Miscarried by my fault, let my old life Prince. We still have known thee for a holy man. Prince. Give me the letter, I will look on it.- grave; And bid me stand aloof, and so I did: Prince. This letter doth make good the friar's Their course of love, the tidings of her death: THIS play is one of the most pleasing of our author's performances. The scenes are busy and various, the incidents numerous and important, the catastrophe irresistibly affecting, and the process of the action carried on with such probability, at least with such congruity to popular opinions, as tragedy requires. Here is one of the few attempts of Shakspeare to exhibit the conversation of gentlemen, to represent the airy sprightliness of juvenile elegance. Dryden mentions a tradition, which might easily reach his time, of to kill Mercutio in the third Act, lest he should bare a declaration made by Shakspeare, that he was obliged been killed by him. Yet he thinks him no such formidable person, but that he might have lived through the play and died in his bed, without danger to the poet. Dryden well knew, had he been in quest of truth, in a pointed sentence, that more regard is commonly had to Where be these enemies? Capulet! Montague!-the words than the thought, and that it is very seldom See, what a scourge is laid upon your hate, Mon. But I can give thee more: 1 Mercutio and Paris. Mercutio is expressly called the Prince's kinsman in Act iii. Sc. 4; and that Paris was also the Prince's kinsman, may be inferred from the following passages. Capulet, speaking of the count in the fourth act, describes him as a gentleman of princely parentage; and after he is killed, Romeo says: -Let me peruse this face; To Mercutio's kinsman, noble county Paris.' 2 The quarto of 1597 reads, A gloomy peace. gloom, is an ancient verb, used by Spenser and other old writers. to be rigorously understood. Mercutio's wit, gayety, him a longer life; but his death is not precipitated, he and courage, will always procure him friends that wish has lived out the time allotted him in the construction of the play; nor do I doubt the ability of Shakspeare to have continued his existence, though some of his sallies are perhaps out of the reach of Dryden; whose genius was not very fertile of merriment, nor ductile to humour, but acute, argumentative, comprehensive, and sublime. The Nurse is one of the characters in which the author delighted: he has with great subtilty of distine. tion, drawn her at once loquacious and secret, obsequious and insolent, trusty and dishonest. His comic scenes are happily wrought, but his pathetic strains are always polluted with some unex. pected depravations. His persons, however distressed, have a conceit left them in their misery, a miserable conceit. JOHNSON. A. W. Schlegel has answered this remark at length, and, as I think, satisfactorily, in a detailed criticism upon this tragedy, published in the Horen, a journal conducted by Schiller in 1794-1795, and made accessi ble to the English reader in Ollier's Literary Miscellany, Part I. In his Lectures on Dramatic Literature (vol. 3 This line has reference to the poem from which theii. p. 135, Eng. translation,) will be found some further fable is taken; in which the Nurse is banished for concealing the marriage; Romeo's servant set at liberty, because he had only acted in obedience to his master's orders; the Apothecary is hanged; while Friar Laurence was permitted to retire to a hermitage near Ve. rona, where he ended his life in penitence and tranquillity. 4 Shakspeare, in his revision of this play, has not effected the alteration by introducing any new incidents, but merely by adding to the length of the scenes. The piece appears to have been always a very popular one. Marston, in his Satires, 1598, says :- Luscus, what's play'd to-day? faith, now I know; I set thy lips abroach, from whence doth flow Nought but pure Juliet and Romeo.' The concluding lines may have been formed on the last couplet of the old poem: among the monuments that in Verona been, There is no monument more worthy of the sight Than is the tombe of Juliet and Romeus her knight.' sensible remarks upon the conceits' here stigmatized. It should be remembered that playing on words was a very favourite species of wit combat with our ancestors. With children, as well as nations of the most simple manners, a great inclination to playing on words is often displayed; [they cannot therefore be both puerile and unnatural: If the first charge is founded, the second cannot be so.] In Homer we find several examples; the Books of Moses, the oldest written memerial of the primitive world, are, it is well known, fall of them. On the other hand, poets of a very cultivated taste, or orators like Cicero, have delighted in them. Whoever, in Richard the Second, is disgusted with the affecting play of words of the dying John of Gaunt, on his own name, let him remember that the same thing occurs in the Ajax of Sophocles.' S. W. S This quotation is also found in the Preface to Dryden's Fables:-'Just John Littlewit, in Bartholomew Fair, who had a conceit (as he tells you) left him in his misery; a miserable conceit.'