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

worship another, choosing him for such qualities; and hereby Shakspere shows us his Hamlet-a brave, noble, wise, pure man, beset by circumstances the most adverse conceivable. That Hamlet had not misapprehended Horatio becomes evident in the last scene of all. 272.]

[Footnote 8: The mother of flattery is self-advantage.]

[Footnote 9: sugared . 1st Q. :

Let flattery sit on those time-pleasing tongs;
To glose with them that loues to heare their praise;
And not with such as thou Horatio .
There is a play to night, &c.]

[Footnote 10: A pregnant figure and phrase, requiring thought.]

[Footnote 11: 'since my real self asserted its dominion, and began to rule my choice,' making it pure, and withdrawing it from the tyranny of impulse and liking.]

[Footnote 12: The old word medle is synonymous with mingle. ]

[Footnote 13: To Hamlet, the lordship of man over himself, despite of circumstance, is a truth, and therefore a duty.]

[Footnote 14: The man who has chosen his friend thus, is hardly himself one to act without sufficing reason, or take vengeance without certain proof of guilt.]

[Footnote 15: He justifies the phrase, repeating it.]

[Footnote 16: -apologetic for having praised him to his face.]

[Page 136]

There is a Play to night before the King, One Scoene of it comes neere the Circumstance Which I haue told thee, of my Fathers death. I prythee, when thou see'st that Acte a-foot,[1] Euen with the verie Comment of my[2] Soule [Sidenote: thy[2] soule] Obserue mine Vnkle: If his occulted guilt, [Sidenote: my Vncle,] Do not it selfe vnkennell in one speech, [Sidenote: 58] It is a damned Ghost that we haue seene:[3] And my Imaginations are as foule As Vulcans Stythe.[4] Giue him needfull note,
[Sidenote: stithy; | heedfull] For I mine eyes will riuet to his Face: And after we will both our iudgements ioyne,[5] To censure of his seeming.[6] [Sidenote: in censure]

Hora. Well my Lord. If he steale ought the whil'st this Play is Playing. [Sidenote: if a] And scape detecting, I will pay the Theft.[1] [Sidenote: detected,]

Enter King, Queene, Polonius, Ophelia, Rosincrance, Guildensterne, and other Lords attendant with his Guard carrying Torches. Danish March. Sound a Flourish.
[Sidenote: Enter Trumpets and Kettle Drummes, King, Queene,
Polonius, Ophelia. ]

Ham. They are comming to the Play: I must [Sidenote: 60, 156, 178] be idle.[7] Get you a place.

King. How fares our Cosin Hamlet ?

Ham. Excellent Ifaith, of the Camelions dish: [Sidenote: 154] I eate the Ayre promise-cramm'd,[8] you cannot feed Capons so.[9]

King. I haue nothing with this answer Hamlet , these words are not mine.[10]

Ham. No, nor mine. Now[11] my Lord, you plaid once i'th'Vniuersity, you say?

Polon. That I did my Lord, and was accounted [Sidenote: did I] a good Actor.

[Footnote 1: Here follows in 1st Q.

Marke thou the King, doe but obserue his lookes,
For I mine eies will riuet to his face:
[Sidenote: 112] And if he doe not bleach, and change at that,
It is a damned ghost that we haue seene.
Horatio , haue a care, obserue him well.

Hor . My lord, mine eies shall still be on his face,
And not the smallest alteration
That shall appeare in him, but I shall note it.]

[Footnote 2: I take 'my' to be right: 'watch my uncle with the comment-the discriminating judgment, that is-of my soul, more intent than thine.']

[Footnote 3: He has then, ere this, taken Horatio into his confidence-so far at least as the Ghost's communication concerning the murder.]

[Footnote 4: a dissyllable: stithy , anvil ; Scotch, studdy .

Hamlet's doubt is here very evident: he hopes he may find it a false ghost: what good man, what good son would not? He has clear cause and reason-it is his duty to delay. That the cause and reason and duty are not invariably clear to Hamlet himself-not clear in every mood, is another thing. Wavering conviction, doubt of evidence, the corollaries of assurance, the oppression of misery, a sense of the worthlessness of the world's whole economy-each demanding delay, might yet well, all together, affect the man's feeling as mere causes of rather than reasons for hesitation. The conscientiousness of Hamlet stands out the clearer that, throughout, his dislike to his uncle, predisposing him to believe any ill of him, is more than evident. By his incompetent or prejudiced judges, Hamlet's accusations and justifications of himself are equally placed to the discredit of his account. They seem to think a man could never accuse himself except he were in the wrong; therefore if ever he excuses himself, he is the more certainly in the wrong: whatever point may tell on the other side, it is to be disregarded.]

