1 Watch. [Within.] Lead, boy :-Which way? | La. Cap. O, me! this sight of death is as a bell, Jul. Yea, noise ?-then I'll be brief.---O, happy That warns my old age to a sepulchre. dagger! [Snatching ROMEO's Dagger. This is thy sheath [Stabs herself:] there rust, and let me die. [Falls on ROMEO's Body, and dies. Enter Watch, with the Page of PARIS. Page. This is the place; there, where the torch doth burn. 1 Watch. The ground is bloody; Search about the churchyard: Go, some of you, whoe'er you find, attach. [Exeunt some. Pitiful sight! here lies the county slain; Enter some of the Watch, with BALTHASAR. I Watch. Hold him in safety, till the prince come hither. Enter another Watchman, with FRIAR LAURENCE. We took this mattock and this spade from him, Prince. What misadventure is so early up, abroad? Enter MONTAGUE and others. Mon. Alas, my liege, my wife is dead to-night;3 Prince. Look, and thou shalt see. Mon. O, thou untaught! what manners is in this, To press before thy father to a grave ?4 Prince. Seal up the mouth of outrage for a while, And know their spring, their head, their true descent; And lead you even to death: Mean time forbear, Fri. I am the greatest, able to do least, Prince. Then say at once what thou dost know Is not so long as is a tedious tale. Romeo, there dead, was husband to that Juliet; La. Cap. The people in the street cry-Romeo, ears? Watch. Sovereign, here lies the county Paris slain; And Romeo dead; and Juliet, dead before, Prince. Search, seek, and know how this murder comes. 1 Watch. Here is a friar, and slaughter'd meo's man; With instruments upon them, fit to open foul Cap. O, Heavens !-O, wife! look how our This dagger hath mista'en,-for lo! his house should we heap still more upon accident, that is already "Shake the yoke of inauspicious stars He holds his beloved in his arms, and, dying, cheers 1 Thus the quarto of 1599. That of 1597 reads: 2 The words, for lo! his house is empty on the back of Montague,' are to be considered parenthetical. It appears that the dagger was anciently worn behind the back. So in Humor's Ordinarie: See you yon huge bum dagger at his back? But, when I came (some minute ere the time But then a noise did scare me from the tomb; "Thou must wear thy sword by thy side, And young Benvolio is deceased too." 5 It is to be lamented that the poet did not conclude the dialogue with the action, and avoid a narrative o. events which the audience already knew.'-Johnson. Shakspeare was led into this uninteresting narrative by following too closely The Tragicall Hystory of Romeus and Juliet. In this poem, (which is printed in the Variorum Editions of Shakspeare) the bodies of the dead are removed to a public scaffold; and from that elevation is the Friar's narrative delivered. The same circumstance is introduced in Hamet near the con clusion. Miscarried by my fault, let my old life Prince. We still have known thee for a holy man. Prince. Give me the letter, I will look on it.Where is the county's page, that rais'd the watch? Sirrah, what made your master in this place? Page. He came with flowers to strew his lady's grave; And bid me stand aloof, and so I did: Prince. This letter doth make good the friar's words, Their course of love, the tidings of her death: Came to this vault to die, and lie with Juliet.- Mon. But I can give thee more: 1 Mercutio and Paris. Mercutio is expressly called the Prince's kinsman in Act iii. Sc. 4; and that Paris was also the Prince's kinsman, may be inferred from the following passages. Capulet, speaking of the count in the fourth act, describes him as a gentleman of princely parentage;' and after he is killed, Romeo says: -Let me peruse this face; Mercutio's kinsman, noble county Paris.' 2 The quarto of 1597 reads, A gloomy peace. To gloom, is an ancient verb, used by Spenser and other old writers. THIS play is one of the most pleasing of our author's performances. The scenes are busy and various, the incidents numerous and important, the catastrophe irresistibly affecting, and the process of the action carried on with such probability, at least with such congruity to popular opinions, as tragedy requires. Here is one of the few attempts of Shakspeare to ex. hibit the conversation of gentlemen, to represent the airy sprightliness of juvenile elegance. Dryden mentions a tradition, which might easily reach his time, of a declaration made by Shakspeare, that he was obliged to kill Mercutio in the third Act, lest he should have been killed by him. Yet he thinks him no such formidable person, but that he might have lived through the play and died in his bed, without danger to the poet. Dryden well knew, had he been in quest of truth, in a pointed sentence, that more regard is commonly had to the words than the thought, and that it is very seldom to be rigorously understood. Mercutio's wit, gayety, and courage, will always procure him friends that wish him a longer life; but his death is not precipitated, he has lived out the time allotted him in the construction of the play; nor do I doubt the ability of Shakspeare to have continued his existence, though some of his sallies are perhaps out of the reach of Dryden; whose genius was not very fertile of merriment, nor ductile to humour, but acute, argumentative, comprehensive, and