Essay [20]) where he says that 'those who would go beyond human nature,
trying to transform themselves into angels, only make beasts of
themselves.' [21] Yet, elsewhere [22] he writes that he shall be
exalted, who, renouncing his own natural means, allows himself to be
guided by means purely celestial--by which he clearly understands
the dogmas of Roman Catholicism.
As a humanistic thinker, Montaigne fears nothing more than any strivings
after transcendentalism. Such yearnings terrify him like inaccessible
heights. In the life of Sokrates, of that sage for whom he felt a special
preference, the 'ecstasies and daimons' greatly repel him. Nevertheless,
Montaigne, the mystic, attributes a great magic power to such daimons;
for he says: 'I, too, have sometimes felt within myself an image of such
internal agitations, as weak in the light of reason as they were violent
in instinctive persuasion or dissuasion (a state of mind more ordinary to
Sokrates), by which I have so profitably, and so happily, suffered myself
to be drawn on, that these mental agitations might perhaps be thought to
contain something of divine inspiration.' [23]
Montaigne, the admirer of classic antiquity, says that serving the
Commonwealth is the most honourable calling. [24] Acts without some
splendour of freedom have, in his eyes, neither grace, nor do they merit
being honoured. [25] But elsewhere [26] we come upon his other view,
less imbued with the spirit of antiquity--namely, that 'man alone,
without other help, armed only with his own weapons, and unprovided with
the grace and knowledge of God, in which all his honour, his strength,
and the whole ground of his being are contained,' is a sorry specimen of
force indeed. His own reason gives him no advantage over other
creatures; the Church alone confers this privilege upon him!
During several years, Montaigne was Mayor of Bordeaux. With great
modesty, he relates [27] that in his mere passive conduct lay
whatever little merit he may have had in serving his town. This
fully harmonises with the view expressed in his last but one Essay,
in which he declares that we are to be blamed for not sufficiently
trusting in Heaven; expecting from ourselves more than behoves us:
'Therefore do our designs so often miscarry. Heaven is envious of
the large extent which we attribute to the rights of human wisdom,
to the prejudice of its own rights; and it curtails ours all the
more that we endeavour to enlarge them.' [28]
Montaigne by no means ignores the troublous character of the times
in which he lived. He often alludes to it. He thinks astrologers cannot
have any great difficulty in presaging changes and revolutions near at
hand:--'Their prophetic indications are practically in our very
midst, and most palpable; one need not search the Heavens for that.'
'Cast we our eyes about us' (here again we follow Florio's translation),
'and in a generall survay consider all the world: all is tottring;
_all is out of frame_. Take a perfect view of all great states,
both in Christendome and where ever else we have knowledge of, and
in all places you shall finde a most evident threatning of change
and ruine ... Astrologers may spout themselves, with warning us,
as they doe of iminent alterations and succeeding revolutions: their
divinations are present and palpable, we need not prie into the
heavens to find them out.' [29]
But Montaigne, always resigned to the will of God, inactively stands by.
Not even a manly counsel comes from his lips. He believes he has
fulfilled his Christian duty by trusting in Heaven for the conduct
of human affairs, and trying to comfort his fellow-men by the hollow
words that he 'sees no cause for despair. Perchance we have not yet
arrived at the last stage. The maintenance of states is most probably
something that goes beyond our powers of understanding.' [30]
Montaigne, the Humanist, says that 'it is an absolute perfection, and,
as it were, a divine accomplishment for a man to know how to loyally
enjoy his existence.' The most commendable life for him is 'that which
adapts itself, in an orderly way, to a common human model, without
miracle, and without extravagance.' [31]
But Montaigne, the Christian, relates that he has 'never occupied
himself with anything more than with ideas of death, even at the most
licentious time of his youth.' With touching ingenuousness he confesses
his weaknesses and his vanities, of which he scarcely dares to think any
longer. The descriptions he often gives of himself--such as, 'a dreamer'
(_songe-creux_), 'soft' (_molle_), 'heavy' (_poisante_), 'pensive,' and so
forth [32]--prove that he cannot have arrived at a pure enjoyment of
life. He questions the happiness of being a husband and father. We
shall touch upon his views as regards woman, and many other peculiarities
of his, in the passages of 'Hamlet' referring to them.
