Words which would indeed have been a mockery if spoken over the grave of Hamlet's concubine, and none the less a mockery, with due respect to Dr. Gervinus, if spoken over the body of one whose 'imagination had been infected with sensual images,' or whose modesty had been tainted with 'amorous passion.'

There is another circumstance which renders the theory that Hamlet had seduced Ophelia quite untenable. Neither Claudius nor Laertes in any way hint at the possibility of such a thing; but surely if this very strong ground of quarrel with Hamlet existed, Laertes would gladly have availed himself of such a fair justification of any vengeance he might choose to exact; and Claudius would not have failed to use such a powerful means of exasperating the anger of Laertes against Hamlet, if there had been the shadow of a suspicion that Ophelia had been dishonoured by the young prince. But however harsh or even cruel Hamlet's words to Ophelia may seem to us, and might have seemed to Claudius and her father, who overheard them, there was no doubt that he had never offered any real insult to her honour. The relations between them had been broken off by the positive commands of Polonius himself, and Laertes had, as we have seen, warned Ophelia against an intimacy which might end for her in disgrace; we cannot therefore conceive that any delicacy, or scruple as to the honour of his family, would have restrained Laertes from making the very most of any conduct on the part of Hamlet which might have sufficed to justify his, or his father's, warning to Ophelia. Nothing would have been so likely to alienate the sympathies of the people from Hamlet, as a plausible story to the effect that he had first seduced the daughter and then killed the father in a quarrel. But little as Claudius respected the truth, or readily as the chivalrous Laertes lent himself to an act of the blackest treachery, they both knew that such an accusation against Hamlet would never have been entertained by those who were at all acquainted with his character.

With regard to the criticisms on Ophelia which I have quoted above, I may remark that Gervinus, of his own individual self, seems to incline to a very just view of the relations between Hamlet and Ophelia. With the first part of his remarks no one could quarrel; but, unfortunately, he seems suddenly to have fallen under the spell of Goethe's enervating sensualism, and the result is the passage on which I have already commented. That Hamlet 'abandons' Ophelia to despair and insanity cannot fairly be said; Gervinus has fallen into this mistake through failing to observe the interval which elapses between Scene 4 and Scene 5 of Act IV.

"His conversation with her is equivocal, and not as Romeo, Bassanio, or even Proteus have spoken with their beloved ones. This seems to me a very grave misrepresentation. Shakespeare has not given us any of Hamlet's conversation with Ophelia before he assumed madness; we may only surmise from the first words he

speaks to her (Act III., Scene 1, lines 89-90) that, had his suspicions of being watched by the King not been excited, he would have talked to her with modesty and tender reverence. To judge of his usual conversation with her by the specimens we have in the Play Scene would be absurd; for there he is evidently exaggerating the insanity which he was avowedly counterfeiting. Ophelia's description of Hamlet's demeanour towards her (Act I., Scene 3) justifies us in supposing that he might compare favourably with Romeo and Bassanio as far as purity of heart goes; while to talk of him in the same breath as of that abject liar and traitor, Proteus, is an insult. In any case it would be gross injustice to attempt to infect Ophelia's nature with the coarse indecencies which Hamlet utters in his assumed character of a bitter-tongued madman. It would be more to the point to compare her language when sane with that of Juliet, Portia, and Julia; I do not think her purity would be dimmed by such a comparison.

With regard to Goethe's conceptions of Ophelia, it is to me one of the most unpleasant features in a work which is the most utterly disappointing I have ever read; and which I humbly venture to assert has been endowed with an exaggerated amount of merit by enthusiastic critics. “Wilhelm Meister" is a work written by one advanced in years, in which we find all the cynicism and selfishness of old age coupled with an amount of animal passion which youth alone could excuse. The gem of the work, Mignon, is marred by

the intrusion of the same element with which Goethe seeks to taint Ophelia's character, and the grateful, loving, child dies in a paroxysm of sensual desire. But this is not the place for a criticism of "Wilhelm Meister." Few who have carefully read that work will deny that there runs through it a strong flavour of sensuousness if not of sensuality.

