NOTE D.

(1) The grave-digger came to his business on the day when old Hamlet defeated Fortinbras:(2) On that day young Hamlet was born:(3) The grave-digger has, at the time of speaking, been sexton for thirty years:(4) Yorick's skull has been in the earth twenty-three years:(5) Yorick used to carry young Hamlet on his back.

(1) The grave-digger came to his business on the day when old Hamlet defeated Fortinbras:

(2) On that day young Hamlet was born:

(3) The grave-digger has, at the time of speaking, been sexton for thirty years:

(4) Yorick's skull has been in the earth twenty-three years:

(5) Yorick used to carry young Hamlet on his back.

This is all explicit and connected, and yields the result that Hamlet is now thirty.

Q1 says:

(1) Yorick's skull has been in the ground a dozen years:(2) It has been in the ground ever since old Hamlet overcame Fortinbras:(3) Yorick used to carry young Hamlet on his back.

(1) Yorick's skull has been in the ground a dozen years:

(2) It has been in the ground ever since old Hamlet overcame Fortinbras:

(3) Yorick used to carry young Hamlet on his back.

From this nothing whatever follows as to Hamlet's age, except that he is more than twelve![256]Evidently the writer (if correctly reported) has no intention of telling us how old Hamlet is. That he did not imagine him as very young appears from hismaking him say that he has noted 'this seven year' (in Q2 'three years') that the toe of the peasant comes near the heel of the courtier. The fact that the Player-King in Q1 speaks of having been married forty years shows that here too the writer has not any reference to Hamlet's age in his mind.[257]

FOOTNOTES:[255]Of course we do not know that he did work on it.[256]I find that I have been anticipated in this remark by H. Türck (Jahrbuchfor 1900, p. 267 ff.)[257]I do not know if it has been observed that in the opening of the Player-King's speech, as given inQ2and the Folio (it is quite different inQ1), there seems to be a reminiscence of Greene'sAlphonsus King of Arragon, Activ., lines 33 ff. (Dyce'sGreene and Peele, p. 239):Thrice ten times Phœbus with his golden beamsHath compassed the circle of the sky,Thrice ten times Ceres hath her workmen hir'd,And fill'd her barns with fruitful crops of corn,Since first in priesthood I did lead my life.

FOOTNOTES:

[255]Of course we do not know that he did work on it.

[256]I find that I have been anticipated in this remark by H. Türck (Jahrbuchfor 1900, p. 267 ff.)

[257]I do not know if it has been observed that in the opening of the Player-King's speech, as given inQ2and the Folio (it is quite different inQ1), there seems to be a reminiscence of Greene'sAlphonsus King of Arragon, Activ., lines 33 ff. (Dyce'sGreene and Peele, p. 239):Thrice ten times Phœbus with his golden beamsHath compassed the circle of the sky,Thrice ten times Ceres hath her workmen hir'd,And fill'd her barns with fruitful crops of corn,Since first in priesthood I did lead my life.

Thrice ten times Phœbus with his golden beamsHath compassed the circle of the sky,Thrice ten times Ceres hath her workmen hir'd,And fill'd her barns with fruitful crops of corn,Since first in priesthood I did lead my life.

This passage has occasioned much difficulty, and to many readers seems even absurd. And it has been suggested that it, with much that immediately follows it, was adopted by Shakespeare, with very little change, from the old play.

It is surely in the highest degree improbable that, at such a critical point, when he had to show the first effect on Hamlet of the disclosures made by the Ghost, Shakespeare would write slackly or be content with anything that did not satisfy his own imagination. But it is not surprising that we should find some difficulty in following his imagination at such a point.

Let us look at the whole speech. The Ghost leaves Hamlet with the words, 'Adieu, adieu! Hamlet, remember me'; and he breaks out:

O all you host of heaven! O earth! what else?And shall I couple hell? O, fie! Hold, hold, my heart;And you, my sinews, grow not instant old,But bear me stiffly up. Remember thee!Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seatIn this distracted globe. Remember thee!Yea, from the table of my memoryI'll wipe away all trivial fond records,All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past,That youth and observation copied there;And thy commandment all alone shall liveWithin the book and volume of my brain,Unmix'd with baser matter: yes, by heaven!O most pernicious woman!O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!My tables—meet it is I set it down,That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain;At least I'm sure it may be so in Denmark:[WritingSo, uncle, there you are. Now to my word;It is 'Adieu, adieu! remember me.'I have sworn 't.

The man who speaks thus was, we must remember, already well-nigh overwhelmed with sorrow and disgust when the Ghost appeared to him. He has now suffered a tremendous shock. He has learned that his mother was not merely what he supposed but an adulteress, and that his father was murdered by her paramour. This knowledge too has come to him in such a way as, quite apart from thematterof the communication, might make any human reason totter. And, finally, a terrible charge has been laid upon him. Is it strange, then, that he should say what is strange? Why, there would be nothing to wonder at if his mind collapsed on the spot.

Now it is just this that he himself fears. In the midst of the first tremendous outburst, he checks himself suddenly with the exclamation 'O, fie!' (cf. the precisely similar use of this interjection,ii.ii. 617). He must not let himself feel: he has to live. He must not let his heart break in pieces ('hold' means 'hold together'), his muscles turn into those of a trembling old man, his brain dissolve—as they threaten in an instant to do. For, if they do, how can he—remember? He goes on reiterating this 'remember' (the 'word' of the Ghost). He is, literally, afraid that he willforget—that his mind will lose the message entrusted to it. Instinctively, then, he feels that, if heisto remember, he must wipe from his memory everything it already contains; and the image of his past life rises before him, of all his joy in thought and observation and the stores they have accumulated in his memory. All that is done with for ever: nothing is to remain for him on the 'table' but the command, 'remember me.' He swearsit; 'yes, by heaven!' That done, suddenly the repressed passion breaks out, and, most characteristically, he thinksfirstof his mother; then of his uncle, the smooth-spoken scoundrel who has just been smiling on him and calling him 'son.' And in bitter desperate irony he snatches his tables from his breast (they are suggested to him by the phrases he has just used, 'table of my memory,' 'book and volume'). After all, hewilluse them once again; and, perhaps with a wild laugh, he writes with trembling fingers his last observation: 'One may smile, and smile, and be a villain.'

