6 a strong imagination to work himself up to tears over the description of Hecuba, but perhaps the slight cause for his emotion lends greater point to Hamlet's application of the incident. Apparently, while the recitation goes on, the idea of having the murder of Gonzago played before Claudius, enters Hamlet's mind, the details of the scheme being worked out later on when the players have retired. It is rather cool of him, by the way, to tell them not to make fun of Polonius, considering the bad example he sets on this point. But under all the pleasant ease of this scene, Hamlet has been restraining a strong tide of mingled feeling, and the instant he is alone, it breaks forth. The player's agitation over a fiction, a dream of passion,' is in bitter, stinging contrast to his own slackness in his great cause. It makes him suspect himself capable of any degree of degenerate baseness that he has delayed so long, remembering what kind of man he is sent to punish. Then with a sudden feeling, most natural and most pathetic, in all his vehemence, he turns against himself for finding relief in strong words, like a scolding shrew. He is disgusted to find himself so weak, yet, ah, poor human nature, it is one thing to own to a weakness, and quite another to become strong! But something Hamlet feels impelled to do, and the notion of testing the King by the proposed performance commends itself strongly to him. The impression of the Ghost's disclosure has become somewhat weakened, and the idea of a possible diabolical deception, which occurred to Hamlet before, now returns in greater force. We admit that he is not sorry to have an excuse for postponing direct action, yet there is much to be said for his plan of eliciting an unconscious confession of guilt from Claudius before dealing further with him. Nothing indicates what special occasion, on the day after the players' arrival, draws Hamlet's thoughts back to the subject of suicide, but he is evidently bent on thinking it all out in one of his lonely moments, while he is expecting the King to appear. From his own private case, his ideas now travel forward to a general survey of the woes of mankind, so many and so varied, and yet all so easily ended. And hereupon we reach perhaps the most widely-known passage in all Shakspere, Hamlet's most famous monologue. Most widely known, not best known, for it is not everybody who takes the trouble to study the wonderful words with anything like the attention they deserve, though most people are superficially familiar with them. There is hardly a line in the speech which has not passed into our common talk, and we are so used to the scattered jewels that it is really necessary sometimes to put them back into their proper setting and follow out the continuous course of Hamlet's, or rather Shakspere's, thought. That is, so far as it goes, for Hamlet's has certainly not exhausted his subject when he becomes suddenly aware of Ophelia's presence, and his meditations are naturally cut short. On the causes of Ophelia's appearance at this point, we shall have more to say later on, now we have only to consider how it affects Hamlet. He has not seen her, we may suppose, since their silent interview, and now feels himself bound to keep up her belief in his madness, and to resist the opening for fresh love-making which she gives him by accusing him of being unkind to her. But it is hard to feign with a breaking heart. Does all English literature contain simple words more intensely pathetic than his, ‘I did love you once,' and her, 'Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so?' The helpless misery of it all, the two who might have loved so happily and well, parted by such a gulf of wickedness, seems to cut Hamlet to the heart. He sees the hopelessness of it for Ophelia, even more than for himself. Here is a world of sin and wretchedness, nobody to be trusted, even the 'indifferent honest' bad enough, what can become of an innocent little creature like her in it? Better for her to be out of it altogether, in the shelter of the cloister safe from the indignities of this life. Naturally the distressed and frightened girl does not follow the connection of his strange words, not knowing what underlies this farewell, for such it really is. Suddenly the peculiarity of Ophelia's being there alone seems to strike Hamlet, and it looks as if one of his lightning-like intuitions revealed to him the scheme connected with her presence. It would be very satisfactory if we could find distinct warrant for the most effective bit of stage business which makes Hamlet at this moment catch a glimpse of Polonius who is concealed behind a curtain, but Shakspere really does not say anything about it. Still if in the last part of the interview, Hamlet is not absolutely addressing a concealed auditor, he certainly means his fierce harshness to go beyond Ophelia. His enemies do not get much by spying on him and using his poor little love as an instrument. The result of the interview is curiously different on the three who listen to Hamlet's ravings. Ophelia is convinced of his complete insanity, and is in despair for him and