Thus was I sleeping by a brother's hand Of Crowne, of Queene, of life, of dignitie At once deprived,' etc."

But I cannot really see anything in the text of the German piece to justify these statements of Mr. Cohn. That the author, whoever he was, had seen or read Shakespeare's Hamlet, as we have it in the Folio or the Quarto of 1604, is most probable, if not certain; also that he must have had access to some copy of the Quarto of 1603, which edition, it will be remembered, was not then known to any of the English commentators of the 18th century. This, in itself, is a very interesting fact, for we may venture to infer from this that this Quarto of 1603, or something like it, had been represented on the stage in Germany, whether in English or in a German translation we have no evidence to show. On the other hand, that there are passages in the German play, which, to quote Mr. Cohn, “prove incontrovertibly that precisely this quarto must have been the source employed by the translator," I cannot see. If we found in the German version that the peculiar sequence of the scenes, for instance, in the Quarto of 1603, was followed rather than that of the Folio or the Quarto of 1604; or if there were any parallels to the one scene peculiar to the Quarto of 1603, the scene between Horatio and the Queen (see Shakspere Quarto Facsimile of Hamlet, scene xiv. p. 53), Mr. Cohn's statement, quoted above, might be justifiable; but we find no such thing. On the other hand there seems to me no internal evidence that the author of the German piece, "Fratricide Punished," &c., need have used the Quarto of 1603 at all. He could have obtained the wretchedly bald skeleton of Hamlet, which he has dressed up in dull and shabby prose, from the Folio, or from the Quarto of 1604. Bald, and corrupt in many passages the Quarto of 1603 undoubtedly is; but it does contain the germs of three of the finest soliloquies, and many passages of beautiful poetry, all of which the German adapter succeeded in eliminating; so that it really could be only a trifle to him to have got rid of the additional poetry, and of the finer passages first given in the Quarto of 1604.

The only absolute point of resemblance between the German play and the Quarto of 1603 is that Polonius in the former is called Corambus, and in the latter Corambis; but there is no resemblance in the names of the other characters; for instance Laertes, who is called in Q. 1 Leartes, in the German play is Leonhardus; Claudius is called Erico, apparently a modified form of Eric; the Queen is called Sigrie; while Hamlet, Horatio, and Ophelia (not Ofelia as in the Quarto of 1603), and Francisco are found both in the German play and in the Quarto of 1604. In the first scene of the German play the Two Sentinels, as in the Quarto of 1603, are simply First and Second Sentinel; but the name Barnardo, which occurs in the Quarto of 1603, does not occur in the German play. Of new characters introduced into the latter we have Phantasmo the Clown, who takes the place of Osric in the last act, and who is a most abominable excrescence in the other scenes, principally the mad scenes of Ophelia, in which he appears. There is also Jens a Peasant, an unimportant character, who appears only in a short scene in the third act. The Principal of the Comedians is called Carl. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern do not appear; but "Two Ruffians" are introduced in their place, who accompany Hamlet on his voyage to England by the King's orders; they attempt, in a ridiculous scene in the fourth act, to shoot Hamlet. From a careful examination of the German text I can only discover one passage which could hardly have been written, unless the author had seen either the Quarto of 1604 or the Folio, and that is in act i. scene 7 of the German piece, which commences with the speech corresponding to that of the King in Shakespeare's play:

Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother's death. -Act i. sc. 2. In the German version the beginning of that speech is thus rendered: "Obschon unsers Herrn Bruders Tod noch in frischem Gedächtniss bey jedermann ist, und uns gebietet, alle Solennitäten einzustellen, werden wir doch anjetzo genöthiget, unsere schwarze Trauerkleider in Carmosin, Purpur und Scharlach zu verändern." The English translation given

in Cohn's book is slightly misleading; it runs thus: "Though yet of our dear brother's death the memory is green to all and it befitteth us to suspend all joyous demonstrations, yet from this time 't is meet we change our suits of solemn black to crimson, purple, and scarlet" (part ii. p. 256). Literally it should be translated thus: "Although our brother's death still is in fresh remembrance with every one, and it befits us to defer all [state] solemnities, yet are we from this time compelled to change our black mourning clothes into crimson, purple, and scarlet." In many places the translator has, very naturally, paraphrased the German text in the language of Shakespeare, even where the latter does not literally render the words of the former.

As to any actual evidence of the representation of Shakespeare's Hamlet, or of any other play on the same subject as early as 1603 or 1604, we can find none in Mr. Cohn's work. In the collection of so-called English Comedies and Tragedies, published in 16201 (see Cohn, part i. pp. cvii-cxi), Hamlet does not occur. The first mention of its representation appears to be in a very interesting catalogue of plays, written in an almanac by an officer of the Dresden Court in 1626, in which we find that on the 24th June of that year, Tragadia von Hamlet einen printzen in Dennemarck (Tragedy of Hamlet, a Prince of Denmark) was represented. The other Shakespearean plays contained in the list are Julius Cæsar, Lear, and Romeo and Juliet, which alone appears to have been acted more than once (see Cohn, part i. pp. cxv, cxvi). Marlowe's tragedy of "Barrabas the Jew of Malta" was acted twice, and so was a comedy called "Josepho the Jew of Venice," which may have been partly taken from Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, and partly from Marlowe's play. There is nothing to show that the Hamlet in this list was not Shakespeare's tragedy as we have it in the Folio.

But now we come to a second very interesting question, namely, was this wretched version of Hamlet, the modernized text of which is given in Cohn, really taken from an old

1 A second edition with exactly the same contents was published in 1624, ut supra, p. cix.

VOL. VIII.

German play, founded, not on Shakespeare's Hamlet, but on the old play of that name mentioned in Henslowe's Diary under the year 1594? The bald way in which the story is treated, the introduction of incongruous comic characters and scenes, and, perhaps, the fact that the German play is preceded by a prologue, which is written in a serious vein and in somewhat poetical language, all lead us to infer that such may have been the case; but, of course, till we have discovered, if we ever do, the text of the old play of Hamlet, this question must remain undecided. But, at least, we may say this, that it is much more likely that the German play had for its original an old-fashioned tragedy, written before Shakespeare's time, than that the author took the trouble to concoct such a wretched unpoetical and dull piece of work from any one of the versions of Shakespeare's Hamlet which have come down to us.

CRITICAL REMARKS.

The extraordinary popularity of this tragedy, not only on the stage and in the study of the scholar and poet, but amongst the people who read anything at all, is probably not exceeded, even if it be equalled, by any other literary work in our language, and certainly not by any dramatic work ever written. Hamlet has enriched our language even more than any other work of Shakespeare's with popular and familiar expressions, which indeed have become household words. Wherever the English language is spoken men and women will be found, not always consciously, perhaps, clothing their ideas-ideas common to all humanity--in the language of Hamlet. The enormous amount of intellectual activity, which this play of Shakespeare has produced, may be seen in the formidable list of works written on the subject, given in Furness's New Variorum edition of Hamlet, vol. ii.; nor is the bulk of this literature mere polemical writing. Those who have made a study of the whole play, or of the single character of Hamlet, have, in the course of that study, generally been brought to think about subjects on which they might otherwise have bestowed very little consideration. As for its popularity as an acting play,

I have spoken of that already. When we come to ask ourselves how is it that this tragedy and its strange philosophic, weak, irresolute hero has taken such a hold on the minds and hearts of the people, it is not very easy at first sight to give an answer. Many more sympathetic stories have been dramatized; for, after all, the main motive of Hamlet, filial love, is not so popular as sexual love. Again, the story has many features in it which can appeal but little to general sympathy. Incestuous marriages, performed in such indecent haste as that of Gertrude and Claudius, are not common; while in the fitful energy with which he carries out his task of vengeance, Hamlet does things which cannot but alienate our sympathies.

Indeed some critics have denounced Hamlet as an immoral and almost contemptible character. They have had no difficulty in pointing out instances of his deplorable weakness, and of his cowardly inaction at those decisive moments in his life which demand firm decision and prompt action. But, perhaps, it is the very weakness of Hamlet which inspires our sympathy; he is no hero cast in a semidivine mould. His imperfections, his errors, no less than his affections and his passions, are intensely human. They appeal to the great heart of mankind; his intellectual superiority to those around him, which he feels himself no less than we do, is never allowed to dominate his character so as to paralyse his emotions, or to fetter his impulses. His philosophy is not of that kind which sets him up on an eminence, whence he looks down with calm and rational contempt on the weaknesses of his fellow-creatures. His scepticism is of the most superficial nature. It is a mere film, so to speak, over his heart, which throbs with the tenderest affection and the warmest passion.

