to say what I have said, in order to animate and enliven the right feeling for Hamlet, I may as well go on. Whoever does not know what I am about to say will laugh at this long introduction to a brief word, the worth of which, moreover, may seem to be very small. For things of this sort have value, for the most part, in the eyes of the finder and not in those of the buyer. Be it so. Fortinbras concludes the whole with, Let four captains bear Hamlet, like a soldier, to the stage; for he was likely, had he been put on, to have proved most royally.' Here lies the pearl. (Whoever perceives it may skip what follows.) First, observe that Fortinbras pronounces no judgment; he only makes a supposition. But let it be that it is a judgment. He says, therefore: Bear the prince to the stage, in order to exhibit the corpse to the people, for were he alive and crowned, he would probably have proved most royally.' This is the Norwegian's plain opinion; he thinks nothing but good of the prince, and now that he is dead, is all the more disposed to think so. I look somewhat closer into the eyes of the youth; he turns aside and lifts his helmet, as if he were hot. I see he has a mask, and, as he thinks no one sees him, he lifts that also. Whom do I now see?—Shakespeare! He looks at me with a waggish smile, and suddenly mask and helmet are again in their places. But this look says infinitely much. Ought I put it into words? Let four captains bear Hamlet, like a soldier, to the stage, for he was likely, had he been put on, to have proved most royally.' Bear Hamlet, like a soldier (not as a soldier), to the stage; for had he been placed there, had Fate called him to the stage instead of the throne, he would have proved most royally. For that was he created. Such was the meaning of the smile of the poet behind the mask,-and when? At the conclusion of the whole! It is as a seal set thereon. But, enough; Fortinbras knows nothing of it, and we would fain seem to know nothing of it also. D'ye understand?

[Page 92.] In obedience to the repeated urging of his friend, Horatio speaks to the apparition. The apparition is offended. Why? Because they do not take him for a real ghost, but for a piece of mummery. The two Hamlets, father and son, have their peculiar humors. The son is offended because in his presence another, who does not, however, see him, talks big and vaunts himself, when he (Hamlet, Jr.) can, as he thinks, do that sort of thing so much better; and Hamlet, Sr., is offended because they won't believe he is a ghost when he is one. People, he thinks, ought to have penetration enough, in spite of their studying at Wittenberg, to see that he is a genuine ghost from the other world. It is a point of honor with him to pass for nothing else. Perhaps, also, his royal blood is up at the idea of being taken for a common man under a mask. And so when he is thus addressed, he is not going to answer. When, however, Horatio calls him Ghost,' and speaks of the fate of his country, then he observes that he is held to be a 'king' and 'a ghost,' and he raises his head and is about to speak. What a pity it is that just at that moment the cock crows, and he has no time! He should have come to the point sooner. Like father, like son; always too late! On this occasion it is wounded vanity that causes the loss of time. Shakespeare has here portrayed character with a minuteness that is hardly to be described.

[Page 98.] Hamlet's first soliloquy, in I, ii, ends with, But break, my heart; for I must hold my tongue,'-thus concluding, as with a prophecy which exactly fulfils itself, the sad utterances of his pain. Indeed, at his death we hear these self-same words, which refer back to this early scene and to his first appearance. After Hamlet has talked much too much the whole drama through, he concludes, as after this monologue, 'The rest is silence;' whereupon Horatio says, 'There breaks a

noble heart! Thus at the close sounds literally on the ear the echo from the be ginning. As in a good opera the last chord is the same as the first.

[Page 104.] Hamlet comes with Horatio to await the Ghost. He is not in a good humor. He complains of the eager air and the nipping cold. It is, however, right comfortable and warm and stirring where the King is, who honors Hamlet's complaisance with a feast, the mention whereof by Hamlet sharpens our sense of the still, weird darkness that surrounds Hamlet himself. The uncle is enjoying full draughts of the pleasures of this world; the nephew is anxiously waiting for intelligence from the torments of the next.

[Page 107.] 'I find thee apt? The iron was warm, but the old Hamlet was a poor smith. Just think only of his long, useless introduction, his call to his son, four times repeated, to hearken to him. He keeps so long mixing with the glowing metal the ill-flavored fluid of wailing and emotion, that it runs cold and gray. He tells of his torments, and if any one is disposed to doubt whether or not he be a genuine ghost, the doubt will be set at rest by the botanical observation from the nether world. Only an eye-witness can speak of the vegetation of the Lethean wharf.

[Page 108.] Hamlet's railing expressions, after the Ghost has vanished, signify nothing. They are a fire of straw, soon burnt out. For how otherwise could he be so childish as to write down in his pocket-book what he is resolved not to forget, -namely, that his uncle, in spite of his smile, is a villain? He has only just said that he will write down the command of the Ghost in the book of his brain, and wipe out and forget everything else. Why then set down a general philosophical remark in his pocket-book? If, after such startling communications, one has composure enough to make general remarks and write them down in his pocket-book, just as an insect-collector catches and keeps a beetle that happens to come droning by, the aforesaid communications cannot have made much of an impression. This peculiarity of Hamlet's to bring out, under such circumstances, what he has learned at college, he possesses in common with Horatio,-they both got it at Wittenberg,-who has also learned, as we have remarked, that ghosts dread the crowing of the cock. These Wittenberg students are a cold-blooded, phlegmatic folk, eager for learning. When the house is burning over their heads, they consult the thermometer to ascertain the degree of heat, or make observations on the consuming effect of the fire.

[Page 140.] There is here, moreover, a new little bit of art. Polonius acts the spy upon his son with the help of his servant; the King and Queen are spies upon Hamlet with the help of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern; the King and Polonius are eavesdroppers to the prince with the help of Ophelia; then Hamlet and his mother are spied upon in like manner; Hamlet is a spy upon the King with the help of Horatio. It is the design of the poet. The people at the Danish court all resemble one another. The Hamletian art is visible everywhere. It is a genuine race of molelike pioneers.

[Page 158.] Hamlet, who has thus far always hesitated, now draws his sword for the first time against the fratricide: Now or never!' might his good angel have said to him; and his father's ghost appears once more just after; why not five minutes sooner, behind the praying Claudius? But that would have been just at the right time, and the Hamlets are always too late! Shakespeare is fine in the web he weaves it is delightful to follow him.

[Page 162.] The King stands up, and has not really prayed; he still clings to the world and its joys. Hamlet's scruples, therefore, were ill-timed.

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DR FRIEDR. THEOD. VISCHER (1861)

(Kritische Gänge, Stuttgart, 1861. Zweites Heft, p. xvi.)-Hamlet's fault lies in that twilight, into which every true tragic poet throws the fault of his hero. Though we are angry at Hamlet, yet we must pity him, and we know not which we must feel the more; we must gaze into that dark abyss where responsible freedom and the insuperable natural barriers of character are secretly confounded.

[Page xx.] I agree with Kreyssig and Gans in ascribing Hamlet's procrastination to an excess in him of a reflective, meditative habit of mind: it is only necessary that this point should be set forth more fully than has yet been done. By the way, Kreyssig's analysis confirms me in the conviction, that I have done well to take the part of the much-abused hero, and to show how Fate, while it condemns him, justifies him also; for how wretchedly is the poor, hesitating youth represented,―as sophisticated all over, a courtier without conscience, a frivolous prince, a bloated, intellectual aristocrat! No, this is not Hamlet! In every stage of his distracted condition the true Hamlet is always great, genuine, noble, one of those chastened and chosen ones of the Lord, above whom we are to learn not to exalt ourselves, and who are too good and too unfortunate for the world to appreciate.

[Page 73.] Hamlet lives in a world surpassingly bad; court-vermin, false show, eye-service, lip-service, surround him on every side, and he sees the refinement of a hollow culture allied to rude barbarous customs. . . . . He was right in despising such a world, and because it was his world, we can understand and pardon him when he extends too widely his impression of loathing, and embraces the whole world in his field of vision.

[Page 89.] Shakespeare has ventured to make, as the central figure of a drama, a hero who is for ever hesitating and delaying. The success of this bold attempt is commonly ascribed to the fact that the more the hero hangs back, the more does his environment press him on, until at last, while it crushes him, it drives him, nevertheless, to the goal. This is certainly the one great crisis whereby a tragedy with such a hero becomes possible. It is, as it were, a huge screw, ever turning closer and closer in, and compelling the passive hero at last to such reaction that both the screw and its victim, all are crushed and shivered into atoms together. It is a horrible machine, in which the cog-wheels, running in opposite directions, catch in one another, and steadily and straightly work out the course of fate. But this is not all; in this view a hero, always shrinking back, would still be undramatic. Shakespeare has taken still another way to make a drama out of such unusual materials. He has given to his hero all the fire and force consistent with his keeping to his dilatory gait. Look more closely at the man, and you discera a nature passionate, violent, relieving itself in fierce ebullitions, stern, occasionally, even in its frenzy, malicious. Hamlet is a volcano, only, as we may indeed see, his violence is inward, not outward; outwardly he emits merely many-colored, tantalizing lights, sparkles of wit, even sharp lightning-flashes, and from time to time the deadly lava-stream bursts forth with fatal effect, while the inner rumble and roar is always heard, telling us that the pent-up force can find no outbreak.

[Page 98.] I see a tender violet, a sincere, modest German maiden, a thoroughly Northern woman's nature, poor in words, shut up in herself, unable to bring the deep rich heart to the lips; she is kindred to Cordelia and Desdemona, and in these three I behold the veiled beauty of the soul. The life ineloquent enhances their

grace, their hidden wealth; the concealed treasure is brought to light only by suffering, for they know not and speak not of it,-one must read between the lines. Still waters are deep is true of Ophelia, and: no fire, no coal, so hotly glows, as the secret love of which nobody knows. Thoroughly German, old German, is she in her household relations. Her obedience as a daughter is implicit; only to her brother, who warns her, does she reply with that dry coolness which belongs to true natures, and which is also apparent, in the first scenes, in Cordelia and Desdemona. We know not what it costs her when she promises obedience to her father's stricter and weightier authority. I will obey, sir;' further she says nothing. What is passing within her a good actress must tell us by a tone that reveals to us that under this obedience her heart is breaking, when she says, 'With almost all the holy vows of Heaven.' In this patriarchal submission to her father, in this touching defencelessness, this inability of resistance, which characterizes natures that are boundlessly good and created only for love, she allows herself without demur to be used, when she is sent in Hamlet's way, that they may talk together, while her father and the King privily listen; Hamlet, under the mask of madness, treats her rudely; the pure nobleness of her true, unstained tenderness speaks in the sorrowful words with which the return of his gifts is accompanied; unsuspicious, she believes in his feigned madness; and then her pain breaks out into a lament that points to an abyss from which comes no speech. The deepest tone of the heart, of which a voice is capable, is demanded in this soliloquy; there are few tragic passages sadder or more moving than, And I, of ladies most deject and wretched, That suck'd the honey of his music vows.' If it ever can be said of a poetical creation that it has a fragrancy in it, it is this picture of the crazed Ophelia, and the inmost secret of this bewitching fragrancy is innocence. Nothing deforms her; not the lack of sense in her sense, not the rude naïveté of those snatches of song: a soft mist, a twilight is drawn around her, veiling the rough reality of insanity, and in this sweet veil, this dissolving melancholy, the story of her death is also told.

