The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark Part 34

[Footnote 3: --by way of intercession.]

[Footnote 4: Note the entire change of mood from that of the last soliloquy. The right understanding of this soliloquy is indispensable to the right understanding of Hamlet. But we are terribly trammelled and hindered, as in the understanding of Hamlet throughout, so here in the understanding of his meditation, by traditional a.s.sumption. I was roused to think in the right direction concerning it, by the honoured friend and relative to whom I have feebly acknowledged my obligation by dedicating to him this book. I could not at first see it as he saw it: 'Think about it, and you will,' he said. I did think, and by degrees--not very quickly--my prejudgments thinned, faded, and almost vanished. I trust I see it now as a whole, and in its true relations, internal and external--its relations to itself, to the play, and to the Hamlet, of Shakspere.

Neither in its first verse, then, nor in it anywhere else, do I find even an allusion to suicide. What Hamlet is referring to in the said first verse, it is not possible with certainty to determine, for it is but the vanishing ripple of a preceding ocean of thought, from which he is just stepping out upon the sh.o.r.e of the articulate. He may have been plunged in some profound depth of the metaphysics of existence, or he may have been occupied with the one practical question, that of the slaying of his uncle, which has, now in one form, now in another, haunted his spirit for weeks. Perhaps, from the message he has just received, he expects to meet the king, and conscience, confronting temptation, has been urging the necessity of proof; perhaps a righteous consideration of consequences, which sometimes have share in the primary duty, has been making him shrink afresh from the shedding of blood, for every thoughtful mind recoils from the irrevocable, and that is an awful form of the irrevocable. But whatever thought, general or special, this first verse may be dismissing, we come at once thereafter into the light of a definite question: 'Which is n.o.bler--to endure evil fortune, or to oppose it _a outrance_; to bear in pa.s.sivity, or to resist where resistance is hopeless--resist to the last--to the death which is its unavoidable end?'

Then comes a pause, during which he is thinking--we will not say 'too precisely on the event,' but taking his account with consequences: the result appears in the uttered conviction that the extreme possible consequence, death, is a good and not an evil. Throughout, observe, how here, as always, he generalizes, himself being to himself but the type of his race.

Then follows another pause, during which he seems prosecuting the thought, for he has already commenced further remark in similar strain, when suddenly a new and awful element introduces itself:

....To die--to sleep.-- --To _sleep_! perchance to _dream_!

He had been thinking of death only as the pa.s.sing away of the present with its troubles; here comes the recollection that death has its own troubles--its own thoughts, its own consciousness: if it be a sleep, it has its dreams. '_What dreams may come_' means, 'the sort of dreams that may come'; the emphasis is on the _what_, not on the _may_; there is no question whether dreams will come, but there is question of the character of the dreams. This consideration is what makes calamity so long-lived! 'For who would bear the multiform ills of life'--he alludes to his own wrongs, but mingles, in his generalizing way, others of those most common to humanity, and refers to the special cure for some of his own which was close to his hand--'who would bear these things if he could, as I can, make his quietus with a bare bodkin'--that is, by slaying his enemy--'who would then bear them, but that he fears the future, and the divine judgment upon his life and actions--that conscience makes a coward of him!'[14]

To run, not the risk of death, but the risks that attend upon and follow death, Hamlet must be certain of what he is about; he must be sure it is a right thing he does, or he will leave it undone. Compare his speech, 250, 'Does it not, &c.':--by the time he speaks this speech, he has had perfect proof, and a.s.serts the righteousness of taking vengeance in almost an agony of appeal to Horatio.

The more continuous and the more formally logical a soliloquy, the less natural it is. The logic should be all there, but latent; the bones of it should not show: they do not show here.]

[Footnote 5: _One_ 'well' _only in Q._]

[Footnote 6: He does not want to take them back, and so sever even that weak bond between them. He has not given her up.]

[Footnote 7: The _Q._ reading seems best. The perfume of his gifts was the sweet words with which they were given; those words having lost their savour, the mere gifts were worth nothing.]

[Footnote 8: Released from the commands her father had laid upon her, and emboldened by the queen's approval of more than the old relation between them, she would timidly draw Hamlet back to the past--to love and a sound mind.]

[Footnote 9: I do not here suppose a noise or movement of the arras, or think that the talk from this point bears the mark of the madness he would have a.s.sumed on the least suspicion of espial. His distrust of Ophelia comes from a far deeper source--suspicion of all women, grown doubtful to him through his mother. Hopeless for her, he would give his life to know that Ophelia was not like her. Hence the cruel things he says to her here and elsewhere; they are the brood of a heart haunted with horrible, alas! too excusable phantoms of distrust. A man wretched as Hamlet must be forgiven for being rude; it is love suppressed, love that can neither breathe nor burn, that makes him rude. His horrid insinuations are a hungry challenge to indignant rejection. He would sting Ophelia to defence of herself and her s.e.x. But, either from her love, or from gentleness to his supposed madness, as afterwards in the play-scene, or from the poverty and weakness of a nature so fathered and so brothered, she hears, and says nothing. 139.]

[Footnote 10: Honesty is here figured as a porter,--just after, as a porter that may be corrupted.]

[Footnote 11: If the _Folio_ reading is right, _commerce_ means _companionship_; if the _Quarto_ reading, then it means _intercourse_.

Note _then_ constantly for our _than_.]

[Footnote 12: I imagine Ophelia here giving Hamlet a loving look--which hardens him. But I do not think she lays emphasis on _your_; the word is here, I take it, used (as so often then) impersonally.]