But that, I believe, is not merely a desperate jest. It springs from thatfear of forgetting. A time will come, he feels, when all this appalling experience of the last half-hour will be incredible to him, will seem a mere nightmare, will even, conceivably, quite vanish from his mind. Let him have something in black and white that will bring it back andforcehim to remember and believe. What is there so unnatural in this, if you substitute a note-book or diary for the 'tables'?[258]

But why should he write that particular note, and not rather his 'word,' 'Adieu, adieu! remember me'? I should answer, first, that a grotesque jest at such a moment is thoroughly characteristic of Hamlet (see p.151), and that the jocose 'So, uncle, there you are!' shows his state of mind; and, secondly, that loathing of his uncle is vehement in his thought at this moment. Possibly, too, he might remember that 'tables' are stealable, and that if the appearance of the Ghost should be reported, a mere observation on the smiling of villains could not betray anything of his communication with the Ghost. What follows shows that the instinct of secrecy is strong in him.

It seems likely, I may add, that Shakespeare here was influenced, consciously or unconsciously, by recollection of a place inTitus Andronicus(iv.i.). In that horrible play Chiron and Demetrius, after outraging Lavinia, cut out her tongue and cut off her hands, in order that she may be unable to reveal the outrage. She reveals it, however, by taking a staff in her mouth, guiding it with her arms, and writing in thesand, 'Stuprum. Chiron. Demetrius.' Titus soon afterwards says:

I will go get a leaf of brass,And with a gad of steel will write these words,And lay it by. The angry northern windWill blow these sands, like Sibyl's leaves, abroad,And where's your lesson then?

Perhaps in the oldHamlet, which may have been a play something likeTitus Andronicus, Hamlet at this point did write something of the Ghost's message in his tables. In any case Shakespeare, whether he wroteTitus Andronicusor only revised an older play on the subject, might well recall this incident, as he frequently reproduces other things in that drama.

FOOTNOTES:[258]The reader will observe that this suggestion of afurtherreason for his making the note may be rejected without the rest of the interpretation being affected.

FOOTNOTES:

[258]The reader will observe that this suggestion of afurtherreason for his making the note may be rejected without the rest of the interpretation being affected.

It has been thought that the whole of the last part ofi.v., from the entrance of Horatio and Marcellus, follows the old play closely, and that Shakespeare is condescending to the groundlings.

Here again, whether or no he took a suggestion from the old play, I see no reason to think that he wrote down to his public. So far as Hamlet's state of mind is concerned, there is not a trace of this. Anyone who has a difficulty in understanding it should read Coleridge's note. What appears grotesque is the part taken by the Ghost, and Hamlet's consequent removal from one part of the stage to another. But, as to the former, should we feel anything grotesque in the four injunctions 'Swear!' if it were not that they come from under the stage—a fact which to an Elizabethan audience, perfectly indifferent to what is absurdly called stage illusion, was probably not in the least grotesque? And as to the latter, if we knew the Ghost-lore of the time better than we do, perhaps we should see nothing odd in Hamlet's insisting on moving away and proposing the oath afresh when the Ghost intervenes.

But, further, it is to be observed that he does not merely propose the oath afresh. He first makes Horatio and Marcellus swear never to make known what they haveseen. Then, on shifting his ground, he makes them swear never to speak ofwhat they haveheard. Then, moving again, he makes them swear that, if he should think fit to play the antic, they will give no sign of knowing aught of him. The oath is now complete; and, when the Ghost commands them to swear the last time, Hamlet suddenly becomes perfectly serious and bids it rest. [In Fletcher'sWoman's Prize,v.iii., a passage pointed out to me by Mr. C.J. Wilkinson, a man taking an oath shifts his ground.]

There are two extreme views about this speech. According to one, Shakespeare quoted it from some play, or composed it for the occasion, simply and solely in order to ridicule, through it, the bombastic style of dramatists contemporary with himself or slightly older; just as he ridicules in2 Henry IV.Tamburlaine's rant about the kings who draw his chariot, or puts fragments of similar bombast into the mouth of Pistol. According to Coleridge, on the other hand, this idea is 'below criticism.' No sort of ridicule was intended. 'The lines, as epic narrative, are superb.' It is true that the language is 'too poetical—the language of lyric vehemence and epic pomp, and not of the drama'; but this is due to the fact that Shakespeare had to distinguish the style of the speech from that of his own dramatic dialogue.

In essentials I think that what Coleridge says[259]is true. He goes too far, it seems to me, when he describes the language of the speech as merely 'too poetical'; for with much that is fine there is intermingled a good deal that, in epic as in drama, must be called bombast. But I do not believe Shakespeare meant it for bombast.

I will briefly put the arguments which point to this conclusion. Warburton long ago stated some of them fully and cogently, but he misinterpreted here and there, and some arguments have to be added to his.

1. If the speech was meant to be ridiculous, it follows either that Hamlet in praising it spoke ironically, or that Shakespeare, in making Hamlet praise it sincerely, himself wrote ironically. And both these consequences are almost incredible.

Let us see what Hamlet says. He asks the player to recite 'a passionate speech'; and, being requested to choose one, he refers to a speech he once heard the player declaim. This speech, he says, was never 'acted' or was acted only once; for the play pleased not the million. But he, and others whose opinion was of more importance than his, thought it an excellent play, well constructed, and composed with equal skill and temperance. One of these other judges commended it because it contained neither piquant indecencies nor affectations of phrase, but showed 'an honest method, as wholesome as sweet, and by very much more handsome than fine.'[260]In this play Hamlet 'chiefly loved' one speech; and he asks for a part of it.