Let us examine the description of Ophelia which I have extracted. "Her whole existence flows in sweet and ripe sensation." This seems to be the description of a juicy peach.

"Decorum, like the thin crape upon her bosom, cannot conceal the motions of her heart, but on the contrary, it betrays them." Here we have the key to the mystery. To Goethe's eyes Ophelia presented herself as a voluptuous girl, with richly-moulded form, the charms of which (for the benefit of elderly gentlemen with an eye for beauty) she was by no means chary of revealing. Her moral nature suited admirably with her physical. "Her imagination is engaged, her silent modesty breathes a sweet desire, and if the convenient goddess Opportunity should shake the tree, the fruit would quickly fall." That is to say, she was only chaste, because she had not been tempted to be otherwise.

It is quite consistent with this luscious conception of Goethe's that she should try to lull her excited appetites to rest with indecent ballads. But I should very much like to know what justification Goethe would have offered for this passage: "Have we not an inti

mation from the very beginning of the play of the subject with which the thoughts of the maiden are engaged? She pursues her course in silent secrecy, but without being able wholly to conceal her wishes and her longings." I maintain that we have no such intimation; on the contrary, that every word Ophelia utters shows that she was a gem of modesty, who worshipped, with the purest and most unsensual love, a young prince of great intellect, refined accomplishments, and such a nobleness cf character as might well attract something more than the animal desire of a less virtuous girl than Ophelia. I have no doubt Goethe's description may seem very poetical, not to say delicious, especially to those who are accustomed to look upon every maiden as chaste only by compulsion; but an Englishman, in whose ears Milton's glorious description of Chastity, the Queen of Virtues, is still ringing, may be excused for thanking Heaven that Shakespeare's Ophelia was not Goethe's.

One more passage, and I leave a question which it is painful to be compelled to argue. This is Goethe's description of Ophelia in her madness. "But at length when all self-control is at an end, and the secrets of her heart appear upon her tongue, that tongue betrays her, and in the innocence of her madness, even in the presence of royalty, she takes delight in the echo of her loose but dearlyloved songs of 'The Maiden whose Heart was Won,' 'The Maid who stole to meet the Youth,' and so forth." I think the idea, expressed by the sentence which I have underlined, passes all other instances I know of what some might call by a harsher name, but which may be more politely described as theinstincts of courtierdom. Conceive the wretched, distracted maid that Shakespeare has represented, pausing to think whether she was in the august presence of royalty or not!

It matters little after this touch that the next sentence gives the

*The passage runs thus in Carlyle's translation :—

"But at last, when her self-command is altogether gone, when the secrets of her, heart are hovering on her tongue, that tongue betrays her, and in the innocence of insanity, she solaces herself, unmindful of king or queen, with the echo of her loose and well-beloved song, To-morrow is Saint Valentine's Day, and By Gis and by Saint Charity." The titles given here are certainly recognisable as lines occurring in the songs in question, but those given in Mr. Boylan's translation fairly puzzled me, until I turned to the original and found that they were literal translations of the lines given by Goethe-" Vom Mädchen das gewonnen ward, vom Mädchen das zum Knaben schleicht, und so weiter." I suppose Goethe evolved these ballads from his inner consciousness.

It

+ Carlyle's translation is the more correct. The words in the original are-" Und in der Unschuld des Wahnsinns ergetzt sie sich vor König und Königin an dem Nachklange ihrer geliebten losen lieder, &c." I hope I have not stretched these words beyond their legitimate meaning. certainly seems to me that they may fairly be made to bear the construction put upon them; and that the omission of the article before ‘König' and Königin' shows that Goethe intended to mark the fact that Ophelia enjoyed the echo of her loose songs before Claudius and Gertrude, not as individuals, but as King and Queen-a circumstance which Ophelia, in her condition, could not be expected to regard.

very false impression that Ophelia sang more than one indecent song in her madness, and that she did so with evident enjoyment. Such a distortion of what Shakespeare has written is on a piece with the whole libel on Ophelia, so lamentable as coming from a writer who was one of the first to grasp the inner meaning of Hamlet's character.

