespeare's und deren Verwirklichung.
SonettcncrklSrung und Analyse des Hamlet. Hamburg, 1 869
Gen6e, Rudolph : Gcschichte der Shakespeare'schen Dramen in Deutschland.
Leipzig, 1870
Grabbc, Christ, Dictr, : SSlmmtliche Wcrke. Hamlet, vol. ii, p. 429. Leip-
zig 1870
BIBLIOGRAPHY— GERMAN 42 1
Zmmennann, Robert : Studien and Kritiken zcr Philosophic and Aesthetik.
Hamlet und Vischer, p. 77. [Zueret in d. Wiener Zeitung, No. 238, u. fif.
1861.— Cohn,] 1870
Zimmennann, W. F. : Die Hamlet-Trag5die, in philosophischer Beleuchtung
(2 Fenilletons der Berliner Brille). [Thimm], 1870
Kreyssig, Fr. : Shakespeare-Fragen, p. 112. Leipzig 1871
Lad wig. Otto: Shakespeare-Studien, p. 138. Leipzig, 1871
Stedefeld, G. F. : Hamlet, ein Tendenzdrama Sheakspeare's gegen die skep-
tische und kosmopolitische Weltanschauung des Montaigne. Berlin, . , 1871
Benedix, Dr R. : Die Shakespearomanie. Zur Abwehr. p. 273. Stuttgart, 1873
Konig, Wilhelm: Shakespeare als Dichter, Weltweiser und Christ Durch
Erlauterung von vier seiner Dramen und eine Vergleichung mit Dante, p. i.
Leipzig 1873
Schmidt, Julian : Neue Bilder aus dem Geistigen Leben tinserer Zeit, p. I.
Leipzig, 1873
Bodenstedt, Fr. : Shakespeare's Frauencharaktere. Ophelia, p. 91. Berlin, . . 1874
Marbach, Oswald : Hamlet TragSdie nach Shakespeare. Leipzig,.. .. 1874
Schmidt, Dr Alexander : Plan und Probe eines Worterbuchs zu Shakespeare.
(Pr<^;ramm der stadtischen Realschule.) Konigsberg i. Pr. . . . . 1871
Schmidt, Dr Alexander: Lexicon zu Shakespeare's Werken, vol. i, A-L.
Berlin, 1874
Schmidt, Dr Alexander : VoL ii, M-Z. Berlin. [This work alone places all
of us under deep and lasting obligations to Germany. — Ed.] . . . . 1875
Werder, Karl : Vorlesungen fiber Hamlet gehalten an der UniversitSt zu Ber-
lin. (Zuerst im Wintersemester 1859-1860, zuletzt 1871-1872.) Berlin, . . 1875
Elze, Karl : WUliam Shakespeare, p. 406. Halle, 1876
Friesen, Herm. von : WilL Shakspere's Dramen von 1601 bis zum Schlusse
seiner Laufbahn, p. 45. Wien, 1876
Liebau, Gustav : Erzahlungen aus der Shakespeare- Welt, p. 81. Berlin, .. 1876
Struve, Dr Heinrich von : Hamlet, eine Charakterstudie. Weimar, . . . , 1876
Baumgart, Dr Hermann : Die Hamlet-Tragodie und ihre Kritik. K5nigs-
berg i. Pr. 1877
PERIODICALS, MAGAZINES, &C.
Arckiv fur das Studium der tuturen Sprachen : Kritische Beleuchtung der
Ansicht Tieck's fiber den Monolog in Hamlet, Act III, sc. i, nebst Eror-
terungen fiber den Charakter Hamlets und die Tendenz der Tragodie,
von Dr A. L. Ziel. No. V, vol. ii, part i, page l. Elberfeld, . . . . 1847
Studien zu Shakespeare's Hamlet, von Hoffmann. No. VI, vol. ii, part ii,
P^e 373. Zweiter Artikel, vol. iv, p. 56. Elberfeld, 1848
Noch ein Wort fiber Hamlets Monolog : Sein oder nicht sein ! u. s. w., von
Dr Huser. No. VIII, vol. iv, part ii, page 328, 1848
Zur Grundlegung einer neuen Auffassung des Hamlet, von Sievers in Gotha,
vol. vi, p. i. Braunschweig, 1 849
Hamlet, &c., von Dr C. L. W. Francke. Eine Beurtheilung von V. F. L.
