question on which I had what seemed something new to say. Professor
Hales's defence of the passage on fuller grounds, in the admirable paper
reprinted in his _Notes and Essays on Shakespeare_, seems to me quite
conclusive. I may add two notes. (1) The references in the Porter's
speeches to 'equivocation,' which have naturally, and probably rightly,
been taken as allusions to the Jesuit Garnet's appeal to the doctrine of
equivocation in defence of his perjury when, on trial for participation
in the Gunpowder Plot, do not stand alone in _Macbeth_. The later
prophecies of the Witches Macbeth calls 'the equivocation of the fiend
That lies like truth' (V. v. 43); and the Porter's remarks about the
equivocator who 'could swear in both the scales against either scale,
who committed treason enough for God's sake, yet could not equivocate to
heaven,' may be compared with the following dialogue (IV. ii. 45):
_Son._ What is a traitor?
_Lady Macduff._ Why, one that swears and lies.
_Son._ And be all traitors that do so?
_Lady Macduff._ Everyone that does so is a traitor, and must
be hanged.
Garnet, as a matter of fact, _was_ hanged in May, 1606; and it is to be
feared that the audience applauded this passage.
(2) The Porter's soliloquy on the different applicants for admittance
has, in idea and manner, a marked resemblance to Pompey's soliloquy on
the inhabitants of the prison, in _Measure for Measure_, IV. iii. 1 ff.;
and the dialogue between him and Abhorson on the 'mystery' of hanging
(IV. ii. 22 ff.) is of just the same kind as the Porter's dialogue with
Macduff about drink.]
[Footnote 248: In the last Act, however, he speaks in verse even in the
quarrel with Laertes at Ophelia's grave. It would be plausible to
explain this either from his imitating what he thinks the rant of
Laertes, or by supposing that his 'towering passion' made him forget to
act the madman. But in the final scene also he speaks in verse in the
presence of all. This again might be accounted for by saying that he is
supposed to be in a lucid interval, as indeed his own language at 239
ff. implies. But the probability is that Shakespeare's real reason for
breaking his rule here was simply that he did not choose to deprive
Hamlet of verse on his last appearance. I wonder the disuse of prose in
these two scenes has not been observed, and used as an argument, by
those who think that Hamlet, with the commission in his pocket, is now
resolute.]
[Footnote 249: The verse-speech of the Doctor, which closes this scene,
lowers the tension towards that of the next scene. His introductory
conversation with the Gentlewoman is written in prose (sometimes very
near verse), partly, perhaps, from its familiar character, but chiefly
because Lady Macbeth is to speak in prose.]
NOTE A.
EVENTS BEFORE THE OPENING OF THE ACTION IN _HAMLET_.
In Hamlet's first soliloquy he speaks of his father as being 'but two
months dead,--nay, not so much, not two.' He goes on to refer to the
love between his father and mother, and then says (I. ii. 145):
and yet, within a month--
Let me not think on't--Frailty, thy name is woman!--
A little month, or ere those shoes were old
With which she follow'd my poor father's body,
Like Niobe, all tears, why she, even she--
O God! a beast, that wants discourse of reason,
Would have mourn'd longer--married with my uncle.
It seems hence to be usually assumed that at this time--the time when
the action begins--Hamlet's mother has been married a little less than a
month.
On this assumption difficulties, however, arise, though I have not found
them referred to. Why has the Ghost waited nearly a month since the
marriage before showing itself? Why has the King waited nearly a month
before appearing in public for the first time, as he evidently does in
this scene? And why has Laertes waited nearly a month since the
coronation before asking leave to return to France (I. ii. 53)?
To this it might be replied that the marriage and the coronation were
separated by some weeks; that, while the former occurred nearly a month
before the time of this scene, the latter has only just taken place; and
that what the Ghost cannot bear is, not the mere marriage, but the
accession of an incestuous murderer to the throne. But anyone who will
read the King's speech at the opening of the scene will certainly
conclude that the marriage has only just been celebrated, and also that
it is conceived as involving the accession of Claudius to the throne.
Gertrude is described as the 'imperial jointress' of the State, and the
King says that the lords consented to the marriage, but makes no
separate mention of his election.
The solution of the difficulty is to be found in the lines quoted above.
