[Page 255.] Although (as neither Shakespeare nor his contemporaries paid any attention to the elucidation of their dramas, which were simply acted, and not easily to be read by any one who had seen them played only once)—although, as has already been remarked, these stage-directions have no weight, yet this oldest one (Laertes wounds Hamlet, then in scuffling they change weapons, and Hamlet wounds Laertes), which the actors found it necessary to write down, deserves some consideration. According to the present mode of speech, to scuffle is to tussle. Even Shakespeare himself uses it thus; but its primitive derivation is from to shuffle: it is one with this word. In scuffling or shuffling then, in tussling one with the other, in the clash, they exchange rapiers. Why must the they refer to Hamlet and Laertes? Is it not much more intelligible that one of the judges of the combat, at the bidding of the King, changes the weapons? or the King himself? or a page at a hint from the King? It must be had in mind that after each essay at arms there came a pause, when the combatants walked up and down to rest, their weapons being laid aside together in one place, and at the last pause the weapons were thus changed by the direction of the King, that Hamlet might kill Laertes. [This shrewd but erroneous explanation of the exchange of rapiers was probably devised before the discovery of Q,, but it was not printed until just after. In a footnote, TIECK refers to the stage direction in Q,, 'They catch one another's rapiers, and both are wounded,' and adds that the word catch' does not in the least disturb his explanation. By stretching a point this might be granted, but no stretching will force one another's' to bear out this theory; which I have inserted because it has been, not infrequently, accepted by German commentators. ED.]

[Page 257.] I see in Polonius a real statesman. Discreet, politic, keen-sighted, ready at the council board, cunning upon occasions, he had been valued by the deceased King, and is now indispensable to his successor. How much he suspected as to the death of the former king, or how sincerely he accepted that event, the poet does not tell us.

When Polonius speaks to Ophelia of her relations to Hamlet, he pretends ignorance; he has only heard through others that his daughter talks with the prince, and often and confidentially. Here the cunning courtier shows himself, for the visits of the prince to his house could not have been unknown to him. But these visits were made in the time of the late king, and afterwards in the interregnum before the new ruler ascended the throne. The election was doubtful; Hamlet, as we know, had the first right, and the prospect of becoming father-in-law to the king was tempting. But Hamlet, who had no faculty for availing himself of circumstances, or even for maintaining his rights, allowed himself to be set aside, and Polonius saw, even when the great assembly was held, that Hamlet's position at court was Hamlet's own fault. Consequently, for double reasons, Polonius forbids his daughter to have any intercourse with the prince; first, because the prince was a cypher, and then again, because the King might become suspicious if he learned that such intercourse existed.

Ophelia calms her father with the report of the madness of the prince, who was cruel enough to begin the rôle with her, but she innocently imagines that it is her withdrawing herself from him which is the cause of his unhappy disease. Polonius is beside himself: 'Come, go with me; I will go seek the King,' he cries; for he fears that Hamlet in his insanity will betray his passion, and that thus the matter can no longer be kept secret. He explains for us his real opinion: I am sorry that with better heed and judgement I had not quoted him,' &c., II, I, III. Hamlet is

nothing it is a matter of indifference should the prince be offended; but he dares not keep silence to the King; it might have serious consequences.

In this state of mind he goes to his majesty; on the way, however, the difficulty of the affair which he is to manage becomes more apparent. The cause of Hamlet's madness is his love for the daughter of the minister, of the King's confidential servant. The father then must have permitted, nay, encouraged, the prince's addresses, which have been kept from the knowledge of the King until they can no longer be concealed. What appearance would the old courtier make in the affair? Since a shadow of suspicion must fall upon the father of Ophelia, the disclosure must be made to the King when his majesty is in a good humor. Fortunately, the ambassadors have returned with good tidings from Norway; this is the feast which Polonius prepares for the King,—the explanation is to be the dessert. As he cares little for the Queen, he ventures to represent the prince in a ridiculous light,— the prince's jesting allusions exposing his weakness, while Polonius himself acts the part of a true-hearted, unsuspecting character, so that, after all these preliminaries, the King shall be put in the happy humor in which he may be told how the case stands. 'But how hath she received his love?' is the first question which the King gravely asks. The King wants instant satisfaction upon the point which alone is of interest to him. And then out of half truth and prevarication the old man is to spin a lie, that shall set himself in the most blameless light, but which, however, does not satisfy the King. Conscious that he has not been innocent of ambitious designs, and anxious to set himself fully right, Polonius, all too eagerly, proposes that his daughter and the prince be brought together, while he himself and the King listen, concealed, to what passes between the two.

How much of fine observation is there in what is said of Ophelia in Goethe's Wilhelm Meister! But if I do not entirely misunderstand Shakespeare, the poet has meant to intimate throughout the piece that the poor girl, in the ardor of her passion for the fair prince, has yielded all to him. The hints and warnings of Laertes come too late. It is tender and worthy of the great poet to leave the relation of Hamlet and Ophelia, like much else in the piece, a riddle; but it is from this point of view alone that Hamlet's behavior, his bitterness, and Ophelia's suffering and madness, find connection and consistency; and we perceive why it is that all in this young creature, hell itself, as Laertes says, is turned to favor and to prettiness. While the riddle is thus solved, the representation of this character on the stage is rendered all the more difficult.