sublime. The Nurse is one of the characters in which the author delighted: he has with great subtilty of distine tion, drawn her at once loquacious and secret, obse quious and insolent, trusty and dishonest. His comic scenes are happily wrought, but his pathetic strains are always polluted with some unexpected depravations. His persons, however distressed, have a conceit left them in their misery, a miserable conceit.t JOHNSON. A. W. Schlegel has answered this remark at length, and, as I think, satisfactorily, in a detailed criticism upon this tragedy, published in the Horen, a journal conducted by Schiller in 1794-1795, and made accessi ble to the English reader in Ollier's Literary Miscellany, Part I. In his Lectures on Dramatic Literature (vol. sensible remarks upon the conceits' here stigmatized. It should be remembered that playing on words was a very favourite species of wit combat with our ancestors 3 This line has reference to the poem from which theii. p. 135, Eng. translation,) will be found some further fable is taken; in which the Nurse is banished for concealing the marriage; Romeo's servant set at liberty, because he had only acted in obedience to his master's orders; the Apothecary is hanged; while Friar Lau rence was permitted to retire to a hermitage near Verona, where he ended his life in penitence and tranquillity. 4 Shakspeare, in his revision of this play, has not effected the alteration by introducing any new incidents, but merely by adding to the length of the scenes. The piece appears to have been always a very popular one. Marston, in his Satires, 1598, says:- Luscus, what's play'd to-day? faith, now I know; I set thy lips abroach, from whence doth flow Nought but pure Juliet and Romeo.' The concluding lines may have been formed on the last couplet of the old poem : among the monuments that in Verona been, There is no monument more worthy of the sight Than is the tombe of Juliet and Romeus her knight.' With children, as well as nations of the most simple manners, a great inclination to playing on words is often displayed; [they cannot therefore be both puerile and unnatural: If the first charge is founded, the second cannot be so.] In Homer we find several examples; the Books of Moses, the oldest written memorial of the primitive world, are, it is well known, full of them. On the other hand, poets of a very cultivated taste, or orators like Cicero, have delighted in them Whoever, in Richard the Second, is disgusted with the affecting play of words of the dying John of Gaunt, on his own name, let him remember that the same thing S. W. S occurs in the Ajax of Sophocles.' This quotation is also found in the Preface to Dryden's Fables: Just John Littlewit, in Bartholomew Fair, who had a conceit (as he tells you) left him in his misery; a miserable conceit.'-Steevens HAMLET, PRINCE OF DENMARK. PRELIMINARY REMARKS. THE original story on which this play is built may father, and privy to his intention of revenging his be found in Saxo Grammaticus, the Danish death. There are also some few lines and passages, historian. From thence Belle forest adopted it in his which do not appear in the revised copy. The princicollection of novels, in seven volumes, which he began pal variations are noticed in the course of the notes.* in 1564, and continued to publish through succeeding years. It was from Belleforest that the old black letter and amended state, and in the title-page is stated to be It again issued from the press in 1604, in its corrected prose Hystorie of Hamblet' was translated; the earli-newly imprinted, and enlarged to almost as much est edition of which, known to the commentators, was again as it was, according to the true and perfect copy.' dated in 1609; but it is supposed that there were earlier From these words Malone had drawn the natural conimpressions. the press; but his star was not propitious; he never clusion that a former less perfect copy had issued from saw it. Though it is said to have formed part of the collection of sir Thomas Hanmer, it only came to light at the commencement of the present year, [1825 ;] too late, alas! even to gratify the enthusiasm of his zealous friend, that worthy man, James Boswell; upon whom devolved the office of giving to the world the accumulated labours of Malone's latter years, devoted to the illustration of Shakspeare. The following passage is found in an Epistle, by Thomas Nashe, prefixed to Greene's Arcadia, which was published in 1589:- I will turn back to my first text of studies of delight, and talk a little in friendship with a few of our rival translators. It is a common practice now-a-days, among a sort of shifting compamons, that runne through every art and thrive by none, to leave the trade of Noverint, [i. e. the law] whereunto they were born, and busie themselves with the endeavours of art, that could scarcely latinize their neck-verse, if they should have neede; yet English Seneca, read by candle-light, yeelds many good sentences, as Bloud is a beggar, and so forth: and if you entreat him faire in a frosty morning, he will affoord you whole Hamlets, I should say, Handfuls of tragical speeches But O, grief! Tempus edax rerum-what is it that will last always? The sea exhaled by drops, will in continuance be drie; and Seneca, let bloud line by line, and page by page, at length must needs die to our stage.' It is manifest from this passage that some play on the story of Hamlet had been exhibited before the year 1589. Malone thinks that it was not Shakspeare's drama, but an elder performance, on which, with the aid of the old prose History of Hamblet, his tragedy was formed. In a tract, entitled Wits Miserie, or the World's Madnesse, discovering the incarnate Devils of the Age,' published by Thomas Lodge in 1596, one of the devils is said to be a foule lubber, and looks as pale as the vizard of the ghost, who cried so miserably at the theatre Hamlet, revenge. But it is supposed that this also may refer to an elder performance. cussed, and with a variety of contradictory opinions. The character of Hamlet has been frequently diaJohnson and Steevens have made severe animadversions upon some parts of his conduct. A celebrated writer of Germany, has very skilfully pointed out the cause of the defects in Hamlet's character, which unfit him for the dreadful office to which he is called. 'It is clear to me (says Goëthé) that Shakspeare's intention was to exhibit the effects of a great action, imposed as a duty upon a mind too feeble for its accomplishment. Here is an oak planted in a china vase, proper to reIn this sense I find the character consistent throughout. ceive only the most delicate flowers. The roots strike out, and the vessel flies to pieces. A pure, noble, highly moral disposition, but without that energy of soul which constitutes the hero, sinks under a load which it can neither support nor resolve to abandon altogether. All his obligations are sacred to him; but this alone is above his powers! An impossibility is required at his hands; not an impossibility in itself, but that which is so to him. Observe how he shifts, turns, hesitates, advances and recedes! how he is continually sion, which he, nevertheless, in the end seems almost reminded and reminding himself of his great commisentirely to lose sight of, and this without ever recovering his former tranquillity.'f Dr. Akenside suggested that the madness of Hamlet Dr. Percy possessed a copy of Speght's edition of Chaucer, which had been Gabriel Harvey's, who had written his name and the date, 1598, both at the beginning and end of the volume, and many remarks in the intermediate leaves; among which are these words:-is not altogether feigned; and the notion has of late The younger sort take much delight in Shakspeare's Venus and Adonis; but his Lucrece, and his tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke, have it in them to please the wiser sort.' was written in 1598, because translated Tasso is named Malone doubts whether this in another note; but it is not necessary that the allusion should be to Fairfax's translation, which was not printed till 1600: it may refer to the version of the first five books of the Jerusalem, published by R. C. [arew] in 1594. We may therefore safely place the date of the first composition of Hamlet, at least as early as 1597; and, for reasons adduced by Mr. George Chalmers, we may presume that it was revised, and the additions made to it in the year 1600. The first entry on the Stationers' books is by James Roberts, July 26, 1602; and a copy of the play in its first state, printed for N. L. and John Trundell, in 1603, has recently been discovered. As in the case of the earliest impressions of Romeo and Juliet, and the Merry Wives of Windsor, this edition of Hamlet appears to have been either printed from an imperfect manuscript of the prompt books, or the playhouse copy, or stolen from the author's papers. It is next to impossible that it can have been taken down during the representation, as some have supposed was the case with the other two plays. The variations of this early copy from the play of Hamlet, in its improved state, are too numerous and striking to admit a doubt of the play having been subsequently revised, amplified, and altered by the poet. There are even some variations in the plot; the principal of which are, that Horatio announces to the Queen Hamlet's unexpected return from his voyage to Eng. land; and that the Queen is expressly declared to be nnocent of any participation in the murder of Hamlet's been revived. Dr. Ferriar, in his Essay towards a Theory of Apparitions, has termed the state of mind which Shakspeare exhibits to us in Hamlet,--as the ting on a frame of acute sensibility,-latent lunacy. consequence of conflicting passions and events operaShakspeare's character of Hamlet can only be underIt has often occurred to me (says Dr. F.) that stood on this principle:-He feigns madness for political purposes, while the poet means to represent his underunhinged by the cruel circumstances in which he is standing as really (and unconsciously to himself) placed. The horror of the communication made by his father's spectre, the necessity of belying his attachment to an innocent and deserving object, the certainty which he is goaded to an act of assassination abhorrent of his mother's guilt, and the supernatural impulse by to his nature, are causes sufficient to overwhelm and distract a mind previously disposed to "weakness and to melancholy," and originally full of tenderness and natural affection. By referring to the play, it will be seen that his real insanity is only developed after the mock play. Then, in place of a systematic conduct, conducive to his purposes, he becomes irresolute, inconsequent; and the plot appears to stand unaccountably still. Instead of striking at his object, he resigns himself to the current of events, and sinks at length ignobly under the stream.' of the Dramatis Personæ. Corambis and Montano are William Meister's Apprenticeship, b. iv. ch. 13. A comedian of considerable talents has entered at large into the question of Hamlet's madness, and has endeavoured to show that the poet meant to represent him as insane.