[Danish lutes.]

Her sweet mind lies in fragments before us-a pitiful spectacle! Her wild, rambling fancies; her aimless, broken speeches; her quick transitions from gayety to sadness-each equally purposeless and causeless; her snatches of old ballads, such as perhaps her nurse sang her to sleep with in her infancy-are all so true to the life, that we forget to wonder, and can only weep. It belonged to Shakespeare alone, so to temper such a picture that we can endure to dwell upon it

"Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself,
She turns to favour and to prettiness."

That in her madness she should exchange her bashful silence for empty babbling, her sweet maidenly demeanour for the impatient restlessness that spurns at straws, and say and sing precisely what she never would or could have uttered had she been in possession of her reason, is so far from being an impropriety, that it is an additional stroke of nature. It is one of the symptoms of this species of insanity, as we are assured by physicians. I have myself known one instance, in the case of a young Quaker girl, whose character resembled that of Ophelia, and whose malady arose from a similar cause."-MRS. JAMESON.

"Where is the beauteous majesty of Denmark?"

Sir Joshua Reynolds observes that there is no part of this play, in its representation on the stage, more pathetic than this scene; which he supposes to arise from the utter insensibility of Ophelia to her own misfortunes. "A great sensibility or none at all, (says he,) seems to produce the same effect. In the latter case, the audience supply what is wanting; and with the former they sympathize."

Over her, "the sweet Ophelia," even Johnson descends from his stern censorship to mourn, as "the young, the beautiful, the harmless, and the pious;" while Hazlitt, in a strain of passionate eloquence, exclaims: "Ophelia is a character almost too exquisitely touching to be dwelt upon. Oh, rose of May!' oh, flower 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 but Shakespeare could have drawn in the way he has done; and to the conception of which there is not the smallest approach, except in some of the old romantic ballads."

Mrs. Jameson, after having pourtrayed with great beauty and truth the effect of Ophelia's character, has with equal delicacy of discrimination, shown the principle by which that effect is produced:-"It is the helplessness of Ophelia, arising merely from her innocence, and pictured without any indication of weakness, which melts us with such profound pity. She is so young, that neither her mind nor her person have attained maturity; she is not aware of the nature of her own feelings; they are prematurely developed in their full force before she has strength to bear them;

and love and grief together rend and shatter the frail texture of her existence, like the burning fluid poured into a crystal vase. She says very little, and what she does say seems rather intended to hide than to reveal the emotions of her heart; yet in those few words we are made as perfectly acquainted with her character, and with what is passing in her mind, as if she had thrown forth her soul with all the glowing eloquence of Juliet."

"God 'ild you"-for God yield you, reward you.

"They say, the owl was a baker's daughter." This transformation is said to be a common tradition in Gloucestershire. It is thus related by Mr. Douce: "Our Saviour went into a baker's shop where they were baking, and asked for some bread to eat: the mistress of the shop immediately put a piece of dough in the oven to bake for him; but was reprimanded by her daughter, who, insisting that the piece of dough was too large, reduced it to a very small size: the dough, however, immediately began to swell, and presently became of a most enormous size; whereupon the baker's daughter cried out, Heugh, heugh, heugh,' which owllike noise probably induced our Saviour to transform her into that bird, for her wickedness." The story is related to deter children from illiberal behaviour to the poor.

"Which bewept to the grave did NOT go."-The quarto, 1603, and the folio have "grave," the other quartos ground; but all authorities read "did not go," which Pope considered an error; but she alters the song in reference to her father's "obscure funeral," as mentioned by Laertes and the King.

"In HUGGER-MUGGER."-This word, now used only in a ludicrous sense, was formerly employed to express any hurried or clandestine manner.

"The ocean, overpeering of his list." Breaking over his boundary. The phrase is used

and explained in Henry IV.

"The very list, the very utmost bound
Of all our fortunes."

"O! this is COUNTER"-To hunt "counter," is to hunt contrary to the proper course.

"O, how the WHEEL."--Stevens and Singer have shown that the wheel is the burthen of the song or ballad.

SCENE VII.