Let the reader now refer to the passage I have just summarised; let him consider its tone and manner; and let him ask himself if Hamlet can possibly be speaking ironically. I am sure he will answer No. And then let him observe what follows. The speech is declaimed. Polonius interrupting it with an objection to its length, Hamlet snubs him, bids the player proceed, and adds, 'He's for a jig or a tale of bawdry: or he sleeps.' 'He,' that is, 'shares the taste of the million for sallets in the lines to make the matter savoury, and is wearied by an honest method.'[261]Polonius later interrupts again, for he thinks the emotion of the player too absurd; but Hamlet respects it; and afterwards, when he is alone (and therefore can hardly be ironical), in contrasting this emotion with his own insensibility, he betrays no consciousness that there was anything unfitting in the speech that caused it.

So far I have chiefly followed Warburton, but there is an important point which seems not to have been observed. AllHamlet's praise of the speech is in the closest agreement with his conduct and words elsewhere. His later advice to the player (iii.ii.) is on precisely the same lines. He is to play to the judicious, not to the crowd, whose opinion is worthless. He is to observe, like the author of Aeneas' speech, the 'modesty' of nature. He must not tear a 'passion' to tatters, to split the ears of the incompetent, but in the very tempest of passion is to keep a temperance and smoothness. The million, we gather from the first passage, cares nothing for construction; and so, we learn in the second passage, the barren spectators want to laugh at the clown instead of attending to some necessary question of the play. Hamlet's hatred of exaggeration is marked in both passages. And so (as already pointed out, p.133) in the play-scene, when his own lines are going to be delivered, he impatiently calls out to the actor to leave his damnable faces and begin; and at the grave of Ophelia he is furious with what he thinks the exaggeration of Laertes, burlesques his language, and breaks off with the words,

Nay, an thou'lt mouth,I'll rant as well as thou.

Now if Hamlet's praise of the Aeneas and Dido play and speech is ironical, his later advice to the player must surely be ironical too: and who will maintain that? And if in the one passage Hamlet is serious but Shakespeare ironical, then in the other passage all those famous remarks about drama and acting, which have been cherished as Shakespeare's by all the world, express the opposite of Shakespeare's opinion: and who will maintain that? And if Hamlet and Shakespeare are both serious—and nothing else is credible—then, to Hamlet and Shakespeare, the speeches of Laertes and Hamlet at Ophelia's grave are rant, but the speech of Aeneas to Dido is not rant. Is it not evident that he meant it for an exalted narrative speech of 'passion,' in a style which, though he may not have adopted it, he still approved and despised the million for not approving,—a speech to be delivered with temperance or modesty, but not too tamely neither? Is he not aiming here to do precisely what Marlowe aimed to do when he proposed to lead the audience

From jigging veins of rhyming mother-wits,And such conceits as clownage keeps in pay,

to 'stately' themes which beget 'high astounding terms'? And is it strange that, like Marlowe inTamburlaine, he adopted a style marred in places by that whichwethink bombast, but which the author meant to be more 'handsome than fine'?

2. If this is so, we can easily understand how it comes about that the speech of Aeneas contains lines which are unquestionably grand and free from any suspicion of bombast, and others which, though not free from that suspicion, are nevertheless highly poetic. To the first class certainly belongs the passage beginning, 'But as we often see.' To the second belongs the description of Pyrrhus, covered with blood that was

Baked and impasted with the parching streets,That lend a tyrannous and damned lightTo their lord's murder;

and again the picture of Pyrrhus standing like a tyrant in a picture, with his uplifted arm arrested in act to strike by the crash of the falling towers of Ilium. It is surely impossible to say that these lines aremerelyabsurd and not in the least grand; and with them I should join the passage about Fortune's wheel, and the concluding lines.

But how can the insertion of these passages possibly be explained on the hypothesis that Shakespeare meant the speech to be ridiculous?

3. 'Still,' it may be answered, 'Shakespearemusthave been conscious of the bombast in some of these passages. How could he help seeing it? And, if he saw it, he cannot have meant seriously to praise the speech.' But why must he have seen it? Did Marlowe know when he wrote bombastically? Or Marston? Or Heywood? Does not Shakespeare elsewhere write bombast? The truth is that the two defects of style in the speech are the very defects we do find in his writings. When he wished to make his style exceptionally high and passionate he always ran some risk of bombast. And he was even more prone to the fault which in this speech seems to me the more marked, a use of metaphors which sound to our ears 'conceited' or grotesque. To me at any rate the metaphors in 'now is he total gules' and 'mincing with his sword her husband's limbs' are more disturbing than any of the bombast. But, as regards this second defect, there are many places in Shakespeare worse than the speech ofAeneas; and, as regards the first, though in his undoubtedly genuine works there is no passage so faulty, there is also no passage of quite the same species (for his narrative poems do not aim at epic grandeur), and there are many passages where bombast of the same kind, though not of the same degree, occurs.

Let the reader ask himself, for instance, how the following lines would strike him if he came on them for the first time out of their context:

Whip me, ye devils,From the possession of this heavenly sight!Blow me about in winds! Roast me in sulphur!Wash me in steep-down gulfs of liquid fire!

