between _Hamlet_ and _Macbeth_, the appearance in each play of a
Ghost,--a figure which seems quite in place in either, whereas it would
seem utterly out of place in _Othello_ or _King Lear_. Much might be
said of the Ghost in _Hamlet_, but I confine myself to the matter which
we are now considering. What is the effect of the appearance of the
Ghost? And, in particular, why does Shakespeare make this Ghost so
_majestical_ a phantom, giving it that measured and solemn utterance,
and that air of impersonal abstraction which forbids, for example, all
expression of affection for Hamlet and checks in Hamlet the outburst of
pity for his father? Whatever the intention may have been, the result is
that the Ghost affects imagination not simply as the apparition of a
dead king who desires the accomplishment of _his_ purposes, but also as
the representative of that hidden ultimate power, the messenger of
divine justice set upon the expiation of offences which it appeared
impossible for man to discover and avenge, a reminder or a symbol of the
connexion of the limited world of ordinary experience with the vaster
life of which it is but a partial appearance. And as, at the beginning
of the play, we have this intimation, conveyed through the medium of the
received religious idea of a soul come from purgatory, so at the end,
conveyed through the similar idea of a soul carried by angels to its
rest, we have an intimation of the same character, and a reminder that
the apparent failure of Hamlet's life is not the ultimate truth
concerning him.
If these various peculiarities of the tragedy are considered, it will be
agreed that, while _Hamlet_ certainly cannot be called in the specific
sense a 'religious drama,' there is in it nevertheless both a freer use
of popular religious ideas, and a more decided, though always
imaginative, intimation of a supreme power concerned in human evil and
good, than can be found in any other of Shakespeare's tragedies. And
this is probably one of the causes of the special popularity of this
play, just as _Macbeth_, the tragedy which in these respects most nearly
approaches it, has also the place next to it in general esteem.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 54: In the First Act (I. ii. 138) Hamlet says that his father
has been dead not quite two months. In the Third Act (III. ii. 135)
Ophelia says King Hamlet has been dead 'twice two months.' The events of
the Third Act are separated from those of the Second by one night (II.
ii. 565).]
[Footnote 55: The only difference is that in the 'To be or not to be'
soliloquy there is no reference to the idea that suicide is forbidden by
'the Everlasting.' Even this, however, seems to have been present in the
original form of the speech, for the version in the First Quarto has a
line about our being 'borne before an everlasting Judge.']
[Footnote 56: The present position of the 'To be or not to be'
soliloquy, and of the interview with Ophelia, appears to have been due
to an after-thought of Shakespeare's; for in the First Quarto they
precede, instead of following, the arrival of the players, and
consequently the arrangement for the play-scene. This is a notable
instance of the truth that 'inspiration' is by no means confined to a
poet's first conceptions.]
[Footnote 57: Cf. again the scene at Ophelia's grave, where a strong
strain of aesthetic disgust is traceable in Hamlet's 'towering passion'
with Laertes: 'Nay, an thou'lt mouth, I'll rant as well as thou' (V. i.
306).]
[Footnote 58:
O heart, lose not thy nature; let not ever
The soul of Nero enter this firm bosom:
Nero, who put to death his mother who had poisoned her husband. This
passage is surely remarkable. And so are the later words (III. iv. 28):
A bloody deed! almost as bad, good mother,
As kill a king, and marry with his brother.
Are we to understand that at this time he really suspected her of
complicity in the murder? We must remember that the Ghost had not told
him she was innocent of that.]
[Footnote 59: I am inclined to think that the note of interrogation put
after 'revenged' in a late Quarto is right.]
[Footnote 60: III. iii. 1-26. The state of affairs at Court at this
time, though I have not seen it noticed by critics, seems to me
puzzling. It is quite clear from III. ii. 310 ff., from the passage just
cited, and from IV. vii. 1-5 and 30 ff., that everyone sees in the
play-scene a gross and menacing insult to the King. Yet no one shows any
sign of perceiving in it also an accusation of murder. Surely that is
strange. Are we perhaps meant to understand that they do perceive this,
but out of subservience choose to ignore the fact? If that were
Shakespeare's meaning, the actors could easily indicate it by their
looks. And if it were so, any sympathy we may feel for Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern in their fate would be much diminished. But the mere text
does not suffice to decide either this question or the question whether
the two courtiers were aware of the contents of the commission they bore
to England.]
