his charge from the spirit of his father; and his condition was vividly
depicted in the fact that, within an hour of receiving this charge, he
had relapsed into that weariness of life or longing for death which is
the immediate cause of his later inaction. When next we meet him, at the
opening of the Second Act, a considerable time has elapsed, apparently
as much as two months.[54] The ambassadors sent to the King of Norway
(I. ii. 27) are just returning. Laertes, whom we saw leaving Elsinore
(I. iii.), has been in Paris long enough to be in want of fresh
supplies. Ophelia has obeyed her father's command (given in I. iii.),
and has refused to receive Hamlet's visits or letters. What has Hamlet
done? He has put on an 'antic disposition' and established a reputation
for lunacy, with the result that his mother has become deeply anxious
about him, and with the further result that the King, who was formerly
so entirely at ease regarding him that he wished him to stay on at
Court, is now extremely uneasy and very desirous to discover the cause
of his 'transformation.' Hence Rosencrantz and Guildenstern have been
sent for, to cheer him by their company and to worm his secret out of
him; and they are just about to arrive. Beyond exciting thus the
apprehensions of his enemy Hamlet has done absolutely nothing; and, as
we have seen, we must imagine him during this long period sunk for the
most part in 'bestial oblivion' or fruitless broodings, and falling
deeper and deeper into the slough of despond.
Now he takes a further step. He suddenly appears unannounced in
Ophelia's chamber; and his appearance and behaviour are such as to
suggest both to Ophelia and to her father that his brain is turned by
disappointment in love. How far this step was due to the design of
creating a false impression as to the origin of his lunacy, how far to
other causes, is a difficult question; but such a design seems certainly
present. It succeeds, however, only in part; for, although Polonius is
fully convinced, the King is not so, and it is therefore arranged that
the two shall secretly witness a meeting between Ophelia and Hamlet.
Meanwhile Rosencrantz and Guildenstern arrive, and at the King's request
begin their attempts, easily foiled by Hamlet, to pluck out the heart of
his mystery. Then the players come to Court, and for a little while one
of Hamlet's old interests revives, and he is almost happy. But only for
a little while. The emotion shown by the player in reciting the speech
which tells of Hecuba's grief for her slaughtered husband awakes into
burning life the slumbering sense of duty and shame. He must act. With
the extreme rapidity which always distinguishes him in his healthier
moments, he conceives and arranges the plan of having the 'Murder of
Gonzago' played before the King and Queen, with the addition of a speech
written by himself for the occasion. Then, longing to be alone, he
abruptly dismisses his guests, and pours out a passion of self-reproach
for his delay, asks himself in bewilderment what can be its cause,
lashes himself into a fury of hatred against his foe, checks himself in
disgust at his futile emotion, and quiets his conscience for the moment
by trying to convince himself that he has doubts about the Ghost, and by
assuring himself that, if the King's behaviour at the play-scene shows
but a sign of guilt, he 'knows his course.'
Nothing, surely, can be clearer than the meaning of this famous
soliloquy. The doubt which appears at its close, instead of being the
natural conclusion of the preceding thoughts, is totally inconsistent
with them. For Hamlet's self-reproaches, his curses on his enemy, and
his perplexity about his own inaction, one and all imply his faith in
the identity and truthfulness of the Ghost. Evidently this sudden doubt,
of which there has not been the slightest trace before, is no genuine
doubt; it is an unconscious fiction, an excuse for his delay--and for
its continuance.
A night passes, and the day that follows it brings the crisis. First
takes place that interview from which the King is to learn whether
disappointed love is really the cause of his nephew's lunacy. Hamlet is
sent for; poor Ophelia is told to walk up and down, reading her
prayer-book; Polonius and the King conceal themselves behind the arras.
