Everything points towards this truth. In the first place, no genius can so disassociate his works from himself in the subjective design, as not to betray himself, if the unity of the idea, hidden under the objective garb, is once seized. That Shakespeare's works are not exhaustive on their mere exoteric side, who can question? Does not a profound idea peep all through Hamlet? And can we not say the same for almost every play?

The theory we are about to enunciate in rationalizing Hamlet is as follows.

Shakespeare has employed art (after the manner of all genius) as the vehicle for his ideas and conceptions upon the greatest and profoundest of subjects-History. He has idealized in Prince Hamlet the spirit of truth-seeking, which realizes itself historically as progress. In that profound and philosophical character of the hero of the tragedy we read a typical idealization of humanity, impelled by that divine sense of justice, truth, and liberty, which, with its still voice, unrolls itself as that divine evolution called progress. The whole tragedy of Hamlet is therefore a Dramatic Philosophy of History. Hamlet himself is progress. Truth is not a concrete entity, but solely a relation ; and its only expositor is history. Therefore it is alone in the latter that we must seek for the history of Prince Hamlet. There we find, as in the play, that the battle is not to the swift, nor to the strong, but to time alone. Hamlet's history is therefore the history of man during his apprenticeship of conflict. With the end of that conflict Hamlet's mission is accomplished, since he represents the spirit warring for truth alone.

On the other hand, the King represents Hamlet's antithesis. As error, opposition to truth, injustice, and stagnancy, Shakespeare has idealized in Claudius a gigantic type of evil and historical oppression. To kill Claudius and

revenge his father is the sole aim of Hamlet. This, in our eyes, is symbolically to redress wrong, establish truth, and secure liberty. The whole action of the tragedy revolves upon the conflict of the King and Hamlet. That struggle is accordingly the antinomy of past and present, or truth and error. It is impossible to treat these abstractions by themselves. Therefore, under that law which overrules social development, and which Shakespeare evidently solved and divined three centuries ago, we must seek for the interpretation of Hamlet.

Ever mindful of the double unity of art and idea, which must be wedded to each other in exquisite harmony, Shakespeare has embodied in the central figures the qualities or sum totals of which their respective followers and supporters are the very constituents. Thus the King is a fiction, necessary for dramatic unity alone, and who is represented by his Lord Chamberlain and courtiers. Hamlet again symbolizes the action and progress of truth in history. He is also the sum total of his partisans.1 Thus the irresolution and apparent inaction of Hamlet become constant action and continual destruction of the King, as each of his organs is successively killed by Hamlet. We at once recognize the weakness of Hamlet, to be remedied by time; and we notice that the death of the King can only be accomplished with the whole tragedy, since the latter is the history of the continual death of the King alone. It is here we notice the marvellous skill of Shakespeare. By embodying the King in several characters, he has succeeded in representing the gradual process and continuity of historical progress. Critics are impatient because Hamlet fails to kill the King at once. We would ask them, why truth does not realize itself at once?

1 Shakespeare has evidently endeavoured to embody in characters the conflicting forces of history, which emerge in that resultant called Progress. Hamlet is this resultant.

Progress and truth are synonymous, and the former, as Mr. Herbert Spencer has assured us, is a very gradual movement. Hamlet, we again assert, is killing the King all through the play. Polonius, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, Laertes, are successively destroyed; and, with his last support, the King has vanished. Thus, as Hamlet grows in strength and power, the King is proportionally weakened.

The action of the tragedy becomes first the detection of error by the birth of Hamlet.1 Secondly, the action of Hamlet and its results. The latter is another expression for the growth of Hamlet; which Goethe has so wonderfully realized in those memorable and oft-quoted but misunderstood words: "Here is an oak planted in a vase fitted for the most delicate flowers, the roots strike out, the vessel flies to pieces."

The death of Polo

In short, the growth of Hamlet is the growth of man, of progress-the expansion of thought. Hamlet is the oak, the King and his supporters the vase. nius is the result of the growth of Hamlet, and thus the vase is broken. Let us be clearly understood. The King is slowly dying all through the play, because Hamlet is acting all through the tragedy also. Hamlet's monologues are the expressions of fresh impetus, of action and reaction gained from the growth of liberty, knowledge, and progress in general. The whole play is a picture of some of the past and a pure prophecy of much of the future. Let us now realize the character of the King through the detail of his supporters.

In Polonius Shakespeare has philosophically summed up certainty and absolutism; he is therefore the very backbone of the King. With his death the climax of the tragedy is reached. From that moment things take a new direction. Polonius is the authority which antiquity and tradition,

1 This is the revival of learning.

when united with autocratic Ophelia (or the Church), form, and admit of no question nor misgivings. Polonius represents broadly the past. Hamlet pictures in like manner the present and future. Polonius is approached through Ophelia. Hamlet first criticizes the latter. By doing this he is criticizing and inspecting Polonius. Father and daughter are one-Church and State before the Reformation. With the death of Polonius certainty is dead. Ophelia is the daughter of tradition and of certainty. As the latter becomes shaken, so she becomes incoherent, dissents, drowns herself, and is buried. Laertes is a continuation of Polonius in a modified form. Since error cannot be questioned until certainty be shaken, the growth of Hamlet is pictured in his satire of Ophelia and Polonius. Polonius is everything which resisted the Protestant Reformation. His death historically is the accomplishment of that Reformation. From that moment the past has been shaken by the present. Rationalism has more and more encroached its domains upon the claims of antiquity and belief in tradition. Two forces were face to face at the Reformation. On the one hand reason, asserting itself through the growth of learning, advanced its claims in the teeth of ignorance and the voice of antiquity. On the other, custom resisted this new and unprecedented assertion of the fallibility of the past.

We now turn to two more of the King's supporters. They are the two courtiers Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Here Shakespeare's genius has italicized itself. In these two we recognize the great passive opponents of progress and truth. They are indifference, opposition of the selfinterested in power, and that optimism which, benefitting by error, maintains things to be at their very best. They evade truth, or Hamlet, by means of sophistry and casuistry. As long as they come between the King and Hamlet, the latter can effect nothing permanent. Nothing in our whole

exposition is less ambiguous and less equivocal than Shakespeare's meaning here. He has distinctly realized the opposition which compromise and the languid indifference of the children of fortune would put in the teeth of progress and truth, or Hamlet. In continually dogging Hamlet, we find how Shakespeare has made them come between the King and our hero as a sort of shield. Hamlet effects nothing whilst with these two sycophants; and when he escapes them for the first time, we have the term naked in connexion with him. In these two characters Shakespeare has epitomized hypocrisy and the abuse of reason, by that immense privileged body who have thriven upon abuses in history, if they do not do so to-day. If we only turn to the opposers of free trade and of reform in this country, we realize, in the long struggle for justice and truth, the recent opposition of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Every true student of history will recognize their significance as hardly second to that of Polonius.

The next constituent of the King is Laertes. Here, again, Shakespeare's genius reveals itself. Having artistically to kill Polonius, Shakespeare felt he must yet continue him symbolically, as his power gradually and slowly decays. His son not inaptly takes his place as opponent to Hamlet. But he represents party, not a sole autocratic and tyrannical power. Laertes defends Ophelia as supporter of Church and State. The travels of Laertes, like the growth of Fortinbras, are understood by us as silent. Laertes represents not only his father, as the conservative and stable principle, but the growth of that principle by education into a party. Similarly Hamlet, by the aid of Horatio, represents the opposite, and progressive or liberal party. Thus the whole play is the conflict of the two forces, statical and dynamical, whose resultant is progress; and who are respectively individualism and authority.

As caution, Rosencrantz, by means of Guildenstern,