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A. C. Bradley - Shakespearean Tragedy

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




Polonius is the first to fall. The old courtier, whose vanity would not
allow him to confess that his diagnosis of Hamlet's lunacy was mistaken,
had suggested that, after the theatricals, the Queen should endeavour in
a private interview with her son to penetrate the mystery, while he
himself would repeat his favourite part of eaves-dropper (III. i. 184
ff.). It has now become quite imperative that the Prince should be
brought to disclose his secret; for his choice of the 'Murder of
Gonzago,' and perhaps his conduct during the performance, have shown a
spirit of exaggerated hostility against the King which has excited
general alarm. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern discourse to Claudius on the
extreme importance of his preserving his invaluable life, as though
Hamlet's insanity had now clearly shown itself to be homicidal.[60]
When, then, at the opening of the interview between Hamlet and his
mother, the son, instead of listening to her remonstrances, roughly
assumes the offensive, she becomes alarmed; and when, on her attempting
to leave the room, he takes her by the arm and forces her to sit down,
she is terrified, cries out, 'Thou wilt not murder me?' and screams for
help. Polonius, behind the arras, echoes her call; and in a moment
Hamlet, hoping the concealed person is the King, runs the old man
through the body.

Evidently this act is intended to stand in sharp contrast with Hamlet's
sparing of his enemy. The King would have been just as defenceless
behind the arras as he had been on his knees; but here Hamlet is already
excited and in action, and the chance comes to him so suddenly that he
has no time to 'scan' it. It is a minor consideration, but still for the
dramatist not unimportant, that the audience would wholly sympathise
with Hamlet's attempt here, as directed against an enemy who is lurking
to entrap him, instead of being engaged in a business which perhaps to
the bulk of the audience then, as now, seemed to have a 'relish of
salvation in't.'

We notice in Hamlet, at the opening of this interview, something of the
excited levity which followed the _denouement_ of the play-scene. The
death of Polonius sobers him; and in the remainder of the interview he
shows, together with some traces of his morbid state, the peculiar
beauty and nobility of his nature. His chief desire is not by any means
to ensure his mother's silent acquiescence in his design of revenge; it
is to save her soul. And while the rough work of vengeance is repugnant
to him, he is at home in this higher work. Here that fatal feeling, 'it
is no matter,' never shows itself. No father-confessor could be more
selflessly set upon his end of redeeming a fellow-creature from
degradation, more stern or pitiless in denouncing the sin, or more eager
to welcome the first token of repentance. There is something infinitely
beautiful in that sudden sunshine of faith and love which breaks out
when, at the Queen's surrender,

O Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain,

he answers,

O throw away the worser part of it,
And live the purer with the other half.

The truth is that, though Hamlet hates his uncle and acknowledges the
duty of vengeance, his whole heart is never in this feeling or this
task; but his whole heart is in his horror at his mother's fall and in
his longing to raise her. The former of these feelings was the
inspiration of his first soliloquy; it combines with the second to form
the inspiration of his eloquence here. And Shakespeare never wrote more
eloquently than here.

I have already alluded to the significance of the reappearance of the
Ghost in this scene; but why does Shakespeare choose for the particular
moment of its reappearance the middle of a speech in which Hamlet is
raving against his uncle? There seems to be more than one reason. In the
first place, Hamlet has already attained his object of stirring shame
and contrition in his mother's breast, and is now yielding to the old
temptation of unpacking his heart with words, and exhausting in useless
emotion the force which should be stored up in his will. And, next, in
doing this he is agonising his mother to no purpose, and in despite of
her piteous and repeated appeals for mercy. But the Ghost, when it gave
him his charge, had expressly warned him to spare her; and here again
the dead husband shows the same tender regard for his weak unfaithful
wife. The object of his return is to repeat his charge:

Do not forget: this visitation
Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose;

but, having uttered this reminder, he immediately bids the son to help
the mother and 'step between her and her fighting soul.'

