here, which, of course, is not its usual dramatic sense.]
[Footnote 18: In the same way a comedy will consist of three parts,
showing the 'situation,' the 'complication' or 'entanglement,' and the
_dénouement_ or 'solution.']
[Footnote 19: It is possible, of course, to open the tragedy with the
conflict already begun, but Shakespeare never does so.]
[Footnote 20: When the subject comes from English history, and
especially when the play forms one of a series, some knowledge may be
assumed. So in _Richard III._ Even in _Richard II._ not a little
knowledge seems to be assumed, and this fact points to the existence of
a popular play on the earlier part of Richard's reign. Such a play
exists, though it is not clear that it is a genuine Elizabethan work.
See the _Jahrbuch d. deutschen Sh.-gesellschaft_ for 1899.]
[Footnote 21: This is one of several reasons why many people enjoy
reading him, who, on the whole, dislike reading plays. A main cause of
this very general dislike is that the reader has not a lively enough
imagination to carry him with pleasure through the exposition, though in
the theatre, where his imagination is helped, he would experience little
difficulty.]
[Footnote 22: The end of _Richard III._ is perhaps an exception.]
[Footnote 23: I do not discuss the general question of the justification
of soliloquy, for it concerns not Shakespeare only, but practically all
dramatists down to quite recent times. I will only remark that neither
soliloquy nor the use of verse can be condemned on the mere ground that
they are 'unnatural.' No dramatic language is 'natural'; _all_ dramatic
language is idealised. So that the question as to soliloquy must be one
as to the degree of idealisation and the balance of advantages and
disadvantages. (Since this lecture was written I have read some remarks
on Shakespeare's soliloquies to much the same effect by E. Kilian in the
_Jahrbuch d. deutschen Shakespeare-Gesellschaft_ for 1903.)]
[Footnote 24: If by this we mean that these characters all speak what is
recognisably Shakespeare's style, of course it is true; but it is no
accusation. Nor does it follow that they all speak alike; and in fact
they are far from doing so.]
LECTURE III
SHAKESPEARE'S TRAGIC PERIOD--HAMLET
1
Before we come to-day to _Hamlet_, the first of our four tragedies, a
few remarks must be made on their probable place in Shakespeare's
literary career. But I shall say no more than seems necessary for our
restricted purpose, and, therefore, for the most part shall merely be
stating widely accepted results of investigation, without going into the
evidence on which they rest.[25]
Shakespeare's tragedies fall into two distinct groups, and these groups
are separated by a considerable interval. He wrote tragedy--pure, like
_Romeo and Juliet_; historical, like _Richard III._--in the early years
of his career of authorship, when he was also writing such comedies as
_Love's Labour's Lost_ and the _Midsummer-Night's Dream_. Then came a
time, lasting some half-dozen years, during which he composed the most
mature and humorous of his English History plays (the plays with
Falstaff in them), and the best of his romantic comedies (the plays with
Beatrice and Jaques and Viola in them). There are no tragedies belonging
to these half-dozen years, nor any dramas approaching tragedy. But now,
from about 1601 to about 1608, comes tragedy after tragedy--_Julius
Caesar_, _Hamlet_, _Othello_, _King Lear_, _Timon of Athens_, _Macbeth_,
_Antony and Cleopatra_ and _Coriolanus_; and their companions are plays
which cannot indeed be called tragedies, but certainly are not comedies
in the same sense as _As You Like It_ or the _Tempest_. These seven
years, accordingly, might, without much risk of misunderstanding, be
called Shakespeare's tragic period.[26] And after it he wrote no more
tragedies, but chiefly romances more serious and less sunny than _As You
Like It_, but not much less serene.
