Shakspere and Montaigne Part 9

The cruel deed he has done, he palliates with the remark that lovingkindness has forced him to it. Love of her G.o.d also forced Catherine of Medicis to the ma.s.sacre of St. Bartholomew.

Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind.

Yes; worse is coming! Hamlet knows that he is to be sent to England; that the letters are sealed; that his two schoolfellows whom he trusts as he will adders, bear the mandate. What does he do to prevent further misfortune?

He rejoices that--

they must sweep my way, And marshall me to knavery. [47]

He enjoys, in advance, the sweet presentiment of revenge which he intends taking upon them. He lets things go without hindrance:--

Let it work!

For 'tis sport to have the engineer Hoist with his own petard.

He enjoys his own crafty policy which shall blow his school-friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (who yet, so far as he knows, have not been guilty in any way towards him!) 'at the moon:'--

O, 'tis most sweet When in one line two crafts directly meet.

Because Hamlet gives utterance to high-sounding thoughts, to sentimental dreams, and melancholy subtleties, it has been a.s.sumed that his character is one nourished with the poet's own heart's blood.

A thousand times the n.o.ble sentiment of duty has been dwelt upon, which it is alleged he is inspired with; and on account of his fine words he has been more taken a fancy to than any other Shaksperian figure. But that was not the poet's object. Great deeds were more to him than the finest words. His contemporaries understood him; for Montaigne--as we shall prove--was given over to the lowest scorn of the age through 'Hamlet,' because the whole reasoning of Hamlet not only was a fruitless, but a pernicious one.

In the fourth scene of the fourth act, the poet describes the frame of mind of the hero before he steps on board ship. 'Excitements of his reason and his blood' once more call him to revenge. This monologue, in which Hamlet gives expression to his feelings and thoughts, is only in the quarto of 1604. The folio of 1623 does not contain it. Shakspere, in later years, may have thought that the soul-struggle of his hero had been ended; and so he may have regarded the pa.s.sage as a superfluous one, in which Hamlet's better self once more asks him to seize the reins of destiny with his own hands.

He sees how young Fortinbras, the delicate and tender prince, 'puff'd with divine ambition, mouthes the invisible event for a piece of land not large enough to hide the slain.' Hamlet philosophises that the man who uses not his G.o.d-like reason is but a beast; for--

--He that made us with such large discourse Looking before and after, gave us not That capability and G.o.d-like reason, To fust in us unused.

We further hear how Hamlet reasons about the question as to how 'to be rightly great.' All the thoughts he produces, seem to flow from the pen of the French philosopher. In Essay III. (13) of Montaigne we read the beautiful words that 'the n.o.blest master-work of man is to live for a purpose (yivre d fropos),' and:--'The greatness of the soul does not consist so much in drawing upwards, and haling forwards, than in knowing how to range and to circ.u.mscribe itself. It holds everything to be great, which is sufficient in itself. It shows its superiority in more loving humble things than eminent ones.'

To the majesty of the human reason also, Montaigne, in spite of his so often condemning it, knows how to render justice. In Essay I. (40) he remarks: 'Shall we then dare to say that this advantage of reason at which we rejoice so very much, and out of respect for which we hold ourselves to be lords and emperors of all other creatures, has been put into us for our torment? Why strive for the knowledge of things if we become more cowardly thereby? if we lose, through it, the rest and the tranquillity in which we should be without it? ... Shall we use the intellect that has been given to us for our greatest good, to effect our ruin; combating the designs of Nature and the general order of things which implies that everyone should use his tools and means for his own convenience?'

n.o.ble thoughts! But it is not enough to play an aesthetic game with them. The energetic English genius wishes that they should regulate our life; that we should act in accordance with them, so that no tragic complication should form itself, which could only be solved by the ruin and death of the innocent together with the guilty. The monologue concludes thus:--

O, from this time forth, My thoughts be b.l.o.o.d.y, or be nothing worth!

Nevertheless, Hamlet continues his voyage.