[Footnote 61: This passage in _Hamlet_ seems to have been in Heywood's
mind when, in _The Second Part of the Iron Age_ (Pearson's reprint, vol.
iii., p. 423), he makes the Ghost of Agamemnon appear in order to
satisfy the doubts of Orestes as to his mother's guilt. No reader could
possibly think that this Ghost was meant to be an hallucination; yet
Clytemnestra cannot see it. The Ghost of King Hamlet, I may add, goes
further than that of Agamemnon, for he is audible, as well as visible,
to the privileged person.]
[Footnote 62: I think it is clear that it is this fear which stands in
the way of the obvious plan of bringing Hamlet to trial and getting him
shut up or executed. It is much safer to hurry him off to his doom in
England before he can say anything about the murder which he has somehow
discovered. Perhaps the Queen's resistance, and probably Hamlet's great
popularity with the people, are additional reasons. (It should be
observed that as early as III. i. 194 we hear of the idea of 'confining'
Hamlet as an alternative to sending him to England.)]
[Footnote 63: I am inferring from IV. vii., 129, 130, and the last words
of the scene.]
[Footnote 64: III. iv. 172:
For this same lord,
I do repent: but heaven hath pleased it so,
To punish me with this and this with me,
That I must be their scourge and minister:
_i.e._ the scourge and minister of 'heaven,' which has a plural sense
elsewhere also in Shakespeare.]
[Footnote 65: IV. iii. 48:
_Ham._ For England!
_King._ Ay, Hamlet.
_Ham._ Good.
_King._ So is it, if thou knew'st our purposes.
_Ham._ I see a cherub that sees them.]
[Footnote 66: On this passage see p. 98. Hamlet's reply to Horatio's
warning sounds, no doubt, determined; but so did 'I know my course.' And
is it not significant that, having given it, he abruptly changes the
subject?]
[Footnote 67: P. 102.]
[Footnote 68: It should be observed also that many of Hamlet's
repetitions can hardly be said to occur at moments of great emotion,
like Cordelia's 'And so I am, I am,' and 'No cause, no cause.'
Of course, a habit of repetition quite as marked as Hamlet's may be
found in comic persons, _e.g._ Justice Shallow in _2 Henry IV._]
[Footnote 69: Perhaps it is from noticing this trait that I find
something characteristic too in this coincidence of phrase: 'Alas, poor
ghost!' (I. v. 4), 'Alas, poor Yorick!' (V. i. 202).]
[Footnote 70: This letter, of course, was written before the time when
the action of the drama begins, for we know that Ophelia, after her
father's commands in I. iii., received no more letters (II. i. 109).]
[Footnote 71: 'Frailty, thy name is woman!' he had exclaimed in the
first soliloquy. Cf. what he says of his mother's act (III. iv. 40):
Such an act
That blurs the grace and blush of modesty,
Calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the rose
From the fair forehead of an innocent love
And sets a blister there.]
[Footnote 72: There are signs that Hamlet was haunted by the horrible
idea that he had been deceived in Ophelia as he had been in his mother;
that she was shallow and artificial, and even that what had seemed
simple and affectionate love might really have been something very
different. The grossness of his language at the play-scene, and some
lines in the Nunnery-scene, suggest this; and, considering the state of
his mind, there is nothing unnatural in his suffering from such a
suspicion. I do not suggest that he _believed_ in it, and in the
Nunnery-scene it is clear that his healthy perception of her innocence
is in conflict with it.
He seems to have divined that Polonius suspected him of dishonourable
intentions towards Ophelia; and there are also traces of the idea that
Polonius had been quite ready to let his daughter run the risk as long
as Hamlet was prosperous. But it is dangerous, of course, to lay stress
on inferences drawn from his conversations with Polonius.]
