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A. C. Bradley - Shakespearean Tragedy

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




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. All
Hamlet'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 in _Tamburlaine_, he adopted a style marred
in places by that which _we_ think 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 light
To 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
are _merely_ absurd 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, 'Shakespeare _must_ have 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 of Aeneas;
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 in _Macbeth_, had
occurred in the speech of Aeneas, we should certainly have been told
that they were meant for burlesque. I open _Troilus 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 cheek
Outswell 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 Margarelon
Hath 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 in
_Romeo and Juliet_,

here will I remain
With worms that are thy chamber-maids;

and in _King John_,

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

and in _Lucrece_,

And, bubbling from her breast, it doth divide
In two slow rivers, that the crimson blood
Circles her body in on every side,
Who, like a late-sack'd island, vastly stood
Bare 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 in _3 Hen. VI._
I. iv. 155. (2) With 'total gules' Steevens compared _Timon_ IV. iii. 59
(an undoubtedly Shakespearean passage),

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

(3) With 'baked and impasted' cf. _John_ III. iii. 42, 'If that surly
spirit melancholy Had baked thy blood.' In the questionable _Tit. 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 undoubted _Richard
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 the _Two 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 lips and 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 in _Dido Queen of
Carthage_, but in _Tr. 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 in _Tr. 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 compares _Ant. and Cl._ IV. xv. 43, where Cleopatra would

rail so high
That 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:

[Footnote 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's _Lectures_; and, whatever he said to the contrary, his
borrowings from Schlegel are demonstrable.]

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

[Footnote 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?]

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

[Footnote 263: Steevens observes that Heywood uses the phrase 'guled
with slaughter,' and I find in his _Iron Age_ various passages
indicating that he knew the speech of Aeneas (cf. p. 140 for another
sign that he knew _Hamlet_). The two parts of the _Iron Age_ were
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's
_Heywood_ (1874). (1) p. 329, Troilus 'lyeth imbak'd In his cold blood.'
(2) p. 341, of Achilles' armour:

_Vulcan_ that wrought it out of gadds of Steele
With his _Ciclopian_ hammers, never made
Such noise upon his Anvile forging it,
Than these my arm'd fists in _Ulisses_ wracke.

(3) p. 357, 'till _Hecub's_ reverent lockes Be gul'd in slaughter.' (4)
p. 357, '_Scamander_ plaines Ore-spread with intrailes bak'd in blood
and dust.' (5) p. 378, 'We'll rost them at the scorching flames of
_Troy_.' (6) p. 379, 'tragicke slaughter, clad in gules and sables'
(cf.'sable arms' in the speech in _Hamlet_). (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 recall _Troilus and
Cressida_. Mr. Fleay's speculation as to its date will be found in his
_Chronicle 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 in _Hamlet_ to
Marlowe and Nash's _Dido_, see Furness's Variorum _Hamlet_.]




NOTE G.

HAMLET'S APOLOGY TO LAERTES.


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 see
The 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 evil
Free 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, _what_ other 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 his behaviour at the grave, he can hardly say, I
suppose, 'You ranted so abominably that you put me into a towering
passion.' _Whatever_ he 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 not _mere_ acting. 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?




NOTE H.

THE EXCHANGE OF RAPIERS.


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):

_Ham._ Come, for the third, Laertes: you but dally;
I pray you, pass with your best violence;
I am afeard you make a wanton of me.

_Laer._ Say you so? come on. [_They play._

_Osr._ Nothing, neither way.

_Laer._ Have at you now!

[_Laertes wounds Hamlet; then, in scuffling, they
change rapiers, and Hamlet wounds Laertes._[264]

_King._ Part them; they are incensed.

_Ham._ Nay, come, again. _The Queen falls._[265]

_Osr._ Look to the Queen there, ho!

_Hor._ They bleed on both sides. How is it, my lord?

_Osr._ How is't, Laertes?

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, and _now_ is 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:

_Laer._ Have at you now!

[_Laertes wounds Hamlet; then, in scuffling,
they change rapiers._

_King._ Part them; they are incensed.

_Ham._ Nay, come, again.

[_They play, and Hamlet wounds Laertes. The Queen falls._

FOOTNOTES:

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

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




NOTE I.

THE DURATION OF THE ACTION IN _OTHELLO_.


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

In Act II. 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 Act III. 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 his attack 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 (see III. 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 left _solus_, 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 of III. i.-iii.
took place, _i.e._ the day after the arrival in Cyprus: but I shall
return to this point.

In IV. 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 here _even now_'; and
Bianca herself, coming in, reproaches him about the handkerchief 'you
gave me _even now_.' There is therefore no appreciable time between III.
iv. and IV. i. In this same scene Bianca bids Cassio come to supper
_to-night_; and Lodovico, arriving, is asked to sup with Othello
_to-night_. In IV. ii. Iago persuades Roderigo to kill Cassio _that
night_ as he comes from Bianca's. In IV. iii. Lodovico, after supper,
takes his leave, and Othello bids Desdemona go to bed on the instant and
dismiss her attendant.

In Act V., _that night_, the attempted assassination of Cassio, and the
murder of Desdemona, take place.

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