And, whether intentionally or not, another purpose is served by
Shakespeare's choice of this particular moment. It is a moment when the
state of Hamlet's mind is such that we cannot suppose the Ghost to be
meant for an hallucination; and it is of great importance here that the
spectator or reader should not suppose any such thing. He is further
guarded by the fact that the Ghost proves, so to speak, his identity by
showing the same traits as were visible on his first appearance--the
same insistence on the duty of remembering, and the same concern for the
Queen. And the result is that we construe the Ghost's interpretation of
Hamlet's delay ('almost blunted purpose') as the truth, the dramatist's
own interpretation. Let me add that probably no one in Shakespeare's
audience had any doubt of his meaning here. The idea of later critics
and readers that the Ghost is an hallucination is due partly to failure
to follow the indications just noticed, but partly also to two mistakes,
the substitution of our present intellectual atmosphere for the
Elizabethan, and the notion that, because the Queen does not see and
hear the Ghost, it is meant to be unreal. But a ghost, in Shakespeare's
day, was able for any sufficient reason to confine its manifestation to
a single person in a company; and here the sufficient reason, that of
sparing the Queen, is obvious.[61]

At the close of this scene it appears that Hamlet has somehow learned of
the King's design of sending him to England in charge of his two
'school-fellows.' He has no doubt that this design covers some
villainous plot against himself, but neither does he doubt that he will
succeed in defeating it; and, as we saw, he looks forward with pleasure
to this conflict of wits. The idea of refusing to go appears not to
occur to him. Perhaps (for here we are left to conjecture) he feels that
he could not refuse unless at the same time he openly accused the King
of his father's murder (a course which he seems at no time to
contemplate); for by the slaughter of Polonius he has supplied his enemy
with the best possible excuse for getting him out of the country.
Besides, he has so effectually warned this enemy that, after the death
of Polonius is discovered, he is kept under guard (IV. iii. 14). He
consents, then, to go. But on his way to the shore he meets the army of
Fortinbras on its march to Poland; and the sight of these men going
cheerfully to risk death 'for an egg-shell,' and 'making mouths at the
invisible event,' strikes him with shame as he remembers how he, with so
much greater cause for action, 'lets all sleep;' and he breaks out into
the soliloquy, 'How all occasions do inform against me!'

This great speech, in itself not inferior to the famous 'To be or not to
be,' is absent not only from the First Quarto but from the Folio. It is
therefore probable that, at any rate by the time when the Folio appeared
(1623), it had become customary to omit it in theatrical representation;
and this is still the custom. But, while no doubt it is dramatically the
least indispensable of the soliloquies, it has a direct dramatic value,
and a great value for the interpretation of Hamlet's character. It shows
that Hamlet, though he is leaving Denmark, has not relinquished the idea
of obeying the Ghost. It exhibits very strikingly his inability to
understand why he has delayed so long. It contains that assertion which
so many critics forget, that he has 'cause and will and strength and
means to do it.' On the other hand--and this was perhaps the principal
purpose of the speech--it convinces us that he has learnt little or
nothing from his delay, or from his failure to seize the opportunity
presented to him after the play-scene. For, we find, both the motive and
the gist of the speech are precisely the same as those of the soliloquy
at the end of the Second Act ('O what a rogue'). There too he was
stirred to shame when he saw a passionate emotion awakened by a cause
which, compared with his, was a mere egg-shell. There too he stood
bewildered at the sight of his own dulness, and was almost ready to
believe--what was justly incredible to him--that it was the mask of mere
cowardice. There too he determined to delay no longer: if the King
should but blench, he knew his course. Yet this determination led to
nothing then; and why, we ask ourselves in despair, should the bloody
thoughts he now resolves to cherish ever pass beyond the realm of
thought?

Between this scene (IV. iv.) and the remainder of the play we must again
suppose an interval, though not a very long one. When the action
recommences, the death of Polonius has led to the insanity of Ophelia
and the secret return of Laertes from France. The young man comes back
breathing slaughter. For the King, afraid to put Hamlet on his trial (a
course likely to raise the question of his own behaviour at the play,
and perhaps to provoke an open accusation),[62] has attempted to hush up
the circumstances of Polonius's death, and has given him a hurried and
inglorious burial. The fury of Laertes, therefore, is directed in the
first instance against the King: and the ease with which he raises the
people, like the King's fear of a judicial enquiry, shows us how purely
internal were the obstacles which the hero had to overcome. This
impression is intensified by the broad contrast between Hamlet and
Laertes, who rushes headlong to his revenge, and is determined to have
it though allegiance, conscience, grace and damnation stand in his way
(IV. v. 130). But the King, though he has been hard put to it, is now in
his element and feels safe. Knowing that he will very soon hear of
Hamlet's execution in England, he tells Laertes that his father died by
Hamlet's hand, and expresses his willingness to let the friends of
Laertes judge whether he himself has any responsibility for the deed.
And when, to his astonishment and dismay, news comes that Hamlet has
returned to Denmark, he acts with admirable promptitude and address,
turns Laertes round his finger, and arranges with him for the murder of
their common enemy. If there were any risk of the young man's resolution
faltering, it is removed by the death of Ophelia. And now the King has
but one anxiety,--to prevent the young men from meeting before the
fencing-match. For who can tell what Hamlet might say in his defence, or
how enchanting his tongue might prove?[63]

Hamlet's return to Denmark is due partly to his own action, partly to
accident. On the voyage he secretly possesses himself of the royal
commission, and substitutes for it another, which he himself writes and
seals, and in which the King of England is ordered to put to death, not
Hamlet, but Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Then the ship is attacked by a
pirate, which, apparently, finds its intended prize too strong for it,
and makes off. But as Hamlet 'in the grapple,' eager for fighting, has
boarded the assailant, he is carried off in it, and by promises induces
the pirates to put him ashore in Denmark.

In what spirit does he return? Unquestionably, I think, we can observe a
certain change, though it is not great. First, we notice here and there
what seems to be a consciousness of power, due probably to his success
in counter-mining Claudius and blowing the courtiers to the moon, and to
his vigorous action in the sea-fight. But I doubt if this sense of power
is more marked than it was in the scenes following the success of the
'Murder of Gonzago.' Secondly, we nowhere find any direct expression of
that weariness of life and that longing for death which were so marked
in the first soliloquy and in the speech 'To be or not to be.' This may
be a mere accident, and it must be remembered that in the Fifth Act we
have no soliloquy. But in the earlier Acts the feelings referred to do
not appear _merely_ in soliloquy, and I incline to think that
Shakespeare means to show in the Hamlet of the Fifth Act a slight
thinning of the dark cloud of melancholy, and means us to feel it tragic
that this change comes too late. And, in the third place, there is a
trait about which doubt is impossible,--a sense in Hamlet that he is in
the hands of Providence. This had, indeed, already shown itself at the
death of Polonius,[64] and perhaps at Hamlet's farewell to the King,[65]
but the idea seems now to be constantly present in his mind. 'There's a
divinity that shapes our ends,' he declares to Horatio in speaking of
the fighting in his heart that would not let him sleep, and of his
rashness in groping his way to the courtiers to find their commission.
How was he able, Horatio asks, to seal the substituted commission?

Why, even in that was heaven ordinant,

Hamlet answers; he had his father's signet in his purse. And though he
has a presentiment of evil about the fencing-match he refuses to yield
to it: 'we defy augury: there is special providence in the fall of a
sparrow ... the readiness is all.'

Though these passages strike us more when put together thus than when
they come upon us at intervals in reading the play, they have a marked
effect on our feeling about Hamlet's character and still more about the
events of the action. But I find it impossible to believe, with some
critics, that they indicate any material change in his general
condition, or the formation of any effective resolution to fulfil the
appointed duty. On the contrary, they seem to express that kind of
religious resignation which, however beautiful in one aspect, really
deserves the name of fatalism rather than that of faith in Providence,
because it is not united to any determination to do what is believed to
be the will of Providence. In place of this determination, the Hamlet of
the Fifth Act shows a kind of sad or indifferent self-abandonment, as if
he secretly despaired of forcing himself to action, and were ready to
leave his duty to some other power than his own. _This_ is really the
main change which appears in him after his return to Denmark, and which
had begun to show itself before he went,--this, and not a determination
to act, nor even an anxiety to do so.