-Steevens HAMLET, PRINCE OF DENMARK. PRELIMINARY REMARKS. THE original story on which this play is built may be found in Saxo Grammaticus, the Danish historian. From thence Belleforest adopted it in his collection of novels, in seven volumes, which he began In 1564, and continued to publish through succeeding years. It was from Belleforest that the old black letter prose Hystorie of Hamblet' was translated; the earliest edition of which, known to the commentators, was dated in 1609; but it is supposed that there were earlier impressions. The following passage is found in an Epistle, by Thomas Nashe, prefixed to Greene's Arcadia, which was published in 1589:- I will turn back to my first text of studies of delight, and talk a little in friendship with a few of our rival translators. It is a common practice now-a-days, among a sort of shifting companions, that runne through every art and thrive by none, to leave the trade of Noverint, [i. e. the law] whereunto they were born, and busie themselves with the endeavours of art, that could scarcely latinize their neck-verse, if they should have neede; yet English Seneca, read by candle-light, yeelds many good sentences, as Bloud is a beggar, and so forth and if you entreat him faire in a frosty morning, he will affoord you whole Hamlets, I should say, Handfuls of tragical speeches. But O, grief! Tempus edai rerum--what is it that will last always? The sea exhaled by drops, will in continuance be drie; and Seneca, let bloud line by line, and page by page, at length must needs die to our stage.' father, and privy to his intention of revenging his The character of Hamlet has been frequently discussed, and with a variety of contradictory opinions. Johnson and Steevens have made severe animadversions upon some parts of his conduct. A celebrated writer of Germany, has very skilfully pointed out the cause of the defects in Hamlet's character, which unfit him for the dreadful office to which he is called. 'It is clear to me (says Goëthé) that Shakspeare's intention was to exhibit the effects of a great action, imposed as a duty upon a mind too feeble for its accomplishment. In this sense I find the character consistent throughout. Here is an oak planted in a china vase, proper to re It is manifest from this passage that some play on the story of Hamlet had been exhibited before the year 1599.ceive only the most delicate flowers. The roots strike Malone thinks that it was not Shakspeare's drama, but an elder performance, on which, with the aid of the old prose History of Hamblet, his tragedy was formed. In a tract, entitled Wits Miserie, or the World's Madnesse, discovering the incarnate Devils of the Age,' published by Thomas Lodge in 1595, one of the devils is said to be a foule lubber, and looks as pale as the vizard of the ghost, who cried so miserably at the theatre, Hamlet, revenge. But it is supposed that this also may refer to an elder performance. out, and the vessel flies to pieces. A pure, noble, highly moral disposition, but without that energy of soul which constitutes the hero, sinks under a load which it can neither support nor resolve to abandon altogether. All his obligations are sacred to him; but this alone is above his powers! An impossibility is required at his hands; not an impossibility in itself, but that which is so to him. Observe how he shifts, turns, hesitates, advances and recedes! how he is continually reminded and reminding himself of his great commission, which he, nevertheless, in the end seems almost entirely to lose sight of, and this without ever recover, Dr. Percy possessed a copy of Speght's edition of Chaucer, which had been Gabriel Harvey's, who had written his name and the date, 1598, both at the begining his former tranquillity.' ning and end of the volume, and many remarks in the intermediate leaves; among which are these words 'The younger sort take much delight in Shakspeare's Venus and Adonis; but his Lucrece, and his tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke, have it in them to please the wiser sort.' Malone doubts whether this was written in 1598, because translated Tasso is named in another note; but it is not necessary that the allusion should be to Fairfax's translation, which was not printed till 1600: it may refer to the version of the first five books of the Jerusalem, published by R. C. [arew] in 1594. Dr. Akenside suggested that the madness of Hamlet is not altogether feigned; and the notion has of late been revived. Dr. Ferriar, in his Essay towards a Theory of Apparitions, has termed the state of mind which Shakspeare exhibits to us in Hamlet,-as the consequence of conflicting passions and events operating on a frame of acute sensibility,-latent lunacy. We may therefore safely place the date of the first composition of Hamlet, at least as early as 1597; and, for reasons adduced by Mr. George Chalmers, we may presume that it was revised, and the additions made to it in the year 1600. The first entry on the Stationers' books is by James Roberts, July 26, 1602; and a copy of the play in its first state, printed for N. L. and John Trundell, in 1603, has recently been discovered. As in the case of the earliest impressions of Romeo