instantaneously the difficulties which beset his path, but immediately to
devise a scheme by which some of them might be overcome. The compliance
with the advice of his father's spirit, in strict unison with his own
natural temperament, that the pursuit of his revenge was to harmonize
with the dictates of his conscience, involving of course his duties to
others, was attended by obstacles apparently insurmountable; yet all were
to be removed before the final catastrophe, however acutely he might feel
the effort of suppressing his desire for vengeance, that obligation the
fulfilment of which was postponed by subtle considerations, and by fear
lest precipitate action might leave him with "a wounded name." But this
duty, it is important to observe, was never sought to be relinquished.
The influences practically render delay a matter of necessity with him,
and leaving a murderer to contend against one who, as he must have felt,
would not have scrupled to design his assassination if at any moment
safety could be in that way secured, his determination to assume the garb
of insanity in the presence of the King and of those likely to divulge
the secret, is easily and naturally explained.
Hamlet is wildly impetuous in moments of excitement, so that his
utterances are not invariably to be accepted as evidences of his general
nature. Much of the difficulty in the interpretation of the tragedy
arises from the oversight of accepting his soliloquies as continuous
illustrations of his character, instead of being, as they mostly are,
transient emanations of his subtle irritability. Even in the midst of his
impetuosity the current of violent thought was subject to a controlling
interruption by a sudden reaction arising from the influence of reason;
but it was natural on occasions that, stirred by his desire for revenge,
he should doubt the validity of his reasons for delay. A wide distinction
also must be drawn in the matter of time for vengeance, between action
resulting from sudden and that from remoter provocation.
There seems to have been in Hamlet, so far as regards the commands of the
apparition, an almost perpetual conflict between impulse and reason, each
in its turn being predominant. The desire for revenge is at times so
great that it is only by the strongest effort of will he resists
precipitate action, then, losing no pretext to find causes for its
exercise, overpowering the dictates of his penetrative genius. It is not
rashness in Hamlet on one occasion and procrastination on another, but a
power of instantaneous action that could be controlled by the very
briefest period of reflection, the great feature in his intellect being a
preternaturally rapid reflective power, and men of genius almost
invariably do meditate before action.
Among the numerous unsupported conjectures respecting this tragedy may be
mentioned that, when Shakespeare drew the characters of, 1. Hamlet; 2.
Horatio; 3. Claudius; 4. The Queen, he had in his mind, 1. The Earl of
Essex or Sir Phillip Sydney or himself; 2. Lord Southampton or Fulke
Greville; 3. The Earl of Leicester; 4. Mary, Queen of Scots. Although
some of these suggestions are ingeniously supported, there is not one of
them which rests on any kind of real evidence or external probability.
Burbage was the first actor of Hamlet in Shakespeare's tragedy. His
performance is spoken of in terms of high commendation, but there is no
record of his treatment of the character, his delineation probably
differing materially from that of modern actors. Stage tradition merely
carries down the tricks of the profession, no actor entirely replacing
another, and, in the case of Hamlet, hardly two of recent times, whose
performances I have had the opportunity of witnessing, but who are or
have been distinct in manner and expression, and even in idea. Few actors
or readers can be found to agree respecting Shakespeare's conception of
the character. This, however, may be safely asserted, that no criticism
on Hamlet will ever be permanent which does not recognize the sublimity
of his nature. Horatio understood Hamlet better than anyone, and his
judgment of him doubtless expressed Shakespeare's own estimate:
"Now cracks a noble heart--good night, sweet prince;
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!"
A "noble heart" that ever shrank from an act that would have resulted in
his own aggrandizement, for, although the monarchy was elective, not
hereditary, the succession of Hamlet had been proclaimed by the King and
tacitly accepted.
