NOTE A.

Why in that rawness left you wife and child,Those precious motives, those strong knots of love,Without leave-taking?

It cannot be decided with certainty from the mere text; but, without going into the considerations on each side, I may express the opinion that Macduff knew well what he was doing, and that he fled without leave-taking for fear his purpose should give way. Perhaps he said to himself, with Coriolanus,

Not of a woman's tenderness to be,Requires nor child nor woman's face to see.

Little Macduff suggests a few words on Shakespeare's boys (there are scarcely any little girls). It is somewhat curious that nearly all of them appear in tragic or semi-tragic dramas. I remember but two exceptions: little William Page, who saidhisHic, haec, hocto Sir Hugh Evans; and the page before whom Falstaff walked like a sow that hath overwhelmed all her litter but one; and it is to be feared that even this page, if he is the Boy ofHenry V., came to an ill end, being killed with the luggage.

So wise so young, they say, do ne'er live long,

as Richard observed of the little Prince of Wales. Of too many of these children (some of the 'boys,'e.g.those inCymbeline, are lads, not children) the saying comes true. They are pathetic figures, the more so because they so often appear in company with their unhappy mothers, and can never be thought of apart from them. Perhaps Arthur is even the first creation in which Shakespeare's power of pathos showed itself mature;[245]and the last of his children, Mamillius, assuredly proves that it never decayed. They are almost all of them noble figures, too,—affectionate, frank, brave, high-spirited, 'of an open and free nature' like Shakespeare's best men. And almost all of them, again, are amusing and charming as well as pathetic; comical in their mingled acuteness andnaïveté, charming in their confidence in themselves and the world, and in the seriousness with which they receive the jocosity of their elders, who commonly address them as strong men, great warriors, or profound politicians.

Little Macduff exemplifies most of these remarks. There is nothing in the scene of a transcendent kind, like the passage about Mamillius' never-finished 'Winter's Tale' of the man who dwelt by a churchyard, or the passage about his death, or that about little Marcius and the butterfly, or the audacity which introduces him, at the suprememoment of the tragedy, outdoing the appeals of Volumnia and Virgilia by the statement,

'A shall not tread on me:I'll run away till I'm bigger, but then I'll fight.

Still one does not easily forget little Macduff's delightful and well-justified confidence in his ability to defeat his mother in argument; or the deep impression she made on him when she spoke of his father as a 'traitor'; or his immediate response when he heard the murderer call his father by the same name,—

Thou liest, thou shag-haired villain.

Nor am I sure that, if the son of Coriolanus had been murdered, his last words to his mother would have been, 'Run away, I pray you.'

I may add two remarks. The presence of this child is one of the things in whichMacbethreminds us ofRichard III.And he is perhaps the only person in the tragedy who provokes a smile. I say 'perhaps,' for though the anxiety of the Doctor to escape from the company of his patient's husband makes one smile, I am not sure that it was meant to.

The Porter does not make me smile: the moment is too terrific. He is grotesque; no doubt the contrast he affords is humorous as well as ghastly; I dare say the groundlings roared with laughter at his coarsest remarks. But they are not comic enough to allow one to forget for a moment what has preceded and what must follow. And I am far from complaining of this. I believe that it is what Shakespeare intended, and that he despised the groundlings if they laughed. Of course he could have written without the least difficulty speeches five times as humorous; but he knew better. The Grave-diggers make us laugh: the old Countryman who brings theasps to Cleopatra makes us smile at least. But the Grave-digger scene does not come at a moment of extreme tension; and it is long. Our distress for Ophelia is not so absorbing that we refuse to be interested in the man who digs her grave, or even continue throughout the long conversation to remember always with pain that the grave is hers. It is fitting, therefore, that he should be made decidedly humorous. The passage inAntony and Cleopatrais much nearer to the passage inMacbeth, and seems to have been forgotten by those who say that there is nothing in Shakespeare resembling that passage.[246]The old Countryman comes at a moment of tragic exaltation, and the dialogue is appropriately brief. But the moment, though tragic, is emphatically one of exaltation. We have not been feeling horror, nor are we feeling a dreadful suspense. We are going to see Cleopatra die, but she is to die gloriously and to triumph over Octavius. And therefore our amusement at the old Countryman and the contrast he affords to these high passions, is untroubled, and it was right to make him really comic. But the Porter's case is quite different. We cannot forget how the knocking that makes him grumble sounded to Macbeth, or that within a few minutes of his opening the gate Duncan will be discovered in his blood; nor can we help feeling that in pretending to be porter of hell-gate he is terribly near the truth. To give him language so humorous that it would ask us almost to lose the sense of these things would have been a fatal mistake,—the kind of mistake that means want of dramatic imagination. And that was not the sort of error into which Shakespeare fell.

To doubt the genuineness of the passage, then, on the ground that it is not humorous enough for Shakespeare, seems to me to show this want. Itis to judge the passage as though it were a separate composition, instead of conceiving it in the fulness of its relations to its surroundings in a stage-play. Taken by itself, I admit, it would bear no indubitable mark of Shakespeare's authorship, not even in the phrase 'the primrose way to the everlasting bonfire,' which Coleridge thought Shakespeare might have added to an interpolation of 'the players.' And if there were reason (as in my judgment there is not) to suppose that Shakespeare thus permitted an interpolation, or that he collaborated with another author, I could believe that he left 'the players' or his collaborator to write the words of the passage. But that anyone except the author of the scene of Duncan's murderconceivedthe passage, is incredible.[247]

The speeches of the Porter, a low comic character, are in prose. So is the letter of Macbeth tohis wife. In both these cases Shakespeare follows his general rule or custom. The only other prose-speeches occur in the sleep-walking scene, and here the use of prose may seem strange. For in great tragic scenes we expect the more poetic medium of expression, and this is one of the most famous of such scenes. Besides, unless I mistake, Lady Macbeth is the only one of Shakespeare's great tragic characters who on a last appearance is denied the dignity of verse.