and Juliet, and the Merry Wives of Windsor, this edition of Hamlet appears to have been either printed from an imperfect manuscript of the prompt books, or the playhouse copy, or stolen from the author's papers. It is next to impossible that it can have been taken down during the representation, as some have supposed was the ease with the other two plays. The variations of this early copy from the play of Hamlet, in its improved state, are too numerous and striking to admit a doubt of the play having been subsequently revised, amplified, and altered by the poet. There are even some variations in the plot; the principal of which are, that Horatio announces to the Queen Hamlet's unexpected return from his voyage to England; and that the Queen is expressly declared to be innocent of any participation in the murder of Hamlet's It has often occurred to me (says Dr. F.) that Shakspeare's character of Hamlet can only be understood on this principle:-He feigns madness for political purposes, while the poet means to represent his understanding as really (and unconsciously to himself) unhinged by the cruel circumstances in which he is placed. The horror of the communication made by his father's spectre, the necessity of belying his attachment to an innocent and deserving object, the certainty of his mother's guilt, and the supernatural impulse by which he is goaded to an act of assassination abhorrent to his nature, are causes sufficient to overwhelm and distract a mind previously disposed to "weakness and to melancholy," and originally full of tenderness and natural affection. By referring to the play, it will be seen that his real insanity is only developed after the mock play. Then, in place of a systematic conduct, conducive to his purposes, he becomes irresolute, inconsequent; and the plot appears to stand unaccounta bly still. Instead of striking at his object, he resigns himself to the current of events, and sinks at length ignobly under the stream.' There are some singular variations in the names of the Dramatis Personæ. Corambis and Montano are the names given to the Polonius and Reynaldo of the revised play; for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern we have Rossencraft and Gilderstone; and Osrick is merely designated a Braggart Gentleman. William Meister's Apprenticeship, b. iv. ch. 13. A comedian of considerable talents has entered at large into the question of Hamlet's madness, and has endeavoured to show that the poet meant to represent him as insane.* Mr. Boswell, on the contrary, in a very judicious and ingenious review of Hamlet's character, combats the supposition, and thinks it entirely without foundation. He argues that the sentiments which fall from Hamlet in his soliloquies, or in confidential communication with Horatio, evince not only a sound but an acute and vigorous understanding. His misfortunes, indeed, and a sense of shame, from the hasty and incestuous marriage of his mother, have sunk him into a state of weakness and melancholy; but though his mind is enfeebled, it is by no means deranged. It would have been little in the manner of Shakspeare to introduce two persons in the same play whose intellects were disordered; but he has rather, in this instance, as in King Lear, a second time effected what, as far as I can recollect, no other writer has ever ventured to attempt-the exhibition on the same scene of real and fictitious madness in contrast with each other. In carrying his design into execution, Hamlet feels no difficulty in imposing upon the King, whom he detests; or upon Polonius, and his school fellows, whom he despises: but the case is very different indeed in his interviews with Ophelia; aware of the submissive mildness of her character, which leads her to be subject to the influence of her father and her brother, he cannot venture to entrust her with his secret. In her presence, therefore, he has not only to assume a disguise, but to restrain himself from those expressions of affection, which a lover must find it most difficult to repress in the presence of his mistress. In this tumult of conflicting feelings, he is led to overact his part, from a fear of falling below it; and thus gives an appearance of rudeness and harshness to that which is, in fact, a painful struggle to conceal his tenderness.'t Mr. Richardson, in his Essay on the Character of Hamlet, has well observed that the spirit of that remarkable scene with Ophelia, where he tells her, "get thee to a nunnery," is frequently misunderstood; and especially by the players. At least it does not appear to have been the poet's intention that the air and manner of Hamlet in this scene should be perfectly grave On the madness of Hamlet, by Mr. W. Farren.London Magazine, for April, 1824. Boswell's edition of Malone's Shakspeare, vol. vii. p. 536. and serious; nor is there any thing in the dialogue ta justify the grave and tragic tone with which it is free quently spoken. Let Hamlet be represented as delivering himself in a light and airy, UBCONCETE⚫de 1 thoughtless manner, and the rudene » so morbi za plained of will disappear. His conduct to Oy La intended to confirm and publish the notion he wor'd convey