The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark by George MacDonald (big ebook reader TXT) 📕

[Sidenote: proude mans] [Sidenote: 114] The pangs of dispriz'd Loue,[11] the Lawes delay,
[Sidenote: despiz'd] The insolence of Office, and the Spurnes That patient merit of the vnworthy takes, [Sidenote: th'] When he himselfe might his Quietus make [Sidenote: 194,252-3] With a bare Bodkin?[12] Who would these Fardles
beare[13] [Sidenote: would fardels] To grunt and sweat vnder a weary life, [Sidenote: 194] But that the dread of something after death,[14] The vndiscouered Countrey, from whose Borne No Traueller returnes,[15] Puzels the will, And makes vs rather beare those illes we haue, Then flye to others that we know not of. Thus Conscience does make Cowards of vs all,[16] [Sidenote: 30] And thus the Natiue hew of Resolution[17] Is sicklied o're, with the pale cast of Thought,[18]
[Sidenote: sickled]

[Footnote 1: Not in Q. -They go behind the tapestry, where it hangs over the recess of the doorway. Ophelia thinks they have left the room.]

[Footnote 2: In Q. before last speech. ]

[Footnote 3: Perhaps to a Danish or Dutch critic, or one from the eastern coast of England, this simile would not seem so unfit as it does to some.]

[Footnote 4: To print this so as I would have it read, I would complete this line from here with points, and commence the next with points. At the other breaks of the soliloquy, as indicated below, I would do the same-thus:

And by opposing end them....
....To die-to sleep,]

[Footnote 5: Break .]

[Footnote 6: Break .]

[Footnote 7: Emphasis on what .]

[Footnote 8: Such dreams as the poor Ghost's.]

[Footnote 9: Break. -' pawse ' is the noun, and from its use at page 186, we may judge it means here 'pause for reflection.']

[Footnote 10: 'makes calamity so long-lived.']

[Footnote 11: -not necessarily disprized by the lady ; the disprizer in Hamlet's case was the worldly and suspicious father-and that in part, and seemingly to Hamlet altogether, for the king's sake.]

[Footnote 12: small sword . If there be here any allusion to suicide, it is on the general question, and with no special application to himself. 24. But it is the king and the bare bodkin his thought associates. How could he even glance at the things he has just mentioned, as each, a reason for suicide? It were a cowardly country indeed where the question might be asked, 'Who would not commit suicide because of any one of these things, except on account of what may follow after death?'! One might well, however, be tempted to destroy an oppressor, and risk his life in that. ]

[Footnote 13: Fardel , burden: the old French for fardeau , I am informed.]

[Footnote 14: -a dread caused by conscience.]

[Footnote 15: The Ghost could not be imagined as having returned .]

[Footnote 16: 'of us all' not in Q. It is not the fear of evil that makes us cowards, but the fear of deserved evil. The Poet may intend that conscience alone is the cause of fear in man. ' Coward ' does not here involve contempt: it should be spoken with a grim smile. But Hamlet would hardly call turning from suicide cowardice in any sense. 24.]

[Footnote 17: -such as was his when he vowed vengeance.]

[Footnote 18: -such as immediately followed on that The native hue of resolution-that which is natural to man till interruption comes-is ruddy; the hue of thought is pale. I suspect the ' pale cast ' of an allusion to whitening with rough-cast .]

[Page 122]

And enterprizes of great pith and moment,[1] [Sidenote: pitch [1]] With this regard their Currants turne away, [Sidenote: awry] And loose the name of Action.[2] Soft you now, [Sidenote: 119] The faire Ophelia ? Nimph, in thy Orizons[3] Be all my sinnes remembred.[4]

Ophe. Good my Lord, How does your Honor for this many a day?

Ham. I humbly thanke you: well, well, well.[5]

Ophe. My Lord, I haue Remembrances of yours, That I haue longed long to re-deliuer. I pray you now, receiue them.

Ham. No, no, I neuer gaue you ought.[6]
[Sidenote: No, not I, I never]

Ophe. My honor'd Lord, I know right well you did,
[Sidenote: you know] And with them words of so sweet breath compos'd, As made the things more rich, then perfume left:
[Sidenote: these things | their perfume lost.[7]] Take these againe, for to the Noble minde Rich gifts wax poore, when giuers proue vnkinde. There my Lord.[8]

Ham. Ha, ha: Are you honest?[9]

Ophe. My Lord.

Ham. Are you faire?

Ophe. What meanes your Lordship?

Ham. That if you be honest and faire, your
[Sidenote: faire, you should admit] Honesty[10] should admit no discourse to your Beautie.

Ophe. Could Beautie my Lord, haue better Comerce[11] then your Honestie?[12]
[Sidenote: Then with honestie?[11]]

Ham. I trulie: for the power of Beautie, will sooner transforme Honestie from what it is, to a Bawd, then the force of Honestie can translate Beautie into his likenesse. This was sometime a Paradox, but now the time giues it proofe. I did loue you once.[13]

Ophe. Indeed my Lord, you made me beleeue so.

[Footnote 1: How could suicide be styled an enterprise of great pith ? Yet less could it be called of great pitch .]

[Footnote 2: I allow this to be a general reflection, but surely it serves to show that conscience must at least be one of Hamlet's restraints.]

[Footnote 3: -by way of intercession.]

[Footnote 4: Note the entire change of mood from that of the last soliloquy. The right understanding of this soliloquy is indispensable to the right understanding of Hamlet. But we are terribly trammelled and hindered, as in the understanding of Hamlet throughout, so here in the understanding of his meditation, by traditional assumption. I was roused to think in the right direction concerning it, by the honoured friend and relative to whom I have feebly acknowledged my obligation by dedicating to him this book. I could not at first see it as he saw it: 'Think about it, and you will,' he said. I did think, and by degrees-not very quickly-my prejudgments thinned, faded, and almost vanished. I trust I see it now as a whole, and in its true relations, internal and external-its relations to itself, to the play, and to the Hamlet, of Shakspere.

Neither in its first verse, then, nor in it anywhere else, do I find even an allusion to suicide. What Hamlet is referring to in the said first verse, it is not possible with certainty to determine, for it is but the vanishing ripple of a preceding ocean of thought, from which he is just stepping out upon the shore of the articulate. He may have been plunged in some profound depth of the metaphysics of existence, or he may have been occupied with the one practical question, that of the slaying of his uncle, which has, now in one form, now in another, haunted his spirit for weeks. Perhaps, from the message he has just received, he expects to meet the king, and conscience, confronting temptation, has been urging the necessity of proof; perhaps a righteous consideration of consequences, which sometimes have share in the primary duty, has been making him shrink afresh from the shedding of blood, for every thoughtful mind recoils from the irrevocable, and that is an awful form of the irrevocable. But whatever thought, general or special, this first verse may be dismissing, we come at once thereafter into the light of a definite question: 'Which is nobler-to endure evil fortune, or to oppose it à outrance ; to bear in passivity, or to resist where resistance is hopeless-resist to the last-to the death which is its unavoidable end?'

Then comes a pause, during which he is thinking-we will not say 'too precisely on the event,' but taking his account with consequences: the result appears in the uttered conviction that the extreme possible consequence, death, is a good and not an evil. Throughout, observe, how here, as always, he generalizes, himself being to himself but the type of his race.

Then follows another pause, during which he seems prosecuting the thought, for he has already commenced further remark in similar strain, when suddenly a new and awful element introduces itself:

....To die-to sleep.-
-To sleep ! perchance to dream !

He had been thinking of death only as the passing away of the present with its troubles; here comes the recollection that death has its own troubles-its own thoughts, its own consciousness: if it be a sleep, it has its dreams. ' What dreams