II. THE STORY OF HAMLET. The relation given in Saxo's Danish History must be considered as the original and oldest source of Shakespeare's Hamlet, though the poet may have been more immediately indebted to an older tragedy on the same subject, ascribed to Thomas Kyd,' and from an English tale which appeared several times in a separate form, under the title, "The Hystorie of Hamblet," 4to., which was immediately taken from Belleforest's Tragical Relations, the fifth volume of which contains it, under the title, Avec qu'elle ruse Amleth qui depuis fuit Roi de Dannemark vengea la mort de son pere Horrendille, occis par Fengou, son frère, et autre occurrence de son histoire. The English relation which Shakespeare had in his view had probably received many arbitrary additions; for, according to Capell, all the chief circumstances and the most important characters of the tragedy lie in the germ, as it were, in this 'This is mere conjecture. If, as is most probable, an older play on the subject of Hamlet existed at the time when Shakespeare wrote his tragedy, we have no evidence whatever that will lead us to believe it was written by Kyd.-ED. 2 The only perfect copy of this work known to exist was published at London in 1608, and has been reprinted by Mr. Collier. The original is preserved in Capell's rich collection, in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge, and was procured by him from the collection of the Duke of Newcastle. I have seen a fragment of this rare book, which, as far as one can offer an opinion, without comparing it with the perfect copy, appeared to be earlier than the date above mentioned. Dr. Farmer had only two leaves of the book, not an imperfect copy, as stated by Mr. Collier.-ED. story: an assertion which could hardly be made of the original relation of Saxo-Grammaticus. Yet, even in this last named author, we can distinguish the figures out of which Shakespeare has formed some of his characters. Horatio, Hamlet's fellow-student at Wittenberg, may be recognised in the foster-brother of the Prince; Polonius, in the bold courtier; and Ophelia in the young lady. The last passage may serve for a confirmation of Tieck's well known opinion respecting Hamlet's relation to Ophelia. The companions of Hamlet, in his journey to England, appear in Shakespeare as Rosenkranz and Guildenstern. We have not succeeded in finding the origin of the interlude which Hamlet causes to be represented in the second scene of the third act, before his uncle. That there is such a source 2 may be suspected from Hamlet's own words:-" The piece is the representation of a murder which happened in Vienna: Gonzago is the name of the Duke, his consort Battista; the history is extant, and is written in choice Italian." This, to be sure, may be merely a pretence, which Shakespeare makes Hamlet use, to conceal the allusion to his uncle; but the mode of Gonzago's death, by poison dropped into his ear during sleep, does not occur in Saxo, and our great dramatist may certainly have taken this circumstance from an Italian story now lost to us. Shakespeare knew that Battista is a man's name, as is proved by the list of the Dramatis Per 1 I fear that Capell's words have been misinterpreted; for, with a trifling exception, the tale of Saxo-Grammaticus furnishes the same particulars as the novel of Belleforest.-ED. 2 In a play called "A Warning for fair Women," supposed, by Mr. Collier, to have been written before 1590, it is stated that a woman who had murdered her husband witnessed a tragedy acted at Lynn, in Norfolk, which expressed a similar crime so perfectly, she was consciencestricken, and confessed the transaction she had been guilty of. Heywood, in his "Apology for Actors," 1612, relates the affair more circumstantially. Perhaps some of our Norfolk antiquaries will be able to tell us whether it has any foundation in truth.-ED. sone of the "Taming of the Shrew;" but that it may be a woman's name, also, seems not to have been noticed by those English critics, who thence deduce Shakespeare's ignorance of the Italian language. The Hamlet of Shakespeare has been compared with the Orestes of Eschylus and Sophocles, in order to develop the difference between the modern and ancient world. The resemblance rests in the similar external action; as in the Greek play, the mother is married to the murderer of the father, whom the son avenges upon both. In Hamlet, as in Orestes, is found the incident of madness, with the difference that Orestes is tormented by the furies for a deed pitilessly done from the impulse of feeling; whilst Hamlet, who can never actually approach the deed, owing to the sense of justice which keeps him weighing its propriety, is driven to madness by his irresolution. Hamlet is the reverse of Orestes; consideration comes to him before the deed, to Orestes after the furies follow him for having acted too tardily; Orestes, for having acted