of his pretended insanity, which corllrot one marked by any circumstance so strongly as that treating her with harshness or induference. The ch cerity and ardour of his passion for her had tndcrame no change: he could not explain himself to her, Era. in the difficult and trying circumstances in which 22 was placed, had therefore no alternative. f The poet indeed has marked with a ma der hand the amiable and polished character of Hamlet. Ophula designates him as having been the glass of fashion, and the mould of form : and though circumstances have unsettled him, and thrown over his natural disposition the clouds of melag choly, the kindness of his disposition and his natural hilarity break through on every occasion which arises to call them forth. Mr. Boswell has remarked, that the scene with te grave-diggers shows, in a striking point of vier good natured affability. The reflections which for afford new proofs of his amiable character. Ther where he stands, the frame of his own thoughts, the objects which surround him, suggest the vi all human pursuits; but there is nothing hersh cr caustic in his satire; his observations are Corst 1 rather by feelings of sorrow than of anger; and the sprightliness of his wit, which misfortune has represses, but cannot altogether extinguish, has thrown over the whole a truly pathetic cast of humorors salessThose gleams of sunshine, which serve only to sow us the scattered fragments of a brilliant imaginati crushed and broken by calamity, are much more sfeding than a long uninterrupted train of monotonous wa’ Ophelia is a character almost too exquisitely touching to be dwelt upon. Oh, rose of May; oh, fower too soon faded! Her love, her madness, her death, are described with the truest touches of tenderness and pathos. It is a character which nobody ber Sickspee could have drawn in the way that he has done; ruta the conception of which there is not the smallest spe proach, except in some of the old romantic ballads. Į Hazlitt's Characters of Shakspeare's Plays, p. IP. CLAUDIUS, King of Denmark. PERSONS REPRESENTED. FRANCISCO, a Soldier. HAMLET, Son to the former, and Nephew to the REYNALDO, Servant to Polonius. LAERTES, Son to Polonius. present King. POLONIUS, Lord Chamberlain. HORATIO, Friend to Hamlet. VOLTIMAND, A Captain. An Ambassador. GERTRUDE, Queen of Denmark, and Mother to OPHELIA, Daughter to Polonius. Lords, Ladies, Officers, Soldiers, Players, Gravediggers, Sailors, Messengers, and other Attend ants. SCENE-Elsinore. What, is Horatio there? A piece of him. Say. Ber. Welcome, Horatio; welcome, good Marcellus. Hor. What, has this thing appear'd again tonight? Ber. I have seen nothing. Mar. Horatio says, 'tis but our fantasy; Sit down awhile: Mar. Thus, twice before, and jump at this dead With martial stalk hath he gone by our watch. But, in the gross and scope of mine opinion, Mar. Good now, sit down, and tell me, he that Why this same strict and most observant watch And let us hear Bernardo speak of this. When yon same star, that's westward from the pole, Mar. Peace, break thee off; look, where it comes Enter Ghost. Ber. In the same figure like the king that's deaa. wonder. Ber. It would be spoke to. Speak to it, Horatio. Hor. What art thou, that usurp'st this time of night, Together with that fair and warlike form In which the majesty of buried Denmark Hor. At least, the whisper goes so. Our last king, Had he been vanquisher; as, by the same co-mart, Did sometimes march? by Heaven I charge thee, His fell to Hamlet: Now, sir, young Fortinbras, speak. Mar. It is offended. longed equally to both, and so signified partners: this partnership led to contests; and hence the word came to signify persons contending for the same object. 1 To approve or confirm. Ratum habere aliquid.' -Baret. 2 It was a vulgar notion that a supernatural being could only be spoken to with effect by persons of learning; exorcisms being usually practised by the clergy in Latin. Toby, in The Night Walker of Beaumont and Fletcher, says : Let's call the butler up, for he speaks Latin, And that will daunt the devil.' 3 The first quarto reads, it horrors me.' To harrow is to distress, to vex, to disturb. To harry and to harass have the same origin, from the Gothic haer, an armed force. Milton has the word in Comus: 'Amaz'd I stood, harrow'd with grief and fear." 4 Parle, the same as parley, a conference between enemies. 5 i. e. the sledged Polander; Polaque, Fr. The old copy reads Pollar. Malone therefore thinks that Shakspeare wrote Polacks, not considering that it was in a parley, and that a general slaughter was hardly likely to ensue. Mr. Boswell suggests that it is just possible the old reading may be right, pole-ar being put for the person who carried the pole-are, a mark of rank among the Muscovites, as he has shown from Milton's Brief History of Muscovy. 6 Jump. So the quarto of 1603, and that of 1604. The folio reads just. Jump and just were synonymous Of unimproved mettle hot and full,11 in the time of Shakspeare. So in Chapman's May Day, 1611:- Your appointment was jumpe at three with me.' Thou bendest neither one way nor tother, but art even jumpe stark naught.'-Baret, B. 486. 