served whole heaps of documents because he thought, in every case that came up, he might possibly hit upon points in them which might affect his decision; in that overzealous clergyman to whom Luther said, 'O thou good man, whilst thou wouldst fain make the church as pure as an angel, thou wilt make it as black as the devil;' in those members of the assembly who cannot sleep in their beds, unless to every ' amendment' they have moved ten more,-all these, and whosoever else resembles them, are only pendants to the crane in the fable, that, despising all the good fishes, had to take up at last with worms; they all preach the same lesson, that, with or without much understanding, a man may let slip the offered opportunity from mere deliberation, distrust, excessive caution, carefulness,-in short, from some bent of his nature which neutralizes the power of a strong understanding, or which, at all events, in many a character, forms an element quite independent of the understanding, and in regard to which one must comfort himself with the saying of Goethe's, The great secret of all our defaulting Is that we waver 'twixt running and halting!' At least every one suffers somewhat in this way, for almost every one knows how reluctantly matters are settled that have been long deferred, and how every postponement makes the task harder, even when it is ever so urgent.

Now it is this excessive deliberation which is the second main ingredient of Hamlet's character, and upon which his first passionate abhorrence of shams and his love of right, honesty, and good morals, suffered such disastrous wreck! He wills only summum jus, but, alas! he does not know that he who clings too exactly to that runs into summam injuriam; he strives, indeed, for the Right, but without knowing that he, who undertakes to put it through, only too often must not shrink back, but be willing to cry, Pereat mundus, for an imperfect right. His is a nature that paralyzes all realization of the Right. Thus he has, as his second trait, only too easily united with his striving for purity, conscience, and right, a readiness to find objections to every decision, every plan which demands decisive action.

[Page 214.] But Shakespeare is never contented with one or two traits of character; he always shows us personalities true to life, and the more eminent they are, the more various the qualities with which he endows them. Therefore, with his quick conscientiousness and the sense of right resulting from it, Hamlet has, with a painful caution resulting in the greatest irresolution, the secretiveness and talent for mystifying so closely related to the above traits, and these qualities it is that render him so much interested in the players, and form a key to so much in his character. With his sense of justice is combined, also, a sense of honor. When Fortinbras passes by, he holds it right, where honor is concerned, to fight to the death for a straw. And these chief elements of his character are combined with and overshadowed by an astonishing intellect, which enables him (and here is the tragedy) to see through all and judge all rightly,—all, only not himself, only not his invincible propensity to hesitate, with its necessary consequences!

DR KARL ELZE (1869)

(Introduction to Trans. of Hamlet. Berlin, 1869, p. xii.)—Hamlet has exerted an incomparably greater influence upon the history of literary development in France and in Germany than in England. It stands alone in this respect among the dramas of Shakespeare, and it may be said, without exaggeration, that in both of the former countries the history of Hamlet is the history of the poetry of Shakespeare; in all cases, as his most original and peculiar work, it has been the pioneer, breaking the

path to the poetry of its creator. In Germany especially it has produced an extensive literature of its own. In France there are evidences that the piece was known before Voltaire led to a more intimate acquaintance with it by translating passages of it (as, for example, the great soliloquy), and by various critical remarks thereupon. 'Voltaire,' as Boerne happily remarks, measured the mammoth bones of this to him unknown giant spirit by the dainty taille of a French marquis, and, of course, found them ridiculous and unnatural.' Yet Voltaire admitted that pearls were to be found on this muck-heap, worthy of being worked up in accordance with the classic rules of French poetry. . . . . Various French translations have gradually led to a more correct understanding of the poet, which was furthered by the critical labors of the Sorbonne, and by the influence of the historical drama of the English upon the romantic school, until at last Victor Hugo, in his work upon Shakespeare, reached to a deification of Shakespeare no less unreasonable than was Voltaire's depreciation of the poet. The conspicuous rôle which Hamlet has played in all these phases is owing mainly to the attraction of the Mysterious and Incommensurable, for of all Shakespeare's dramas this piece it is which always strikes the French as the strangest and most unintelligible, and in spite of their present better understanding of the poet, they do not feel to this day quite at home with him.

