Shakespeare's Hamlet

Contents

5^

Introduction

I. Shakespeare's Life and Works

II. Hamlet Descriptive Bibliography The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark Notes and Comment Glossary ....

The Globe Theater Map of Elizabethan London Interior of Fortune Theater The Swan Theater .

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Frontispiece

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INTRODUCTION

SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE AND WORKS

William Shakespeare was baptized at Stratford-on- Avon on April 26, 1564, so that the date of his birth is probably April 22 or 23. He was the son of John Shakespeare, who had left his father's farm at Snitterfield about thirteen years before, and had come to Stratford, where he engaged in business (especially in the sale of agricultural produce), and became one of the prominent citizens of the town, holding office in the borough more than once. He married, in I557, Mary Arden, the daughter of a wealthy farmer of excellent family, whose home was at Wilmcote, near Stratford. The dramatist, accordingly, came of good English stock.

Shakespeare grew up in the little town of Stratford, in one of the most beautiful districts of England. He received his education in the Stratford grammar school, where he got the " small Latin and less Greek " with which Ben Jonson credited him. But his training, at least in Latin, was doubtless pretty thorough, and Jonson's statement must be interpreted in the light of his own very unusual scholarship. Shakespeare, nevertheless, was vn viii Introduction

not primarily a scholar; his immense knowledge of men and things was gained in other ways.

In 1582, when he was a mere boy of less than nineteen years, Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway, a woman of twenty-seven, the daughter of a neighboring farmer in the little village of Shottery. The marriage does not seem to have been a very happy one; and three years later, in 1585, Shakespeare left Stratford, without his family (three children had been born to him), and went up to London. The tradition that he abandoned Stratford on account of difficulties into which he had fallen through poaching on the estate of Sir Thomas Lucy may have at least an element of truth in it, but there is no certainty regarding the details.

The London to which Shakespeare went in 1585 or 1586 must not be thought of as the vast metropolis we know to-day. It was a city of between one and two hundred thousand inhabitants only. But it was the center of the stirring life of a period more keenly alive, perhaps, than any other in English history, and it afforded a stimulating environment for the development of a genius like Shakespeare's. It was a time when horizons had been almost immeasurably widened. The discovery of the New World, with the possibilities which it was still thought to hold of realizing the dreams of centuries, had quickened men's imaginations to a degree which it is difficult for us to grasp. The Reformation had brought with it a new freedom of thought; the Revival of Learning had opened up another new world, and from Italy especially — " that great limbec of working brains," as one

Shakespeare's Life and Works ix

of Shakespeare's contemporaries called it — young Englishmen were eagerly bringing back new literary forms. The war with Spain, that culminated in the defeat of the Armada, was awakening a new national consciousness. In a word, when Shakespeare came up to London, he found a community intensely alive at every point, — a community surpassingly adapted to call out just such powers as he possessed, and no less ready to respond to what it thus called out.

Particularly was this true in connection with the drama. Plays founded (for the most part) on the Bible had been popular all over England for centuries. Then, as the Latin comedies and tragedies — especially those of Plautus and Seneca — were more and more studied in the schools, and as the influence of the Renaissance in Italy and France had spread to England, the field had widened. And just at the time when Shakespeare arrived in London a group of young university men were giving the drama a fresh impetus and enlarging still further its scope. Plays of all sorts were being written, in response to the varying popular demand; delicate court comedies, like John Lyly's; plays that experimented in many fields, like those of Peele and Greene; crude but powerful tragedies, like Kyd's; dramas like Marlowe's, that expressed, in the new medium of blank verse, the boundless aspirations of the time; plays that dealt with history, mythology, fairylore, adventure, crime — everything was grist that came to the playwrights' mill, and the demand for more plays was steadily growing.