And Hamlet enters, so deeply absorbed in thought that for some time he
supposes himself to be alone. What is he thinking of? 'The Murder of
Gonzago,' which is to be played in a few hours, and on which everything
depends? Not at all. He is meditating on suicide; and he finds that what
stands in the way of it, and counterbalances its infinite attraction, is
not any thought of a sacred unaccomplished duty, but the doubt, quite
irrelevant to that issue, whether it is not ignoble in the mind to end
its misery, and, still more, whether death _would_ end it. Hamlet, that
is to say, is here, in effect, precisely where he was at the time of his
first soliloquy ('O that this too too solid flesh would melt') two
months ago, before ever he heard of his father's murder.[55] His
reflections have no reference to this particular moment; they represent
that habitual weariness of life with which his passing outbursts of
emotion or energy are contrasted. What can be more significant than the
fact that he is sunk in these reflections on the very day which is to
determine for him the truthfulness of the Ghost? And how is it possible
for us to hope that, if that truthfulness should be established, Hamlet
will be any nearer to his revenge?[56]
His interview with Ophelia follows; and its result shows that his delay
is becoming most dangerous to himself. The King is satisfied that,
whatever else may be the hidden cause of Hamlet's madness, it is not
love. He is by no means certain even that Hamlet is mad at all. He has
heard that infuriated threat, 'I say, we will have no more marriages;
those that are married, all but one, shall live; the rest shall keep as
they are.' He is thoroughly alarmed. He at any rate will not delay. On
the spot he determines to send Hamlet to England. But, as Polonius is
present, we do not learn at once the meaning of this purpose.
Evening comes. The approach of the play-scene raises Hamlet's spirits.
He is in his element. He feels that he is doing _something_ towards his
end, striking a stroke, but a stroke of intellect. In his instructions
to the actor on the delivery of the inserted speech, and again in his
conversation with Horatio just before the entry of the Court, we see the
true Hamlet, the Hamlet of the days before his father's death. But how
characteristic it is that he appears quite as anxious that his speech
should not be ranted as that Horatio should observe its effect upon the
King! This trait appears again even at that thrilling moment when the
actor is just going to deliver the speech. Hamlet sees him beginning to
frown and glare like the conventional stage-murderer, and calls to him
impatiently, 'Leave thy damnable faces and begin!'[57]
Hamlet's device proves a triumph far more complete than he had dared to
expect. He had thought the King might 'blench,' but he does much more.
When only six of the 'dozen or sixteen lines' have been spoken he starts
to his feet and rushes from the hall, followed by the whole dismayed
Court. In the elation of success--an elation at first almost
hysterical--Hamlet treats Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who are sent to
him, with undisguised contempt. Left to himself, he declares that now he
could
drink hot blood,
And do such bitter business as the day
Would quake to look on.
He has been sent for by his mother, and is going to her chamber; and so
vehement and revengeful is his mood that he actually fancies himself in
danger of using daggers to her as well as speaking them.[58]
In this mood, on his way to his mother's chamber, he comes upon the
King, alone, kneeling, conscience-stricken and attempting to pray. His
enemy is delivered into his hands.
Now might I do it pat, now he is praying:
And now I'll do it: and so he goes to heaven:
And so am I revenged.[59] That would be scanned.
He scans it; and the sword that he drew at the words, 'And now I'll do
it,' is thrust back into its sheath. If he killed the villain now he
would send his soul to heaven; and he would fain kill soul as well as
body.