....

It is far otherwise in Germany. GERVINUS with much acuteness distinguishes Hamlet as a poem, which has wrought upon our modern German life, and which has grown into it, as no work of the kind of our own times and nation has done, if we except Faust. . . . . The character of Hamlet, as is well known, has been in manifold ways regarded as the personification of that superabundance of thinking, that sickly irresoluteness, and that lack of power to act, which, in political affairs especially, disadvantageously distinguish the Germans; Hamlet has even come to be represented as a symbol of Germany, and Freiligrath has sharpened this idea to a point in the exclamation, Hamlet is Germany!'

[ELZE here speaks of the early Hamlet acted by the English comedians in Germany in 1626.]

It is certainly a proof of the greatness and immortality of this work, that, from such corruption and mutilation, it has, step by step, and hand in hand with advancing intelligence, been restored to its original purity; all the variations and changes of its form (even Shroeder's with its happy ending),—all have proved to be temporary, while the imperishable original survives them all. But it is the leading minds of our nation, Lessing, Schlegel, Tieck, and others, who have carried on this work of purification, and no less a person than Goethe was the first to throw open the doors of this mysterious temple. Hamlet has accompanied us, as of our own kith and kin, through all the stages of our intellectual development; and the knowledge of Shakespeare, especially promoted by him, is now reflected back from Germany to England, so that the present understanding and æsthetic criticism of Shakespeare in England is in no small degree based upon the German.

CARL KARPF (1869)

(Tò tí žv elvai. Die Idee Shakespeare's und deren Verwirklichung.* Hamburg, 1869, p. 127.)-THE MYTHS. The Myths used by the poet as the foundation of

*[It is difficult, very difficult, to treat this volume of 166 pages charitably. And I have failed in the endeavor inasmuch as I have here given some extracts from it. The greatest charity would have been silence; the author, however, is so thoroughly convinced of the truth and wisdom of his theory

Hamlet, we interpret in reference to the different activities personified in Hamlet and Laertes, the speculative and the active, the theoretic and the practical, the intensive and the extensive (Reason and Force). IN REFERENCE TO HAMLET. The First Myth, which may relate to the divine Thought, founded upon the One, the first Being.*

From the union of the god Odin and the giantess Jordh, the union of Spirit and of Matter, sprang Thor. Thor carries Orvandill in a basket upon his back, wading through the floods, the wintry ice-streams, the Elivagar, which separates the kingdom of the giants from the world of gods and men. One of Orvandill's toes, sticking out of the basket, is frozen, and thrown by Thor at the heavens, where it is made a star, which is now called Orvandill's Toe. Some myths relate how Thor (the flash of lightning) waded through the sacred glowing water of heaven, the flaming clouds. In winter these became snow, ,frozen into ice, strange waves (Elivagar). But spring comes, and with it the faithful Thor bears the Lightning-spark Orvandill (i. e. the Beam) upon his shoulders through the icy streams, the seat of all wintry horror, to the earth, to the expectant wife of the same, Groa, i. e. to the vegetable green, which seeks to spread its covering over the rocks, to set loose the stones from the head of the building god. In the purified, clear heaven of spring shines Orvandill's Toe, which is in winter frozen; the lightning god gives again their brightness to the lights of the firmament, kindles it anew with the lightning-spark, and fixes the company of stars high above.

Orvandill (the Frozen Toe), the chilblain (Frostbeule), is, as the lightning-spark, the hypostasis of Thor. But Thor is the god of peasants, in reference to which the Myth says, the race of slaves (thralls), oppressed in this life by the burthen and trouble of labor, will find a resting-place after death with their friend Thor.

That the poet was acquainted with this myth, and had special reference to it, appears from the very significant remark of Hamlet, in the graveyard, in relation to the tragic singer, the first clown, and to his ambiguity and equivocation.

