H. A. WERNER (1870)

(Ueber das Dunkel in der Hamlet-Tragödie. Jahrbuch der deutschen ShakespeareGesellschaft, 1870, vol. v, p. 40.)—In this drama the attempt has been made to study the hero exclusively, and to regard his character as the key to the whole tragedy. The reverse method would be the right one. It is an error, but an error arising from the fortunes of our nation and from the tendency of our time, to suppose that the hero creates and conditions his world and all his environment. He influences his century, but his century, with its loves and its hates, its virtues and its vices, its hopes and its trials, influences him, and has him in its leading-strings. And herein is Shakespeare the profoundest and the most faithful painter of nature, that he sees and depicts the mutual influence of the individual and of the masses.

[Page 43.] The relationship between Lear and Hamlet is striking even in form. Only compare the principal persons in their doing and being, their passive connection with the world around them; compare the respective groups of persons by whom they are surrounded, observe the like moving passions, the apparently hopeless results, upon which, however, a comforting beam of light is not wanting, and withal the soothing ending of each. A careful observer will be able to add to the number of points of resemblance even in particulars. It will be seen by him that these resemblances in situation and arrangement are due directly to the similar purposes of the poet in both these pieces. He will find that both these tragedies treat substantially the same theme, only with different applications. In both he will find pictures of the disturbance of social order, of the loosening of sacred ties, by which the whole collective life of human society is made impossible, sins which extend from the throne to the serf, and put in jeopardy all estates. From the first word of the age-bewildered Lear to his last breath over Cordelia's pale countenance, it is the corruption of domestic life, which is not only the key-note, but the impelling power, of the action of the piece, and just so is the corruption of the civil life of society in Hamlet. As in the former the poet breaks out in a mighty elegy over the grave of parental and filial love, so here in Hamlet we have the awful denunciation of a generation that has lost the conditions of a well-ordered society. Yes, like two members of one great whole, are these two songs of woe over humanity, whose whole suffering they take in, for between the State and the family springs up our whole collective life and being, and when both are diseased, then man is hurled back into the primeval chaos; where they are destroyed, there reigns eternal night.

Such are the mighty tasks which the poet set himself as the herald of a rew epoch. Leaving all beaten paths far behind him, he created the tragedy of the masses, which, upon a newly born popular consciousness, has founded the sovereignty of society over the individual. But as the new law is yet struggling, even till now, not indeed for existence, but for exclusive jurisdiction, and therefore lives only in a broken, indistinct form, we cannot wonder if the prophetic revelations of the poet still sound as a dark word, whose import is doubtful and uncertain. His work comes to us like an oracle, which is first fully understood only when it is fulfilled.

[Page 81.] To us this tragedy, to state this one result, seems to be a question addressed to Fate. It is the first part of a work similar to the Arabian poem, the book of Job, an earnest, solemn setting in opposition, the one to the other, of the good and the evil in the world, neither coming off victorious; a true riddle without

answer, so intended by the poet; and the longer he meditated it, the more distinctly did it take this shape. He paints a dark, mysterious side of man's being, a gloomy night-piece, putting into it everything that is dark in his otherwise clear soul. And, therefore, he chooses those mournful colors, the northern sky, the lonely sea, the sluggish, weedy brook, the sandy grave. Therefore he makes the dead awake, therefore he lets madness pass over the stage,—madness real, feigned, and doubtful. Where the Highest, the Holiest, is uncertain, confounded, out of place, where the cry for God and for Justice rings unanswered and unheard, there everything gathers that acts both on soul and body with a dark, weird effect, with the coldness of death. Over the misery of the shattered family of Lear the lightning flashes, the avenging thunder rolls; over the gloomy waste in which the state of Denmark is sunk [literally, swamped. TR.] settles hyperborean night with clammy horror. Only beyond these graves glimmer the ruddy streaks of a new dawn.