Petri, vol. vi, p. 89. Braunschweig, 1849
Jong, Albert : Hamlet Eine SchicksalstragSdie Herrig's Archiv, voL xxviL
[Thimm.]
422 APPENDIX
Archiv fur das Studium der neneren Sprachen (continued) :
Ueber Hamlet, von Prof. Dr L. Eckardt, vol, xxxi, p. 93, 1862
Eine Beurtheilung iiber Gerth's Der Hamlet von Shakespeare, von (L.), vol.
xxxi, p. 323, 1862
Shakspeare hat behufs seines danischen Prinzen Hamlet die nordische
Geschichte des 16 Jahrhunderts studirt, von A. Gerth, vol. xxxvi, p. 53.
[Thimm.] . 1864
Blatter filr litterarische Unterhallung : Ueber Hamlet und seine Beurtheiler:
Goethe, Schlegel und Tieck von K. H. Hermes, 1827
Ueber Hamlet. Von Immermann. No. Ill, 1842
Hamlet in Paris, No. 16, 1868
Berliner Modenspiegel : Ueber Hamlet. Von J. L. Klein, 1846
Berlinische Zeitung : Hamlet in Deutschland. Sonntag's Beilage, Nos. 24,
25, * 1870
Deutscker yahrbiicher : Die Beleuchtungston in Shakespeare's Dramen. Von
J. L. IClein, vol. ii, p. 457. Berlin, 1862
Deuischer Sprachwart : Hamlet's Monolog, • To be, or not to be,* nach den
verschiedensten Lesarten und Uebersetzungen betrachtet und ver^lichen.
Max. Moltke. Vol. iii, No. 18, 1868
Deutsches Museum : Hamlet's Aufenthalt in Wittenberg. VonKSstner [Cohn.] 1777
Shakespeare-Studien : I, Hamlet. Von Gustav Hauff. No. 5. Februar, 1866
Shakespeare-Studien : VI, Hamlet. Von Karl KSstlin (3 Artikel, Nos. 29,
30, 31) [Thimm.] 1869
Dramaturgische Blatter: Hamlet. Prof. H. Th. Rotscher. First Year, 2
Heft. Dresden. [Cohn.] 1865
Worin liegt die Anziehungskraft zwischen Hamlet und Ophelia? Prof.
Rotscher. First Year, 2 Heft. [Cohn.]
Wie muss die Unterredung Hamlets mit Ophelien am Schluss des beriihmten
Monologs, * Sein oder nicht sein,' aufgefasst und behandelt werden ? First
Year, First Part. [Cohn.] 1865
Worin liegt der Zauber, welchen Hamlet auf alien Klassen der Gesellschaft
ausUbt? [Cohn.] 1867
Evangelische Kirchen-Zeitung : Hamlet eine pastorale Studie. Von M. P.
Nos. 40-43, ^864
Hamlet und Macbeth, 18 September, No. 75. 'Berlin, 1872
Die Gegenwart: Ein Paar Bemerkungen iiber Frl. v. Vestvali's und Herrn
Turschmann's Hamlet, No. 21. Berlin, 1 873
lUustrirtes Familien Journal: Hamlet in der Eisenhiitte, von Arnold Schloen-
bach. Nos. 9, lO, 1S64
Internationale Revue: Faust und Hamlet, Eine Ssthet. Parallele. Von C.
A. von Reichlin-Meldegg. No. 2 (August) [Cohn.] 1 866
yahrbiicher der Deutschen Shakespeare- Gesellschaft : Hamlet in Frankreich.
Eize. i, 86, 1865
Die CharakterzUge Hamlets, nachgezeichnet von einem Nichtphilosophen.
ii, 16, 1867
Die realistische Shakespeare-Kritik und Hamlet. Friedr. Theod. Vischer.
