"That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat
Of habits 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....
For use can almost change the stamp of nature."
No doubt the idea is a classic commonplace; and in the early TWO
GENTLEMEN OF VERONA[38] we actually have the line, "How use doth breed a
habit in a man;" but here again there seems reason to regard Montaigne
as having suggested Shakspere's vivid and many-coloured wording of the
idea in the tragedy. Indeed, even the line cited from the early comedy
may have been one of the poet's many later additions to his text.
VIII. A less close but still a noteworthy resemblance is that between
the passage in which Hamlet expresses to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
the veering of his mood from joy in things to disgust with them, and the
paragraph in the APOLOGY OF RAYMOND SEBONDE in which Montaigne sets
against each other the splendour of the universe and the littleness of
man. Here the thought diverges, Shakspere making it his own as he always
does, and altering its aim; but the language is curiously similar.
Hamlet says:
"It goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly
frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory: this
most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave
o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof, fretted with
golden fire, why it appears no other thing to me than a foul
and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work
is man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in
form and moving, how express and admirable! in action, how
like an angel! in apprehension, how like a God! the beauty
of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet to me what is
this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me."
Montaigne, as translated by Florio, has:
"Let us see what hold-fast or free-hold he (man) hath in
this gorgeous and goodly equipage.... Who hath persuaded
him, that this admirable moving of heaven's vaults, that the
eternal light of these lamps so fiercely rolling over his
head ... were established ... for his commodity and service?
Is it possible to imagine anything so ridiculous as this
miserable and wretched creature, which is not so much as
master of himself, exposed and subject to offences of all
things, and yet dareth call himself Master and Emperor of
this universe?... [To consider ... the power and domination
these (celestial) bodies have, not only upon our lives and
conditions of our fortune ... but also over our dispositions
and inclinations, our discourses and wills, which they rule,
provoke, and move at the pleasure of their influences.] ...
Of all creatures man is the most miserable and frail, and
therewithal the proudest and disdainfullest. Who perceiveth
himself placed here, amidst the filth and mire of the world
... and yet dareth imaginarily place himself above the
circle of the Moon, and reduce heaven under his feet. It is
through the vanity of the same imagination that he dare
equal himself to God."
The passage in brackets is left here in its place, not as suggesting
anything in Hamlet's speech, but as paralleling a line in MEASURE FOR
MEASURE, to be dealt with immediately. But it will be seen that
the rest of the passage, though turned to quite another purpose than
Hamlet's, brings together in the same way a set of contrasted ideas of
human greatness and smallness, and of the splendour of the midnight
firmament.[39]
IX. The nervous protest of Hamlet to Horatio on the point of the
national vice of drunkenness,[40] of which all save the beginning is
added in the Second Quarto just before the entrance of the Ghost, has
several curious points of coincidence with Montaigne's essay[41] on THE
HISTORY OF SPURINA, which discusses at great length a matter of special
interest to Shakspere--the character of Julius Caesar. In the course of
the examination Montaigne takes trouble to show that Cato's use of the
epithet "drunkard" to Caesar could not have been meant literally; that
the same Cato admitted Caesar's sobriety in the matter of drinking. It is
after making light of Caesar's faults in other matters of personal
conduct that the essayist comes to this decision:
"But all these noble inclinations, rich gifts, worthy
qualities, were altered, smothered, and eclipsed by this
furious passion of ambition.... To conclude, this only vice
(in mine opinion) lost and overthrew in him the fairest
natural and richest ingenuity that ever was, and hath made
his memory abominable to all honest minds."
Compare the exquisitely high-strung lines, so congruous in their excited
rapidity with Hamlet's intensity of expectation, which follow on his
notable outburst on the subject of drunkenness:
"So oft it chances in particular men,
That for some vicious mode of nature in them,
As in their birth (wherein they are not guilty,
Since nature cannot choose its origin),
By the o'ergrowth of some complexion,
Oft breaking down the pales and forts of reason;
Or by some habit that too much o'er-leavens
The form of plausive manners; that these men,--
Carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect;
Being nature's livery, or fortune's star,--
Their virtues else (be they as pure as grace,
As infinite as man may undergo)
Shall in the general censure take corruption
From that particular fault...."
Even the idea that "nature cannot choose its origin" is suggested by the
context in Montaigne.[42] Shakspere's estimate of Caesar, of course,
diverged from that of the essay.
X. I find a certain singularity of coincidence between the words of King
Claudius on kingship:
"There's such divinity doth hedge a king,
That treason can but peep to what it would,
Acts little of his will,"
and a passage in the essay[43] OF THE INCOMMODITY OF GREATNESS:
"To be a king, is a matter of that consequence, that only by
it he is so. That strange glimmering and eye-dazzling light,
which round about environeth, over-casteth and hideth from
us: our weak sight is thereby bleared and dissipated, as
being filled and obscured by that greater and
further-spreading brightness."
The working out of the metaphor here gives at once to Shakspere's terms
"divinity" and "can but peep" a point not otherwise easily seen; but the
idea of a dazzling light may be really what was meant in the play; and
one is tempted to pronounce the passage a reminiscence of Montaigne.
Here, however, it has to be noted that in the First Quarto we have the
lines:
"There's such divinity doth wall a king
That treason dares not look on."
And if Shakspere had not seen or heard the passage in Montaigne before
the publication of Florio's folio--which, however, he may very well have
done--the theory of reminiscence here cannot stand.
XI. In Hamlet's soliloquy on the passage of the army of Fortinbras--one
of the many passages added in the Second Quarto--there is a strong
general resemblance to a passage in the essay OF DIVERSION.[44] Hamlet
first remarks to the Captain:
"Two thousand souls and twenty thousand ducats
Will not debate the question of this straw:
This is the imposthume of much wealth and peace;"
and afterwards soliloquises:
"Examples gross as earth exhort me:
Witness, this army of such mass and charge,
Led by a delicate and tender prince,
Whose spirit, by divine ambition puff'd,
Makes mouths at the invisible event;
Exposing what is mortal and unsure
To all that fortune, death, and danger dare,
Even for an egg-shell. Rightly to be great,
Is not to stir without great argument,
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw.
When honour is at stake....
....to my shame I see
The imminent death of twenty thousand men,
That for a fantasy and trick of fame,
Go to their graves like beds; fight for a plot
Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause...."
Montaigne has the same general idea in the essay OF DIVERSION:
"If one demand that fellow, what interest he hath in such a
siege: The interest of example (he will say) and common
obedience of the Prince: I nor look nor pretend any benefit
thereby ... I have neither passion nor quarrel in the
matter. Yet the next day you will see him all changed, and
chafing, boiling and blushing with rage, in his rank of
battle, ready for the assault. It is the glaring reflecting
of so much steel, the flashing thundering of the cannon, the
clang of trumpets, and the rattling of drums, that have
infused this new fury and rancour in his swelling veins. A
frivolous cause, will you say? How a cause? There needeth
none to excite our mind. A doting humour without body,
without substance, overswayeth it up and down."