Yet in this scene also he adheres to his custom. Somnambulism is an abnormal condition, and it is his general rule to assign prose to persons whose state of mind is abnormal. Thus, to illustrate from these four plays, Hamlet when playing the madman speaks prose, but in soliloquy, in talking with Horatio, and in pleading with his mother, he speaks verse.[248]Ophelia in her madness either sings snatches of songs or speaks prose. Almost all Lear's speeches, after he has become definitely insane, are in prose: where he wakes from sleep recovered, the verse returns. The prose enters with that speech which closes with his trying to tear off his clothes; but he speaks in verse—some of it very irregular—in the Timon-like speeches where his intellect suddenly in his madness seems to regain the force of his best days (iv.vi.). Othello, iniv.i., speaks in verse till the moment when Iago tells him that Cassio has confessed.There follow ten lines of prose—exclamations and mutterings of bewildered horror—and he falls to the ground unconscious.

The idea underlying this custom of Shakespeare's evidently is that the regular rhythm of verse would be inappropriate where the mind is supposed to have lost its balance and to be at the mercy of chance impressions coming from without (as sometimes with Lear), or of ideas emerging from its unconscious depths and pursuing one another across its passive surface. The somnambulism of Lady Macbeth is such a condition. There is no rational connection in the sequence of images and ideas. The sight of blood on her hand, the sound of the clock striking the hour for Duncan's murder, the hesitation of her husband before that hour came, the vision of the old man in his blood, the idea of the murdered wife of Macduff, the sight of the hand again, Macbeth's 'flaws and starts' at the sight of Banquo's ghost, the smell on her hand, the washing of hands after Duncan's murder again, her husband's fear of the buried Banquo, the sound of the knocking at the gate—these possess her, one after another, in this chance order. It is not much less accidental than the order of Ophelia's ideas; the great difference is that with Ophelia total insanity has effaced or greatly weakened the emotional force of the ideas, whereas to Lady Macbeth each new image or perception comes laden with anguish. There is, again, scarcely a sign of the exaltation of disordered imagination; we are conscious rather of an intense suffering which forces its way into light against resistance, and speaks a language for the most part strikingly bare in its diction and simple in its construction. This language stands in strong contrast with that of Macbeth in the surrounding scenes, full of a feverish and almost furious excitement, and seems to express a far more desolating misery.

The effect is extraordinarily impressive. The soaring pride and power of Lady Macbeth's first speeches return on our memory, and the change is felt with a breathless awe. Any attempt, even by Shakespeare, to draw out the moral enfolded in this awe, would but weaken it. For the moment, too, all the language of poetry—even of Macbeth's poetry—seems to be touched with unreality, and these brief toneless sentences seem the only voice of truth.[249]

