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Reception and Criticism

A.C. Bradley

Shakespearean Tragedy:
Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth

(1904)

NOTE A.
EVENTS BEFORE THE OPENING OF THE ACTION IN HAMLET.

In Hamlet's first soliloquy he speaks of his father as being 'but two months dead, – nay, not so much, not two.' He goes on to refer to the love between his father and mother, and then says (I. ii. 145):

It seems hence to be usually assumed that at this time – the time when the action begins – Hamlet's mother has been married a little less than a month.

On this assumption difficulties, however, arise, though I have not found them referred to. Why has the Ghost waited nearly a month since the marriage before showing itself? Why has the King waited nearly a month before appearing in public for the first time, as he evidently does in this scene? And why has Laertes waited nearly a month since the coronation before asking leave to return to France (I. ii. 53)?

To this it might be replied that the marriage and the coronation were separated by some weeks; that, while the former occurred nearly a month before the time of this scene, the latter has only just taken place; and that what the Ghost cannot bear is, not the mere marriage, but the accession of an incestuous murderer to the throne. But anyone who will read the King's speech at the opening of the scene will certainly conclude that the marriage has only just been celebrated, and also that it is conceived as involving the accession of Claudius to the throne. Gertrude is described as the 'imperial jointress' of the State, and the King says that the lords consented to the marriage, but makes no separate mention of his election.

The solution of the difficulty is to be found in the lines quoted above. The marriage followed, within a month, not the death of Hamlet's father, but the funeral. And this makes all clear. The death happened nearly two months ago. The funeral did not succeed it immediately, but (say) in a fortnight or three weeks. And the marriage and coronation, coming rather less than a month after the funeral, have just taken place. So that the Ghost has not waited at all; nor has the King, nor Laertes.

On this hypothesis it follows that Hamlet's agonised soliloquy is not uttered nearly a month after the marriage which has so horrified him, but quite soon after it (though presumably he would know rather earlier what was coming). And from this hypothesis we get also a partial explanation of two other difficulties, (a) When Horatio, at the end of the soliloquy, enters and greets Hamlet, it is evident that he and Hamlet have not recently met at Elsinore. Yet Horatio came to Elsinore for the funeral (I. ii. 176). Now even if the funeral took place some three weeks ago, it seems rather strange that Hamlet, however absorbed in grief and however withdrawn from the Court, has not met Horatio; but if the funeral took place some seven weeks ago, the difficulty is considerably greater. (b) We are twice told that Hamlet has 'of late' been seeking the society of Ophelia and protesting his love for her (I. iii. 91, 99). It always seemed to me, on the usual view of the chronology, rather difficult (though not, of course, impossible) to understand this, considering the state of feeling produced in him by his mother's marriage, and in particular the shock it appears to have given to his faith in woman. But if the marriage has only just been celebrated the words 'of late' would naturally refer to a time before it. This time presumably would be subsequent to the death of Hamlet's father, but it is not so hard to fancy that Hamlet may have sought relief from mere grief in his love for Ophelia.

But here another question arises; May not the words 'of late' include, or even wholly refer to,[250] a time prior to the death of Hamlet's father? And this question would be answered universally, I suppose, in the negative, on the ground that Hamlet was not at Court but at Wittenberg when his father died. I will deal with this idea in a separate note, and will only add here that, though it is quite possible that Shakespeare never imagined any of these matters clearly, and so produced these unimportant difficulties, we ought not to assume this without examination.

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NOTE B.
WHERE WAS HAMLET AT THE TIME OF HIS FATHER'S DEATH?

The answer will at once be given: 'At the University of Wittenberg. For the king says to him (I. ii. 112):

The Queen also prays him not to go to Wittenberg: and he consents to remain.'

Now I quite agree that the obvious interpretation of this passage is that universally accepted, that Hamlet, like Horatio, was at Wittenberg when his father died; and I do not say that it is wrong. But it involves difficulties, and ought not to be regarded as certain.

(1) One of these difficulties has long been recognised. Hamlet, according to the evidence of Act V., Scene i., is thirty years of age; and that is a very late age for a university student. One solution is found (by those who admit that Hamlet was thirty) in a passage in Nash's Pierce Penniless: 'For fashion sake some [Danes] will put their children to schoole, but they set them not to it till they are fourteene years old, so that you shall see a great boy with a beard learne his A.B.C. and sit weeping under the rod when he is thirty years old.' Another solution, as we saw (p. 105), is found in Hamlet's character. He is a philosopher who lingers on at the University from love of his studies there.