DOWNFALL OF IRISH LIBERTY
"FLIGHT OF THE EARLS"
A.D. 1603
JUSTIN McCARTHY
At the accession of Henry VIII to the English throne that portion of
Ireland mainly colonized from England, the ruling country, was known
as the English pale--that is, district. It comprised "the four
shires" or counties of Dublin, Kildare, Meath, and Louth. Beyond this
district the country was held by various Celtic clans ruled by their
own chieftains. Early in Henry's reign the English lords began to
show their independence of royal authority, and also to ally
themselves with the native chieftains. Henry saw that the Irish, who
had often before aimed at independence of England, were about to
renew the struggle. He determined to forestall them, and sent one
lord deputy after another to Ireland in charge of the royal
interests.
Disputes between his own representatives, and their doubtful loyalty,
caused the King much trouble, and Irish affairs were far from being
composed when Thomas Fitzgerald, tenth earl of Kildare, renounced his
allegiance to Henry and headed an unsuccessful rebellion. Fitzgerald
was executed at Tyburn in 1537.
Matters were now further complicated by the introduction of the
Reformation into Ireland. Most of the Irish people were stanch
adherents of Catholicism, while some of the leading English
Protestants in Ireland favored Irish nationality as strongly as did
the Catholics. After the death of Henry VIII the religious troubles
were intensified. Under Edward VI a severe policy was pursued against
the Irish Catholics and Nationalists. After a brief reaction under
Mary, the Catholic sovereign of England, the policy of suppression
was renewed with still greater severity by Queen Elizabeth, and the
condition of Ireland became one of chronic rebellion.
This time of trouble called forth some powerful champions of the Irish
national cause. One of these, Shane O'Neil, has been celebrated in many
a popular ballad. The head of the house to which he belonged had
acknowledged allegiance to Henry VIII and received the title of Earl of
Tyrone. The English title carried with it, according to English law, the
principle of hereditary succession; but when the first earl died, the
clan of O'Neil refused to adopt the English practice, and, according to
the Irish principle of tanistry, chose as his successor the member of the
house for whom they had the highest regard.
This was Shane O'Neil, who was a younger and not even a legitimate son
of the Earl of Tyrone, but whose energy, courage, and strong national
sentiments had already made him the hero of his sept. Shane O'Neil at
once proclaimed himself the champion of Irish national independence.
Queen Elizabeth, amid all her troubles with foreign states, had to pour
large numbers of troops into Ireland, and these troops, as all historians
admit, overran the country in the most reckless and merciless manner.
Shane O'Neil, however, held his own, and began to prove himself a
formidable opponent of English power.
The evidence of history leaves little or no doubt that Elizabeth connived
at a plot for the removal of O'Neil by assassination. This project did
not come to anything, and the Queen tried another policy. She was a woman
not merely of high intellect but also of artistic feeling, and it would
seem as if the picturesque figure of Shane O'Neil had aroused some
interest in her. She proposed to enter into terms with the new "Lord
of Ulster," as he now declared himself, and invited him to visit her
court in England. O'Neil seems to have accepted with great good-will
this opportunity of seeing a life hitherto unknown to him, and he soon
appeared at court. We read that O'Neil and his retainers presented
themselves in their saffron-colored shirts and shaggy mantles, bearing
battle-axes as their weapons, amid the stately gentlemen, the
contemporaries of Essex and Raleigh, who thronged the court of the
great Queen. A meeting took place on January 6, 1562.