Are Pyrrhus's 'total gules' any worse than Duncan's 'silver skin laced with his golden blood,' or so bad as the chamberlains' daggers 'unmannerly breech'd with gore'?[262]If 'to bathe in reeking wounds,' and 'spongy officers,' and even 'alarum'd by his sentinel the wolf, Whose howl's his watch,' and other such phrases inMacbeth, had occurred in the speech of Aeneas, we should certainly have been told that they were meant for burlesque. I openTroilus and Cressida(because, like the speech of Aeneas, it has to do with the story of Troy), and I read, in a perfectly serious context (iv.v. 6 f.):

Thou, trumpet, there's thy purse.Now crack thy lungs, and split thy brazen pipe:Blow, villain, till thy sphered bias cheekOutswell the colic of puff'd Aquilon:Come, stretch thy chest, and let thy eyes spout blood;Thou blow'st for Hector.

'Splendid!' one cries. Yes, but if you are told it is also bombastic, can you deny it? I read again (v.v. 7):

bastard MargarelonHath Doreus prisoner,And stands colossus-wise, waving his beam,Upon the pashed corses of the kings.

Or, to turn to earlier but still undoubted works, Shakespeare wrote inRomeo and Juliet,

here will I remainWith worms that are thy chamber-maids;

and inKing John,

And pick strong matter of revolt and wrathOut of the bloody finger-ends of John;

and inLucrece,

And, bubbling from her breast, it doth divideIn two slow rivers, that the crimson bloodCircles her body in on every side,Who, like a late-sack'd island, vastly stoodBare and unpeopled in this fearful flood.Some of her blood still pure and red remain'd,And some look'd black, and that false Tarquin stain'd.

Is it so very unlikely that the poet who wrote thus might, aiming at a peculiarly heightened and passionate style, write the speech of Aeneas?

4. But, pursuing this line of argument, we must go further. There is really scarcely one idea, and there is but little phraseology, in the speech that cannot be paralleled from Shakespeare's own works. He merely exaggerates a little here what he has done elsewhere. I will conclude this Note by showing that this is so as regards almost all the passages most objected to, as well as some others. (1) 'The Hyrcanian beast' is Macbeth's 'Hyrcan tiger' (iii.iv. 101), who also occurs in3 Hen. VI.i.iv. 155. (2) With 'total gules' Steevens comparedTimoniv.iii. 59 (an undoubtedly Shakespearean passage),

With man's blood paint the ground, gules, gules.

(3) With 'baked and impasted' cf.Johniii.iii. 42, 'If that surly spirit melancholy Had baked thy blood.' In the questionableTit. And.v.ii. 201 we have, 'in that paste let their vile heads be baked' (a paste made of blood and bones,ib.188), and in the undoubtedRichard II.iii.ii. 154 (quoted by Caldecott) Richard refers to the ground

Which serves as paste and cover to our bones.

(4) 'O'er-sized with coagulate gore' finds an exact parallel in the 'blood-siz'd field' of theTwo Noble Kinsmen,i.i. 99, a scene which, whether written by Shakespeare (as I fully believe) or by another poet, was certainly written in all seriousness. (5) 'With eyes like carbuncles' has been much ridiculed, but Milton (P.L.ix. 500) gives 'carbuncle eyes' to Satan turned into a serpent (Steevens), and why are they more outrageous than ruby lipsand cheeks (J.C.iii.i. 260,Macb.iii.iv. 115,Cym.ii.ii. 17)? (6) Priam falling with the mere wind of Pyrrhus's sword is paralleled, not only inDido Queen of Carthage, but inTr. and Cr.v.iii. 40 (Warburton). (7) With Pyrrhus standing like a painted tyrant cf.Macb.v.viii. 25 (Delius). (8) The forging of Mars's armour occurs again inTr. and Cr.iv.v. 255, where Hector swears by the forge that stithied Mars his helm, just as Hamlet himself alludes to Vulcan's stithy (iii.ii. 89). (9) The idea of 'strumpet Fortune' is common:e.g.Macb.i.ii. 15, 'Fortune ... show'd like a rebel's whore.' (10) With the 'rant' about her wheel Warburton comparesAnt. and Cl.iv.xv. 43, where Cleopatra would

rail so highThat the false huswife Fortune break her wheel.

(11.) Pyrrhus minces with his sword Priam's limbs, and Timon (iv.iii. 122) bids Alcibiades 'mince' the babe without remorse.'[263]

FOOTNOTES:[259]It is impossible to tell whether Coleridge formed his view independently, or adopted it from Schlegel. For there is no record of his having expressed his opinion prior to the time of his reading Schlegel'sLectures; and, whatever he said to the contrary, his borrowings from Schlegel are demonstrable.[260]Clark and Wright well compare Polonius' antithesis of 'rich, not gaudy': though I doubt if 'handsome' implies richness.[261]Is it not possible that 'mobled queen,' to which Hamlet seems to object, and which Polonius praises, is meant for an example of the second fault of affected phraseology, from which the play was said to be free, and an instance of which therefore surprises Hamlet?[262]The extravagance of these phrases is doubtless intentional (for Macbeth in using them is trying to act a part), but theabsurdityof the second can hardly be so.[263]Steevens observes that Heywood uses the phrase 'guled with slaughter,' and I find in hisIron Agevarious passages indicating that he knew the speech of Aeneas (cf. p.140for another sign that he knewHamlet). The two parts of theIron Agewere published in 1632, but are said, in the preface to the Second, to have 'been long since writ.' I refer to the pages of vol. 3 of Pearson'sHeywood(1874). (1) p. 329, Troilus 'lyeth imbak'd In his cold blood.' (2) p. 341, of Achilles' armour:Vulcanthat wrought it out of gadds of SteeleWith hisCiclopianhammers, never madeSuch noise upon his Anvile forging it,Than these my arm'd fists inUlisseswracke.(3) p. 357, 'tillHecub'sreverent lockes Be gul'd in slaughter.' (4) p. 357, 'Scamanderplaines Ore-spread with intrailes bak'd in blood and dust.' (5) p. 378, 'We'll rost them at the scorching flames ofTroy.' (6) p. 379, 'tragicke slaughter, clad in gules and sables' (cf.'sable arms' in the speech inHamlet). (7) p. 384, 'these lockes, now knotted all, As bak't in blood.' Of these, all but (1) and (2) are in Part II. Part I. has many passages which recallTroilus and Cressida. Mr. Fleay's speculation as to its date will be found in hisChronicle History of the English Drama, i. p. 285.For the same writer's ingenious theory (which is of course incapable of proof) regarding the relation of the player's speech inHamletto Marlowe and Nash'sDido, see Furness's VariorumHamlet.