(2) But there is a more formidable difficulty, which seems to have escaped notice. Horatio certainly came from Wittenberg to the funeral. And observe how he and Hamlet meet (I. ii. 160).

Is not this passing strange? Hamlet and Horatio are supposed to be fellow-students at Wittenberg, and to have left it for Elsinore less than two months ago. Yet Hamlet hardly recognises Horatio at first, and speaks as if he himself lived at Elsinore (I refer to his bitter jest, 'We'll teach you to drink deep ere you depart'). Who would dream that Hamlet had himself just come from Wittenberg, if it were not for the previous words about his going back there?

How can this be explained on the usual view? Only, I presume, by supposing that Hamlet is so sunk in melancholy that he really does almost 'forget himself'[252] and forget everything else, so that he actually is in doubt who Horatio is. And this, though not impossible, is hard to believe.

'Oh no,' it may be answered, 'for he is doubtful about Marcellus too; and yet, if he were living at Elsinore, he must have seen Marcellus often.' But he is not doubtful about Marcellus. That note of interrogation after 'Marcellus' is Capell's conjecture: it is not in any Quarto or any Folio. The fact is that he knows perfectly well the man who lives at Elsinore, but is confused by the appearance of the friend who comes from Wittenberg.

(3) Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are sent for, to wean Hamlet from his melancholy and to worm his secret out of him, because he has known them from his youth and is fond of them (II. ii. 1 ff.). They come to Denmark (II. ii. 247 f.): they come therefore from some other country. Where do they come from? They are, we hear, Hamlet's 'school-fellows' (III. iv. 202). And in the first Quarto we are directly told that they were with him at Wittenberg:

Now let the reader look at Hamlet's first greeting of them in the received text, and let him ask himself whether it is the greeting of a man to fellow-students whom he left two months ago: whether it is not rather, like his greeting of Horatio, the welcome of an old fellow-student who has not seen his visitors for a considerable time (II. ii. 226 f.).

(4) Rosencrantz and Guildenstern tell Hamlet of the players who are coming. He asks what players they are, and is told, 'Even those you were wont to take such delight in, the tragedians of the city.' He asks, 'Do they hold the same estimation they did when I was in the city?' Evidently he has not been in the city for some time. And this is still more evident when the players come in, and he talks of one having grown a beard, and another having perhaps cracked his voice, since they last met. What then is this city, where he has not been for some time, but where (it would appear) Rosencrantz and Guildenstern live? It is not in Denmark ('Comest thou to beard me in Denmark?'). It would seem to be Wittenberg.[253]

All these passages, it should be observed, are consistent with one another. And the conclusion they point to is that Hamlet has left the University for some years and has been living at Court. This again is consistent with his being thirty years of age, and with his being mentioned as a soldier and a courtier as well as a scholar (III. i. 159). And it is inconsistent, I believe, with nothing in the play, unless with the mention of his 'going back to school in Wittenberg.' But it is not really inconsistent with that. The idea may quite well be that Hamlet, feeling it impossible to continue at Court after his mother's marriage and Claudius' accession, thinks of the University where, years ago, he was so happy, and contemplates a return to it. If this were Shakespeare's meaning he might easily fail to notice that the expression 'going back to school in Wittenberg' would naturally suggest that Hamlet had only just left 'school.'

I do not see how to account for these passages except on this hypothesis. But it in its turn involves a certain difficulty. Horatio, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern seem to be of about the same age as Hamlet. How then do they come to be at Wittenberg? I had thought that this question might be answered in the following way. If 'the city' is Wittenberg, Shakespeare would regard it as a place like London, and we might suppose that Horatio, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were living there, though they had ceased to be students. But this can hardly be true of Horatio, who, when he (to spare Hamlet's feelings) talks of being 'a truant,' must mean a truant from his University. The only solution I can suggest is that, in the story or play which Shakespeare used, Hamlet and the others were all at the time of the murder young students at Wittenberg, and that when he determined to make them older men (or to make Hamlet, at any rate, older), he did not take trouble enough to carry this idea through all the necessary detail, and so left some inconsistencies. But in any case the difficulty in the view which I suggest seems to me not nearly so great as those which the usual view has to meet.[254]

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NOTE C.
HAMLET'S AGE.

