Shakespearean Tragedy Part 33

[Footnote 238: So when he hears that Fleance has escaped he is not much troubled (III. iv. 29):

the worm that's fled Hath nature that in time will venom breed, No teeth for the present.

I have repeated above what I have said before, because the meaning of Macbeth's soliloquy is frequently misconceived.]

[Footnote 239: Virgilia in _Coriola.n.u.s_ is a famous example. She speaks about thirty-five lines.]

[Footnote 240: The percentage of prose is, roughly, in _Hamlet_ 30-2/3, in _Oth.e.l.lo_ 16-1/3, in _King Lear_ 27-1/2, in _Macbeth_ 8-1/2.]

[Footnote 241: Cf. Note F. There are also in _Macbeth_ several shorter pa.s.sages which recall the Player's speech. Cf. 'Fortune ... showed like a rebel's wh.o.r.e' (I. ii. 14) with 'Out! out! thou strumpet Fortune!' The form 'eterne' occurs in Shakespeare only in _Macbeth_, III. ii. 38, and in the 'proof eterne' of the Player's speech. Cf. 'So, as a painted tyrant, Pyrrhus stood,' with _Macbeth_, V. viii. 26; 'the rugged Pyrrhus, like the Hyrcanian beast,' with 'the rugged Russian bear ... or the Hyrcan tiger' (_Macbeth_, III. iv. 100); 'like a neutral to his will and matter' with _Macbeth_, I. v. 47. The words 'Till he unseam'd him from the nave to the chaps,' in the Serjeant's speech, recall the words 'Then from the navel to the throat at once He ript old Priam,' in _Dido Queen of Carthage_, where these words follow those others, about Priam falling with the mere wind of Pyrrhus' sword, which seem to have suggested 'the whiff and wind of his fell sword' in the Player's speech.]

[Footnote 242: See Cunliffe, _The Influence of Seneca on Elizabethan Tragedy_. The most famous of these parallels is that between 'Will all great Neptune's Ocean,' etc., and the following pa.s.sages:

Quis eluet me Tanais? aut quae barbaris Maeotis undis Pontico inc.u.mbens mari?

Non ipse toto magnus Oceano pater Tantum expiarit sceleris. (_Hipp._ 715.)

Quis Tanais, aut quis Nilus, aut quis Persica Violentus unda Tigris, aut Rhenus ferox, Tagusve Ibera turbidus gaza fluens, Abluere dextram poterit? Arctoum licet Maeotis in me gelida transfundat mare, Et tota Tethys per meas currat ma.n.u.s, Haerebit altum facinus. (_Herc. Furens_, 1323.)

(The reader will remember Oth.e.l.lo's 'Pontic sea' with its 'violent pace.') Medea's incantation in Ovid's _Metamorphoses_, vii. 197 ff., which certainly suggested Prospero's speech, _Tempest_, V. i. 33 ff., should be compared with Seneca, _Herc. Oet._, 452 ff., 'Artibus magicis,' etc. It is of course highly probable that Shakespeare read some Seneca at school. I may add that in the _Hippolytus_, beside the pa.s.sage quoted above, there are others which might have furnished him with suggestions. Cf. for instance _Hipp._, 30 ff., with the lines about the Spartan hounds in _Mids. Night's Dream_, IV. i. 117 ff., and Hippolytus' speech, beginning 483, with the Duke's speech in _As You Like It_, II. i.]

[Footnote 243: Cf. Coleridge's note on the Lady Macduff scene.]

[Footnote 244: It is nothing to the purpose that Macduff himself says,

Sinful Macduff, They were all struck for thee! naught that I am, Not for their own demerits, but for mine, Fell slaughter on their souls.

There is no reason to suppose that the sin and demerit he speaks of is that of leaving his home. And even if it were, it is Macduff that speaks, not Shakespeare, any more than Shakespeare speaks in the preceding sentence,

Did heaven look on, And would not take their part?

And yet Brandes (ii. 104) hears in these words 'the voice of revolt ...

that sounds later through the despairing philosophy of _King Lear_.' It sounds a good deal earlier too; _e.g._ in _t.i.t. And._, IV. i. 81, and _2 Henry VI._, II. i. 154. The idea is a commonplace of Elizabethan tragedy.]

[Footnote 245: And the idea that it was the death of his son Hamnet, aged eleven, that brought this power to maturity is one of the more plausible attempts to find in his dramas a reflection of his private history. It implies however as late a date as 1596 for _King John_.]

[Footnote 246: Even if this were true, the retort is obvious that neither is there anything resembling the murder-scene in _Macbeth_.]

[Footnote 247: I have confined myself to the single aspect of this question on which I had what seemed something new to say. Professor Hales's defence of the pa.s.sage on fuller grounds, in the admirable paper reprinted in his _Notes and Essays on Shakespeare_, seems to me quite conclusive. I may add two notes. (1) The references in the Porter's speeches to 'equivocation,' which have naturally, and probably rightly, been taken as allusions to the Jesuit Garnet's appeal to the doctrine of equivocation in defence of his perjury when, on trial for partic.i.p.ation in the Gunpowder Plot, do not stand alone in _Macbeth_. The later prophecies of the Witches Macbeth calls 'the equivocation of the fiend That lies like truth' (V. v. 43); and the Porter's remarks about the equivocator who 'could swear in both the scales against either scale, who committed treason enough for G.o.d's sake, yet could not equivocate to heaven,' may be compared with the following dialogue (IV. ii. 45):

_Son._ What is a traitor?

_Lady Macduff._ Why, one that swears and lies.

_Son._ And be all traitors that do so?

_Lady Macduff._ Everyone that does so is a traitor, and must be hanged.

Garnet, as a matter of fact, _was_ hanged in May, 1606; and it is to be feared that the audience applauded this pa.s.sage.