"Of the unworthiest SIEGE."-Siege is here used as in Othello, (act i. scene 2, &c.,) for seat; and denotes place or rank, as in other poets of that age.

661

-the SCRIMERS of their nation"-Escrimeur is French for a fencer; and hence "scrimer."

"A sword UNBATED"-i. e. not blunted: in Love's Labour Lost, (act i. scene 1,) we meet with the word "bate" for blunt

"That honour, which shall bate his scythe's keen edge." "A wager on your CUNNINGS"-On the skill of each of you; as in our English Bible-"Let my right hand forget her cunning."

"your venom'd STUCK"-So all the copies, excepting the quarto, 1637, which has tuck, a word sometimes used for a sword; but "stuck" is warranted by its etymology, stoccata, a term in the art of fencing: "venom'd stuck" is equivalent to "venom'd thrust."-COL.

"There is a willow grows aslant a brook."

In this exquisite passage, I have, with the correction of two literal errors, and one word from the quartos, followed the folio reading. The ordinary text is from the quartos, with a conjectural emendation of "Therewith fantastic garlands did she make," for "There, with fantastic garlands did she make," as it appears in

all the quartos. Independently of the external evidence, the sense is clearer; and the passage has, to my ear, especially in the repetition of "there," a more touching melody than in the other readings.

Instead, however, of "the snatches of old tunes," of the folio and modern editions, I have restored the reading of the quarto, "old lauds," i. e. hymns of praise, psalms, canticles, or chants of thanksgiving. This word could not have crept accidentally into all the earlier editions; while tunes, as more familiar, may well have been afterwards substituted in the playhouse copies. Besides, this is more congruous to the next line; chanting harmonizes best with lauds; and the "chanting snatches of lauds," would indicate one "incapable of her own distress;" while tunes might have been wildexpressive of sorrow and lament.

"Liberal" is here used, as in Othello and elsewhere, for "free in language."

ACT V.-SCENE I.

"Crowner's quest-law.”—Sir John Hawkins originally pointed out that this ludicrous description of "crowner's quest-law" was, in all probability, "a ridicule on the case of Dame Hales, reported by Plowden. This was a case regarding the forfeiture of a lease, in consequence of the suicide of Sir James Hales. The precise thing, however, ridiculed, is in the speech of one of the counsel in the case:

"Walsh said that the act consists of three parts. The first is the imagination, which is a reflection or meditation of the mind, whether or no it is convenient for him to destroy himself, and what way it can be done. The second is the resolution, which is a determination of the mind to destroy himself, and to do it in this or that particular way. The third is the perfection, which is the execution of what the mind has resolved to do. And this perfection consists of two parts, the beginning and the end. The beginning is the doing of the act which causes the death, and the end is the death, which is only a sequel to the act."

Again, the reasoning of one of the judges is nearly equal to that of the clown:

Sir James Hales was dead, and how came he to his death? It may be answered, by drowning; and who drowned him? Sir James Hales: and when did he drown him? In his lifetime. So that Sir James Hales, being alive, caused Sir James Hales to die; and the act of the living man was the death of the dead man. And then for this offence it is reasonable to punish the living man who committed the offence, and not the dead man. But how can he be said to be punished alive when the punishment comes after his death? Sir, this can be done no other way but by divesting out of him, from the time of the act done in his life which was the cause of his death, the title and property of those things which he had in his lifetime."

It is clear that the ridicule here was especially meant for the case and argument above cited. Nor is there any thing very marvellous in a well-informed man, of general curiosity, having looked into and found matter of mirth in a book of reports published in his own time. It is indeed a natural illusion to suppose that such a book appeared to Shakespeare as it does now to the unprofessional reader, when seen clad in the solemn terrors of black letter and the antique mystery of law French. But the black letter was a customary mode of printing in the poet's youth, and the French of Westminster-Hall very much resembled the Norman-French then still in familiar use as a common accomplishment. The poet having acquired that, as his historical plays show him to have done, it was no more strange for him to look into a remarkable report, pointed out by any of the "better brothers" of the courts, than for one of our authors to look into the State Trials, or Wheaton's Reports. The difficulty to be explained in Shakespeare's legal allusions is not