7 That is, what particular train of thought to follow, I know not,' &c. The first quarto reads:- "In what particular to work I know not." 8 To impress signifies only to retain shipwrights by giving them prest money for holding themselves in readiness to be employed. Thus in Chapman's second book of Homer's Odyssey: I from the people straight will press for you, See King Lear, Act iv. Sc. 2; and Blount's Glossogra- 9 Co-mart is the reading of the quarto of 1604; the folio reads, covenant. Co-mart, it is presumed, means a joint bargain. No other instance of the word is Hath in the skirts of Norway, here and there, 4 [Ber. I think, it be no other, but even so: Well may it sort, that this portentous figure Comes armed through our watch; so like the king That was, and is, the question of these wars. Hor. A mote it is, to trouble the mind's eye. The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead * * * * * * * *8 As, stars with trains of fire and dews of blood, Re-enter Ghost. But, soft; behold! lo, where it comes again! If there be any good thing to be done, If thou art privy to thy country's fate, Or, if thou hast uphoarded in thy life "Tis here! Johnson explains it, full of spirit, not regulated or guided by knowledge or experience,' and has been hitherto uncontradicted. 1 i. e. snapped up or taken up hastily. Scroccare is properly to do any thing at another man's cost, to shark or shift for any thing. Scroccolone, a cunning shifter or sharker for any thing in time of need, namely for victuals; a tall trencher-man, shifting up and down for belly cheer. The same word also signifies to snap. This word has not yet lost its force in vulgar conversation. 2 Stomach is used for determined purpose. 3 Romage, now spelt rummage, and in common use as a verb, though not as a substantive, for making a thorough ransack or search, a busy and tumultuous movement. Hor. "Tis here! Mar. 'Tis gone! 12 [Exit Ghost We do it wrong, being so majestical, 13 Mar. It faded on the crowing of the cock.15 Some say, that ever 'gainst that season comes Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated, This bird of dawning singeth all night long: And then they say no spirit dares stir abroad; The nights are wholesome: then no planets strike, No fairy takes,16 nor witch hath power to charm, So hallow'd and so gracious" is the time. Hor. So I have heard, and do in part believe it. But look, the morn,18 in russet mantle clad, Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastern hill: Break we our watch up; and, by my advice, Let us impart what we have seen to-night Unto young Hamlet: for, upon my life, This spirit, dumb to us, will speak to him: Do you consent we shall acquaint him with it, As needful in our loves, fitting our duty? Mar. Let's do't, I pray; and I this morning know Where we shall find him most convenient. [Exeunt. same. SCENE II. The same. A Room of State in the Enter the King, Queen, HAMLET, POLONIUS, LAERTES, VOLTIMAND, CORNELIUS, Lords, and Attendants. King. Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother's death The memory be green; and that it us befitted On Friday there appeared a tall man, who nee crossed him swiftly; and when the earl came to the place where he saw this man he fell sick.'-Lodge's Illustrations of English History, vol. iii. p. 48. Johnson remarks that the speech of Horatio to the spectre is very elegant and noble, and congruous to the common traditions of the causes of apparitions. 12 Thus in Macbeth : 'As easy may'st thou the intrenchant air With thy keen sword impress.' And in King John : 13 'Against the invulnerable clouds of heaven." "And now the cocke, the morning's trumpeter, Play'd hunts-up for the day-star to appear." Drayton. 14 'The extravagant and erring spirit.' Extra-ra4 All the lines within crotchets in this play are omit-gans, wandering about, going beyond bounds. Thus in ted in the folio of 1623. The title-pages of the quartos Othello:- To an extravagant and wheeling stranger." of 1604 and 1605 declare this play to be enlarged to-Erring is erraticus, straying or roving up and down. almost as much againe as it was, according to the true and perfect copie.' 5 i. e. fall in with the idea of, suit, accord 6 i. e. theme, or subject. 7 i. e. victorious; the palm being the emblem of victory. Chapman, in his Middle Temple Masque, has 'high-palm'd hearts.' 8 A line or more is here supposed to be lost. 9 i. e. the moon. Not that night-wand'ring pale and watry star.' Marlowe's Hero and Leander. 10 Omen is here put by a figure of speech for predicted event. 11 The person who crossed the spot on which a spectre was seen, became subject to its malignant influence. Among the reasons for supposing the death of Ferdinand, Earl of Derby, (who died young, in 1594,) to 15 This is a very ancient superstition. Philostratus giving an account of the apparition of Achilles' shade to Apollonius of Tyanna, says, that it vanished with a little gleam as soon as the cock crowed.' There is a Hymn of Prudentius, and another of St. Ambrose, in which it is mentioned; and there are some lines in the latter very much resembling Horatio's speech. Mr. Douce has given them in his Illustrations of Shak |