It was a favourite wish of the beneficent Caligula that all mankind had
but one neck, that he might finish them off at a single chop. It would
ill comport with my known modesty, were I to lay claim to any thing like
the all-embracing humanity of the old Roman philanthropist; but I must
acknowledge that I have frequently felt inclined to apply his pious
aspiration to the commentators on Shakespeare. Impatience is not my
prevailing weakness; but these pestilent annotators have often been
instrumental in convincing me that I am no stoic. I have frequently
regretted the days of my youth, when no envious commentary obscured the
brilliancy of that genius which has consecrated the language through
which it finds utterance, and made it venerable to the scholars of all
lands and ages. My love of Shakespeare, like the gout which has been
stinging my right foot all the morning, is hereditary. My revered
grandmother was very fond of solid English literature. She had not had,
it is true, the advantages which the young people of the present day
rejoice in; she had not studied in any of those seminaries which polish
off an education in a most Arabian-Nightsy style of expedition, and send
a young lady home in the middle of her teens, accomplished in innumerous
ologies, and knowing little or nothing that is really useful, or that
will attract her to intellectual pursuits or pleasure in after life. She
had acquired what is infinitely better than the superficial omniscience
which is so much cultivated in these days. The more active duties of
life pleased her not; and Shakespeare was the never-failing resource of
her leisure hours. Mr. Addison's Spectator was for her a "treasure of
contentment, a mine of delight, and, with regard to style, the best book
in the world." I shall never forget that happy day (anterior even to the
jacket era of my life) when she took me upon her knee, and read to me
the speeches of Marullus, and Mark Antony, and Brutus. In that hour I
became as sincere a devotee as ever bent down before the shrine of
Shakespeare's genius. Nor has that innocent fanaticism abated any of its
ardour under the weight laid upon me by increasing years. The theatre
has lost many of its old charms for me. The friendships of youth--the
only enduring intimacies, for our palms grow callous in the promiscuous
intercourse of the world, and cannot easily receive new
impressions--have either been terminated by that inexorable power whose
chilling touch is merciless alike to love and enmity, or have been
interfered with by the varying pursuits of life. But Shakespeare still
maintains his wonted sway, and my loyalty to him has not been disturbed
by any of the revolutionary movements which have made such changes in
most other things. Martin Farquhar Tupper has written, but I am so
old-fashioned in my prejudices that I find myself constantly turning to
my Shakespeare, in preference even to that gifted and proverbially
philosophic bard.
But I am wandering. From the day I have mentioned, Robinson Crusoe was
obliged to abdicate, and England's "monarch bard" (as Mr. Sprague calls
Anne Hathaway's husband) reigned in his stead. I first devoured the
Julius Caesar. I say "devoured," for no other word will express the
eager earnestness with which I read. The last time I read that play
through, it was "within a bowshot where the Caesars dwelt," and but a
few minutes' walk from the palace which now holds great Pompey's statua,
at whose foot the mighty Julius fell. Increase of appetite grew rapidly
by what it fed on, and I was not long in learning as much about the
black-clad prince, the homeless king, the exacting usurer, the fat
knight and his jolly companions, the remorseful Thane, and generous,
jealous Moor, as I knew about Brutus and the other red republican
assassins of imperial Rome. My love of Shakespeare was greatly edified
by a friendship which I formed in my earliest foreign journeyings. It
was before the days of railways,--which, convenient as they are, have
robbed travelling of half its zest, by rendering it so common. I had
been making a little tour through the north of France. I had admired the
white caps and pious simplicity of the peasants of Normandy, and had
drunk in that exaltation of soul which the lofty nave of the majestic
Cathedral of Amiens always imparts, and was about returning to Paris,
when a rheumatic attack arrested my progress and prolonged my stay in
the pleasant city of Douai. I there met accidentally with an English
monk of that grand old Benedictine order, whose history for more than
twelve centuries has been the history of civilization, and literature,
and religion. He was descended from one of those old families which
refused to modify their creed at the demand of a divorce-seeking king.