When she first appears with Laertes, who tells her that Hamlet's love-making is only a violet in the youth of primy nature, conscious that it was a great deal more, she naively and smilingly asks, No more but so?' After the speech of her brother, she answers: But, good my brother, Do not as some ungracious pastors do,' &c., I, iii, 46-51. I do not understand how an innocent girl could thus answer,—an answer wide of that warning. But she believed she knew her brother; she felt deeply how contemptible it was that these lessons should never have been addressed to her until after her acquaintance with the prince had been permitted or ignored. Towards her father she has already been reserved; she takes care not to say too much; she contents herself with a few general expressions, and is painfully aware that, all of a sudden, as a stern parent, he treats the prince with contempt.

Terrified, deeply moved, well nigh distraught, she mentions the visit of the prince. Here we are made prophetically to see upon what a dizzy height her whole being This scene is always represented too coldly and thoughtfully.

totters.

In this condition she suffers herself to be used that her mad lover may be overheard. An actress in this character must employ all her skill, in order to show how painful to Ophelia this unworthy part is; to know that, in this interview with her lover, her father and the King are listening to every word; that she is to see him no more, when she had so much to say to him; and to feel herself forced to show herself to him in this strange, unnatural attitude, compelled to bear all his reproaches, his bitterness, bordering on brutality, and not daring to breathe a word in vindication of herself, until at last, when she is no longer observed, she breaks out into lamentation. Certainly, a most involved task for the artist! Instead of this, one commonly sees on the stage, in Ophelia, a maiden taking everything very quietly, while the prince is suffering, complaining, and sentimental, and thus the poet is completely misrepresented.

[Page 266.] At the acting of the play before the court, Ophelia has to endure all sorts of coarseness from Hamlet before all the courtiers; he treats her without that respect which she appears to him to have long before forfeited. The prince is sent away, her father has been killed by him, and her anguish, long pent up, her deserted state, the remembrance of happy hours,-all overwhelm her and overpower her tottering understanding.

Of Laertes less is to be said. It is enough that the actor does not allow himself to be misled into representing him as a noble and affectionate son and brother. In the beginning he appears merely as a gallant of those days. He warns Ophelia in beautiful set phrases, in which he loves to hear himself speak, as indeed is the case with all the persons of the drama.

[Page 270.] The Ghost must have been one of Schroeder's most artistic and impressive representations. I am convinced of it, although I never saw him in this part. But what has since passed on the German stage for an imitation of this great artist is certainly not to be commended. I mean that slow, dull, monotonous recitation, accompanied by hardly a gesture, whereby the scene drags, and the illusion is greatly disturbed. The old Hamlet no longer has flesh and blood; but he has all human passions, anger, revenge, jealousy. Although modified, his utterance should be felt to be pathetic. He must express himself in intonation and by gestures. In both theatres in London the Ghost was simply ridiculous. stalking up and down, without grace or dignity, and speaking his part as if it were a cold-blooded lecture. Is it necessary to consider this soliloquy ['To be or not to be,' &c.] as having reference to suicide? Did Shakespeare really mean it so? It could not have been so understood in Shakespeare's time, although we have no evidence bearing on the point. As often as Hamlet was acted by the poet's contemporaries, this character and this soliloquy were made subjects of criticism and ridicule. [The course of Hamlet's feelings is here traced by TIECK, from the beginning of the tragedy until it reaches the intense dissatisfaction with himself, expressed in the monologue after the Player had recited the passage about the rugged Pyrrhus;' this dissatisfaction, however, is soothed by the prospect of the play wherein the conscience of the King is to be caught; this relief lasts only for a moment, and Hamlet begins to ask himself why it is that he cannot carry out his revenge; and it is in this self-searching mood that we next see him. TIECK finds fault with the present division into Acts. The Second Act, he says, should end with what is now III, i, whereby the two monologues should be brought into closer connection. He then proceeds to give the following explanation of To be or not to be,' &c.; an explanation that I believe has never found favor with any one, except TIECK's warm personal friend and

admirer, Freih. v. FRIESEN, who acknowledges that TIECK was anticipated by ZIEGLER. See p. 662. ED.]

[Page 282.] It comes to this, he says to himself (the spectator is understood to keep in mind all that precedes, and to follow this apparent leap in Hamlet's thoughts): the only point is whether a man live or do not live, i. e. more than life I cannot risk and lose, so that the only thing is life, whether I set all upon that. This consideration is altogether just; it has often been expressed, who fears not Death need fear nothing else. But, he continues after a pause, it may be the greatest magnanimity calmly to bear the worst, to practice that patience which is commended as Christian, and which requires as much strength and greatness of soul as positive resistance: 'Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And, by opposing, end them,' i.e. these troubles: but how? By suicide? What then is meant by this 'opposing,' this positive resistance? Would taking arms, then, be fitting, if the arms were to be directed against him who took them up? No, it is these troubles that I seek to annihilate; it is my opponent that I am to put an end to. This must I accomplish, in case my patience does not suffice, if I do not possess strength enough, to keep from valuing my own life too highly; for that may be imperilled; but I dare to meet this peril the more readily, as dying is only a release from all earthly burthens.