ii, 132, ^867
Eine Charakteristik Hamlets fur Schauspielcr. W. Rossmann. ii, 305, . . 1867
Hamlet's ' mortal coil.' Elze. ii, 362, 1867
BIBLIOGRAPHY— GERMAN 423
Jahrbucher der Deutschen Shakespeare-Geiellschaft (continued) :
Die Gemuthsseite des Hamlet-Charakters. W. Oehlmann. iii, 205, . . 1868
Glosse zu III, ii, 18-23. H. von Friesen. iii, 229 1868
Die Sh. Forschungen von Tschischwitz beurtheilt von Oehlmann. iii, 223, 1868
Literarische Uebersicht. Der Hamlet von Tschischwitz. iv, 369, . . 1S69
Die Fechtscene in Hamlet. H. von Freisen. iv, 374, 1S69
Zu Hamlet, I, ii, 187, 188. F. Luders. iv, 385, 1869
Ueber das Dunkel in der Hamlet-Tragodie. H. A. Werner, v, 6, . . 1870
Literarische Besprechung: Carl Karpf, Th ri ^v clvai. H. Ulrici. v, 335, 1S70
Miscellen: Zu Hamlet, I, ii, 187, 188. L. Schmitz. v, 364, .. .1870
Miscellen : Zu Hamlet, V, ii, 140. H. von Friesen. v, 365, .. ..1870
Die Grundzuge der Hamlet-Tragddie. Wilhelm KSnig. vi, 277, . . 1871
In dem Monolog, III, i, 59, statt * a sea of troubles,' schligt Dr Braunfels
vor :« a jrf of troubles.' H. Ulrici. vi, 354, 187 1
Der Hamlet von Arthur Meadows, beurtheilt. vii, 362, 1872
Dr Latham's Two Dissertations, &c., beurtheilt. viii, 363, 1873
Chettle's Hoffmann und Shakespeare's Hamlet. Dr Delius. ix, 166, . . 1S74
Der Hamlet von Marbach, beurtheilt. ix, 322, 1874
Hamlet in Spanien. Caroline Michaelis. x, 311, 1875
Irving as Hamlet by Russell, reviewed, x, 376, . . 1875
Tyler's Philosophy of Hamlet reviewed, x, 377, 1S75
Der Hamlet von Hackh, beurtheilt. x, 378, 187$
Elze's note on 'four hours,' II, ii, 159. xi, 288, 1876
" " 'suit of sables,' III, ii, 122. xi, 294, 1876
** " 'Convert his gyves to graces,' IV, vii, 21. xi, 295, .. 1876
** «' ' Yaughan,' V, i, 58. xi, 296, 1876
" *' ' dog will have his day,' V, i, 2S0. xi, 297, 1876
jfahrbucher fur dramat. Kunst : Erklirung der Tragodie Prinz Hamlet von
seinem Freunde Horatio. [Cohn MS.] 1848
yahrbucher fur LUeratur : Ein Wort iiber Hamlet, vol. xxviii [Cohn], .. 1824
Journal fur Theater, &c. : Etwas iiber Garves Abhandlung Uber d. Karakter
Hamlets, vol. ii. Hamburg, 1797
Ein paar Worte iiber Einiges in Hamlet, vol. iii [Cohn], 1 797
Leipziger Zeitung : Hamlet in Gera, von Dr W. Buchholz, 27 February, . . 1873
LUeratur und Theater-Zeitung. [Enthaltend Nachrichten iiber die Auffiihrung
Hamlets auf deutschen Buhnen. — Thimm.] Berlin, . . . . 1778-1779
Du LUeratur : Hamlet in Rom. Von R. Vischer. Nos. 33, 34, 35, 36 [Cohn], 1874
LU. Blatter : Der Hamlet des Ducis und der des Shakespeare. Von Ei
Cans. Stuttgart [Cohn] 1826
LUerariiche KrUische Blatter: Hamlet, ein literar-historisch kritischer Ver-
such. Von W. Bemhardi [Cohn]. Hamburg, ..1857
Magazin fur die LUeratur des Auslandes : Die Englischen Hamletdarsteller
von der Zeit Shakespeares bis zur Zeit Lessings. I. Burbage, Davenant,
und Betterton. 2. David Garrick und J. P. Kemble. Nos. 29, 30 [Cohn], 1869
Morgenblatt : Briefe iiber Hamlet. Nos. 60-80 [Cohn], 1S12
Dawison's Hamlet. No. 26, " . 1863
Shakespeare und Hamlet. Nos, 25 und 26, " . 1864
Hamlet. Von H. M. Zaubitz. Nos. 5, 6, " 1859
Hamlet. Von Karl Silberschlag. Nos. 46, 47, i860
424 APPENDIX
IforgenMati (continued) :
Ueber Hamlet's Wahnsinn [Cohn], l8ii
Hamlet auf der franzSsischen Bvihne. 1848
Nachtwachen : Briefe von Hamlet und Ophelia. Von Bonaventura (pseud.
