The division between the second and third acts is by common consent
placed here. The third act occupies the afternoon, evening, and night of
the same day with the second.
This soliloquy is Hamlet's first, and perhaps we may find it correct to
say _only_ outbreak of self-accusation. He charges himself with lack of
feeling, spirit, and courage, in that he has not yet taken vengeance on
his uncle. But unless we are prepared to accept and justify to the full
his own hardest words against himself, and grant him a muddy-mettled,
pigeon-livered rascal, we must examine and understand him, so as to
account for his conduct better than he could himself. If we allow that
perhaps he accuses himself too much, we may find on reflection that he
accuses himself altogether wrongfully. If a man is content to think the
worst of Hamlet, I care to hold no argument with that man.
We must not look for _expressed_ logical sequence in a soliloquy, which
is a vocal mind. The mind is seldom conscious of the links or
transitions of a yet perfectly logical process developed in it. This
remark, however, is more necessary in regard to the famous soliloquy to
follow.
In Hamlet, misery has partly choked even vengeance; and although sure in
his heart that his uncle is guilty, in his brain he is not sure.
Bitterly accusing himself in an access of wretchedness and rage and
credence, he forgets the doubt that has restrained him, with all besides
which he might so well urge in righteous defence, not excuse, of his
delay. But ungenerous criticism has, by all but universal consent,
accepted his own verdict against himself. So in common life there are
thousands on thousands who, upon the sad confession of a man
immeasurably greater than themselves, and showing his greatness in the
humility whose absence makes admission impossible to them, immediately
pounce upon him with vituperation, as if he were one of the vile, and
they infinitely better. Such should be indignant with St. Paul and
say--if he was the chief of sinners, what insolence to lecture _them_!
and certainly the more justified publican would never by them have been
allowed to touch the robe of the less justified Pharisee. Such critics
surely take little or no pains to understand the object of their
contempt: because Hamlet is troubled and blames himself, they without
hesitation condemn him--and there where he is most commendable. It is
the righteous man who is most ready to accuse himself; the unrighteous
is least ready. Who is able when in deep trouble, rightly to analyze his
feelings? Delay in action is not necessarily abandonment of duty; in
Hamlet's case it is a due recognition of duty, which condemns
precipitancy--and action in the face of doubt, so long as it is nowise
compelled, is precipitancy. The first thing is _to be sure_: Hamlet has
never been sure; he spies at length a chance of making himself sure; he
seizes upon it; and while his sudden resolve to make use of the players,
like the equally sudden resolve to shroud himself in pretended madness,
manifests him fertile in expedient, the carrying out of both manifests
him right capable and diligent in execution--_a man of action in every
true sense of the word_.
The self-accusation of Hamlet has its ground in the lapse of weeks
during which nothing has been done towards punishing the king. Suddenly
roused to a keen sense of the fact, he feels as if surely he might have
done something. The first act ends with a burning vow of righteous
vengeance; the second shows him wandering about the palace in
profoundest melancholy--such as makes it more than easy for him to
assume the forms of madness the moment he marks any curious eye bent
upon him. Let him who has never loved and revered a mother, call such
melancholy weakness. He has indeed done nothing towards the fulfilment
of his vow; but the way in which he made the vow, the terms in which he
exacted from his companions their promise of silence, and his scheme for
eluding suspicion, combine to show that from the first he perceived its
fulfilment would be hard, saw the obstacles in his way, and knew it
would require both time and caution. That even in the first rush of his
wrath he should thus be aware of difficulty, indicates moral symmetry;
but the full weight of what lay in his path could appear to him only
upon reflection. Partly in the light of passages yet to come, I will
imagine the further course of his thoughts, which the closing couplet of
the first act shows as having already begun to apale 'the native hue of
resolution.'
'But how shall I take vengeance on my uncle? Shall I publicly accuse
him, or slay him at once? In the one case what answer can I make to his
denial? in the other, what justification can I offer? If I say the
spirit of my father accuses him, what proof can I bring? My companions
only saw the apparition--heard no word from him; and my uncle's party
will assert, with absolute likelihood to the minds of those who do not
know me--and who here knows me but my mother!--that charge is a mere
coinage of jealous disappointment, working upon the melancholy I have
not cared to hide. (174-6.) When I act, it must be to kill him, and to
what misconstruction shall I not expose myself! (272) If the thing must
so be, I must brave all; but I could never present myself thereafter as
successor to the crown of one whom I had first slain and then vilified
on the accusation of an apparition whom no one heard but myself! I must
find _proof_--such proof as will satisfy others as well as myself. My
immediate duty is _evidence_, not vengeance.'