The reader will remember that Montaigne spoke of an instinctive impulse of the will--a daimon--by which he often, and to his final advantage, had allowed himself to be guided, so much so that such strong impulses might be attributed to divine inspiration. A daimon of this kind, under whose influence Hamlet acts, is described in the second scene of the fifth act. The pa.s.sage is wanting in the first quarto. [48] Hamlet tells Horatio how he lay in the ship, and how in his heart there was a kind of fighting which would not let him sleep. This hara.s.sing condition, the result of his unmanly indecision, he depicts in these words:--

Methought I lay Worse than the mutines in the bilboes.

Then all at once (how could an impulsive manner of action be better described?), before he could 'make a prologue to his brains,' Hamlet lets himself be overcome by such a daimonic influence. He breaks open the grand commission of others, forges a seal with a signet in his possession, becomes a murderer of two innocent men, and draws the evil conclusion therefrom:--

Let us know, Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well, When our deep plots do pall; and that should learn us, There's a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will.

This view we have already quoted from Essay III. (12). In Florio's translation (632):--'Therefore do our dessigns so often miscarry....

The heavens are angry, and I may say envious of the extension and large privilege we ascribe to human wisdome, to the prejudice of theirs: and abridge them so more unto us, by so much more we endeavour to amplifie them.'

Hamlet takes the twofold murder committed against Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as little to heart as the 'indiscreet' deed by which Polonius was killed. Then the consolation was sufficient for him that lovingkindness had forced him to be cruel. This time, his conscience is not touched, because--

't is dangerous when the baser nature comes Between the pa.s.s and fell incensed points Of mighty opposites.

With such argumentation every tyranny may be palliated, especially by those who, like Hamlet, think that--

A man's life 's no more than to say 'One.'

Yet another peculiarity of Montaigne's complex being is depicted by Shakspere in the graveyard scene. He shows us every side of this whimsical character who says of himself that he has no staying power for any standpoint, but that he is driven about by incalculable emergencies.

Let us read a pa.s.sage in Essay II (12), and compare it with Hamlet's enigmatic conduct towards Laertes. Montaigne describes himself in these sentences:--'Being of a soft and somewhat heavy temperament, I have no great experience of those violent agitations which mostly come like a surprise upon our mind without allowing it leisure to collect itself.' In spite of the resistance--he further says--which he endeavoured to offer, even he, however, was occasionally thus seized. He felt these agitations rising and growing in, and becoming master over, himself. As in drunkenness, things then appeared to him otherwise than he usually saw them. 'I manifestly saw the advantages of the object which I sought after, augmenting and growing; and I felt them becoming greater and swelling by the wind of my imagination.

I felt the difficulties of my enterprise becoming easier and simpler, my reasoning and my conscience drawing back. But, that fire being gone, all of a sudden, as with the flash of lightning, my mind resumed another view, another condition, another judgment.'

In this manner Hamlet conducts himself towards Laertes. A great grief takes possession of him when he hears of the death of Ophelia: he leaps, like Laertes, into her grave; he grapples with him; he warns him that, though 'not splenetive and rash,' he (Hamlet) yet has 'something dangerous' in him. (He means the daimon which so fatally impelled him against Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.) Hamlet and Laertes wrestle, but they are parted by the attendants. Hamlet begins boasting, in high-flown language, of what great things he would be able to do.

The Queen describes Hamlet's rage in these words:--

And thus awhile the fit will work on him; Anon, as patient as the female dove, When that her golden couplets are disclosed, His silence will sit drooping. [49]

In the meantime, the fire with which Hamlet's soul had been seized, is gone, like a flash of lightning. He changes to another point of view--probably that one according to which everything goes its way in compliance with a heavenly decree. The little verse he recites in parting:--

Let Hercules himself do what he may, The cat will mew and dog will have his day,

quite corresponds to such a pa.s.sive philosophy which has gained the mastery over him, and to which he soon falls a victim.

