LECTURE V

Lay her in the earth,And from her fair and unpolluted fleshMay violets spring!

—so he prays at her burial. 'Sweets to the sweet' the Queen murmurs, as she scatters flowers on the grave; and the flowers which Ophelia herself gathered—those which she gave to others, and those which floated about her in the brook—glimmer in the picture of the mind. Her affection for her brother is shown in two or three delicate strokes. Her love for her father is deep, though mingled with fear. For Hamlet she has, some say, no deep love—and perhaps she is so near childhood that old affections have still the strongest hold; but certainly she has given to Hamlet all the love of which her nature is as yet capable. Beyond these three beloved ones she seems to have eyes and ears for no one. The Queen is fond of her, but there is no sign of her returning the Queen's affection. Her existence is wrapped up in these three.

On this childlike nature and on Ophelia's inexperience everything depends. The knowledge that 'there's tricks in the world' has reached her only as a vague report. Her father and brother are jealously anxious for her because of her ignorance and innocence; and we resent their anxiety chiefly because we know Hamlet better than they. Her whole character is that of simple unselfish affection. Naturally she is incapable of understanding Hamlet's mind, though she can feel its beauty. Naturally, too, she obeys herfather when she is forbidden to receive Hamlet's visits and letters. If we remember not whatweknow but whatsheknows of her lover and her father; if we remember that she had not, like Juliet, confessed her love; and if we remember that she was much below her suitor in station, her compliance surely must seem perfectly natural, apart from the fact that the standard of obedience to a father was in Shakespeare's day higher than in ours.

'But she does more than obey,' we are told; 'she runs off frightened to report to her father Hamlet's strange visit and behaviour; she shows to her father one of Hamlet's letters, and tells him[77]the whole story of the courtship; and she joins in a plot to win Hamlet's secret from him.' One must remember, however, that she had never read the tragedy. Consider for a moment how matters looked toher. She knows nothing about the Ghost and its disclosures. She has undergone for some time the pain of repelling her lover and appearing to have turned against him. She sees him, or hears of him, sinking daily into deeper gloom, and so transformed from what he was that he is considered to be out of his mind. She hears the question constantly discussed what the cause of this sad change can be; and her heart tells her—how can it fail to tell her?—that her unkindness is the chief cause. Suddenly Hamlet forces his way into her chamber; and his appearance and his behaviour are those of a man crazed with love. She is frightened—why not? She is not Lady Macbeth. Rosalind would have been frightened. Which of her censors would be wholly unmoved if his room were invaded by a lunatic? She is frightened, then; frightened, if you will, like a child. Yes, but, observe, her one idea is to help Hamlet. She goes, therefore,at once to her father. To whom else should she go? Her brother is away. Her father, whom she saw with her own eyes and not with Shakespeare's, is kind, and the wisest of men, and concerned about Hamlet's state. Her father finds, in her report, the solution of the mystery: Hamlet is mad because she has repulsed him. Why should she not tell her father the whole story and give him an old letter which may help to convince the King and the Queen? Nay, why should she not allow herself to be used as a 'decoy' to settle the question why Hamlet is mad? It is all-important that it should be settled, in order that he may be cured; all her seniors are simply and solely anxious for his welfare; and, if her unkindnessisthe cause of his sad state, they will permit her to restore him by kindness (iii.i. 40). Was she to refuse to play a part just because it would be painful to her to do so? I find in her joining the 'plot' (as it is absurdly called) a sign not of weakness, but of unselfishness and strength.

'But she practised deception; she even told a lie. Hamlet asked her where her father was, and she said he was at home, when he was really listening behind a curtain.' Poor Ophelia! It is considered angelic in Desdemona to say untruly that she killed herself, but most immoral or pusillanimous in Ophelia to tellherlie. I will not discuss these casuistical problems; but, if ever an angry lunatic asks me a question which I cannot answer truly without great danger to him and to one of my relations, I hope that grace may be given me to imitate Ophelia. Seriously, at such a terrible moment was it weak, was it not rather heroic, in a simple girl not to lose her presence of mind and not to flinch, but to go through her task for Hamlet's sake and her father's? And, finally, is it really a thing to be taken as matter of course, andno matter for admiration, in this girl that, from beginning to end, and after a storm of utterly unjust reproach, not a thought of resentment should even cross her mind?

Still, we are told, it was ridiculously weak in her to lose her reason. And here again her critics seem hardly to realise the situation, hardly to put themselves in the place of a girl whose lover, estranged from her, goes mad and kills her father. They seem to forget also that Ophelia must have believed that these frightful calamities were not mere calamities, but followed fromheraction in repelling her lover. Nor do they realise the utter loneliness that must have fallen on her. Of the three persons who were all the world to her, her father has been killed, Hamlet has been sent out of the country insane, and her brother is abroad. Horatio, when her mind gives way, tries to befriend her, but there is no sign of any previous relation between them, or of Hamlet's having commended her to his friend's care. What support she can gain from the Queen we can guess from the Queen's character, and from the fact that, when Ophelia is most helpless, the Queen shrinks from the very sight of her (iv.v. 1). She was left, thus, absolutely alone, and if she looked for her brother's return (as she did,iv.v. 70), she might reflect that it would mean danger to Hamlet.

Whether this idea occurred to her we cannot tell. In any case it was well for her that her mind gave way before Laertes reached Elsinore; and pathetic as Ophelia's madness is, it is also, we feel, the kindest stroke that now could fall on her. It is evident, I think, that this was the effect Shakespeare intended to produce. In her madness Ophelia continues sweet and lovable.

Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself,She turns to favour and to prettiness.

In her wanderings we hear from time to time an undertone of the deepest sorrow, but never the agonised cry of fear or horror which makes madness dreadful or shocking.[78]And the picture of her death, if our eyes grow dim in watching it, is still purely beautiful. Coleridge was true to Shakespeare when he wrote of 'the affecting death of Ophelia,—who in the beginning lay like a little projection of land into a lake or stream, covered with spray-flowers quietly reflected in the quiet waters, but at length is undermined or loosened, and becomes a fairy isle, and after a brief vagrancy sinks almost without an eddy.'[79]

I reluctantly pass by Polonius, Laertes and the beautiful character of Horatio, to say something in conclusion of the Queen and the King.

The answers to two questions asked about the Queen are, it seems to me, practically certain, (1) She did not merely marry a second time with indecent haste; she was false to her husband while he lived. This is surely the most natural interpretation of the words of the Ghost (i.v. 41 f.), coming, as they do, before his account of the murder. And against this testimony what force has the objection that the queen in the 'Murder of Gonzago' is not represented as an adulteress? Hamlet's mark in arranging the play-scene was not his mother, whom besides he had been expressly ordered to spare (i.v. 84 f.).