In nothing does Montaigne arrive at any clear conclusion within himself.
Though he knows how to speak much and well about everything, it is all
mere _bel esprit_, a display of glittering words, hollow verbiage,
which only lands us in a labyrinth of contradictions, from which we
seek an issue as vainly as the author himself. Striving, through all his
life, to arrive at a knowledge of himself, he at last lays down his arms,
considering the attempt a fruitless and impossible task, and, in his last
Essay, [33] he makes this avowal:--
'That which in Perseus, the King of Macedon, was remarked as a rare
thing--viz. that his mind, not settling down into any kind of condition,
went wandering through every manner of life, thus showing such flighty
and erratic conduct that neither he nor others knew what sort of man he
was: this seems to me to apply nearly to the whole world, and more
especially to one of that ilk whom this description would eminently fit.
This, indeed, is what I believe of him (he speaks of himself):--"No
average attitude; being always driven from one extreme to the other by
indivinable chances; no manner of course without cross-runnings and
marvellous controversies; no clear and plain faculty, so that the
likeliest idea that could one day be put forth about him will be this:
that he affected and laboured to make himself known by the
impossibility of really knowing him" ('qu'il affectoit et estudioit
de se rendre cogneu par estre mecognoissable').' This is Montaigne
all over.
In the British Museum there is a copy of the Essays of Montaigne, in
Florio's translation, with Shakspere's name, it is alleged, written
in it by his own hand, and with notes which possibly may in part have
been jotted down by him. Sir Frederick Madden, one of the greatest
authorities in autographs, has recognised Shakspere's autograph as
genuine. [34] Whatever disputes may be carried on on this particular
point, we think we shall be able to prove that Shakspere about the year
1600 must have been well acquainted with Montaigne. We shall show
that in the first text of 'Hamlet,' which, it is assumed, was
represented on the stage between 1601 and 1602, there are already
to be found some allusions to Montaigne, especially as far as the
middle of the second and towards the end of the fifth act. In all
likelihood, Shakspere knew the 'Essais' even in the original French
text or perhaps from the manuscript of the translation which, as
above stated, had been begun towards the year 1599; for Shakspere,
it is to be supposed, had access to the houses of, at least, two
of the noble ladies to whom the Italian teacher dedicated his
translation.
In the 'Tempest,' assumed to be of later date than 'Hamlet,' there is
a passage unmistakably taken from Florio's version of Montaigne. [35]
Ben Jonson, the most quarrelsome and the chief adversary of Shakspere,
was an intimate friend of Florio. When Montaigne, in 'Hamlet'--as
Jonson says--became the target of 'railing rhetoric,' the latter
took sides with Florio and his colleagues; launching out against
Shakspere in his comedy, 'Volpone.' This play, as well as an
Introduction in which it is dedicated to the two Universities, gives
us a clue to a great many things otherwise difficult to understand.
A new book, especially a philosophical work like that of Michel
Montaigne, was then still a remarkable event. [36] To counteract the
pernicious influence which the frivolous, foreign talker threatened to
exercise, in large circles, through an English translation--this, in
our opinion, was the object which Shakspere had when touching upon
ground interdicted, as a rule, to the stage--namely, upon questions of
religion. We shall find that it was not through any preference for ghost
and murder scenes that, a year after the second quarto, in 1605,
'Hamlet' was reprinted--a circumstance occurring with but one other
drama of Shakspere; which testifies that this particular play attained
great popularity from its first appearance. [37]
A very instructive insight into the intellectual movement of the great
Reformation epoch here opens itself to us. In this case, also, we shall
gain the conviction that a true genius takes the liveliest interest in
the fate of his own nation, and does not occupy himself with distant,
abstruse problems (such as fussy metaphysicians would fain philosophise
into 'Hamlet'), whilst the times are going out of joint. The greatest
Englishman remained, in the most powerful drama of his, within the
sphere of the questions that agitated his time. In 'Hamlet' he
identifies Montaigne's philosophy with madness; branding it as a
pernicious one, as contrary to the intellectual conquests his own
English nation has made, when breaking with the Romanist dogmas.
What sense of duty do Montaigne's Essays promote? What noble deed can
ripen in the light of the disordered and discordant ideas they contain?
