The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark Part 19

_Polon._ Goe with me, I will goe seeke the King, [Sidenote: Come, goe]

This is the very extasie of Loue, Whose violent property foredoes[4] it selfe, And leads the will to desperate Vndertakings, As oft as any pa.s.sion vnder Heauen, [Sidenote: pa.s.sions]

That does afflict our Natures. I am sorrie, What haue you giuen him any hard words of late?

_Ophe_. No my good Lord: but as you did command, [Sidenote: 42, 82] I did repell his Letters, and deny'de His accesse to me.[5]

_Pol_. That hath made him mad.

I am sorrie that with better speed and Judgement [Sidenote: better heede]

[Sidenote: 83] I had not quoted[6] him. I feare he did but trifle, [Sidenote: coted[6] fear'd]

And meant to wracke thee: but beshrew my iealousie:

[Footnote 1: She would be glad her father should think so.]

[Footnote 2: The detailed description of Hamlet and his behaviour that follows, must be introduced in order that the side mirror of narrative may aid the front mirror of drama, and between them be given a true notion of his condition both mental and bodily. Although weeks have pa.s.sed since his interview with the Ghost, he is still haunted with the memory of it, still broods over its horrible revelation. That he had, probably soon, begun to feel far from certain of the truth of the apparition, could not make the thoughts and questions it had awaked, cease tormenting his whole being. The stifling smoke of his mother's conduct had in his mind burst into loathsome flame, and through her he has all but lost his faith in humanity. To know his uncle a villain, was to know his uncle a villain; to know his mother false, was to doubt women, doubt the whole world.

In the meantime Ophelia, in obedience to her father, and evidently without reason a.s.signed, has broken off communication with him: he reads her behaviour by the lurid light of his mother's. She too is false! she too is heartless! he can look to her for no help! She has turned against him to curry favour with his mother and his uncle!

Can she be such as his mother! Why should she not be? His mother had seemed as good! He would give his life to know her honest and pure.

Might he but believe her what he had believed her, he would yet have a hiding-place from the wind, a covert from the tempest! If he could but know the truth! Alone with her once more but for a moment, he would read her very soul by the might of his! He must see her! He would see her! In the agony of a doubt upon which seemed to hang the bliss or bale of his being, yet not altogether unintimidated by a sense of his intrusion, he walks into the house of Polonius, and into the chamber of Ophelia.

Ever since the night of the apparition, the court, from the behaviour a.s.sumed by Hamlet, has believed his mind affected; and when he enters her room, Ophelia, though such is the insight of love that she is able to read in the face of the son the father's purgatorial sufferings, the picture of one 'loosed out of h.e.l.l, to speak of horrors,' attributes all the strangeness of his appearance and demeanour, such as she describes them to her father, to that supposed fact. But there is, in truth, as little of affected as of actual madness in his behaviour in her presence. When he comes before her pale and trembling, speechless and with staring eyes, it is with no simulated insanity, but in the agonized hope, scarce distinguishable from despair, of finding, in the testimony of her visible presence, an a.s.surance that the doubts ever tearing his spirit and sickening his brain, are but the offspring of his phantasy.

There she sits!--and there he stands, vainly endeavouring through her eyes to read her soul! for, alas,

there's no art To find the mind's construction in the face!

--until at length, finding himself utterly baffled, but unable, save by the removal of his person, to take his eyes from her face, he retires speechless as he came. Such is the man whom we are now to see wandering about the halls and corridors of the great castle-palace.

He may by this time have begun to doubt even the reality of the sight he had seen. The moment the pressure of a marvellous presence is removed, it is in the nature of man the same moment to begin to doubt; and instead of having any reason to wish the apparition a true one, he had every reason to desire to believe it an illusion or a lying spirit.