FOOTNOTES:[227]So Mrs. Siddons is said to have given the passage.[228]Surely the usual interpretation of 'We fail?' as a question of contemptuous astonishment, is right. 'We fail!' gives practically the same sense, but alters the punctuation of the first two Folios. In either case, 'But,' I think, means 'Only.' On the other hand the proposal to read 'We fail.' with a full stop, as expressive of sublime acceptance of the possibility, seems to me, however attractive at first sight, quite out of harmony with Lady Macbeth's mood throughout these scenes.[229]SeeNote DD.[230]It is not new.[231]The words about Lady Macduff are of course significant of natural human feeling, and may have been introduced expressly to mark it, but they do not, I think, show any fundamental change in Lady Macbeth, for at no time would she have suggested or approved apurposelessatrocity. It is perhaps characteristic that this human feeling should show itself most clearly in reference to an act for which she was not directly responsible, and in regard to which therefore she does not feel the instinct of self-assertion.[232]The tendency to sentimentalise Lady Macbeth is partly due to Mrs. Siddons's fancy that she was a small, fair, blue-eyed woman, 'perhaps even fragile.' Dr. Bucknill, who was unaquainted with this fancy, independently determined that she was 'beautiful and delicate,' 'unoppressed by weight of flesh,' 'probably small,' but 'a tawny or brown blonde,' with grey eyes: and Brandes affirms that she was lean, slight, and hard. They know much more than Shakespeare, who tells us absolutely nothing on these subjects. That Lady Macbeth, after taking part in a murder, was so exhausted as to faint, will hardly demonstrate her fragility. That she must have been blue-eyed, fair, or red-haired, because she was a Celt, is a bold inference, and it is an idle dream that Shakespeare had any idea of making her or her husband characteristically Celtic. The only evidence ever offered to prove that she was small is the sentence, 'All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand'; and Goliath might have called his hand 'little' in contrast with all the perfumes of Arabia. One might as well propose to prove that Othello was a small man by quoting,I have seen the day,That, with this little arm and this good sword,I have made my way through more impedimentsThan twenty times your stop.The reader is at liberty to imagine Lady Macbeth's person in the way that pleases him best, or to leave it, as Shakespeare very likely did, unimagined.Perhaps it may be well to add that there is not the faintest trace in the play of the idea occasionally met with, and to some extent embodied in Madame Bernhardt's impersonation of Lady Macbeth, that her hold upon her husband lay in seductive attractions deliberately exercised. Shakespeare was not unskilled or squeamish in indicating such ideas.[233]That it is Macbeth who feels the harmony between the desolation of the heath and the figures who appear on it is a characteristic touch.[234]So, in Holinshed, 'Banquho jested with him and sayde, now Makbeth thou haste obtayned those things which the twoo former sisters prophesied, there remayneth onely for thee to purchase that which the third sayd should come to passe.'[235]=doubts.[236]=design.[237]'tis much he dares,And, to that dauntless temper of his mind,He hath a wisdom that doth guide his valourTo act in safety.[238]So when he hears that Fleance has escaped he is not much troubled (iii.iv. 29):the worm that's fledHath nature that in time will venom breed,No teeth for the present.I have repeated above what I have said before, because the meaning of Macbeth's soliloquy is frequently misconceived.[239]Virgilia inCoriolanusis a famous example. She speaks about thirty-five lines.[240]The percentage of prose is, roughly, inHamlet30-2/3, inOthello16-1/3, inKing Lear27-1/2, inMacbeth8-1/2.[241]Cf.Note F. There are also inMacbethseveral shorter passages which recall the Player's speech. Cf. 'Fortune ... showed like a rebel's whore' (i.ii. 14) with 'Out! out! thou strumpet Fortune!' The form 'eterne' occurs in Shakespeare only inMacbeth,iii.ii. 38, and in the 'proof eterne' of the Player's speech. Cf. 'So, as a painted tyrant, Pyrrhus stood,' withMacbeth,v.viii. 26; 'the rugged Pyrrhus, like the Hyrcanian beast,' with 'the rugged Russian bear ... or the Hyrcan tiger' (Macbeth,iii.iv. 100); 'like a neutral to his will and matter' withMacbeth,i.v. 47. The words 'Till he unseam'd him from the nave to the chaps,' in the Serjeant's speech, recall the words 'Then from the navel to the throat at once He ript old Priam,' inDido Queen of Carthage, where these words follow those others, about Priam falling with the mere wind of Pyrrhus' sword, which seem to have suggested 'the whiff and wind of his fell sword' in the Player's speech.[242]See Cunliffe,The Influence of Seneca on Elizabethan Tragedy. The most famous of these parallels is that between 'Will all great Neptune's Ocean,' etc., and the following passages:Quis eluet me Tanais? aut quae barbarisMaeotis undis Pontico incumbens mari?Non ipse toto magnus Oceano paterTantum expiarit sceleris. (Hipp.715.)Quis Tanais, aut quis Nilus, aut quis PersicaViolentus unda Tigris, aut Rhenus ferox,Tagusve Ibera turbidus gaza fluens,Abluere dextram poterit? Arctoum licetMaeotis in me gelida transfundat mare,Et tota Tethys per meas currat manus,Haerebit altum facinus. (Herc. Furens, 1323.)(The reader will remember Othello's 'Pontic sea' with its 'violent pace.') Medea's incantation in Ovid'sMetamorphoses, vii. 197 ff., which certainly suggested Prospero's speech,Tempest,v.i. 33 ff., should be compared with Seneca,Herc. Oet., 452 ff., 'Artibus magicis,' etc. It is of course highly probable that Shakespeare read some Seneca at school. I may add that in theHippolytus, beside the passage quoted above, there are others which might have furnished him with suggestions. Cf. for instanceHipp., 30 ff., with the lines about the Spartan hounds inMids. Night's Dream,iv.i. 117 ff., and Hippolytus' speech, beginning 483, with the Duke's speech inAs You Like It,ii.i.[243]Cf. Coleridge's note on the Lady Macduff scene.[244]It is nothing to the purpose that Macduff himself says,Sinful Macduff,They were all struck for thee! naught that I am,Not for their own demerits, but for mine,Fell slaughter on their souls.There is no reason to suppose that the sin and demerit he speaks of is that of leaving his home. And even if it were, it is Macduff that speaks, not Shakespeare, any more than Shakespeare speaks in the preceding sentence,Did heaven look on,And would not take their part?And yet Brandes (ii. 104) hears in these words 'the voice of revolt ... that sounds later through the despairing philosophy ofKing Lear.' It sounds a good deal earlier too;e.g.inTit. And.,iv.i. 81, and2 Henry VI.,ii.i. 154. The idea is a commonplace of Elizabethan tragedy.[245]And the idea that it was the death of his son Hamnet, aged eleven, that brought this power to maturity is one of the more plausible attempts to find in his dramas a reflection of his private history. It implies however as late a date as 1596 forKing John.[246]Even if this were true, the retort is obvious that neither is there anything resembling the murder-scene inMacbeth.[247]I have confined myself to the single aspect of this question on which I had what seemed something new to say. Professor Hales's defence of the passage on fuller grounds, in the admirable paper reprinted in hisNotes and Essays on Shakespeare, seems to me quite conclusive. I may add two notes. (1) The references in the Porter's speeches to 'equivocation,' which have naturally, and probably rightly, been taken as allusions to the Jesuit Garnet's appeal to the doctrine of equivocation in defence of his perjury when, on trial for participation in the Gunpowder Plot, do not stand alone inMacbeth. The later prophecies of the Witches Macbeth calls 'the equivocation of the fiend That lies like truth' (v.v. 43); and the Porter's remarks about the equivocator who 'could swear in both the scales against either scale, who committed treason enough for God's sake, yet could not equivocate to heaven,' may be compared with the following dialogue (iv.ii. 45):Son.What is a traitor?Lady Macduff.Why, one that swears and lies.Son.And be all traitors that do so?Lady Macduff.Everyone that does so is a traitor, and must be hanged.Garnet, as a matter of fact,washanged in May, 1606; and it is to be feared that the audience applauded this passage.(2) The Porter's soliloquy on the different applicants for admittance has, in idea and manner, a marked resemblance to Pompey's soliloquy on the inhabitants of the prison, inMeasure for Measure,iv.iii. 1 ff.; and the dialogue between him and Abhorson on the 'mystery' of hanging (iv.ii. 22 ff.) is of just the same kind as the Porter's dialogue with Macduff about drink.[248]In the last Act, however, he speaks in verse even in the quarrel with Laertes at Ophelia's grave. It would be plausible to explain this either from his imitating what he thinks the rant of Laertes, or by supposing that his 'towering passion' made him forget to act the madman. But in the final scene also he speaks in verse in the presence of all. This again might be accounted for by saying that he is supposed to be in a lucid interval, as indeed his own language at 239 ff. implies. But the probability is that Shakespeare's real reason for breaking his rule here was simply that he did not choose to deprive Hamlet of verse on his last appearance. I wonder the disuse of prose in these two scenes has not been observed, and used as an argument, by those who think that Hamlet, with the commission in his pocket, is now resolute.[249]The verse-speech of the Doctor, which closes this scene, lowers the tension towards that of the next scene. His introductory conversation with the Gentlewoman is written in prose (sometimes very near verse), partly, perhaps, from its familiar character, but chiefly because Lady Macbeth is to speak in prose.