All they can do is, to disturb the mind, not to clear it; to give rise
to doubts, not to solve them; to nip the buds from which great actions
may spring, not to develop them. Instead of furthering the love for
mankind, they can only produce despair as to all higher aims and ideals.
In 'Hamlet,' Shakspere personified many qualities of the complex
character of Montaigne. Before all, he meant to draw this conclusion:
that whoever approaches a high task of life with such wavering
thoughts and such logical inconsistencies, must needs suffer
shipwreck. Hamlet's character has only remained an enigma to us for
so long a time because he is flesh of our flesh, blood of our blood;
'but, to knew a man well, were to know himself.'
1: Essay III. 9.
2: Essay III. 12, 235.
3: _Ibid_. 9.
4: Essay III. 13 (_Edition Variorum_, par Charles Louandre,
Paris; which we always refer to).
5: The _Essayes, or Morall, Politike, and Millitarie Discourses_
of Lo. Michaell de Montaigne, London, 1603, p. 256.
6: Sainte-Beuve.
7: Essay II. 17, p. 71.
8: III. 2, 330.
9: Essay I. 26, 257.
10: II. 12, 487-8.
11: Montaigne, _Discours de Raison_ (Discourse of Reason). Florio,
252.
12: Essay II. 12, 297. Florio, 266.
13: Part of an inscription still legible in Montaigne's castle.
14: Essay II. 12.
15: III. 9.
16: I. 26.
17: Essay III. 1
18: II. 11.
19: III. 1.
20: III. 13.
21: Essay III. 13.
22: II. 12.
23: I. 11.
24: III. 9.
25: _Ibid_.
26: II. 12.
27: Essay III. 10.
28: _Ibid_. 12.
29. Florio, 575.
30: Essay III. 9.
31: III. 13.
32: Essay II. 12.
33: III. 13.
34: _Observations on an Autograph of Shakspere_. London, 1838.
35: This is the passage, which occurs in the _Tempest_, act ii.
sc. I:
'_Gonzalo_.--I' the commonwealth I would by contraries
Execute all things: for no kind of traffic
Would I admit; no name of magistrate:
Letters should not be known; riches, poverty,
And use of service, none; contract, succession,
Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none;
No use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil;
No occupation: all men idle, all;
And women too.'
This passage is almost literally taken from Essay I. 30, 'On
Cannibals.' We shall later on show Shakspere's reason for giving
us this fanciful description of such an Utopian commonwealth.
36: Florio, after enumerating the difficulties he encountered in the
translation of the _Essays_, concludes his preface to the
courteous reader with the following words:--
'In summe, if any think he could do better, let him trie, then
will he better think of what is done. Seven or eight of great wit
and worth have assayed, but found those Essais no attempt for
French apprentises or Littletonians. If thus done it may please
you, as I wish it may and I hope it shall, and I with you shall be
pleased: though not, yet still I am.'
We learn, from this remark, of what great importance the _Essais_
must have been considered in literary circles, and it is not
improbable that a few attempts 'of the seven or eight of great wit
and worth' may have appeared in print long before Florio's
translation. We may well ask: Is it likely that the greatest
literary genius of his age should have been unaware of the
existence of a work which was considered of such importance that
'seven or eight of great wit and worth' thought it worth while to
attempt to translate it? Shakspere, who in _King Henry the Fifth_
(1599) wrote some scenes in French, must surely have had sufficient
knowledge of this language to read it.
37: Besides the quartos of 1603 and 1604, thee were reprints of the
latter in 1605 and 1611; also another edition without date.
IV.
HAMLET.
In the foregoing sketch of Montaigne our especial object was to point
out the inconsistency of the French writer in advising us to follow
Nature as our guide, yet at the same time maintaining a strict
adherence to tenets and dogmas which qualify the impulses and
inclinations of nature as sinful, and which even declare war against
them.
Let us see how Shakspere incarnates these contrasts in the character
of Hamlet.
He makes the Danish Prince come back from the University of Wittenberg.
There, we certainly may assume, he has become imbued with the new spirit
that then shook the world. We refrain from mentioning it by name,
because the designation we now confer upon it has become a lifeless
word, comprising no longer those free thoughts of the Humanist, for
which Shakspere, in this powerful tragedy, boldly enters the lists.