(2) On the other hand, she wasnotprivy to the murder of her husband, either before the deed or after it. There is no sign of her being so, and there are clear signs that she was not. The representation of the murder in the play-scene does not move her; and when her husband starts from his throne, she innocently asks him, 'How fares my lord?' In the interview with Hamlet, when her son says of his slaughter of Polonius,

'A bloody deed!' Almost as bad, good mother,As kill a king and marry with his brother,

the astonishment of her repetition 'As kill a king!' is evidently genuine; and, if it had not been so, she would never have had the hardihood to exclaim:

What have I done, that thou darest wag thy tongueIn noise so rude against me?

Further, it is most significant that when she and the King speak together alone, nothing that is said by her or to her implies her knowledge of the secret.

The Queen was not a bad-hearted woman, not at all the woman to think little of murder. But she had a soft animal nature, and was very dull and very shallow. She loved to be happy, like a sheep in the sun; and, to do her justice, it pleased her to see others happy, like more sheep in the sun. She never saw that drunkenness is disgusting till Hamlet told her so; and, though she knew that he considered her marriage 'o'er-hasty' (ii.ii. 57), she was untroubled by any shame at the feelings which had led to it. It was pleasant to sit upon her throne and see smiling faces round her, and foolish and unkind in Hamlet to persist in grieving for his father instead of marrying Ophelia and making everything comfortable. She was fond of Ophelia and genuinely attached to her son (though willing to see her lover exclude him from the throne); and, no doubt, she considered equality of rank a mere trifle compared with the claims of love. The belief at the bottom of her heart was that the world is a place constructed simply that people may be happy in it in a good-humoured sensual fashion.

Her only chance was to be made unhappy. When affliction comes to her, the good in her nature struggles to the surface through the heavy mass of sloth. Like other faulty characters in Shakespeare's tragedies, she dies a better woman than she had lived. When Hamlet shows her what she has done she feels genuine remorse. It is true, Hamlet fears it will not last, and so at the end of the interview (iii.iv. 180 ff.) he adds a warning that, if she betrays him, she will ruin herself as well.[80]It is true too that there is no sign of her obeying Hamlet in breaking off her most intimate connection with the King. Still she does feel remorse; and she loves her son, and does not betray him. She gives her husband a false account ofPolonius's death, and is silent about the appearance of the Ghost. She becomes miserable;

To her sick soul, as sin's true nature is,Each toy seems prologue to some great amiss.

She shows spirit when Laertes raises the mob, and one respects her for standing up for her husband when she can do nothing to help her son. If she had sense to realise Hamlet's purpose, or the probability of the King's taking some desperate step to foil it, she must have suffered torture in those days. But perhaps she was too dull.

The last we see of her, at the fencing-match, is most characteristic. She is perfectly serene. Things have slipped back into their groove, and she has no apprehensions. She is, however, disturbed and full of sympathy for her son, who is out of condition and pants and perspires. These are afflictions she can thoroughly feel for, though they are even more common than the death of a father. But then she meets her death because she cannot resist the wish to please her son by drinking to his success. And more: when she falls dying, and the King tries to make out that she is merely swooning at the sight of blood, she collects her energies to deny it and to warn Hamlet:

No, no, the drink, the drink,—O my dear Hamlet,—The drink, the drink! I am poison'd. [Dies.

Was ever any other writer at once so pitiless and so just as Shakespeare? Did ever any other mingle the grotesque and the pathetic with a realism so daring and yet so true to 'the modesty of nature'?

King Claudius rarely gets from the reader the attention he deserves. But he is very interesting, both psychologically and dramatically. On the one hand, he is not without respectable qualities. As a king he is courteous and never undignified;he performs his ceremonial duties efficiently; and he takes good care of the national interests. He nowhere shows cowardice, and when Laertes and the mob force their way into the palace, he confronts a dangerous situation with coolness and address. His love for his ill-gotten wife seems to be quite genuine, and there is no ground for suspecting him of having used her as a mere means to the crown.[81]His conscience, though ineffective, is far from being dead. In spite of its reproaches he plots new crimes to ensure the prize of the old one; but still it makes him unhappy (iii.i. 49 f.,iii.iii. 35 f.). Nor is he cruel or malevolent.

On the other hand, he is no tragic character. He had a small nature. If Hamlet may be trusted, he was a man of mean appearance—a mildewed ear, a toad, a bat; and he was also bloated by excess in drinking. People made mouths at him in contempt while his brother lived; and though, when he came to the throne, they spent large sums in buying his portrait, he evidently put little reliance on their loyalty. He was no villain of force, who thought of winning his brother's crown by a bold and open stroke, but a cut-purse who stole the diadem from a shelf and put it in his pocket. He had the inclination of natures physically weak and morally small towards intrigue and crooked dealing. His instinctive predilection was for poison: this was the means he used in his first murder, and he at once recurred to it when he had failed to get Hamlet executed by deputy. Though in danger he showed no cowardice, his first thought was always for himself.

I like him not, nor stands it safe withusTo let his madness range,

—these are the first words we hear him speak after the play-scene. His first comment on the death of Polonius is,

It had been so withushad we been there;

and his second is,

Alas, how shall this bloody deed be answered?It will be laid tous.

He was not, however, stupid, but rather quick-witted and adroit. He won the Queen partly indeed by presents (how pitifully characteristic of her!), but also by 'witch-craft of his wit' or intellect. He seems to have been soft-spoken, ingratiating in manner, and given to smiling on the person he addressed ('that one may smile, and smile, and be a villain'). We see this in his speech to Laertes about the young man's desire to return to Paris (i.ii. 42 f.). Hamlet scarcely ever speaks to him without an insult, but he never shows resentment, hardly even annoyance. He makes use of Laertes with great dexterity. He had evidently found that a clear head, a general complaisance, a willingness to bend and oblige where he could not overawe, would lead him to his objects,—that he could trick men and manage them. Unfortunately he imagined he could trick something more than men.

This error, together with a decided trait of temperament, leads him to his ruin. He has a sanguine disposition. When first we see him, all has fallen out to his wishes, and he confidently looks forward to a happy life. He believes his secret to be absolutely safe, and he is quite ready to be kind to Hamlet, in whose melancholy he sees only excess of grief. He has no desire to see him leave the court; he promises him his voice for the succession (i.ii. 108,iii.ii. 355); he will be a father to him. Before long, indeed, he becomes very uneasy, and then more and more alarmed;but when, much later, he has contrived Hamlet's death in England, he has still no suspicion that he need not hope for happiness:

till I know 'tis done,Howe'er my haps, myjoyswere ne'er begun.

Nay, his very last words show that he goes to death unchanged:

Oh yet defend me, friends, I am but hurt [=wounded],

he cries, although in half a minute he is dead. That his crime has failed, and that it could do nothing else, never once comes home to him. He thinks he can over-reach Heaven. When he is praying for pardon, he is all the while perfectly determined to keep his crown; and he knows it. More—it is one of the grimmest things in Shakespeare, but he puts such things so quietly that we are apt to miss them—when the King is praying for pardon for his first murder he has just made his final arrangements for a second, the murder of Hamlet. But he does not allude to that fact in his prayer. If Hamlet had really wished to kill him at a moment that had no relish of salvation in it, he had no need to wait.[82]So we are inclined to say; and yet it was not so. For this was the crisis for Claudius as well as Hamlet. He had better have died at once, before he had added to his guilt a share in the responsibility for all the woe and death that followed. And so, we may allow ourselves to say, here also Hamlet's indiscretion served him well. The power that shaped his end shaped the King's no less.

