Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark Part 1

Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.

Written by Mr. William Shakespeare (1736).

by Anonymous.

INTRODUCTION

The ident.i.ty of the "Anonymous" of _Some Remarks on Hamlet Prince of Denmark_ has never been established. The tradition that Hanmer wrote the essay had its highly dubious origin in a single unsupported statement by Sir Henry Bunbury, made over one hundred years after the work was written, in his _Correspondence of Sir Thomas Hanmer, with a Memoir of His Life_ (London, 1838), to the effect that he had reason to believe that Hanmer was the author. The evidence against this bare surmise is such, however, as to compel a.s.sent to Professor Lounsbury's judgment that Hanmer's authorship "is so improbable that it may be called impossible" (_Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist_, 60). I have elsewhere set down reasons for my own belief that Hanmer could have had nothing to do with the composition of the essay, arguing on grounds of ideas, att.i.tudes, style, and other internal evidence ("Thomas Hanmer and the Anonymous Essay on _Hamlet_," _MLN_61 [1934], 493-498). Without going over the case again, I wish here merely to reaffirm my conviction that Hanmer was not the author, and to say that it would seem that the difference in styles and the att.i.tude of Anonymous toward Pope and Theobald are alone convincing proof that Hanmer had no part in the _Remarks_. Hanmer's style is stiff, formal, pedantic; the style of the essay is free, easy, direct, more in the Addison manner. Hanmer was a disciple of Pope's, and in his Preface to his Shakespeare and in his edition as a whole shows allegiance to Pope. Anonymous, on the contrary, decisively, though urbanely, rejects Pope's edition in favor of Theobald's text and notes. The fact that Theobald was at that time still the king of dunces in the _Dunciad_, adds to the improbability that an admirer of Pope's, as Hanmer certainly was, would pay Theobald such honor.

Most careful scholars of our day go no further on the question of authorship than to note that the essay has been "attributed" to Hanmer; some, like Professor Stoll, seem to have dropped the idea that Hanmer was in any way connected with it and safely speak of "the author" or "the anonymous author"; I recall only one case in recent years of an all-out, incautious a.s.signment of the authorship to Hanmer ("Hamlet among the Mechanists," _Shakespeare a.s.sociation Bulletin_ 17 [July, 1942], 138). It would seem advisable to follow Stoll's lead and ignore Hanmer entirely.

The anonymous essay has been of continued interest to students of Shakespeare. Echoes of its ideas if not its words appear in such later critics of the eighteenth century as Gentleman, Steevens, Richardson, and Morgann; in 1790 Malone copied out some two pages of the best of it for publication; and in 1864 the whole was reprinted, a not too usual thing for an obscure eighteenth century pamphlet. Present-day students of Shakespeare, among them D.N. Smith, Lounsbury, Babc.o.c.k, Lawrence, and Stoll have treated the essay with unvarying respect. Remarking that it antic.i.p.ates some of Johnson's arguments, Smith calls it in general a "well-written, interesting book" greatly superior to the anonymous essay on Hamlet of 1752 (_Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare_, xxn).

Lawrence has recently praised a selected pa.s.sage for its "wise words ...

which may be pondered with profit" (Hamlet and Fortinbras, _PMLA_61 [1946], 697). And Stoll, who has obviously read the book with care, has found in one of its statements the very "beginning of historical criticism" (PQ 24 [1945], 291; _Shakespeare Studies_, 212n.), and has elsewhere seen much to commend in it.

Reasons for such attention are not difficult to find; for the _Remarks_ is both intrinsically and historically an important piece of criticism.

It is still worth reading for more than one pa.s.sage of discerning a.n.a.lysis and apt comment on scene, speech, or character, and for certain not unfruitful excursions into the field of general aesthetics; while historically it is a sort of landmark in Shakespearian literature.

Standing chronologically almost midway between Dryden and Johnson, Kames, and Richardson, the _Remarks_ shows decisively the direction in which criticism, under the steadily mounting pressure of liberal, empirical thought, is traveling. This little unpretentious book gathers into itself, either in faint adumbration or in fairly advanced form, the tendencies in method and ideas that are to remake criticism in the eighteenth century. There are reflected here the growing distrust of the "Rules" and the deepening faith in mind as the measure and in imagination as the instrument. There is also added recognition of the integrity of effects as a factor in judging literature.