FOOTNOTES:

[227]So Mrs. Siddons is said to have given the passage.

[228]Surely the usual interpretation of 'We fail?' as a question of contemptuous astonishment, is right. 'We fail!' gives practically the same sense, but alters the punctuation of the first two Folios. In either case, 'But,' I think, means 'Only.' On the other hand the proposal to read 'We fail.' with a full stop, as expressive of sublime acceptance of the possibility, seems to me, however attractive at first sight, quite out of harmony with Lady Macbeth's mood throughout these scenes.

[229]SeeNote DD.

[230]It is not new.

[231]The words about Lady Macduff are of course significant of natural human feeling, and may have been introduced expressly to mark it, but they do not, I think, show any fundamental change in Lady Macbeth, for at no time would she have suggested or approved apurposelessatrocity. It is perhaps characteristic that this human feeling should show itself most clearly in reference to an act for which she was not directly responsible, and in regard to which therefore she does not feel the instinct of self-assertion.

[232]The tendency to sentimentalise Lady Macbeth is partly due to Mrs. Siddons's fancy that she was a small, fair, blue-eyed woman, 'perhaps even fragile.' Dr. Bucknill, who was unaquainted with this fancy, independently determined that she was 'beautiful and delicate,' 'unoppressed by weight of flesh,' 'probably small,' but 'a tawny or brown blonde,' with grey eyes: and Brandes affirms that she was lean, slight, and hard. They know much more than Shakespeare, who tells us absolutely nothing on these subjects. That Lady Macbeth, after taking part in a murder, was so exhausted as to faint, will hardly demonstrate her fragility. That she must have been blue-eyed, fair, or red-haired, because she was a Celt, is a bold inference, and it is an idle dream that Shakespeare had any idea of making her or her husband characteristically Celtic. The only evidence ever offered to prove that she was small is the sentence, 'All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand'; and Goliath might have called his hand 'little' in contrast with all the perfumes of Arabia. One might as well propose to prove that Othello was a small man by quoting,I have seen the day,That, with this little arm and this good sword,I have made my way through more impedimentsThan twenty times your stop.The reader is at liberty to imagine Lady Macbeth's person in the way that pleases him best, or to leave it, as Shakespeare very likely did, unimagined.Perhaps it may be well to add that there is not the faintest trace in the play of the idea occasionally met with, and to some extent embodied in Madame Bernhardt's impersonation of Lady Macbeth, that her hold upon her husband lay in seductive attractions deliberately exercised. Shakespeare was not unskilled or squeamish in indicating such ideas.

I have seen the day,That, with this little arm and this good sword,I have made my way through more impedimentsThan twenty times your stop.

The reader is at liberty to imagine Lady Macbeth's person in the way that pleases him best, or to leave it, as Shakespeare very likely did, unimagined.

Perhaps it may be well to add that there is not the faintest trace in the play of the idea occasionally met with, and to some extent embodied in Madame Bernhardt's impersonation of Lady Macbeth, that her hold upon her husband lay in seductive attractions deliberately exercised. Shakespeare was not unskilled or squeamish in indicating such ideas.

[233]That it is Macbeth who feels the harmony between the desolation of the heath and the figures who appear on it is a characteristic touch.

[234]So, in Holinshed, 'Banquho jested with him and sayde, now Makbeth thou haste obtayned those things which the twoo former sisters prophesied, there remayneth onely for thee to purchase that which the third sayd should come to passe.'

[235]=doubts.

[236]=design.

[237]'tis much he dares,And, to that dauntless temper of his mind,He hath a wisdom that doth guide his valourTo act in safety.

[237]

'tis much he dares,And, to that dauntless temper of his mind,He hath a wisdom that doth guide his valourTo act in safety.

[238]So when he hears that Fleance has escaped he is not much troubled (iii.iv. 29):the worm that's fledHath nature that in time will venom breed,No teeth for the present.I have repeated above what I have said before, because the meaning of Macbeth's soliloquy is frequently misconceived.

[238]So when he hears that Fleance has escaped he is not much troubled (iii.iv. 29):

the worm that's fledHath nature that in time will venom breed,No teeth for the present.

I have repeated above what I have said before, because the meaning of Macbeth's soliloquy is frequently misconceived.

[239]Virgilia inCoriolanusis a famous example. She speaks about thirty-five lines.

[240]The percentage of prose is, roughly, inHamlet30-2/3, inOthello16-1/3, inKing Lear27-1/2, inMacbeth8-1/2.