For—to return in conclusion to the action of the play—in all that happens or is done we seem to apprehend some vaster power. We do not defineit, or even name it, or perhaps even say to ourselves that it is there; but our imagination is haunted by the sense of it, as it works its way through the deeds or the delays of men to its inevitable end. And most of all do we feel this in regard to Hamlet and the King. For these two, the one by his shrinking from his appointed task, and the other by efforts growing ever more feverish to rid himself of his enemy, seem to be bent on avoiding each other. But they cannot. Through devious paths, the very paths they take in order to escape, something is pushing them silently step by step towards one another, until they meet and it puts the sword into Hamlet's hand. He himself must die, for he needed this compulsion before he could fulfil the demand of destiny; but hemustfulfil it. And the King too, turn and twist as he may, must reach the appointed goal, and is only hastening to it by the windings which seem to lead elsewhere. Concentration on the character of the hero is apt to withdraw our attention from this aspect of the drama; but in no other tragedy of Shakespeare's, not even inMacbeth, is this aspect so impressive.[83]

I mentionMacbethfor a further reason. InMacbethandHamletnot only is the feeling of a supreme power or destiny peculiarly marked, but it has also at times a peculiar tone, which may be called, in a sense, religious. I cannot make my meaning clear without using language too definite to describe truly the imaginative impression produced; but it is roughly true that, while we do not imagine the supreme power as a divine being who avenges crime, or as a providence which supernaturally interferes, our sense of it is influenced by the fact that Shakespeare uses current religious ideas here much more decidedly than inOthelloorKing Lear. The horror in Macbeth's soul ismore than once represented as desperation at the thought that he is eternally 'lost'; the same idea appears in the attempt of Claudius at repentance; and asHamletnears its close the 'religious' tone of the tragedy is deepened in two ways. In the first place, 'accident' is introduced into the plot in its barest and least dramatic form, when Hamlet is brought back to Denmark by the chance of the meeting with the pirate ship. This incident has been therefore severely criticised as a lame expedient,[84]but it appears probable that the 'accident' is meant to impress the imagination as the very reverse of accidental, and with many readers it certainly does so. And that this was the intention is made the more likely by a second fact, the fact that in connection with the events of the voyage Shakespeare introduces that feeling, on Hamlet's part, of his being in the hands of Providence. The repeated expressions of this feeling are not, I have maintained, a sign that Hamlet has now formed a fixed resolution to do his duty forthwith; but their effect is to strengthen in the spectator the feeling that, whatever may become of Hamlet, and whether he wills it or not, his task will surely be accomplished, because it is the purpose of a power against which both he and his enemy are impotent, and which makes of them the instruments of its own will.

Observing this, we may remember another significant point of resemblance betweenHamletandMacbeth, the appearance in each play of a Ghost,—a figure which seems quite in place in either, whereas it would seem utterly out of place inOthelloorKing Lear. Much might be said of the Ghost inHamlet, but I confine myself to the matter which we are now considering. What is the effect of the appearance of the Ghost? And, inparticular, why does Shakespeare make this Ghost somajesticala phantom, giving it that measured and solemn utterance, and that air of impersonal abstraction which forbids, for example, all expression of affection for Hamlet and checks in Hamlet the outburst of pity for his father? Whatever the intention may have been, the result is that the Ghost affects imagination not simply as the apparition of a dead king who desires the accomplishment ofhispurposes, but also as the representative of that hidden ultimate power, the messenger of divine justice set upon the expiation of offences which it appeared impossible for man to discover and avenge, a reminder or a symbol of the connexion of the limited world of ordinary experience with the vaster life of which it is but a partial appearance. And as, at the beginning of the play, we have this intimation, conveyed through the medium of the received religious idea of a soul come from purgatory, so at the end, conveyed through the similar idea of a soul carried by angels to its rest, we have an intimation of the same character, and a reminder that the apparent failure of Hamlet's life is not the ultimate truth concerning him.

If these various peculiarities of the tragedy are considered, it will be agreed that, whileHamletcertainly cannot be called in the specific sense a 'religious drama,' there is in it nevertheless both a freer use of popular religious ideas, and a more decided, though always imaginative, intimation of a supreme power concerned in human evil and good, than can be found in any other of Shakespeare's tragedies. And this is probably one of the causes of the special popularity of this play, just asMacbeth, the tragedy which in these respects most nearly approaches it, has also the place next to it in general esteem.

