young against drifting, than that of the interesting victim of uncongeniality. It is bad enough in women, it is worse in men, because it saps all capacity for practical usefulness in life. If your mind, if your tastes, be superior to those of your friends, relations, and companions, show it by an increase of courtesy, of amiability, towards them; and you will find none, or few, to dispute your superiority. If your duties be distasteful, even repulsive to you, so long as they are your duties, fulfil them as perfectly and as cheerfully as you can; and perhaps in good time you will find yourself raised to higher ones more worthy of the talents which you may possess: but to walk about with your nose in the air, and to furnace forth sighs-like a self-exhausting wind-bag-to despise those about you simply because you imagine yourself better than them, and to neglect your duties because you think yourself too good for them, can end in nothing else but in earning for you the contempt, if not the detestation, of your companions, and in convincing your employers, whoever they may be, that you are not fit for any duties at all. Briefly then, I would attribute the popularity of this play not only to the inherent interest of the story and the dramatic skill with which, in spite of many blemishes of construction, it is developed; but even more to the sympathetic character of Hamlet himself: sympathetic, because he has more in common with mankind than any other tragic hero; because the motives of his conduct, the idiosyncrasies of his nature, the very blemishes which mar his virtues, his strength of feeling, his weakness in action, all alike endear his character to us. The creation of the poet is imbued with the very essence of human nature, while it is beautified by the infusion of so lovable and noble a spirit, that what we instinctively admire we are also able to comprehend, This is the chief difference between real greatness and mere excellence, whether in poet, sculptor, painter, or actor. The great poet appeals not only to the intellect which some men possess, but to the heart which all possess; everyone feels the meaning of his words, though everyone cannot explain it. I do not deny that the most exquisitely finished style in poetry, or in any other art, is perfectly compatible with greatness; but in work that is not only clever, but great, the style is subordinate to the matter; regularity of metre and precision of detail are sacrificed to nobility of thought and beauty of subject. The most faultless poems and pictures are rarely the noblest. Genius is impatient of restriction, seeking truth in great, rather than accuracy in little things; and so it happens that talent often exceeds genius in beauty of form, but never in grandeur of imagination. Talent is apt to imitate, genius is sure to create; but be careful not to fancy yourselves geniuses simply because you are impatient of conventionality: vagueness and inaccuracy are not proofs of genius, though too often the blemishes which detract from its beauty. Cultivate style as carefully as you can; let it yield, if it must yield, to the force of your subject, not to the weakness of your execution. I have been led to make these remarks, because those who detract from the merits of Shakespeare's plays in general, and of Hamlet" in particular, are especially severe upon the want of regularity in the construction, and of natural sequence in the incidents of this tragedy; they also delight in pointing out the ruggedness of metre, and the crudeness of imagery, which are to be found in all Shakespeare's works. There is no doubt that "Cato," for instance, that solemnly elegant tragedy of Addison's, contains far fewer faults in scansion and regularity of metre than "Shakespeare's Hamlet;” but those persons who derive more pleasure from reading Cato than from studying Hamlet, must be allowed to exist, happy in that world of metrical proprieties which they have chosen to occupy; for my own part I dare not attempt to follow them. I have patiently read "Cato," some of Rowe's afflicting tragedies, and many others based upon the same models, which adorned the literature of the last century. I have no doubt that every line of these beautiful works contains some very pretty language, and the proper number of feet; but in very few lines do they contain anything which can touch the heart, charm the imagination, or elevate the soul. There is a class of persons by whom Shakespeare is regarded very much as a young lady regards a black-beetle, or a lizard; with them the maxim is "omne ignotum pro horribili;" they have such a horror of Nature, that if they had their own way they would encase the trunks of the trees in petticoats, drape the bare rocks with decent dimity, and throw a veil over the naked verdure of the turf, in the shape of imitation Brussels: their timid aversion to Nature is in exact proportion to their ignorance of her. But Shakespeare has been reviled by quite a different order of beings, of whom, perhaps, the chief is Voltaire. I doubt if any worshipper of Shakespeare's genius has ever done so much to exalt his ideal, as the malignant abuse of Voltaire's powerful but cankered mind has done. I would not wish to speak with disrespect of one whom so many great intellects regard with something more than admiration; but I cannot consent to bow down before a mind, however great in itself, which was degraded by him, to whom it was given as a sacred trust and as a glorious responsibility, to the most foul and ignoble ends which perverted intellect ever sought to accomplish. Malone may claim the merit of industry and research, though the application of both is frequently wrong; but as a critic he is unsympathetic.