1 So tell him, with the occurrents, more and lefs, And flights of angels fing thee to thy reft!* 8 the occurrents,] i. e. incidents. The word is now difufed. So, in The Hog hath loft bis Pearl, 1614: "Such ftrange occurrents of my fore-past life." Again, in The Barons' Wars, by Drayton, Canto I: "With each occurrent, right in his degree." STEEVENS. 9 Which have folicited,] Solicited, for brought on the event. WARBURTON. Warburton fays that folicited, means brought on the event; but that is a meaning the word cannot import. That have folicited, means that have excited;—but the fentence is left imperfect. M. MASON. What Hamlet would have faid, the poet has not given us any ground for conjecturing. The words feem to mean no more than which have incited me to. MALONE. 2 Now cracks a noble heart :-Good night, fweet prince; And flights of angels fing thee to thy reft!] So, in Pericles, Prince of Tyre, 1609: "If thou liv'ft, Pericles, thou hast a heart, "That even cracks for woe." The concluding words of the unfortunate Lord Effex's prayer on the fcaffold were thefe: " and when my life and body fhall part, fend thy blessed angels, which may receive my foule, and convey it to the joys of heaven." Hamlet had certainly been exhibited before the execution of that amiable nobleman; but the words here given to Horatio might have been one of the many additions made to this play. As no copy of an earlier date than 1604 has yet been discovered, whether Lord Effex's laft words were in our author's thoughts, cannot now be afcertained. MALONE. And flights of angels fing thee to thy reft!] Rather from Marston's Infatiate Countess, 1603: "An hoft of angels be thy convey hence!" STEEVENS. Let us review for a moment the behaviour of Hamlet, on the ftrength of which Horatio founds this eulogy, and recommends him to the patronage of angels. Why does the drum come hither? [March within. Hamlet, at the command of his father's ghoft, undertakes with feeming alacrity to revenge the murder; and declares he will banish all other thoughts from his mind. He makes, however, but one effort to keep his word, and that is, when he mistakes Polonius for the king. On another occafion, he defers his pur pofe till he can find an opportunity of taking his uncle when he is leaft prepared for death, that he may infure damnation to his foul. Though he affaffinated Polonius by accident, yet he deliberately procures the execution of his fchool-fellows, Rofencrantz and Guildenftern, who appear not, from any circumftances in this play, to have been acquainted with the treacherous purposes of the mandate they were employed to carry. To embitter their fate, and hazard their punishment beyond the grave, he denies them even the few moments neceffary for a brief confeffion of their fins. Their end (as he declares in a fubfequent converfation with Horatio) gives him no concern, for they obtruded themselves into the fervice, and he thought he had a right to deftroy them. From his brutal conduct toward Ophelia, he is not lefs accountable for her diftraction and death. He interrupts the funeral defigned in honour of this lady, at which both the king and queen were prefent; and, by fuch an outrage to decency, renders it ftill more neceffary for the ufurper to lay a fecond ftratagem for his life, though the first had proved abortive. He infults the brother of the dead, and boafts of an affection for his fifter, which, before, he had denied to her face; and yet at this very time must be confidered as defirous of fupporting the character of a madman, fo that the opennefs of his confeffion is not to be imputed to him as a virtue. He apologizes to Horatio afterwards for the abfurdity of this behaviour, to which, he fays, he was provoked by that nobleness of fraternal grief, which, indeed, he ought rather to have applauded than condemned. Dr. Johnfon has obferved, that to bring about a reconciliation with Laertes, he has availed himself of a difhoneft fallacy; and to conclude, it is obvious to the moft carelefs fpectator or reader, that he kills the king at last to revenge himself, and not his father. Hamlet cannot be faid to have purfued his ends by very wat rantable means; and if the poet, when he facrificed him at last, meant to have enforced fuch a moral, it is not the worst that can be deduced from the play; for, as Maximus, in Beaumont and Fletcher's Valentinian, fays, Although his juftice were as white as truth, "His way was crooked to it; that condemns him." The late Dr. Akenfide once obferved to me, that the conduct of Hamlet was every way unnatural and indefenfible, unless he were to be regarded as a young man whofe intellects were in fome degree Enter FORTINBRAS, the English Ambaffadors, and Others. FORT. Where is this fight? HOR. What is it, you would fee? impaired by his own misfortunes; by the death of his father, the lofs of expected fovereignty, and a fenfe of fhame refulting