FOOTNOTES:[54]In the First Act (i.ii. 138) Hamlet says that his father has been dead not quite two months. In the Third Act (iii.ii. 135) Ophelia says King Hamlet has been dead 'twice two months.' The events of the Third Act are separated from those of the Second by one night (ii.ii. 565).[55]The only difference is that in the 'To be or not to be' soliloquy there is no reference to the idea that suicide is forbidden by 'the Everlasting.' Even this, however, seems to have been present in the original form of the speech, for the version in the First Quarto has a line about our being 'borne before an everlasting Judge.'[56]The present position of the 'To be or not to be' soliloquy, and of the interview with Ophelia, appears to have been due to an after-thought of Shakespeare's; for in the First Quarto they precede, instead of following, the arrival of the players, and consequently the arrangement for the play-scene. This is a notable instance of the truth that 'inspiration' is by no means confined to a poet's first conceptions.[57]Cf. again the scene at Ophelia's grave, where a strong strain of aesthetic disgust is traceable in Hamlet's 'towering passion' with Laertes: 'Nay, an thou'lt mouth, I'll rant as well as thou' (v.i. 306).[58]O heart, lose not thy nature; let not everThe soul of Nero enter this firm bosom:Nero, who put to death his mother who had poisoned her husband. This passage is surely remarkable. And so are the later words (iii.iv. 28):A bloody deed! almost as bad, good mother,As kill a king, and marry with his brother.Are we to understand that at this time he really suspected her of complicity in the murder? We must remember that the Ghost had not told him she was innocent of that.[59]I am inclined to think that the note of interrogation put after 'revenged' in a late Quarto is right.[60]iii.iii. 1-26. The state of affairs at Court at this time, though I have not seen it noticed by critics, seems to me puzzling. It is quite clear fromiii.ii. 310 ff., from the passage just cited, and fromiv.vii. 1-5 and 30 ff., that everyone sees in the play-scene a gross and menacing insult to the King. Yet no one shows any sign of perceiving in it also an accusation of murder. Surely that is strange. Are we perhaps meant to understand that they do perceive this, but out of subservience choose to ignore the fact? If that were Shakespeare's meaning, the actors could easily indicate it by their looks. And if it were so, any sympathy we may feel for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in their fate would be much diminished. But the mere text does not suffice to decide either this question or the question whether the two courtiers were aware of the contents of the commission they bore to England.[61]This passage inHamletseems to have been in Heywood's mind when, inThe Second Part of the Iron Age(Pearson's reprint, vol. iii., p. 423), he makes the Ghost of Agamemnon appear in order to satisfy the doubts of Orestes as to his mother's guilt. No reader could possibly think that this Ghost was meant to be an hallucination; yet Clytemnestra cannot see it. The Ghost of King Hamlet, I may add, goes further than that of Agamemnon, for he is audible, as well as visible, to the privileged person.[62]I think it is clear that it is this fear which stands in the way of the obvious plan of bringing Hamlet to trial and getting him shut up or executed. It is much safer to hurry him off to his doom in England before he can say anything about the murder which he has somehow discovered. Perhaps the Queen's resistance, and probably Hamlet's great popularity with the people, are additional reasons. (It should be observed that as early asiii.i. 194 we hear of the idea of 'confining' Hamlet as an alternative to sending him to England.)[63]I am inferring fromiv.vii., 129, 130, and the last words of the scene.[64]iii.iv. 172:For this same lord,I do repent: but heaven hath pleased it so,To punish me with this and this with me,That I must be their scourge and minister:i.e.the scourge and minister of 'heaven,' which has a plural sense elsewhere also in Shakespeare.[65]iv.iii. 48:Ham.For England!King.Ay, Hamlet.Ham.Good.King.So is it, if thou knew'st our purposes.Ham.I see a cherub that sees them.[66]On this passage see p.98. Hamlet's reply to Horatio's warning sounds, no doubt, determined; but so did 'I know my course.' And is it not significant that, having given it, he abruptly changes the subject?[67]P.102.[68]It should be observed also that many of Hamlet's repetitions can hardly be said to occur at moments of great emotion, like Cordelia's 'And so I am, I am,' and 'No cause, no cause.'Of course, a habit of repetition quite as marked as Hamlet's may be found in comic persons,e.g.Justice Shallow in2 Henry IV.[69]Perhaps it is from noticing this trait that I find something characteristic too in this coincidence of phrase: 'Alas, poor ghost!' (i.v. 4), 'Alas, poor Yorick!' (v.i. 202).[70]This letter, of course, was written before the time when the action of the drama begins, for we know that Ophelia, after her father's commands ini.iii., received no more letters (ii.i. 109).[71]'Frailty, thy name is woman!' he had exclaimed in the first soliloquy. Cf. what he says of his mother's act (iii.iv. 40):Such an actThat blurs the grace and blush of modesty,Calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the roseFrom the fair forehead of an innocent loveAnd sets a blister there.[72]There are signs that Hamlet was haunted by the horrible idea that he had been deceived in Ophelia as he had been in his mother; that she was shallow and artificial, and even that what had seemed simple and affectionate love might really have been something very different. The grossness of his language at the play-scene, and some lines in the Nunnery-scene, suggest this; and, considering the state of his mind, there is nothing unnatural in his suffering from such a suspicion. I do not suggest that hebelievedin it, and in the Nunnery-scene it is clear that his healthy perception of her innocence is in conflict with it.He seems to have divined that Polonius suspected him of dishonourable intentions towards Ophelia; and there are also traces of the idea that Polonius had been quite ready to let his daughter run the risk as long as Hamlet was prosperous. But it is dangerous, of course, to lay stress on inferences drawn from his conversations with Polonius.[73]Many readers and critics imagine that Hamlet went straight to Ophelia's room after his interview with the Ghost. But we have just seen that on the contrary he tried to visit her and was repelled, and it is absolutely certain that a long interval separates the events ofi.v. andii.i. They think also, of course, that Hamlet's visit to Ophelia was the first announcement of his madness. But the text flatly contradicts that idea also. Hamlet has for some time appeared totally changed (ii.ii. 1-10); the King is very uneasy at his 'transformation,' and has sent for his school-fellows in order to discover its cause. Polonius now, after Ophelia has told him of the interview, comes to announce his discovery, not of Hamlet's madness, but of its cause (ii.ii. 49). That, it would seem, was the effect Hamlet aimed at in his interview. I may add that Ophelia's description of his intent examination of her face suggests doubt rather as to her 'honesty' or sincerity than as to her strength of mind. I cannot believe that he ever dreamed of confiding his secret to her.[74]If thisisan allusion to his own love, the adjective 'despised' is significant. But I doubt the allusion. The other calamities mentioned by Hamlet, 'the oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, the law's delay, the insolence of office, and the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes,' are not at all specially his own.[75]It should be noticed that it was not apparently of long standing. See the words 'of late' ini.iii. 91, 99.[76]This, I think, may be said on almost any sane view of Hamlet's love.[77]Polonius says so, and itmaybe true.[78]I have heard an actress in this part utter such a cry as is described above, but there is absolutely nothing in the text to justify her rendering. Even the exclamation 'O, ho!' found in the Quartos ativ.v. 33, but omitted in the Folios and by almost all modern editors, coming as it does after the stanza, 'He is dead and gone, lady,' evidently expresses grief, not terror.[79]In the remarks above I have not attempted, of course, a complete view of the character, which has often been well described; but I cannot forbear a reference to one point which I do not remember to have seen noticed. In the Nunnery-scene Ophelia's first words pathetically betray her own feeling:Good my lord,How does your honourfor this many a day?She then offers to return Hamlet's presents. This has not been suggested to her by her father: it is her own thought. And the next lines, in which she refers to the sweet words which accompanied those gifts, and to the unkindness which has succeeded that kindness, imply a reproach. So again do those most touching little speeches:Hamlet.... I did love you once.Ophelia.Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.Hamlet.You should not have believed me ... I loved you not.Ophelia.I was the more deceived.Now the obvious surface fact was not that Hamlet had forsaken her, but thatshehad repulsedhim; and here, with his usual unobtrusive subtlety, Shakespeare shows how Ophelia, even though she may have accepted from her elders the theory that her unkindness has driven Hamlet mad, knows within herself that she is forsaken, and cannot repress the timid attempt to win her lover back by showing that her own heart is unchanged.I will add one note. There are critics who, after all the help given them in different ways by Goethe and Coleridge and Mrs. Jameson, still shake their heads over Ophelia's song, 'To-morrow is Saint Valentine's day.' Probably they are incurable, but they may be asked to consider that Shakespeare makes Desdemona, 'as chaste as ice, as pure as snow,' sing an old song containing the line,If I court moe women, you'll couch with moe men.[80]I.e.the King will killherto make all sure.[81]I do not rely so much on his own statement to Laertes (iv.vii. 12 f.) as on the absence of contrary indications, on his tone in speaking to her, and on such signs as his mention of her in soliloquy (iii.iii. 55).[82]This also is quietly indicated. Hamlet spares the King, he says, because if the King is killed praying he willgo to heaven. On Hamlet's departure, the King rises from his knees, and mutters:My words fly up, my thoughts remain below:Words without thoughtsnever to heaven go.[83]I am indebted to Werder in this paragraph.[84]The attempt to explain this meeting as pre-arranged by Hamlet is scarcely worth mention.

