A. C. Bradley - Shakespearean Tragedy

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Would any other character in Shakespeare have used those words? And,
again, where is Hamlet more Hamlet than when he accompanies with a pun
the furious action by which he compels his enemy to drink the 'poison
tempered by himself'?

Here, thou incestuous, murderous, damn'd Dane,
Drink off this potion. Is thy union here?
Follow my mother.

The 'union' was the pearl which Claudius professed to throw into the
cup, and in place of which (as Hamlet supposes) he dropped poison in.
But the 'union' is also that incestuous marriage which must not be
broken by his remaining alive now that his partner is dead. What rage
there is in the words, and what a strange lightning of the mind!

Much of Hamlet's play with words and ideas is imaginatively humorous.
That of Richard II. is fanciful, but rarely, if ever, humorous. Antony
has touches of humour, and Richard III. has more; but Hamlet, we may
safely assert, is the only one of the tragic heroes who can be called a
humorist, his humour being first cousin to that speculative tendency
which keeps his mental world in perpetual movement. Some of his quips
are, of course, poor enough, and many are not distinctive. Those of his
retorts which strike one as perfectly individual do so, I think, chiefly
because they suddenly reveal the misery and bitterness below the
surface; as when, to Rosencrantz's message from his mother, 'She desires
to speak with you in her closet, ere you go to bed,' he answers, 'We
shall obey, were she ten times our mother'; or as when he replies to
Polonius's invitation, 'Will you walk out of the air, my lord?' with
words that suddenly turn one cold, 'Into my grave.' Otherwise, what we
justly call Hamlet's characteristic humour is not his exclusive
property, but appears in passages spoken by persons as different as
Mercutio, Falstaff and Rosalind. The truth probably is that it was the
kind of humour most natural to Shakespeare himself, and that here, as in
some other traits of the poet's greatest creation, we come into close
contact with Shakespeare the man.

3

The actor who plays the part of Hamlet must make up his mind as to the
interpretation of every word and deed of the character. Even if at some
point he feels no certainty as to which of two interpretations is right,
he must still choose one or the other. The mere critic is not obliged to
do this. Where he remains in doubt he may say so, and, if the matter is
of importance, he ought to say so.

This is the position in which I find myself in regard to Hamlet's love
for Ophelia. I am unable to arrive at a conviction as to the meaning of
some of his words and deeds, and I question whether from the mere text
of the play a sure interpretation of them can be drawn. For this reason
I have reserved the subject for separate treatment, and have, so far as
possible, kept it out of the general discussion of Hamlet's character.

On two points no reasonable doubt can, I think, be felt. (1) Hamlet was
at one time sincerely and ardently in love with Ophelia. For she herself
says that he had importuned her with love in honourable fashion, and had
given countenance to his speech with almost all the holy vows of heaven
(I. iii. 110 f.). (2) When, at Ophelia's grave, he declared,

I loved Ophelia; forty thousand brothers
Could not, with all their quantity of love,
Make up my sum,

he must have spoken sincerely; and, further, we may take it for granted
that he used the past tense, 'loved,' merely because Ophelia was dead,
and not to imply that he had once loved her but no longer did so.

So much being assumed, we come to what is doubtful, and I will begin by
stating what is probably the most popular view. According to this view,
Hamlet's love for Ophelia never changed. On the revelation made by the
Ghost, however, he felt that he must put aside all thoughts of it; and
it also seemed to him necessary to convince Ophelia, as well as others,
that he was insane, and so to destroy her hopes of any happy issue to
their love. This was the purpose of his appearance in her chamber,
though he was probably influenced also by a longing to see her and bid
her a silent farewell, and possibly by a faint hope that he might safely
entrust his secret to her. If he entertained any such hope his study of
her face dispelled it; and thereafter, as in the Nunnery-scene (III. i.)
and again at the play-scene, he not only feigned madness, but, to
convince her that he had quite lost his love for her, he also addressed
her in bitter and insulting language. In all this he was acting a part
intensely painful to himself; the very violence of his language in the
Nunnery-scene arose from this pain; and so the actor should make him
show, in that scene, occasional signs of a tenderness which with all his
efforts he cannot wholly conceal. Finally, over her grave the truth
bursts from him in the declaration quoted just now, though it is still
impossible for him to explain to others why he who loved her so
profoundly was forced to wring her heart.

Now this theory, if the view of Hamlet's character which I have taken is
anywhere near the truth, is certainly wrong at one point, viz., in so
far as it supposes that Hamlet's bitterness to Ophelia was a _mere_
pretence forced on him by his design of feigning to be insane; and I
proceed to call attention to certain facts and considerations, of which
the theory seems to take no account.