[Footnote 5: 'bring our two judgments together for comparison.']

[Footnote 6: 'in order to judge of the significance of his looks and behaviour.']

[Footnote 7: Does he mean foolish , that is, lunatic ? or
insouciant , and unpreoccupied ?]

[Footnote 8: The king asks Hamlet how he fares -that is, how he gets on; Hamlet pretends to think he has asked him about his diet. His talk has at once become wild; ere the king enters he has donned his cloak of madness. Here he confesses to ambition-will favour any notion concerning himself rather than give ground for suspecting the real state of his mind and feeling.

In the 1st Q. 'the Camelions dish' almost appears to mean the play, not the king's promises.]

[Footnote 9: In some places they push food down the throats of the poultry they want to fatten, which is technically, I believe, called
cramming them.]

[Footnote 10: 'You have not taken me with you; I have not laid hold of your meaning; I have nothing by your answer.' 'Your words have not become my property; they have not given themselves to me in their meaning.']

[Footnote 11: Point thus : 'No, nor mine now.-My Lord,' &c. '-not mine, now I have uttered them, for so I have given them away.' Or does he mean to disclaim their purport?]

[Page 138]

Ham. And[1] what did you enact?

Pol. I did enact Iulius Caesar , I was kill'd i'th'Capitol: Brutus kill'd me.

Ham. It was a bruite part of him, to kill so Capitall a Calfe there.[2] Be the Players ready?

Rosin. I my Lord, they stay vpon your patience.

Qu. Come hither my good Hamlet , sit by me. [Sidenote: my deere]

Ham. No good Mother, here's Mettle more attractiue.[3]

Pol. Oh ho, do you marke that?[4]

Ham. Ladie, shall I lye in your Lap?

Ophe. No my Lord.

Ham. I meane, my Head vpon your Lap?[5]

Ophe. I my Lord.[6]

Ham. Do you thinke I meant Country[7] matters?

Ophe. I thinke nothing, my Lord.

Ham. That's a faire thought to ly between Maids legs.

Ophe. What is my Lord?

Ham. Nothing.

Ophe. You are merrie, my Lord?

Ham. Who I?

Ophe. I my Lord.[8]

Ham. Oh God, your onely Iigge-maker[9]: what should a man do, but be merrie. For looke you how cheerefully my Mother lookes, and my Father dyed within's two Houres.

[Sidenote: 65] Ophe. Nay, 'tis twice two moneths, my Lord.[10]

Ham. So long? Nay then let the Diuel weare [Sidenote: 32] blacke, for Ile haue a suite of Sables.[11] Oh Heauens! dye two moneths ago, and not forgotten yet?[12] Then there's hope, a great mans Memorie, may out-liue his life halfe a yeare: But byrlady [Sidenote: ber Lady a] he must builde Churches then: or else shall he [Sidenote: shall a]

[Footnote 1: 'And ' not in Q. ]

[Footnote 2: Emphasis on there . 'There' is not in 1st Q. Hamlet means it was a desecration of the Capitol.]

[Footnote 3: He cannot be familiar with his mother, so avoids her-will not sit by her, cannot, indeed, bear to be near her. But he loves and hopes in Ophelia still.]

[Footnote 4: '-Did I not tell you so?']

[Footnote 5: This speech and the next are not in the Q. , but are shadowed in the 1st Q. ]

[Footnote 6: -consenting .]

[Footnote 7: In 1st Quarto , 'contrary.'

Hamlet hints, probing her character-hoping her unable to understand. It is the festering soreness of his feeling concerning his mother, making him doubt with the haunting agony of a loathed possibility, that prompts, urges, forces from him his ugly speeches-nowise to be justified, only to be largely excused in his sickening consciousness of his mother's presence. Such pain as Hamlet's, the ferment of subverted love and reverence, may lightly bear the blame of hideous manners, seeing, they spring from no wantonness, but from the writhing of tortured and helpless Purity. Good manners may be as impossible as out of place in the presence of shameless evil.]

[Footnote 8: Ophelia bears with him for his own and his madness' sake, and is less uneasy because of the presence of his mother. To account
satisfactorily for Hamlet's speeches to her, is not easy. The freer custom of the age, freer to an extent hardly credible in this, will not
satisfy the lovers of Hamlet, although it must have some weight. The necessity for talking madly, because he is in the presence of his uncle, and perhaps, to that end, for uttering whatever comes to him, without pause for choice, might give us another hair's-weight. Also he may be supposed confident that Ophelia would not understand him, while his uncle would naturally set such worse than improprieties down to wildest madness. But I suspect that here as before (123), Shakepere would show Hamlet's soul full of bitterest, passionate loathing; his mother has compelled