We are approaching the conclusion of the great drama. Here, again, in order to explain Hamlet's action, or rather his yielding to influences around him, we have to direct the attention of the reader to Essay (III. 10), in which Montaigne tells how easily he protects himself against the dangers of inward agitation by dropping the subject which threatens to become troublesome to him before he is drawn on and carried along by it. The doughty n.o.bleman says that he has escaped from many difficulties by not staking frivolously, like others, happiness and honour, life and everything, on his 'rapier and his dagger.' [50]

There may be some truth in Montaigne's charge that the cause of not a few struggles he has seen, was often of truly pitiful origin, and that such struggles were only carried on from a mistaken feeling of self-respect. It may be true also that it is a bad habit--as he maintains--to proceed still further in affairs of this kind simply because one is implicated. But how strange a confession of a n.o.bleman from whom we at all times expect bravery: 'For want of judgement our hearte fails us.' [51]

Hamlet is engaged in such a struggle with Laertes through the graveyard scene. The King, who has had good cause to study Hamlet's character more deeply than anyone else, reckons upon his vanity in order to decide him to the fencing-match. 'Rapier and dagger' are forced upon weak-willed Hamlet by Osric. [52] How subtle is this satire! For appearance' sake, in order to outshine Laertes, the Prince accepts the challenge. [53] Happiness and life, which he ought long ago to have risked for the purpose of avenging his father and his honour, are now staked from sheer vanity. The 'want of prudence' Hamlet displays in accepting a challenge which he must 'carry out from a (mistaken) feeling of self-respect,' has the 'intolerable' consequence that, shortly before he crosses swords with Laertes, he confesses to Horatio:--'But thou would'st not think how ill all's here about my heart.'

Again, Shakspere, very briefly, but not less pointedly, depicts the way in which Hamlet allows himself to be influenced and driven to a decision. This time the poet does so by bringing in a clearly expressed dogmatic tenet whereby Hamlet's fate is sealed. It is 'ill all about his heart.' He would prefer not going to meet Laertes. [54]

_Horatio_. If your mind dislike anything, obey it. I will forestal their repair hither, and say you are not fit.

The fatalist Hamlet, whom we have seen coming ever closer to the doctrine of Predestination, answers as follows:--

'Not a whit; we defy augury; there is special providence in the fall of a sparrow. [55] If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come; the readiness is all. Since no man has aught of what he leaves, what is't to leave betimes? Let be.'

This time it is a 'Let be!'--even as it was a 'Let it go' when he was sent to England.

Now let us read Montaigne's Essay, [56] 'To Philosophise is to Learn how to Die:'--

'Our religion has had no surer human foundation than the contempt of life. Not only does the course of our reason lead us that way; for, why should we fear to lose a thing which, when lost, cannot be regretted?--but also, seeing that we are threatened by so many kinds of death, is it not a greater inconvenience to fear them all than to endure one? What does it matter when Death comes, since it is inevitable?... Moreover, n.o.body dies before his hour. The time you leave behind was no more yours than that which was before your birth, and concerns you no more.'

No further comment is needed to prove that Hamlet's and Montaigne's thoughts are in so close a connection that it cannot be a mere accident.

And the nearer we come to the conclusion of the drama, the more striking become Shakspere's satirical hits.

Hamlet allows his hand to be put into that of Laertes by the King. He does not think of the wrong he has done to Laertes--of the murder of the latter's father, or the unhappiness he has criminally brought upon Laertes' sister. In most cowardly manner, hoping that Laertes would desist from the combat, Hamlet endeavours to excuse his conduct at the grave of Ophelia, by pleading his own madness. Laertes insists on the combat; adding that he would stand aloof 'till by some elder masters of known honour' the decision were given.

Hamlet avenges the death of his father; he kills the criminal, the enemy, when his wrath is up and aflame, and every muscle of his is swelled with indignation--but it is _too late_. Together with himself, he has dragged them all into the grave. It is blind pa.s.sion, unbridled by reason, which does the deed: a sublime satire upon the words of Montaigne in Essay II. (12), 'that the most beautiful actions of the soul proceed from, and have need of, this impulse of pa.s.sion; valour, they say, cannot become perfect without the help of wrath; and that n.o.body pursues the wicked and the enemies with sufficient energy, except he be thoroughly in anger.'