Anonymous is an earlier member of the School of Taste. He is none-the-less concerned with firm principles by which to justify his acceptances and rejections. His announced over-all rule is conformity to "Reason and Nature"--old words that he uses in the newer way. But he is also handily equipped with a stock of stubbornly conservative principles, reaching at times the status of bias, that serve to hold his taste in balance and effectively check unrestrained admiration.

This conservative side of Anonymous must not pa.s.s unnoticed, for it is the part of him that most closely identifies him with his forebears and so throws his more original, independent side into stronger relief. Our author is, not unexpectedly, an invariable moralist; is throughout a stickler for dignity; is sensitive to absurdities, improprieties, and slips in decorum; will have no truck with tragi-comedy in any of its forms. He hates puns and bombast, demands refinement in speech and restraint in manners. He regards Hamlet's speeches to Ophelia in the Player scene as a violation of propriety, is shocked by the lack of decency in the representation of Ophelia's madness, finds Hamlet's frequent levity and the buffoonery of Polonius alike regrettable --Shakespeare's favorite foible, he feels, is "that of raising a laugh."

The introduction of Fortinbras and his army on the stage is "an Absurdity"; the grave-diggers' scene is "very unbecoming to tragedy"; the satire on the "Children of the Chapel" is not allowable in this kind of piece.

In all these things Anonymous is an upholder of the tradition of true, restrained wit. But unlike some of his contemporaries, he has a formula for discounting faults. "But we should be very cautious in finding Fault with Men of such exalted Genius as our Author certainly was, lest we should blame them when in reality the Fault lies in our own slow Conceptions ..." This is the language of tolerance, a tolerance that can overlook faults for the sake of greater beauties--one of the distinct marks of the new criticism to which the _Remarks_ belongs.

The essay starts out in a boldly challenging tone. Criticism, says the author, has been badly abused: it has been regarded as an excuse for the ill-natured to find fault or for the better-natured to eulogize. But true criticism has for its end "to set in the best light all Beauties, and to touch upon Defects no more than is necessary." Beyond this it seeks to set up a right taste for the age. His own purpose is to examine a great tragedy "according to the Rules of Reason and Nature, without having any regard to those Rules established by arbitrary Dogmatizing Critics ..." More specifically, he proposes to show the why of our pleasure in this piece: "And as to those things which charm by a certain secret Force, and strike us we know not how, or why; I believe it will not be disagreeable, if I shew to everyone the Reason why they are pleas'd ..." This, it need hardly be observed, is all pretty much in the vein of Addison, whom the author extols and whose papers on _Paradise Lost_, he tells us, have furnished a model for the present undertaking. Throughout his criticism Addison had deprecated mere fault-finding and had urged the positive approach of emphasis on beauties. In the last twelve essays on Milton's poem he had shown a new way in critical writing, the way of particular as opposed to general criticism, with the selection of specific details for praise and explication; in his essay on the Imagination he had sought to find a rationale for that kind of criticism: in which a man of true taste, going beyond the mechanical rules, "would enter into the very Spirit and Soul of Fine Writing, and shew us the several Sources of that Pleasure which rises in the Mind upon the Perusal of a n.o.ble Work." With such ideas in mind, Anonymous proceeds to study _Hamlet_, in what is probably the first act-by-act, scene-by-scene a.n.a.lysis of a play in English, according to his understanding of the principles of the "new criticism"

as he finds them ill.u.s.trated in Addison's theory and practice.

Having brushed aside the "fantastick Rules" of the conventional critics, he proceeds to apply his laws of "Reason and Nature" as criteria by which to test the validity of Shakespeare's effects and to discover the cause of these effects. The results he achieves are in part conditioned by his interpretation of his basic terms. Reason and Nature had been invoked by many previous critics; but to Anonymous these words are not what they were to Boileau and Pope. They particularly have nothing, or next to nothing, to do with the Deistic concept of a universal nature of external diversity but of an internal rational and universal order, which art reveals and to which art at its best conforms. To Anonymous, who in this is following the lead of the Hobbian school, the nature that is the norm by which Shakespeare is to be judged is merely human nature, used as Whately, Richardson, and Morgann are to use it later, and as Johnson uses it when he argues that there is an appeal open from custom to nature. Anonymous' interest is in the way the mind works and the way people customarily act. So also when he talks about reason, he is thinking only of what is acceptable to a logical, healthy mind. He has no thought of identifying nature or reason with the traditional Rules or with Homer. On the contrary, he is willing to set both of them quite apart from, or even in opposition to the Rules (with a qualifying concession that they may sometimes meet), and he definitely renounces obligation to show that Shakespeare bears any relation to the ancients whatever, denying at the same time the value of the customary shows of learning in discussing his work. For Shakespeare apparently drew little from the authors of antiquity: "Nature was our great Poet's Mistress; her alone has he followed as his Conductress."