G. F. STEDEFELD (1871)

(Hamlet, ein Tendenzdrama Sheakspeare's [sic *] gegen die skeptische und kosmopolitische Weltanschauung des Michael de Montaigne. Berlin, 1871, p. 9.)—Hamlet is, according to the intention of the poet, in his whole bearing a noble, manly, chivalrous presence, with moral and religious feeling; an intellectual hero, a Titan, who is far above his whole surroundings, rising thus above them by insight, learning, culture, wisdom, and knowledge of men and the world; there is lacking in him. only the Christian godliness, faith, love, hope. He has no firm, positive faith, no love and no hope! Once they were his, but he lost them when his ideals melted away, and he discovered in his own family how evil reigns in the world. He has become a skeptic in regard to a righteous Providence, and has fallen out with himself, with God, and the world, although, together with his native truthfulness and manliness, with his hatred of everything base and false, and of the lies and hypocrisy which he sees busy at court, he still keeps his filial piety towards his mother and his devotion to his friend Horatio. This filial piety and this capacity of friendship and of recognizing the worth of others, this personal nobleness and knightly fashion of thinking, which never forsake him, even in his utter despair of the world, and in the deepest embitterment of his spirit, are certainly fine qualities adorning his character, but they are no longer hallowed by a firm faith in a just Providence. His love for Ophelia, which, as appears from his confession to his mother, in the churchyard scene, he has felt; but, unlike Laertes with his fraternal love, he makes no show of it at her grave, nor does he shriek it out to the world in big-sounding phrase,-yet is it no true passion, animated by virtue and religion, but only a sensual pleasure in the beautiful, finely cultured, charming maiden, a pleasure which ceases to be felt when he discovers by observation that her love is not for him personally, but is the offspring of design, and that she repels his advances under the instruction of her father and brother, who had directed

* It is altogether beneath the dignity of an editor to notice what might be a trivial misspelling on a title-page, most especially when it occurs in the name of Shakespeare. But in the present instance this spelling is maintained, with but a few exceptions, throughout Herr Kreisgerichtsrath STEDEFELD'S volume. I am therefore bound to believe it intentional. There is in my library a volume, sad monument of wasted time, containing the name of Shakespeare spelled in four thousand different ways. Herr STEDEFELD'S makes the four thousand and first. ED.

her so to bear herself towards him, in order to draw him more surely into her net, and win from him a promise of marriage, and thereby the prospect of the crown.

[Page 11.] Hamlet plays the part of a madman, because, doubting the moral order of the world, he has lost faith, love, and hope, those saving sentiments, which, with his deep moral sensibilities, and his ideal of life and the world, he urgently needed. Here lies his tragical defect and the ethical reason for sympathy with his fate. He must perish, because he will not see that evil, the passions of men, the tortures of this life, are only instruments of divine Providence to stimulate the moral energy of good. He will not see that every rational being is called upon to reconcile the Ideal with the Real on this earth.

[Page 24.] One need not seek far for the reason why this drama, in all times and in all nations, commands such a wondrously mysterious interest, whether when acted or read. The contrast between the Christian view of God and the ideal or materialistic pantheism which leads to skepticism, this opposition and this conflict, of which every man has experience in his own soul, this great question, To be or not to be,' the great riddle which the Sphinx puts to every man to guess, and for which he and others are sacrificed, when he attempts to solve it without faith in a higher power, this pride of the old Adam, that would be like God and know all things, would fain pluck the fruit of the tree of knowledge without putting forth strength and resolution, without much spiritual and moral labor, to do the good and to leave the evil, or when the evil presses upon us powerfully, with love and merciful forbearance to render it innocuous;-this great Riddle it is which Shakespeare in Hamlet presents in the life of a man highly endowed with all intellectual and moral gifts, but he shows us also how that life was wrecked in the attempt to solve it.

[Page 31.] It is, I think, extremely probable that Shakespeare sought by the drama of Hamlet to free himself from the impressions left upon his mind by the reading of the book of the French skeptic, Montaigne. It is known that a copy of Florio's translation of this book was in the possession of Shakespeare.

