beckon him; he follows it and hearkens. The fearful accusation of his uncle rings in his ears; the summons to revenge and the piercing reiterated prayer, 'Remember me." And, when the Ghost has vanished, who is it we see standing before us? A young hero panting for vengeance? A born prince, feeling himself favoured in being summoned to punish the usurper of his crown? No! Amazement and sorrow overwhelm the solitary young man; he becomes bitter against smiling villains, swears never to forget the departed, and concludes with the significant ejaculation : "The time is out of joint: O cursed spite, 'In these words, I imagine, will be found the key to Hamlet's whole procedure. To me it is clear that Shakespeare meant, in the present case, to represent the effects of a great action laid upon a soul unfit for the performance of it. In this view the whole piece seems to me to be composed. There is an oak-tree planted in a costly jar, which should have borne only pleasant flowers in its bosom; the roots expand, the jar is shivered. A lovely, pure, noble, and most moral nature, without the strength of nerve which forms a hero, sinks beneath a burden which it cannot bear, and must not cast away. All duties are holy for him; the present is too hard. Impossibilities have been required of him; not in themselves impossibilities, but such for him. He winds, and turns, and torments himself; he advances and recoils; is ever put in mind, ever puts himself in mind; at last does all but lose his purpose from his thoughts; yet still without recovering his peace of mind.'GOETHE (Wilhelm Meister). (ii.) 'In Hamlet Shakespeare seems to have wished to exemplify the moral necessity of a due balance between our attention to the objects of our senses, and our meditations on the workings of our minds-an equilibrium between the real and the imaginary worlds. In Hamlet this balance is disturbed: his thoughts, and the images of his fancy, are far more vivid than his actual perceptions, and his very perceptions, instantly passing through the medium of his contemplations, acquire, as they pass, a form and a colour not naturally their own. Hence we see a great, an almost enormous intellectual activity, and a proportionate aversion to real action, consequent upon it, with all its symptoms and accompanying qualities. This character, Shakespeare places in circumstances under which it is obliged to act on the spur of the moment: Hamlet is brave and careless of death; but he vacillates from sensibility, and procrastinates from thought, and loses the power of action in the energy of resolve. Thus it is that this tragedy presents a direct contrast to that of Macbeth; the one proceeds with the utmost slowness, the other with a crowded and breathless rapidity. The effect of this overbalance of the imaginative power is beautifully illustrated in the everlasting broodings and superfluous activities of Hamlet's mind, which, unseated from its healthy relation, is constantly occupied with the world within, and abstracted from the world without-giving substance to shadows, and throwing a mist over all commonplace actualities.'COLERIDGE. ... (iii.) 'Hamlet is called upon to assert moral order in a world of moral confusion and obscurity. All the strength which he possesses would have become organised and available had his world been one of honesty, of happiness, of human love. But a world of deceit, of espionage, of selfishness surrounds him; his idealism at thirty years of age almost takes the form of pessimism; his life and his heart become sterile; he loses the energy which sound and joyous feeling supplies; and in the wide-spreading waste of corruption which lies around him, he is tempted to understand and detest things rather than accomplish some limited practical service. . . . Hamlet is not merely or chiefly intellectual; the emotional side of his character is quite as important as the intellectual; his malady is as deep-seated in his sensibilities and in his heart as it is in the brain. If all his feelings translate themselves into thoughts, it is no less true that all his thoughts are impregnated with feeling. To represent Hamlet as a man of preponderating power of reflection, and to disregard his craving, sensitive heart, is to make the whole play incoherent and unintelligible. . During the reign of the strong-willed elder Hamlet, there was no call to action for his meditative son. He has slipped on into years of full manhood still a haunter of the university, a student of philosophies, an amateur in art, a ponderer on the things of life and death, who has never formed a resolution or executed a deed. This long course of thinking, apart from action, has destroyed Hamlet's very capacity for belief; since in belief there exists a certain element contributed by the will.'