Froude tells us the effect produced upon the court by the appearance
of O'Neil and his followers: "The council, the peers, the foreign
ambassadors, bishops, aldermen, dignitaries of all kinds, were present in
state, as if at the exhibition of some wild animal of the desert. O'Neil
stalked in, his saffron mantle sweeping round and round him, his hair
curling on his back and clipped short below the eyes, which gleamed from
under it with a gray lustre, frowning, fierce, and cruel. Behind him
followed his gallow-glasses, bareheaded and fair-haired, with shirts of
mail which reached beneath their knees, a wolf's skin flung across their
shoulders, and short, broad battle-axes in their hands." O'Neil made a
formal act of submission to the Queen, and negotiations set in for a
definite and lasting arrangement. Nothing came of it. O'Neil seems to
have understood that he was acting under a promise of safe-conduct, and
was to be confirmed in the ownership of his estates in return for his
submission. But, whatever may have been the misunderstanding, it is
certain that these terms were not carried out according to O'Neil's
expectation. He was detained in London in qualified captivity, and was
informed that he could only be restored to his lands when he had engaged
to make war against his former allies the Scots, had pledged himself not
to make war without the consent of the English government, and to set up
no claim of supremacy over other chiefs in Ireland.
O'Neil seems to have proved himself skilful as a diplomatist, and he
greatly gratified the Queen by paying intense deference to all her
suggestions, and even by modestly requesting that she would choose a wife
for him. He seems to have agreed to what he did not intend to carry out.
Some terms were understood to be arranged at last, and on May 5, 1562,
a royal proclamation was issued declaring that in future he was to be
regarded as a good and loyal subject of the Queen. Shane returned to
Ireland, and made known to his friends that the articles of agreement had
been forced upon him under peril of captivity or death, and that he could
not regard them as binding. He went so far to maintain the terms of the
treaty as to begin a war against the Scots, and sent the Queen a list of
his captives in token of his sincerity. But he still insisted that he had
never made peace with the Queen except by her own seeking; that his
ancestors were kings of Ulster, and that Ulster was his kingdom and
should continue to be his.
He soon after applied to Charles IX, King of France, to send him five
thousand men to assist him in expelling the English from Ireland. Then
war set in again between the English Lord Deputy and Shane O'Neil.
Defeated in many encounters, O'Neil again tried to make terms with the
Queen, and again applied to the King of France for the help of an army to
drive the English from Ireland and restore the Catholic faith. By this
time the Scottish settlers in Ulster, who appear to have once been as
much disliked by the English government as the Irish themselves, had
turned completely against him. His end was not in keeping with his
soldierly picturesque career. After a severe defeat he took refuge with
some old tribal enemies of his, who at first professed to receive him
as a friend and find a shelter for him. A quarrel sprang up at a
drinking-festival during the June of 1567, and Shane and most of his
companions were killed in the affray.
It is not easy to come to a satisfactory estimate of the character of
Shane O'Neil. Some English historians treat him as if he were a mere
monster of treachery and violent crime. Most Irish legends and stories
convert him into a perfect hero and patriot; while other Irish writers of
graver order are inclined to dwell altogether upon the wrongs done to
him, and the perfidies employed to ensnare him by those who acted for the
English government. It is necessary to keep always in mind that, in their
dealings with the Irish native populations, the English government only
too frequently employed deception and treachery, thus giving the Irish
chieftains what they considered warrant enough for playing a similar
game. Shane O'Neil was very unscrupulous in his methods of dealing with
his enemies; he was a man of sensuous passions and fierce hatreds, but he
was gifted with splendid courage, a remarkable capacity for soldiership,
and much of the diplomatist's or statesman's art.
An Irish essayist, who writes with much judgment and moderation on the
subject, describes Shane as "a thorough Celtic chief, not of the
traditional type, but such as centuries of prolonged struggle for
existence had made the chieftains of his nation." This seems the only
fair standard by which to judge his career. No Irish family gave more
trouble in its time to the English conquerors than did the O'Neils, and
Shane O'Neil was in some of his qualities the most extraordinary man of
the family. There were other O'Neils who bequeathed to their country's
history a brighter and purer fame, and of whose characters we can form a
common estimate with less chance of dispute, but in Shane O'Neil we see a
genuine type of the ancestral Irish chieftain brought into dealings and
antagonism with the advances and the emissaries of a newer civilization.