in his use of matter so rich in absurd ingenuity as Dame Hales's case, but in the careless variety and playful abundance of his technical allusions, indicating a familiarity rarely acquired except by professional studies. In these he is invariably accurate, and his knowledge is far beyond the general information acquired by men of property and business, in their ordinary affairs, even at this day. It is the more remarkable in an age when the legal mysteries were much more jealously guarded than now from lay intrusion. Junius has been shown by a learned lawyer (Charles Butler) not to have been a law-bred man, from an error in allusion to the law of real property, although he was competent to discuss constitutional questions. In any particular point, reading and inquiry may protect the mere literary man from error as to any legal subject selected for literary use; though Lord Coke denies even that as to the clergy. It is the transient and careless allusion that proves habitual familiarity, and would indicate the great poet to have been, in some way or other, at some early period of life, connected with the law.

"Even Christian."-As, we now say, "Fellow

Christian."

"To play at LOGGATS with them."-"Loggats" is a game still much used in some parts of England, particularly Norwich, and its vicinity. A stake is fixed in the ground, at which the loggats (small logs or pieces of wood) are thrown. The sport may be considered a rude kind of quoits.-Illust. Shak.

"Why may not that be the skull of a lawyer ?"-Here is a profusion of legal lore, much of which has become obsolete in the progress of legal reform, even in England. Ritson, who was a lawyer, may explain :-" A recovery with double voucher is the one usually suffered, and is so called from two persons being successively voucher, or called upon to warrant the tenant's title. Both fines and recoveries are fictions of law, used to convert an estate-tail into a fee-simple. Statutes are (not acts of parliament) but statutes merchant, and staple, particular modes of recognizance or acknowledgment for securing debts, which thereby become a charge upon the party's land. Statutes and recognizances are constantly mentioned together in the covenants of a purchase deed."

The play upon "parchment" in the next lines, refers to deeds, (always written upon parchment in England,) being, in legal language, "common assurances."

"The CARD."-The "seaman's card" of Macbeth; a sea chart.

"Picked"-Is explained by Minshew, in his dictionary, as "trimmed or dressed sprucely."

"It was that very day that young Hamlet was born."

Judge Blackstone remarks on this as a slip of memory in the poet. It appears, from what the Gravedigger subsequently says, that Hamlet must have been at this period thirty years old; and yet, in the early part of the play, we are told of his intention to return to school at Wittenberg. In the first quarto, Yorick's skull is said to have laid in the ground twelve years, instead of threeand-twenty, as at present.

The editor of the Illustrated edition acutely remarks that "It is probable that, in the reconstruction of the play, Shakespeare perceived that the general depth of Hamlet's philosophy indicated a mind too mature for the possession of a very young man."

"IMPERIAL Cæsar."-So the folio; the quartos, imperious: the words were often used indifferently.-COL.

"Virgin RITES."-So the folio. The reading of the quarto, which is usually followed, is "crants," which means garlands. But the "maiden strewments" are the flowers, the garlands, which piety scatters over the

bier of the young and innocent. The "rites" included these, and "the bringing home of bell and burial," i. e. with bell and burial.

Warburton conjectured "chants;" I think with Johnson that "crants" was the original word, which the author discovering to be provincial and not understood, changed to a term more intelligible. I judge it to be the author's own correction, both because it is an improvement for the reasons above stated, and from its analogy to the phrase "rites of war" applied to Hamlet's obsequies, at the end of the play.

"Woul't drink up ESILL ?"-" Esill" was formerly a term in common use for vinegar; and thus some have thought that Hamlet here meant, Will you take a draught of something very disagreeable? There is, however, little doubt that he referred to the river Yssell, Issell, or Izel, the most northern branch of the Rhine, and that which is the nearest to Denmark. Drayton are familiar with the name.

SCENE II.

Stow and

"Worse than the MUTINES in the BILBOES."-Here again we have "mutines" for mutineers, as in "King John." The "bilboes" seem to have been so called from the place where they were originally made, Bilboa, and they consisted of an iron bar with rings for confining the hands or legs of offenders on board ship.