That this again is an unconscious excuse for delay is now pretty
generally agreed, and it is needless to describe again the state of mind
which, on the view explained in our last lecture, is the real cause of
Hamlet's failure here. The first five words he utters, 'Now might I do
it,' show that he has no effective _desire_ to 'do it'; and in the
little sentences that follow, and the long pauses between them, the
endeavour at a resolution, and the sickening return of melancholic
paralysis, however difficult a task they set to the actor, are plain
enough to a reader. And any reader who may retain a doubt should observe
the fact that, when the Ghost reappears, Hamlet does not think of
justifying his delay by the plea that he was waiting for a more perfect
vengeance. But in one point the great majority of critics, I think, go
astray. The feeling of intense hatred which Hamlet expresses is not the
cause of his sparing the King, and in his heart he knows this; but it
does not at all follow that this feeling is unreal. All the evidence
afforded by the play goes to show that it is perfectly genuine, and I
see no reason whatever to doubt that Hamlet would have been very sorry
to send his father's murderer to heaven, nor much to doubt that he would
have been glad to send him to perdition. The reason for refusing to
accept his own version of his motive in sparing Claudius is not that his
sentiments are horrible, but that elsewhere, and also in the opening of
his speech here, we can see that his reluctance to act is due to other
causes.
The incident of the sparing of the King is contrived with extraordinary
dramatic insight. On the one side we feel that the opportunity was
perfect. Hamlet could not possibly any longer tell himself that he had
no certainty as to his uncle's guilt. And the external conditions were
most favourable; for the King's remarkable behaviour at the play-scene
would have supplied a damning confirmation of the story Hamlet had to
tell about the Ghost. Even now, probably, in a Court so corrupt as that
of Elsinore, he could not with perfect security have begun by charging
the King with the murder; but he could quite safely have killed him
first and given his justification afterwards, especially as he would
certainly have had on his side the people, who loved him and despised
Claudius. On the other hand, Shakespeare has taken care to give this
perfect opportunity so repulsive a character that we can hardly bring
ourselves to wish that the hero should accept it. One of his minor
difficulties, we have seen, probably was that he seemed to be required
to attack a defenceless man; and here this difficulty is at its maximum.
This incident is, again, the turning-point of the tragedy. So far,
Hamlet's delay, though it is endangering his freedom and his life, has
done no irreparable harm; but his failure here is the cause of all the
disasters that follow. In sparing the King, he sacrifices Polonius,
Ophelia, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Laertes, the Queen and himself.
This central significance of the passage is dramatically indicated in
the following scene by the reappearance of the Ghost and the repetition
of its charge.
Polonius is the first to fall. The old courtier, whose vanity would not
allow him to confess that his diagnosis of Hamlet's lunacy was mistaken,
had suggested that, after the theatricals, the Queen should endeavour in
a private interview with her son to penetrate the mystery, while he
himself would repeat his favourite part of eaves-dropper (III. i. 184
ff.). It has now become quite imperative that the Prince should be
brought to disclose his secret; for his choice of the 'Murder of
Gonzago,' and perhaps his conduct during the performance, have shown a
spirit of exaggerated hostility against the King which has excited
general alarm. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern discourse to Claudius on the
extreme importance of his preserving his invaluable life, as though
Hamlet's insanity had now clearly shown itself to be homicidal.[60]
When, then, at the opening of the interview between Hamlet and his
mother, the son, instead of listening to her remonstrances, roughly
assumes the offensive, she becomes alarmed; and when, on her attempting
to leave the room, he takes her by the arm and forces her to sit down,
she is terrified, cries out, 'Thou wilt not murder me?' and screams for
help. Polonius, behind the arras, echoes her call; and in a moment
Hamlet, hoping the concealed person is the King, runs the old man
through the body.
Evidently this act is intended to stand in sharp contrast with Hamlet's
sparing of his enemy. The King would have been just as defenceless
behind the arras as he had been on his knees; but here Hamlet is already
excited and in action, and the chance comes to him so suddenly that he
has no time to 'scan' it. It is a minor consideration, but still for the
dramatist not unimportant, that the audience would wholly sympathise
with Hamlet's attempt here, as directed against an enemy who is lurking
to entrap him, instead of being engaged in a business which perhaps to
the bulk of the audience then, as now, seemed to have a 'relish of
salvation in't.'