1. How is it that in his first soliloquy Hamlet makes no reference
whatever to Ophelia?

2. How is it that in his second soliloquy, on the departure of the
Ghost, he again says nothing about her? When the lover is feeling that
he must make a complete break with his past, why does it not occur to
him at once that he must give up his hopes of happiness in love?

3. Hamlet does not, as the popular theory supposes, break with Ophelia
directly after the Ghost appears to him; on the contrary, he tries to
see her and sends letters to her (II. i. 109). What really happens is
that Ophelia suddenly repels his visits and letters. Now, _we_ know that
she is simply obeying her father's order; but how would her action
appear to Hamlet, already sick at heart because of his mother's
frailty,[71] and now finding that, the moment fortune has turned against
him, the woman who had welcomed his love turns against him too? Even if
he divined (as his insults to Polonius suggest) that her father was
concerned in this change, would he not still, in that morbid condition
of mind, certainly suspect her of being less simple than she had
appeared to him?[72] Even if he remained free from _this_ suspicion, and
merely thought her deplorably weak, would he not probably feel anger
against _her_, an anger like that of the hero of _Locksley Hall_ against
his Amy?

4. When Hamlet made his way into Ophelia's room, why did he go in the
garb, the conventionally recognised garb, of the distracted _lover_? If
it was necessary to convince Ophelia of his insanity, how was it
necessary to convince her that disappointment in _love_ was the cause of
his insanity? His _main_ object in the visit appears to have been to
convince _others_, through her, that his insanity was not due to any
mysterious unknown cause, but to this disappointment, and so to allay
the suspicions of the King. But if his feeling for her had been simply
that of love, however unhappy, and had not been in any degree that of
suspicion or resentment, would he have adopted a plan which must involve
her in so much suffering?[73]

5. In what way are Hamlet's insults to Ophelia at the play-scene
necessary either to his purpose of convincing her of his insanity or to
his purpose of revenge? And, even if he did regard them as somehow means
to these ends, is it conceivable that he would have uttered them, if his
feeling for her were one of hopeless but unmingled love?

6. How is it that neither when he kills Polonius, nor afterwards, does
he appear to reflect that he has killed Ophelia's father, or what the
effect on Ophelia is likely to be?

7. We have seen that there is no reference to Ophelia in the soliloquies
of the First Act. Neither is there the faintest allusion to her in any
one of the soliloquies of the subsequent Acts, unless possibly in the
words (III. i. 72) 'the pangs of despised love.'[74] If the popular
theory is true, is not this an astounding fact?

8. Considering this fact, is there no significance in the further fact
(which, by itself, would present no difficulty) that in speaking to
Horatio Hamlet never alludes to Ophelia, and that at his death he says
nothing of her?

9. If the popular theory is true, how is it that neither in the
Nunnery-scene nor at the play-scene does Shakespeare insert anything to
make the truth plain? Four words like Othello's 'O hardness to
dissemble' would have sufficed.

These considerations, coupled with others as to Hamlet's state of mind,
seem to point to two conclusions. They suggest, first, that Hamlet's
love, though never lost, was, after Ophelia's apparent rejection of him,
mingled with suspicion and resentment, and that his treatment of her was
due in part to this cause. And I find it impossible to resist this
conclusion. But the question how much of his harshness is meant to be
real, and how much assumed, seems to me impossible in some places to
answer. For example, his behaviour at the play-scene seems to me to show
an intention to hurt and insult; but in the Nunnery-scene (which cannot
be discussed briefly) he is evidently acting a part and suffering
acutely, while at the same time his invective, however exaggerated,
seems to spring from real feelings; and what is pretence, and what
sincerity, appears to me an insoluble problem. Something depends here on
the further question whether or no Hamlet suspects or detects the
presence of listeners; but, in the absence of an authentic stage
tradition, this question too seems to be unanswerable.

But something further seems to follow from the considerations adduced.
Hamlet's love, they seem to show, was not only mingled with bitterness,
it was also, like all his healthy feelings, weakened and deadened by his
melancholy.[75] It was far from being extinguished; probably it was
_one_ of the causes which drove him to force his way to Ophelia;
whenever he saw Ophelia, it awoke and, the circumstances being what they
were, tormented him. But it was not an absorbing passion; it did not
habitually occupy his thoughts; and when he declared that it was such a
love as forty thousand brothers could not equal, he spoke sincerely
indeed but not truly. What he said was true, if I may put it thus, of
the inner healthy self which doubtless in time would have fully
reasserted itself; but it was only partly true of the Hamlet whom we see
in the play. And the morbid influence of his melancholy on his love is
the cause of those strange facts, that he never alludes to her in his
soliloquies, and that he appears not to realise how the death of her
father must affect her.

The facts seem almost to force this idea on us. That it is less
'romantic' than the popular view is no argument against it. And
psychologically it is quite sound, for a frequent symptom of such
melancholy as Hamlet's is a more or less complete paralysis, or even
perversion, of the emotion of love. And yet, while feeling no doubt that
up to a certain point it is true, I confess I am not satisfied that the
explanation of Hamlet's silence regarding Ophelia lies in it. And the
reason of this uncertainty is that scarcely any spectators or readers of
_Hamlet_ notice this silence at all; that I never noticed it myself till
I began to try to solve the problem of Hamlet's relation to Ophelia; and
that even now, when I read the play through without pausing to consider
particular questions, it scarcely strikes me. Now Shakespeare wrote
primarily for the theatre and not for students, and therefore great
weight should be attached to the immediate impressions made by his
works. And so it seems at least possible that the explanation of
Hamlet's silence may be that Shakespeare, having already a very
difficult task to perform in the soliloquies--that of showing the state
of mind which caused Hamlet to delay his vengeance--did not choose to
make his task more difficult by introducing matter which would not only
add to the complexity of the subject but might, from its 'sentimental'
interest, distract attention from the main point; while, from his
theatrical experience, he knew that the audience would not observe how
unnatural it was that a man deeply in love, and forced not only to
renounce but to wound the woman he loved, should not think of her when
he was alone. But, as this explanation is no more completely convincing
to me than the other, I am driven to suspend judgment, and also to
suspect that the text admits of no sure interpretation. [This paragraph
states my view imperfectly.]

This result may seem to imply a serious accusation against Shakespeare.
But it must be remembered that if we could see a contemporary
representation of _Hamlet_, our doubts would probably disappear. The
actor, instructed by the author, would make it clear to us by looks,
tones, gestures, and by-play how far Hamlet's feigned harshness to
Ophelia was mingled with real bitterness, and again how far his
melancholy had deadened his love.

4

As we have seen, all the persons in _Hamlet_ except the hero are minor
characters, who fail to rise to the tragic level. They are not less
interesting on that account, but the hero has occupied us so long that I
shall refer only to those in regard to whom Shakespeare's intention
appears to be not seldom misunderstood or overlooked.

It may seem strange that Ophelia should be one of these; and yet
Shakespearean literature and the experience of teachers show that there
is much difference of opinion regarding her, and in particular that a
large number of readers feel a kind of personal irritation against her.
They seem unable to forgive her for not having been a heroine, and they
fancy her much weaker than she was. They think she ought to have been
able to help Hamlet to fulfil his task. And they betray, it appears to
me, the strangest misconceptions as to what she actually did.

Now it was essential to Shakespeare's purpose that too great an interest
should not be aroused in the love-story; essential, therefore, that
Ophelia should be merely one of the subordinate characters; and
necessary, accordingly, that she should not be the equal, in spirit,
power or intelligence, of his famous heroines. If she had been an
Imogen, a Cordelia, even a Portia or a Juliet, the story must have taken
another shape. Hamlet would either have been stimulated to do his duty,
or (which is more likely) he would have gone mad, or (which is
likeliest) he would have killed himself in despair. Ophelia, therefore,
was made a character who could not help Hamlet, and for whom on the
other hand he would not naturally feel a passion so vehement or profound
as to interfere with the main motive of the play.[76] And in the love
and the fate of Ophelia herself there was introduced an element, not of
deep tragedy but of pathetic beauty, which makes the analysis of her
character seem almost a desecration.

Ophelia is plainly quite young and inexperienced. She has lost her
mother, and has only a father and a brother, affectionate but worldly,
to take care of her. Everyone in the drama who has any heart is drawn to
her. To the persons in the play, as to the readers of it, she brings the
thought of flowers. 'Rose of May' Laertes names her.

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

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

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

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

'But she practised deception; she even told a lie. Hamlet asked her
where her father was, and she said he was at home, when he was really
listening behind a curtain.' Poor Ophelia! It is considered angelic in
Desdemona to say untruly that she killed herself, but most immoral or
pusillanimous in Ophelia to tell _her_ lie. I will not discuss these
casuistical problems; but, if ever an angry lunatic asks me a question
which I cannot answer truly without great danger to him and to one of my
relations, I hope that grace may be given me to imitate Ophelia.
Seriously, at such a terrible moment was it weak, was it not rather
heroic, in a simple girl not to lose her presence of mind and not to
flinch, but to go through her task for Hamlet's sake and her father's?
And, finally, is it really a thing to be taken as matter of course, and
no matter for admiration, in this girl that, from beginning to end, and
after a storm of utterly unjust reproach, not a thought of resentment
should even cross her mind?

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

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

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

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

5

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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