hear And let me fpeak, to the yet unknowing world, 8 Fall'n on the inventors' heads: all this can I FORT. Let us hafte to hear it, And call the nobleft to the audience. For me, with forrow I embrace my fortune; parently taken from Arthur Brooke's Tragicall Hyfory of Romeus and Juliet, 1562: "The prince did straight ordaine, the corfes that wer founde, "Should be fet forth upon a stage bye rayfed from the grounde," &c. STEEVENS. Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural a&ts;] Carnal is a word ufed by Shakspeare as an adjective to carnage. RITSON. Of fanguinary and unnatural acts, to which the perpetrator was inftigated by concupifcence, or, to use our poet's own words, by "carnal ftings." The speaker alludes to the murder of old Hamlet by his brother, previous to his inceftuous union with Gertrude. A Remarker afks," was the relationship between the ufurper and the deceased king a fecret confined to Horatio?"-No, but the murder of Hamlet by Claudius was a fecret which the young prince had imparted to Horatio, and had imparted to him alone; and to this it is he principally, though covertly, alludes.—Carnal is the reading of the only authentick copies, the quarto 1604, and the folio 1623. The modern editors, following a quarto of no authority, for carnal, read cruel. MALONE. The edition immediately preceding that of Mr. Malone, readscarnal, and not cruel, as here afferted. REED. 8 Of deaths put on-] i. e. inftigated, produced. See Vol. XIIp. 109, n. 9. MALONE. 9 and forc'd caufe;] Thus the folio. The quartos readand for no caufe. STEEVENS. 2 -fome rights of memory in this kingdom,] Some rights, which are remembered in this kingdom. MALONE. HOR. Of that I fhall have alfo caufe to fpeak, And from his mouth whofe voice will draw on more: 3 But let this fame be presently perform'd, Even while men's minds are wild; left more mif chance, On plots, and errors, happen. FORT. Let four captains Bear Hamlet, like a foldier, to the stage; For he was likely, had he been put on, To have prov'd moft royally: and, for his paffage, Take up the bodies:-Such a fight as this [4 dead march. [Exeunt, bearing off the dead bodies; after which, a peal of ordnance is shot off. 3 And from his mouth whose voice will draw on more:] No is the reading of the old quartos, but certainly a mistaken one. We fay, a man will no more draw breath; but that a man's voice will draw no more, is, I believe, an expreffion without any authority. I choose to efpouse the reading of the elder folio: And from his mouth whofe voice will draw on more. And this is the poet's meaning. Hamlet, just before his death, had faid: "But I do prophecy, the election lights "On Fortinbras: he has my dying voice; Accordingly, Horatio here delivers that meffage; and very juftly infers, that Hamlet's voice will be feconded by others, and procure them in favour of Fortinbras's fucceffion. THEOBALD. 4 If the dramas of Shakspeare were to be characterifed, each by the particular excellence which diftinguishes it from the reft, we muft allow to the tragedy of Hamlet the praife of variety. The incidents are fo numerous, that the argument of the play would make a long tale. The fcenes are interchangeably diverfified with merriment and folemnity; with merriment that includes judicious and inftructive obfervations; and folemnity not ftrained by poetical violence above the natural fentiments of man. New characters appear from time to time in continual fucceffion, exhibiting various forms of life and particular modes of converfation. The pretended madness of Hamlet caufes much mirth, the mournful diftraction of Ophelia fills the heart with tendernefs, and every perfonage produces the effect intended, from the apparition that in the first act chills the blood with horror, to the fop in the laft, that expofes affectation to just contempt. The conduct is perhaps not wholly fecure against objections. The action is indeed for the moft part in continual progreffion, but there are fome fcenes which neither forward nor retard it. Of the feigned madnefs of Hamlet there appears no adequate caufe, for he does nothing which he might not have done with the reputation of fanity. He plays the madman moft, when he treats Ophelia with fo much rudenefs, which feems to be ufelefs and wanton cruelty. Hamlet is, through the whole piece, rather an inftrument than an agent. After he has, by the ftratagem of the play, convicted the king, he makes no attempt to punish him; and his death is at laft effected by an incident which Hamlet had no part in producing. The catastrophe is not very happily produced; the exchange of weapons is rather an expedient of neceflity, than a ftroke of art. A fcheme might eafily be formed to kill Hamlet with the dagger, and Laertes with the bowl. The poet is accused of having fhown little regard to poetical juftice, and may be charged with equal neglect of poetical probability. The apparition left the regions of the dead to little purpofe; the revenge which he demands is not obtained, but by the death of him that was required to take it; and the gratification, which would arife from the deftruction of an ufurper and a murderer, is abated by the untimely death of Ophelia, the young, the beautiful, the harmlefs, and the pious. JOHNSON. The levity of behaviour which Hamlet affumes immediately after the difappearance of the ghoft in the first act, [fc. v.] has been ob jected to; but the writer of fome fenfible Remarks on this tragedy, published in 1736, juftly obferves, that the poet's object there was, that Marcellus might not imagine that the ghoft had revealed to Hamlet fome matter of great confequence to him, and that he might not therefore be fufpected of any deep defign." 66 66 I have heard (adds the fame writer,) many perfons wonder, why the poet fhould bring in this ghoft in complete armour.