After recognizing the absolute, revealed in the tragic figure, and after emphasizing the equivocation (Doppelsinnigkeit), which points to annihilation, Hamlet says, 'By the Lord, Horatio, these three years I have taken note of it, the age is grown so picked that the toe of the peasant comes so near the heel of the courtier, he galls his kibe' (Frostbeule).

that no criticism of mine can at all disturb him, and others can read and judge for themselves. I am willing to confess, in character, that an 'exposition of sleep' comes over me when I hear any discussion, conducted by men below Grote or Jowett, of Plato's rò rí ¡v elvaɩ, or formal cause, but when it comes to reading it in German, I think I would prefer to meet my dearest foe in heaven. I therefore make no apologies for the above translation. If Germany has given us a KARPF, England has given us a MERCADE. ED.]

* In Bernardo's allusion [I, i] to the star in the west, which he connects with the appearance of the Ghost, as the clock strikes 'one,' and of which he says, that it makes its course, in order to illume the part of the heavens,'-not sky,-where now it shines, there lies a very significant image which is to be referred to the first myth of the star Orvandill (the father of the mythical Hamlet). At the words of Bernardo, the bell then beating one,' the free Ghost first steps forth before our eyes. Here is the One which the clock has announced. He is the Star in the West, the first reality (Wesenheit), which will run its course (ʼn vonynuévn μélodos), in order to found the science of the creative essence, by means of the drama of Hamlet. That the striking of the clock at the first sight of the Ghost is designed to intimate something special is clear, otherwise the poet would have put the entrance of the Ghost, on the evening before, and Bernardo's remark, at the midnight hour, the appropriate time for ghosts to appear, and not have let them occur just after that hour had passed.

† Steevens here remarks that this word is taken from the preening of birds, and we think that there is here also an allusion to self-evolution for the purpose of purification (Katharsis, purgation).

VOL. II.-22

In the relation which the star (the Frozen Toe, the chilblain) Orvandill stands to Thor as hypostasis, Hamlet may be regarded as standing to the time idea and destructive moment of the force immanent in matter, 'nature' (comp. Sonnet 126) personified in the First Gravedigger (Chronos, or Æon), and Hamlet appears to intend to say that the tragical, personified activity, its own hypostasis, seeks to injure and annihilate himself.

[Page 129.] The poet may have referred his conflict with the passions, or rather the representation of them, by identification therewith, which was his ground for existence in purgatory, the thymosis and the thymopathic circumstance (see the image of the 'fretful porcupine,' used by the Ghost), this conflict the poet may [&c. &c. &c.]

HERMANN FREIHERR VON FRIESEN (1869)

(Die Fechtscene im Hamlet. Jahrbuch der deutschen Shakespeare-Gesellschaft, 1869, p. 376.)-How is it possible that Laertes and Hamlet could have exchanged rapiers?

There is only one way, I conceive, of solving this problem on the stage, and that is by reference to the Rules of the Fencing-school, and the lesson that relates to • Disarming with the Left Hand.' The French translator possibly knew this lesson, as he paraphrases the stage-direction ('They catch one another's rapiers, and both are wounded') with the following words, Laerte blesse Hamlet, et dans la chaleur de l'assaut ils se désarment et changent de fleuret, et Hamlet blesse Laerte.' The lesson upon disarming, if I may depend on the memory of my schooldays, is somewhat this: As soon as your opponent has made a pass, and is about to return to his guard, you strike the most powerful battute possible (i. e. a blow descending along the blade of your opponent), in order to throw your opponent's blade out of its position, if possible, with its point downwards, at the same instant you advance the left foot close to the outer side of the right foot of your opponent, seize with the left hand the guard of your opponent's rapier, and endeavor to wrest the weapon from his fist by a powerful pressure downwards; if this manœuvre succeeds, you put the point of your dagger to the breast of your opponent, and compel him to confess himself vanquished. When your opponent does not succeed in withstanding the battute, which makes it impossible for him to keep back his assailant with the point of his dagger, there is nothing for him to do but to meet the attack with the same manœuvre, and get his assailant's weapon in his hand in the same way. With persons of equal skill this is the usual result, whereby they change places, and the combat is continued without delay. It is obvious that in the execution of this manoeuvre on the stage, the greatest skill is required, that the whole thing may not prove a mere scuffle, as Tieck says he has seen it in English theatres.

