"Shakspeare alone could have produced the vow of Hamlet, to make
his memory a blank of all maxims and generalised truths that
'observation had copied there,' followed immediately by the
speaker noting down the generalised fact--
"'That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain.'
"Now, that this last line _is_ really what Shakspeare _intended to
be noted down_, is precisely the point that goes so much "against
the stomach of my sense!"
This jotting down by Hamlet, upon a real substantial table, of one of
those "generalised truths" which he had just excluded from the table of
his memory, would be such a _literalising of the metaphor_, that it is a
great relief to me to feel convinced that Shakspeare never intended it.
In Hamlet's discourse there may be observed an under current of thought
that is continually breaking forth in _apostrophe_. In the present
instance it is directed to his uncle:
"O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain!
At least I'm sure it may be so in Denmark--
So! uncle, _there_ you are!"
Is not all this _one continued apostrophe_? The second line an
admirative comment upon the first, and the fourth line, even in the
present day, a common exclamation expressive of misdeeds, or intentions,
unexpectedly brought to light? But it is not this most trite reflection,
in the second line, that Hamlet wishes to set down. No, it is the
all-absorbing _commandment_:
"And thy commandment all alone shall live
Within the book and volume of my brain,
Unmixed with baser matter--
"My tables, my tables,--meet it is I set it down!"
_Set it down_, in order that the exact words of the
commandment--subsequently quoted to the very letter--may be preserved.
To suppose that Hamlet gets forth his tables for the purpose of setting
down a common-place truism, _because_ he has reserved no place for such
matters _in the table of his memory_, is surely to materialise a fine
poetical image by contrasting it with a substantial matter of fact
operation.
And to suppose, with Coleridge, that the very absurdness of the act is a
subtle indication of incipient madness, is an over refinement in
criticism, as intenable as it is unnecessary.
Hamlet evinces no semblance of unsettled mind, real or assumed, until
joined by Horatio and Marcellus; and, even then, his apparently
misplaced jocularity does not commence until he has finally determined
_to withhold_ the secret he had twice been on the point of disclosing:
"How say you then, would the heart of man once think it?--
But you'll be secret."
Again:
"There's ne'er a villain dwelling in all Denmark--
But he's an arrant knave."
I do not know whether I am singular in the view I take of these two
sentences, but I understand them as _inchoate disclosures_, suddenly
broken off through the irresolution of the speaker.
For instance, I do not understand the last, as Horatio understood
it--"_There needs no ghost from the grave to tell us this_;" but I
understand it as an intended revelation, begun, withdrawn, and cleverly
turned off by the substitution of a ridiculous termination. It is
_then_, when Hamlet finally resolves to withhold the secret, at least
from Marcellus (when or where Horatio afterwards acquires it, is not
explained), that he seeks to conceal his overwrought feelings by assumed
levity.
Such is the way I read this scene; and, while I freely admit the
difficulty presented in the fact, that, amongst so many acute students
of Shakspeare, no one before should have seen any difficulty in the
usual interpretation of this passage, I must at the same time declare,
that I can perceive no single point in favour of that interpretation,
save and except the placing of the "stage direction" where it now is.
But this may have arisen from the early printers being misled by the
apparent sequence of the word "that," with which the next line
commences:
----"meet it is I set it down
_That_" &c.
It may be observed, however, that such a commencement, to a sentence
expressive of wonder or incredulity, was by no needs uncommon. As, for
example, in the first scene of _Cymbeline_:
"That a _king's_ children should be so convey'd!"
I really can perceive little _else_ than this "stage direction" to
favour the usual reading, while, in that proposed by me, the sequence of
action appears to be the most natural in the world:--
First, "My tables, my tables," &c.
Next, the continuation of the interrupted apostrophe, which occupies the
time while getting forth and preparing the tables.