He was a man of clear intellect and fascinating simplicity of character.
He seemed to carry sunshine with him wherever he went. He occupied a
professional chair in the English College attached to the Benedictine
Monastery at Douai, and when his class hours were ended, he daily came
to visit me. His sensible and sprightly conversation did more towards
untying the rheumatic knots in my poor shoulder, than all the pills and
lotions for which _M. le Medecin_ charged me so roundly. When I visited
him in his cell, I found that a well-worn copy of Shakespeare was the
only companion of his Breviary, his Aquinas and St. Bernard on his study
table. He loved Shakespeare for himself alone. He never used him as a
lay figure on which he might display the drapery of a pedant. He hated
commentators as heartily as a man so sincerely religious can hate any
thing except sin, and was as earnest in his predilection for
Shakespeare, "without note or comment," as his dissenting
fellow-countrymen would have wished him to be for a similar edition of
the only other inspired book in the world. He had his theories, however,
concerning Shakespeare's characters, and we often talked them over
together; but I must do him the justice to say that he never published
any of them. I always regarded this fact as a splendid evidence of the
entireness of his self-abnegation, and of his extraordinary advancement
in the path of religious perfection. Many have taken the three monastic
vows by which he was bound, and have lived up to them with conscientious
fidelity; but few scholars have studied Shakespeare as he did, and yet
resisted the temptation to tell the world all about it in a book.
Mousing the other day in the library of a venerable citizen of Boston,
who is no less skilled in the gospel (let us hope) than in the law, I
stumbled over a seedy-looking folio containing _A Treatise of Original
Sinne_, by one Anthony Burgesse, who flourished in England something
more than two centuries ago. One of the discoloured fly-leaves of this
entertaining tome informed me, in a hand-writing which resembled a
dilapidated rail-fence looked at from the window of an express train,
that _Jacobus Keith me possedit, An. Dom. 1655_; and also bore this
inscription, so pertinent to my present theme: "Expositors are wise when
they are not otherwise." I feel that it is safe to leave my readers to
make the application of this apothegm to the Shakespearean annotators of
their acquaintance, so few of whom are wise, so many otherwise. I think
it was the late Mr. Hazlitt who said (and if it was not, it ought to
have been) that if you desire to know to what sublimity human genius is
capable of ascending, you must read Shakespeare; but that if you seek to
ascertain to what a depth of imbecility the intellect of man may be
brought down, you must read his commentators.
Notwithstanding the low estimate which I am inclined to place upon the
labour of the majority of the commentators on Shakespeare, still I have
often felt a strong temptation to enroll myself among them. Not all
their stupidity in explaining things which are clear to the meanest
capacity, not all their pedantry in elucidating matters which are simply
inexplicable, not all their inordinate voluminousness, could quench my
ambition to fasten my roll of waste paper to the bob (already so
unwieldy) of the Shakespearean kite. Others have soared into fame by
such means; why should not I? We ought not to study Shakespeare so many
years for nothing, and I feel that a sacred duty would be neglected if
the result of my researches were withheld from my suffering
fellow-students. But let me be more merciful than other commentators;
let me confine my remarks to a single play. From that one you may learn
the tenor of my theories concerning the others; and if you wish for
another specimen, I shall consider that I have achieved an unheard-of
triumph in this department of literature.