FOOTNOTES:

[259]It is impossible to tell whether Coleridge formed his view independently, or adopted it from Schlegel. For there is no record of his having expressed his opinion prior to the time of his reading Schlegel'sLectures; and, whatever he said to the contrary, his borrowings from Schlegel are demonstrable.

[260]Clark and Wright well compare Polonius' antithesis of 'rich, not gaudy': though I doubt if 'handsome' implies richness.

[261]Is it not possible that 'mobled queen,' to which Hamlet seems to object, and which Polonius praises, is meant for an example of the second fault of affected phraseology, from which the play was said to be free, and an instance of which therefore surprises Hamlet?

[262]The extravagance of these phrases is doubtless intentional (for Macbeth in using them is trying to act a part), but theabsurdityof the second can hardly be so.

[263]Steevens observes that Heywood uses the phrase 'guled with slaughter,' and I find in hisIron Agevarious passages indicating that he knew the speech of Aeneas (cf. p.140for another sign that he knewHamlet). The two parts of theIron Agewere published in 1632, but are said, in the preface to the Second, to have 'been long since writ.' I refer to the pages of vol. 3 of Pearson'sHeywood(1874). (1) p. 329, Troilus 'lyeth imbak'd In his cold blood.' (2) p. 341, of Achilles' armour:Vulcanthat wrought it out of gadds of SteeleWith hisCiclopianhammers, never madeSuch noise upon his Anvile forging it,Than these my arm'd fists inUlisseswracke.(3) p. 357, 'tillHecub'sreverent lockes Be gul'd in slaughter.' (4) p. 357, 'Scamanderplaines Ore-spread with intrailes bak'd in blood and dust.' (5) p. 378, 'We'll rost them at the scorching flames ofTroy.' (6) p. 379, 'tragicke slaughter, clad in gules and sables' (cf.'sable arms' in the speech inHamlet). (7) p. 384, 'these lockes, now knotted all, As bak't in blood.' Of these, all but (1) and (2) are in Part II. Part I. has many passages which recallTroilus and Cressida. Mr. Fleay's speculation as to its date will be found in hisChronicle History of the English Drama, i. p. 285.For the same writer's ingenious theory (which is of course incapable of proof) regarding the relation of the player's speech inHamletto Marlowe and Nash'sDido, see Furness's VariorumHamlet.

Vulcanthat wrought it out of gadds of SteeleWith hisCiclopianhammers, never madeSuch noise upon his Anvile forging it,Than these my arm'd fists inUlisseswracke.

(3) p. 357, 'tillHecub'sreverent lockes Be gul'd in slaughter.' (4) p. 357, 'Scamanderplaines Ore-spread with intrailes bak'd in blood and dust.' (5) p. 378, 'We'll rost them at the scorching flames ofTroy.' (6) p. 379, 'tragicke slaughter, clad in gules and sables' (cf.'sable arms' in the speech inHamlet). (7) p. 384, 'these lockes, now knotted all, As bak't in blood.' Of these, all but (1) and (2) are in Part II. Part I. has many passages which recallTroilus and Cressida. Mr. Fleay's speculation as to its date will be found in hisChronicle History of the English Drama, i. p. 285.

For the same writer's ingenious theory (which is of course incapable of proof) regarding the relation of the player's speech inHamletto Marlowe and Nash'sDido, see Furness's VariorumHamlet.

Johnson, in commenting on the passage (v.ii. 237-255), says: 'I wish Hamlet had made some other defence; it is unsuitable to the character of a good or a brave man to shelter himself in falsehood.' And Seymour (according to Furness) thought the falsehood so ignoble that he rejected lines 239-250 as an interpolation!

I wish first to remark that we are mistaken when we suppose that Hamlet is here apologising specially for his behaviour to Laertes at Ophelia's grave. We naturally suppose this because he has told Horatio that he is sorry he 'forgot himself' on that occasion, and that he will court Laertes' favours (v.ii. 75 ff.). But what he says in that very passage shows that he is thinking chiefly of the greater wrong he has done Laertes by depriving him of his father:

For, by the image of my cause, I seeThe portraiture of his.

And it is also evident in the last words of the apology itself that he is referring in it to the deaths of Polonius and Ophelia:

Sir, in this audience,Let my disclaiming from a purposed evilFree me so far in your most generous thoughts,That I have shot mine arrow o'er the house,And hurt my brother.

But now, as to the falsehood. The charge is not to be set aside lightly; and, for my part, I confess that, while rejecting of course Johnson's notion that Shakespeare wanted to paint 'a good man,' I have momentarily shared Johnson's wish that Hamlet had made 'some other defence' than that of madness. But I think the wish proceeds from failure to imagine the situation.

In the first place,whatother defence can we wish Hamlet to have made? I can think of none. He cannot tell the truth. He cannot say to Laertes, 'I meant to stab the King, not your father.' He cannot explain why he was unkind to Ophelia. Even on the false supposition that he is referring simply to hisbehaviour at the grave, he can hardly say, I suppose, 'You ranted so abominably that you put me into a towering passion.'Whateverhe said, it would have to be more or less untrue.

Next, what moral difference is there between feigning insanity and asserting it? If we are to blame Hamlet for the second, why not equally for the first?