FRIEDRICH BODENSTEDT (1870)

(Introduction to Trans. of Hamlet. Leipzig, 1870, p. viii.)—Notwithstanding the wonderful manner in which Shakespeare has sublimated the material, the stuff of the old legend, there yet remains something of its original rudeness, and must always remain, because the fruit never can disown the soil out of which it has sprung.

As chief foes, and consequently as the chief representatives of the play and counter-play in the piece, stand opposed to each other Hamlet and King Claudius. Claudius is a bad man, but a monarch who understands how to rule, and in practical prudence and force of will far excels Hamlet. Arrived at the throne by a crime, he does not, like Macbeth, go from one murder to another, but seeks by intrigue to strengthen and establish his power. Against the pretensions of young Fortinbras he prepares for war, but avoids useless bloodshed, as the difficulty permits of being peacefully settled. He is identified with the interests of the country, for which Hamlet has neither eye nor ear, and accordingly, notwithstanding his superior culture, is not qualified to reign.

The courtiers, from their position, are all of the party of the King. They are neither better nor worse than the courtiers in the time of Elizabeth, or the average of the same class to-day. . . . .

[Page x.] Hamlet's first utterances in the drama are keen, cutting phrases. He is at this time about thirty years of age, and, while his country is in danger, he cherishes no wish but to go back to Wittenberg. . . . . He resolves to play before the King and the court the part of a madman. His talent for acting enables him to do this excellently well. Instead of exulting in his success in this particular, and taking advantage of it, he is vain enough to be offended, and indeed to fall into a passion, because he is thought to be really crazy. The scenes in which all this is represented are very effective on the stage; but, closely considered, they show the prince in no very favorable light, for a true man will never avail himself of a safe position to wound defenceless opponents. And besides it strikes us that the prince acts with very little prudence in betraying at every turn that he is not really crazy, but only making believe.

[Page xi.] Ophelia's eloquent praise of Hamlet is referred to by most of the commentators as a proof of what a combination of excellent qualities, as a statesman, soldier, and scholar, &c., he was possessed. We see in it only the natural expression of the enthusiasm of a young maiden to whom everything about a Prince appears glorified. Otherwise, her relation to him is to be regarded as perfectly pure. As a philosopher Hamlet loves to generalize, to establish a universal experience upon a particular case. Because his uncle has committed a murder, which he has to avenge, he looks upon the whole world as out of joint, and himself as born to set it right. Because his mother is a weak woman, he exclaims: 'Frailty, thy name is woman!' Because she was unfaithful to her first husband, he accounts the whole sex false, and misunderstands Ophelia even. It is in the nature of imagi native idealists, that they exalt the object of their love to such a height that the disillusion is all the more violent.

Old Polonius is befooled with the cloud; which, by the way, might have happened to a far wiser man at the hands of a prince supposed to be mad.

[Page xii.] Hamlet's behavior after the killing of Polonius evinces, almost as if he were proud of it, the deep-lying barbarian element which in weak, sensitive characters, so frequently crops out in connection with the highest intellectual culture. The madness of Ophelia, who was hardly of a nature to be thus powerfully affected, does not appear to us to be sufficiently accounted for and explained. After passing beyond the turning-point, the poet, we suppose, felt the need of a freshening up in the progress of the action.

The graveyard scene in Act V has been found much fault with, yet it is as necessary to the conclusion of the whole as the rafters are to the roof. The poet takes