(2) The Porter's soliloquy on the different applicants for admittance has, in idea and manner, a marked resemblance to Pompey's soliloquy on the inhabitants of the prison, in _Measure for Measure_, IV. iii. 1 ff.; and the dialogue between him and Abhorson on the 'mystery' of hanging (IV. ii. 22 ff.) is of just the same kind as the Porter's dialogue with Macduff about drink.]

[Footnote 248: In the last Act, however, he speaks in verse even in the quarrel with Laertes at Ophelia's grave. It would be plausible to explain this either from his imitating what he thinks the rant of Laertes, or by supposing that his 'towering pa.s.sion' made him forget to act the madman. But in the final scene also he speaks in verse in the presence of all. This again might be accounted for by saying that he is supposed to be in a lucid interval, as indeed his own language at 239 ff. implies. But the probability is that Shakespeare's real reason for breaking his rule here was simply that he did not choose to deprive Hamlet of verse on his last appearance. I wonder the disuse of prose in these two scenes has not been observed, and used as an argument, by those who think that Hamlet, with the commission in his pocket, is now resolute.]

[Footnote 249: The verse-speech of the Doctor, which closes this scene, lowers the tension towards that of the next scene. His introductory conversation with the Gentlewoman is written in prose (sometimes very near verse), partly, perhaps, from its familiar character, but chiefly because Lady Macbeth is to speak in prose.]

NOTE A.

EVENTS BEFORE THE OPENING OF THE ACTION IN _HAMLET_.

In Hamlet's first soliloquy he speaks of his father as being 'but two months dead,--nay, not so much, not two.' He goes on to refer to the love between his father and mother, and then says (I. ii. 145):

and yet, within a month-- Let me not think on't--Frailty, thy name is woman!-- A little month, or ere those shoes were old With which she follow'd my poor father's body, Like Niobe, all tears, why she, even she-- O G.o.d! a beast, that wants discourse of reason, Would have mourn'd longer--married with my uncle.

It seems hence to be usually a.s.sumed that at this time--the time when the action begins--Hamlet's mother has been married a little less than a month.

On this a.s.sumption difficulties, however, arise, though I have not found them referred to. Why has the Ghost waited nearly a month since the marriage before showing itself? Why has the King waited nearly a month before appearing in public for the first time, as he evidently does in this scene? And why has Laertes waited nearly a month since the coronation before asking leave to return to France (I. ii. 53)?

To this it might be replied that the marriage and the coronation were separated by some weeks; that, while the former occurred nearly a month before the time of this scene, the latter has only just taken place; and that what the Ghost cannot bear is, not the mere marriage, but the accession of an incestuous murderer to the throne. But anyone who will read the King's speech at the opening of the scene will certainly conclude that the marriage has only just been celebrated, and also that it is conceived as involving the accession of Claudius to the throne.

Gertrude is described as the 'imperial jointress' of the State, and the King says that the lords consented to the marriage, but makes no separate mention of his election.

The solution of the difficulty is to be found in the lines quoted above.

The marriage followed, within a month, not the _death_ of Hamlet's father, but the _funeral_. And this makes all clear. The death happened nearly two months ago. The funeral did not succeed it immediately, but (say) in a fortnight or three weeks. And the marriage and coronation, coming rather less than a month after the funeral, have just taken place. So that the Ghost has not waited at all; nor has the King, nor Laertes.

On this hypothesis it follows that Hamlet's agonised soliloquy is not uttered nearly a month after the marriage which has so horrified him, but quite soon after it (though presumably he would know rather earlier what was coming). And from this hypothesis we get also a partial explanation of two other difficulties, (_a_) When Horatio, at the end of the soliloquy, enters and greets Hamlet, it is evident that he and Hamlet have not recently met at Elsinore. Yet Horatio came to Elsinore for the funeral (I. ii. 176). Now even if the funeral took place some three weeks ago, it seems rather strange that Hamlet, however absorbed in grief and however withdrawn from the Court, has not met Horatio; but if the funeral took place some seven weeks ago, the difficulty is considerably greater. (_b_) We are twice told that Hamlet has '_of late_' been seeking the society of Ophelia and protesting his love for her (I. iii. 91, 99). It always seemed to me, on the usual view of the chronology, rather difficult (though not, of course, impossible) to understand this, considering the state of feeling produced in him by his mother's marriage, and in particular the shock it appears to have given to his faith in woman. But if the marriage has only just been celebrated the words 'of late' would naturally refer to a time before it. This time presumably would be subsequent to the death of Hamlet's father, but it is not so hard to fancy that Hamlet may have sought relief from mere _grief_ in his love for Ophelia.

But here another question arises; May not the words 'of late' include, or even wholly refer to,[250] a time prior to the death of Hamlet's father? And this question would be answered universally, I suppose, in the negative, on the ground that Hamlet was not at Court but at Wittenberg when his father died. I will deal with this idea in a separate note, and will only add here that, though it is quite possible that Shakespeare never imagined any of these matters clearly, and so produced these unimportant difficulties, we ought not to a.s.sume this without examination.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 250: This is intrinsically not probable, and is the more improbable because in Q1 Hamlet's letter to Ophelia (which must have been written before the action of the play begins) is signed 'Thine ever the most unhappy Prince _Hamlet_.' 'Unhappy' _might_ be meant to describe an unsuccessful lover, but it probably shows that the letter was written after his father's death.]

NOTE B.

WHERE WAS HAMLET AT THE TIME OF HIS FATHER'S DEATH?

The answer will at once be given: 'At the University of Wittenberg. For the king says to him (I. ii. 112):

For your intent In going back to school in Wittenberg, It is most retrograde to our desire.

The Queen also prays him not to go to Wittenberg: and he consents to remain.'