FOOTNOTES:

[54]In the First Act (i.ii. 138) Hamlet says that his father has been dead not quite two months. In the Third Act (iii.ii. 135) Ophelia says King Hamlet has been dead 'twice two months.' The events of the Third Act are separated from those of the Second by one night (ii.ii. 565).

[55]The only difference is that in the 'To be or not to be' soliloquy there is no reference to the idea that suicide is forbidden by 'the Everlasting.' Even this, however, seems to have been present in the original form of the speech, for the version in the First Quarto has a line about our being 'borne before an everlasting Judge.'

[56]The present position of the 'To be or not to be' soliloquy, and of the interview with Ophelia, appears to have been due to an after-thought of Shakespeare's; for in the First Quarto they precede, instead of following, the arrival of the players, and consequently the arrangement for the play-scene. This is a notable instance of the truth that 'inspiration' is by no means confined to a poet's first conceptions.

[57]Cf. again the scene at Ophelia's grave, where a strong strain of aesthetic disgust is traceable in Hamlet's 'towering passion' with Laertes: 'Nay, an thou'lt mouth, I'll rant as well as thou' (v.i. 306).

[58]O heart, lose not thy nature; let not everThe soul of Nero enter this firm bosom:Nero, who put to death his mother who had poisoned her husband. This passage is surely remarkable. And so are the later words (iii.iv. 28):A bloody deed! almost as bad, good mother,As kill a king, and marry with his brother.Are we to understand that at this time he really suspected her of complicity in the murder? We must remember that the Ghost had not told him she was innocent of that.

[58]

O heart, lose not thy nature; let not everThe soul of Nero enter this firm bosom:

Nero, who put to death his mother who had poisoned her husband. This passage is surely remarkable. And so are the later words (iii.iv. 28):

A bloody deed! almost as bad, good mother,As kill a king, and marry with his brother.

Are we to understand that at this time he really suspected her of complicity in the murder? We must remember that the Ghost had not told him she was innocent of that.

[59]I am inclined to think that the note of interrogation put after 'revenged' in a late Quarto is right.

[60]iii.iii. 1-26. The state of affairs at Court at this time, though I have not seen it noticed by critics, seems to me puzzling. It is quite clear fromiii.ii. 310 ff., from the passage just cited, and fromiv.vii. 1-5 and 30 ff., that everyone sees in the play-scene a gross and menacing insult to the King. Yet no one shows any sign of perceiving in it also an accusation of murder. Surely that is strange. Are we perhaps meant to understand that they do perceive this, but out of subservience choose to ignore the fact? If that were Shakespeare's meaning, the actors could easily indicate it by their looks. And if it were so, any sympathy we may feel for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in their fate would be much diminished. But the mere text does not suffice to decide either this question or the question whether the two courtiers were aware of the contents of the commission they bore to England.

[61]This passage inHamletseems to have been in Heywood's mind when, inThe Second Part of the Iron Age(Pearson's reprint, vol. iii., p. 423), he makes the Ghost of Agamemnon appear in order to satisfy the doubts of Orestes as to his mother's guilt. No reader could possibly think that this Ghost was meant to be an hallucination; yet Clytemnestra cannot see it. The Ghost of King Hamlet, I may add, goes further than that of Agamemnon, for he is audible, as well as visible, to the privileged person.

[62]I think it is clear that it is this fear which stands in the way of the obvious plan of bringing Hamlet to trial and getting him shut up or executed. It is much safer to hurry him off to his doom in England before he can say anything about the murder which he has somehow discovered. Perhaps the Queen's resistance, and probably Hamlet's great popularity with the people, are additional reasons. (It should be observed that as early asiii.i. 194 we hear of the idea of 'confining' Hamlet as an alternative to sending him to England.)

[63]I am inferring fromiv.vii., 129, 130, and the last words of the scene.

[64]iii.iv. 172:For this same lord,I do repent: but heaven hath pleased it so,To punish me with this and this with me,That I must be their scourge and minister:i.e.the scourge and minister of 'heaven,' which has a plural sense elsewhere also in Shakespeare.

[64]iii.iv. 172:

For this same lord,I do repent: but heaven hath pleased it so,To punish me with this and this with me,That I must be their scourge and minister:

i.e.the scourge and minister of 'heaven,' which has a plural sense elsewhere also in Shakespeare.

[65]iv.iii. 48:Ham.For England!King.Ay, Hamlet.Ham.Good.King.So is it, if thou knew'st our purposes.Ham.I see a cherub that sees them.

[65]iv.iii. 48:

[66]On this passage see p.98. Hamlet's reply to Horatio's warning sounds, no doubt, determined; but so did 'I know my course.' And is it not significant that, having given it, he abruptly changes the subject?

[67]P.102.

[68]It should be observed also that many of Hamlet's repetitions can hardly be said to occur at moments of great emotion, like Cordelia's 'And so I am, I am,' and 'No cause, no cause.'Of course, a habit of repetition quite as marked as Hamlet's may be found in comic persons,e.g.Justice Shallow in2 Henry IV.

[68]It should be observed also that many of Hamlet's repetitions can hardly be said to occur at moments of great emotion, like Cordelia's 'And so I am, I am,' and 'No cause, no cause.'

Of course, a habit of repetition quite as marked as Hamlet's may be found in comic persons,e.g.Justice Shallow in2 Henry IV.

[69]Perhaps it is from noticing this trait that I find something characteristic too in this coincidence of phrase: 'Alas, poor ghost!' (i.v. 4), 'Alas, poor Yorick!' (v.i. 202).

[70]This letter, of course, was written before the time when the action of the drama begins, for we know that Ophelia, after her father's commands ini.iii., received no more letters (ii.i. 109).

[71]'Frailty, thy name is woman!' he had exclaimed in the first soliloquy. Cf. what he says of his mother's act (iii.iv. 40):Such an actThat blurs the grace and blush of modesty,Calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the roseFrom the fair forehead of an innocent loveAnd sets a blister there.

[71]'Frailty, thy name is woman!' he had exclaimed in the first soliloquy. Cf. what he says of his mother's act (iii.iv. 40):

Such an actThat blurs the grace and blush of modesty,Calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the roseFrom the fair forehead of an innocent loveAnd sets a blister there.