Hamlet longs to be back to Wittenberg. This desire represents his
inclination towards free, humanistic studies. On the other hand, his
adherence to old dogmatic views can be deduced from the fact of his
being so terribly impressed by the circumstance of his father having
had to die
Unhousel'd, disappointed, unaneled;
a fact recorded with a threefold outcry:--
Oh, horrible! Oh, horrible! most horrible!
Again, we must direct the reader's attention to this very noteworthy
point, that the first quarto edition of 'Hamlet' was already worked out
tolerably well as far as the middle of the second act. For the completion
of this part, only a few details were necessary. From them, we must all
the more be enabled to gather Shakspere's intention.
In the speech of the Ghost in the second quarto--otherwise of well-nigh
identical contents with the one in the first edition--there is only
one new line, but one which deserves the closest consideration.
It is that which we have quoted--
Unhousel'd, disappointed, unaneled.
The effect this statement has on the course of the dramatic action we
shall explain later on. In act iii. sc. 3, where Hamlet's energy is
paralysed by this disclosure of the Ghost, we afterwards again come upon
a short innovation, and a most characteristic one, though but consisting
of two lines.
In the first quarto we see Hamlet, in the beginning of the play,
seized with an unmanly grief which makes him wish that heaven and
earth would change back into chaos. But a new addition to this
weariness of life is the contempt of all earthly aspirations: the
aversion to Nature as the begetter of sin. The following passages
are not to be found in the first quarto:--
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on't! Ah fie! 't is an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely.
The scene between Hamlet and Horatio (act i. sc. 4), which in both
texts is about the same, contains an innovation in which the Prince's
mistrust of nature is even more sharply expressed. These lines are new:--
This heavy-headed revel east and west
Makes us traduced and tax'd of other nations--
as far as--
... The dram of eale (evil)
Doth (drawth) all the substance of a doubt
To his own scandal.
The contents of this interpolated speech may concisely be thus given:
that the virtues of man, however pure and numerous they may be, are
often infected by 'some vicious mole of Nature,' wherein he himself
is guiltless; and that from such a fault in the chance of birth a stamp
of defect is impressed upon his character, and thus contaminates the
whole.
These innovations are evidently introduced for the purpose of making
us understand why Hamlet does not trust to the excitements of his own
reason and his own blood, in order to find out by natural means whether
it be true what his 'prophetic soul' anticipates--namely, that his
uncle may 'smile and smile, and yet be a villain.'
Man, says Montaigne, has no hold-fast, no firm and fixed point, within
himself, in spite of his apparently splendid outfit. [1]
Man can do nothing with his own weapons alone without help from outside.
In the Essay 'On the Folly of Referring the True and the False to the
Trustworthiness of our Judgment,' [2] he maintains that 'it is a
silly presumption to go about despising and condemning as false that
which does not seem probable to us; which is a common fault of those who
think they have more self-sufficiency than the vulgar. So was I formerly
minded; and if I heard anybody speak either of ghosts coming back, or of
the prophecy of coming things, of spells, of witchcraft, or of any other
tale I could not digest--
Somnia, terrores magicos, miracula, sagas,
Nocturnos lemures, portentaque Thessala--
I felt a kind of compassion for the poor people who were made the
victims of such follies. And now I find that I was, at least, to be
as much pitied myself.... Reason has taught me that, so resolutely
to condemn a thing as false and impossible, is to boldly assume that
we have in our head the bounds and limits of the will of God and of
our common mother, Nature; and I now see that there is no more notable
folly in the world than to reduce them to the measure of our capacity
and of our self-sufficient judgment.' [3]
Not less weak than Montaigne's trust in human reason is that of Hamlet
when he fears 'the pales and forts of reason' may be broken down--
by the o'ergrowth of some complexion.
With such a mode of thought it is not to be wondered at that he should
welcome the first occasion when the task of his life may be revealed
to him by a heavenly messenger. Hoping that 'the questionable shape'
would not let him 'burst in ignorance,' but tell him why 'we fools of
Nature so horridly shake our disposition with thoughts beyond the
reaches of our souls,' he follows the spectral apparition. Good Horatio
does his best to restrain his friend, who has waxed 'desperate with
imagination,' from approaching the 'removed ground,' that might deprive
him of the 'sovereignity of reason,' and whither the Ghost beckons him.