We have seen besides, that, when informed of the haunting presence of
the Ghost, he expected the apparition with not a little doubt as to its
authenticity--a doubt which, even when he saw it, did not immediately
vanish: is it any wonder that when the apparition was gone, the doubt
should return? Return it did, in accordance with the reaction which
waits upon all high-strung experience. If he did not believe in the
person who performed it, would any man long believe in any miracle?
Hamlet soon begins to question whether he can with confidence accept the
appearance for that which it appeared and asserted itself to be. He
steps over to the stand-point of his judges, and doubts the only
testimony he has to produce. Far more:--was he not bound in common
humanity, not to say _filialness_, to doubt it? To doubt the Ghost, was
to doubt a testimony which to accept was to believe his father in
horrible suffering, his uncle a murderer, his mother at least an
adulteress; to kill his uncle was to set his seal to the whole, and,
besides, to bring his mother into frightful suspicion of complicity in
his father's murder. Ought not the faintest shadow of a doubt, assuaging
ever so little the glare of the hell-sun of such crime, to be welcome to
the tortured heart? Wretched wife and woman as his mother had shown
herself, the Ghost would have him think her far worse--perhaps, even
accessory to her husband's murder! For action he _must_ have proof!
At the same time, what every one knew of his mother, coupled now with
the mere idea of the Ghost's accusation, wrought in him such misery,
roused in him so many torturing and unanswerable questions, so blotted
the face of the universe and withered the heart of hope, that he could
not but doubt whether, in such a world of rogues and false women, it was
worth his while to slay one villain out of the swarm.
Ophelia's behaviour to him, in obedience to her father, of which she
gives him no explanation, has added 'the pangs of disprized love,' and
increased his doubts of woman-kind. 120.
But when his imagination, presenting afresh the awful interview, brings
him more immediately under the influence of the apparition and its
behest, he is for the moment delivered both from the stunning effect of
its communication and his doubt of its truth; forgetting then the
considerations that have wrought in him, he accuses himself of
remissness, blames himself grievously for his delay. Soon, however, his
senses resume their influence, and he doubts again. So goes the
mill-round of his thoughts, with the revolving of many wheels.
His whole conscious nature is frightfully shaken: he would be the poor
creature most of his critics would make of him, were it otherwise; it is
because of his greatness that he suffers so terribly, and doubts so
much. A mother's crime is far more paralyzing than a father's murder is
stimulating; and either he has not set himself in thorough earnest to
find the proof he needs, or he has as yet been unable to think of any
serviceable means to the end, when the half real, half simulated emotion
of the Player yet again rouses in him the sense of remissness, leads him
to accuse himself of forgotten obligation and heartlessness, and
simultaneously suggests a device for putting the Ghost and his words to
the test. Instantly he seizes the chance: when a thing has to be done,
and can be done, Hamlet is _never_ wanting--shows himself the very
promptest of men.
In the last passage of this act I do not take it that he is expressing
an idea then first occurring to him: that the whole thing may be a snare
of the devil is a doubt with which during weeks he has been familiar.
The delay through which, in utter failure to comprehend his character,
he has been so miserably misjudged, falls really between the first and
second acts, although it seems in the regard of most readers to underlie
and protract the whole play. Its duration is measured by the journey of
the ambassadors to and from the neighbouring kingdom of Norway.
It is notably odd, by the way, that those who accuse Hamlet of inaction,
are mostly the same who believe his madness a reality! In truth,
however, his affected madness is one of the strongest signs of his
activity, and his delay one of the strongest proofs of his sanity.
This second act, the third act, and a part always given to the fourth,
but which really belongs to the third, occupy in all only one day.
[Footnote 1: Here follows in _1st Q._
confest a murder
Committed long before.
This spirit that I haue seene may be the Diuell,
And out of my weakenesse and my melancholy,
As he is very potent with such men,
Doth seeke to damne me, I will haue sounder proofes,
The play's the thing, &c.]
[Footnote 2:
'Stones have been known to move, and trees to speak;' &c.
_Macbeth_, iii. 4.]
[Footnote 3: In the _1st Q._ Hamlet, speaking to Horatio (l 37), says,