Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher Part 20

"O all you host of heaven! O earth! What else?

And shall I couple h.e.l.l?"

I remember nothing equal to this burst, unless it be the first speech of Prometheus in the Greek drama, after the exit of Vulcan and the two Afrites. But Shakespeare alone could have produced the vow of Hamlet to make his memory a blank of all maxims and generalised truths, that "observation had copied there,"-followed immediately by the speaker noting down the generalised fact,-

"That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain!"

_Ib._-

"_Mar._ Hillo, ho, ho, my lord!

_Ham._ Hillo, ho, ho, boy! come bird, come," &c.

This part of the scene, after Hamlet's interview with the Ghost, has been charged with an improbable eccentricity. But the truth is, that after the mind has been stretched beyond its usual pitch and tone, it must either sink into exhaustion and inanity, or seek relief by change. It is thus well known, that persons conversant in deeds of cruelty contrive to escape from conscience by connecting something of the ludicrous with them, and by inventing grotesque terms, and a certain technical phraseology, to disguise the horror of their practices. Indeed, paradoxical as it may appear, the terrible by a law of the human mind always touches on the verge of the ludicrous. Both arise from the perception of something out of the common order of things-something, in fact, out of its place; and if from this we can abstract danger, the uncommonness will alone remain, and the sense of the ridiculous be excited. The close alliance of these opposites-they are not contraries-appears from the circ.u.mstance, that laughter is equally the expression of extreme anguish and horror as of joy: as there are tears of sorrow and tears of joy, so is there a laugh of terror and a laugh of merriment. These complex causes will naturally have produced in Hamlet the disposition to escape from his own feelings of the overwhelming and supernatural by a wild transition to the ludicrous,-a sort of cunning bravado, bordering on the flights of delirium. For you may, perhaps, observe that Hamlet's wildness is but half false; he plays that subtle trick of pretending to act only when he is very near really being what he acts.

The subterraneous speeches of the Ghost are hardly defensible;-but I would call your attention to the characteristic difference between this Ghost, as a superst.i.tion connected with the most mysterious truths of revealed religion,-and Shakespeare's consequent reverence in his treatment of it,-and the foul earthly witcheries and wild language in _Macbeth_.

Act ii. sc. 1. Polonius and Reynaldo.

In all things dependent on, or rather made up of, fine address, the manner is no more or otherwise rememberable than the light notions, steps, and gestures of youth and health. But this is almost everything:-no wonder, therefore, if that which can be put down by rule in the memory should appear to us as mere poring, maudlin, cunning,-slyness blinking through the watery eye of superannuation. So in this admirable scene, Polonius, who is throughout the skeleton of his own former skill and statecraft, hunts the trail of policy at a dead scent, supplied by the weak fever-smell in his own nostrils.

_Ib._ sc. 2. Speech of Polonius:-

"My liege, and madam, to expostulate," &c.

Warburton's note.

"Then as to the jingles, and play on words, let us but look into the sermons of Dr. Donne (the wittiest man of that age), and we shall find them full of this vein."

I have, and that most carefully, read Dr. Donne's sermons, and find none of these jingles. The great art of an orator-to make whatever he talks of appear of importance-this, indeed, Donne has effected with consummate skill.

_Ib._-

"_Ham._ Excellent well; You are a fishmonger."

That is, you are sent to fish out this secret. This is Hamlet's own meaning.

_Ib._-

"_Ham._ For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, Being a G.o.d, kissing carrion."

These purposely obscure lines, I rather think, refer to some thought in Hamlet's mind, contrasting the lovely daughter with such a tedious old fool, her father, as he, Hamlet, represents Polonius to himself:-"Why, fool as he is, he is some degrees in rank above a dead dog's carcase; and if the sun, being a G.o.d that kisses carrion, can raise life out of a dead dog,-why may not good fortune, that favours fools, have raised a lovely girl out of this dead-alive old fool?" Warburton is often led astray, in his interpretations, by his attention to general positions without the due Shakespearian reference to what is probably pa.s.sing in the mind of his speaker, characteristic, and expository of his particular character and present mood. The subsequent pa.s.sage,-

"O Jephthah, judge of Israel! what a treasure hadst thou!"

is confirmatory of my view of these lines.

_Ib._-

"_Ham._ You cannot, Sir, take from me any thing that I will more willingly part withal; except my life, except my life, except my life."

This repet.i.tion strikes me as most admirable.

_Ib._-

"_Ham._ Then are our beggars, bodies; and our monarchs, and out-stretched heroes, the beggars' shadows?"

I do not understand this; and Shakespeare seems to have intended the meaning not to be more than s.n.a.t.c.hed at:-"By my fay, I cannot reason!"

_Ib._-

"The rugged Pyrrhus-he whose sable arms," &c.

This admirable subst.i.tution of the epic for the dramatic, giving such a reality to the impa.s.sioned dramatic diction of Shakespeare's own dialogue, and authorised too, by the actual style of the tragedies before his time (_Porrex and Ferrex_, _t.i.tus Andronicus_, &c.)-is well worthy of notice.

The fancy, that a burlesque was intended, sinks below criticism: the lines, as epic narrative, are superb.

In the thoughts, and even in the separate parts of the diction, this description is highly poetical: in truth, taken by itself, that is its fault that it is too poetical!-the language of lyric vehemence and epic pomp, and not of the drama. But if Shakespeare had made the diction truly dramatic, where would have been the contrast between Hamlet and the play in _Hamlet_?

_Ib._-

... "Had seen the _mobled_ queen," &c.

A mob-cap is still a word in common use for a morning cap, which conceals the whole head of hair, and pa.s.ses under the chin. It is nearly the same as the night-cap, that is, it is an imitation of it, so as to answer the purpose ("I am not drest for company"), and yet reconciling it with neatness and perfect purity.

_Ib._ Hamlet's soliloquy:-

"O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!" &c.

This is Shakespeare's own attestation to the truth of the idea of Hamlet which I have before put forth.

_Ib._-

"The spirit that I have seen, May be a devil: and the devil hath power To a.s.sume a pleasing shape; yea, and, perhaps Out of my weakness, and my melancholy (As he is very potent with such spirits), Abuses me to d.a.m.n me."

See Sir Thomas Brown:-

"I believe ... that those apparitions and ghosts of departed persons are not the wandering souls of men, but the unquiet walks of devils, prompting and suggesting us unto mischief, blood, and villany, instilling and stealing into our hearts, that the blessed spirits are not at rest in their graves, but wander solicitous of the affairs of the world."-_Relig. Med._ part. i. sect. 37.

Act iii. sc. 1. Hamlet's soliloquy:-

"To be, or not to be, that is the question," &c.

This speech is of absolutely universal interest,-and yet to which of all Shakespeare's characters could it have been appropriately given but to Hamlet? For Jaques it would have been too deep, and for Iago too habitual a communion with the heart; which in every man belongs, or ought to belong, to all mankind.

_Ib._-