As to Hamlet's love for his father, which is evidently the strongest affection in his nature, we feel that it was something far beyond the habitual respect or submission which so often does duty for filial devotion. This love is founded not on the false basis of family pride, nor on a mere blind admiration of his father's talents and virtues, but on a keen appreciation

of all his nobler qualities; qualities with which Hamlet sympathizes, not from the point of view of a mere outside admirer-if one may use the expression-who felt that they were quite beyond his own reach, but with the earnest veneration of one who kept them always before his eyes as an example to be imitated; who was sensible that these qualities were the real source of that feeling of genial companionship, which raises the love of a son for his father so far beyond the sterile region of duty.

The close sympathy that existed between the elder Hamlet and his son, which is so insisted on by the dramatist, directs our attention to what is the key-note to the whole play, which may in some respects be called the Tragedy of Uncongeniality. When Hamlet first appears upon the scene, one cannot fail to be struck by the painful moral isolation of his position. Not one single soul of all

those around him seems to share the least in the great sorrow which weighs him down. Not two months have elapsed since the sudden death of his father; of the king whom all his subjects appeared to love and honour; of the generous open-hearted brother, the chivalrous, tender, devoted husband; yet on no face, save on that of his son, is there any shade of sadness. Hamlet looks to the throne, and he sees there his uncle with a smile of smug selfsatisfaction on his sensual face. He listens to him pouring forth sentence after sentence of plausible platitudes with an unctuous hypocrisy, which must have been unspeakably nauseous to the son of that murdered brother whose throne he had, morally if not legally, usurped. And by that uncle's side what does he see? His mother; who was scarcely a widow before she was again a bride; a mother from whose loving sympathy he had looked to find his greatest consolation in his sorrow, on whose sobbing breast he had thought to pour forth all the anguish of his soul. But-horrible disillusion-he had found that breast disturbed by nothing but the throbs of an incestuous passion; and those tears, the worthless tribute of conventional hypocrisy, to the memory of her dead husband, dried by her lover's kisses. If those who were bound by the nearest

and dearest ties to his lost father, were so shamelessly forgetful of his death, what could he expect of the courtiers around him? They might well be forgiven if, in their anxiety to curry favour with the new king, they forgot even that decent affectation of regret for the loss of their late master, however kind and gracious he had been, which they may have thought themselves bound to cast off with the court mourning. So the young prince sits there, the one dark spot on the gay scene; his head bowed down with grief, his heart quivering, his brain reeling from the shock he had received; while he listens to that mother whom he had seen hanging on her late husband's neck, as if she would grow there, exhorting him in placid tones to cast off his "inky cloak," and to look cheerful; an effort which could not but have been rendered much easier by the admirable exhortation from the crowned adulterer, who reminded him that everyone must die some time or other, and that the father, whose death Hamlet showed such bad taste in not forgetting, had at some distant period lost his father. One person there was who longed to throw her arms around his neck, and tell him how she shared his grief and his painful bewilderment at the jarring merriment around him. But she dared not show the secret of her heart; for she was bound, hand and foot, by the trammels of conventionality, and forced to keep silence by the filial awe she felt for her worldly time-serving father, supported as he was by her still more worldly and time-serving brother.

It is important to notice the condition of Hamlet's mind before Horatio describes to him the appearance of his father's ghost. Half stupefied by the shock which his mother's marriage has given him, he had begun, unconsciously, to piece together in his mind the suspicious circumstances of his father's death; and the accusation which he had but half framed against his uncle is suddenly and supernaturally confirmed by the revelation of the ghost. All the tenderest feelings of his nature are wrung by the pathetic story of his father's end which is now revealed to him. He has to bear, in addition, the overwhelm

ing burden of that solemn duty of revenge enjoined on him by his supernatural visitant. Small wonder if, under this severe strain on his emotional and mental faculties, his reason for a short time totters on its throne; and when his friends rejoin him after the interview with the Ghost, his wild and agitated manner might well induce them to believe that the announcement of his intention to put on an "antic manner" was a conscious anticipation of the madness that he felt to be coming on him. Repeated study of Hamlet only confirms me in the opinion, which I ventured to express fourteen years ago,1 that Hamlet's intention of assuming insanity is not only inspired by the idea that he would thus be able to accomplish his task of vengeance more easily, but by the clear consciousness of the fact that, unless his overtaxed mind can have the relief of eccentricity, the assumption must become, sooner or later, a reality. I will again quote that sentence from Coleridge, which is worth all the remarks that German æstheticism or mysticism has perpetrated on this subject: "Hamlet plays that subtle trick of pretending to act only when he is very near really being what he acts." That Hamlet is not absolutely mad, even at this most critical moment of his life, is clear from the beautiful speech which concludes the first act.