-DOWDEN (Mind and Art of Shakespeare, pp. 130–133). OPHELIA.-'It is the helplessness of Ophelia, arising merely from her innocence, and pictured without any indication of weakness, which melts us with such profound pity. She is so young, that neither her mind nor her person has attained maturity; she is not aware of the nature of her own feelings; they are prematurely developed in their full force before she has strength to bear them; and love and grief together rend and shatter the frail texture of her existence, like the burning fluid poured into a crystal vase. She says very little, and what she does say seems rather intended to hide than to reveal the emotions of her heart; yet in those few words we are made as perfectly acquainted with her character and with what is passing in her mind as if she had thrown forth her soul with all the glowing eloquence of Juliet. . . . Constance is frantic; Lear is mad; Ophelia is insane. Her sweet mind lies in fragments before us-a pitiful spectacle! Her wild, rambling fancies; her aimless, broken speeches; her quick transitions from gaiety to sadness-each equally purposeless and causeless; her snatches of old ballads-such as perhaps her nurse sang her to sleep with in her infancyare all so true to the life, that we forget to wonder, and can only weep.'— MRS JAMESON (Characteristics of Women). "The pathos proceeds from the utter insensibility Ophelia has to her own misfortunes. A great sensibility, or none at all, seems to produce the same effect. In the latter the audience supply what she wants, and with the former they sympathise.'-SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. POLONIUS.-Polonius is a man bred in courts, exercised in business, stored with observation, confident in his knowledge, proud of his eloquence, and declining into dotage. His mode of oratory is truly represented as designed to ridicule the practice of those times, of prefaces that made no introduction, and of method that embarrassed rather than explained. This part of his character is accidental; the rest is natural. Such a man is positive and confident, because he knows that his mind was once strong, and knows not that it is become weak. Such a man excels in general principles, but fails in the particular application. He is knowing in retrospect, and ignorant in foresight.'-DR JOHNSON. 'Polonius has no difficulty in calling to mind a number of wise precepts for the guidance of his son's conduct, the last of which is most striking for its force and nobleness. Yet it is undeniable that he is often both foolish and mean. The reason is, that his memory has outlived his intellect; that prettinesses have taken the place of wisdom in his mind; that he recals words of wisdom and noble sentiments rather than feels them; and that his acknowledged services have so persuaded him of his own merit, that he will both act meanly and express himself absurdly, because he conceives, without any misgiving at all, that whatever he does or says is justified by his saying or doing it. Still, in estimating this character, we should do well to remember that the use of language like that of Polonius' would not, in Shakspeare's euphuistic days, argue the complete folly which it would at the present time.'-MR MOBERLY. HAMLET, PRINCE OF DENMARK. DRAMATIS PERSONA. CLAUDIUS, king of Denmark. MARCELLUS, officers. HAMLET, son to the former, and BERNARDO, S nephew to the present king. POLONIUS, lord chamberlain. HORATIO, friend to Hamlet. CORNELIUS, FRANCISCO, a soldier. REYNALDO, servant to Polonius. Two Clowns, gravediggers. English Ambassadors. GERTRUDE, queen of Denmark. Lords, Ladies, Officers, Soldiers, Sailors, Messengers, and other Attendants. Ghost of Hamlet's father. SCENE-ELSINORE. ACT I. SCENE I-Elsinore. A Platform before the Castle. FRANCISCO at his post. Enter to him BERNARDO. BERNARDO. Who's there? Fran. Nay, answer me : stand, and unfold yourself. Ber. Long live the king! Fran. Bernardo ? Ber. He. Fran. You come most carefully upon your hour. Ber. 'Tis now struck twelve; get thee to bed, Francisco. 5 Fran. For this relief, much thanks: 'tis bitter cold, And I am sick at heart. Ber. Have you had quiet guard? Not a mouse stirring. 10 Fran. Ber. Well, good-night. If you do meet Horatio and Marcellus, The rivals of my watch, bid them make haste. Fran. I think I hear them.-Stand, ho! who is there? Ber. Welcome, Horatio; welcome, good Marcellus. Mar. Horatio says, 'tis but our fantasy, And will not let belief take hold of him Touching this dreaded sight, twice seen of us : He may approve our eyes, and speak to it. And let us once again assail your ears, Sit down awhile; |