"Ham. King. Ham. For England! Ay, Hamlet. Good. King. So is it, if thou knew'st our purposes. That is, My times are in God's hand. Again, when he reflects that, acting upon a sudden impulse, in which there was nothing voluntary (for the deed was accomplished before he had conceived what it was), he had sent his two schoolfellows to death, Hamlet's thoughts go on to discover the divine purpose in the event: "Let us know Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well, When our deep plots do pall; and that should teach us Rough-hew them how we will. Horatio. That is most certain." Once more, when Horatio bids the Prince yield to the secret misgiving which troubled his heart before he went to the trial of skill with Laertes, Hamlet puts aside his friend's advice with the words "We defy augury; there's a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come; the readiness is all." Does Shakspere accept the interpretation of events which Hamlet is led to adopt? No; the providence in which Shakspere believed is a moral order which includes man's highest exercise of foresight, energy, and resolution. The disposition of Hamlet to reduce to a minimum the share which man's conscious will and foresight have in the disposing of events, and to enlarge the sphere of the action of powers outside the will, has a dramatic, not a theological, significance. Helena, who clearly sees what she resolves to do, and accomplishes neither less nor more than she has resolved, professes a different creed: "Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie, Which we ascribe to heaven; the fated sky Our slow designs when we ourselves are dull."* Horatio, a believer in the "divinity that shapes our ends," by his promised explanation of the events, delivers us from the transcendental optimism of Hamlet, and restores the purely human way of viewing things: "Give order that these bodies High on a stage be placed to the view; And let me speak to the yet unknowing world Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters, Of deaths put on by cunning and forced cause, Fall'n on the inventors' heads: all this can I The arrival of Fortinbras contributes also to the restoration of a practical and positive feeling. With none of the rare qualities of the Danish prince, he excels him in plain grasp of ordinary fact. Shakspere knows that the success of these men, who are limited, definite, positive, will do no dishonor to the failure of the rarer natures, to whom the problem of living is more embarrassing, and for whom the tests of the world are stricter and more delicate. Shakspere "beats triumphant marches" not for successful persons alone, but also "for conquered and slain persons. Does Hamlet finally attain deliverance from his disease of will? Shakspere has left the answer to that question doubtful. Probably if anything could supply the link which was wanting between the purpose and the deed, it was the achievement of some supreme ac *All's Well that Ends Well, act i., sc. 1. tion. The last moments of Hamlet's life are well spent, and, for energy and foresight, are the noblest moments of his existence. He snatches the poisoned bowl from Horatio, and saves his friend; he gives his dying voice for Fortinbras, and saves his country. The rest is silence: "Had I but time (as this fell sergeant, death, But he has not told. Let us not too readily assume that we "know the stops" of Hamlet, that we can "pluck out the heart of his mystery." One thing, however, we do know-that the man who wrote the play of Hamlet had obtained a thorough comprehension of Hamlet's malady. And, assured, as we are by abundant evidence, that Shakspere transformed with energetic will his knowledge into fact, we may be confident that when Hamlet was written Shakspere had gained a further stage in his culture of self-control, and that he had become not only adult as an author, but had entered upon the full maturity of his manhood. * * To refer even to the best portion of the immense Hamlet literature would require considerable space. I believe my study of the play is indebted chiefly to the article by H. A. Werner, in Jahrbuch der deutschen Shakespeare-Gesellschaft, vol. v., and to an essay by my friend J. Todhunter, M.D., read before the Dublin University Shakspere Society. The doctors of the insane have been studious of the state of Hamlet's mind-Doctors Ray, Kellogg, Conolly, Maudsley, Bucknill. They are unanimous in wishing to put Hamlet under judicious medical treatment; but they find it harder than Polonius did to hit upon a definition of madness: "For to define true madness, What is't but to be nothing else but mad ?" The critics are nearly equally divided in their estimates of Ophelia. Flathe is extravagantly hostile to the Polonius family. Mr. Ruskin ("Sesame and Lilies") may be mentioned among English writers as forming no favorable estimate of Ophelia; and against Mrs. Jameson's authority we may set the authority of a lady writer in Jahrbuch der deutschen Shakespeare-Gesell schaft, vol. ii., pp. 16-36. Vischer chivalrously defends Ophelia, and Hebler coincides. The study of Hamlet by Benno Tschischwitz is learned and ingenious. H. von Friesen's "Briefe über Shakespeare's Hamlet" contains much more than its name implies, and is, indeed, a study of the entire development of Shakspere. Sir Edward Strachey's "Shakspeare's Hamlet," 1848, interprets the play throughout in a different sense from the interpretation attempted in this chapter. See especially what is called "Hamlet's Final Discovery," pp. 91–93. Werder's " 'Vorlesungen über Shakespeare's Hamlet," 1875, presents with remarkable force the view that Hamlet's was not a weak nature. Mr. Frank Marshall's "A Study of Hamlet," if less brilliant, is, I think, more sound. Last must be mentioned Mr. Furness's magnificent variorum edition of the play, in two volumes, 1877. CHAPTER IV. THE ENGLISH HISTORICAL PLAYS. THE historical plays of Shakspere may be approached from many sides. It would be interesting to endeavor to ascertain from them what was Shakspere's political creed.* It would be interesting to compare his method as artist when handling historical matter with that of some other great dramatist-with that of Schiller when writing "Wallenstein," or Goethe when writing "Egmont," or Victor Hugo when writing "Cromwell." Shakspere's opinions, however, and Shakspere's method as artist, are less than Shakspere himself. It is the man we are still seeking to discover-behind his works, behind his opinions, behind his artistic process. Shakspere's life, we must believe, ran on below his art, and was to himself of deeper import than his work as artist. Not, perhaps, his material life, though to this also he contrived to make his art contribute, but the life of his inmost being. To him art was not, as it has been to some poets and painters and musicians, a temple-worship; a devotion of self, a surrender which is at once blissful and pathetic to some presence greater and nobler than *See on this subject "Shakspere-Forschungen," by Benno Tschischwitz, III.-"Shakspere's Staat und Königthum." The writer dwells on the moral and religious character of the relation between king and people as conceived by Shakspere. He says well, "Für Shakspere nämlich ist das Königthum durchaus nicht die gekrönte Spitze einer Pyramide, sondern der lebendige Mittelpunkt eines organischen Ganzen, nach welchem zu das Gesammtleben des Organismus pulsirt," p. 84. See the subsequent chapter in this volume upon "The Roman Plays," pp. 276-336. |