And with the demand for more plays went hand in

X Introduction

hand the demand for more theaters. When Shakespeare came to London there were only two. Before Hamlet was written six new ones had been established. With one exception they were without the city walls, since theaters were forbidden within the civic jurisdiction, and the most popular of them, including the Globe, were just across the river, on what was known as the Bankside. Here, then, either across London Bridge or in little boats, came of an afternoon (for the plays were always given by daylight) the throngs of Londoners — tradesmen, gallants, staid citizens, soldiers, sailors — who formed the audience at the Rose, the Swan, the Globe, and (later) the Hope. Their destination, however, was very different from the theaters we know. The buildings were round or hexagonal, and for the most part open to the sky, except for a sort of hood that in some cases projected over the stage. The larger part of the audience stood in the pit (see note on HI, ii, 12), where the admission price was low; there were, however, galleries as well, and seats were also provided on the stage. And the stage itself was utterly unlike ours. It projected straight out into the body of the theater — in one case, we know (for the plans have been preserved), practically half the distance to the outer wall — so that it was surrounded by spectators on three of its four sides, and actually had spectators seated on it too. An Elizabethan play, in other words, stood in the most intimate relation to its audience; the stage was a little island in a sea of upturned faces, and the sea encroached upon the island even then. There were no long waits for shifts of

Shakespeare's Life and Works xi

scenery; the plays proceeded with few pauses, and with a continuity of action unknown to the modern stage. What Shakespeare found, then, was a community that eagerly demanded plays, a keen and active competition to supply that demand, and stage conditions which permitted the swiftest and most intimate response between actors and audience.

What Shakespeare did was first of all to become an actor, and an actor he seems to have remained until towards the close of his career. But he must very soon have begun to serve his apprenticeship as a playwright too — collaborating (as the custom was) with more experienced dramatists in the writing of new plays, in revamping older plays, in combining two plays into one — doing, in a word, the sort of hack-work that regularly belonged to the initial stages of his craft. Within half a dozen years, however, his own plays began to appear, and for the next two decades — from about 1591 to about 161 1 — one followed another, with steadily growing power. Nor was he only actor and playwright. In 1599 he became a shareholder in the Globe Theater, and he later acquired an interest in the Blackfriars — a private theater within the city walls.^ As actor, as playwright, and as manager, then, Shakespeare knew his profession to the minutest details. Thorough and practical knowledge of his craft joined with his genius to make him what he was.

^ The Blackfriars, unlike the public theaters, was roofed over, artificially lighted, and it charged higher admission. Although it was within the city walls, it was on ground not within the civic jurisdiction.

xli Introduction

The general order and character of his plays Is indicated in Professor Pierce's bibliography that follows this Introduction. One thing may be emphasized here. Shakespeare's plays show a development which is the result not only of growing powers, but also of conscious effort to improve upon what he had already done. Again and again it happens that a situation, a type of character, a dramatic device of some sort, a method of handling a plot, which has left, in its execution in an earlier play, something to be desired, is taken up again in a later play, and done surpassingly and once for all. Nothing is farther removed from fact than the rather stupid catchword, " Shakespeare never repeats." He was constantly repeating, because, for one reason, he was constantly trying to do better something that he had done not so well before. The common idea that genius is independent of a hard-earned mastery of technique and of an artistic conscience which demands that one proceed " from well to better, daily self-surpast " — this fallacy never had a better refutation than Shakespeare's development affords.

Something of this care which Shakespeare (contrary to the widespread popular idea) exercised in his work may be seen by comparing the Second Quarto of Hamlet with the First. To do this with any degree of thoroughness lies beyond the purpose of a school study of the play. But one brief passage will serve at least to illustrate Shakespeare's methods in revision. The reading of the First Quarto for I, i, 150-52 is as follows:

Shakespeare's Life and Works xlii

The Cock that is the trumpet to the morne, Doth with his earley and shrill crowing throate Awake the god of day, and at his sound, etc.

These lines have become, in the Second Quarto, the following :

• The cock th^t is the trumpet to the morne, Doth with his lofty and shrill sounding throat Awake the God of day, and at his ^warning, etc.