We notice in Hamlet, at the opening of this interview, something of the
excited levity which followed the _dénouement_ of the play-scene. The
death of Polonius sobers him; and in the remainder of the interview he
shows, together with some traces of his morbid state, the peculiar
beauty and nobility of his nature. His chief desire is not by any means
to ensure his mother's silent acquiescence in his design of revenge; it
is to save her soul. And while the rough work of vengeance is repugnant
to him, he is at home in this higher work. Here that fatal feeling, 'it
is no matter,' never shows itself. No father-confessor could be more
selflessly set upon his end of redeeming a fellow-creature from
degradation, more stern or pitiless in denouncing the sin, or more eager
to welcome the first token of repentance. There is something infinitely
beautiful in that sudden sunshine of faith and love which breaks out
when, at the Queen's surrender,
O Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain,
he answers,
O throw away the worser part of it,
And live the purer with the other half.
The truth is that, though Hamlet hates his uncle and acknowledges the
duty of vengeance, his whole heart is never in this feeling or this
task; but his whole heart is in his horror at his mother's fall and in
his longing to raise her. The former of these feelings was the
inspiration of his first soliloquy; it combines with the second to form
the inspiration of his eloquence here. And Shakespeare never wrote more
eloquently than here.
I have already alluded to the significance of the reappearance of the
Ghost in this scene; but why does Shakespeare choose for the particular
moment of its reappearance the middle of a speech in which Hamlet is
raving against his uncle? There seems to be more than one reason. In the
first place, Hamlet has already attained his object of stirring shame
and contrition in his mother's breast, and is now yielding to the old
temptation of unpacking his heart with words, and exhausting in useless
emotion the force which should be stored up in his will. And, next, in
doing this he is agonising his mother to no purpose, and in despite of
her piteous and repeated appeals for mercy. But the Ghost, when it gave
him his charge, had expressly warned him to spare her; and here again
the dead husband shows the same tender regard for his weak unfaithful
wife. The object of his return is to repeat his charge:
Do not forget: this visitation
Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose;
but, having uttered this reminder, he immediately bids the son to help
the mother and 'step between her and her fighting soul.'
And, whether intentionally or not, another purpose is served by
Shakespeare's choice of this particular moment. It is a moment when the
state of Hamlet's mind is such that we cannot suppose the Ghost to be
meant for an hallucination; and it is of great importance here that the
spectator or reader should not suppose any such thing. He is further
guarded by the fact that the Ghost proves, so to speak, his identity by
showing the same traits as were visible on his first appearance--the
same insistence on the duty of remembering, and the same concern for the
Queen. And the result is that we construe the Ghost's interpretation of
Hamlet's delay ('almost blunted purpose') as the truth, the dramatist's
own interpretation. Let me add that probably no one in Shakespeare's
audience had any doubt of his meaning here. The idea of later critics
and readers that the Ghost is an hallucination is due partly to failure
to follow the indications just noticed, but partly also to two mistakes,
the substitution of our present intellectual atmosphere for the
Elizabethan, and the notion that, because the Queen does not see and
hear the Ghost, it is meant to be unreal. But a ghost, in Shakespeare's
day, was able for any sufficient reason to confine its manifestation to
a single person in a company; and here the sufficient reason, that of
sparing the Queen, is obvious.[61]
At the close of this scene it appears that Hamlet has somehow learned of
the King's design of sending him to England in charge of his two
'school-fellows.' He has no doubt that this design covers some
villainous plot against himself, but neither does he doubt that he will
succeed in defeating it; and, as we saw, he looks forward with pleasure
to this conflict of wits. The idea of refusing to go appears not to
occur to him. Perhaps (for here we are left to conjecture) he feels that
he could not refuse unless at the same time he openly accused the King
of his father's murder (a course which he seems at no time to
contemplate); for by the slaughter of Polonius he has supplied his enemy
with the best possible excuse for getting him out of the country.
