NATURALNESS OF SHAKSPEARE'S DIALOGUE.

57

And the device of the play shows at once his ready wit and versatile talents, and his conscientiousness in resolving to test the truth of the Ghost's story before he acts upon it:-though it must not be overlooked that Hamlet willingly makes these conscientious scruples an excuse for delaying to act.

ACT III, SCENE 1.-The scene opens with a dialogue. which is as perfect in its kind, as it is unpretending. Here, as everywhere in Shakspeare's dialogue, we may notice the easy natural way in which each person's words suit exactly his or her character, and yet come so simply and naturally that we do not stop to think about their appropriateness, any more than we should do on a like occasion in real life-the well-bred manners of the courtiers disguising their shallowness; the womanly and motherly feeling of the Queen, and her matronly freedom, contrasted with the maidenly modesty and submissiveness of Ophelia; the formal politeness, and formal moralizing of Polonius; the quiet enquiries and directions of the King about Hamlet, concealing the deep anxiety of past and purposed guilt; and then the conscience-stricken admission of that guilt, which shows him to be not quite reprobate, a wicked man, not a devil :—all are in exact keeping with what we know before of the persons; and at the same time our acquaintance with them is increased, our knowledge of them goes forward, and not merely in a circle, while the action of the piece proceeds.

Enter HAMLET.

Ham. To be, or not to be, that is the question :
Whether 't is nobler in the mind, to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing, end them?-To die,-to sleep,-
No more; and, by a sleep, to say we end
The heart-ach, and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to,-'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die,-to sleep ;-

To sleep! perchance to dream;-aye, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect,
That makes calamity of so long life:

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of dispriz'd love, the law's delay,

The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would these fardels bear,
To groan* and sweat under a weary life;
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns,† puzzles the will;

And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought;
And enterprizes of great pith and moment,
With this regard, their currents turn away,
And lose the name of action.

"This speech is of absolutely universal interest, and yet to which of all Shakspeare's characters could it have been appropriately given, but to Hamlet? For Jaques it would have been too deep, and for Iago too habitual a com

The original is grunt: "this is undoubtedly the true reading," says Dr. Johnson, "but can scarcely be borne by modern ears." And Steevens adds, "the change made by the editors [to groan] is supported by the following line in Julius Caesar, ACT IV, SCENE 1,

To groan and sweat under the business." And I incline to think that the emendation may be classed with the universal modernizing of the spelling, (for is it in truth much more?) and properly adopted. Is not the over-delicacy to be found in retaining the word because Shakspeare wrote it, though it is now so exclusively applied to pigs, that the man least in the bad habit of allowing foolish associations with words to intrude into his serious thoughts, may feel the retention of this word mar his enjoyment of the passage in which it stands? At least, if it should be retained in the text of Shakspeare's Works, it is not fit for the stage, for reading, or for quotation on an occasion like this.

+ A confirmation of my view of the Ghost.

Y

?

THE DREAD OF RESPONSIBILITY.

59

munion with the heart; which in every man belongs, or ought to belong, to all mankind." Hamlet had decided against suicide because it was against the laws of God: he here investigates it as a question of moral philosophy, for which his growing habit of speculativeness makes him more disposed and better qualified than before. And he finds that it is the fear of unknown consequences in the state of existence which will come after death, that prevents men from resorting to this remedy against the great evils of life, such as those he enumerates, and which we may see are generalized from his own circumstances:generalized from the wrongs, the hatred, and the contumely (which, however disguised, cannot escape Hamlet's keen eye) of his uncle: from the impossibility of getting redress from the law against so powerful an oppressor: from the belief that Ophelia undervalues his love, a natural inference with his desponding disposition, from her having denied him access to her and refused to take his letters, though we know how to construe her conduct otherwise: from the insolence, covert it may be, yet not the less felt, and even exaggerated, by one of Hamlet's proud and sensitive disposition, which already marked the demeanour of the courtiers, now that his uncle had not only pushed him aside from the throne, but was beginning to show his dislike to him, and which is presently exhibited openly enough by Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

This fear of invisible, unknown, and-not material but— moral and spiritual consequences, is what men commonly call the dread of responsibility. How often do we hear men refuse to be parties to some one of the weightier affairs of human life,-to the contracting of a marriage, the guardianship of a child, the choice of a profession, or any other of those critical events which colour our whole after-existence-alleging that they will not take on themselves the responsibility. Responsibility to whom or to what? If the question be thoroughly sifted, we

shall find no practical answer but-"to God, and to God's law" but the man who does plainly ask the question of his own heart, and deliberately give it this answer, does necessarily, in so doing, discover that the responsibility of not acting may be just as great as that of acting, and that he is bound to ask, and to find out too, which of the two is his duty in the particular case, and to do that. But the greater number of men in whom this dread of responsibility is awakened, do not thus push the difficulty into clear light. They leave it in its obscurity and indefiniteness, and vagueness: they feel that there somehow is such a thing as responsibility, but though they cannot get rid of the unpleasant fact, they shrink from investigating its nature, and try and avoid whatever may remind them of its existence. 'Thus,' says Hamlet, conscience,' which is this sense of moral responsibility, does make cowards of us all.' There are men whom conscience makes brave, because they go to their daily duty as they do to their daily work, as a thing simply to be done, and not reasoned about:-like the regiment which, in some critical moment at Waterloo, the Duke of Wellington was encouraging to stand firm, when they replied, "Never fear, sir, we know our duty." And there are men whom conscience makes brave, because they have passed beyond the region of reasonings and doubtings, and found a firm footing in religious faith. But in the intermediate state of mind in which Hamlet is, and which he describes so powerfully, it is universally true that conscience makes men cowards. And then Hamlet finds, in this solution of the question of suicide, the key to the tendency to dilatoriness and hesitation, when momentous action is demanded, in every other case. It is because the more fully the circumstances are ascertained, and the more carefully they are weighed, the more difficult does it become to strike the balance aright, and to decide what ought to be done: so much may be said on both sides, so

FINAL STAGE OF HAMLET'S MEDITATIVENESS.

61

many reasons lead us to think each course the right, and consequently each the wrong one, that we are paralysed. It is impossible to act at all under such a weight of responsibility :

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought;
And enterprizes of great pith and moment,
With this regard, their currents turn away,
And lose the name of action.

In this speech we have the climax of Hamlet's meditative phase of character: he has now carried it as high as it can go,and in this its full and final development its nature has become clear, not only to us but to himself. He has at last got the clue to his own state of mind, or rather to his whole being, and in due time we shall see how he follows it out. Let us now turn to Ophelia, and observe how gracefully and naturally the current of Hamlet's thoughts and words flows into the new direction, which her sudden appearance before him gives to them. Though he says but few words, they seem impressed with that momentum of his previous mental activity, which Coleridge has so ably criticised on the occasion of his first address to the Ghost. Observe the gentlemanlyI might say, knightly-courtesy, of his 'I humbly thank you;' and the melancholy well, well, well,' which completes his reply to the lady's enquiry after his health, and which, by the repetition and by the pauses necessary to make the three syllables fill the place of five, is shown to speak anything but his real feeling. His first address, like his feelings, had been most gentle and loving; but when Ophelia proceeds to offer to re-deliver his remembrances, he answers, in that wayward, irritable tone, which we have noticed before

No, no. I never gave you aught. And then the dialogue goes on: