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A. C. Bradley - Shakespearean Tragedy

A >> A. C. Bradley >> Shakespearean Tragedy




I have dwelt thus at length on Hamlet's melancholy because, from the
psychological point of view, it is the centre of the tragedy, and to
omit it from consideration or to underrate its intensity is to make
Shakespeare's story unintelligible. But the psychological point of view
is not equivalent to the tragic; and, having once given its due weight
to the fact of Hamlet's melancholy, we may freely admit, or rather may
be anxious to insist, that this pathological condition would excite but
little, if any, tragic interest if it were not the condition of a nature
distinguished by that speculative genius on which the Schlegel-Coleridge
type of theory lays stress. Such theories misinterpret the connection
between that genius and Hamlet's failure, but still it is this
connection which gives to his story its peculiar fascination and makes
it appear (if the phrase may be allowed) as the symbol of a tragic
mystery inherent in human nature. Wherever this mystery touches us,
wherever we are forced to feel the wonder and awe of man's godlike
'apprehension' and his 'thoughts that wander through eternity,' and at
the same time are forced to see him powerless in his petty sphere of
action, and powerless (it would appear) from the very divinity of his
thought, we remember Hamlet. And this is the reason why, in the great
ideal movement which began towards the close of the eighteenth century,
this tragedy acquired a position unique among Shakespeare's dramas, and
shared only by Goethe's _Faust_. It was not that _Hamlet_ is
Shakespeare's greatest tragedy or most perfect work of art; it was that
_Hamlet_ most brings home to us at once the sense of the soul's
infinity, and the sense of the doom which not only circumscribes that
infinity but appears to be its offspring.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 25: It may be convenient to some readers for the purposes of
this book to have by them a list of Shakespeare's plays, arranged in
periods. No such list, of course, can command general assent, but the
following (which does not throughout represent my own views) would
perhaps meet with as little objection from scholars as any other. For
some purposes the Third and Fourth Periods are better considered to be
one. Within each period the so-called Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies
are respectively grouped together; and for this reason, as well as for
others, the order within each period does not profess to be
chronological (_e.g._ it is not implied that the _Comedy of Errors_
preceded _1 Henry VI._ or _Titus Andronicus_). Where Shakespeare's
authorship of any considerable part of a play is questioned, widely or
by specially good authority, the name of the play is printed in italics.

_First Period_ (to 1595?).--Comedy of Errors, Love's Labour's Lost, Two
Gentlemen of Verona, Midsummer-Night's Dream; _1 Henry VI._, _2 Henry
VI._, _3 Henry VI._, Richard III., Richard II.; _Titus Andronicus_,
Romeo and Juliet.

_Second Period_ (to 1602?).--Merchant of Venice, All's Well (better in
Third Period?), _Taming of the Shrew_, Much Ado, As You Like it, Merry
Wives, Twelfth Night; King John, 1 Henry IV., 2 Henry IV., Henry V.;
Julius Caesar, Hamlet.

_Third Period_ (to 1608?).--Troilus and Cressida, Measure for Measure;
Othello, King Lear, _Timon of Athens_, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra,
Coriolanus.

_Fourth Period._--_Pericles_, Cymbeline, Winter's Tale, Tempest, _Two
Noble Kinsmen_, _Henry VIII._]

[Footnote 26: The reader will observe that this 'tragic period' would
not exactly coincide with the 'Third Period' of the division given in
the last note. For _Julius Caesar_ and _Hamlet_ fall in the Second
Period, not the Third; and I may add that, as _Pericles_ was entered at
Stationers' Hall in 1608 and published in 1609, it ought strictly to be
put in the Third Period--not the Fourth. The truth is that _Julius
Caesar_ and _Hamlet_ are given to the Second Period mainly on the ground
of style; while a Fourth Period is admitted, not mainly on that ground
(for there is no great difference here between _Antony_ and _Coriolanus_
on the one side and _Cymbeline_ and the _Tempest_ on the other), but
because of a difference in substance and spirit. If a Fourth Period were
admitted on grounds of form, it ought to begin with _Antony and
Cleopatra_.]

[Footnote 27: I should go perhaps too far if I said that it is generally
admitted that _Timon of Athens_ also precedes the two Roman tragedies;
but its precedence seems to me so nearly certain that I assume it in
what follows.]

[Footnote 28: That play, however, is distinguished, I think, by a
deliberate endeavour after a dignified and unadorned simplicity,--a
Roman simplicity perhaps.]