"And stand a COMMA."-Caldecott explains this"Continue the passage or intercourse of amity between them, and prevent the interposition of a period to it."

"I'll COUNT his favours.-Rowe reads "court" for "count," with very considerable plausibility: however, "count" may be the word in the sense of count upon; or as Singer interprets, "make account of his goodwill."

"Is it not possible to understand in another tongue ?" Walter Scott has made the reader familiar with the "euphemisms" or finical phraseology of Elizabeth's court, here ridiculed, as used by Osric, and retorted in a caricatured extravagance by Hamlet, until Horatio impatiently asks if it is not possible to understand in another tongue; i. e. that of common use.

"Ere you had done."-Horatio refers to the explanatory comment upon the body of a work, sometimes inserted in the margin of the page.

"It is such a kind of gain-giving as would trouble a woman."-" Gain-giving," or giving against, is in present use, misgiving.

Coleridge remarks, "Shakespeare seems to mean all Hamlet's character to be brought together before his final disappearance from the scene; his meditative excess in the grave-digging, his yielding to passion with Laertes, his love for Ophelia blazing out, his tendency to generalize on all occasions in the dialogue with Horatio, his fine gentlemanly manners with Osric, and his and Shakespeare's own fondness for presentiment :'But thou would'st not think, how ill all's here about my heart; but it is no matter.'"

:

"Since no man, of aught he leaves, knows, what is't to leave betimes? Let be."--We have preferred here the reading of the quarto, 1604: the folio has, "Since no man has aught of what he leaves, what is't to leave betimes?" omitting "Let be." Johnson thus paraphrases, "Since no man can tell what other years will produce, why should he be afraid of leaving life betimes? Why should he dread an early death, of which he cannot tell whether it be an exclusion of happiness or an interruption of calamity."

"Fond and winnowed opinions."-This is the folio reading, and may well mean that such frothy facility imposes alike on fond (or weak) judgments, and those more critical. If this is not satisfactory, we must adopt one of the conjectural emendations; as Mason's,

"sound and winnowed;"—or Singer's, "fanned and winnowed."

"In the cup an UNION shall be thrown."-So the folio, rightly; a union being the most valuable kind of pearl. Some of the quartos read "onyx.”

"He's fat, and scant of breath."-There are few readers among the young of either sex-very few, it is to be feared, among the ladies-who are not somewhat shocked at this notice of Hamlet's person, slight and transient as it is. In our own day, especially, the shadowy Hamlet of the imagination has been filled up and made distinct to the mind's eye by the grand, graceful, and intellectual representation of the Prince in the Kemble-Hamlet of Sir T. Lawrence, and the excellent engravings from that majestic portrait.

The probable, though very unpoetical, explanation of the apparently needless introduction of these words, is drawn from one of those hard necessities of the stage which so often mar the delicate creations of the fancy, by embodying them in the coarser forms of material imitation. It arose from the necessity of apologizing for the personal appearance and action of Richard Burbage, the "English Roscius" of his time, who was the original Hamlet.

Mr. Collier has corrected the opinion of former editors that Taylor was the original actor of Hamlet. We know from the manuscript Elegy upon Burbage, sold among Heber's books, that he was the earliest representative of Hamlet; and there the circumstance of his being "fat and scant of breath," in the fencingscene, is noticed the very words of Shakespeare ::

"No more young Hamlet, though but scant of breath, Shall cryRevenge!' for his dear father's death." Thus it happened, oddly enough, that the original Hamlet resembled in all respects, the original Orestes of Racine, (and Orestes is the Hamlet of the classic drama,) in which Montfleuri's impassioned declamation produced a wonderful effect, "malgré (says the critical Geoffroy) l'énormité de son embonpoint."

Yet it would require no great ingenuity to array a fair show of reasons (it may, perhaps, already have been done in Germany) why this casual speech may not be meant as a hint of the poet's own notion of our hero's constitution and temperament. His own observation had noted that the formidable conspirator, the dangerous enemy, the man of iron will and prompt execution, resembled the lean and hungry Cassius;" while a fuller habit denoted a more indolent will, though it might be accompanied with an active intellect. But, to consider it so, "were to consider too curiously." We may be content to acquiesce in Mr. Collier's solution.