In the interval supposed to elapse before the action of the play recommences Hamlet has taken one most important practical step towards the fulfilment of the solemn charge imposed on him by his father's spirit. The terrible disillusion, as regards his mother's real nature, which he has undergone, has swept away all that holy confidence, and nearly all that still holier love between them, which now would have been his greatest consolation. Instinctively Hamlet feels that he must deny himself also that other great consolation which seems within his reach, the sympathetic love of Ophelia. If the great task enjoined him-of his own unfitness for which by nature he is well aware-is ever to be accomplished, he must put aside all temp

1 See A Study of Hamlet (Longmans, 1875), p. 22.

tation to tread "the path of dalliance" by the side of her whom he loves. Shakespeare only allows us a glimpse—but what a vivid one it is of the fearful struggle that must have gone on in Hamlet's mind before he resolved to give up his love, in that beautiful description which Ophelia gives her father of Hamlet's strange visit to her. He could not, it seems, trust himself to speak a word, but his actions, as she describes them, tell us all that we need know. In the future which lies before him there is no room for love or marriage. Whether he succeeds or whether he fails in the duty supernaturally enjoined him, he will succeed or fail alone. Ophelia must have clearly understood that this strange silent interview was meant by Hamlet to be their last; and she may well be forgiven for lending herself-as she undoubtedly does in the first scene of the third act, however some commentators may try to deny the fact-to an innocent deception, which she believes may aid in at once restoring her lover to reason and to her. It is absolutely necessary, in order to understand that scene between Hamlet and Ophelia, to recognize this fact; that, suspicious as he then is of all around him, Hamlet is convinced, on evidence which would be sufficient even for a more dispassionate mind, that Ophelia has sought that interview, not of her own accord, but at the instigation of those whom Hamlet naturally looks upon as his worst enemies. Thus there comes to him the second great disillusion of his life, more terrible if possible than that which shattered the image of his mother cherished from childhood. For he now learns that she, whom he loved with a love which inspired that bitter cry by the side of her grave (see v. 1. 292–294), is leagued with his enemies, at least so far that she does not scruple to lend herself as an instrument of deception, and as the bait of a trap which they have laid for him. Henceforth there is one being, and one only, in all the world whom Hamlet feels that he can trust, namely, Horatio; and in him his trust remains unshaken to the end.

In the great soliloquy, which concludes the second act, Hamlet shows how clearly he is sensible of his own weakness. He distrusts

even his father's ghost, and, for a short time at least, entertains the idea that the spirit he has seen "may be the devil," who has imposed upon his weakness and his melancholy disposition. One expression in this soliloquy is very remarkable, and that is where Hamlet, comparing his inactivity with the emotion shown by the player in reciting the sufferings of Hecuba, does not say "I can do nothing," but "I can say nothing." Even now he shrinks from any action, till the Ghost's word has been confirmed by the device of the play. After the success of that experiment he declares that he has no longer any doubt; yet the very next moment he has an opportunity of killing the king when on his knees and unprepared for any attack. The reasons, which Hamlet assigns for not killing Claudius then, are couched in what one cannot but call repulsive language; but the fact is that they are not his real reasons at all. His nature shrinks from the wild justice of revenge; to him an assassination is always an assassination; and therefore he spares Claudius at that moment; though, scarce half an hour afterwards, he does not hesitate to stab him, as he believes, through the arras behind which he thinks that his uncle is concealed. He has worked himself up to such a state of mental exaltation that when he finds his mistake, and that it is Polonius and not Claudius whom he has killed, he does not at the moment feel any remorse; his energies are all concentrated on the first real action which he is about to take in obedience to the command of his father's spirit. This action, if it can be called so, is to be performed by words rather than by deeds. He has resolved to make a bold attempt to awaken his mother's conscience; and the reappearance of the Ghost, while he is engaged in this, serves to confirm him in the idea, of which he has shown some trace in the scene with Ophelia, that he is appointed by heaven as an instrument of vengeance. After the excitement of the scene with his mother, reaction sets in. He weeps over the body of Polonius; and submits without a struggle to the King's command which sends him away to England; though by doing so it would seem, at first sight, that he puts it for ever out of