[Footnote 29: It is quite probable that this may arise in part from the
fact, which seems hardly doubtful, that the tragedy was revised, and in
places re-written, some little time after its first composition.]

[Footnote 30: This, if we confine ourselves to the tragedies, is, I
think, especially the case in _King Lear_ and _Timon_.]

[Footnote 31: The first, at any rate, of these three plays is, of
course, much nearer to _Hamlet_, especially in versification, than to
_Antony and Cleopatra_, in which Shakespeare's final style first shows
itself practically complete. It has been impossible, in the brief
treatment of this subject, to say what is required of the individual
plays.]

[Footnote 32: _The Mirror_, 18th April, 1780, quoted by Furness,
_Variorum Hamlet_, ii. 148. In the above remarks I have relied mainly on
Furness's collection of extracts from early critics.]

[Footnote 33: I do not profess to reproduce any one theory, and, still
less, to do justice to the ablest exponent of this kind of view, Werder
(_Vorlesungen ueber Hamlet_, 1875), who by no means regards Hamlet's
difficulties as _merely_ external.]

[Footnote 34: I give one instance. When he spares the King, he speaks of
killing him when he is drunk asleep, when he is in his rage, when he is
awake in bed, when he is gaming, as if there were in none of these cases
the least obstacle (III. iii. 89 ff.).]

[Footnote 35: It is surprising to find quoted, in support of the
conscience view, the line 'Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,'
and to observe the total misinterpretation of the soliloquy _To be or
not to be_, from which the line comes. In this soliloquy Hamlet is not
thinking of the duty laid upon him at all. He is debating the question
of suicide. No one oppressed by the ills of life, he says, would
continue to bear them if it were not for speculation about his possible
fortune in another life. And then, generalising, he says (what applies
to himself, no doubt, though he shows no consciousness of the fact) that
such speculation or reflection makes men hesitate and shrink like
cowards from great actions and enterprises. 'Conscience' does not mean
moral sense or scrupulosity, but this reflection on the _consequences_
of action. It is the same thing as the 'craven scruple of thinking too
precisely on the event' of the speech in IV. iv. As to this use
of 'conscience,' see Schmidt, _s.v._ and the parallels there given. The
_Oxford Dictionary_ also gives many examples of similar uses of
'conscience,' though it unfortunately lends its authority to the
misinterpretation criticised.]

[Footnote 36: The King does not die of the _poison_ on the foil, like
Laertes and Hamlet. They were wounded before he was, but they die after
him.]

[Footnote 37: I may add here a word on one small matter. It is
constantly asserted that Hamlet wept over the body of Polonius. Now, if
he did, it would make no difference to my point in the paragraph above;
but there is no warrant in the text for the assertion. It is based on
some words of the Queen (IV. i. 24), in answer to the King's
question, 'Where is he gone?':

To draw apart the body he hath killed:
O'er whom his very madness, like some ore
Among a mineral of metals base,
Shows itself pure; he weeps for what is done.

But the Queen, as was pointed out by Doering, is trying to screen her
son. She has already made the false statement that when Hamlet, crying,
'A rat! a rat!', ran his rapier through the arras, it was because he
heard _something stir_ there, whereas we know that what he heard was a
man's voice crying, 'What ho! help, help, help!' And in this scene she
has come straight from the interview with her son, terribly agitated,
shaken with 'sighs' and 'profound heaves,' in the night (line 30). Now
we know what Hamlet said to the body, and of the body, in that
interview; and there is assuredly no sound of tears in the voice that
said those things and others. The only sign of relenting is in the words
(III. iv. 171):

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

His mother's statement, therefore, is almost certainly untrue, though it
may be to her credit. (It is just conceivable that Hamlet wept at
III. iv. 130, and that the Queen supposed he was weeping for
Polonius.)

Perhaps, however, he may have wept over Polonius's body afterwards?
Well, in the _next_ scene (IV. ii.) we see him _alone_ with the
body, and are therefore likely to witness his genuine feelings. And his
first words are, 'Safely stowed'!]

[Footnote 38: Not 'must cripple,' as the English translation has it.]

[Footnote 39: He says so to Horatio, whom he has no motive for deceiving
(V. ii. 218). His contrary statement (II. ii. 308) is made to
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.]

[Footnote 40: See Note B.]