This prolonged period of incessant war brought about the almost complete
devastation of wide tracts of country in Ireland. Historians and poets
tell the same sad story. Holinshed says that except in the cities or
towns the traveller might journey for miles without meeting man, woman,
child, or even beast. Edmund Spenser declared that the story of many
among the inhabitants, and the picture one could see of their miserable
state, was such that "any stony heart would rue the same." Mr. Froude
affirms that in Munster alone there had been so much devastation that
"the lowing of a cow or the sound of a ploughboy's whistle was not to be
heard from Valentia to the Rock of Cashel." It was made a boast by at
least one of those engaged in ruling Ireland on behalf of the Queen that
he had reduced some of the populations so deeply down that they preferred
slaughter in the field to death by starvation. When the supposed
pacification of Munster was accomplished, the province was divided into
separate settlements, to be held under the crown, at hardly more than a
nominal quit-rent, by any loyal settlers who were willing to hold the
land as vassals of the sovereign and fight for their lives. All these
lands were obtained by the confiscation of the estates of the rebellious
chieftains.
A new deputy, Sir John Perrot, convened a parliament in Ireland. There
was something farcical as well as grim in calling together a parliament
under such conditions, when the delegates were supposed to be convened
that they might give frank and sincere advice to the representative of
the sovereign. Some of the Irish chieftains who had given their
allegiance to the English sovereign not only accepted the Deputy's
invitation, but actually presented themselves in full English costume. In
former parliaments, when Irish chieftains were loyal enough to take part
in the sittings, they still wore the costume of their septs; but now,
after so many struggles, some of the Irish nobles thought they would do
better by making a complete submission to the conqueror, and inaugurating
the new season of peace and prosperity by adopting the costume of their
rulers.
This parliament naturally proved most obedient. Whatever the Deputy
wished, it promptly adopted. More estates were confiscated to the Crown,
and the land thus obtained was parcelled out on the cheapest terms of
holding to English nobles, and also to mere English adventurers, who
undertook to colonize it with workmen and traders from England. But it
was soon found that English traders and laborers were not easily to be
persuaded into the risks of a settlement under these conditions, and the
new owners were compelled in most cases either to put up with such labor
as the country afforded or to allow the soil to lie barren for the time.
The scheme which the rulers had in mind--a scheme which meant nothing
less than the substitution of an English for an Irish population--proved
a failure. An English nobleman endowed with the spirit of adventure might
be tempted to accept an estate in Ireland on the chance of making a
brilliant career there, winning the favor of his sovereign, and becoming
a great figure in the eyes of his own court and his own country. A mere
adventurer might be as ready to try his fortunes in Ireland as in some
unexplored part of the New World beyond the Atlantic. But the ordinary
trader or working-man of English birth and ways did not at that time feel
inclined to give up his business and his home to venture on a settlement
in that wild western island, where all reports told him that every man's
hand was against every other man, and that the loyal subjects of the
Queen were hunted like wild game by the uncivilized Irish.
Sir John Perrot was not a man qualified to make the situation any better
than he had found it. A man of quick and violent temper, he succeeded in
making enemies of some of the Irish chieftains who had lately been coming
over to the service of the Crown, and converted some of his friends in
office into his most bitter enemies. Sir John Perrot had to be withdrawn,
and a new deputy appointed in his place. Such a representative of English
government was not likely to encourage many of the Irish chieftains to
accept the advances of an English deputy, or to believe that they could
secure safety for themselves and their lands by submitting to his rule.
The new Deputy, Sir William Russell, had a hard task before him.
One of the most important and famous struggles made during these years
against English dominion was led by Hugh O'Neil. This celebrated Irish
leader was the grandson of that Shane O'Neil whom Henry VIII had created
Earl of Tyrone. He had led thus far a very different life from that
usually led by an Irish chieftain. The ruling powers were at first
inclined to make a favorite of him, and confirmed him in his earldom and
estates. He was brought over when very young to England, and we learn
that even in the brilliant court of Queen Elizabeth he was distinguished
for gifts and graces of body and mind. For a long time Tyrone seemed a
loyal supporter of English rule. He commanded a troop in the Queen's
service, and even took part in the suppression of risings in his own
country, cooperating with the Earl of Essex in the Ulster wars and the
settlement of Antrim. One romantic incident of his life brought him into
personal antagonism with Sir Henry Bagnal, the Lord Marshal of Ireland.