[241]Cf.Note F. There are also inMacbethseveral shorter passages which recall the Player's speech. Cf. 'Fortune ... showed like a rebel's whore' (i.ii. 14) with 'Out! out! thou strumpet Fortune!' The form 'eterne' occurs in Shakespeare only inMacbeth,iii.ii. 38, and in the 'proof eterne' of the Player's speech. Cf. 'So, as a painted tyrant, Pyrrhus stood,' withMacbeth,v.viii. 26; 'the rugged Pyrrhus, like the Hyrcanian beast,' with 'the rugged Russian bear ... or the Hyrcan tiger' (Macbeth,iii.iv. 100); 'like a neutral to his will and matter' withMacbeth,i.v. 47. The words 'Till he unseam'd him from the nave to the chaps,' in the Serjeant's speech, recall the words 'Then from the navel to the throat at once He ript old Priam,' inDido Queen of Carthage, where these words follow those others, about Priam falling with the mere wind of Pyrrhus' sword, which seem to have suggested 'the whiff and wind of his fell sword' in the Player's speech.

[242]See Cunliffe,The Influence of Seneca on Elizabethan Tragedy. The most famous of these parallels is that between 'Will all great Neptune's Ocean,' etc., and the following passages:Quis eluet me Tanais? aut quae barbarisMaeotis undis Pontico incumbens mari?Non ipse toto magnus Oceano paterTantum expiarit sceleris. (Hipp.715.)Quis Tanais, aut quis Nilus, aut quis PersicaViolentus unda Tigris, aut Rhenus ferox,Tagusve Ibera turbidus gaza fluens,Abluere dextram poterit? Arctoum licetMaeotis in me gelida transfundat mare,Et tota Tethys per meas currat manus,Haerebit altum facinus. (Herc. Furens, 1323.)(The reader will remember Othello's 'Pontic sea' with its 'violent pace.') Medea's incantation in Ovid'sMetamorphoses, vii. 197 ff., which certainly suggested Prospero's speech,Tempest,v.i. 33 ff., should be compared with Seneca,Herc. Oet., 452 ff., 'Artibus magicis,' etc. It is of course highly probable that Shakespeare read some Seneca at school. I may add that in theHippolytus, beside the passage quoted above, there are others which might have furnished him with suggestions. Cf. for instanceHipp., 30 ff., with the lines about the Spartan hounds inMids. Night's Dream,iv.i. 117 ff., and Hippolytus' speech, beginning 483, with the Duke's speech inAs You Like It,ii.i.

[242]See Cunliffe,The Influence of Seneca on Elizabethan Tragedy. The most famous of these parallels is that between 'Will all great Neptune's Ocean,' etc., and the following passages:

Quis eluet me Tanais? aut quae barbarisMaeotis undis Pontico incumbens mari?Non ipse toto magnus Oceano paterTantum expiarit sceleris. (Hipp.715.)Quis Tanais, aut quis Nilus, aut quis PersicaViolentus unda Tigris, aut Rhenus ferox,Tagusve Ibera turbidus gaza fluens,Abluere dextram poterit? Arctoum licetMaeotis in me gelida transfundat mare,Et tota Tethys per meas currat manus,Haerebit altum facinus. (Herc. Furens, 1323.)

Quis eluet me Tanais? aut quae barbarisMaeotis undis Pontico incumbens mari?Non ipse toto magnus Oceano paterTantum expiarit sceleris. (Hipp.715.)

Quis Tanais, aut quis Nilus, aut quis PersicaViolentus unda Tigris, aut Rhenus ferox,Tagusve Ibera turbidus gaza fluens,Abluere dextram poterit? Arctoum licetMaeotis in me gelida transfundat mare,Et tota Tethys per meas currat manus,Haerebit altum facinus. (Herc. Furens, 1323.)

(The reader will remember Othello's 'Pontic sea' with its 'violent pace.') Medea's incantation in Ovid'sMetamorphoses, vii. 197 ff., which certainly suggested Prospero's speech,Tempest,v.i. 33 ff., should be compared with Seneca,Herc. Oet., 452 ff., 'Artibus magicis,' etc. It is of course highly probable that Shakespeare read some Seneca at school. I may add that in theHippolytus, beside the passage quoted above, there are others which might have furnished him with suggestions. Cf. for instanceHipp., 30 ff., with the lines about the Spartan hounds inMids. Night's Dream,iv.i. 117 ff., and Hippolytus' speech, beginning 483, with the Duke's speech inAs You Like It,ii.i.

[243]Cf. Coleridge's note on the Lady Macduff scene.

[244]It is nothing to the purpose that Macduff himself says,Sinful Macduff,They were all struck for thee! naught that I am,Not for their own demerits, but for mine,Fell slaughter on their souls.There is no reason to suppose that the sin and demerit he speaks of is that of leaving his home. And even if it were, it is Macduff that speaks, not Shakespeare, any more than Shakespeare speaks in the preceding sentence,Did heaven look on,And would not take their part?And yet Brandes (ii. 104) hears in these words 'the voice of revolt ... that sounds later through the despairing philosophy ofKing Lear.' It sounds a good deal earlier too;e.g.inTit. And.,iv.i. 81, and2 Henry VI.,ii.i. 154. The idea is a commonplace of Elizabethan tragedy.

[244]It is nothing to the purpose that Macduff himself says,

Sinful Macduff,They were all struck for thee! naught that I am,Not for their own demerits, but for mine,Fell slaughter on their souls.

There is no reason to suppose that the sin and demerit he speaks of is that of leaving his home. And even if it were, it is Macduff that speaks, not Shakespeare, any more than Shakespeare speaks in the preceding sentence,

Did heaven look on,And would not take their part?