[Footnote 41: The critics have laboured to find a cause, but it seems to
me Shakespeare simply meant to portray a pathological condition; and a
very touching picture he draws. Antonio's sadness, which he describes in
the opening lines of the play, would never drive him to suicide, but it
makes him indifferent to the issue of the trial, as all his speeches in
the trial-scene show.]

[Footnote 42: Of course 'your' does not mean Horatio's philosophy in
particular. 'Your' is used as the Gravedigger uses it when he says that
'your water is a sore decayer of your ... dead body.']

[Footnote 43: This aspect of the matter leaves _us_ comparatively
unaffected, but Shakespeare evidently means it to be of importance. The
Ghost speaks of it twice, and Hamlet thrice (once in his last furious
words to the King). If, as we must suppose, the marriage was universally
admitted to be incestuous, the corrupt acquiescence of the court and the
electors to the crown would naturally have a strong effect on Hamlet's
mind.]

[Footnote 44: It is most significant that the metaphor of this soliloquy
reappears in Hamlet's adjuration to his mother (III. iv. 150):

Repent what's past; avoid what is to come;
And do not spread the compost on the weeds
To make them ranker.]

[Footnote 45: If the reader will now look at the only speech of Hamlet's
that precedes the soliloquy, and is more than one line in length--the
speech beginning 'Seems, madam! nay, it _is_'--he will understand what,
surely, when first we come to it, sounds very strange and almost
boastful. It is not, in effect, about Hamlet himself at all; it is about
his mother (I do not mean that it is intentionally and consciously so;
and still less that she understood it so).]

[Footnote 46: See Note D.]

[Footnote 47: See p. 13.]

[Footnote 48: _E.g._ in the transition, referred to above, from
desire for vengeance into the wish never to have been born; in
the soliloquy, 'O what a rogue'; in the scene at Ophelia's grave.
The Schlegel-Coleridge theory does not account for the psychological
movement in these passages.]

[Footnote 49: Hamlet's violence at Ophelia's grave, though probably
intentionally exaggerated, is another example of this want of
self-control. The Queen's description of him (V. i. 307),

This is mere madness;
And thus awhile the fit will work on him;
Anon, as patient as the female dove,
When that her golden couplets are disclosed,
His silence will sit drooping.

may be true to life, though it is evidently prompted by anxiety to
excuse his violence on the ground of his insanity. On this passage see
further Note G.]

[Footnote 50: Throughout, I italicise to show the connection of ideas.]

[Footnote 51: Cf. _Measure for Measure_, IV. iv. 23, 'This deed
... makes me unpregnant and dull to all proceedings.']

[Footnote 52: III. ii. 196 ff., IV. vii. 111 ff.:
_e.g._,

Purpose is but the slave to _memory_,
Of violent birth but poor validity.]

[Footnote 53: So, before, he had said to him:

And duller should'st thou be than the fat weed
That roots itself in ease on Lethe wharf,
Would'st thou not stir in this.

On Hamlet's soliloquy after the Ghost's disappearance see Note D.]




LECTURE IV

HAMLET


The only way, if there is any way, in which a conception of Hamlet's
character could be proved true, would be to show that it, and it alone,
explains all the relevant facts presented by the text of the drama. To
attempt such a demonstration here would obviously be impossible, even if
I felt certain of the interpretation of all the facts. But I propose now
to follow rapidly the course of the action in so far as it specially
illustrates the character, reserving for separate consideration one
important but particularly doubtful point.


1

We left Hamlet, at the close of the First Act, when he had just received
his charge from the spirit of his father; and his condition was vividly
depicted in the fact that, within an hour of receiving this charge, he
had relapsed into that weariness of life or longing for death which is
the immediate cause of his later inaction. When next we meet him, at the
opening of the Second Act, a considerable time has elapsed, apparently
as much as two months.[54] The ambassadors sent to the King of Norway
(I. ii. 27) are just returning. Laertes, whom we saw leaving Elsinore
(I. iii.), has been in Paris long enough to be in want of fresh
supplies. Ophelia has obeyed her father's command (given in I. iii.),
and has refused to receive Hamlet's visits or letters. What has Hamlet
done? He has put on an 'antic disposition' and established a reputation
for lunacy, with the result that his mother has become deeply anxious
about him, and with the further result that the King, who was formerly
so entirely at ease regarding him that he wished him to stay on at
Court, is now extremely uneasy and very desirous to discover the cause
of his 'transformation.' Hence Rosencrantz and Guildenstern have been
sent for, to cheer him by their company and to worm his secret out of
him; and they are just about to arrive. Beyond exciting thus the
apprehensions of his enemy Hamlet has done absolutely nothing; and, as
we have seen, we must imagine him during this long period sunk for the
most part in 'bestial oblivion' or fruitless broodings, and falling
deeper and deeper into the slough of despond.