With this matter-of-fact explanation, these words may be considered as no more than a stage-direction for a particular purpose, not a permanent part of the text; and the reader's imagination may be free to paint for itself, according to its own tastes and associations, the ideal presence of him who is elsewhere described as

"That unmatch'd form and feature of blown youth,"

"The expectancy and rose of this fair state, The glass of fashion, and the mould of form."

the occurrents, more and less,

Which have solicited."

Hooker and Bacon use "occurrents" for events, occurrences; as here. "Solicited," for excited, prompted. Hamlet's conduct was importunately urged on, in the sense of the "supernatural solliciting," in Macbeth. In the same sense, Milton speaks of resisting Satan's "sollicitations," i. e. his temptations, strong inducements to evil.

"Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters." Several critics (Goëthe among them) have remarked, that the catastrophe of this drama resembles those fa

miliar to the Greek tragedy, where royal families, stained like that of Denmark, with "carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts," are swept away by the torrent of irresistible destiny, confounding the innocent with the guilty in one common fate, while the sceptre passes to some unlineal hand. As Shakespeare has here entirely departed from the old legend, which made Hamlet, after punishing his father's murder, succeed to the throne; and as it is not his custom to vary from the popular history or fable on which his drama happens to be founded, without some cogent reason; it is clear, that this catastrophe seemed to him essential to the great end and effect of his poem. But its resemblance with the Grecian stage is one of coincidence, not of imitation. His theology or his philosophy holds, instead of ancient Destiny, an over-ruling Providence, directing man's weak designs to its own wise purposes :—

"a divinity, that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will."

It is this, and not fixed fate, that at last nerves Hamlet's wavering will to be the instrument of signal judicial punishment. But the avenger is made to fall in the common ruin. To this the poet was led, neither by learned imitation nor by philosophical theory, but from his own sympathy with the character he had created. He could not but feel, as to this loved child of his fancy, what he has expressed as to Lear; and therefore would

not

"upon the rack of this tough world

Stretch him out longer."

What could prolonged life,-what could power or royal poinp, do for Hamlet? Surely nothing, according to Shakespeare's habitual estimate of the worthlessness of life's empty shows. They could not restore to him the "freshness of the heart;" they could only leave him to toil on, and groan under the load of a weary existence.

To the general mind this might not so appear; and for that very reason it was the more necessary that the grand, melancholy effect of the Prince's character and story should not be weakened by any vulgar triumph at the close, confounding him with the common herd of romantic and dramatic heroes.

"Let four captains

Bear Hamlet, like a soldier, to the stage;
For he was likely, had he been put on,
To have prov'd most royally."

Coleridge remarks, that "The character of Hamlet may be traced to Shakespeare's deep and accurate science in mental philosophy; that the character must have some connection with the common fundamental laws of nature, may be assumed from the fact that Hamlet has been the darling of every country in which the literature of England has been fostered." Besides the vexed question of the nature and degree of his mental malady, the intellectual peculiarities, and the moral cast of his character and conduct, have also afforded matter for much discussion. They have been flippantly assailed by Stevens, and dogmatically pronounced by Schlegel to exhibit a strange mixture of constitutional deceit, and hypocrisy, and universal skepticism; while they have been analyzed in a higher mood of feeling and eloquence by Coleridge, Lamb, Hazlitt, Mrs. Jameson, Hallam, the Pictorial editor, and several anonymous critics of almost equal ability. The very fact and nature of these differing opinions, and the manner they are entertained by readers according to their own several habits of thought and life,-all equally attest the truth and reality of the character which is thus examined, not as a figment of the imagination, which may be ever so incongruous, but as a real personage, out of and far above the common class of minds, upon whose principles, motives, and actions, different men may come to different conclusious. It is not a character of ideal perfection, either moral or mental; but, while it commands our admiration by brilliant qualities and lofty intellect, it is brought down to the level of our sym

pathy, and even of our compassion, by no common share of human weakness, error, and suffering.

Goëthe has pointed out the leading characteristic of Hamlet, upon which the interest of the whole drama mainly depends.