And yet Brandes (ii. 104) hears in these words 'the voice of revolt ... that sounds later through the despairing philosophy ofKing Lear.' It sounds a good deal earlier too;e.g.inTit. And.,iv.i. 81, and2 Henry VI.,ii.i. 154. The idea is a commonplace of Elizabethan tragedy.

[245]And the idea that it was the death of his son Hamnet, aged eleven, that brought this power to maturity is one of the more plausible attempts to find in his dramas a reflection of his private history. It implies however as late a date as 1596 forKing John.

[246]Even if this were true, the retort is obvious that neither is there anything resembling the murder-scene inMacbeth.

[247]I have confined myself to the single aspect of this question on which I had what seemed something new to say. Professor Hales's defence of the passage on fuller grounds, in the admirable paper reprinted in hisNotes and Essays on Shakespeare, seems to me quite conclusive. I may add two notes. (1) The references in the Porter's speeches to 'equivocation,' which have naturally, and probably rightly, been taken as allusions to the Jesuit Garnet's appeal to the doctrine of equivocation in defence of his perjury when, on trial for participation in the Gunpowder Plot, do not stand alone inMacbeth. The later prophecies of the Witches Macbeth calls 'the equivocation of the fiend That lies like truth' (v.v. 43); and the Porter's remarks about the equivocator who 'could swear in both the scales against either scale, who committed treason enough for God's sake, yet could not equivocate to heaven,' may be compared with the following dialogue (iv.ii. 45):Son.What is a traitor?Lady Macduff.Why, one that swears and lies.Son.And be all traitors that do so?Lady Macduff.Everyone that does so is a traitor, and must be hanged.Garnet, as a matter of fact,washanged in May, 1606; and it is to be feared that the audience applauded this passage.(2) The Porter's soliloquy on the different applicants for admittance has, in idea and manner, a marked resemblance to Pompey's soliloquy on the inhabitants of the prison, inMeasure for Measure,iv.iii. 1 ff.; and the dialogue between him and Abhorson on the 'mystery' of hanging (iv.ii. 22 ff.) is of just the same kind as the Porter's dialogue with Macduff about drink.

Garnet, as a matter of fact,washanged in May, 1606; and it is to be feared that the audience applauded this passage.

(2) The Porter's soliloquy on the different applicants for admittance has, in idea and manner, a marked resemblance to Pompey's soliloquy on the inhabitants of the prison, inMeasure for Measure,iv.iii. 1 ff.; and the dialogue between him and Abhorson on the 'mystery' of hanging (iv.ii. 22 ff.) is of just the same kind as the Porter's dialogue with Macduff about drink.

[248]In the last Act, however, he speaks in verse even in the quarrel with Laertes at Ophelia's grave. It would be plausible to explain this either from his imitating what he thinks the rant of Laertes, or by supposing that his 'towering passion' made him forget to act the madman. But in the final scene also he speaks in verse in the presence of all. This again might be accounted for by saying that he is supposed to be in a lucid interval, as indeed his own language at 239 ff. implies. But the probability is that Shakespeare's real reason for breaking his rule here was simply that he did not choose to deprive Hamlet of verse on his last appearance. I wonder the disuse of prose in these two scenes has not been observed, and used as an argument, by those who think that Hamlet, with the commission in his pocket, is now resolute.

[249]The verse-speech of the Doctor, which closes this scene, lowers the tension towards that of the next scene. His introductory conversation with the Gentlewoman is written in prose (sometimes very near verse), partly, perhaps, from its familiar character, but chiefly because Lady Macbeth is to speak in prose.

In Hamlet's first soliloquy he speaks of his father as being 'but two months dead,—nay, not so much, not two.' He goes on to refer to the love between his father and mother, and then says (i.ii. 145):

and yet, within a month—Let me not think on't—Frailty, thy name is woman!—A little month, or ere those shoes were oldWith which she follow'd my poor father's body,Like Niobe, all tears, why she, even she—O God! a beast, that wants discourse of reason,Would have mourn'd longer—married with my uncle.

It seems hence to be usually assumed that at this time—the time when the action begins—Hamlet's mother has been married a little less than a month.

On this assumption difficulties, however, arise, though I have not found them referred to. Why has the Ghost waited nearly a month since the marriage before showing itself? Why has the King waited nearly a month before appearing in public for the first time, as he evidently does in this scene? And why has Laertes waited nearly a month since the coronation before asking leave to return to France (i.ii. 53)?

To this it might be replied that the marriage and the coronation were separated by some weeks; that, while the former occurred nearly a month before the time of this scene, the latter has only just taken place; and that what the Ghost cannot bear is, not the mere marriage, but the accession of an incestuous murderer to the throne. But anyone who will readthe King's speech at the opening of the scene will certainly conclude that the marriage has only just been celebrated, and also that it is conceived as involving the accession of Claudius to the throne. Gertrude is described as the 'imperial jointress' of the State, and the King says that the lords consented to the marriage, but makes no separate mention of his election.

The solution of the difficulty is to be found in the lines quoted above. The marriage followed, within a month, not thedeathof Hamlet's father, but thefuneral. And this makes all clear. The death happened nearly two months ago. The funeral did not succeed it immediately, but (say) in a fortnight or three weeks. And the marriage and coronation, coming rather less than a month after the funeral, have just taken place. So that the Ghost has not waited at all; nor has the King, nor Laertes.