And, finally, even if he were referring simply to his behaviour at the grave, his excuse, besides falling in with his whole plan of feigning insanity, would be as near the truth as any he could devise. For we are not to take the account he gives to Horatio, that he was put in a passion by the bravery of Laertes' grief, as the whole truth. His raving over the grave is notmereacting. On the contrary, that passage is the best card that the believers in Hamlet's madness have to play. He is really almost beside himself with grief as well as anger, half-maddened by the impossibility of explaining to Laertes how he has come to do what he has done, full of wild rage and then of sick despair at this wretched world which drives him to such deeds and such misery. It is the same rage and despair that mingle with other feelings in his outbreak to Ophelia in the Nunnery-scene. But of all this, even if he were clearly conscious of it, he cannot speak to Horatio; for his love to Ophelia is a subject on which he has never opened his lips to his friend.

If we realise the situation, then, we shall, I think, repress the wish that Hamlet had 'made some other defence' than that of madness. We shall feel only tragic sympathy.

As I have referred to Hamlet's apology, I will add a remark on it from a different point of view. It forms another refutation of the theory that Hamlet has delayed his vengeance till he could publicly convict the King, and that he has come back to Denmark because now, with the evidence of the commission in his pocket, he can safely accuse him. If that were so, what better opportunity could he possibly find than this occasion, where he has to express his sorrow to Laertes for the grievous wrongs which he has unintentionally inflicted on him?

I am not going to discuss the question how this exchange ought to be managed. I wish merely to point out that the stage-direction fails to show the sequence of speeches and events. The passage is as follows (Globe text):

The words 'and Hamlet wounds Laertes' in Rowe's stage-direction destroy the point of the words given to the King in the text. If Laertes is already wounded, why should the King care whether the fencers are parted or not? What makes him cry out is that, while he sees his purpose effected as regards Hamlet, he also sees Laertes in danger through the exchange of foils in the scuffle. Now it is not to be supposed that Laertes is particularly dear to him; but he sees instantaneously that, if Laertes escapes the poisoned foil, he will certainly hold his tongue about the plot against Hamlet, while, if he is wounded, he may confess the truth; for it is no doubt quite evident to the King that Laertes has fenced tamely because his conscience is greatly troubled by the treachery he is about to practise. The King therefore, as soon as he sees the exchange of foils, cries out, 'Part them; they are incensed.' But Hamlet's blood is up. 'Nay,come, again,' he calls to Laertes, who cannot refuse to play, andnowis wounded by Hamlet. At the very same moment the Queen falls to the ground; and ruin rushes on the King from the right hand and the left.

The passage, therefore, should be printed thus:

FOOTNOTES:[264]So Rowe. The direction in Q1 is negligible, the text being different. Q2 etc. have nothing, Ff. simply 'In scuffling they change rapiers.'[265]Capell. The Quartos and Folios have no directions.

FOOTNOTES:

[264]So Rowe. The direction in Q1 is negligible, the text being different. Q2 etc. have nothing, Ff. simply 'In scuffling they change rapiers.'

[265]Capell. The Quartos and Folios have no directions.

The quite unusual difficulties regarding this subject have led to much discussion, a synopsis of which may be found in Furness's Variorum edition, pp. 358-72. Without detailing the facts I will briefly set out the main difficulty, which is that, according to one set of indications (which I will call A), Desdemona was murdered within a day or two of her arrival in Cyprus, while, according to another set (which I will call B), some time elapsed between her arrival and the catastrophe. Let us take A first, and run through the play.

(A) Acti.opens on the night of Othello's marriage. On that night he is despatched to Cyprus, leaving Desdemona to follow him.

In Actii.Sc. i., there arrive at Cyprus, first, in one ship, Cassio; then, in another, Desdemona, Iago, and Emilia; then, in another, Othello (Othello, Cassio, and Desdemona being in three different ships, it does not matter, for our purpose, how long the voyage lasted). On the night following these arrivals in Cyprus the marriage is consummated (ii.iii. 9), Cassio is cashiered, and, on Iago's advice, he resolves to ask Desdemona's intercession 'betimes in the morning' (ii.iii. 335).

In Actiii.Sc. iii. (the Temptation scene), he does so: Desdemona does intercede: Iago begins to poison Othello's mind: the handkerchief is lost, found by Emilia, and given to Iago: he determines to leave it in Cassio's room, and, renewing hisattack on Othello, asserts that he has seen the handkerchief in Cassio's hand: Othello bids him kill Cassio within three days, and resolves to kill Desdemona himself. All this occurs in one unbroken scene, and evidently on the day after the arrival in Cyprus (seeiii.i. 33).

In the scene (iv.) following the Temptation scene Desdemona sends to bid Cassio come, as she has interceded for him: Othello enters, tests her about the handkerchief, and departs in anger: Cassio, arriving, is told of the change in Othello, and, being leftsolus, is accosted by Bianca, whom he requests to copy the work on the handkerchief which he has just found in his room (ll. 188 f.). All this is naturally taken to happen in the later part of the day on which the events ofiii.i.-iii. took place,i.e.the day after the arrival in Cyprus: but I shall return to this point.

Iniv.i. Iago tells Othello that Cassio has confessed, and, placing Othello where he can watch, he proceeds on Cassio's entrance to rally him about Bianca; and Othello, not being near enough to hear what is said, believes that Cassio is laughing at his conquest of Desdemona. Cassio here says that Bianca haunts him and 'was hereeven now'; and Bianca herself, coming in, reproaches him about the handkerchief 'you gave meeven now.' There is therefore no appreciable time betweeniii.iv. andiv.i. In this same scene Bianca bids Cassio come to supperto-night; and Lodovico, arriving, is asked to sup with Othelloto-night. Iniv.ii. Iago persuades Roderigo to kill Cassiothat nightas he comes from Bianca's. Iniv.iii. Lodovico, after supper, takes his leave, and Othello bids Desdemona go to bed on the instant and dismiss her attendant.