* Mr. Boswell, on the contrary, in a very judicious and ingenious review of Hamlet's character, combats the supposition, and thinks it entirely without foundation. He argues that the sentiments which fall from Hamlet in his soliloquies, or in confidential communication with Horatio, evince not only a sound but an acute and vigorous understanding. His misfortunes, indeed, and a sense of shame, from the hasty and incestuous marriage of his mother, have sunk him into a state of weakness and melancholy; but though his mind is enfeebled, it is by no means de"anged. It would have been little in the manner of akspeare to introduce two persons in the same play whose intellects were disordered; but he has rather, in this instance, as in King Lear, a second time effected what, as far as I can recollect, no other writer has ever ventured to attempt-the exhibition on the same scene of real and fictitious madness in contrast with each other. In carrying his design into execution, Hamlet Feels no difficulty in imposing upon the King, whom he detests; or upon Polonius, and his school fellows, whom he despises: but the case is very different indeed in his interviews with Ophelia; aware of the submissive mildness of her character, which leads her to be subject to the influence of her father and her brother, he cannot venture to entrust her with his secret. In her presence, therefore, he has not only to assume a disguise, but to restrain himself from those expressions of affection, which a lover must find it most difficult to repress in the presence of his mistress. In this tumult of conflicting feelings, he is led to overact his part, from a fear of falling below it; and thus gives an appearance of rudeness and harshness to that which is, in fact, a painful struggle to conceal his tenderness.'f Mr. Richardson, in his Essay on the Character of Hamlet, has well observed that the spirit of that remarkable scene with Ophelia, where he tells her, get thee to a nunnery," is frequently misunderstood; and especially by the players. At least it does not appear to have been the poet's intention that the air and manner of Hamlet in this scene should be perfectly grave *On the madness of Hamlet, by Mr. W. Farren.London Magazine, for April, 1824. Boswell's edition of Malone's Shakspeare, vol. vii. p. 536. and serious; nor is there any thing in the dialogue to justify the grave and tragic tone with which it is frequently spoken. Let Hamlet be represented as delivering himself in a light and airy, unconcerned and thoughtless manner, and the rudeness so much complained of will disappear.' His conduct to Ophelia is intended to confirm and publish the notion he would convey of his pretended insanity, which could not be marked by any circumstance so strongly as that of treating her with harshness or indifference. The sincerity and ardour of his passion for her had undergone no change: he could not explain himself to her; and, in the difficult and trying circumstances in which he was placed, had therefore no alternative. The poet indeed has marked with a master hand the amiable and polished character of Hamlet. Ophelia designates him as having been the glass of fashion, and the mould of form ;' and though circumstances have unsettled him, and thrown over his natural disposition the clouds of melancholy, the kindness of his disposition and his natural hilarity break through on every occasion which arises to call them forth. Mr. Boswell has remarked, that the scene with the grave-diggers shows, in a striking point of view, his good natured affability. The reflections which follow afford new proofs of his amiable character. The place where he stands, the frame of his own thoughts, and the objects which surround him, suggest the vanity of all human pursuits; but there is nothing harsh or caustic in his satire; his observations are dictated rather by feelings of sorrow than of anger; and the sprightliness of his wit, which misfortune has repressed, but cannot altogether extinguish, has thrown over the whole a truly pathetic cast of humorous sadness.Those gleams of sunshine, which serve only to show us the scattered fragments of a brilliant imagination, crushed and broken by calamity, are much more affecting than a long uninterrupted train of monotonous wo? Ophelia is a character almost too exquisitely touch ing to be dwelt upon. Oh, rose of May; oh, flower too soon faded! Her love, her madness, her death, are described with the truest touches of tenderness and pathos. It is a character which nobody but Shakspeare could have drawn in the way that he has done; and