The marriage followed, within a month, not the _death_ of Hamlet's
father, but the _funeral_. And this makes all clear. The death happened
nearly two months ago. The funeral did not succeed it immediately, but
(say) in a fortnight or three weeks. And the marriage and coronation,
coming rather less than a month after the funeral, have just taken
place. So that the Ghost has not waited at all; nor has the King, nor
Laertes.
On this hypothesis it follows that Hamlet's agonised soliloquy is not
uttered nearly a month after the marriage which has so horrified him,
but quite soon after it (though presumably he would know rather earlier
what was coming). And from this hypothesis we get also a partial
explanation of two other difficulties, (_a_) When Horatio, at the end of
the soliloquy, enters and greets Hamlet, it is evident that he and
Hamlet have not recently met at Elsinore. Yet Horatio came to Elsinore
for the funeral (I. ii. 176). Now even if the funeral took place some
three weeks ago, it seems rather strange that Hamlet, however absorbed
in grief and however withdrawn from the Court, has not met Horatio; but
if the funeral took place some seven weeks ago, the difficulty is
considerably greater. (_b_) We are twice told that Hamlet has '_of
late_' been seeking the society of Ophelia and protesting his love for
her (I. iii. 91, 99). It always seemed to me, on the usual view of the
chronology, rather difficult (though not, of course, impossible) to
understand this, considering the state of feeling produced in him by his
mother's marriage, and in particular the shock it appears to have given
to his faith in woman. But if the marriage has only just been celebrated
the words 'of late' would naturally refer to a time before it. This time
presumably would be subsequent to the death of Hamlet's father, but it
is not so hard to fancy that Hamlet may have sought relief from mere
_grief_ in his love for Ophelia.
But here another question arises; May not the words 'of late' include,
or even wholly refer to,[250] a time prior to the death of Hamlet's
father? And this question would be answered universally, I suppose, in
the negative, on the ground that Hamlet was not at Court but at
Wittenberg when his father died. I will deal with this idea in a
separate note, and will only add here that, though it is quite possible
that Shakespeare never imagined any of these matters clearly, and so
produced these unimportant difficulties, we ought not to assume this
without examination.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 250: This is intrinsically not probable, and is the more
improbable because in Q1 Hamlet's letter to Ophelia (which must have
been written before the action of the play begins) is signed 'Thine ever
the most unhappy Prince _Hamlet_.' 'Unhappy' _might_ be meant to
describe an unsuccessful lover, but it probably shows that the letter
was written after his father's death.]
NOTE B.
WHERE WAS HAMLET AT THE TIME OF HIS FATHER'S DEATH?
The answer will at once be given: 'At the University of Wittenberg. For
the king says to him (I. ii. 112):
For your intent
In going back to school in Wittenberg,
It is most retrograde to our desire.
The Queen also prays him not to go to Wittenberg: and he consents to
remain.'
Now I quite agree that the obvious interpretation of this passage is
that universally accepted, that Hamlet, like Horatio, was at Wittenberg
when his father died; and I do not say that it is wrong. But it involves
difficulties, and ought not to be regarded as certain.
(1) One of these difficulties has long been recognised. Hamlet,
according to the evidence of Act V., Scene i., is thirty years of age;
and that is a very late age for a university student. One solution is
found (by those who admit that Hamlet _was_ thirty) in a passage in
Nash's _Pierce Penniless_: 'For fashion sake some [Danes] will put their
children to schoole, but they set them not to it till they are fourteene
years old, so that you shall see a great boy with a beard learne his
A.B.C. and sit weeping under the rod when he is thirty years old.'
Another solution, as we saw (p. 105), is found in Hamlet's character. He
is a philosopher who lingers on at the University from love of his
studies there.
(2) But there is a more formidable difficulty, which seems to have
escaped notice. Horatio certainly came from Wittenberg to the funeral.
And observe how he and Hamlet meet (I. ii. 160).
_Hor._ Hail to your lordship!
_Ham._ I am glad to see you well:
Horatio,--or I do forget myself.
_Hor._ The same, my lord, and your poor servant ever.
_Ham._ Sir, my good friend; I'll change that name with you:
And what make you from Wittenberg, Horatio?
Marcellus?
_Mar._ My good lord--
_Ham._ I am very glad to see you. Good even, sir.[251]
But what, in faith, make you from Wittenberg?
_Hor._ A truant disposition, good my lord.
_Ham._ I would not hear your enemy say so,
Nor shall you do my ear that violence,
To make it truster of your own report
Against yourself: I know you are no truant.
But what is your affair in Elsinore?