[Page 288.] By forcing the meaning somewhat, the common interpretation of the soliloquy may be justified, until we come to: And enterprises of great pith and moment With this regard,' &c. Here, if one goes candidly to work, is a passage difficult, if not impossible, to be reconciled with the idea that self-murder is the one great topic of the soliloquy. Is self-murder an enterprise of great pith and moment? And could Hamlet deceive himself so egregiously as to give such honorable names to the miserable cowardice that prompted him to destroy himself, in order to escape the heavy task imposed upon him? He is no hero; he shows, as he confesses to Ophelia, weaknesses of all sorts; almost everything good and bad in man has been contended for in his character. But it is sinking altogether too low to think seriously of destroying himself, and this out of base fear. I wonder that his friends and admirers can allow him to be thus degraded without turning away with disgust.

A certain disposition to suicide and to a contempt for life, which existed for a while, is partly, perhaps, the cause why this soliloquy has been misunderstood and so excessively admired. But now looking back from its conclusion to all that goes before, and reading it once more according to my understanding of it, we find that all is natural, significant, and fitting. Enterprises of great pith and moment, e. g. to hurl an usurper from the throne, to avenge a murdered father, to take the position of a king, to which birth and the law of the land entitled him, to gain over the army, the nobles, and the people to this revolution,—and these, like all similar great undertakings, are turned awry, and die in the intention, because he who attempts them hesitates, because it is not a matter of indifference to him whether or not he himself perishes in the contest.

PROF. J. F. PRIES (1825)

(Ueber Shakespeare's Hamlet. Rostock, 1825, p. 54.)-Fault has been found with Hamlet's conversation with Ophelia before the court-play begins, and very properly, if it is read without reference to what precedes and what follows. There is one explanation which fully justifies it, although it is true Shakespeare gives no intima

tion thereof.

Hamlet is now, as never before, acting at the King. Claudius has attained to his present good fortune through woman's love. Surrounded by court beauties, would he have neglected the chance of casting the lustful eye of an old fop at the fairest of them all; indeed, such a course on the part of her husband would have proved an additional stimulus to the love of such a woman as Gertrude. Hamlet may have suspected it; for he observes keenly. Woe be it, if the uncle succeeds to the thousandth degree in the case of the son as he has been altogether successful in the case of the father. Distracted by such jealous thoughts, Hamlet utters his coarse jests.

K. H. HERMES (1827)

(Veber Shakespeare's Hamlet und Seine Beurtheiler, Goethe, A. W. Schlegel, und Tieck. Stuttgart, 1827, p. 20.)—' I see a cherub,' &c., IV, iii, 50. In these words is the key to Hamlet's character. He is not precipitate, because, conscious of his worth, he does not despair of the result. He does not overestimate himself, and attribute this result to himself, but he confides in a higher guidance, without knowing that he has it in his own breast,—he trusts to the hand of the Highest, by which that will happen that must. Only in moments of depression, when the flame of passion blazes wildly up in him, does his revenge seem to lag, only then does he reproach himself that his thoughts are not bloody enough. But is this hesitation, dodging, skulking? Does he on this account ever lose sight of his purpose?

L. BOERNE (1829)

(Gesammelte Schriften, Dram. Blätter, 2d Abth., p. 172. Hamburg, 1829.)— Among the plays of the British poet, the scenes of which are laid neither in history nor fable, Hamlet is the only one that has a Northern soil and a Northern heaven. Shakespeare, in his sympathy with Nature, well understood what atmosphere best harmonized with his various characters. To lively wit, to light-winged joy, to quick passion, to the clear, decisive deed, he gave the blue sunny South, where night is only day asleep; the melancholy, brooding, dreamy Hamlet he places in a land of clouds and long nights, under a gray sky, where the day is only a sleepless night. This tragedy holds us imprisoned in the North, the damp dungeon of Nature, and we are cheered, as by a sunbeam penetrating the darkness through a fissure in the wall, when, of a sudden, we hear the glowing word, Rome, and the bright word, France.

The most exact admirers, as well as the warmest friends, of the poet have declared Hamlet his masterpiece. We must define this estimate. Hamlet is not the most admirable of Shakespeare's works; but Shakespeare is most admirable in Hamlet. That is, an extraordinary force astonishes us, not when its activity begins, but when it ceases; only the endurance of a force testifies of its greatness. So here. We wander along the brilliant path of the poet, and as our wonder, having reached the end, turns, wearied, around, we are affronted by Hamlet, whom we had not expected, on our way back. To create him, Shakespeare had to double himself, had to step out of himself; herein he has surpassed himself. But this is not said in the rhetorical language of eulogy, but in the sober terms of description. The play of Hamlet is a colony of Shakespeare's genius, lying under another zone; it has another nature, and obeys other laws than the motherland.

VOL. II.-19