[Footnote 73: Many readers and critics imagine that Hamlet went straight
to Ophelia's room after his interview with the Ghost. But we have just
seen that on the contrary he tried to visit her and was repelled, and it
is absolutely certain that a long interval separates the events of I. v.
and II. i. They think also, of course, that Hamlet's visit to Ophelia
was the first announcement of his madness. But the text flatly
contradicts that idea also. Hamlet has for some time appeared totally
changed (II. ii. 1-10); the King is very uneasy at his 'transformation,'
and has sent for his school-fellows in order to discover its cause.
Polonius now, after Ophelia has told him of the interview, comes to
announce his discovery, not of Hamlet's madness, but of its cause (II.
ii. 49). That, it would seem, was the effect Hamlet aimed at in his
interview. I may add that Ophelia's description of his intent
examination of her face suggests doubt rather as to her 'honesty' or
sincerity than as to her strength of mind. I cannot believe that he ever
dreamed of confiding his secret to her.]
[Footnote 74: If this _is_ an allusion to his own love, the adjective
'despised' is significant. But I doubt the allusion. The other
calamities mentioned by Hamlet, 'the oppressor's wrong, the proud man's
contumely, the law's delay, the insolence of office, and the spurns that
patient merit of the unworthy takes,' are not at all specially his own.]
[Footnote 75: It should be noticed that it was not apparently of long
standing. See the words 'of late' in I. iii. 91, 99.]
[Footnote 76: This, I think, may be said on almost any sane view of
Hamlet's love.]
[Footnote 77: Polonius says so, and it _may_ be true.]
[Footnote 78: I have heard an actress in this part utter such a cry as
is described above, but there is absolutely nothing in the text to
justify her rendering. Even the exclamation 'O, ho!' found in the
Quartos at IV. v. 33, but omitted in the Folios and by almost all modern
editors, coming as it does after the stanza, 'He is dead and gone,
lady,' evidently expresses grief, not terror.]
[Footnote 79: In the remarks above I have not attempted, of course, a
complete view of the character, which has often been well described; but
I cannot forbear a reference to one point which I do not remember to
have seen noticed. In the Nunnery-scene Ophelia's first words
pathetically betray her own feeling:
Good my lord,
How does your honour _for this many a day_?
She then offers to return Hamlet's presents. This has not been suggested
to her by her father: it is her own thought. And the next lines, in
which she refers to the sweet words which accompanied those gifts, and
to the unkindness which has succeeded that kindness, imply a reproach.
So again do those most touching little speeches:
_Hamlet._ ... I did love you once.
_Ophelia._ Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.
_Hamlet._ You should not have believed me ... I loved you not.
_Ophelia._ I was the more deceived.
Now the obvious surface fact was not that Hamlet had forsaken her, but
that _she_ had repulsed _him_; and here, with his usual unobtrusive
subtlety, Shakespeare shows how Ophelia, even though she may have
accepted from her elders the theory that her unkindness has driven
Hamlet mad, knows within herself that she is forsaken, and cannot
repress the timid attempt to win her lover back by showing that her own
heart is unchanged.
I will add one note. There are critics who, after all the help given
them in different ways by Goethe and Coleridge and Mrs. Jameson, still
shake their heads over Ophelia's song, 'To-morrow is Saint Valentine's
day.' Probably they are incurable, but they may be asked to consider
that Shakespeare makes Desdemona, 'as chaste as ice, as pure as snow,'
sing an old song containing the line,
If I court moe women, you'll couch with moe men.]
[Footnote 80: _I.e._ the King will kill _her_ to make all sure.]
[Footnote 81: I do not rely so much on his own statement to Laertes (IV.
vii. 12 f.) as on the absence of contrary indications, on his tone in
speaking to her, and on such signs as his mention of her in soliloquy
(III. iii. 55).]
[Footnote 82: This also is quietly indicated. Hamlet spares the King, he
says, because if the King is killed praying he will _go to heaven_. On
Hamlet's departure, the King rises from his knees, and mutters:
My words fly up, my thoughts remain below:
Words without thoughts _never to heaven go_.]
[Footnote 83: I am indebted to Werder in this paragraph.]
[Footnote 84: The attempt to explain this meeting as pre-arranged by
Hamlet is scarcely worth mention.]