Schelling) [Cohn] igoe
Neorama: Hamlet. Von F. W. CarovS. Vol. i, p. 21. Leipzig, . . . . 1838
Neue Jahrb.f. Philologie und Pddagogie : Beurtheilung iiber den Delius'scheu
Hamlet von T. Mommsen, vol. Ixxii, p. 57; p. 89; p. 139, . . . . 1854
Das neue Reich : Shakespeare als Kenner des Wahnsinns. Von M. Bemays,
No. 29 [Cohn] 1871
Olla Potrida: [See p. 117 of this Volume. Ed.]
Orion : 1st Hamlet toll? Studie von Karl Grun, p. 365. Mai, No. II, p. 440,
June. Hamburg, 1863
Phobus : Fragmente uber Shakespeare. Hamlet und Lear, No. 9. Von A.
Miiller. Herausgegeben von Kleisr u. Miiller. [Cohn MS.] . . . . 1808
Preussische yahrbucAer: Ueber Hamlet. Vori Karl Werder, Nov., Dec.
[Cohn], 1873
Hamlet, von Herman Grimm, vol. xxxv, part iv, p. 385, April, Berlin, . . 1875
Preussische Zeitung : Hamlet. Klein [Cohn MS.] 1859
Shakespeare- Museum : Hamlet in Leipzig, vol. i, 15, . 1870
Pole-axe oder Polacks, Ob Streitaxt oder Polacken. Max. Moltke, p. 23,
37, 56.
Ob Hamlet wahnsinnig war, p. 32.
Anmerkung zu Hamlet, I, v, ' celestial bed.' Modlinger, p. 64.
Herder's translation of IV, v, 1-195, p. 79.
Amlethiana: i. Das Urbild des Hamlet. 2. Hamlet auf der deutschen
Buhne. 3. Friederich Haase als Hamlet. 4. Deutschland ist Hamlet
von Freiligrath, p. 88.
Stimmen der Zeit : Recension Uber Hamlet, 17 Heft, p. 198. [Thimm.] . . 1861
Sibyllinische Blatter: aus der neuesten Zeit, i Heft. Tieck und Hamlet, von
A. Beyfuss. Berlin [Cohn], 1826
Unterhaltungen am hauslichen Heerd: Ueber Hamlet. Eine Skizze. Von
Prof. H. Hettner in Jena. [In a foot-note by the Editor, Karl Gutzkow,
there is a comparison between Emil Devrient and Dawison in the part ot
Hamlet. Ed.] Vol. ii, p. 88. Leipzig l8S3-54
Urania : Ueber Shakespeare's Philosophic, Besonders in Hamlet, von E. A.
H. Clodius, s. 275. Leipzig, 1820
Die Vossische Zeitung: Hamlet in Deutschland. Nos. 23 und 24. [ — Thimm,] 1870
IVestermann's Monatshefte : Hamlet. Friedr. Bodenstedt. October [Cohn], 1865
Zeitung f. d. elegante Welt: Ueber Hamlet (translated from the Journal des
Dibats) [Cohn], 1827
ANONYMOUS
Grundlinien zu einer Theorie der Schauspielkunst. Eine Analyse des Hamlet,
p. 115. Leipzig [by F. H. von Einsiedel. — Thimm], 1797
Die Schauspielerschule. Quedlinburg, l8lO
BIBLIOGRAPHY— GERMAN, FRENCH 425
Scnemns, Dr (psend.) : Prinz Hammelfett and Prinzessin Pamphelia. Eine
Trauerposse fiir Polichinell- und Kasperltheater. Neu-Ruppin [Cohn], . . n. d.