too hastily. In Hamlet, feeling punishes consideration, because it had delayed the execution which feeling demanded; in Orestes, consideration punishes feeling, because feeling had hastened the deed which he disapproved. It is remarkable that in some representations of the story of Orestes and Clytemnestra, we meet with such a net as Hamlet makes use of to destroy the partisans of his uncle. Clytemnestra's words, in Eschylus “I did it, and will not deny my deed, So that no flight and no defence remained: First round his limbs I threw an endless coil, Garment of misery, like a fisher's net; Twice then I struck him; twice he groan'd and fell, His limbs all palsied; as he lay, I struck The third and fatal blow" Do not correspond with those of Homer's Agamemnon, Odyssey, xi., v. 417-420— "But most of all thy heart would there have grieved, We lay, and all the pavement swam in blood." If both relations are taken together, Clytemnestra revenged the sacrifice of Iphigenia by the same stratagem as Hamlet employed in avenging the death of his father. The fishingnet appears here specially as a symbol of deceit. The Amleth of Saxo-Grammaticus merely pretends mad-ness,' to gain time for carrying out his finely-woven stratagem; but of his eventual success he is certain. The Hamletof Shakespeare suffers from the madness which he counterfeits, but he has no plan, and therefore no hope of success; and this sense of inactivity, in the face of every challenge to action, drives him to actual insanity. Here, also, Shakespeare has deserted the fiction, and invented something new, the idea of the play being quite different from that of the popular story. The results, also, are different; for Amleth perfects his stratagem, and retires triumphantly from the contest; but Hamlet falls a victim to his inactivity at the moment when a higher power is acting through him. The germ of this alteration lays only so far in the story, that Amleth had sufficient coolness to defer his revenge; and it is Hamlet's want of passion which gives his reflection too great preponderance over the impulses of nature. Belleforest has already remarked the resemblance between Amleth and Brutus; and he mentions also a parallel2 between Amleth and David, because the latter also counterfeited madness. This latter instance is a mere accidental coincidence 1 "Falsitatis enim (Hamlethus) alienus haberi cupidus, ita astutiam veriloquio permiscebat, ut nec dictis veracitas deesset, nec acuminis modus verorum judicio proderetur." M. Simrock appears to underrate the method of Hamlet's madness.-ED. 2 He scarcely goes so far as to institute any parallelism between the characters. David is merely cursorily introduced, as a sort of illustrative remark on the counterfeited madness of Amleth.-ED. in a single circumstance, which does not warrant us in assuming an internal or external connexion. As little does Tristan belong to this part of our subject, though he profited by his assumed madness to take vengeance on his enemies. On the contrary, Amleth and Brutus are very nearly connected. We shall best give the proof for this in the words of Niebuhr : "The King sent two of his sons, Titus and Aruns, to Delphi, to consult the oracle; sending with them, as a companion and subject of derision, L. Junius, who, for his assumed stupidity, was called Brutus. This was a son of a sister of the King, a child when he caused his elder brother, with many others, to be put to death on a false accusation, that he might possess himself of his riches. As Junius grew up, he saved his life by the continuous stratagem of representing himself as idiotic; and prepared for his revenge by the unshaken patience with which he permitted himself to be mocked as a fool. Thus he dedicated to the god what seemed to be the offering of a fool, a staff of cornel wood; but which, as an image of his secret, was filled with gold. The princes questioned the Pythian God for themselves also. He of you will rule at Rome,' answered the Pythoness, 'who first kisses his mother.' The sons of Tarquin decided this between them by lot; Brutus ran like an idiot down the mountain, so that he fell down and pressed with his lips the earth, in the middle point of which lay the temple of Apollo, as its original sanctuary." According to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Tarquinius had also put to death the father of Brutus and his eldest son, Brutus's brother, because this youth, who showed a great mind, would not have left his father's death unavenged. Whichever account we follow, vengeance for blood determined Brutus, like Amleth, to pretend insanity; both have suffered the same wrong, have the same purpose, and make use of the same means. That Amleth has claims upon the throne, which are wanting in Brutus, is unimportant to the argument; for Amleth is impelled far more by the desire and duty of revenge than by the love of rule. In addition to |