him and his victims, his conscience sees but dimly at such a distance? Some powerful associations with his uncle, dating back, perhaps, to a happy childhood, must have exercised an influence-none the less strong because he would not acknowledge it to himself-over Hamlet's mind. The very pains he takes to add fuel to his hate show that he knew how difficult it was to keep the fire burning. But I must return to the main point in question; I mean to what extent can we admit Hamlet's narrative as a justification of his conduct towards Rosencrantz and Guildenstern? The malignant misrepresentation of Hamlet's character, for which Steevens is responsible, has drawn forth many able and indignant vindications of Shakespeare's favourite hero; but while unable to agree with any of Steevens' deductions, I must confess that he seems right in refusing to judge Hamlet by any other evidence than that afforded by the tragedy itself. If we were to admit any circumstances, found only in the original story of Saxo Grammaticus, as exculpating the dramatist from any blemishes in the delineation of his characters, we could not in justice decline to hold him responsible for other circumstances, derived from the same source, which might tell against him; and thus we should be led into all kinds of errors, and should be utterly unable to form any true estimate of Shakespeare's work. It is useless to deny that in the play of "Hamlet" there is not one line which can be fairly said to prove that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern knew what were the contents of the packet committed to their care. Hamlet himself does not say they knew it; he expresses his distrust of them in the strongest language to his mother (see Act III., Scene 4, lines 202 to 210 inclusive), but all that he says to Horatio now is—Why, man, they did make love to this employment; their defeat Does by their Own insinuation grow: and he seems to justify the terrible punishment he had inflicted on them by the very fact that their conduct throughout had been so underhand, and so cunningly false to him as their friend and prince, that although their treachery was undoubted, they had not been openly guilty of any design against his life. Hamlet declares They are not near my conscience; because he considered that by laying themselves out to serve the King's ends from the very first moment they arrived at Court; by their lack of frankness towards him, their old schoolfellow, at their first meeting; by their steadily blinding their eyes to the state of affairs at Court, and by denying to the griefs of their friend any sympathy; by readily accepting the theory of his madness without trying to account for his melancholy and retirement from Court in any other manner; by accepting an embassy which their own common sense must have told them could not mean any good to Hamlet, they had been so false to the duties of friendship and to the honour of gentlemen, that they deserved the death of traitors. It must be remembered that in Hamlet's character Shakespeare intended to protest against conventionality of all kinds. As to what the world might think right or wrong, Hamlet cared little public opinion might justify the usurpation and marriage of Claudius; respectable members of the Court might overlook the indecent haste with which that marriage, really incestuous, was concluded; worthy men of the world might hold it honourable as well as expedient to do the bidding of such a man as Claudius, seeing he was a king; these two well-behaved young gentlemen, who passed for his two most intimate friends, might wonder why Hamlet was so odd and so out of spirits, might choose to forget how he loved his father, might assume that he acquiesced in the dishonour of his mother and in his own disinheritance; others might see nothing to blame in their conduct; but this brave, accomplished, eccentric prince was unlike others in this, that he judged conduct by a higher standard than that of courts, or of the fashionable world; he loved good for its own sake, not for what could be got by it; and in his indignation at the despicable weakness of these two courtiers, in the scorn which he felt for their time-serving cowardice, he allowed himself to be hurried into the commission of an act of cruelty, because, at the time, it wore an appearance of an exquisitely ironical punishment. It is possible that Shakespeare meant to mark, as strongly as he could, the hatred of a noble, honest nature for that complicity in crime which is the result of wilful blindness and self-interested negligence. The lesson is one which in this age we may all take to heart; and while we shrink from the cruelty which is inseparable from all acts of vengeance, while we are pained to see the treachery of Claudius retorted on his agents with such terrible exactness, we cannot help feeling how dangerous it is to side with evil against good, however high the wages; to shut our eyes to the truth, however unpleasant; to do wrong because the world cries out loudly it is right, and drowns the voice of conscience in the roar of its applause. The next scene we come to (Act IV., Scene 4), following the regular order of the play, is one which has been omitted almost invariably on the stage. I find that Betterton certainly never attempted it.