On this hypothesis it follows that Hamlet's agonised soliloquy is not uttered nearly a month after the marriage which has so horrified him, but quite soon after it (though presumably he would know rather earlier what was coming). And from this hypothesis we get also a partial explanation of two other difficulties, (a) When Horatio, at the end of the soliloquy, enters and greets Hamlet, it is evident that he and Hamlet have not recently met at Elsinore. Yet Horatio came to Elsinore for the funeral (i.ii. 176). Now even if the funeral took place some three weeks ago, it seems rather strange that Hamlet, however absorbed in grief and however withdrawn from the Court, has not met Horatio; but if the funeral took place some seven weeks ago, the difficulty is considerably greater. (b) We are twice told that Hamlet has 'of late' been seeking the society of Ophelia and protesting his love for her (i.iii. 91, 99). It always seemed to me, on the usual view of the chronology, rather difficult (though not, of course, impossible) to understand this, considering the state of feeling produced in him by his mother's marriage, and in particular the shock it appears to have given to his faith in woman. But if the marriage has only just been celebrated the words 'of late' would naturally refer to a time before it. This time presumably would be subsequent to the death of Hamlet's father, but it is not so hard to fancy that Hamlet may have sought relief from meregriefin his love for Ophelia.

But here another question arises; May not the words 'of late'include, or even wholly refer to,[250]a time prior to the death of Hamlet's father? And this question would be answered universally, I suppose, in the negative, on the ground that Hamlet was not at Court but at Wittenberg when his father died. I will deal with this idea in a separate note, and will only add here that, though it is quite possible that Shakespeare never imagined any of these matters clearly, and so produced these unimportant difficulties, we ought not to assume this without examination.

FOOTNOTES:[250]This is intrinsically not probable, and is the more improbable because inQ1Hamlet's letter to Ophelia (which must have been written before the action of the play begins) is signed 'Thine ever the most unhappy PrinceHamlet.' 'Unhappy'mightbe meant to describe an unsuccessful lover, but it probably shows that the letter was written after his father's death.

FOOTNOTES:

[250]This is intrinsically not probable, and is the more improbable because inQ1Hamlet's letter to Ophelia (which must have been written before the action of the play begins) is signed 'Thine ever the most unhappy PrinceHamlet.' 'Unhappy'mightbe meant to describe an unsuccessful lover, but it probably shows that the letter was written after his father's death.

The answer will at once be given: 'At the University of Wittenberg. For the king says to him (i.ii. 112):

For your intentIn going back to school in Wittenberg,It is most retrograde to our desire.

The Queen also prays him not to go to Wittenberg: and he consents to remain.'

Now I quite agree that the obvious interpretation of this passage is that universally accepted, that Hamlet, like Horatio, was at Wittenberg when his father died; and I do not say that it is wrong. But it involves difficulties, and ought not to be regarded as certain.

(1) One of these difficulties has long been recognised. Hamlet, according to the evidence of Actv., Scene i., is thirty years of age; and that is a very late age for a university student. One solution is found (by those who admit that Hamletwasthirty) in a passage in Nash'sPierce Penniless: 'For fashion sake some [Danes] will put their children to schoole, but they set them not to it till they are fourteene years old, so that you shall see a great boy with a beard learne his A.B.C. and sit weeping under the rod when he isthirty years old.' Another solution, as we saw (p.105), is found in Hamlet's character. He is a philosopher who lingers on at the University from love of his studies there.

(2) But there is a more formidable difficulty, which seems to have escaped notice. Horatio certainly came from Wittenberg to the funeral. And observe how he and Hamlet meet (i.ii. 160).

Is not this passing strange? Hamlet and Horatio are supposed to be fellow-students at Wittenberg, and to have left it for Elsinore less than two months ago. Yet Hamlet hardly recognises Horatio at first, and speaks as if he himself lived at Elsinore (I refer to his bitter jest, 'We'll teach you to drink deep ere you depart'). Who would dream that Hamlet had himself just come from Wittenberg, if it were not for the previous words about his going back there?

How can this be explained on the usual view? Only, I presume, by supposing that Hamlet is so sunk in melancholy that he really does almost 'forget himself'[252]and forget everything else, sothat he actually is in doubt who Horatio is. And this, though not impossible, is hard to believe.

'Oh no,' it may be answered, 'for he is doubtful about Marcellus too; and yet, if he were living at Elsinore, he must have seen Marcellus often.' But he isnotdoubtful about Marcellus. That note of interrogation after 'Marcellus' is Capell's conjecture: it is not in any Quarto or any Folio. The fact is that he knows perfectly well the man who lives at Elsinore, but is confused by the appearance of the friend who comes from Wittenberg.

(3) Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are sent for, to wean Hamlet from his melancholy and to worm his secret out of him, because he has known them from his youth and is fond of them (ii.ii. 1 ff.). They cometoDenmark (ii.ii. 247 f.): they come thereforefromsome other country. Where do they come from? They are, we hear, Hamlet's 'school-fellows' (iii.iv. 202). And in the first Quarto we are directly told that they were with him at Wittenberg:

Now let the reader look at Hamlet's first greeting of them in the received text, and let him ask himself whether it is the greeting of a man to fellow-students whom he left two months ago: whether it is not rather, like his greeting of Horatio, the welcome of an old fellow-student who has not seen his visitors for a considerable time (ii.ii. 226 f.).