[72]There are signs that Hamlet was haunted by the horrible idea that he had been deceived in Ophelia as he had been in his mother; that she was shallow and artificial, and even that what had seemed simple and affectionate love might really have been something very different. The grossness of his language at the play-scene, and some lines in the Nunnery-scene, suggest this; and, considering the state of his mind, there is nothing unnatural in his suffering from such a suspicion. I do not suggest that hebelievedin it, and in the Nunnery-scene it is clear that his healthy perception of her innocence is in conflict with it.He seems to have divined that Polonius suspected him of dishonourable intentions towards Ophelia; and there are also traces of the idea that Polonius had been quite ready to let his daughter run the risk as long as Hamlet was prosperous. But it is dangerous, of course, to lay stress on inferences drawn from his conversations with Polonius.

He seems to have divined that Polonius suspected him of dishonourable intentions towards Ophelia; and there are also traces of the idea that Polonius had been quite ready to let his daughter run the risk as long as Hamlet was prosperous. But it is dangerous, of course, to lay stress on inferences drawn from his conversations with Polonius.

[73]Many readers and critics imagine that Hamlet went straight to Ophelia's room after his interview with the Ghost. But we have just seen that on the contrary he tried to visit her and was repelled, and it is absolutely certain that a long interval separates the events ofi.v. andii.i. They think also, of course, that Hamlet's visit to Ophelia was the first announcement of his madness. But the text flatly contradicts that idea also. Hamlet has for some time appeared totally changed (ii.ii. 1-10); the King is very uneasy at his 'transformation,' and has sent for his school-fellows in order to discover its cause. Polonius now, after Ophelia has told him of the interview, comes to announce his discovery, not of Hamlet's madness, but of its cause (ii.ii. 49). That, it would seem, was the effect Hamlet aimed at in his interview. I may add that Ophelia's description of his intent examination of her face suggests doubt rather as to her 'honesty' or sincerity than as to her strength of mind. I cannot believe that he ever dreamed of confiding his secret to her.

[74]If thisisan allusion to his own love, the adjective 'despised' is significant. But I doubt the allusion. The other calamities mentioned by Hamlet, 'the oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, the law's delay, the insolence of office, and the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes,' are not at all specially his own.

[75]It should be noticed that it was not apparently of long standing. See the words 'of late' ini.iii. 91, 99.

[76]This, I think, may be said on almost any sane view of Hamlet's love.

[77]Polonius says so, and itmaybe true.

[78]I have heard an actress in this part utter such a cry as is described above, but there is absolutely nothing in the text to justify her rendering. Even the exclamation 'O, ho!' found in the Quartos ativ.v. 33, but omitted in the Folios and by almost all modern editors, coming as it does after the stanza, 'He is dead and gone, lady,' evidently expresses grief, not terror.

[79]In the remarks above I have not attempted, of course, a complete view of the character, which has often been well described; but I cannot forbear a reference to one point which I do not remember to have seen noticed. In the Nunnery-scene Ophelia's first words pathetically betray her own feeling:Good my lord,How does your honourfor this many a day?She then offers to return Hamlet's presents. This has not been suggested to her by her father: it is her own thought. And the next lines, in which she refers to the sweet words which accompanied those gifts, and to the unkindness which has succeeded that kindness, imply a reproach. So again do those most touching little speeches:Hamlet.... I did love you once.Ophelia.Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.Hamlet.You should not have believed me ... I loved you not.Ophelia.I was the more deceived.Now the obvious surface fact was not that Hamlet had forsaken her, but thatshehad repulsedhim; and here, with his usual unobtrusive subtlety, Shakespeare shows how Ophelia, even though she may have accepted from her elders the theory that her unkindness has driven Hamlet mad, knows within herself that she is forsaken, and cannot repress the timid attempt to win her lover back by showing that her own heart is unchanged.I will add one note. There are critics who, after all the help given them in different ways by Goethe and Coleridge and Mrs. Jameson, still shake their heads over Ophelia's song, 'To-morrow is Saint Valentine's day.' Probably they are incurable, but they may be asked to consider that Shakespeare makes Desdemona, 'as chaste as ice, as pure as snow,' sing an old song containing the line,If I court moe women, you'll couch with moe men.

Good my lord,How does your honourfor this many a day?

She then offers to return Hamlet's presents. This has not been suggested to her by her father: it is her own thought. And the next lines, in which she refers to the sweet words which accompanied those gifts, and to the unkindness which has succeeded that kindness, imply a reproach. So again do those most touching little speeches:

Now the obvious surface fact was not that Hamlet had forsaken her, but thatshehad repulsedhim; and here, with his usual unobtrusive subtlety, Shakespeare shows how Ophelia, even though she may have accepted from her elders the theory that her unkindness has driven Hamlet mad, knows within herself that she is forsaken, and cannot repress the timid attempt to win her lover back by showing that her own heart is unchanged.

I will add one note. There are critics who, after all the help given them in different ways by Goethe and Coleridge and Mrs. Jameson, still shake their heads over Ophelia's song, 'To-morrow is Saint Valentine's day.' Probably they are incurable, but they may be asked to consider that Shakespeare makes Desdemona, 'as chaste as ice, as pure as snow,' sing an old song containing the line,

If I court moe women, you'll couch with moe men.

[80]I.e.the King will killherto make all sure.

[81]I do not rely so much on his own statement to Laertes (iv.vii. 12 f.) as on the absence of contrary indications, on his tone in speaking to her, and on such signs as his mention of her in soliloquy (iii.iii. 55).

[82]This also is quietly indicated. Hamlet spares the King, he says, because if the King is killed praying he willgo to heaven. On Hamlet's departure, the King rises from his knees, and mutters:My words fly up, my thoughts remain below:Words without thoughtsnever to heaven go.

[82]This also is quietly indicated. Hamlet spares the King, he says, because if the King is killed praying he willgo to heaven. On Hamlet's departure, the King rises from his knees, and mutters:

My words fly up, my thoughts remain below:Words without thoughtsnever to heaven go.

[83]I am indebted to Werder in this paragraph.

[84]The attempt to explain this meeting as pre-arranged by Hamlet is scarcely worth mention.

There is practically no doubt thatOthellowas the tragedy written next afterHamlet. Such external evidence as we possess points to this conclusion, and it is confirmed by similarities of style, diction and versification, and also by the fact that ideas and phrases of the earlier play are echoed in the later.[85]There is, further (not to speak of one curious point, to be considered when we come to Iago), a certain resemblance in the subjects. The heroes of the two plays are doubtless extremely unlike, so unlike that each could have dealt without much difficulty with the situation which proved fatal to the other; but still each is a man exceptionally noble and trustful, and each endures the shock of a terrible disillusionment. This theme is treated by Shakespeare for the first time inHamlet, for the second inOthello. It recurs with modifications inKing Lear, and it probably formed the attraction which drew Shakespeare to refashion in part another writer's tragedy ofTimon. These four dramasmay so far be grouped together in distinction from the remaining tragedies.