Here there are several new lines:--
Or to the dreadful summit of the cliff....
The very place puts toys of desperation,
Without more motive, into every brain
That looks so many fathoms to the sea,
And hears it roar beneath.
Here we have one of those incipient ecstasies of which Montaigne says
that 'such transcending humours affright me as much as _steep,
high, and inaccessible places_.' [4]
In the following scene between Hamlet and the Ghost the introduction is
new:--
_Ghost_. My hour is almost come,
When I to sulphurous and tormenting flames
Must render up myself.
_Hamlet_. Alas, poor ghost!
_Ghost_. Pity me not, but lend thy serious hearing
To what I shall unfold.
_Hamlet_. Speak; I am bound to hear.
_Ghost_. So art thou to revenge, when thou shall hear.
This picturing of the torments of hell--how very characteristic! It
is forbidden to the Ghost to communicate to 'ears of flesh and blood'
the secrets of its fiery prison-house. Yet it knows how to tell enough
of the horrors of that gruesome place to make the hair of a stronger
mortal than Hamlet is, stand on end, 'like quills upon the fretful
porcupine.'
With masterly hand, the poet depicts the distance which henceforth
separates Hamlet's course of thought from that of his friends who have
remained on the firm ground of human reason. Hamlet cannot say more
than--
that there's ne'er a villain dwelling in all Denmark
But he's an arrant knave.
When Horatio answers that 'there needs no ghost, my lord, come from
the grave to tell us this,' [5] Hamlet asks his friends to shake hands
with him and part, giving them to understand that every man has his
own business and desire, and that--
for my own poor part,
Look you, I'll go pray.
Horatio calls this 'wild and whirling words.' The Prince who at this
moment, no doubt, expresses his own true inclination, says:--'I am
sorry they offend you--heartily; yes, 'faith, heartily.' It is difficult
for him to justify his own procedure. He feels unable to explain
his thoughts and sentiments to the clear, unwarped reason of a Horatio,
to whom the Ghost did not reply, and to whom no ghost would.
Hamlet assures his friend, for whose sympathy he greatly cares, that
the apparition is a true one, an honest ghost. He advises Horatio to
give the 'wondrous strange' a welcome even as to 'a stranger;' and,
lest he might endeavour to test the apparition by human reason, he speaks
the beautiful words:--
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy
Hamlet tells his friends that in future he will put on 'an antic
disposition.' Towards them he has, in fact, already done so. His desire
for a threefold oath; his repeated shifting of ground; his swearing
by the sword on which the hands are laid (a custom referable to the
time of the Crusades, and considered tantamount to swearing by the
cross, but which, at the same time, is an older Germanic, and hence
Danish, custom); his use of a Latin formula, _Hic et ubique_--all
these procedures have the evident object of throwing his comrades into
a mystic frame of mind, and to make them keep silence ('so help you
mercy!') as to what they have seen. These are the mysterious means
which those have to use that would make themselves the medium of a
message supernaturally revealed. [5]
A perusal of the fifty-sixth chapter of the first Essay of Montaigne
will show with what great reverence he treated ceremonial customs
and hollow formulas; for instance, the sign of the cross, of which he
'continually made use, even if he be but yawning' (_sic_). It is
not a mere coincidence, but a well-calculated trait in the character of
Hamlet, that in his speech he goes through a scale of exclamations and
asseverations such as Shakspere employs in no other of his poetical
creations. Hamlet incessantly mentions God, Heaven, Hell, and the
Devil, the Heavenly Hosts, and the Saints. He claims protection from
the latter at the appearance of the Ghost. He swears 'by St. Patrick,'
by his faith, by God's wounds, by His blood, by His body, by the
Cross, and so forth. [6]
Stubbs, in his 'Anatomy of Abuses' (1583), [7] lays stress, among other
characteristics of the Papists, upon their terrible inclination to
swearing: 'in so muche, as if they speake but three or fower words,
yet must thei needes be interlaced with a bloudie othe or two, to the
great dishonour of God and offence of the hearers.'
An overwhelming grief and mistrust in his own nature filled Hamlet's
bold imagination with the desire of receiving a complete mandate
for his mission from the hands of superior powers. So he enters the
realm of mysticism, where mind wields no authority, and where no
sound fruit of human reason can ripen.