-ĺ think thefe reafons may be given for it. We are to confider, that he could introduce him in thefe dreffes only; in his regal drefs, in a habit of interment, in a common habit, or in fome fantaftick one of his own invention. Now let us examine, which was most likely to affect the fpectators with paffions proper on the occafion. "The regal habit has nothing uncommon in it, nor furprising, nor could it give rife to any fine images. The habit of interment was fomething too horrible; for terror, not horror, is to be raised in the fpectators. The common habit (or habit de ville, as the French call it,) was by no means proper for the occafion. It remains then that the poet fhould choofe fome habit from his own brain: but this certainly could not be proper, because invention in fuch a cafe would be fo much in danger of falling into the gro tefque, that it was not to be hazarded. Now as to the armour, it was very suitable to a king who is defcribed as a great warrior, and is very particular; and confequently affects the fpectators without being fantaftick. "The king fpurs on his fon to revenge his foul and unnatural murder, from thefe two confiderations chiefly; that he was fent into the other world without having had time to repent of his fins, and without the neceffary facraments, according to the church of Rome, and that confequently his foul was to fuffer, if not eternal damnation, at leaft a long courfe of penance in purgatory; which aggravates the circumftances of his brother's barbarity; and fecondly, that Denmark might not be the fcene of ufurpation and inceft, and the throne thus polluted and profaned. For these reasons he prompts the young prince to revenge; else it would have been more becoming the character of fuch a prince as Hamlet's father is represented to have been, and more fuitable to his prefent condition, to have left his brother to the divine punishment, and to a poffibility of repentance for his bafe crime, which, by cutting him off, he must be deprived of. "To conform to the ground-work of his plot, Shakspeare makes the young prince feign himfelf mad. I cannot but think this to be injudicious; for fo far from fecuring himself from any violence which he feared from the ufurper, it feems to have been the most likely way of getting himfelf confined, and confequently debarred from an opportunity of revenging his father's death, which now feemed to be his only aim; and accordingly it was the occafion of his being fent away to England; which defign, had it taken effect upon his life, he never could have revenged his father's murder. To fpeak truth, our poet by keeping too clofe to the ground-work of his plot, has fallen into an abfurdity; for there appears no reafon at all in nature, why the young prince did not put the ufurper to death as foon as poffible, efpecially as Hamlet is reprefented as a youth fo brave, and fo carelefs of his own life. "The cafe indeed is this. Had Hamlet gone naturally to work, as we could fuppofe fuch a prince to do in parallel circumftances, there would have been an end of our play. The poet there fore was obliged to delay his hero's revenge: but then he should have contrived fome good reafon for it. "His beginning his fcenes of Hamlet's madnefs by his behaviour to Ophelia, was judicious, becaufe by this means he might be thought to be mad for her, not that his brain was disturbed about ftate affairs, which would have been dangerous. "It does not appear whether Ophelia's madness was chiefly for her father's death, or for the lofs of Hamlet. It is not often that young women run mad for the lofs of their fathers. It is more natural to fuppofe that, like Chimene, in the Cid, her great forrow proceeded from her father's being killed by the man fhe loved, and thereby making it indecent for her ever to marry him. "Laertes's character is a very odd one; it is not eafy to fay whether it is good or bad: but his confenting to the villainous contrivance of the ufurper's to murder Hamlet, makes him much more a bad man than a good one.-It is a very nice conduct in the poet to make the ufurper build his fcheme upon the generous unfufpicious temper of the perfon he intends to murder, and thus to raise the prince's character by the confeflion of his enemy; to make the villain ten times more odious from his own mouth. The contrivance of the foil unbated, (i. e. without a button,) is methinks too grofs a deceit to go down even with a man of the most unfufpicious nature. "Laertes's death and the queen's are truly poetical justice, and very naturally brought about, although I do not conceive it fo eafy to change rapiers in a fcuffle without knowing it at the time. The death of the queen is particularly according to the strictest rules of poetical juftice; for the lofes her life by the villainy of the very perfon, who had been the cause of all her crimes. "Since the poet deferred fo long the ufurper's death, we must own that he has very naturally effected it, and still added freth crimes to those the murderer had already committed. "Upon Laertes's repentance for contriving the death of Hamlet, one cannot but feel fome fentiments of pity for him; but who can fee or read the death of the young prince without melting into tears and compaffion? Horatio's earneft defire to die with the prince, thus not to furvive his friend, gives a stronger idea of his friendship for Hamlet in the few lines on that occafion, than many actions or expreffions could poffibly have done. And Hamlet's begging him to draw his breath in this harsh world a little longer, to clear his reputation, and manifeft his innocence, is very fuitable to his virtuous character, and the honeft regard that all men fhould have not to be mifreprefented to pofterity; that they may not fet a bad example, when in reality they have fet a good one: which is the only motive that can, in reafon, recommend the love of fame and glory. |