The chief arguments on this question may be found in Furness's Variorum Hamlet, vol. i., pp. 391 ff. I will merely explain my position briefly.

Even if the general impression I received from the play were that Hamlet was a youth of eighteen or twenty, I should feel quite unable to set it against the evidence of the statements in V. i. which show him to be exactly thirty, unless these statements seemed to be casual. But they have to my mind, on the contrary, the appearance of being expressly inserted in order to fix Hamlet's age; and the fact that they differ decidedly from the statements in Q1 confirms that idea. So does the fact that the Player King speaks of having been married thirty years (III. ii. 165), where again the number differs from that in Q1.

If V. i. did not contain those decisive statements, I believe my impression as to Hamlet's age would be uncertain. His being several times called 'young' would not influence me much (nor at all when he is called 'young' simply to distinguish him from his father, as he is in the very passage which shows him to be thirty). But I think we naturally take him to be about as old as Laertes, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and take them to be less than thirty. Further, the language used by Laertes and Polonius to Ophelia in I. iii. would certainly, by itself, lead one to imagine Hamlet as a good deal less than thirty; and the impression it makes is not, to me, altogether effaced by the fact that Henry V. at his accession is said to be in 'the very May-morn of his youth,' – an expression which corresponds closely with those used by Laertes to Ophelia. In some passages, again, there is an air of boyish petulance. On the other side, however, we should have to set (1) the maturity of Hamlet's thought; (2) his manner, on the whole, to other men and to his mother, which, I think, is far from suggesting the idea of a mere youth; (3) such a passage as his words to Horatio at III. ii. 59 ff., which imply that both he and Horatio have seen a good deal of life (this passage has in Q1 nothing corresponding to the most significant lines). I have shown in Note B that it is very unsafe to argue to Hamlet's youth from the words about his going back to Wittenberg.

On the whole I agree with Prof. Dowden that, apart from the statements in V. i., one would naturally take Hamlet to be a man of about five and twenty.

It has been suggested that in the old play Hamlet was a mere lad; that Shakespeare, when he began to work on it,[255] had not determined to make Hamlet older; that, as he went on, he did so determine; and that this is the reason why the earlier part of the play makes (if it does so) a different impression from the later. I see nothing very improbable in this idea, but I must point out that it is a mistake to appeal in support of it to the passage in V. i. as found in Q1; for that passage does not in the least show that the author (if correctly reported) imagined Hamlet as a lad. I set out the statements in Q2 and Q1.

Q2 says:

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

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

Q1 says:

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

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

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NOTE D.
'MY TABLES – MEET IT IS I SET IT DOWN.'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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NOTE E.
THE GHOST IN THE CELLARAGE.

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

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

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

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NOTE F.
THE PLAYER'S SPEECH IN Hamlet.

There are two extreme views about this speech. According to one, Shakespeare quoted it from some play, or composed it for the occasion, simply and solely in order to ridicule, through it, the bombastic style of dramatists contemporary with himself or slightly older; just as he ridicules in 2 Henry IV. Tamburlaine's rant about the kings who draw his chariot, or puts fragments of similar bombast into the mouth of Pistol. According to Coleridge, on the other hand, this idea is 'below criticism.' No sort of ridicule was intended. 'The lines, as epic narrative, are superb.' It is true that the language is 'too poetical – the language of lyric vehemence and epic pomp, and not of the drama'; but this is due to the fact that Shakespeare had to distinguish the style of the speech from that of his own dramatic dialogue.

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

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

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

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

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

So far I have chiefly followed Warburton, but there is an important point which seems not to have been observed. 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,

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

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

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:

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.):

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

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

and in King John,

and in Lucrece,

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),

(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

(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

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

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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:

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:

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?

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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):

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:

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A.C. Bradley: Shakespearean Tragedy – Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth (Macmillan and Co., London, UK, 1904; republished by Penguin Books, London, UK, 1991); online version made available by Project Gutenberg.

[Return to A.C. Bradley introduction page]

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