We'll teach you to drink deep ere you depart.
_Hor._ My lord, I came to see your father's funeral.
_Ham._ I pray thee, do not mock me, fellow-student;
I think it was to see my mother's wedding.
Is not this passing strange? Hamlet and Horatio are supposed to be
fellow-students at Wittenberg, and to have left it for Elsinore less
than two months ago. Yet Hamlet hardly recognises Horatio at first, and
speaks as if he himself lived at Elsinore (I refer to his bitter jest,
'We'll teach you to drink deep ere you depart'). Who would dream that
Hamlet had himself just come from Wittenberg, if it were not for the
previous words about his going back there?
How can this be explained on the usual view? Only, I presume, by
supposing that Hamlet is so sunk in melancholy that he really does
almost 'forget himself'[252] and forget everything else, so that he
actually is in doubt who Horatio is. And this, though not impossible, is
hard to believe.
'Oh no,' it may be answered, 'for he is doubtful about Marcellus too;
and yet, if he were living at Elsinore, he must have seen Marcellus
often.' But he is _not_ doubtful about Marcellus. That note of
interrogation after 'Marcellus' is Capell's conjecture: it is not in any
Quarto or any Folio. The fact is that he knows perfectly well the man
who lives at Elsinore, but is confused by the appearance of the friend
who comes from Wittenberg.
(3) Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are sent for, to wean Hamlet from his
melancholy and to worm his secret out of him, because he has known them
from his youth and is fond of them (II. ii. 1 ff.). They come _to_
Denmark (II. ii. 247 f.): they come therefore _from_ some other country.
Where do they come from? They are, we hear, Hamlet's 'school-fellows'
(III. iv. 202). And in the first Quarto we are directly told that they
were with him at Wittenberg:
_Ham._ What, Gilderstone, and Rossencraft,
Welcome, kind school-fellows, to Elsanore.
_Gil._ We thank your grace, and would be very glad
You were as when we were at Wittenberg.
Now let the reader look at Hamlet's first greeting of them in the
received text, and let him ask himself whether it is the greeting of a
man to fellow-students whom he left two months ago: whether it is not
rather, like his greeting of Horatio, the welcome of an old
fellow-student who has not seen his visitors for a considerable time
(II. ii. 226 f.).
(4) Rosencrantz and Guildenstern tell Hamlet of the players who are
coming. He asks what players they are, and is told, 'Even those you were
wont to take such delight in, the tragedians of the city.' He asks, 'Do
they hold the same estimation they did when I was in the city?'
Evidently he has not been in the city for some time. And this is still
more evident when the players come in, and he talks of one having grown
a beard, and another having perhaps cracked his voice, since they last
met. What then is this city, where he has not been for some time, but
where (it would appear) Rosencrantz and Guildenstern live? It is not in
Denmark ('Comest thou to beard me in Denmark?'). It would seem to be
Wittenberg.[253]
All these passages, it should be observed, are consistent with one
another. And the conclusion they point to is that Hamlet has left the
University for some years and has been living at Court. This again is
consistent with his being thirty years of age, and with his being
mentioned as a soldier and a courtier as well as a scholar (III. i.
159). And it is inconsistent, I believe, with nothing in the play,
unless with the mention of his 'going back to school in Wittenberg.' But
it is not really inconsistent with that. The idea may quite well be that
Hamlet, feeling it impossible to continue at Court after his mother's
marriage and Claudius' accession, thinks of the University where, years
ago, he was so happy, and contemplates a return to it. If this were
Shakespeare's meaning he might easily fail to notice that the expression
'going back to school in Wittenberg' would naturally suggest that Hamlet
had only just left 'school.'
I do not see how to account for these passages except on this
hypothesis. But it in its turn involves a certain difficulty. Horatio,
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern seem to be of about the same age as Hamlet.
How then do _they_ come to be at Wittenberg? I had thought that this
question might be answered in the following way. If 'the city' is
Wittenberg, Shakespeare would regard it as a place like London, and we
might suppose that Horatio, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were living
there, though they had ceased to be students. But this can hardly be
true of Horatio, who, when he (to spare Hamlet's feelings) talks of
being 'a truant,' must mean a truant from his University. The only
solution I can suggest is that, in the story or play which Shakespeare
used, Hamlet and the others were all at the time of the murder young
students at Wittenberg, and that when he determined to make them older
men (or to make Hamlet, at any rate, older), he did not take trouble
enough to carry this idea through all the necessary detail, and so left
some inconsistencies. But in any case the difficulty in the view which I
suggest seems to me not nearly so great as those which the usual view
has to meet.[254]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 251: These three words are evidently addressed to Bernardo.]