Such a view is emanc.i.p.atory. Free the critic from the idea that nature and the ancients are the same and that reason and the laws ascribed to the ancients are identical, and he is ready to look at modern literature with an independent judgment and to see what it is like and what it is worth in and by itself. Release the critic from the necessity of regarding nature as universal order and reason as the directive of this order, and, whatever the loss in philosophic concept, he is ready for a more specific and particular investigation that turns its attention to basic human behavior and the basic ways of the mind as the criterion by which to judge artistic representation. No need now for quaint parallels with the ancients to justify modern practice, nor for scholarly arguments to prove learning; all that is required is to prove adherence to common nature and common rationality. This is the ground upon which Anonymous stands, and it is the ground upon which Morgann is to stand when he gives us the "Falstaff of Nature," and Johnson when he presents Shakespeare as the dramatist who is "above all modern writers the poet of nature," whose "persons act and speak by the influence of those general pa.s.sions by which all minds are agitated," whose "drama is the mirror of life," in which his readers may find "human sentiments in human language," whose practices are to be judged not by appeal to the rules of criticism, but by reference to the author's design and the great law of nature and reason.

This position opens the way for further advances. Thus, beginning with the a.s.sumption that the mind of the spectator or the reader is the chief arbiter in such matters, Anonymous gives us what is perhaps the most enlightened comment on probability and illusion to be found in the period between Dryden and Coleridge. His test for probability is what the imagination will readily accept; and the imagination, he says, will bear a "strong Imposition." Reason, to be sure, demands that actions and speeches shall be "natural"--but natural within the framework of the situation and character as established by the dramatist on the imaginative level. The author's words on illusion recall the pa.s.sage in Dryden about reason's suffering itself to be "hoodwinked" by imaginative presentation, foreshadow Coleridge's "willing suspension of disbelief,"

and directly suggest Johnson's pa.s.sages on the subject. Experience will show, he says, "that no Dramatick Piece can affect us but by the Delusion of our Imagination; which, to taste true and real Pleasures at such Representations, must undergo a very great Imposition." For example, on our stage all nations speak English, and shock no one; also the actors are recognized as actors and not as the persons represented, and the stage as a stage and not Rome, or Denmark. Without such imposition "farewell all Dramatick Performances."

And then, in continuation of this pre-Johnsonian (and pre-Coleridgean) argument he goes on to say that delusion must be accepted, never, however, in defiance of our reason but with the approval of our reason.

That Shakespeare's plays create delusion with the a.s.sistance of reason is proved by the success they have so long enjoyed. Sublimity of sentiments, exalted diction, and "in short all the Charms of his Poetry, far outweigh any little absurdities in his Plots." He knew how to work up "great and moving Circ.u.mstances in such a Way as to affect our Pa.s.sions strongly." The word used here throughout is _delusion_, but the sense, just as is largely the case with Johnson, is _illusion_--not a demand for such a verisimilitude as will deceive, but for such representation as will lead the imagination to voluntary, pleasurable acceptance.

Likewise, when Anonymous considers unity his emphasis, like Johnson's and Hurd's, is no longer on the mechanical unities but on unity of design. "When Shakespeare's plan is understood most of the criticisms of Rymer and Voltaire vanish away," Johnson was to write some thirty years later. Anonymous holds steadily for the integrity of Shakespeare's plan in Hamlet. Of Act I, iii he says, "Concerning the Design of this scene, we shall find it is necessary towards the whole plot of the Play"; he speaks of I, iv as an "important Scene, on which turns the Whole Play"; the killing of Polonious, he explains, "was in Conformity to the Plan _Shakespeare_ built his Play upon"; and finally, of the piece as a whole, he a.s.serts that "there is not one Scene but what some way or other conduces toward the _Denoument_ of the Whole; and thus the Unity of Action is indisputably kept up by everything tending to what we may call the main Design, and it all hangs by Consequence so close together, that no Scene can be omitted, without Prejudice to the Whole." When one recalls that the idea of unity of design as evolved in Thomas Warton, Hurd, and Johnson was the intermediate step on the way to a full theory of organic unity we see the importance of such pa.s.sages in the forward march of criticism.

