tues of the mother without in the least palliating the guilt of the wife; while the crimes in which she is an accomplice almost dis appear in those of which she is the victim. The plan of this drama seems to consist in the persons being represented as without plans; for, as Goethe happily remarks, "the hero is without any plan, but the play itself is full of plan.' As the action, so far as there is any, is shaped and determined rather for the characters than from them, all their energies could the better be translated into thought. Hence of all the Poet's dramas this probably combines the greatest strength and diversity of faculties. Sweeping round the whole circle of human thought and passion, its alternations of amazement and terror; f lust, ambition, and remorse; of hope, love, friendship, anguish, madness, and despair; of wit, humour, pathos, poetry, and philosophy; now congealing the blood with horror, now melting the heart with pity, now launching the mind into eternity, now startling conscience from her lonely seat with supernatural visitings ;· it unfolds indeed a world of truth, and beauty, and sublimity. Of its varied excellences, only a few of the less obvious need be specified. The platform scenes are singularly charged with picturesque effect. The chills of a northern winter midnight seem creeping on us, as the heart-sick sentinels pass in view, and, steeped in moonlight and drowsiness, exchange their meeting and parting salutations. The thoughts and images that rise in their minds are just such as the anticipation of preternatural visions would be likely to inspire. As the bitter cold stupefies their senses, an indescribable feeling of dread and awe steals over them, preparing the mind to realise its own superstitious imaginings. And the feeling one has in reading these scenes is not unlike that of a child pass ing a grave-yard by moonlight. Out of the dim and drowsy moonbeams apprehension creates its own objects; his fancies embody themselves in surrounding facts; his fears give shape to outward things, while those things give outwardness to his fears.The heterogeneous elements that are brought together in the gravedigging scene, with its strange mixture of songs and witticisms and dead men's bones, and its still stranger transitions of the grave, the sprightly, the meditative, the solemn, the playful, and the grotesque, make it one of the most wonderful yet most natural scenes in the drama. In view of the terrible catastrophe, Goethe has the following weighty sentence: "It is the tendency of crime to spread its evils over innocence, as it is of virtue to diffuse its blessings over many who deserve them not; while, frequently, the author of the one or of the other is not, so far as we can see, pun. ished or rewarded." PERSONS REPRESENTED. CLAUDIUS, King of Denmark. HAMLET, his Nephew, Son of the former King. HORATIO, Friend to Hamlet. LAERTES, Son of Polonius. GERTRUDE, Mother of Hamlet, and Queen. OPHELIA, Daughter of Polonius. Lords, Ladies, Officers, Soldiers, Players, Sailors, Messed gers, and Attendants. SCENE, Elsinore. THE TRAGEDY OF HAMLET ACT I. SCENE I. Elsinore. A Platform before the Castle. FRANCISCO on his Post. Enter to him BERNARDO. Ber. WHO's there? Fran. Nay, answer me:1 stand, and unfold your self. Ber. Long live the king! Fran. Bernardo ? Ber. He. That is, answer me, as I have the right to challenge you. Bernardo then gives in answer the watch-word, "Long live the king! -"Compare," says Coleridge, "the easy language of common life, in which this drama commences, with the direful music and wild wayward rhythm and abrupt lyrics of the opening of Macbeth. The tone is quite familiar: there is no poetic description of night, no elaborate information conveyed by one speaker to another of what both had immediately before their senses; and yet nothing bordering on the comic on the one hand, nor any striving of the intellect on the other. It is precisely the language of sensation among men who feared no charge of effeminacy for feeling what they had no want of resolution to bear. Yet the armour, the dead silence, the watchfulness that first interrupts it, the welcome relief of the guard, the cold, the broken expressions of compelled attention to bodily feelings still under control,- - all excellently accord with, and prepare for, the after gradual rise into tragedy; but, above all, into a tragedy, the interest of which is as eminently ad et apud intra, as that of Macbeth is directly id extra." H. Fran. You come most carefully upon your hour. Ber. "Tis now struck twelve: get thee to bed, Francisco. Fran. For this relief, much thanks: 'tis bitter cold, And I am sick at heart. If Ber. Have you had quiet guard? Fran. Ber. Well, good night. Not a mouse stirring you do meet Horatio and Marcellus, The rivals of my watch,2 bid them make haste. Enter HORATIO and MARCEllus. Fran. I think I hear them. · Stand, ho! Who is there? Ber. Welcome, Horatio: welcome, good Mar cellus. 2 Rivals are associates or partners. A brook, rivulet, or river, rivus, being a natural boundary between different proprietors, was owned by them in common; that is, they were partners in the right and use of it. From the strifes thus engendered, the partners came to be contenders: hence the ordinary sense of rival. See Antony and Cleopatra, Act iii. sc. 5, note 1. H. This salutation is an abbreviated form of, "May God give you a good night;" which has been still further abbreviated in the phrase, "Good night." B. Hor What! has this thing appear'd again to night?" Ber. I have seen nothing. Mar. Horatio says 'tis but our fantasy, He may approve our eyes," and speak to it. 4 The folio assigns this speech to Marcellus. The quartos are probably right, as Horatio comes on purpose to try his own eyes on the Ghost. We quote from Coleridge again: "Bernardo's inquiry after Horatio, and the repetition of his name in his own presence indicate a respect or an eagerness that implies him as one of the persons who are in the foreground; and the scepticism attributed to him prepares us for Hamlet's after eulogy on him as one whose blood and judgment were happily commingled. Now, observe the admirable indefiniteness of the first opening out of the occasion of all this anxiety. The preparative information of the audience is just as much as was precisely necessary, and no more; -it begins with the uncertainty appertaining to a question: 'What! has this thing appear'd again to-night?' Even the word again has its credibilizing effect. Then Horatio, the representative of the ignorance of the audience, not himself, but by Marcellus to Bernardo, anticipates the common solution, - 'Tis but our fantasy;' upon which Marcellus rises into,-This dreaded sight twice seen of us;' which immediately afterwards becomes this apparition,' and that, too, an intelligent spirit that is to be spoken to!" н. 5 That is, make good our vision, or prove our eyes to be true. Approve was often thus used in the sense of confirm. - Coleridge continues his comments on the scene thus: "Then comes the con firmation of Horatio's disbelief,-Tush, tush! 'twill not appear;' and the silence with which the scene opened is again restored in the shivering feeling of Horatio sitting down, at such a time, and with the two eye-witnesses, to hear a story of a ghost, and that, too, of a ghost which had appeared twice before at the very same hour. In the deep feeling which Bernardo has of the solemn nature of what he is about to relate, he makes an effort to master his own imaginative terrors by an elevation of style, — itself a continuation of the effort, and by turning off from the apparition as from something which would force him too deeply into himself |