from the hafty and inceftuous marriage of his mother. I have dwelt the longer on this fubject, because Hamlet feems to have been hitherto regarded as a hero not undeferving the pity of the audience; and becaufe no writer on Shakspeare has taken the pains to point out the immoral tendency of his character. STEEVENS. Mr. Ritfon controverts the juftice of Mr. Steevens's strictures on the character of Hamlet, which he undertakes to defend. The arguments he makes ufe of for this purpose are too long to be here inferted, and therefore I fhall content myfelf with referring to them. See REMARKS, p. 217, to 224. REED. Some of the charges here brought against Hamlet appear to me queftionable at leaft, if not unfounded. I have already obferved that in the novel on which this play is conftructed, the minifters who by the king's order accompanied the young prince to England, and carried with them a packet in which his death was concerted, were apprized of its contents; and therefore we may presume that Shakspeare meant to defcribe their reprefentatives, Rofencrantz and Guildenstern, as equally criminal; as combining with the king to deprive Hamlet of his life. His procuring their execution therefore does not with certainty appear to have been an unprovoked cruelty, and might have been confidered by him as neceffary to his future fafety; knowing, as he must have known, that they had devoted themfelves to the fervice of the king in whatever he fhould command. The principle on which he acted, is afcertained by the following lines, from which alfo it may be inferred that the poet meant to reprefent Hamlet's school-fellows as privy to the plot againft his life: "There's letters feal'd: and my two school-fellows- "They bear the mandate; they muft fweep my way, If aught of woe, or wonder, cease your search. "Hoift with his own petar; and it shall go hard, "But I will delve one yard below their mines, "And blow them to the moon." Another charge is, that "he comes to disturb the funeral of Ophelia:" but the fact is otherwife reprefented in the first scene of the fifth act: for when the funeral proceffion appears, (which he does not feek, but finds,) he exclaims, "The queen, the courtiers: who is this they follow, nor does he know it to be the funeral of Ophelia, till Laertes mentions that the dead body was that of his fifter. I do not perceive that he is accountable for the madness of Ophelia. He did not mean to kill her father when concealed behind the arras, but the king; and ftill lefs did he intend to deprive her of her reafon and her life: her subsequent distraction therefore can no otherwife be laid to his charge, than as an unforeseen confequence from his too ardently purfuing the object recommended to him by his father. He appears to have been induced to leap into Ophelia's grave, not with a defign to infult Laertes, but from his love to her, (which then he had no reafon to conceal,) and from the bravery of her brother's grief, which excited him (not to condemn that brother, as has been stated, but) to vie with him in the expression of affection and forrow: Why, I will fight with him upon this theme, When Hamlet fays, "the bravery of his grief did put me into a towering paffion," I think, he means, into a lofty expreffion (not of refentment, but) of forrow. So, in King John, Vol. VIII. p. 64, n. 9. "She is fad and passionate at your highness' tent.” Again, more appofitely in the play before us: "The inftant burft of clamour that she made, (Unless things mortal move them not at all,) "Would have made milch the burning eyes of heaven, I may alfo add, that he neither affaulted, nor infulted Laertes, till that nobleman had curfed him, and seized him by the throat. MALONE. -be comes-] The words stood thus in edit. 1778, &c. STEEVENS. FORT. This quarry cries on havock!-O proud death! What feast is toward in thine eternal cell,+ That thou so many princes, at a fhot, So bloodily haft ftruck? 1. AMB. The fight is difmal; And our affairs from England come too late: The ears are fenfelefs, that fhould give us hearing, That Rofencrantz and Guildenstern are dead: HOR. 3 This quarry cries on havock!] Sir T. Hanmer reads, To cry on, was to exclaim against. I suppose, when unfair sportsmen deftroyed more quarry or game than was reasonable, the cenfure was to cry, Havock. JOHNSON. We have the fame phrafeology in Othello, A&t V. fc. i: Whofe noife is this, that cries on murder?" See the note there. MALONE. 4 What feaft is toward in thine eternal cell,] Shakspeare has already employed this allufion to the Choe, or feafts of the dead, which were anciently celebrated at Athens, and are mentioned by Plutarch in the life of Antonius. Our author likewise makes Talbot fay to his fon in the First Part of King Henry VI: "Now art thou come unto a feast of death." 5 -his mouth,] i. e. the king's. STEEVENS. STEEVENS. High on a stage be placed to the view;] This idea was ap |