There is in the _Remarks_ a closer examination of event and character than is usual in the period, again in the light of what it reasonable and natural. The includes some "psychologizing" of persons in the play, specifically in partial a.n.a.lyses of Laertes, Polonious, and Hamlet, enough to foreshadow the later vogue but none of it very remarkable.

More worthy of notice is the author's use of a psychological method that is to reappear in developed form in Coleridge: that is, a study of successive scenes leading to a climactic moment--in this case Hamlet's meeting with the ghost--for evidence of a skillful working up through right preparatory touches to a point where the audience, in the words of Anonymous, "are forced ... entirely to suspend their most fixed Opinions and believe ..." This may have been done before in criticism; but if so I do not myself recall it.

I should like, also, to risk the suggestion that to the author of _Some Remarks_ should go the honor of the earliest adumbration of the "Hamlet problem." For here, before Francis Gentleman or Steevens or Richardson, Anonymous has raised the tantalising question of the why of Hamlet's conduct, the problem of his delay in effecting his revenge, and has glanced at an answer. Anonymous in no wise approves of Hamlet's madness: it was, he thinks, the best possible way to thwart his design of revenge and it was carried on with unseemly lack of dignity. Shakespeare has followed his sources too closely, with bad results. There appears "no Reason at all in Nature, why the young prince did not put the Usurper to Death as soon as possible." To be sure this would have ended the play; the poet must therefore delay the hero's revenge. But, insists Anonymous, "then he should have contrived some good Reason for it." This is clearly recognition of the vexing problem that has since occupied the attention of unnumbered critics--if not in full statement, at least in its essentials.

Such examples suggest the seminal quality of the best of this little book. The writer was obviously a man who read closely and reflected to good effect on what he read, with the result that he saw new things and helped open new problems and point the way to a generally more fruitful study of his author. Because of this and its prevailing sound critical qualities the anonymous essay ranks with the more important Shakespearian doc.u.ments of the century. The editors of the _Augustan_ Reprints are to be commended for their decision to give it a place in their valuable series. A critical work which is so viable, which has so many points of contact with other good Shakespearian criticism, and which is in itself so stimulating in approach and specific idea deserves the added accessibility which such publication permits.

University of Michigan Clarence D. Thorpe

Reprinted from the British Museum copy by permission of The Trustees of the British Museum.

_There is hardly any Thing which has been more abus'd than the Art of Criticism; it has been turned to so many bad Purposes among us, that the very Word it self has almost totally lost its genuine and natural Signification; for People generally understand by Criticism, finding fault with a Work; and from thence, when we call a Man a Critick, we usually mean, one disposed to blame, and seldom to commend. Whereas in Truth, a real Critick, in the proper Sense of that Word, is one whose constant Endeavour it is to set in the best Light all Beauties, and to touch upon Defects no more than is necessary; to point out how such may be avoided for the future, and to settle, if possible, a right Taste among those of the Age in which he lives.

Ill-nature, and a Propensity to set any Work in a ridiculous and false Light, are so far from being the Characteristicks of a true Critick, that they are the certain Marks whereby we may know that a Man has not the true Spirit of Criticism in him.

There is a Weakness opposite to this, which indeed is better natur'd, but is, however, vicious; and that is, the being bigotted to an Author; insomuch that Men of this Stamp, when they undertake to explain or comment upon any Writer, they will not allow him to have any Defects; nay, so far from that, they find out Beauties in him which can be so to none but themselves, and give Turns to his Expressions, and lend him Thoughts which were never his Design, or never enter'd into his Brain.

Of all our Countrymen, Mr._ Addison _is the best in Criticism, the most exempt from the Faults I mention; for his Papers upon_ Milton's Paradise Lost, _I look upon as the true Model for all Criticks to follow. In those we see the Beauties and Faults of that great Poet weigh'd in the most exact and impartial Scales.