The tragedy of _Hamlet_ has always been regarded as one of the most
creditable of Shakespeare's performances. It needs no new commendation
from me. Dramatic composition has made great progress within the two
hundred and sixty years that have elapsed since Hamlet was written, yet
few better things are produced nowadays. We may as well acknowledge the
humiliating fact that Hamlet, with all its age, is every whit as good as
if it had been written since Lady Day, and were announced on the
playbills of to-morrow night, with one of Mr. Boucicault's most eloquent
and elaborate prefaces. The character of Hamlet has been much discussed,
but, with all due respect for the genius of those who have fatigued
their reader with their treatment of the subject, I would humbly suggest
that they are all wrong. Hamlet resembles a picture which has been
scoured, and retouched, and varnished, and restored, until you can
hardly see any thing of the original. Critics and commentators have
bedaubed the original character so thoroughly, and those credulous
people who rejoice that Chatham's language is their mother tongue, have
heard so much of their estimate of Hamlet's character, that they receive
them on faith, flattering themselves all the while that they are paying
homage to the Hamlet of Shakespeare. High-flown philosophy exerts its
powers upon the theme, and Goethe gives it as his opinion that the
dramatist wished to portray the effects of a great action, imposed as a
duty upon a mind too feeble for its accomplishment, and compares it to
an oak planted in a china vase, proper to receive only the most delicate
flowers, and which flies to pieces as soon as the roots begin to strike
out.
Now let us drop all this metaphysical and poetical cant, and go back to
the play itself. Shakespeare will prove his own best expositor, if we
read him with docile minds, having previously instructed ourselves
concerning the history of the time of which he wrote. There is a
tradition common in the north of Ireland that Hamlet's father was a
native of that country, named Howndale, and that he followed the trade
of a tailor; that he was captured by the Danes, in one of their
expeditions against that fair island, and carried to Jutland; that he
married and set up in business again in that cold region, but that he
afterwards forsook the sartorial for the regal line, by usurping the
throne of Denmark. The tradition represents him to have been a man of
violent character, a hard drinker, and altogether a most unprincipled
and unamiable person, though an excellent tailor. Now, if we take the
old chronicle of Saxo Grammaticus, (_Historia Danorum_,) from which
Shakespeare drew the plot for his tragedy, we shall find there little
that does not harmonize with this tradition. Saxo Grammaticus tells us
that Hamlet was the son of Horwendal, who was a famous pirate of
Jutland, whom the king, Huric, feared so much, that, to propitiate him,
he was obliged to appoint him governor of Jutland, and afterwards to
give him his daughter Gertrude in marriage. Thus he obtained the throne.
The old Irish name, Howndale, might easily have been corrupted into
Horwendal by the jaw-breaking Northmen, and for the rest, the Danish
chronicle and the Irish tradition are perfectly consistent. That there
was frequent communication at that early period between Denmark and
Ireland, I surely need not take the trouble to prove. All the early
chronicles of both of those countries bear witness to it. It was to the
land evangelized by St. Patrick that Denmark was indebted for the
blessings of education and the Christian faith. But the visits of the
Danes were not dictated by any holy zeal for the salvation or mental
advancement of their benefactors, if we may believe all the stories of
their piratical expeditions. An Irish monk of the great monastery of
Banchor, who wrote very good Latin for the age in which he lived,
alludes to this period in his country's history in a poem, one line of
which is sometimes quoted, even now:--
_Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes._
"Time was, O Danes, we feared your gifts."
The great Danish poet, OEhlenschlaeger, makes frequent allusions in the
course of his epic, _The Gods of the North_, to the relations that once
existed between Denmark and Ireland, and to the fact that his native
land received from Ireland the custom of imbibing spirituous liquors in
large quantities.
Hamlet's Irish parentage would naturally be concealed as much as
possible by him, as it might prejudice his claims to the throne of
Denmark; therefore we can hardly expect to find the ancient legend
confirmed in the play, except in a casual manner. The free, outspoken,
Irish nature would make itself known occasionally. Thus we find that
when Horatio tells him that "there's no offence," he rebukes him with
"Yes, _by St. Patrick_, but there is, Horatio!"
There certainly needs no ghost come from the grave to tell us that no
true-born Scandinavian would have sworn in an unguarded moment by the
Apostle of Ireland. Again, when Hamlet thinks of killing his uncle, the
wrongful king, he apostrophizes himself by the name which he probably
bore when he assisted his father (whose death he wishes to avenge) in
his shop in Jutland:--
"Now, might I do it, Pat, now he is praying."