Now he takes a further step. He suddenly appears unannounced in
Ophelia's chamber; and his appearance and behaviour are such as to
suggest both to Ophelia and to her father that his brain is turned by
disappointment in love. How far this step was due to the design of
creating a false impression as to the origin of his lunacy, how far to
other causes, is a difficult question; but such a design seems certainly
present. It succeeds, however, only in part; for, although Polonius is
fully convinced, the King is not so, and it is therefore arranged that
the two shall secretly witness a meeting between Ophelia and Hamlet.
Meanwhile Rosencrantz and Guildenstern arrive, and at the King's request
begin their attempts, easily foiled by Hamlet, to pluck out the heart of
his mystery. Then the players come to Court, and for a little while one
of Hamlet's old interests revives, and he is almost happy. But only for
a little while. The emotion shown by the player in reciting the speech
which tells of Hecuba's grief for her slaughtered husband awakes into
burning life the slumbering sense of duty and shame. He must act. With
the extreme rapidity which always distinguishes him in his healthier
moments, he conceives and arranges the plan of having the 'Murder of
Gonzago' played before the King and Queen, with the addition of a speech
written by himself for the occasion. Then, longing to be alone, he
abruptly dismisses his guests, and pours out a passion of self-reproach
for his delay, asks himself in bewilderment what can be its cause,
lashes himself into a fury of hatred against his foe, checks himself in
disgust at his futile emotion, and quiets his conscience for the moment
by trying to convince himself that he has doubts about the Ghost, and by
assuring himself that, if the King's behaviour at the play-scene shows
but a sign of guilt, he 'knows his course.'

Nothing, surely, can be clearer than the meaning of this famous
soliloquy. The doubt which appears at its close, instead of being the
natural conclusion of the preceding thoughts, is totally inconsistent
with them. For Hamlet's self-reproaches, his curses on his enemy, and
his perplexity about his own inaction, one and all imply his faith in
the identity and truthfulness of the Ghost. Evidently this sudden doubt,
of which there has not been the slightest trace before, is no genuine
doubt; it is an unconscious fiction, an excuse for his delay--and for
its continuance.

A night passes, and the day that follows it brings the crisis. First
takes place that interview from which the King is to learn whether
disappointed love is really the cause of his nephew's lunacy. Hamlet is
sent for; poor Ophelia is told to walk up and down, reading her
prayer-book; Polonius and the King conceal themselves behind the arras.
And Hamlet enters, so deeply absorbed in thought that for some time he
supposes himself to be alone. What is he thinking of? 'The Murder of
Gonzago,' which is to be played in a few hours, and on which everything
depends? Not at all. He is meditating on suicide; and he finds that what
stands in the way of it, and counterbalances its infinite attraction, is
not any thought of a sacred unaccomplished duty, but the doubt, quite
irrelevant to that issue, whether it is not ignoble in the mind to end
its misery, and, still more, whether death _would_ end it. Hamlet, that
is to say, is here, in effect, precisely where he was at the time of his
first soliloquy ('O that this too too solid flesh would melt') two
months ago, before ever he heard of his father's murder.[55] His
reflections have no reference to this particular moment; they represent
that habitual weariness of life with which his passing outbursts of
emotion or energy are contrasted. What can be more significant than the
fact that he is sunk in these reflections on the very day which is to
determine for him the truthfulness of the Ghost? And how is it possible
for us to hope that, if that truthfulness should be established, Hamlet
will be any nearer to his revenge?[56]

His interview with Ophelia follows; and its result shows that his delay
is becoming most dangerous to himself. The King is satisfied that,
whatever else may be the hidden cause of Hamlet's madness, it is not
love. He is by no means certain even that Hamlet is mad at all. He has
heard that infuriated threat, 'I say, we will have no more marriages;
those that are married, all but one, shall live; the rest shall keep as
they are.' He is thoroughly alarmed. He at any rate will not delay. On
the spot he determines to send Hamlet to England. But, as Polonius is
present, we do not learn at once the meaning of this purpose.