The existence of this distinct tragic period, of a time when the
dramatist seems to have been occupied almost exclusively with deep and
painful problems, has naturally helped to suggest the idea that the
'man' also, in these years of middle age, from thirty-seven to
forty-four, was heavily burdened in spirit; that Shakespeare turned to
tragedy not merely for change, or because he felt it to be the greatest
form of drama and felt himself equal to it, but also because the world
had come to look dark and terrible to him; and even that the railings of
Thersites and the maledictions of Timon express his own contempt and
hatred for mankind. Discussion of this large and difficult subject,
however, is not necessary to the dramatic appreciation of any of his
works, and I shall say nothing of it here, but shall pass on at once to
draw attention to certain stages and changes which may be observed
within the tragic period. For this purpose too it is needless to raise
any question as to the respective chronological positions of _Othello_,
_King Lear_ and _Macbeth_. What is important is also generally admitted:
that _Julius Caesar_ and _Hamlet_ precede these plays, and that _Antony
and Cleopatra_ and _Coriolanus_ follow them.[27]
If we consider the tragedies first on the side of their substance, we
find at once an obvious difference between the first two and the
remainder. Both Brutus and Hamlet are highly intellectual by nature and
reflective by habit. Both may even be called, in a popular sense,
philosophic; Brutus may be called so in a stricter sense. Each, being
also a 'good' man, shows accordingly, when placed in critical
circumstances, a sensitive and almost painful anxiety to do right. And
though they fail--of course in quite different ways--to deal
successfully with these circumstances, the failure in each case is
connected rather with their intellectual nature and reflective habit
than with any yielding to passion. Hence the name 'tragedy of thought,'
which Schlegel gave to _Hamlet_, may be given also, as in effect it has
been by Professor Dowden, to _Julius Caesar_. The later heroes, on the
other hand, Othello, Lear, Timon, Macbeth, Antony, Coriolanus, have, one
and all, passionate natures, and, speaking roughly, we may attribute the
tragic failure in each of these cases to passion. Partly for this
reason, the later plays are wilder and stormier than the first two. We
see a greater mass of human nature in commotion, and we see
Shakespeare's own powers exhibited on a larger scale. Finally,
examination would show that, in all these respects, the first tragedy,
_Julius Caesar_, is further removed from the later type than is the
second, _Hamlet_.
These two earlier works are both distinguished from most of the
succeeding tragedies in another though a kindred respect. Moral evil is
not so intently scrutinised or so fully displayed in them. In _Julius
Caesar_, we may almost say, everybody means well. In _Hamlet_, though we
have a villain, he is a small one. The murder which gives rise to the
action lies outside the play, and the centre of attention within the
play lies in the hero's efforts to do his duty. It seems clear that
Shakespeare's interest, since the early days when under Marlowe's
influence he wrote _Richard III._, has not been directed to the more
extreme or terrible forms of evil. But in the tragedies that follow
_Hamlet_ the presence of this interest is equally clear. In Iago, in the
'bad' people of _King Lear_, even in Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, human
nature assumes shapes which inspire not mere sadness or repulsion but
horror and dismay. If in _Timon_ no monstrous cruelty is done, we still
watch ingratitude and selfishness so blank that they provoke a loathing
we never felt for Claudius; and in this play and _King Lear_ we can
fancy that we hear at times the _saeva indignatio_, if not the despair,
of Swift. This prevalence of abnormal or appalling forms of evil, side
by side with vehement passion, is another reason why the convulsion
depicted in these tragedies seems to come from a deeper source, and to
be vaster in extent, than the conflict in the two earlier plays. And
here again _Julius Caesar_ is further removed than _Hamlet_ from
_Othello_, _King Lear_, and _Macbeth_.
But in regard to this second point of difference a reservation must be
made, on which I will speak a little more fully, because, unlike the
matter hitherto touched on, its necessity seems hardly to have been
recognised. _All_ of the later tragedies may be called tragedies of
passion, but not all of them display these extreme forms of evil.
Neither of the last two does so. Antony and Coriolanus are, from one
point of view, victims of passion; but the passion that ruins Antony
also exalts him, he touches the infinite in it; and the pride and
self-will of Coriolanus, though terrible in bulk, are scarcely so in
quality; there is nothing base in them, and the huge creature whom they
destroy is a noble, even a lovable, being. Nor does either of these
dramas, though the earlier depicts a corrupt civilisation, include even
among the minor characters anyone who can be called villainous or
horrible. Consider, finally, the impression left on us at the close of
each. It is remarkable that this impression, though very strong, can
scarcely be called purely tragic; or, if we call it so, at least the
feeling of reconciliation which mingles with the obviously tragic
emotions is here exceptionally well-marked. The death of Antony, it will
be remembered, comes before the opening of the Fifth Act. The death of
Cleopatra, which closes the play, is greeted by the reader with sympathy
and admiration, even with exultation at the thought that she has foiled
Octavius; and these feelings are heightened by the deaths of Charmian
and Iras, heroically faithful to their mistress, as Emilia was to hers.