In Actv.,that night, the attempted assassination of Cassio, and the murder of Desdemona, take place.

From all this, then, it seems clear that the time between the arrival in Cyprus and the catastrophe is certainly not more than a few days, and most probably only about a day and a half: or, to put it otherwise, that most probably Othello kills his wife about twenty-four hours after the consummation of their marriage!

The onlypossibleplace, it will be seen, where time can elapse is betweeniii.iii. andiii.iv. And here Mr. Fleay would imagine a gap of at least a week. The reader will find that this supposition involves the following results, (a) Desdemona has allowedat least a week to elapse without telling Cassio that she has interceded for him. (b) Othello, after being convinced of her guilt, after resolving to kill her, and after ordering Iago to kill Cassio within three days, has allowed at least a week to elapse without even questioning her about the handkerchief, and has so behaved during all this time that she is totally unconscious of any change in his feelings. (c) Desdemona, who reserves the handkerchief evermore about her to kiss and talk to (iii.iii. 295), has lost it for at least a week before she is conscious of the loss. (d) Iago has waited at least a week to leave the handkerchief in Cassio's chamber; for Cassio has evidently only just found it, and wants the work on it copied before the owner makes inquiries for it. These are all gross absurdities. It is certain that only a short time, most probable that not even a night, elapses betweeniii.iii. andiii.iv.

(B) Now this idea that Othello killed his wife, probably within twenty-four hours, certainly within a few days, of the consummation of his marriage, contradicts the impression produced by the play on all uncritical readers and spectators. It is also in flat contradiction with a large number of time-indications in the play itself. It is needless to mention more than a few. (a) Bianca complains that Cassio has kept away from her for a week (iii.iv. 173). Cassio and the rest have therefore been more than a week in Cyprus, and, we should naturally infer, considerably more. (b) The ground on which Iago builds throughout is the probability of Desdemona's having got tired of the Moor; she is accused of having repeatedly committed adultery with Cassio (e.g.v.ii. 210); these facts and a great many others, such as Othello's language iniii.iii. 338 ff., are utterly absurd on the supposition that he murders his wife within a day or two of the night when he consummated his marriage. (c) Iago's account of Cassio's dream implies (and indeed states) that he had been sleeping with Cassio 'lately,'i.e.after arriving at Cyprus: yet, according to A, he had only spent one night in Cyprus, and we are expressly told that Cassio never went to bed on that night. Iago doubtless was a liar, but Othello was not an absolute idiot.

Thus (1) one set of time-indications clearly shows that Othello murdered his wife within a few days, probably a day and a half, of his arrival in Cyprus and the consummation of his marriage;(2) another set of time-indications implies quite as clearly that some little time must have elapsed, probably a few weeks; and this last is certainly the impression of a reader who has not closely examined the play.

It is impossible to escape this result. The suggestion that the imputed intrigue of Cassio and Desdemona took place at Venice before the marriage, not at Cyprus after it, is quite futile. There is no positive evidence whatever for it; if the reader will merely refer to the difficulties mentioned under B above, he will see that it leaves almost all of them absolutely untouched; and Iago's accusation is uniformly one of adultery.

How then is this extraordinary contradiction to be explained? It can hardly be one of the casual inconsistencies, due to forgetfulness, which are found in Shakespeare's other tragedies; for the scheme of time indicated under A seems deliberate and self-consistent, and the scheme indicated under B seems, if less deliberate, equally self-consistent. This does not look as if a single scheme had been so vaguely imagined that inconsistencies arose in working it out; it points to some other source of contradiction.

'Christopher North,' who dealt very fully with the question, elaborated a doctrine of Double Time, Short and Long. To do justice to this theory in a few words is impossible, but its essence is the notion that Shakespeare, consciously or unconsciously, wanted to produce on the spectator (for he did not aim at readers) two impressions. He wanted the spectator to feel a passionate and vehement haste in the action; but he also wanted him to feel that the action was fairly probable. Consciously or unconsciously he used Short Time (the scheme of A) for the first purpose, and Long Time (the scheme of B) for the second. The spectator is affected in the required manner by both, though without distinctly noticing the indications of the two schemes.

The notion underlying this theory is probably true, but the theory itself can hardly stand. Passing minor matters by, I would ask the reader to consider the following remarks. (a) If, as seems to be maintained, the spectator does not notice the indications of 'Short Time' at all, how can they possibly affect him? The passion, vehemence and haste of Othello affect him, because he perceives them; but if he does not perceive the hints whichshow the duration of the action from the arrival in Cyprus to the murder, these hints have simply no existence for him and are perfectly useless. The theory, therefore, does not explain the existence of 'Short Time.' (b) It is not the case that 'Short Time' is wanted only to produce an impression of vehemence and haste, and 'Long Time' for probability. The 'Short Time' is equally wanted for probability: for it is grossly improbable that Iago's intrigue should not break down if Othello spends a week or weeks between the successful temptation and his execution of justice. (c) And this brings me to the most important point, which appears to have escaped notice. The place where 'Long Time' is wanted is notwithinIago's intrigue. 'Long Time' is required simply and solely because the intrigue and its circumstances presuppose a marriage consummated, and an adultery possible, for (let us say) some weeks. But, granted that lapse between the marriage and the temptation, there is no reason whatever why more than a few days or even one day should elapse between this temptation and the murder. The whole trouble arises because the temptation begins on the morning after the consummated marriage. Let some three weeks elapse between the first night at Cyprus and the temptation; let the brawl which ends in the disgrace of Cassio occur not on that night but three weeks later; or again let it occur that night, but let three weeks elapse before the intercession of Desdemona and the temptation of Iago begin. All will then be clear. Cassio has time to make acquaintance with Bianca, and to neglect her: the Senate has time to hear of the perdition of the Turkish fleet and to recall Othello: the accusations of Iago cease to be ridiculous; and the headlong speed of the action after the temptation has begun is quite in place. Now, too, there is no reason why we should not be affected by the hints of time ('to-day,' 'to-night,' 'even now'), which wedoperceive (though we do not calculate them out). And, lastly, this supposition corresponds with our natural impression, which is that the temptation and what follows it take place some little while after the marriage, but occupy, themselves, a very short time.