herself, Polonius sticks to his old opinion, and Claudius begins to think Hamlet more dangerous and less mad, than the world has believed him before. After this scene of pathos and passion it is strange to meet Hamlet next in his character of art critic, laying down those principles of acting since recognised as fundamental. It has often been said that this conversation with the First Player has nothing whatever to do with the main story, but what a loss it would have been if any such like scruples had prevented Shakspere from inserting this unique little discourse on his own art. We wonder how far he ever saw his ideal of acting realised as he here sets it forth, and whether he could keep his company from the faults which he criticises. At some previous point unnoted in the play, Hamlet has relieved his feelings by fully confiding in Horatio, and now justifies his doing so by that beautiful sketch of his good friend's character, which almost overpowers the modest man. Besides the comfort of having a sympathiser in Horatio, Hamlet also secures a second observer of the king's demeanour as the play is performed before him. There is only one drawback to this play scene, it seems to bring us up to a climax before the time, and we cannot keep at that pitch of excitement. Like the trial scene in the Merchant of Venice, the end is almost a foregone conclusion, and yet we get as excited as if the upshot were entirely doubtful. In this case, we feel that the extreme tension of Hamlet's nerves affects ours, and we watch through his eyes. He sets himself deliberately to play the madman, the better to cover his close watch on the King, and we are bound to admit that he overdoes his part, and is in danger of betraying himself, being hardly able to control his own excitement. He treats Ophelia with a wild recklessness most distressing to the sad maiden, whose mournful little attempts to soothe him show that it is not possible for her to be offended by him. Under favour of his madness, Hamlet ventures on more daring allusions to his father's death and his mother's marriage than he has previously risked in the King's hearing, till the latter begins to take alarm, and gets suspicious by the time the Dumbshow and Introduction, elucidated by Hamlet's comments, have been represented. His sudden imperious turn on his nephew, asking whether there was no offence in the play, seems to suggest much as to the relations between them, and he evidently shrinks back from the unexpected freedom of Hamlet's reply, and the defiant significance of his, Your majesty, and we that have free souls, it touches us not.' All through this scene, our interest is not so much in what the characters say and do, as in what they are feeling. The protestations of the Player Queen jar even on Gertrude's stifled conscience, and Hamlet sadly notes how they affect her, even while he is concentrating his attention on Claudius as the crisis approaches, and the counterfeit murderer steps over the stage, uttering the charm-lines which have truly something magical in their electric thrill and rhythm. "Thoughts black, hands apt, drugs fit, and time agreeing, Thou mixture rank, of midnight weeds collected On wholesome life usurp immediately.' If they are meant for Hamlet's own lines, we may fancy him whispering them over half audibly, and gazing on the King meanwhile with intense excitement. This is the climax. Claudius can bear no more, and regardless of prudence, he breaks off and rushes away, and in an instant the brilliant scene is deserted by all but Hamlet and Horatio, recovering from the strain of the previous moments as they best can. It leaves Hamlet in an almost hysterical condition, exultant at the success of his stratagem, but so thoroughly shaken by his own emotions, and the effort of restraining them, that he is hardly master of himself. This possibly prompts his desire for music, which might quiet his mind, and allow him to compose himself, but our poor hero rarely gets the treatment suitable to his sorely tried spirits. Instead of music and sweet harmonies come the false voices of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, with their feigned friendship and peering curiosity, and Hamlet has to work off his agitation in puzzling and confounding them. Now he no longer cares to keep on any sort of terms with them and lets his contempt for them be plainly seen. He could more easily forgive their treachery than their clumsy efforts to work upon him, for nothing galls a man of Hamlet's mental power more than being supposed to be managed by distinctly inferior natures. This gives force to his acted parable of the musician's pipe. Is he, with all the complications of his nature, easier to be understood and used than this simple instrument which they admit they do not comprehend? He is more indignant with them than with Polonius, though he cannot resist trying to see how far that old gentleman will go in his efforts to humour him. Darkness and light have not always the same effect on the nerves, and apparently Hamlet is just now in that strung-up condition when darkness and silence instead of calming or depressing, produce a sense