[Footnote 13: '--proof in you and me: _I_ loved _you_ once, but my honesty did not translate your beauty into its likeness.']

[Footnote 14: That the Great Judgement was here in Shakspere's thought, will be plain to those who take light from the corresponding pa.s.sage in the _1st Quarto_. As it makes an excellent specimen of that issue in the character I am most inclined to attribute to it--that of original sketch and continuous line of notes, with more or less finished pa.s.sages in place among the notes--I will here quote it, recommending it to my student's attention. If it be what I suggest, it is clear that Shakspere had not at first altogether determined how he would carry the soliloquy--what line he was going to follow in it: here hope and fear contend for the place of motive to patience. The changes from it in the text are well worth noting: the religion is lessened: the hope disappears: were they too much of pearls to cast before 'barren spectators'? The ma.n.u.script could never have been meant for any eye but his own, seeing it was possible to print from it such a chaos--over which yet broods the presence of the formative spirit of the Poet.

_Ham._ To be, or not to be, I there's the point, To Die, to sleepe, is that all? I all: No, to sleepe, to dreame, I mary there it goes, For in that dreame of death, when wee awake, [Sidenote: 24, 247, 260] And borne before an euerlasting Iudge, From whence no pa.s.senger euer retur'nd, The vndiscouered country, at whose sight The happy smile, and the accursed d.a.m.n'd.

But for this, the ioyfull hope of this, Whol'd beare the scornes and flattery of the world, Scorned by the right rich, the rich curssed of the poore?

The widow being oppressed, the orphan wrong'd, The taste of hunger, or a tirants raigne, And thousand more calamities besides, To grunt and sweate vnder this weary life, When that he may his full _Quietus_ make, With a bare bodkin, who would this indure, But for a hope of something after death?

Which pulses the braine, and doth confound the sence, Which makes vs rather beare those euilles we haue, Than flie to others that we know not of.

I that, O this conscience makes cowardes of vs all, Lady in thy orizons, be all my sinnes remembred.]

[Page 126]

_Ham._ You should not haue beleeued me. For vertue cannot so innocculate[1] our old stocke,[2] but we shall rellish of it.[3] I loued you not.[4]

_Ophe._ I was the more deceiued.

_Ham._ Get thee to a Nunnerie. Why would'st [Sidenote: thee a]

thou be a breeder of Sinners? I am my selfe indifferent[5]

[Sidenote: 132] honest, but yet I could accuse me of such things,[6] that it were better my Mother had [Sidenote: 62] not borne me,[7] I am very prowd, reuengefull, Ambitious, with more offences at my becke, then I haue thoughts to put them in imagination, to giue them shape, or time to acte them in. What should such Fellowes as I do, crawling betweene Heauen [Sidenote: earth and heauen]

and Earth.[8] We are arrant Knaues all[10], beleeue none of vs.[9] Goe thy wayes to a Nunnery.

Where's your Father?[11]

_Ophe._ At home, my Lord.[12]

_Ham._ Let the doores be shut vpon him, that he may play the Foole no way, but in's owne house.[13]

[Sidenote: no where but]

Farewell.[14]

_Ophe._ O helpe him, you sweet Heauens.

_Ham._[15] If thou doest Marry, Ile giue thee this Plague for thy Dowrie. Be thou as chast as Ice, as pure as Snow, thou shalt not escape Calumny.[16]

Get thee to a Nunnery. Go,[17] Farewell.[18] Or if thou wilt needs Marry, marry a fool: for Wise men know well enough, what monsters[19] you make of them. To a Nunnery go, and quickly too. Farwell.[20]

_Ophe._ O[21] heauenly Powers, restore him.

_Ham._[22] I haue heard of your pratlings[23] too wel [Sidenote: your paintings well]

enough. G.o.d has giuen you one pace,[23] and you [Sidenote: hath one face,]

make your selfe another: you gidge, you amble, [Sidenote: selfes you gig and amble, and]

and you lispe, and nickname G.o.ds creatures, and [Sidenote: you list you nickname]

make your Wantonnesse, your[24] Ignorance.[25] Go

[Footnote 1: 'inoculate'--_bud_, in the horticultural use.]

[Footnote 2: _trunk_ or _stem_ of the family tree.]

[Footnote 3: Emphasis on _relish_--'keep something of the old flavour of the stock.']

[Footnote 4: He tries her now with denying his love--perhaps moved in part by a feeling, taught by his mother's, of how imperfect it was.]

[Footnote 5: tolerably.]

[Footnote 6: He turns from baiting woman in her to condemn himself. Is it not the case with every n.o.ble nature, that the knowledge of wrong in another arouses in it the consciousness of its own faults and sins, of its own evil possibilities? Hurled from the heights of ideal humanity, Hamlet not only recognizes in himself every evil tendency of his race, but almost feels himself individually guilty of every transgression.

'G.o.d, G.o.d, forgive us all!' exclaims the doctor who has just witnessed the misery of Lady Macbeth, unveiling her guilt.

This whole speech of Hamlet is profoundly sane--looking therefore altogether insane to the shallow mind, on which the impression of its insanity is deepened by its coming from him so freely. The common nature disappointed rails at humanity; Hamlet, his earthly ideal destroyed, would tear his individual human self to pieces.]

[Footnote 7: This we may suppose uttered with an expression as startling to Ophelia as impenetrable.]

[Footnote 8: He is disgusted with himself, with his own nature and consciousness--]

[Footnote 9: --and this reacts on his kind.]

[Footnote 10: 'all' _not in Q._]

[Footnote 11: Here, perhaps, he grows suspicious--asks himself why he is allowed this prolonged _tete a tete_.]