But in point of substance, and, in certain respects, in point of style, the unlikeness ofOthellotoHamletis much greater than the likeness, and the later play belongs decidedly to one group with its successors. We have seen that, like them, it is a tragedy of passion, a description inapplicable toJulius CaesarorHamlet. And with this change goes another, an enlargement in the stature of the hero. There is in most of the later heroes something colossal, something which reminds us of Michael Angelo's figures. They are not merely exceptional men, they are huge men; as it were, survivors of the heroic age living in a later and smaller world. We do not receive this impression from Romeo or Brutus or Hamlet, nor did it lie in Shakespeare's design to allow more than touches of this trait to Julius Caesar himself; but it is strongly marked in Lear and Coriolanus, and quite distinct in Macbeth and even in Antony. Othello is the first of these men, a being essentially large and grand, towering above his fellows, holding a volume of force which in repose ensures preeminence without an effort, and in commotion reminds us rather of the fury of the elements than of the tumult of common human passion.

What is the peculiarity ofOthello? What is the distinctive impression that it leaves? Of all Shakespeare's tragedies, I would answer, not even exceptingKing Lear,Othellois the most painfully exciting and the most terrible. From the moment when the temptation of the hero begins, the reader's heart and mind are held in a vice, experiencing the extremes of pity and fear, sympathy and repulsion, sickening hope and dreadful expectation.Evil is displayed before him, not indeed with the profusion found inKing Lear, but forming, as it were, the soul of a single character, and united with an intellectual superiority so great that he watches its advance fascinated and appalled. He sees it, in itself almost irresistible, aided at every step by fortunate accidents and the innocent mistakes of its victims. He seems to breathe an atmosphere as fateful as that ofKing Lear, but more confined and oppressive, the darkness not of night but of a close-shut murderous room. His imagination is excited to intense activity, but it is the activity of concentration rather than dilation.

I will not dwell now on aspects of the play which modify this impression, and I reserve for later discussion one of its principal sources, the character of Iago. But if we glance at some of its other sources, we shall find at the same time certain distinguishing characteristics ofOthello.

(1) One of these has been already mentioned in our discussion of Shakespeare's technique.Othellois not only the most masterly of the tragedies in point of construction, but its method of construction is unusual. And this method, by which the conflict begins late, and advances without appreciable pause and with accelerating speed to the catastrophe, is a main cause of the painful tension just described. To this may be added that, after the conflict has begun, there is very little relief by way of the ridiculous. Henceforward at any rate Iago's humour never raises a smile. The clown is a poor one; we hardly attend to him and quickly forget him; I believe most readers of Shakespeare, if asked whether there is a clown inOthello, would answer No.

(2) In the second place, there is no subject more exciting than sexual jealousy rising to the pitch of passion; and there can hardly be any spectacle at once so engrossing and so painful as that of agreat nature suffering the torment of this passion, and driven by it to a crime which is also a hideous blunder. Such a passion as ambition, however terrible its results, is not itself ignoble; if we separate it in thought from the conditions which make it guilty, it does not appear despicable; it is not a kind of suffering, its nature is active; and therefore we can watch its course without shrinking. But jealousy, and especially sexual jealousy, brings with it a sense of shame and humiliation. For this reason it is generally hidden; if we perceive it we ourselves are ashamed and turn our eyes away; and when it is not hidden it commonly stirs contempt as well as pity. Nor is this all. Such jealousy as Othello's converts human nature into chaos, and liberates the beast in man; and it does this in relation to one of the most intense and also the most ideal of human feelings. What spectacle can be more painful than that of this feeling turned into a tortured mixture of longing and loathing, the 'golden purity' of passion split by poison into fragments, the animal in man forcing itself into his consciousness in naked grossness, and he writhing before it but powerless to deny it entrance, gasping inarticulate images of pollution, and finding relief only in a bestial thirst for blood? This is what we have to witness in one who was indeed 'great of heart' and no less pure and tender than he was great. And this, with what it leads to, the blow to Desdemona, and the scene where she is treated as the inmate of a brothel, a scene far more painful than the murder scene, is another cause of the special effect of this tragedy.[86]

(3) The mere mention of these scenes will remind us painfully of a third cause; and perhaps it is the most potent of all. I mean the sufferingof Desdemona. This is, unless I mistake, the most nearly intolerable spectacle that Shakespeare offers us. For one thing, it ismeresuffering; and,ceteris paribus, that is much worse to witness than suffering that issues in action. Desdemona is helplessly passive. She can do nothing whatever. She cannot retaliate even in speech; no, not even in silent feeling. And the chief reason of her helplessness only makes the sight of her suffering more exquisitely painful. She is helpless because her nature is infinitely sweet and her love absolute. I would not challenge Mr. Swinburne's statement that wepityOthello even more than Desdemona; but we watch Desdemona with more unmitigated distress. We are never wholly uninfluenced by the feeling that Othello is a man contending with another man; but Desdemona's suffering is like that of the most loving of dumb creatures tortured without cause by the being he adores.

(4) Turning from the hero and heroine to the third principal character, we observe (what has often been pointed out) that the action and catastrophe ofOthellodepend largely on intrigue. We must not say more than this. We must not call the play a tragedy of intrigue as distinguished from a tragedy of character. Iago's plot is Iago's character in action; and it is built on his knowledge of Othello's character, and could not otherwise have succeeded. Still it remains true that an elaborate plot was necessary to elicit the catastrophe; for Othello was no Leontes, and his was the last nature to engender such jealousy from itself. Accordingly Iago's intrigue occupies a position in the drama for which no parallel can be found in the other tragedies; the only approach, and that a distant one, being the intrigue of Edmund in the secondary plot ofKing Lear. Now in any novel or play, even if the persons rouse little interest and are never in serious danger, a skilfully-workedintrigue will excite eager attention and suspense. And where, as inOthello, the persons inspire the keenest sympathy and antipathy, and life and death depend on the intrigue, it becomes the source of a tension in which pain almost overpowers pleasure. Nowhere else in Shakespeare do we hold our breath in such anxiety and for so long a time as in the later Acts ofOthello.

(5) One result of the prominence of the element of intrigue is thatOthellois less unlike a story of private life than any other of the great tragedies. And this impression is strengthened in further ways. In the other great tragedies the action is placed in a distant period, so that its general significance is perceived through a thin veil which separates the persons from ourselves and our own world. ButOthellois a drama of modern life; when it first appeared it was a drama almost of contemporary life, for the date of the Turkish attack on Cyprus is 1570. The characters come close to us, and the application of the drama to ourselves (if the phrase may be pardoned) is more immediate than it can be inHamletorLear. Besides this, their fortunes affect us as those of private individuals more than is possible in any of the later tragedies with the exception ofTimon. I have not forgotten the Senate, nor Othello's position, nor his service to the State;[87]but his deed and his death have not that influence on the interests of a nation or an empire which serves to idealise, and to remove far from our own sphere, the stories of Hamlet and Macbeth, of Coriolanus and Antony. Indeed he is already superseded at Cyprus when his fate is consummated, and as we leave him no vision rises on us, as in other tragedies, of peace descending on a distracted land.