It is clear at a glance that the change from " shrill crowing" to ''shrill sounding" has made it necessary to substitute another word for sound in the next line. But the word actually substituted {warning) introduces at once a rime with morning two lines before. The further change from morning to morne of course grows out of the necessity of avoiding such a rime. The interest of comparisons like these is endless. For us, however, in our study, its chief value lies in the light it throws on one reason for Shakespeare's success — his capacity, that is, • for taking pains, which is one ingredient even of genius such as his.

His career, moreover, was successful, even when judged by other than literary standards. For his creative power was not inconsistent with a keen and practical business sense. His income as an actor, as a shareholder in two remunerative theaters, and as the most popular playwright of his day was a large and growing one. In 1597, only eleven years after he came up to London, he bought the largest house in Stratford, known as New Place, and during the following years improved it, making at inxlv Introduction

tervals other investments in and about the town. In i6i i, at the height of his fame, he returned to Stratford, twentysix years after he had left it, and lived there, on his own estate, until his death at the age of fifty-two, April 23, 1616.

After his death his friend and greatest rival, Ben Jonson, wrote of him: " I loved the man and do honor his memory, on this side idolatry, as well as any. He was, indeed, honest and of an open and free nature." It is useless to try to piece out the facts of his biography from his plays; but the more thoroughly one studies them, the profounder is one's conviction of the soundness and wholesomeness of character, and of the deepening moral insight, of the man who wrote them.

II

The first question about a Shakespearean play has to do with its text — with the form and manner, that is, in which the play has come down to us. Shakespeare's plays were published in two different forms. Sixteen of them appeared in small volumes called quartos, each containing a single play. And all of them, except Pericles, were published (the remaining twenty for the first time) in 1623, in a large volume known as the First Folio. For a number of the sixteen plays referred to there are two or more quartos (in two cases as many as six) ; and

Hamlet xv

three folios (dated 1632, 1663, and 1685) followed the first. The play of Hamlet exists in three forms: one, known as the First Quarto, published in 1603 ; another, known as the Second Quarto, published in 1604; the third is the text that is found in the First Folio of 1623.

These three forms of the play differ from one another in many ways. The First Quarto is little more than half as long as the Second, and the text Is evidently imperfect, and in many passages incorrect. In the Second Quarto the arrangement of the scenes Is different, and in addition to the fact that the play is " enlarged to almost as much agalne as It was" (as the title-page states), the characterization and the treatment In general are vastly Improved. The text of the First Folio is essentially that of the Second Quarto, but a number of passages that occur In the Second Quarto are omitted In the Folio, and the Folio contains a few passages that do not appear In the Quartos. The text of the play as It Is found In modern editions Is made up by combining the texts of the Second Quarto and First Folio, with some aid, here and there, from the First Quarto.

The relations of the two Quartos to each other, and of the Folio to both, have been much disputed. But It seems fairly clear that the First Quarto represents a pirated edition of the first form of Shakespeare's play, probably taken down hastily and surreptitiously in shorthand by some agent of the publishers, and possibly pieced out to a slight degree from actors' copies ; that the Second Quarto represents an authorized (but not very well printed) edition of the play as Shakespeare had meantime xvi Introduction

thoroughly revised it; and that the differences between the First Foh'o and the Second Quarto are in the main to be accounted for by supposing that the omissions — now in the one, now in the other — represent cuts for acting purposes, due to the great length of the play. Even to-day the ordinary stage performance of Hamlet never includes the full text.