* Whether his predecessors did we do not know; but the majority of his successors have followed his example. There are, I admit, grave reasons for its omission, though no great actor can study the part of Hamlet without longing to deliver the grand and characteristic soliloquy which it contains. In the first place, the scene is very awkwardly placed as regards time; it comes in the middle of an act, although it is evident that some considerable interval of time must elapse between this and the following scene. In the second place, the soliloquy makes a very serious demand on the strength of the actor at a time when the most powerful of Hamlets must feel the need of rest; but I cannot help thinking that the latter objection would have been oftener overcome had the speech been of a more effective" nature from the actor's point of view. Another difficulty is that the scene necessitates the introduction of Fortinbras, who has been mercilessly suppressed in all recent acting editions of the play. The omission of the soliloquy, which seems to me absolutely necessary to the perfect comprehension and appreciation of Hamlet's character, is so much to be deplored, that I would advise the restoration of this scene even at the risk of ending the fourth act here, and of so adding another act to the conventional five, into which, by a most arbitrary system, all tragedies are divided. The subdivision of long acts in operas is constantly practised with great advantage to the audience and to the actors: I confess I cannot see why such a convenient practice should not be extended to the dramatic works of Shakespeare. Hamlet, accompanied by Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, is on his way to the ship which is to bear him to England, there to die by the foulest treachery, of which he has strong suspicions but no certain knowledge. On his way to the place of embarkation he encounters the soldiers of Fortinbras on their march through the dominions of his uncle to the "little patch of ground" which it is their object to conquer from the Poles. Hamlet thus questions a Captain whom Fortinbras has despatched on an embassy to Claudius: HAM. Good sir, whose powers are these? CAP. They are of Norway, sir. HAM. How purposed, sir, I pray you? * See Additional Notes, No. 9. HAM. Who commands them, sir? CAP. The nephew to old Norway, Fortinbras.* CAP. Truly to speak, and with no addition, To pay five ducats, five, I would not farm it; A ranker rate, should it be sold in fee. HAM. Why, then the Polack never will defend it. HAM. Two thousand souls and twenty thousand ducats This is the imposthume of much wealth and peace, CAP. God be wi' you, sir. Ros. [Exit. I think this scene is devised with the most admirable art. Hamlet is here brought into contact with an extravagant instance of that capacity for action in which he is so painfully deficient as before, in the case of the player, he was witness of the most violent emotions excited by a fictitious sorrow, is he now the witness of the most restless activity directed against an object so insignificant in itself, that the most practical and active mind might well ask cui bono? Here is the art of the dramatist; for if the object of this expedition led by Fortinbras had been the conquest of some vast and wealthy territory, or the punishment of some gross outrage, or the vindication of some great principle of national honour, the self-reproach excited in Hamlet's soul, the contrast with his own cowardly inertness, would have been less strong. The analytical powers of his mind detect at once the moral of such an incident, as it affects his own character; the morbid self-consciousness which lies at the root of that very incapacity for action, so bitterly, yet so vainly censured by himself-an incapacity which he is ever confessing but never correcting-finds in this rash aggression of the fiery young Fortinbras new food for cynical reflection. He philosophises admirably, resolves most daringly; but carries out his philosophy and executes his resolve most feebly. Let us examine the soliloquy, and we shall see how masterly is the delineation of Hamlet's character, how subtly the workings of such a mind are laid bare before us : How all occasions do inform against me, *See Appendix O. + See Additional Notes, No. 11. If his chief good and market of his time That capability and god-like reason To fust in us unused. Now, whether it be Of thinking too precisely on the event, A thought which, quarter'd, hath but one part wisdom Why yet I live to say this thing's to do,' Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and means, To do't, Examples gross as earth exhort me : Witness this army, of such mass and charge, Led by a delicate and tender prince, Whose spirit with divine ambition puff'd To all that fortune, death, and danger dare, When honour's at the stake. How stand I then, To hide the slain? O, from this time forth, That wonderful inconsistency, which is the essence of human nature, was never more forcibly pictured than in this grand speech. When we read these words we are astonished at the shrewdness, the incisive criticism, the stupendous common-sense, of the man who could utter them; all that has passed before, surely, was a dream; all hesitation, all procrastination, all scruples of conscience, all tenderness of nature, all horror of violence, all over-sensitiveness as to the justice of revenge, all shrinking from the sternest severity of punishment, must disappear, and the reflective hero will now prove himself the hero of action. Beginning with the two servile and cowardly knaves, the bearers of the treacherous mandate, of whom he will make a terrible example, he will at once go on to the arch-murderer himself, and will expiate with unrelenting vengeance the death and dishonour of his beloved and honoured father, fulfilling to the letter the solemn charge of the perturbed and tortured spirit, and so procuring for it that rest which, while its commands were unheeded, it could never know. We have already seen how such expectation is partly realised; we have yet to see how faithfully Shakespeare |