Those excellent Papers first gave me an Idea of publishing the following Sheets. Happy! if I can but any ways follow such a Guide, though at ever so great a Distance; since I am well persuaded, that by this Means I can never be totally in Error, tho' I may sometimes deviate for want of proper Abilities!

Criticism in general, is what few of our Countrymen have succeeded in: In that respect, our Neighbours have got the better of us; altho' we can justly boast of the compleatest Essay on that Subject that has been publish'd in any Language, in which almost every Line, and every Word, convey such Images, and such Beauties, as were never before found in so small a Compa.s.s, and of whose Author it may properly be said, in that respect,_

He is himself that great Sublime he draws.

_I would not have the Reader imagine, that I believe I have pointed out all the Excellencies in this Tragedy; I am not so vain as to think so.

Besides, these Papers are too few to contain them; and I have so little of Presumption in me, that I did not think it reasonable to put my Readers to a greater Expence, by enlarging on the Subject, until I find that they themselves are not averse to it._

_This is all I have to say at present; whatever else is necessary to premise, will be found in the Introduction to the Remarks, to which I refer._

SOME REMARKS ON THE TRAGEDY OF

_Hamlet_ Prince of _Denmark_.

I am going to do what to some may appear extravagant, but by those of a true Taste in Works of Genius will be approv'd of. I intend to examine one of the Pieces of the greatest Tragick Writer that ever liv'd, (except _Sophocles_ and _Euripides_,) according to the Rules of Reason and Nature, without having any regard to those Rules established by Arbitrary Dogmatising Criticks, only as they can be brought to bear that Test.

Among the many Parts of this great Poet's Character, so often given by some of our best Writers, I shall particularly dwell upon those which they have the least insisted on, which will, however, put every Thing he has produc'd in its true and proper Light.

He had (beyond Dispute) a most unbounded Genius, very little regulated by Art.

His particular Excellency consists in the Variety and Singularity of his Characters, and in the constant Conformity of each Character to it self from its very first setting out in the Play, quite to the End. And still further, no Poet ever came up to him, in the n.o.bleness and Sublimity of Thought, so frequent in his Tragedies, and all express'd with the most Energick Comprehensiveness of Diction.

And it must moreover be observed, as to his Characters, that although there are some entirely of his own Invention, and such as none but so great a Genius could invent; yet he is so remarkably happy in following of Nature, that (if I may so express it) he does it even in Characters which are not in Nature. To clear up this Paradox, my Meaning is, that if we can but once suppose such Characters to exist, then we must allow they must think and act exactly as he has described them.

This is but a short Sketch of the main Part of _Shakespeare's_ particular Excellencies; the others will be taken Notice of in the Progress of my Remarks. And if I am so happy as to point out some Beauties not yet discovered, or at least not put in the Light they ought to be, I hope I shall deserve my Reader's Thanks, who will thereby, I imagine, receive that Pleasure which I have always done upon any new Discovery of this sort, whether made by my own Labour, or by the Penetration of others: And as to those Things which charm by a certain secret Force, and strike us we know not how, or why; I believe it will not be disagreeable, if I shew to every one the Reason why they are pleas'd, and by that Confederation they will be capacitated to discover still more and more Charms in the Works of this great Poet, and thereby increase their Pleasure without End.

I do not pretend, in Publishing these Remarks of mine, to arrogate any Superiority of Genius; but I think every one should contribute to the Improvement of some Branch or other of Literature in this Country of ours, and thus furnish out his Share towards the Bettering of the Minds of his Countrymen, by affording some Honest Amus.e.m.e.nts, which can entertain a Man, and help to refine his Taste, and improve his Understanding, and no Ways at the Expence of his Honesty and Virtue. In the Course of these Remarks, I shall make use of the Edition of this Poet, given us by Mr. _Theobalds_, because he is generally thought to have understood our Author best, and certainly deserves the Applause of all his Countrymen for the great Pains he has been at to give us the best Edition of this Poet, which has yet appear'd. I would not have Mr.

_Pope_ offended at what I say, for I look upon him as the greatest Genius in Poetry that has ever appear'd in _England_: But the Province of an Editor and a Commentator is quite foreign to that of a Poet. The former endeavours to give us an Author as he is; the latter, by the Correctness and Excellency of his own Genius, is often tempted to give us an Author as he thinks he ought to be.