to the conception of which there is not the smallest approach, except in some of the old romantic ballads.'f Hazlitt's Characters of Shakspeare's Plays, p. 112. CLAUDIUS, King of Denmark. PERSONS REPRESENTED. FRANCISCO, a Soldier. HAMLET, Son to the former, and Nephew to the REYNALDO, Servant to Polonius. LAERTES, Son to Polonius. present King. POLONIUS, Lord Chamberlain. HORATIO, Friend to Hamlet. VOLTIMAND, CORNELIUS, Courtiers. Officers. A Captain. An Ambassador. GERTRUDE, Queen of Denmark, and Mother to OPHELIA, Daughter to Polonius. Lords, Ladies, Officers, Soldiers, Players, Gravediggers, Sailors, Messengers, and other Attend ants. SCENE-Elsinore. Fran. Nay, answer me;' stand, and unfold Yourself. Ber. Long live the king! Bernardo? He. If you do meet Horatio and Marcellus, The rivals of my watch, bid them make haste. logy was pointed out by Acro Grammaticus, in his Scholia on Horace: A rico dicto rivales qui in agris rivum haberent communem, et propter enim sæpe dis2 Shakspeare uses rirals for associates, partners; crepabant." Hanmer applied this explanation:-Riand competitor has the same sense throughout these vals, in Latin, being originally applied to proprietors of plays. It is the original sense of rivalis. The etymo-neighbouring lands parted only by a brook, which be 1 i. e. me who am already on the watch, and have a right to demand the watchword; which appears to have been, Long live the king,' cellus. Hor. What, has this thing appear'd again tonight? Ber. I have seen nothing. Mar. Horatio says, 'tis but our fantasy; Hor. Sit down awhile: And let us hear Bernardo speak of this. Ber. Last night of all, Hor. Stay; speak: speak, I charge thee, speak. Mar. "Tis gone, and will not answer. pale: Is not this something more than fantasy? Hor. Before my God, I might not this believe, Mar. Is it not like the king? "Tis strange. Mar. Thus, twice before, and jump at this dead With martial stalk hath he gone by our watch. But, in the gross and scope of mine opinion, Mar. Good now, sit down, and tell me, he that Why this same strict and most observant watch Well, sit we down, Why such impress of shipwrights, whose sore task When yon same star, that's westward from the pole, Mar. Peace, break thee off; look, where it comes Ber. In the same figure like the king that's dead. wonder. Ber. It would be spoke to. Speak to it, Horatio. Hor. What art thou, that usurp'st this time of night, Together with that fair and warlike form In which the majesty of buried Denmark Hor. At least, the whisper goes so. Our last king, Did forfeit with his life, all those his lands, Had he been vanquisher; as, by the same co-mart, Did sometimes march? by Heaven I charge thee, Of unimproved mettle hot and full,' His fell to Hamlet: Now, sir, young Fortinbras, speak. Mar. It is offended. in the time of Shakspeare. So in Chapman's May longed equally to both, and so signified partners: Your appointment was jumpe at three with me.' 2 it was a vulgar notion that a supernatural being could only be spoken to with effect by persons of learning; exorcisms being usually practised by the clergy in Latin. Toby, in The Night Walker of Beaumont and Fletcher, says: 'Let's call the butler up, for he speaks Latin, And that will daunt the devil.' 3 The first quarto reads, it horrors me. To harrow is to distress, to vex, to disturb. To harry and to harass have the same origin, from the Gothic haer, an armed force. Milton has the word in Comus: 'Amaz'd I stood, harrow'd with grief and fear.' 4 Parle, the same as parley, a conference between enemies. 5 i. e. the sledged Polander; Polaque, Fr. The old copy reads Pollar. Malone therefore thinks that Shakspeare wrote Polacks, not considering that it was in a parley, and that a general slaughter was hardly likely to ensue. Mr. Boswell suggests that it is just possible the old reading may be right, pole-ar being put for the person who carried the pole-are, a mark of rank among the Muscovites, as he has shown from Milton's Brief History of Muscovy. 6 Jump. So the quarto of 1603, and that of 1604. The folio reads just. Jump and just were synonymous 7 That is, what particular train of thought to follow, I know not,' &c. The first quarto reads: "In what particular to work I know not.' 8 To impress signifies only to retain shipwrights by giving them prest money for holding themselves in readiness to be employed. Thus in Chapman's second book of Homer's Odyssey: I from the people straight will press for you, Free voluntaries." See King Lear, Act iv. Sc. 2; and Blount's Glossogra phy, in v. prest. 9 Co-mart is the reading of the quarto of 1604; the folio reads, covenant. Co-mart, it is presumed, means a joint bargain. No other instance of the word is known. 10 i. e. and import of that article marked out, assigned or appointed for that purpose.' Designed is here used in the sense designatus, Lat. 11 The first quarto reads, 'Of unapproved. Of unimproved meule hot and full ;' i. e. of unimpeached or unquestioned courage. To improve anciently signified to impeach, to impugn. Thus Florio: 'Improbare, to improove, to impugn.' The French have still improuver, with the same meaning; from improbare, Lat. Numerous instances of improve in this sense, may be found in the writings of Shakspeare's time. And yet |