Evening comes. The approach of the play-scene raises Hamlet's spirits.
He is in his element. He feels that he is doing _something_ towards his
end, striking a stroke, but a stroke of intellect. In his instructions
to the actor on the delivery of the inserted speech, and again in his
conversation with Horatio just before the entry of the Court, we see the
true Hamlet, the Hamlet of the days before his father's death. But how
characteristic it is that he appears quite as anxious that his speech
should not be ranted as that Horatio should observe its effect upon the
King! This trait appears again even at that thrilling moment when the
actor is just going to deliver the speech. Hamlet sees him beginning to
frown and glare like the conventional stage-murderer, and calls to him
impatiently, 'Leave thy damnable faces and begin!'[57]

Hamlet's device proves a triumph far more complete than he had dared to
expect. He had thought the King might 'blench,' but he does much more.
When only six of the 'dozen or sixteen lines' have been spoken he starts
to his feet and rushes from the hall, followed by the whole dismayed
Court. In the elation of success--an elation at first almost
hysterical--Hamlet treats Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who are sent to
him, with undisguised contempt. Left to himself, he declares that now he
could

drink hot blood,
And do such bitter business as the day
Would quake to look on.

He has been sent for by his mother, and is going to her chamber; and so
vehement and revengeful is his mood that he actually fancies himself in
danger of using daggers to her as well as speaking them.[58]

In this mood, on his way to his mother's chamber, he comes upon the
King, alone, kneeling, conscience-stricken and attempting to pray. His
enemy is delivered into his hands.

Now might I do it pat, now he is praying:
And now I'll do it: and so he goes to heaven:
And so am I revenged.[59] That would be scanned.

He scans it; and the sword that he drew at the words, 'And now I'll do
it,' is thrust back into its sheath. If he killed the villain now he
would send his soul to heaven; and he would fain kill soul as well as
body.

That this again is an unconscious excuse for delay is now pretty
generally agreed, and it is needless to describe again the state of mind
which, on the view explained in our last lecture, is the real cause of
Hamlet's failure here. The first five words he utters, 'Now might I do
it,' show that he has no effective _desire_ to 'do it'; and in the
little sentences that follow, and the long pauses between them, the
endeavour at a resolution, and the sickening return of melancholic
paralysis, however difficult a task they set to the actor, are plain
enough to a reader. And any reader who may retain a doubt should observe
the fact that, when the Ghost reappears, Hamlet does not think of
justifying his delay by the plea that he was waiting for a more perfect
vengeance. But in one point the great majority of critics, I think, go
astray. The feeling of intense hatred which Hamlet expresses is not the
cause of his sparing the King, and in his heart he knows this; but it
does not at all follow that this feeling is unreal. All the evidence
afforded by the play goes to show that it is perfectly genuine, and I
see no reason whatever to doubt that Hamlet would have been very sorry
to send his father's murderer to heaven, nor much to doubt that he would
have been glad to send him to perdition. The reason for refusing to
accept his own version of his motive in sparing Claudius is not that his
sentiments are horrible, but that elsewhere, and also in the opening of
his speech here, we can see that his reluctance to act is due to other
causes.

The incident of the sparing of the King is contrived with extraordinary
dramatic insight. On the one side we feel that the opportunity was
perfect. Hamlet could not possibly any longer tell himself that he had
no certainty as to his uncle's guilt. And the external conditions were
most favourable; for the King's remarkable behaviour at the play-scene
would have supplied a damning confirmation of the story Hamlet had to
tell about the Ghost. Even now, probably, in a Court so corrupt as that
of Elsinore, he could not with perfect security have begun by charging
the King with the murder; but he could quite safely have killed him
first and given his justification afterwards, especially as he would
certainly have had on his side the people, who loved him and despised
Claudius. On the other hand, Shakespeare has taken care to give this
perfect opportunity so repulsive a character that we can hardly bring
ourselves to wish that the hero should accept it. One of his minor
difficulties, we have seen, probably was that he seemed to be required
to attack a defenceless man; and here this difficulty is at its maximum.

This incident is, again, the turning-point of the tragedy. So far,
Hamlet's delay, though it is endangering his freedom and his life, has
done no irreparable harm; but his failure here is the cause of all the
disasters that follow. In sparing the King, he sacrifices Polonius,
Ophelia, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Laertes, the Queen and himself.
This central significance of the passage is dramatically indicated in
the following scene by the reappearance of the Ghost and the repetition
of its charge.

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