In _Coriolanus_ the feeling of reconciliation is even stronger. The
whole interest towards the close has been concentrated on the question
whether the hero will persist in his revengeful design of storming and
burning his native city, or whether better feelings will at last
overpower his resentment and pride. He stands on the edge of a crime
beside which, at least in outward dreadfulness, the slaughter of an
individual looks insignificant. And when, at the sound of his mother's
voice and the sight of his wife and child, nature asserts itself and he
gives way, although we know he will lose his life, we care little for
that: he has saved his soul. Our relief, and our exultation in the power
of goodness, are so great that the actual catastrophe which follows and
mingles sadness with these feelings leaves them but little diminished,
and as we close the book we feel, it seems to me, more as we do at the
close of _Cymbeline_ than as we do at the close of _Othello_. In saying
this I do not in the least mean to criticise _Coriolanus_. It is a much
nobler play as it stands than it would have been if Shakespeare had made
the hero persist, and we had seen him amid the flaming ruins of Rome,
awaking suddenly to the enormity of his deed and taking vengeance on
himself; but that would surely have been an ending more strictly tragic
than the close of Shakespeare's play. Whether this close was simply due
to his unwillingness to contradict his historical authority on a point
of such magnitude we need not ask. In any case _Coriolanus_ is, in more
than an outward sense, the end of his tragic period. It marks the
transition to his latest works, in which the powers of repentance and
forgiveness charm to rest the tempest raised by error and guilt.
If we turn now from the substance of the tragedies to their style and
versification, we find on the whole a corresponding difference between
the earlier and the later. The usual assignment of _Julius Caesar_, and
even of _Hamlet_, to the end of Shakespeare's Second Period--the period
of _Henry V._--is based mainly, we saw, on considerations of form. The
general style of the serious parts of the last plays from English
history is one of full, noble and comparatively equable eloquence. The
'honey-tongued' sweetness and beauty of Shakespeare's early writing, as
seen in _Romeo and Juliet_ or the _Midsummer-Night's Dream_, remain; the
ease and lucidity remain; but there is an accession of force and weight.
We find no great change from this style when we come to _Julius
Caesar_,[28] which may be taken to mark its culmination. At this point
in Shakespeare's literary development he reaches, if the phrase may be
pardoned, a limited perfection. Neither thought on the one side, nor
expression on the other, seems to have any tendency to outrun or contend
with its fellow. We receive an impression of easy mastery and complete
harmony, but not so strong an impression of inner power bursting into
outer life. Shakespeare's style is perhaps nowhere else so free from
defects, and yet almost every one of his subsequent plays contains
writing which is greater. To speak familiarly, we feel in _Julius
Caesar_ that, although not even Shakespeare could better the style he
has chosen, he has not let himself go.
In reading _Hamlet_ we have no such feeling, and in many parts (for
there is in the writing of _Hamlet_ an unusual variety[29]) we are
conscious of a decided change. The style in these parts is more rapid
and vehement, less equable and less simple; and there is a change of the
same kind in the versification. But on the whole the _type_ is the same
as in _Julius Caesar_, and the resemblance of the two plays is decidedly
more marked than the difference. If Hamlet's soliloquies, considered
simply as compositions, show a great change from Jaques's speech, 'All
the world's a stage,' and even from the soliloquies of Brutus, yet
_Hamlet_ (for instance in the hero's interview with his mother) is like
_Julius Caesar_, and unlike the later tragedies, in the fulness of its
eloquence, and passages like the following belong quite definitely to
the style of the Second Period:
_Mar._ It faded on the crowing of the cock.
Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long;
And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad;
The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallow'd and so gracious is the time.
_Hor._ So have I heard and do in part believe it.
But, look, the morn, in russet mantle clad,
Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastward hill.
This bewitching music is heard again in Hamlet's farewell to Horatio:
If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart,
Absent thee from felicity awhile,
And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain,
To tell my story.
But after _Hamlet_ this music is heard no more. It is followed by a
music vaster and deeper, but not the same.
The changes observable in _Hamlet_ are afterwards, and gradually, so
greatly developed that Shakespeare's style and versification at last
become almost new things. It is extremely difficult to illustrate this
briefly in a manner to which no just exception can be taken, for it is
almost impossible to find in two plays passages bearing a sufficiently
close resemblance to one another in occasion and sentiment. But I will
venture to put by the first of those quotations from _Hamlet_ this from
_Macbeth_:
_Dun._ This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air
Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself
Unto our gentle senses.
_Ban._ This guest of summer,
The temple-haunting martlet, does approve,
By his loved mansionry, that the heaven's breath
Smells wooingly here: no jutty, frieze,
Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird
Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle;
Where they most breed and haunt, I have observed,
The air is delicate;
and by the second quotation from _Hamlet_ this from _Antony and
Cleopatra_:
The miserable change now at my end
Lament nor sorrow at; but please your thoughts
In feeding them with those my former fortunes
Wherein I lived, the greatest prince o' the world,
The noblest; and do now not basely die,
Not cowardly put off my helmet to
My countryman,--a Roman by a Roman
Valiantly vanquish'd. Now my spirit is going;
I can no more.
