CHAPTER VIII

HAMLET

I

A factitious mystery-A masterpiece, not a problem-The evidence of its perennial popularity-Every "star" his own Hamlet-Highest art never unintelligible-Some imperfect diagnoses of Hamlet-A masterly opening-Superbness of diction-A flaw of construction.

(1)

So much has been written upon Hamlet, that one can hardly descry the play through the rolling cloud of witness. The critical guns detonate with such uproar, and, exploding, diffuse such quantities of gas, as to impose on us that moral stupor which I understand to be one of the calculated effects of heavy artillery in warfare. The poor infantryman-if I may press the similitude discerns not, in the din, that half of these missiles are flying in one direction, half in another, still less how large a proportion of both hit no mark at all. He can scarcely command nerve for a steady look at the thing itself. This loud authority confuses us all. It starts us thinking of Hamlet not as an acted play but as a mystery, a psychological study, an effort of genius so grandiose, vast, vague, amorphous, nebulous, that other men of admitted genius-even such men as

Coleridge and Goethe-tracking it, have lost their way in the profound obscure.

(2)

Now, with all the courage of humility, I say that this is, nine-tenths of it, rubbish.

I insist that we take Shakespeare first and before any of these imposing fellows. At all events he wrote the play, and they did not.

Moreover, he wrote it as a play-to be acted on a stage, before an audience.

Moreover, he wrote it, not for an audience of Goethes and Coleridges, but for an audience of ordinary men and women.

And yet further, if pressed, I am ready to maintain that any work of art which is shapeless, nebulous; any work of art which from its artistic purpose naturally falls to be the prey of pedants and philosophers, to that extent lies suspect as a piece of art. And I hope to demonstrate that Hamlet is no such thing, but a masterpiece.

All this may seem brazenly bold: but having gone so far I will go yet one more step further and say that while, to understand Hamlet, the best way is to see it acted on a stage, a second-best way is to read it by ourselves, surrendering ourselves to it as a new thing, as childishly as anyone pleases. As Emerson wrote, "All that Shakespeare says of the king, yonder slip of a boy that reads in a corner feels to be true of himself." In this chapter I shall ask the reader to take Hamlet by itself, as a new thing. Let us renew our

courage from a sentence of Bacon's: "Regnum Scientiæ ut regnum Coeli non nisi sub persona infantis intratur-Into the Kingdom of Knowledge, as into the Kingdom of Heaven, whoso would enter must become as a little child."

(3)

The earliest printed copy of Hamlet, known to us, was discovered in 1823-a little, horribly cropped quarto bearing date 1603, and entitled :

The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet | Prince of Denmark | By William Shake-speare. As it hath beene diverse times acted by his Highnesse servants in the Cittie of London: as also in the two Universities of Cambridge and Oxford, and elsewhere | At London printed for N.L., and John Trundell | 1603.

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It was a drama, then; written by a real playwright, whose name was Shakespeare: and not by Hegel nor by Werder. "As it hathe beene diverse times acted by his Highnesse servants in the Cittie of London: as also in the two Universities of Cambridge and Oxford.. It would seem from that to have been a popular play. Can we suppose that it would have been a popular play had it been a mystery, a problem, or anything like the psychological enigma that Coleridge and Goethe and their followers have chosen to make of it? Let us ask ourselves as men-Does that sort of thing happen?

But I will tell what does happen. To this day a travelling company of actors, thrown on their beamends for lack of money, having acted this or that to empty houses, always as a last resort advertise Hamlet. It can be counted upon, above any other play, to fill the treasury. Again, when an actor takes a benefit, what

is the piece most commonly chosen ?-Hamlet. Why? "Because," it may be answered, "Hamlet himself is notoriously a 'star' part, with plenty of soliloquies, with plenty of what I believe is called 'fat' in the Profession; and moreover because the part has become consecrated somehow, invested by tradition with a certain aura of greatness and crowned as with a halo." I applaud the answer: it is an excellent one so far as it goes. But why does the gentleman who enacts the First Gravedigger also choose Hamlet for his "benefit night"? Now that question happens to be more searching than for a moment it may seem. I was once assisting at a dress rehearsal of Hamlet, when the First Gravedigger came off the stage in a passion. In the green-room it exploded. "Why," he wished to know, should I be treated like a dog by that conceited fool?"'—meaning our Hamlet, of course. "His temper gets viler at every rehearsal. Surely, after airing his vanity through four Acts, he might be quiet while I have my little say!" " Bless you, sir," answered an old dresser, "it's always like that. In these forty years, I've helped dress (I dare say) all that number of Hamlets: and Hamlet and the First

Gravedigger always fall out. It's a regular thing.

I've known 'em come to blows." The old man allowed that he could not account for it at all. Hamlet, he said, was a great play-a wonderful play-and there it just was. "Hamlet and First Gravedigger when you've said that, you've said oil and vinegar." Well, while engaged in denying that Hamlet is a mystery in the sense in which Coleridge, Goethe, and the rest would

make it a mystery, I fairly admit there are mysteries about it. But why the First Gravedigger should choose for his benefit night the great and wonderful drama which gives his hated rival such opportunity for display is neither beyond conjecture nor even a puzzling question. It fills the cash-box.

Let me illustrate my argument from another side, using another tradition of the theatre. We all know that to play Hamlet, and play him successfully, is the crown of every young actor's ambition. But here comes in another mystery-which yet is no mystery at all, unless the critics have fogged us. When he comes to it, he always plays it successfully. An actor, about to play Hamlet for the first time, once assured me (and from boyhood he had known the theatre, as "from the inside ")-"If I make a mess of this, I shall be either a complete fool or too good to live; and I am neither." Well, he did not make a mess of it, and so I escaped choosing between those dismal alternatives. But when reading the play I have often pondered his words, and it is not in any love of paradox that I suggest this question.

we say,

It is the fashion, and was the fashion before we were born, so that we may call it the custom-it is the custom to talk of So-and-so's Hamlet of Garrick's Hamlet, Kemble's Hamlet, Kean's Hamlet; Macready's, Salvini's, Phelps', Irving's Hamlets; Sir Herbert Tree's Hamlet, Mr. Forbes Robertson's Hamlet. This custom of speech, if it mean anything, would seem to imply that each of these gifted interpreters has given the world a different resolution of that mystery;