TRANSLATIONS OF ENGLISH COMMENTATORS
Wagner, A. : Skottowe's Shakespeare's Leben, &c Leipzig, 1 824
Wagner, A.: Mrs Jameson's Shakespeare's Weibliche Karaktere. Leipzig
[Thimm] 1834
Ortlepp, E. : Ditto. Stuttgart, 1840
Schucking, Levin : Ditto. Bielefeld [Thimm], 1840
Kunzel, H. : Lamb's Erzahlungen. Darmstadt [Thinun] , . 1842
Dralle, F. W. : Ditto. Stuttgart [Thimm], 1843
Frese, Dr Julius : Ei^Snzungsband zu alien englischen Ausgaben, and rur
Schlegel-Tieckshen Uebersetzung. [Collier's Notes and Etnfndaiums.'\
Berlin 1853
Ij^yY. h.i \CdaitT's NoUs and EmendatumsJ] Berlin, 185 3
William Shakespeare. Von Sr. Eminenz Cardinal Wiseman. Koln, . . 1865
FRENCH TRANSLATIONS
COLLECTED WORKS
LeToomeur: Shakespeare traduit de 1' Anglais, vol. v, 1779
Guizot: CEuvres completes de Shakspeare, voL L [Septidme Edition, 1868.] 1821
Avenel: CEuvres dramatiques, corrig^es et enrichies de notes, &c. [Bohru] 1822
Brugui^re et Ch6n6doll6 : Chefs-d'osuvres ; traduits conform^ment au texte
original en vers blancs, en vers rim6s et en prose, 1826
Havard, J. A. : OEuvres dramatiques, pr6c6d6s des notices bistoriques et lit-
t^raires sur sa Vie, &c., Paris, 1834
Nisard, Lebas et Fouinet : Chefs-d'oeuvre de Shakespeare, Othello, Hamlet et
Macbeth, avec des* imitations en vers Fran^ais par MM. de Vigny, Des-
champs, &c., et des notices critiques, &c par D. O'Sullivan. [No date, but,
according to Thimm] 1837
Michel, Francisque : CEuvres completes, traduction enti^rement revue sur le
texte Anglais, voL ii, Paris. [Deuxi^me 6d. 1855; cinqui^me id. 1S69.] 1839
Laroche, Benjamin : OEuvres completes. Traduction nouvelle, voL ii.
[Cinquidme Edition, 1869.] 1842
Hugo, Francois- Victor : CEuvres completes. [This edition contains a transla-
tion of the Q, and Q,.] [TroisiSme dd. 1873.] 1862
MontSgut, fimile: CEuvres completes, . . . . 1S67-70
426 APPENDIX
SEPARATE TRANSLATIONS
De la Place : Hamlet traduit (Theatre anglais) [Bohn], . . . . 1 745-1 748
Ducis : Hamlet. Tragedie imit^e de 1' Anglais en vers Fran^ais, . . . . 1769
Hamlet, Tragedie en cinq Actes, conformfi aux Representations donfies \
Paris [Bohn], 1827
Hamlet en Anglais et en Fran^ais, avec la description du costume, &c., . . 1833
Lain6, Jules: Une Sc^ne d'Hamlet, traduite en vers [Bohn], 1836
O'Sullivan: Hamlet. Nouvelle Edition, 1843
Dumas et Paul Meurice: Hamlet, drame en cinq Actes, en vers, . . . . 1848
Garal, Pierre : Traduit, 1862
Chatelain, Le Chevalier de : Hamlet traduit en vers Frangais. Londres, .. 1 864
Brown, A. : Hamlet [in English, with a French translation of a few of the
Variorum notes.] Truchy's edition, 1865
Cayrou, Alcide: Chefs-d'oeuvre de Shakespeare. Traduction en vers. Avec
une Introduction de M. M6zi6res, vol. i, .0 1876
Guillemot, Ernest : Hamlet par Shakespeare. Paris, . . - n. d.
COMMENTARIES, ESSAYS, &c.