It would be almost an impertinence to point out in detail how greatly
these two passages, and especially the second, differ in effect from
those in _Hamlet_, written perhaps five or six years earlier. The
versification, by the time we reach _Antony and Cleopatra_, has assumed
a new type; and although this change would appear comparatively slight
in a typical passage from _Othello_ or even from _King Lear_, its
approach through these plays to _Timon_ and _Macbeth_ can easily be
traced. It is accompanied by a similar change in diction and
construction. After _Hamlet_ the style, in the more emotional passages,
is heightened. It becomes grander, sometimes wilder, sometimes more
swelling, even tumid. It is also more concentrated, rapid, varied, and,
in construction, less regular, not seldom twisted or elliptical. It is,
therefore, not so easy and lucid, and in the more ordinary dialogue it
is sometimes involved and obscure, and from these and other causes
deficient in charm.[30] On the other hand, it is always full of life and
movement, and in great passages produces sudden, strange, electrifying
effects which are rarely found in earlier plays, and not so often even
in _Hamlet_. The more pervading effect of beauty gives place to what may
almost be called explosions of sublimity or pathos.
There is room for differences of taste and preference as regards the
style and versification of the end of Shakespeare's Second Period, and
those of the later tragedies and last romances. But readers who miss in
the latter the peculiar enchantment of the earlier will not deny that
the changes in form are in entire harmony with the inward changes. If
they object to passages where, to exaggerate a little, the sense has
rather to be discerned beyond the words than found in them, and if they
do not wholly enjoy the movement of so typical a speech as this,
Yes, like enough, high-battled Caesar will
Unstate his happiness, and be staged to the show,
Against a sworder! I see men's judgements are
A parcel of their fortunes; and things outward
Do draw the inward quality after them,
To suffer all alike. That he should dream,
Knowing all measures, the full Caesar will
Answer his emptiness! Caesar, thou hast subdued
His judgement too,
they will admit that, in traversing the impatient throng of thoughts not
always completely embodied, their minds move through an astonishing
variety of ideas and experiences, and that a style less generally poetic
than that of _Hamlet_ is also a style more invariably dramatic. It may
be that, for the purposes of tragedy, the highest point was reached
during the progress of these changes, in the most critical passages of
_Othello_, _King Lear_ and _Macbeth_.[31]
2
Suppose you were to describe the plot of _Hamlet_ to a person quite
ignorant of the play, and suppose you were careful to tell your hearer
nothing about Hamlet's character, what impression would your sketch make
on him? Would he not exclaim: 'What a sensational story! Why, here are
some eight violent deaths, not to speak of adultery, a ghost, a mad
woman, and a fight in a grave! If I did not know that the play was
Shakespeare's, I should have thought it must have been one of those
early tragedies of blood and horror from which he is said to have
redeemed the stage'? And would he not then go on to ask: 'But why in the
world did not Hamlet obey the Ghost at once, and so save seven of those
eight lives?'
This exclamation and this question both show the same thing, that the
whole story turns upon the peculiar character of the hero. For without
this character the story would appear sensational and horrible; and yet
the actual _Hamlet_ is very far from being so, and even has a less
terrible effect than _Othello_, _King Lear_ or _Macbeth_. And again, if
we had no knowledge of this character, the story would hardly be
intelligible; it would at any rate at once suggest that wondering
question about the conduct of the hero; while the story of any of the
other three tragedies would sound plain enough and would raise no such
question. It is further very probable that the main change made by
Shakespeare in the story as already represented on the stage, lay in a
new conception of Hamlet's character and so of the cause of his delay.
And, lastly, when we examine the tragedy, we observe two things which
illustrate the same point. First, we find by the side of the hero no
other figure of tragic proportions, no one like Lady Macbeth or Iago, no
one even like Cordelia or Desdemona; so that, in Hamlet's absence, the
remaining characters could not yield a Shakespearean tragedy at all.
And, secondly, we find among them two, Laertes and Fortinbras, who are
evidently designed to throw the character of the hero into relief. Even
in the situations there is a curious parallelism; for Fortinbras, like
Hamlet, is the son of a king, lately dead, and succeeded by his brother;
and Laertes, like Hamlet, has a father slain, and feels bound to avenge
him. And with this parallelism in situation there is a strong contrast
in character; for both Fortinbras and Laertes possess in abundance the
very quality which the hero seems to lack, so that, as we read, we are
tempted to exclaim that either of them would have accomplished Hamlet's
task in a day. Naturally, then, the tragedy of _Hamlet_ with Hamlet left
out has become the symbol of extreme absurdity; while the character
itself has probably exerted a greater fascination, and certainly has
been the subject of more discussion, than any other in the whole
literature of the world.