He says "It is clear to me that Shakespeare'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 receive only the most delicate flowers: the roots strike 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 recovering his former tranquillity."

Coleridge's theory of Hamlet's character cannot be omitted. Without assenting to his intimation that Shakespeare drew it with any direct intent to inculcate a lesson of intellectual discipline, still we must allow the original and profound truth of the criticism; the truer, we believe, and the more striking, because the critic drew his theory from his own character and experience.

Shakespeare, painting from nature, (perhaps from himself,) has given to his hero the endowments and the defects common, in various degrees or proportions, to one of the nobler classes of human intellects; and to that very class Coleridge himself belonged. He says

"In Hamlet, he (Shakespeare) seems to have wished to exemplify the moral necessity of a due balance between our attention to the objects of our senses, and our meditation on the workings of our minds,—an equilibrium between the real and imaginary worlds. In Hamlet this balance is disturbed: his thoughts, and the images of his fancy, are far more vivid than his actual perceptions, and his very perceptions, instantly pass ing through the medium of his contemplations, acquire, as they pass, a form and colour not naturally their own. Hence, we see a great, an almost enormous, intellectual activity, and a proportionate aversion to real action consequent upon it, with all its symptoms and accompanying qualities. This character Shakespeare places in circumstances under which it is obliged to act on the spur of the moment :-Hamlet is brave and careless of death; but he vacillates from sensibility, and procrastinates from thought, and loses the power of action in the energy of resolve."

The first edition of Hamlet bears the marks of a pirated and very inaccurate copy; still, it is as manifestly not a mutilated abridgment of the piece as we now have it, but an imperfect transcript of the poet's original sketch. This appears from the fact, that the difference consists not only in improved dialogue, added poetry of language and imagery, and more excursive thought, but also in some variation of the plot, as well as minor changes as to names, etc. Polonius is called Corambis. The Queen is made to attest her own innocence of her husband's murder. In the closet-scene, as the Ghost disappears, instead of―

"This is the very coinage of your brain"the Queen says

"Alas! it is the weakness of thy brain

Which makes thy tongue to blazon thy heart's grief.
But, as I have a soul, I swear to heaven,

I never knew of this most horrid murder.
But, Hamlet, this is only fantasy," etc.

The following scene also, differs too materially from the revised play to be omitted:

Enter HORATIO and the QUEEN.

Hor. Madam, your son is safe arrived in Denmarke, This letter I even now received of him, Whereas he writes how be escaped the danger And subtle treason that the King had plotted, Being crossed by the contention of the winds, He found the packet sent to the King of England, Wherein he saw himself betrayed to death, As at his next conversion with your grace He will relate the circumstance at full.

Queen. Then I perceive there's treason in his looks, That seemed to sugar o'er his villanies:

But I will soothe and please him for a time,

For murderous minds are always jealous;

But know not you, Horatio, where he is?

Hor. Yes, madam, and he hath appointed me

To meet him on the east side of the city

To-morrow morning.

Queen. O fail not, good Horatio, and withal commend me A mother's care to him, bid him awhile

Be wary of his presence, lest that he

Fail in that he goes about.

Hor. Madam, never make doubt of that;

I think by this the news be come to court

He is arrived: observe the King, and you shall Quickly find, Hamlet being here,

Things fell not to his mind.

Queen. But what became of Gilderstone and Rossencraft? Hor. He being set ashore, they went for England,

And in the packet there writ down that doom

To be performed on them 'pointed for him:

And by great chance he had his father's seal,

So all was done without discovery.

Queen. Thanks be to heaven for blessing of the prince. Horatio, once again I take my leave,

With thousand mother's blessings to my son.

Hor. Madam, adieu!

Coleridge, who had not seen this early sketch, has observed, that "the character of the Queen is left in an unpleasant perplexity. Was she, or was she not, conscious of the fratricide ?" Most readers have felt this doubt; but the early edition shows that this very effect was intended by the poet. In his revision he suppressed the evidence of Gertrude's freedom from the more atrocious guilt; and this was evidently done to heighten the mysterious gloom of the interest, and to leave another cause of horrible suspicion to prey upon his hero's mind.