(4) Rosencrantz and Guildenstern tell Hamlet of the players who are coming. He asks what players they are, and is told, 'Even those you were wont to take such delight in, the tragedians of the city.' He asks, 'Do they hold the same estimation they did when I was in the city?' Evidently he has not been in the city for some time. And this is still more evident when the players come in, and he talks of one having grown a beard, and another having perhaps cracked his voice, since they last met. What then is this city, where he has not been for some time, but where (it would appear) Rosencrantz and Guildenstern live? It is not in Denmark ('Comest thou to beard me in Denmark?'). It would seem to be Wittenberg.[253]

All these passages, it should be observed, are consistent with one another. And the conclusion they point to is that Hamlet has left the University for some years and has been living at Court. This again is consistent with his being thirty years of age, and with his being mentioned as a soldier and a courtier as well as a scholar (iii.i. 159). And it is inconsistent, I believe, with nothing in the play, unless with the mention of his 'going back to school in Wittenberg.' But it is not really inconsistent with that. The idea may quite well be that Hamlet, feeling it impossible to continue at Court after his mother's marriage and Claudius' accession, thinks of the University where, years ago, he was so happy, and contemplates a return to it. If this were Shakespeare's meaning he might easily fail to notice that the expression 'going back to school in Wittenberg' would naturally suggest that Hamlet had only just left 'school.'

I do not see how to account for these passages except on this hypothesis. But it in its turn involves a certain difficulty. Horatio, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern seem to be of about the same age as Hamlet. How then dotheycome to be at Wittenberg? I had thought that this question might be answered in the following way. If 'the city' is Wittenberg, Shakespeare would regard it as a place like London, and we might suppose that Horatio, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were living there, though they had ceased to be students. But this can hardly be true of Horatio, who, when he (to spare Hamlet's feelings) talks of being 'a truant,' must mean a truant from his University. The only solution I can suggest is that, in the story or play which Shakespeare used, Hamlet and the others were all at the time of the murder young students at Wittenberg, and that when he determined to make them older men (or to make Hamlet, at any rate, older), he did not take trouble enough to carry this idea through all the necessary detail, and so left some inconsistencies. But in any case the difficulty in the view which I suggest seems to me not nearly so great as those which the usual view has to meet.[254]

FOOTNOTES:[251]These three words are evidently addressed to Bernardo.[252]Cf. Antonio in his melancholy (Merchant of Venice,i.i. 6),And such a want-wit sadness makes of meThat I have much ado to know myself.[253]InDer Bestrafte BrudermorditisWittenberg. Hamlet says to the actors: 'Were you not, a few years ago, at the University of Wittenberg? I think I saw you act there': Furness'sVariorum, ii. 129. But it is very doubtful whether this play is anything but an adaptation and enlargement ofHamletas it existed in the stage represented byQ1.[254]It is perhaps worth while to note that inDer Bestrafte BrudermordHamlet is said to have been 'in Germany' at the time of his father's murder.

FOOTNOTES:

[251]These three words are evidently addressed to Bernardo.

[252]Cf. Antonio in his melancholy (Merchant of Venice,i.i. 6),And such a want-wit sadness makes of meThat I have much ado to know myself.

[252]Cf. Antonio in his melancholy (Merchant of Venice,i.i. 6),

And such a want-wit sadness makes of meThat I have much ado to know myself.

[253]InDer Bestrafte BrudermorditisWittenberg. Hamlet says to the actors: 'Were you not, a few years ago, at the University of Wittenberg? I think I saw you act there': Furness'sVariorum, ii. 129. But it is very doubtful whether this play is anything but an adaptation and enlargement ofHamletas it existed in the stage represented byQ1.

[254]It is perhaps worth while to note that inDer Bestrafte BrudermordHamlet is said to have been 'in Germany' at the time of his father's murder.

The chief arguments on this question may be found in Furness'sVariorum Hamlet, vol. i., pp. 391 ff. I will merely explain my position briefly.

Even if the general impression I received from the play were that Hamlet was a youth of eighteen or twenty, I should feel quite unable to set it against the evidence of the statements inv.i. which show him to be exactly thirty, unless these statements seemed to be casual. But they have to my mind, on the contrary, the appearance of being expressly inserted in order to fix Hamlet's age; and the fact that they differ decidedly from the statements in Q1 confirms that idea. So does the fact that the Player King speaks of having been married thirty years (iii.ii. 165), where again the number differs from that in Q1.

Ifv.i. did not contain those decisive statements, I believe my impression as to Hamlet's age would be uncertain. His being several times called 'young' would not influence me much (nor at all when he is called 'young' simply to distinguish him from his father,as he is in the very passage which shows him to be thirty). But I think we naturally take him to be about as old as Laertes, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and take them to be less than thirty. Further, the language used by Laertes and Polonius to Ophelia ini.iii. would certainly, by itself, lead one to imagine Hamlet as a good deal less than thirty; and the impression it makes is not, to me, altogether effaced by the fact that Henry V. at his accession is said to be in 'the very May-morn of his youth,'—an expression which corresponds closely with those used by Laertes to Ophelia. In some passages, again, there is an air of boyish petulance. On the other side, however, we should have to set (1) the maturity of Hamlet's thought; (2) his manner, on the whole, to other men and to his mother, which, I think, is far from suggesting the idea of a mere youth; (3) such a passage as his words to Horatio atiii.ii. 59 ff., which imply that both he and Horatio have seen a good deal of life (this passage has in Q1 nothing corresponding to themost significant lines). I have shown inNote Bthat it is very unsafe to argue to Hamlet's youth from the words about his going back to Wittenberg.

On the whole I agree with Prof. Dowden that, apart from the statements inv.i., one would naturally take Hamlet to be a man of about five and twenty.

It has been suggested that in the old play Hamlet was a mere lad; that Shakespeare, when he began to work on it,[255]had not determined to make Hamlet older; that, as he went on, he did so determine; and that this is the reason why the earlier part of the play makes (if it does so) a different impression from the later. I see nothing very improbable in this idea, but I must point out that it is a mistake to appeal in support of it to the passage inv.i. as found in Q1; for that passage does not in the least show that the author (if correctly reported) imagined Hamlet as a lad. I set out the statements in Q2 and Q1.

Q2 says:

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