LECTURE V
OTHELLO
There is practically no doubt that _Othello_ was the tragedy written
next after _Hamlet_. Such external evidence as we possess points to this
conclusion, and it is confirmed by similarities of style, diction and
versification, and also by the fact that ideas and phrases of the
earlier play are echoed in the later.[85] There is, further (not to
speak of one curious point, to be considered when we come to Iago), a
certain resemblance in the subjects. The heroes of the two plays are
doubtless extremely unlike, so unlike that each could have dealt without
much difficulty with the situation which proved fatal to the other; but
still each is a man exceptionally noble and trustful, and each endures
the shock of a terrible disillusionment. This theme is treated by
Shakespeare for the first time in _Hamlet_, for the second in _Othello_.
It recurs with modifications in _King Lear_, and it probably formed the
attraction which drew Shakespeare to refashion in part another writer's
tragedy of _Timon_. These four dramas may so far be grouped together in
distinction from the remaining tragedies.
But in point of substance, and, in certain respects, in point of style,
the unlikeness of _Othello_ to _Hamlet_ is much greater than the
likeness, and the later play belongs decidedly to one group with its
successors. We have seen that, like them, it is a tragedy of passion, a
description inapplicable to _Julius Caesar_ or _Hamlet_. And with this
change goes another, an enlargement in the stature of the hero. There is
in most of the later heroes something colossal, something which reminds
us of Michael Angelo's figures. They are not merely exceptional men,
they are huge men; as it were, survivors of the heroic age living in a
later and smaller world. We do not receive this impression from Romeo or
Brutus or Hamlet, nor did it lie in Shakespeare's design to allow more
than touches of this trait to Julius Caesar himself; but it is strongly
marked in Lear and Coriolanus, and quite distinct in Macbeth and even in
Antony. Othello is the first of these men, a being essentially large and
grand, towering above his fellows, holding a volume of force which in
repose ensures preeminence without an effort, and in commotion reminds
us rather of the fury of the elements than of the tumult of common human
passion.
1
What is the peculiarity of _Othello_? What is the distinctive impression
that it leaves? Of all Shakespeare's tragedies, I would answer, not even
excepting _King Lear_, _Othello_ is the most painfully exciting and the
most terrible. From the moment when the temptation of the hero begins,
the reader's heart and mind are held in a vice, experiencing the
extremes of pity and fear, sympathy and repulsion, sickening hope and
dreadful expectation. Evil is displayed before him, not indeed with the
profusion found in _King Lear_, but forming, as it were, the soul of a
single character, and united with an intellectual superiority so great
that he watches its advance fascinated and appalled. He sees it, in
itself almost irresistible, aided at every step by fortunate accidents
and the innocent mistakes of its victims. He seems to breathe an
atmosphere as fateful as that of _King Lear_, but more confined and
oppressive, the darkness not of night but of a close-shut murderous
room. His imagination is excited to intense activity, but it is the
activity of concentration rather than dilation.
I will not dwell now on aspects of the play which modify this
impression, and I reserve for later discussion one of its principal
sources, the character of Iago. But if we glance at some of its other
sources, we shall find at the same time certain distinguishing
characteristics of _Othello_.
(1) One of these has been already mentioned in our discussion of
Shakespeare's technique. _Othello_ is not only the most masterly of the
tragedies in point of construction, but its method of construction is
unusual. And this method, by which the conflict begins late, and
advances without appreciable pause and with accelerating speed to the
catastrophe, is a main cause of the painful tension just described. To
this may be added that, after the conflict has begun, there is very
little relief by way of the ridiculous. Henceforward at any rate Iago's
humour never raises a smile. The clown is a poor one; we hardly attend
to him and quickly forget him; I believe most readers of Shakespeare, if
asked whether there is a clown in _Othello_, would answer No.