If traces of Giordano Bruno's philosophy may be found in Hamlet's soliloquies, with much more confidence may we suppose that the reading of Montaigne furnished considerable material for the conception of the enigmatical Hamlet, or is it at all improbable that the legend of Hamlet, the idea of the prince whose thoughts were given to enigmas, and who acted the madman, may have shaped itself in the mind of Shakespeare for the hero of a drama, who, as a skeptic, was consequently inefficient, hypochondriac, although intellectually gifted, and incapable of a great act?

OTTO LUDWIG (1872)

(Shakespeare-Studien. Leipzig, 1872, p. 138.)-Shakespeare carefully avoids the appearance of everything sketchy, rectilineal, hurried. The branch ramifies. The situation is hollowed out. Here is an example: Hamlet appears, led by the Ghost to a more lonely part of the terrace. He asks, Where wilt thou lead me? Speak; I'll go no further.' The Ghost does not begin his story right off. He only says, 'Mark me.' Hamlet replies, I will.' And yet the Ghost does not begin; he is still preparing for the impression to be made: My hour is almost come, When I to sulphurous and tormenting flames Must render up myself.' Hamlet says, 'Alas, poor ghost! Still the Ghost does not begin; Hamlet does not even urge on the communication. The Ghost says, 'Pity me not, but lend thy serious hearing To

what I shall unfold.'

Hamlet replies, merely filling up the time, Speak; I am bound to hear.' The Ghost adds, 'So art thou to revenge, when thou shalt hear.' Hamlet asks, What?' Even now the Ghost communicates nothing; he only tells who he is, which as a mere piece of intelligence would be unnecessary. All the while the due tone of feeling is in course of preparation, and is furthered when the Ghost describes his condition in Purgatory more strikingly by telling of the effect which a knowledge of it would have on Hamlet, did he dare unfold it to him. At the same time opportunity is given the Ghost for the employment of a style wondrously poetical. After a long period, his List, list, O, list!' makes an impression tending wonderfully to produce the due tone of mind. There are sighs at the same time. What must that be which the Ghost has to tell? A state of expectation is aroused, sweet, weird, in the spirit of the old popular ballads. But still the communication has not yet come. It is as if the Ghost himself purposely delays, that expectation may be still higher strung. But now comes only, 'If thou didst ever thy dear father love-.' Hamlet breaks in, O God!' and his excitement is betrayed thereby. How can the Ghost ask such a question? And now? How can Hamlet now declare how he loved his father, when the deepest, the most overwhelming sympathy and the burning impulse to avenge him kindle his love to a flame? He is to avenge his father, but it is not told even yet upon whom. The Ghost tells only the cause therefor: Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder!' Hamlet exclaims, 'Murder?' And then the murder is described merely in general terms: Murder most foul, as in the best it is, But this most foul, strange, and unnatural.' Hamlet: Haste me to know't, that I, with wings as swift As meditation or the thoughts of love, May sweep to my revenge.' Observe how the question: Upon whom? that I may kill him!' is insinuated. The vehement impulse is here expressed not in words swift and violently ejaculated. The swiftness is described. He says he will be quick, but he does not say it quickly. Even if the actor speaks this speech quickly, it will produce a greater effect than if the speech were short, and thereby directly expressive of swiftness. Not even yet does the Ghost say upon whom he is to be revenged. He says, 'I find thee apt; And duller shouldst thou be,' &c. Thus we have in anticipation the idea of Hamlet's character and of the whole piece. For Hamlet actually proves to be thus dull in his revenge. But once more: Now, Hamlet, hear.' Then the Ghost tells about his sudden death, and how the whole ear of the kingdom has been abused, and then at last he says upon whom he would be revenged. If of anything, it is of Beethoven's modulation that we are here reminded. But there still comes a delayed cadence; the Ghost does not speak out the name without further ado; he says, 'Know, The serpent that did sting thy father's life Now wears his crown.' Then Hamlet speaks out that he had suspected it: 'O my prophetic soul! And at last, uttering the name, asks: My uncle?' 'Ay,' then finally says the Ghost, and begins his story. The heightening of the interest by keeping back the word is a high stroke of art in Shakespeare. After all this preparation the word thus has the greatest effect possible. While a mere bald narration is avoided, the impression is all the more artistic. The Ghost might have told it all right off; Hamlet knows it from the apparition alone and the demand for revenge. But the delay of both, deferring the horror, brings the spectator into full sympathy with the scene, producing, before the utterance of the word, the same state of terror which is felt at the beginning of the piece. Wondrously versatile is the genius of Shakespeare in devising these preliminary steps; one must anatomize almost every scene in order to perceive how firmly they are all