(6) The peculiarities so far considered combine with others to produce those feelings of oppression,of confinement to a comparatively narrow world, and of dark fatality, which haunt us in readingOthello. InMacbeththe fate which works itself out alike in the external conflict and in the hero's soul, is obviously hostile to evil; and the imagination is dilated both by the consciousness of its presence and by the appearance of supernatural agencies. These, as we have seen, produce inHamleta somewhat similar effect, which is increased by the hero's acceptance of the accidents as a providential shaping of his end.King Learis undoubtedly the tragedy which comes nearest toOthelloin the impression of darkness and fatefulness, and in the absence of direct indications of any guiding power.[88]But inKing Lear, apart from other differences to be considered later, the conflict assumes proportions so vast that the imagination seems, as inParadise Lost, to traverse spaces wider than the earth. In readingOthellothe mind is not thus distended. It is more bound down to the spectacle of noble beings caught in toils from which there is no escape; while the prominence of the intrigue diminishes the sense of the dependence of the catastrophe on character, and the part played by accident[89]in this catastrophe accentuates the feeling of fate. This influence of accident is keenly felt inKing Learonly once, and at the very end of the play. InOthello, after the temptation hasbegun, it is incessant and terrible. The skill of Iago was extraordinary, but so was his good fortune. Again and again a chance word from Desdemona, a chance meeting of Othello and Cassio, a question which starts to our lips and which anyone but Othello would have asked, would have destroyed Iago's plot and ended his life. In their stead, Desdemona drops her handkerchief at the moment most favourable to him,[90]Cassio blunders into the presence of Othello only to find him in a swoon, Bianca arrives precisely when she is wanted to complete Othello's deception and incense his anger into fury. All this and much more seems to us quite natural, so potent is the art of the dramatist; but it confounds us with a feeling, such as we experience in theOedipus Tyrannus, that for these star-crossed mortals—bothδυσδαίμονες—there is no escape from fate, and even with a feeling, absent from that play, that fate has taken sides with villainy.[91]It is not surprising, therefore, thatOthelloshould affect us asHamletandMacbethnever do, and asKing Leardoes only in slighter measure. On the contrary, it is marvellous that, before the tragedy is over, Shakespeareshould have succeeded in toning down this impression into harmony with others more solemn and serene.

But has he wholly succeeded? Or is there a justification for the fact—a fact it certainly is—that some readers, while acknowledging, of course, the immense power ofOthello, and even admitting that it is dramatically perhaps Shakespeare's greatest triumph, still regard it with a certain distaste, or, at any rate, hardly allow it a place in their minds besideHamlet,King LearandMacbeth?

The distaste to which I refer is due chiefly to two causes. First, to many readers in our time, men as well as women, the subject of sexual jealousy, treated with Elizabethan fulness and frankness, is not merely painful but so repulsive that not even the intense tragic emotions which the story generates can overcome this repulsion. But, while it is easy to understand a dislike ofOthellothus caused, it does not seem necessary to discuss it, for it may fairly be called personal or subjective. It would become more than this, and would amount to a criticism of the play, only if those who feel it maintained that the fulness and frankness which are disagreeable to them are also needless from a dramatic point of view, or betray a design of appealing to unpoetic feelings in the audience. But I do not think that this is maintained, or that such a view would be plausible.

To some readers, again, parts ofOthelloappear shocking or even horrible. They think—if I may formulate their objection—that in these parts Shakespeare has sinned against the canons of art, by representing on the stage a violence or brutality the effect of which is unnecessarily painful and rather sensational than tragic. The passages which thus give offence are probably thosealready referred to,—that where Othello strikes Desdemona (iv.i. 251), that where he affects to treat her as an inmate of a house of ill-fame (iv.ii.), and finally the scene of her death.

The issues thus raised ought not to be ignored or impatiently dismissed, but they cannot be decided, it seems to me, by argument. All we can profitably do is to consider narrowly our experience, and to ask ourselves this question: If we feel these objections, do we feel them when we are reading the play with all our force, or only when we are reading it in a half-hearted manner? For, however matters may stand in the former case, in the latter case evidently the fault is ours and not Shakespeare's. And if we try the question thus, I believe we shall find that on the whole the fault is ours. The first, and least important, of the three passages—that of the blow—seems to me the most doubtful. I confess that, do what I will, I cannot reconcile myself with it. It seems certain that the blow is by no means a tap on the shoulder with a roll of paper, as some actors, feeling the repulsiveness of the passage, have made it. It must occur, too, on the open stage. And there is not, I think, a sufficiently overwhelming tragic feeling in the passage to make it bearable. But in the other two scenes the case is different. There, it seems to me, if we fully imagine the inward tragedy in the souls of the persons as we read, the more obvious and almost physical sensations of pain or horror do not appear in their own likeness, and only serve to intensify the tragic feelings in which they are absorbed. Whether this would be so in the murder-scene if Desdemona had to be imagined as dragged about the open stage (as in some modern performances) may be doubtful; but there is absolutely no warrant in the text for imagining this, and it is also quite clearthat the bed where she is stifled was within the curtains,[92]and so, presumably, in part concealed.

Here, then,Othellodoes not appear to be, unless perhaps at one point,[93]open to criticism, though it has more passages than the other three tragedies where, if imagination is not fully exerted, it is shocked or else sensationally excited. If nevertheless we feel it to occupy a place in our minds a little lower than the other three (and I believe this feeling, though not general, is not rare), the reason lies not here but in another characteristic, to which I have already referred,—the comparative confinement of the imaginative atmosphere.Othellohas not equally with the other three the power of dilating the imagination by vague suggestions of huge universal powers working in the world of individual fate and passion. It is, in a sense, less 'symbolic.' We seem to be aware in it of a certain limitation, a partial suppression of that element in Shakespeare's mind which unites him with the mystical poets and with the great musicians and philosophers. In one or two of his plays, notably inTroilus and Cressida, we are almost painfully conscious of this suppression; we feel an intense intellectual activity, but at the same time a certain coldness and hardness, as though some power in his soul, at once the highest and the sweetest, were for a time in abeyance. In other plays, notably in theTempest, we are constantly aware of the presence of this power; and in such cases we seem to be peculiarly near to Shakespeare himself. Now this is so inHamletandKing Lear, and, in a slighter degree, inMacbeth; but it is much less so inOthello. I do not mean that inOthellothesuppression is marked, or that, as inTroilus and Cressida, it strikes us as due to some unpleasant mood; it seems rather to follow simply from the design of a play on a contemporary and wholly mundane subject. Still it makes a difference of the kind I have attempted to indicate, and it leaves an impression that inOthellowe are not in contact with the whole of Shakespeare. And it is perhaps significant in this respect that the hero himself strikes us as having, probably, less of the poet's personality in him than many characters far inferior both as dramatic creations and as men.

The character of Othello is comparatively simple, but, as I have dwelt on the prominence of intrigue and accident in the play, it is desirable to show how essentially the success of Iago's plot is connected with this character. Othello's description of himself as

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