* He seems to have criticised "Hamlet" in the same spirit in which he would criticise his grocer's bill, examining all the items to see if they were correct, and insisting that all the articles should be inscribed in clear and legible type. There are many clever men now living who affect to despise Shakespeare; if they only showed one-tenth part of the industry in trying to comprehend his many beauties which they parade in ferreting out his faults, they would earn more respect for their capacities than they do at present. They are mostly men of a type too common, alas! now-a-days, who seem just clever enough to know that they are clever, and who use their minds in such a way as to make the truly wise and good regret that they ever had any. The number of commentaries and essays which have been written on the tragedy of "Hamlet" is so great that time will not allow me to do more than mention a very few of those which are best worth your attention. Goethe and Coleridge have both exercised their powers of psychological analysis on the character of Hamlet; I need scarcely say that every one, wishing to study this play critically, should read every word which those two intellectual giants have written on the subject. The commentaries of Johnson, Steevens, and Malone are very unequal; whatever is valuable in their annotations will be found in later editions of Shakespeare, especially in that published by Routledge, edited by Staunton. Professor Richardson'st essay on Hamlet" shows more correct appreciation of the beauties of the character than any other that I have come across, always excepting Coleridge's lecture. A volume containing the plays of "Hamlet" and " As You Like It," published as a specimen of a new edition of Shakespeare, but as I do not mean to disparage Malone's labours as an annotator; an æsthetic critic of Shakespeare I think he has committed outrages on good taste and good sense which can never be forgiven. Steevens is worse. + London: Samuel Bagster. 1818. anonymously by Thomas Caldecott,* contains some excellent notes. The best text of Shakespeare is the Cambridge edition, Macmillan, 1866; a reprint of the very rare quarto, 1603, the first known edition of "Hamlet," is given by the editors, Messrs. Clark and Wright, to whom all students of Shakespeare owe an enormous debt of gratitude, If I were asked to mention the best criticism, on the whole, which has been written on Shakespeare, I am afraid I should have to give you no English name, but that of a German, Schlegel.† This is something humiliating to our national vanity; but I do not think we need fear, now Germany has been swallowed up in Prussia, that Schlegel, any more than Goethe and Schiller, will find any successor. A nation which allows itself to be turned into one large barrack must be content with so glorious an achievement; it can well afford to leave more humanizing studies to those who have the leisure to follow them. When Hamlet first enters, it is in company with the King (his uncle), the Queen (his mother), and their Court. Gertrude, Hamlet's mother, has married, within the short space of a month after her husband's death, Claudius, his brother and successor. Why the elder Hamlet was not succeeded, as in due course he should have been, by his only son, is not explained; but we learn from the King's speech to the Court, that both his usurpation of the throne, and his incestuous marriage with his brother's wife, had been sanctioned by the principal lords of his council, whether willingly or under compulsion we do not know. Perhaps the comparative youth of Hamlet, and the fact that the kingdom was at that tinre threatened by an invasion of the Norwegians under young Fortinbras, were the reasons which induced the royal councillors of Denmark to place the sceptre in the hands of Claudius, who might be supposed better able to cope with so formidable a foe. The figure of Hamlet, dressed in black, his eyes cast on the ground, his whole appearance betraying the utmost dejection, the only mourner in the brilliant Court, at once arrests the attention. We cannot wonder at his melancholy when we consider the position in which he found himself. The news of his father's sudden death would have reached him at the University of Wittenburg: it is most probable that the first parting between him and his father had taken place when he went to that town to complete his education. He hurried back on hearing the dreadful news, and naturally * London: John Murray. Second edition, 1833 (first edition, 1819). + See Additional Notes, No. 1. See Appendix A. the first person he would seek in his sorrow was his mother. We can imagine what a terrible shock it must have been to his feelings when he found her preparing for her wedding with her late husband's brother, almost before that husband's funeral rites were over; the revolting features of such an union were intensified by the indecent haste with which it was completed. It is probable that the revulsion of feeling, which such an outrage on his father's memory would cause in a nature like Hamlet's, prevented him from dwelling on the mortification which he must have suffered on finding himself ousted from the throne by his incestuous uncle. It is natural that Hamlet should at once have suspected that the death of his father was no accident of nature; the story of a serpent having stung him in his sleeep was probably believed by very few in the Danish Court, certainly not by Hamlet. At the same time time, the fact of Claudius being supported by the chief lords of the country, the imminence of war, and the want of any strong party in the State favourable to his own succession, restrained Hamlet from making any attempt to claim his right. Claudius, very plausibly and with an assumption of fatherly affection, greets Hamlet as his son and future successor. As to the suspicion which Hamlet entertained of foul play, he could take no immediate action thereon without some evidence; and his generous nature would be hampered in any such attempt by the consciousness that such a suspicion might spring as much from wounded vanity, on account of his being deprived of his rights, as from affection for his father. The very first words that he speaks in reply to the King, who has addressed him as-" My son " -a little more than kin and less than kind, words probably intended to be spoken half aside, show how impossible was any reconciliation between stepfather and stepson. It is to be remarked that Hamlet only once addresses the King during this first scene, and that in the sarcastic answer to KING. How is it that the clouds still hang on you? The very fact that the King does not dare to rebuke Hamlet for the marked manner in which he ignores his advice, tendered as it is with affected kindness, shows that he was conscious of his guilt. Short as the scene is which precedes Hamlet's first soliloquy, nothing can be more admirable than the skill with which Shakespeare at once strikes the key-note |