constructed. Thus is the tone (Stimmung) of the separate scenes struck, and the impression of each scene completely secured, and stamped into the heart and memory of the hearer, which, in the wealth of his pieces, is necessary; were it otherwise, the impression of one scene would obliterate that of the others. And thus also, in the most important scenes, a due proportion of power is possible. A piece of Shakespeare's is a continuous preparation for the catastrophe, and every separate scene has its minor catastrophe, for which the previous dialogue is the preparation.

EDUARD AND OTTO DEVRIENT (1873)

(Deutscher Bühnen und Familien Shakespeare. Leipzig, 1873. Introd. p. 7.)When Q, is candidly and thoroughly studied in the interest of stage effect, (and, according to its title, it has had the test of the stage,) it will show, amidst all the abbreviations, absurdities, garblings, and whatever other faults there may be, an abundance of marks, which, apart from the fact that they follow much more exactly the even course of the original novel, cause the effective representation of the action, as well as of the characters themselves, to appear more distinct and logical.

[Page 9.] Taking Hamlet to be in his minority [on the authority of Q,], we have the fact explained that, gifted with no mean understanding, he has not yet at the beginning of the piece, with all his diligence, completed his studies, but resolves to return immediately to Wittenberg.

Upon this supposition of the minority of Hamlet is explained also the murderous scheme conceived by his uncle Claudius. If he wished to gratify his ambition, it be hooved him to lose no time. While Hamlet is still a minor, the death of his father raises to the throne the widow whom Claudius had already won before his brother was put out of the way. With the consent of the nobles, she chose her husband co-regent. Claudius is compelled by Hamlet's reversionary right to the throne, which is unquestioned, to educate the young philosopher for political life. Hence he opposes his return to Wittenberg, and keeps him nearest to himself as the first person of his court. The character of guardian in which he meets the prince, and the sullen obedience which Hamlet renders to his uncle, are clearly significant of the relations between the two. Hamlet, as a full-grown man, silently submitting to such reproofs as he receives in the first scene at court, must at the outset forfeit our respect, while as a youthful enthusiast, under age, he wins all our sympathy.

But all those facts which go to show Hamlet's unripe youth first derive their full force from his inner qualities: this all-embracing pain (Weltschmerz), this pessimism, which springs from idealism, this blazing up of quickly-excited passion, this irresolute endurance of evil treatment, this yearning for the superlative and overlooking the positive, this continual carping and wanting everything better, this self-esteem with constant self-disparagement, and all the thousand little things which betray youth and excuse it, all show Hamlet as a very young prince, most lovable, unripe, enthusiastic, upon whom is imposed a man's task.

[Page 13.] According to the arrangement of Q,, Hamlet, helplessly dispirited, and turned, after the command of the Ghost is laid upon him, from the half-wish to escape the task by suicide, and excited by the plottings of the King more and more to the thirst for revenge, finds at last in the players the means whereby he is not only enabled to see that his despair is wrong, but to have his uncle at the same time in his power; thus the dramatic interest goes increasing on and on to the catastrophe of the third act. According to the common arrangement, the passion drives on, breaks