Now, of course, the supposition just described is no fact. As the play stands, it is quite certain that there is no space of three weeks, or anything like it, either between the arrival in Cyprus and the brawl, or between the brawl and the temptation. AndI draw attention to the supposition chiefly to show that quite a small change would remove the difficulties, and to insist that there is nothing wrong at all in regard to the time from the temptation onward. How to account for the existing contradictions I do not at all profess to know, and I will merely mention two possibilities.

Possibly, as Mr. Daniel observes, the play has been tampered with. We have no text earlier than 1622, six years after Shakespeare's death. It may be suggested, then, that in the play, as Shakespeare wrote it, there was a gap of some weeks between the arrival in Cyprus and Cassio's brawl, or (less probably) between the brawl and the temptation. Perhaps there was a scene indicating the lapse of time. Perhaps it was dull, or the play was a little too long, or devotees of the unity of time made sport of a second breach of that unity coming just after the breach caused by the voyage. Perhaps accordingly the owners of the play altered, or hired a dramatist to alter, the arrangement at this point, and this was unwittingly done in such a way as to produce the contradictions we are engaged on. There is nothing intrinsically unlikely in this idea; and certainly, I think, the amount of such corruption of Shakespeare's texts by the players is usually rather underrated than otherwise. But I cannot say I see any signs of foreign alteration in the text, though it is somewhat odd that Roderigo, who makes no complaint on the day of the arrival in Cyprus when he is being persuaded to draw Cassio into a quarrel that night, should, directly after the quarrel (ii.iii. 370), complain that he is making no advance in his pursuit of Desdemona, and should speak as though he had been in Cyprus long enough to have spent nearly all the money he brought from Venice.

Or, possibly, Shakespeare's original plan was to allow some time to elapse after the arrival at Cyprus, but when he reached the point he found it troublesome to indicate this lapse in an interesting way, and convenient to produce Cassio's fall by means of the rejoicings on the night of the arrival, and then almost necessary to let the request for intercession, and the temptation, follow on the next day. And perhaps he said to himself, No one in the theatre will notice that all this makes an impossible position: and I can make all safe by using language that implies that Othello has after all been married for some time. If so, probably he was right. I do not think anyone does notice theimpossibilities either in the theatre or in a casual reading of the play.

Either of these suppositions is possible: neither is, to me, probable. The first seems the less unlikely. If the second is true, Shakespeare did inOthellowhat he seems to do in no other play. I can believe that he may have done so; but I find it very hard to believe that he produced this impossible situation without knowing it. It is one thing to read a drama or see it, quite another to construct and compose it, and he appears to have imagined the action inOthellowith even more than his usual intensity.

The first printedOthellois the first Quarto (Q1), 1622; the second is the first Folio (F1), 1623. These two texts are two distinct versions of the play. Q1 contains many oaths and expletives where less 'objectionable' expressions occur in F1. Partly for this reason it is believed to represent theearliertext, perhaps the text as it stood before the Act of 1605 against profanity on the stage. Its readings are frequently superior to those of F1, but it wants many lines that appear in F1, which probably represents the acting version in 1623. I give a list of the longer passages absent from Q1:

Were these passages after-thoughts, composed after the version represented by Q1 was written? Or were they in the version represented by Q1, and only omitted in printing, whether accidentally or because they were also omitted in the theatre? Or were some of them after-thoughts, and others in the original version?

I will take them in order. (a) can hardly be an after-thought. Up to that point Roderigo had hardly said anything, for Iago had always interposed; and it is very unlikely that Roderigo would now deliver but four lines, and speak at once of 'she' instead of 'your daughter.' Probably this 'omission' represents a 'cut' in stage performance. (b) This may also be the case here. In our texts the omission of the passage would make nonsense, but in Q1 the 'cut' (if a cut) has been mended, awkwardly enough, by the substitution of 'Such' for 'For' in line 78. In any case, the lines cannot be an addition. (c) cannot be an after-thought, for the sentence is unfinished without it; and that it was not meant to be interrupted is clear, because in Q1 line 31 begins 'And,' not 'Nay'; the Duke might say 'Nay' if he were cutting the previous speaker short, but not 'And.' (d) is surely no addition. If the lines are cut out, not only is the metre spoilt, but the obvious reason for Iago's words, 'I see, Sir, you are eaten up with passion,' disappears, and so does the reference of his word 'satisfied' in 393 to Othello's 'satisfied' in 390. (e) is the famous passage about the Pontic Sea, and I reserve it for the present. (f) As Pope observes, 'no hint of this trash in the first edition,' the 'trash' including the words 'Nature would not invest herself in such shadowing passion without some instruction. It is not words that shake me thus'! There is nothing to prove these lines to be original or an after-thought. The omission of (g) is clearly a printer's error, due to the fact that lines 72 and 76 both end with the word 'committed.' No conclusion can be formed as to (h), nor perhaps (i), which includes the whole of Desdemona's song; but if (j) is removed the reference in 'such a deed' in 64 is destroyed. (k) is Emilia's long speech about husbands. It cannot well be an after-thought, for 105-6 evidently refer to 103-4 (even the word 'uses' in 105 refers to 'use' in 103). (l) is no after-thought, for 'if he says so' in 155 must point back to 'my husband say that she was false!' in 152. (m) might bean after-thought, but, if so, in the first version the ending 'to speak' occurred twice within three lines, and the reason for Iago's sudden alarm in 193 is much less obvious. If (n) is an addition the original collocation was:

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