Then, too, he speaks to Horatio of the "funeral baked meats" coldly
furnishing forth the marriage table at his mother's second espousal. The
custom of baking meats is as well known to be of Irish origin, as that
of roasting them is to be peculiar to the northern nations of
continental Europe.
The frequent allusions in the course of the play to drinking customs not
only prove that Hamlet descended from that nation whose hospitality is
its greatest fault, but that he and his family were far from being the
refined and philosophic people some of the commentators would have us
believe. Thus he promises his old companion,--
"We'll teach you to drink deep ere you depart,"--
which the most prejudiced person will freely allow to be truly a
_Corkonian_ phrase. This frailty of the family may be seen throughout
the play. In the last scene, it is especially apparent. All the royal
family of Denmark seem to have joined an intemperance society. The queen
even, in spite of her husband's remonstrances, joins in the carousal.
Hamlet, too, while he is dying, starts up on hearing Horatio say,
"Here's yet some liquor left," and insists upon the cup being given to
him. I know that it may be urged, on the other hand, that in the scene
preceding the first appearance of the ghost before Hamlet, he indulges
in some remarks which would prove him to have entertained sentiments
becoming his compatriot, the noble Father Mathew. Speaking of the custom
of draining down such frequent draughts of Rhenish, he pronounces it to
his mind
"a custom
More honoured in the breach than the observance."
It must be remembered that the occasion on which this speech was uttered
was a solemn one. Under such supernatural circumstances old Silenus or
the King of Prussia himself might be pardoned for growing somewhat
homiletic on the subject of temperance. The conclusion of this speech
has given the commentators a fine chance to exercise their ingenuity.
"The dram of bale
Doth all the noble substance often doubt
To his own scandal."
They have called it the "dram of base," the "dram of eale," &c., and
then have been as much in the dark as before. Some have thought that
Shakespeare intended to have written it "the dram of Bale," as a sly hit
at Dr. John Bale, the first Protestant Bishop of Ossory in Ireland, who
was an unscrupulous dram-drinker as well as dramatist, for he wrote a
play called "Kynge Johan," which was reprinted under the editorial care
of my friend, Mr. J. O. Halliwell, by the Camden Society, in 1838. But
this attempt to make it reflect upon the Ossory prelate is entirely
uncalled for. A little research would have showed that _bale_ was a
liquor somewhat resembling our whiskey of the true R. G. brand, the
consumption of which in the dram-shops of his country the Prince Hamlet
so earnestly deplored. The great Danish philosopher, V. Scheerer
Homboegger, in his autobiography, speaks of it, and says that like all
the Danes he prefers it to either wine or ale, or water even: _Der er
vand, her er vun og oel,--men allested BAELE drikker saaledes de
Dansker._ (Autobiog. II. xiii. Ed. Copenhag.)
As to the proofs that Hamlet's family was closely connected with the
tailoring interest, they are so thickly scattered through the entire
tragedy, and are so apparent even to the casual reader, that, even if I
had room, it would only be necessary to mention a few of the principal
ones. In the very first scene in which he is introduced, Hamlet talks in
an experienced manner about his "inky cloak," "suits of solemn black,"
"forms" and "modes," and tries to defend himself from the suspicion
which he feels is attached to him by many of the courtiers, by saying
plainly, "I know not _seams_." This first speech of Hamlet's is a key to
the wanton insincerity of his character. His mother has begged him to
change his clothes,--to "cast his nighted colour off,"--and he answers
her requests with, "I shall _in all my best_ obey you, madam;" yet it is
notorious that he heeds not this promise, but wears black to the end of
his career.
He repeatedly uses the expressions which a tailor would naturally
employ. His figures of speech frequently smell of the shop. As, for
instance, he says to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, "The appurtenance of
welcome is fashion and ceremony. Let me comply with you in this garb;"
in the scene preceding the play he declares that, though the devil
himself wear black, he'll "have a suit of sables." In the interview with
his mother, who may be supposed not to have forgotten the early history
of the family, he uses such figures with still greater freedom:--
"That monster _custom_ who all sense doth eat
Of _habit's_ devil, is angel yet in this;
That to the use of actions fair and good
He likewise gives a _frock_ or _livery_,
That aptly is put on."