For when he returns he stands in a most perilous position. On one side
of him is the King, whose safety depends on his death, and who has done
his best to murder him; on the other, Laertes, whose father and sister
he has sent to their graves, and of whose behaviour and probable
attitude he must surely be informed by Horatio. What is required of him,
therefore, if he is not to perish with his duty undone, is the utmost
wariness and the swiftest resolution. Yet it is not too much to say
that, except when Horatio forces the matter on his attention, he shows
no consciousness of this position. He muses in the graveyard on the
nothingness of life and fame, and the base uses to which our dust
returns, whether it be a court-jester's or a world-conqueror's. He
learns that the open grave over which he muses has been dug for the
woman he loved; and he suffers one terrible pang, from which he gains
relief in frenzied words and frenzied action,--action which must needs
intensify, if that were possible, the fury of the man whom he has,
however unwittingly, so cruelly injured. Yet he appears absolutely
unconscious that he has injured Laertes at all, and asks him:

What is the reason that you use me thus?

And as the sharpness of the first pang passes, the old weary misery
returns, and he might almost say to Ophelia, as he does to her brother:

I loved you ever: but it is no matter.

'It is no matter': _nothing_ matters.

The last scene opens. He narrates to Horatio the events of the voyage
and his uncle's attempt to murder him. But the conclusion of the story
is no plan of action, but the old fatal question, 'Ought I not to
act?'[66] And, while he asks it, his enemies have acted. Osric enters
with an invitation to him to take part in a fencing-match with Laertes.
This match--he is expressly told so--has been arranged by his deadly
enemy the King; and his antagonist is a man whose hands but a few hours
ago were at his throat, and whose voice he had heard shouting 'The devil
take thy soul!' But he does not think of that. To fence is to show a
courtesy, and to himself it is a relief,--action, and not the one
hateful action. There is something noble in his carelessness, and also
in his refusal to attend to the presentiment which he suddenly feels
(and of which he says, not only 'the readiness is all,' but also 'it is
no matter'). Something noble; and yet, when a sacred duty is still
undone, ought one to be so ready to die? With the same carelessness, and
with that trustfulness which makes us love him, but which is here so
fatally misplaced, he picks up the first foil that comes to his hand,
asks indifferently, 'These foils have all a length?' and begins. And
Fate descends upon his enemies, and his mother, and himself.

But he is not left in utter defeat. Not only is his task at last
accomplished, but Shakespeare seems to have determined that his hero
should exhibit in his latest hour all the glorious power and all the
nobility and sweetness of his nature. Of the first, the power, I spoke
before,[67] but there is a wonderful beauty in the revelation of the
second. His body already labouring in the pangs of death, his mind soars
above them. He forgives Laertes; he remembers his wretched mother and
bids her adieu, ignorant that she has preceded him. We hear now no word
of lamentation or self-reproach. He has will, and just time, to think,
not of the past or of what might have been, but of the future; to forbid
his friend's death in words more pathetic in their sadness than even his
agony of spirit had been; and to take care, so far as in him lies, for
the welfare of the State which he himself should have guided. Then in
spite of shipwreck he reaches the haven of silence where he would be.
What else could his world-wearied flesh desire?

But _we_ desire more; and we receive it. As those mysterious words, 'The
rest is silence,' die upon Hamlet's lips, Horatio answers:

Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince,
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

Why did Shakespeare here, so much against his custom, introduce this
reference to another life? Did he remember that Hamlet is the only one
of his tragic heroes whom he has not allowed us to see in the days when
this life smiled on him? Did he feel that, while for the others we might
be content to imagine after life's fitful fever nothing more than
release and silence, we must ask more for one whose 'godlike reason' and
passionate love of goodness have only gleamed upon us through the heavy
clouds of melancholy, and yet have left us murmuring, as we bow our
heads, 'This was the noblest spirit of them all'?


2

How many things still remain to say of Hamlet! Before I touch on his
relation to Ophelia, I will choose but two. Neither of them, compared
with the matters so far considered, is of great consequence, but both
are interesting, and the first seems to have quite escaped observation.

(1) Most people have, beside their more essential traits of character,
little peculiarities which, for their intimates, form an indissoluble
part of their personality. In comedy, and in other humorous works of
fiction, such peculiarities often figure prominently, but they rarely do
so, I think, in tragedy. Shakespeare, however, seems to have given one
such idiosyncrasy to Hamlet.