of wild exaltation and power. At that moment, he feels equal to anything, but unluckily these moments are apt to pass as quickly as they come, and leave us as weak as before. Also there is a certain chill in the recollection that the next business is his interview with his mother, where he has to perform the difficult task of appealing to her conscience, without being carried away by his indignation into forgetting their relative positions. However hard, it has to be done, and Hamlet makes no attempt to evade it, but on his way to her, he comes across the extraordinary spectacle of Claudius endeavouring to pray, and therefore for once, unguarded. If Hamlet ever deliberately deceives himself, it is on this occasion. He could not bring himself up to the point of despatching his uncle then and there (and could we have forgiven him if he had thus taken Claudius unawares ?) and forthwith he makes an excuse to himself of which he ought to be heartily ashamed and bolsters it up with big words to hide the fact that it is mainly a sham. Not absolutely one, for there is an unmistakable vein of fierceness, even possible cruelty, running somehow through Hamlet's nature, recalling his savage original, and we get a touch of it here. However, his feeling is only righteous indignation as he enters the Queen's room, and it is no wonder that her first words are bitter to him, the sacred name of father being profaned by her application of it to the doubly stained wretch whom he has just quitted. Can that extraordinarily foolish woman, Gertrude, really have expected to scold Hamlet into conformity to her wishes, that she shrinks terrified and screaming from his first resistance? It is an ill-timed scream, as foolish as Polonius' call for help when no help is As Hamlet instinctively stabs at the hangings, an idea crosses his brain that he has possibly caught his enemy here without expecting it, but he would know it was most unlikely, had he time to near. think. Curiously enough, it is only at this point that he seems to accuse his mother of having had a hand in her first husband's death. He cannot yet afford any pity for Polonius thus reaping the fruit of his own intrusion, remorse for his death may come later, but just now Hamlet has only attention for one subject, a desperate attempt to penetrate his mother's deadened conscience. She seems at first absolutely hardened, so he has to begin by startling her, and then to prove what an utter fool she has been, before going on to her crime. Bitter are his words in truth, bitter with the long-suppressed feelings of these months of torture. All the eloquence he can command prompted by his undying affection, expresses itself in his description of his father, and in forcing the contrast between her two husbands home to the reluctant Queen. No woman not absolutely hardened could listen unmoved to his burning words, and there is still some capacity for feeling left in Gertrude, some possibility of repentance, although characteristically it is chiefly displayed by entreaties to Hamlet to stop his too truthful words. But Hamlet is not going to stop, his torrent of remonstrance is only checked by the startling vision of the ghost revisiting the halls in which he had lived. At once Hamlet's conscience finds a reason for this fresh visitation in his own slowness to carry out his father's will, but the ghost seems also to come to protect Gertrude from the effects of extreme terror. Somehow Hamlet himself appears more agitated and distressed by the renewed sight of the apparition than he was on the former occasion, and is perplexed besides by finding that the ghost is invisible to Gertrude, though the honest soldiers and Horatio had seen him plainly. He discovers to his horror, that she is disposed to set everything down to his madness, and that his passionate efforts will all be thrown away. This he must prevent if it may be done, so by a great exertion of earnestness and self-control, he manages to show her that he is not mad, but only appealing to her better self to repent and save her soul. So far he succeeds that she no longer regards his pleading as insanity, but owns its penetrating power, and more than this he can hardly expect of her. He tells her what she should do, and has to leave the rest to her, not without experiencing a bitter pang at the strange reversing of their positions, which forces him to be cruel only to be kind. He only requests one kindness of his mother, to leave Claudius still to think him mad, and we cannot make out that she ever disregards this entreaty. We should like to know how Hamlet finds out that he is to be despatched to England, but once he has got a hint of the intention, it is easy for him to foresee that Polonius' death will form a good excuse for sending him from Denmark. So, like his original, he has to make the best of the situation, evidently meaning not to be long before he gets back again, and determined to keep a sharp eye on the doings of his fellow-travellers, really his gaolers. If Rosencrantz and his comrade expected to have an easy time with their prisoner, they must be undeceived by the poor VOL. 14. 6 ᏢᎪᎡᎢ 79. |