In his instruction to the players he speaks of tearing "a passion to
_tatters_, to very _rags_" and says of certain actors that when he saw
them it seemed to him as if "some of nature's _journeymen_ had made men
and not made them well." In the fourth act, he calls Rosencrantz a
_sponge_.
What better evidence of the skill of Hamlet and his father in their
common trade can we have than that afforded by the fair Ophelia, who
speaks of the Prince as "the glass of fashion and the mould of form"? In
the chamber scene with his mother, Hamlet is taken entirely off his
guard by the sudden appearance of his father's ghost, whom he
apostrophizes, not in the set phrases which he used when Horatio and
Marcellus were by, but as "_a king of shreds and patches_". Old Polonius
does not wish his daughter to marry a tailor, but is too polite to tell
her all of his objections to Lord Hamlet's suit; so he cloaks his
reasons under these figures of speech, instead of telling her, out of
whole cloth, that Hamlet is a tailor, and the match will never do:--
"Do not believe his vows, for they are brokers,
Not of that dye which there in vestments show,
But implorators of unholy suits," &c.
Some late editions of the Bard make the second line of this passage
read,--
"Not of that die which their investments show,"----
which is as evident a corruption of the text as any of those detected by
the indefatigable Mr. Payne Collier.
If any further proof is needed of a matter which must be clear to every
reasoning mind, it may be found in that solemn scene in which the
Prince, oppressed by the burden of a life embittered and defeated in its
highest aims, meditates suicide. Now, if there is a time when all
affectation of worldly rank would be likely to be forgotten and
swallowed up in the contemplation of the terrible deed which occupies
the mind, it is such a time as this. And here we find Shakespeare as
true as Nature herself. The soldier, weary of life, uses the sword his
enemies once feared, to end his troubles. Hamlet's mind overleaps the
interval of his princely life, and the weapon which is most naturally
suggested by his youthful career is "_a bare bodkin_."
Had I not already written more than I intended on this subject, I might
go on with many other evidences of the truth of my view of this
remarkable character. I did wish also to show that Hamlet was a most
disreputable character, and by no means entitled to the sympathy or
admiration of men. Suffice it to say that he was, even to his last hour,
fonder of drink than became a prince (except perhaps a Prince
Regent)--that he treated Ophelia improperly--that he often spoke of his
step-father in profane terms--that he indulged in the use of profane
language even in his soliloquies, as for example,--
"The spirit I have seen
May be a devil; and the devil hath power
To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps
Out of my weakness, and my melancholy,
(As he is very potent with such spirits)
Abuses me too,--damme!"
His familiarity with the players likewise is an incontrovertible proof
of his depravity; for the theatrical people of Denmark in his age were
not what the players of our day are. They were too often people of loose
and reckless lives, careless of moral and social obligations, and whose
company would by no means be acceptable to a truly philosophic prince.
If this pre-Raphaelite sketch of Hamlet's character should seem
unsatisfactory, it can be filled out by a perusal of the play itself, if
the reader will only cast aside the trammels which the commentators have
placed in his way. It may be a new view to most of my readers; but I am
convinced that the theory, of which I have given an outline, is fully as
tenable as many of the countless conjectural essays to which that
matchless drama has given rise. If it be untrue, why, then we must
conclude that all similar theories, though they may be sustained by as
many passages as I have adduced in support of my Hibernico-sartorial
hypothesis, are equally devoid of a foundation of common sense. If my
theory stands, I have the satisfaction of having connected my name
(which would else be soon forgotten) with one of Shakespeare's
masterpieces; and that is all that any commentator has ever done. And if
my theory proves false, it consoles me to think that the splendour of
the genius which I so highly reverence is in no wise obscured thereby;
for the stability and grandeur of the temple cannot be impaired by the
obliteration of the ambitious scribblings and chalk-marks with which
some aspiring worshippers may have defaced its portico.