It is a trick of speech, a habit of repetition. And these are simple
examples of it from the first soliloquy:

O _God! God!_
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
_Fie_ on't! ah _fie!_

Now I ask your patience. You will say: 'There is nothing individual
here. Everybody repeats words thus. And the tendency, in particular, to
use such repetitions in moments of great emotion is well-known, and
frequently illustrated in literature--for example, in David's cry of
lament for Absalom.'

This is perfectly true, and plenty of examples could be drawn from
Shakespeare himself. But what we find in Hamlet's case is, I believe,
_not_ common. In the first place, this repetition is a _habit_ with him.
Here are some more instances: 'Thrift, thrift, Horatio'; 'Indeed,
indeed, sirs, but this troubles me'; 'Come, deal justly with me: come,
come'; 'Wormwood, wormwood!' I do not profess to have made an exhaustive
search, but I am much mistaken if this _habit_ is to be found in any
other serious character of Shakespeare.[68]

And, in the second place--and here I appeal with confidence to lovers of
Hamlet--some of these repetitions strike us as intensely characteristic.
Some even of those already quoted strike one thus, and still more do the
following:

(_a_) _Horatio._ It would have much amazed you.
_Hamlet._ Very like, very like. Stay'd it long?

(_b_) _Polonius._ What do you read, my lord?
_Hamlet._ Words, words, words.

(_c_) _Polonius._ My honourable lord, I will most humbly take
my leave of you.
_Hamlet._ You cannot, sir, take from me anything that I
will more willingly part withal: except my
life, except my life, except my life.

(_d_) _Ophelia._ Good my lord,
How does your honour for this many a day?
_Hamlet._ I humbly thank you, well, well, well.

Is there anything that Hamlet says or does in the whole play more
unmistakably individual than these replies?[69]

(2) Hamlet, everyone has noticed, is fond of quibbles and word-play, and
of 'conceits' and turns of thought such as are common in the poets whom
Johnson called Metaphysical. Sometimes, no doubt, he plays with words
and ideas chiefly in order to mystify, thwart and annoy. To some extent,
again, as we may see from the conversation where Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern first present themselves (II. ii. 227), he is merely
following the fashion of the young courtiers about him, just as in his
love-letter to Ophelia[70] he uses for the most part the fantastic
language of Court Euphuism. Nevertheless in this trait there is
something very characteristic. We should be greatly surprised to find it
marked in Othello or Lear or Timon, in Macbeth or Antony or Coriolanus;
and, in fact, we find it in them hardly at all. One reason of this may
perhaps be that these characters are all later creations than Hamlet,
and that Shakespeare's own fondness for this kind of play, like the
fondness of the theatrical audience for it, diminished with time. But
the main reason is surely that this tendency, as we see it in Hamlet,
betokens a nimbleness and flexibility of mind which is characteristic of
him and not of the later less many-sided heroes. Macbeth, for instance,
has an imagination quite as sensitive as Hamlet's to certain
impressions, but he has none of Hamlet's delight in freaks and twists of
thought, or of his tendency to perceive and play with resemblances in
the most diverse objects and ideas. Though Romeo shows this tendency,
the only tragic hero who approaches Hamlet here is Richard II., who
indeed in several ways recalls the emasculated Hamlet of some critics,
and may, like the real Hamlet, have owed his existence in part to
Shakespeare's personal familiarity with the weaknesses and dangers of an
imaginative temperament.

That Shakespeare meant this trait to be characteristic of Hamlet is
beyond question. The very first line the hero speaks contains a play on
words:

A little more than kin and less than kind.

The fact is significant, though the pun itself is not specially
characteristic. Much more so, and indeed absolutely individual, are the
uses of word-play in moments of extreme excitement. Remember the awe and
terror of the scene where the Ghost beckons Hamlet to leave his friends
and follow him into the darkness, and then consider this dialogue:

_Hamlet._ It waves me still.
Go on; I'll follow thee.

_Marcellus._ You shall not go, my lord.

_Hamlet._ Hold off your hands.

_Horatio._ Be ruled; you shall not go.

_Hamlet._ My fate cries out,
And makes each petty artery in this body
As hardy as the Nemean lion's nerve.
Still am I called. Unhand me, gentlemen.
_By heaven I'll make a ghost of him that lets me._

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