Hugh O'Neil had been left a widower, and he fell in love with Bagnal's
beautiful sister. Bagnal highly disapproved of the match, but, as the
lady was heart and soul in love with the Irish chieftain, her brother's
opposition was vain. She eloped with her lover and married him. Bagnal
became O'Neil's determined enemy. It may be that Sir Henry Bagnal did his
best to prejudice the ruling authorities against O'Neil, and at that time
no very substantial evidence was needed to set up a charge of treason
against an Irish chieftain.
Perhaps when O'Neil returned to his own country he was recalled to
national sentiments by the sight of oppression there, and it is certain
that he was roused to indignation by the arbitrary imprisonment of one of
his kinsmen known as Red Hugh. When Red Hugh succeeded in escaping from
prison he inspired Tyrone with a keen sense of his wrongs, and brought
him into the temper of insurrection. O'Neil threw himself completely into
the new movement for independence. A confederation of Irish chieftains
was organized, and O'Neil took the command. He proved himself possessed
of the most genuine military talents, and he could play the part of the
statesman as well as of the soldier. The confederation of Irish chieftains
soon became an embattled army, and the brothers-in-law met in arms as
hostile commanders on the shores of the northern Blackwater. As one
historian has well remarked, there was something positively Homeric about
this struggle, in which the two men connected by marriage encountered
each other as commanders of opposing armies. Events had been moving on
since the marriage between Tyrone and Bagnal's sister. O'Neil's young
wife had found her early grave before this last engagement between her
husband and her brother. The army of Bagnal was completely defeated, and
Bagnal was killed upon the field.
For a time victory seemed to follow Tyrone. Before long the greater part
of Ireland was in the hands of the Irish forces. The Earl of Essex was
sent to Ireland at the head of the largest army ever despatched from
England for the conquest of the island. But Essex does not seem to have
made any serious effort. He appears to have had some idea of coming to
terms with Tyrone. The two had a meeting, over which many pages of
historical description and conjecture have been spent, but it is certain
that, so far as Essex was concerned, neither peace nor war came of his
intervention. He was recalled to London. His failure in Ireland, and the
trouble it brought upon him in England, only drove him into the wild
movements which led to his condemnation as a traitor and to his death on
the scaffold.
The place which Essex had so unsuccessfully endeavored to hold was given
to Lord Mountjoy, who proved himself a more fitting man for the work.
Mountjoy was a strong man, who made up his mind from the first that he
was sent to Ireland to fight the Irish. He had a great encounter with
Tyrone, and Tyrone was defeated. From that moment the fortunes of the
struggle seem to have turned. The resources of the Irish were very
limited, and it was almost certain that, if the English government
carried on the war long enough, the Irish must sooner or later be
defeated. It was a question of numbers and weapons and money, and in all
these the English had an immense superiority. Tyrone had great hopes that
a Spanish army would come to the aid of the Irish. A large Spanish force
was actually despatched for the purpose, but the news of Tyrone's defeat
reached the Spaniards on their arrival, and they promptly reëmbarked, and
gave up what they considered a lost cause. Some of the Irish chiefs were
compelled to surrender; others fled to Spain, in the hope of stirring up
some movement there against England, or at least of finding a place of
shelter. Ireland was suffering almost everywhere from famine, and in many
districts famine of the most ghastly order. Tyrone found it impossible to
carry on the struggle for independence under such terrible conditions.
There was nothing for it but to surrender and come to terms as best he
could with his conquering enemy.