Voltaire: Theatre compl^t, vol. ii, p. 201. Geneve, .. 1768
Baretti, Joseph : Discours sur Shakespeare et sur Mons. de Voltaire. London,
and Paris, 1777
Duval, A, : Shakespeare et Addison mis en comparaison, ou imitation en vers
des Monologues de Hamlet et de Caton [Bohn], . . . . . . . . 1786
Barante, A. G: Sur Hamlet. [Melanges, vol. iii, 1833 — Bohn.] . . . . 1824
Duport, M. P. : Essais litt^raires sur Shakespeare, &c., vol. i, p. 1 1828
Villemain, A. E. : Cours de Litt6rature, 1 829
Chateaubriand : Essai sur la Littdrature anglaise. [Second edition, London,
1837.] ^ 1836
Girardin: Cours de la Littirature dramatique, vol. i, 1852
Guizot: Shakespeare et son Temps, 1852
Lacroix, A. : De I'lnfluence de Shakespeare sur le Theatre fran^aise jusqu'a
nos jours. Bruxelles, 1855
MeziSres, A. : Shakespeare, ses CEuvres et ses Critiques. Paris, . . . . 1861
Hugo, Victor: William Shakespeare, . . . 1864
Meurice : Theatre. Hamlet, Falstaff, Parolles d'aprds Shakespeare. [Thimm.] 1864
Courdaveaux, V. : CaractSres et Talents, p. 287. 1867
Dumas, A. : £tude sur Hamlet, 1867
Thomas, Ambroise : Hamlet. Opira en cinq Actes, par Michel Carri et Jules
Barbier; musique de Amb. Thomas, 1868
Chatelain, Le Chevalier de : Shakespearian Gems in French and English Set-
tings. London, 1869
Gomont, H. : Encore sur Hamlet, ^ propos d'Hamlet et Ji c6t6 d'Hamlet, . . 1874
Mayow, M. : Hamlet. Revue des Cours littiraires de la France ct de I'fitran*
ger, 5me annie. [Cohn.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY— DUTCH 427
DUTCH TRANSLATIONS
Bnmins, B. : William Shakespeare's Tooneelspeelen. [A Variorum edition,
which is pronounced 'indifferent' in Bohn's Ltrwru/es.'] Vol. i, . . . . 1778
Kok, A. S. : Shakespeare's Dramatische Werken. Vertaald en toegelicht
Eerste Aflevering. Amsterdam, n. d. ? 1871
SiparaU Translations:
Brandt, G. : De veinzende Torquatns. [Imitation of Hamlet — Thimm.3
Amsterdam, 1720
Cambon, M. G. de : Hamlet gevolgt naar het Franch, en naar het Engelsch. 1779
Zubli, Ambrosius Justus : Hamlet, Treurspel. Gevolgd naar het Fransche
van den Heere Ducis. Amsteldam. [Tweede Druk, 1790; Zesde Druk,
1845] 1786
Roorda van Eysinga, P. P. : Hamlet Treurspel uit het Engelsch in den vorm
van het oorspronkelyke vertaald. Met Inleidung en Aanhangsel van J.
Moulin. Kampen [Bohn], 1836
Susan, S. : Hamlet, Historisch Treurspel. Ten Gebruike der G3rmnasia.
[English text, with Dutch and English notes. — Ed.] Deventer, . . 1849
Loffelt, A. C: Hamlet Uitgegeven en Verklaard. [English text, with
Dutch notes.— Ed.] Utrecht, 1867
Shakesptariana :
Van Hemert, Paulus : Lektuur bij het Ontbijt en de Thetafel, p. 45. Amster-
dam. [' Reading for the Breakfast (!) and the Tea-Table.'— Ed.] . . 1808
Van den Bergh, L., Ph. C. : Bloemlezing uit de dramatische Werken van
Shakspeare in Nederduitsche'X)ichtmaat overgebracht, p. 98. Amsterdam, 1834
Sijbrandi, Klaas : Verhandeling over Vondel en Shakspeare als treurspel-
dichteis, p. 163. Haarlem, 184I
Moltzer, Mr H. E. : Het Drupje Boosheid, Groningen, 1870
Periodicals, Magazines, &*c. :
De Neder lands eke Spectator : Het nieuwste over den Hamlet van Shake-
speare, door J. d. W. V. C, 14 April. [Ook No. II, 12 Mei.] . . i860
Het oordeel van Ed. t)evrient over de rol van Hamlet. 8 October, . . 1864
Eene vemieuwde opvoering van den Hamlet, door A*. 14 Juni, . . 1873
Rossi als Hamlet, door A. C. Loffelt. 8 April, 1876
De Gids: [Review of Loffelt's edition of Hamlet by] A. S. Kok, p. 568.
Dec. Amsterdam, 1S67
De Levensbode : Hamlet-Bespiegelingen, naar aanleiding der nieuwe Neder-
landsche uitgave [Loffelfs] [door J. Van Vloten?]. Derde DeeL I, p.