(2) In the second place, there is no subject more exciting than sexual
jealousy rising to the pitch of passion; and there can hardly be any
spectacle at once so engrossing and so painful as that of a great nature
suffering the torment of this passion, and driven by it to a crime which
is also a hideous blunder. Such a passion as ambition, however terrible
its results, is not itself ignoble; if we separate it in thought from
the conditions which make it guilty, it does not appear despicable; it
is not a kind of suffering, its nature is active; and therefore we can
watch its course without shrinking. But jealousy, and especially sexual
jealousy, brings with it a sense of shame and humiliation. For this
reason it is generally hidden; if we perceive it we ourselves are
ashamed and turn our eyes away; and when it is not hidden it commonly
stirs contempt as well as pity. Nor is this all. Such jealousy as
Othello's converts human nature into chaos, and liberates the beast in
man; and it does this in relation to one of the most intense and also
the most ideal of human feelings. What spectacle can be more painful
than that of this feeling turned into a tortured mixture of longing and
loathing, the 'golden purity' of passion split by poison into fragments,
the animal in man forcing itself into his consciousness in naked
grossness, and he writhing before it but powerless to deny it entrance,
gasping inarticulate images of pollution, and finding relief only in a
bestial thirst for blood? This is what we have to witness in one who was
indeed 'great of heart' and no less pure and tender than he was great.
And this, with what it leads to, the blow to Desdemona, and the scene
where she is treated as the inmate of a brothel, a scene far more
painful than the murder scene, is another cause of the special effect of
this tragedy.[86]
(3) The mere mention of these scenes will remind us painfully of a third
cause; and perhaps it is the most potent of all. I mean the suffering of
Desdemona. This is, unless I mistake, the most nearly intolerable
spectacle that Shakespeare offers us. For one thing, it is _mere_
suffering; and, _ceteris paribus_, that is much worse to witness than
suffering that issues in action. Desdemona is helplessly passive. She
can do nothing whatever. She cannot retaliate even in speech; no, not
even in silent feeling. And the chief reason of her helplessness only
makes the sight of her suffering more exquisitely painful. She is
helpless because her nature is infinitely sweet and her love absolute. I
would not challenge Mr. Swinburne's statement that we _pity_ Othello
even more than Desdemona; but we watch Desdemona with more unmitigated
distress. We are never wholly uninfluenced by the feeling that Othello
is a man contending with another man; but Desdemona's suffering is like
that of the most loving of dumb creatures tortured without cause by the
being he adores.
(4) Turning from the hero and heroine to the third principal character,
we observe (what has often been pointed out) that the action and
catastrophe of _Othello_ depend largely on intrigue. We must not say
more than this. We must not call the play a tragedy of intrigue as
distinguished from a tragedy of character. Iago's plot is Iago's
character in action; and it is built on his knowledge of Othello's
character, and could not otherwise have succeeded. Still it remains true
that an elaborate plot was necessary to elicit the catastrophe; for
Othello was no Leontes, and his was the last nature to engender such
jealousy from itself. Accordingly Iago's intrigue occupies a position in
the drama for which no parallel can be found in the other tragedies; the
only approach, and that a distant one, being the intrigue of Edmund in
the secondary plot of _King Lear_. Now in any novel or play, even if the
persons rouse little interest and are never in serious danger, a
skilfully-worked intrigue will excite eager attention and suspense. And
where, as in _Othello_, the persons inspire the keenest sympathy and
antipathy, and life and death depend on the intrigue, it becomes the
source of a tension in which pain almost overpowers pleasure. Nowhere
else in Shakespeare do we hold our breath in such anxiety and for so
long a time as in the later Acts of _Othello_.
(5) One result of the prominence of the element of intrigue is that
_Othello_ is less unlike a story of private life than any other of the
great tragedies. And this impression is strengthened in further ways. In
the other great tragedies the action is placed in a distant period, so
that its general significance is perceived through a thin veil which
separates the persons from ourselves and our own world. But _Othello_ is
a drama of modern life; when it first appeared it was a drama almost of
contemporary life, for the date of the Turkish attack on Cyprus is 1570.
The characters come close to us, and the application of the drama to
ourselves (if the phrase may be pardoned) is more immediate than it can
be in _Hamlet_ or _Lear_. Besides this, their fortunes affect us as
those of private individuals more than is possible in any of the later
tragedies with the exception of _Timon_. I have not forgotten the
Senate, nor Othello's position, nor his service to the State;[87] but
his deed and his death have not that influence on the interests of a
nation or an empire which serves to idealise, and to remove far from our
own sphere, the stories of Hamlet and Macbeth, of Coriolanus and Antony.
Indeed he is already superseded at Cyprus when his fate is consummated,
and as we leave him no vision rises on us, as in other tragedies, of
peace descending on a distracted land.