Great were his excuse even if he forced likelihoods, and suborned witnesses in the court of his own judgment. To conclude it false was to think his father in heaven, and his mother not an adulteress, not a murderess! At once to kill his uncle would be to seal these horrible things irrevocable, indisputable facts. Strongest reasons he had for not taking immediate action in vengeance; but no smallest incapacity for action had share in his delay. The Poet takes recurrent pains, as if he foresaw hasty conclusions, to show his hero a man of prompt.i.tude, with this truest fitness for action, that he would not make unlawful haste.

Without sufficing a.s.surance, he would have no part in the fate either of the uncle he disliked or the mother he loved.]

[Footnote 3: _a doors_, like _an end_. 51, 175.]

[Footnote 4: _undoes, frustrates, destroys_.]

[Footnote 5: See quotation from _1st Quarto,_ 43.]

[Footnote 6: _Quoted_ or _coted: observed_; Fr. _coter_, to mark the number. Compare 95.]

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It seemes it is as proper to our Age, [Sidenote: By heauen it is]

To cast beyond our selues[1] in our Opinions, As it is common for the yonger sort To lacke discretion.[2] Come, go we to the King, This must be knowne, which being kept close might moue More greefe to hide, then hate to vtter loue.[3] [Sidenote: Come.]

_Exeunt._

_SCENA SECUNDA._[4]

_Enter King, Queene, Rosincrane, and Guildensterne c.u.m alijs.

[Sidenote: Florish: Enter King and Queene, Rosencraus and Guyldensterne.[5]]

_King._ Welcome deere _Rosincrance_ and _Guildensterne_.

Moreouer,[6] that we much did long to see you, The neede we haue to vse you, did prouoke [Sidenote: 92] Our hastie sending.[7] Something haue you heard Of _Hamlets_ transformation: so I call it, [Sidenote: so call]

Since not th'exterior, nor the inward man [Sidenote: Sith nor]

Resembles that it was. What it should bee More then his Fathers death, that thus hath put him So much from th'understanding of himselfe, I cannot deeme of.[8] I intreat you both, [Sidenote: dreame]

That being of so young dayes[9] brought vp with him: And since so Neighbour'd to[10] his youth,and humour, [Sidenote: And sith and hauior,]

That you vouchsafe your rest heere in our Court Some little time: so by your Companies To draw him on to pleasures, and to gather [Sidenote: 116] So much as from Occasions you may gleane, [Sidenote: occasion]

[A]

That open'd lies within our remedie.[11]

[Footnote A: _Here in the Quarto_:--

Whether ought to vs vnknowne afflicts him thus,]

[Footnote 1:

'to be overwise--to overreach ourselves'

'ambition, which o'erleaps itself,'

--_Macbeth_, act i. sc. 7.]

[Footnote 2: Polonius is a man of faculty. His courtier-life, his self-seeking, his vanity, have made and make him the fool he is.]

[Footnote 3: He hopes now to get his daughter married to the prince.

We have here a curious instance of Shakspere's not unfrequently excessive condensation. Expanded, the clause would be like this: 'which, being kept close, might move more grief by the hiding of love, than to utter love might move hate:' the grief in the one case might be greater than the hate in the other would be. It verges on confusion, and may not be as Shakspere wrote it, though it is like his way.

_1st Q._

Lets to the king, this madnesse may prooue, Though wilde a while, yet more true to thy loue.]

[Footnote 4: _Not in Quarto._]

[Footnote 5: _Q._ has not _c.u.m alijs._]

[Footnote 6: 'Moreover that &c.': _moreover_ is here used as a preposition, with the rest of the clause for its objective.]

[Footnote 7: Rosincrance and Guildensterne are, from the first and throughout, the creatures of the king.]

[Footnote 8: The king's conscience makes him suspicious of Hamlet's suspicion.]

[Footnote 9: 'from such an early age'.]

[Footnote 10: 'since then so familiar with'.]

[Footnote 11: 'to gather as much as you may glean from opportunities, of that which, when disclosed to us, will lie within our remedial power.'

If the line of the Quarto be included, it makes plainer construction.

The line beginning with '_So much_,' then becomes parenthetical, and _to gather_ will not immediately govern that line, but the rest of the sentence.]

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