51. Deventer . . x868
Dr Tijdspiegel : Shakespeare's Hamlet en Bara's Herstelde Vorst. Door
A. C. Loffelt, p. 474-503. I Mei, . . . . 1869
428 APPENDIX
ITALIAN
Amleto. Tragedia di M. Duels, ad imitazione deHa Inglese di Shakespeare,
tradolta in versi sciolti. Venezia. [Bohn,] 1774
Saggi di Eloquenza di Shakespeare. Milano, , .. ,.i8ll
Leoni di Parma, Michele : Amleto, Tragedia di G. Shakespeare, recata in versi
Italiani. Firenze, 1814
Pozzoli, Girolamo : Traduzione di Discorso sopra Shakespeare ed Voltaire di
G. Baretti. Milano, 1820
Rusconi, Carlo : Teatro di Shakspeare, voltato in prosa Italiana. [Vol. ii,
Quarta edizione, 1859; vol. iii, Sesta edizione, 1874.] 1831
Carcano, Giulio : Teatro scelto di Shakspeare, vol. i. Firenze. [Prima edizione
illustrata, vol. ii, Milano, Pisa, Napoli, 1875. Levi, in his excellent Studi
su Shakespeare, says that the first edition of Carcano's translation ' fu stampata
a Milano dal 1843 al 1853.' Kd,] 1857
Forlani, Dr F. : Sull' Amore e sulla Pazzia d' Amleto, 1 87 1
Amleto Principe di Danimarca. Firenze, 1874
Matteucci, Luigi: Amleto. Tradotto in versi e prosa conforme al testo.
Milano, . . 1875
Levi, A. R. : Studi su Shakespeare. Treviso, 1 875
LauziSres, Achille de: Traduzione italiana di Amleto, tragedia lirica del
Signori Carr6, Barbier e Ambrogio Thomas. Milano, 1876
SWEDISH
Hamlet, Sorgespel i Fem Akter. Fri Ofversattning fran Engelskan. Stock-
holm, 1819
Betankande om Shakspeare jemte Iter en Oefversaettning af Hamlet. Stock-
holm, 1820
Shakespeare-Sagor. [Translation of Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare.] Stock-
holm, .' 1851
Hagberg, Carl August : Shakespeare's Dramatiska Arbeten. FSrsta Bandet.
Lund [First edition in 1847 — Bohn], 1861
F. M. : Supplement till Shakespeare's Dramatiska Arbeten. [Translation of
Brown's ' Bible Truths with Shakespearian Parallels,'] Stockholm, . . 1863
Shakespeare och bans dramatiska Arbeten. [Translation of Hiilsmann's
Shakspeare, sein Geist und seine Werke,] Stockholm. 1865
FSrelasningar 6fver Shakespeare, bans Tid och bans Verk. [Translation of
Kreyssig's Vorlesungen.] Karlstad, 1872
BIBLIOGRAPHY— SPANISH, &»€. 429
SPANISH
Hamlet. Tragedia de Guillenno Shakespeare. Tradadda 6 ilnstrada con la
vida del autor y notas criticas. For Inarco Celenio. QMoratin — Bohn.}
Madrid, 1798
Clark, Jaime : Obras de Shakspeare. Version Castellana, voL v. Madrid, n. d,
Coello, Carlos : £1 Principe Hamlet, drama tragico-fantastico en tres Actos y
ea verso, inspirado per el Hamlet de Shakespeare. Madrid, . . . . 1872
BOHEMIAN
Musea EriloTstrl ^^k^ho. Dramaticki dila Williama Shakespeara : Hamlet,
princ Dansky. Pfeloiil Jos. Jifi Kolar. Dil i. Praze, 1856
Maly, Jakub: Kytice zdramatick^ch spisft Williama Shakespeara. Praze, .. 1873
WELSH
Hamlet, Tjvry^og Denmarc. Gan W. Shakespeare. Cyfieithiad Buddugol
yn Eisteddfod Llandudno, 1864. Wrexham, 1865
GREEK
AMAETOS, BASIAOHAIS THS AAXIAS, TPArOAIA TOT AITAOT
SAISnHPOT. •EvoTf;rwf fteradpaaeEloa, TjtS IQANNOT H. IIEPBANO-
PAOT. A¥0'2,T}}g(lnXoco<;>iac. EN A9HNAIS, TTHOIS X. NIKOAAIAOT
*IAAAEA<I'EQ2. {Uapa ry IlvXy r^c 'A.yopac, apid. 420.) . . . . . . 1858
P have also two Russian translations, which are beyond the resources of our
printers; and Bohn mentions a Polish translation published in Warsaw, 1862. There
is also a Hungarian translation, published in 1824. Eo.J
FINIS
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