THE first words of this soliloquy, "Now I am alone," sometimes omitted on the stage, give the key to the interpretation of this outburst for such it is—and therefore a complete contrast to that passionate piece of calm, reflective self-communing on the question of suicide, which comes in the next Act.*

It is a well-known fact that in the Quarto of 1603 this soliloquy occurs after, and not before, the one beginning "To be, or not to be," which (together with the scene between Hamlet and Ophelia) is placed in that edition before his scene with Polonius, and that with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern-in fact, the first words that Hamlet speaks after his interview with the Ghost are, "To be, or not to be." Some people prefer this arrangement, because they consider that it lends greater force to Hamlet's self-communings on the subject of suicide. Ernesto Rossi, the Italian actor, omits this soliloquy, "O, what a rogue, &c.," altogether, and substitutes for it; "To be, or not to be." This appears to me quite indefensible. Other representatives of Hamlet omit or mutilate this soliloquy; but whether they do it from modesty or presumption I cannot take upon me to decide.

Hamlet had longed to be alone from the moment that the strong emotion of the player, while reciting the speech about Hecuba, awoke in his conscience the pangs of self-reproach for the remissness which he had shown in fulfilling the solemn duty imposed on him, and suggested to him the idea of taking an important step towards the fulfilment of that duty. By a supernatural visitation he had been informed of his uncle's guilt, and directed to punish him; now he saw his way to obtaining a material proof of that guilt, which would make the punishment a task less repugnant to his over-scrupulous conscience. He wanted to be alone that he might give way to his self-reproach, and might at the same time arrange the plan which had occurred to him. For the moment he becomes a man of action; with few words he dismisses the

* I have referred to this contrast again in the text, page 39.

players, the tedious old courtier, and the two double-faced friends of whose insincerity he has convinced himself. It is with an enormous sense of relief that he exclaims

The next words

Now I am alone.

O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I !

should not, it seems to me, be spoken with calm self-contempt, but with a bitterness almost furious. Hamlet, as a prince and a man of courage and honesty, uses the most injurious expressions that he can find with which to reproach his own apathy and indolence. In speaking to himself of his own faults he spares no term, however opprobrious; and the indignation he feels against his own defects is too real to be uttered with anything but the most impassioned vehemence. As he recalls the emotion of the player, emphasising and amplifying every detail, his indignation gathers force; till it culminates in the eloquent contrast which he draws between the fictitious wrong which excited such emotion in the player, and the terribly real injury which failed to rouse himself, the son of a murdered father, and that father a king, to any action or even to any expression of indignation.

I have pointed out in the text how Hamlet virtually refutes himself; it is sufficient to remark here that the actor should not be deterred by the paltry fear of an anti-climax from abandoning himself thoroughly to the passion of the speech up to the words

O, vengeance!

at which point Hamlet's better sense triumphs, and he regains his self-command.

The expression

About, my brain !

has been commented on by Gervinus* and others, who point out that we should naturally expect "About my hands," or "arm." But I do not think it is really so significant of Hamlet's averseness to action as at first sight it appears; it is by an exertion of his brain, not of his arm, that he hopes to entrap Claudius into a virtual confession of his guilt. It seems to me that Shakespeare intended here to represent Hamlet as having been so transported by passion, that a few moments' rest was necessary before the effects of the excitement would allow of his mind resuming the idea which had been suggested to him during the actor's speech. The word "Hum” which we find in the text, seems to prove this. The actor might pause here, as if, for a moment, he had lost the clue to the plan which the next lines develope. So far from weakening the effect

See foot-note, page 75.