[Footnote 252: Cf. Antonio in his melancholy (_Merchant of Venice_, I.
i. 6),
And such a want-wit sadness makes of me
That I have much ado to know myself.]
[Footnote 253: In _Der Bestrafte Brudermord_ it _is_ Wittenberg. Hamlet
says to the actors: 'Were you not, a few years ago, at the University of
Wittenberg? I think I saw you act there': Furness's _Variorum_, ii. 129.
But it is very doubtful whether this play is anything but an adaptation
and enlargement of _Hamlet_ as it existed in the stage represented by
Q1.]
[Footnote 254: It is perhaps worth while to note that in _Der Bestrafte
Brudermord_ Hamlet is said to have been 'in Germany' at the time of his
father's murder.]
NOTE C.
HAMLET'S AGE.
The chief arguments on this question may be found in Furness's _Variorum
Hamlet_, vol. i., pp. 391 ff. I will merely explain my position briefly.
Even if the general impression I received from the play were that Hamlet
was a youth of eighteen or twenty, I should feel quite unable to set it
against the evidence of the statements in V. i. which show him to be
exactly thirty, unless these statements seemed to be casual. But they
have to my mind, on the contrary, the appearance of being expressly
inserted in order to fix Hamlet's age; and the fact that they differ
decidedly from the statements in Q1 confirms that idea. So does the fact
that the Player King speaks of having been married thirty years (III.
ii. 165), where again the number differs from that in Q1.
If V. i. did not contain those decisive statements, I believe my
impression as to Hamlet's age would be uncertain. His being several
times called 'young' would not influence me much (nor at all when he is
called 'young' simply to distinguish him from his father, _as he is in
the very passage which shows him to be thirty_). But I think we
naturally take him to be about as old as Laertes, Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern, and take them to be less than thirty. Further, the
language used by Laertes and Polonius to Ophelia in I. iii. would
certainly, by itself, lead one to imagine Hamlet as a good deal less
than thirty; and the impression it makes is not, to me, altogether
effaced by the fact that Henry V. at his accession is said to be in 'the
very May-morn of his youth,'--an expression which corresponds closely
with those used by Laertes to Ophelia. In some passages, again, there is
an air of boyish petulance. On the other side, however, we should have
to set (1) the maturity of Hamlet's thought; (2) his manner, on the
whole, to other men and to his mother, which, I think, is far from
suggesting the idea of a mere youth; (3) such a passage as his words to
Horatio at III. ii. 59 ff., which imply that both he and Horatio have
seen a good deal of life (this passage has in Q1 nothing corresponding
to the most significant lines). I have shown in Note B that it is very
unsafe to argue to Hamlet's youth from the words about his going back to
Wittenberg.
On the whole I agree with Prof. Dowden that, apart from the statements
in V. i., one would naturally take Hamlet to be a man of about five and
twenty.
It has been suggested that in the old play Hamlet was a mere lad; that
Shakespeare, when he began to work on it,[255] had not determined to
make Hamlet older; that, as he went on, he did so determine; and that
this is the reason why the earlier part of the play makes (if it does
so) a different impression from the later. I see nothing very improbable
in this idea, but I must point out that it is a mistake to appeal in
support of it to the passage in V. i. as found in Q1; for that passage
does not in the least show that the author (if correctly reported)
imagined Hamlet as a lad. I set out the statements in Q2 and Q1.
Q2 says:
(1) The grave-digger came to his business on the day when old
Hamlet defeated Fortinbras:
(2) On that day young Hamlet was born:
(3) The grave-digger has, at the time of speaking, been sexton
for thirty years:
(4) Yorick's skull has been in the earth twenty-three years:
(5) Yorick used to carry young Hamlet on his back.
This is all explicit and connected, and yields the result that Hamlet is
now thirty.
Q1 says:
(1) Yorick's skull has been in the ground a dozen years:
(2) It has been in the ground ever since old Hamlet overcame
Fortinbras:
(3) Yorick used to carry young Hamlet on his back.