[Page 109.] Thinking alone never leads to action; there is no bridge from it to the fulfilment of the thought. Thinking goes on in an endless line. When all is thought out in regard to the deed to be done, all that remains is to seize the right moment. There comes a moment which appears to be the fit one. But who will say that a succeeding moment may not be a fitter? The idea of fitness is relative; thought seeks an absolutely fit moment, and there is none, it never comes. To him whose inmost nature is given to thinking, the Now is formidable. In a decisive, bold deed, what we specially admire is, that the man who ventures it has seized the Now, taken his stand upon the knife-like edge of the Instant. The transition from thinking to acting is irrational; it is a leap, a jerk, a breaking off of an endless chain. How does this leap become possible? Through another force than thought, but a force that must be connected with thought,-a force that is blind face to face with thought, and which works unconsciously. This force no longer asks, whether the moment may not be so favorable that a more favorable one may not be thought of. Enough, it is favorable; seize it then by the forelock, and up and away! Have I deceived myself? does the act miscarry? I cannot have any regrets, for I say to myself, that under the circumstances, so far as human discernment reaches, I was bound to regard that moment as the right one. It is only this venturous force that gives resolution, expansion, so that the door at last flies open, and what is within breaks forth as action, and becomes real. . . . .

The absence of this force Hamlet calls dullness, beastly oblivion, and in a pre

ceding soliloquy he says, 'I am pigeon-livered, and lack gall.' It is not true that he lacks gall, but the gall does not flow out at the right moment upon the point where it lifts the arm to strike, for that too much thinking of his is in the way, his rage is not discharged with a duly measured thought into the act. After all that is necessary has been thought out, his thinking is not, as it were, quenched in that other force which is to actualize the thought.

[Page 111.] That other force, into which thought should be lifted, we call instinct; we call it passion, or the native force of the mind: it is ultimately nature in the mind. Passion, specially considered, Hamlet does not lack, but it is force in the core of his being that is wanting. It accompanies thought in the organism of our nature in endless forms; an act arises only when the two meet at the right moment, and thought is lost in an impulse of native force.

....

Only just when the supreme interest, the one great object of his life, is concerned, does Hamlet's nature waste away, caught in the net of thought, confined within the charmed circle of reflection; a proof, indeed, that the incongruity of thought and instinct in him,-the fact that they never hit together-lies deeply seated in his inmost organization.

[Page 131.] We have now found the positive reason why he resolves to wear the inappropriate mask of madness, and thus is completed what we have said above. As a means to his end it is wrong, but, in fact, it is not a means, but an object of his own. It is Hamlet's taste to play the part of a fool; it is a pleasure to him in itself. First of all, because he delights in the theatre, in acting. He goes among play. actors, he understands their art; he has doubtless often had the pleasure of acting himself. This is so perfectly human in him that nothing more need be said of it. But the main thing is, that under this mask he can draw out the vermin of the court, give free play to his wit,-that is his glory, and it is a still greater glory that he can thus lash out freely, and parody the consciousness of his own madness. The earlier English critics, with a narrowness in dialectic questions peculiar to the nation, seriously entertained the query, whether Hamlet really were crazy. He is just as insane as all men of genius are, who do not find that everything is so perfectly clear to them as it is to ordinary heads; just as insane as all deep natures are, in whom particular faculties are developed in such strength that the harmony of their being is disturbed, and Hamlet knows that, and yet cannot make it otherwise; that is, as he himself says, enough to drive one mad; but he is not, therefore, mad in the medical sense of the word; he knows infinitely more about himself than many a critic who seeks to analyze him to his very heart and reins. In this sense, then, it may be said of him, that he plays the fool because he is one.

[Page 136.] Justice to Hamlet demands that it should be clearly seen how easy it is to say that the right is the higher union of the thinking and active powers, and how hard it is to accomplish this union. One must take care what he is about in demanding the higher unities. A man without depth may easily seize the right moment, and act right off; when the depth reaches a certain degree, then the good fortune of this lightmindedness ceases. Men with brains have in their weakness a strength which should well save them from ridicule; we pity them, but in their misfortunes there is a tragic greatness, which mingles reverence with our pity. In Hamlet there has justly been found the type of the German character; the Frenchman, the modern Englishman, laugh at us for our irresoluteness. The former is more lightminded, more versatile in his organization, and the latter narrower and harder; and both, while they ridicule us, have a dim suspicion that there is some