Besides, he has so effectually warned this enemy that, after the death
of Polonius is discovered, he is kept under guard (IV. iii. 14). He
consents, then, to go. But on his way to the shore he meets the army of
Fortinbras on its march to Poland; and the sight of these men going
cheerfully to risk death 'for an egg-shell,' and 'making mouths at the
invisible event,' strikes him with shame as he remembers how he, with so
much greater cause for action, 'lets all sleep;' and he breaks out into
the soliloquy, 'How all occasions do inform against me!'
This great speech, in itself not inferior to the famous 'To be or not to
be,' is absent not only from the First Quarto but from the Folio. It is
therefore probable that, at any rate by the time when the Folio appeared
(1623), it had become customary to omit it in theatrical representation;
and this is still the custom. But, while no doubt it is dramatically the
least indispensable of the soliloquies, it has a direct dramatic value,
and a great value for the interpretation of Hamlet's character. It shows
that Hamlet, though he is leaving Denmark, has not relinquished the idea
of obeying the Ghost. It exhibits very strikingly his inability to
understand why he has delayed so long. It contains that assertion which
so many critics forget, that he has 'cause and will and strength and
means to do it.' On the other hand--and this was perhaps the principal
purpose of the speech--it convinces us that he has learnt little or
nothing from his delay, or from his failure to seize the opportunity
presented to him after the play-scene. For, we find, both the motive and
the gist of the speech are precisely the same as those of the soliloquy
at the end of the Second Act ('O what a rogue'). There too he was
stirred to shame when he saw a passionate emotion awakened by a cause
which, compared with his, was a mere egg-shell. There too he stood
bewildered at the sight of his own dulness, and was almost ready to
believe--what was justly incredible to him--that it was the mask of mere
cowardice. There too he determined to delay no longer: if the King
should but blench, he knew his course. Yet this determination led to
nothing then; and why, we ask ourselves in despair, should the bloody
thoughts he now resolves to cherish ever pass beyond the realm of
thought?
Between this scene (IV. iv.) and the remainder of the play we must again
suppose an interval, though not a very long one. When the action
recommences, the death of Polonius has led to the insanity of Ophelia
and the secret return of Laertes from France. The young man comes back
breathing slaughter. For the King, afraid to put Hamlet on his trial (a
course likely to raise the question of his own behaviour at the play,
and perhaps to provoke an open accusation),[62] has attempted to hush up
the circumstances of Polonius's death, and has given him a hurried and
inglorious burial. The fury of Laertes, therefore, is directed in the
first instance against the King: and the ease with which he raises the
people, like the King's fear of a judicial enquiry, shows us how purely
internal were the obstacles which the hero had to overcome. This
impression is intensified by the broad contrast between Hamlet and
Laertes, who rushes headlong to his revenge, and is determined to have
it though allegiance, conscience, grace and damnation stand in his way
(IV. v. 130). But the King, though he has been hard put to it, is now in
his element and feels safe. Knowing that he will very soon hear of
Hamlet's execution in England, he tells Laertes that his father died by
Hamlet's hand, and expresses his willingness to let the friends of
Laertes judge whether he himself has any responsibility for the deed.
And when, to his astonishment and dismay, news comes that Hamlet has
returned to Denmark, he acts with admirable promptitude and address,
turns Laertes round his finger, and arranges with him for the murder of
their common enemy. If there were any risk of the young man's resolution
faltering, it is removed by the death of Ophelia. And now the King has
but one anxiety,--to prevent the young men from meeting before the
fencing-match. For who can tell what Hamlet might say in his defence, or
how enchanting his tongue might prove?[63]
Hamlet's return to Denmark is due partly to his own action, partly to
accident. On the voyage he secretly possesses himself of the royal
commission, and substitutes for it another, which he himself writes and
seals, and in which the King of England is ordered to put to death, not
Hamlet, but Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Then the ship is attacked by a
pirate, which, apparently, finds its intended prize too strong for it,
and makes off. But as Hamlet 'in the grapple,' eager for fighting, has
boarded the assailant, he is carried off in it, and by promises induces
the pirates to put him ashore in Denmark.