From this nothing whatever follows as to Hamlet's age, except that he is
more than twelve![256] Evidently the writer (if correctly reported) has
no intention of telling us how old Hamlet is. That he did not imagine
him as very young appears from his making him say that he has noted
'this seven year' (in Q2 'three years') that the toe of the peasant
comes near the heel of the courtier. The fact that the Player-King in Q1
speaks of having been married forty years shows that here too the writer
has not any reference to Hamlet's age in his mind.[257]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 255: Of course we do not know that he did work on it.]
[Footnote 256: I find that I have been anticipated in this remark by H.
Türck (_Jahrbuch_ for 1900, p. 267 ff.)]
[Footnote 257: I do not know if it has been observed that in the opening
of the Player-King's speech, as given in Q2 and the Folio (it is quite
different in Q1), there seems to be a reminiscence of Greene's
_Alphonsus King of Arragon_, Act IV., lines 33 ff. (Dyce's _Greene and
Peele_, p. 239):
Thrice ten times Phoebus with his golden beams
Hath compassed the circle of the sky,
Thrice ten times Ceres hath her workmen hir'd,
And fill'd her barns with fruitful crops of corn,
Since first in priesthood I did lead my life.]
NOTE D.
'MY TABLES--MEET IT IS I SET IT DOWN.'
This passage has occasioned much difficulty, and to many readers seems
even absurd. And it has been suggested that it, with much that
immediately follows it, was adopted by Shakespeare, with very little
change, from the old play.
It is surely in the highest degree improbable that, at such a critical
point, when he had to show the first effect on Hamlet of the disclosures
made by the Ghost, Shakespeare would write slackly or be content with
anything that did not satisfy his own imagination. But it is not
surprising that we should find some difficulty in following his
imagination at such a point.
Let us look at the whole speech. The Ghost leaves Hamlet with the words,
'Adieu, adieu! Hamlet, remember me'; and he breaks out:
O all you host of heaven! O earth! what else?
And shall I couple hell? O, fie! Hold, hold, my heart;
And you, my sinews, grow not instant old,
But bear me stiffly up. Remember thee!
Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat
In this distracted globe. Remember thee!
Yea, from the table of my memory
I'll wipe away all trivial fond records,
All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past,
That youth and observation copied there;
And thy commandment all alone shall live
Within the book and volume of my brain,
Unmix'd with baser matter: yes, by heaven!
O most pernicious woman!
O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!
My tables--meet it is I set it down,
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain;
At least I'm sure it may be so in Denmark: [_Writing_
So, uncle, there you are. Now to my word;
It is 'Adieu, adieu! remember me.'
I have sworn 't.
The man who speaks thus was, we must remember, already well-nigh
overwhelmed with sorrow and disgust when the Ghost appeared to him. He
has now suffered a tremendous shock. He has learned that his mother was
not merely what he supposed but an adulteress, and that his father was
murdered by her paramour. This knowledge too has come to him in such a
way as, quite apart from the _matter_ of the communication, might make
any human reason totter. And, finally, a terrible charge has been laid
upon him. Is it strange, then, that he should say what is strange? Why,
there would be nothing to wonder at if his mind collapsed on the spot.
Now it is just this that he himself fears. In the midst of the first
tremendous outburst, he checks himself suddenly with the exclamation 'O,
fie!' (cf. the precisely similar use of this interjection, II. ii. 617).
He must not let himself feel: he has to live. He must not let his heart
break in pieces ('hold' means 'hold together'), his muscles turn into
those of a trembling old man, his brain dissolve--as they threaten in an
instant to do. For, if they do, how can he--_remember_? He goes on
reiterating this 'remember' (the 'word' of the Ghost). He is, literally,
afraid that he will _forget_--that his mind will lose the message
entrusted to it. Instinctively, then, he feels that, if he _is_ to
remember, he must wipe from his memory everything it already contains;
and the image of his past life rises before him, of all his joy in
thought and observation and the stores they have accumulated in his
memory. All that is done with for ever: nothing is to remain for him on
the 'table' but the command, 'remember me.' He swears it; 'yes, by
heaven!' That done, suddenly the repressed passion breaks out, and, most
characteristically, he thinks _first_ of his mother; then of his uncle,
the smooth-spoken scoundrel who has just been smiling on him and calling
him 'son.' And in bitter desperate irony he snatches his tables from his
breast (they are suggested to him by the phrases he has just used,
'table of my memory,' 'book and volume'). After all, he _will_ use them
once again; and, perhaps with a wild laugh, he writes with trembling
fingers his last observation: 'One may smile, and smile, and be a
villain.'