But after we know how the play has reached us, we have still to ask how the story that it tells reached Shakespeare. For the great dramatists, whose supreme originality lies in giving new form and meaning to what is already known, rarely, if ever, invent their own plots, and Hamlet offers no exception. The story of the play is very old. It appears first about the beginning of the thirteenth century, in the History of the Danes by Saxo Grammaticus.^ The story, as it is there told, is very different from the one we know, four hundred years later, in Shakespeare. It is a rude and brutal tale, with elements in it that go back to a still more primitive stage of civilization. But certain essential facts of the play are present in the history. The fratricide on which the drama is based ; the marriage between the murderer and Hamlet's mother; Hamlet's feigned madness in order to accomplish his revenge; the device (in a very different form, however, from that of the play) of using his love for a woman in order to lead him to betray himself; the killing of an eavesdropper (who has hidden under the rushes

* Translated (in part) from the Latin in The First Nine Books of the Danish History of Saxo Grammaticus, by Oliver Elton (Folk Lore Society, 1893), pp. 106-130.

Hamlet xvli

on the floor) ; the dispatch of Hamlet to England with two companions; the altering of the letter, and Hamlet's return (not, however, through the aid of the pirates), — all these details are present in the older story. But there is no ghost, and Hamlet's savage revenge is wholly different, while he himself lives to become king, and is later killed through the treachery of his second wife. Saxo's story was retold in French in 1570, in Belief orest's Histoires Tragiques} which was not translated into English until five years after the First Quarto was published. Shakespeare may possibly have known Belief rest ; he almost certainly did not know Saxo. The story seems to have reached him in another way.

At least fifteen of Shakespeare's thirty-seven plays — including the Merchant of Venice, King John, Henry V, Romeo and Juliet, Julius Casar, and King Lear — are more or less directly based upon earlier plays, and no clearer insight into Shakespeare's genius and originality can be gained than that which comes from a study of what he has done with the crude materials at his hand. In the case of Hamlet we know, from a number of interesting contemporary allusions, that there was an earlier play, although, unfortunately, it has not come down to us. But its author was very probably Thomas Kyd, and from an extremely popular play of Kyd's that is extant — The Spanish Tragedy — we can guess something of the character of the older Hamlet. For both plays — the Spanish Tragedy and the earlier Hamlet, which Shake-

^ Translation in Hazlitt's Shakespeare's Library, Part I, Vol. II, pp. 211-379.

xvlil Introduction

speare almost certainly used — very evidently appealed strongly to one of the marked tastes of an Elizabethan audience — its fondness for what is often called the Tragedy of Blood. And if we consider the mere framework of Shakespeare's Hamlet, in connection with what we know of the Spanish Tragedy, it is not difficult to form some idea of the older play. A ghost, insanity, real or assumed, revenge, adultery, suicide, poisoning, stabbing — all the elements of sheer melodrama are present. And the amazing thing that Shakespeare has done is to take this old story of blood and lust and revenge, and make it the vehicle of his own profoundest thought and his supremest artistry, so that it stands as one of the two or three greatest tragedies in the world. The mere inventing of a plot is little; it is what the dramatist does with what he finds that counts.

What he has to do first and foremost is to make a play. The Ghost, Hamlet's assumed madness, the killing of Polonius, Ophelia's suicide, the exchange of the letters — all these are but the raw materials of a drama. They must be bound together into a single action, and that action must have a definite movement. And such a movement, in a tragedy, involves a conflict between two opposing forces. In Hamlet this conflict takes the form (we shall see another side of it in a moment) of a contest between Hamlet and the King. The play starts out with relative equilibrium; the contest has not yet begun. The real movement is initiated when the disclosure of the Ghost (the Exciting Force) stirs Hamlet to revenge. From that point up to the success of the play within the

Hamlet xlx

play the action rises; Hamlet is the aggressor, and the King is on the defensive. But with Hamlet's refusal to kill the King while he is praying, comes the turningpoint, and the so-called Falling (or Return) Action begins; the King is the aggressor, and Hamlet is steadily forced to the wall, until, with the success of the King's and Laertes's plot against him, the catastrophe ensues. One may even indicate by a diagram the typical movement of a tragedy:

Turning Point

l^quilibrium

Kxciting Force

The details of the movement in Hamlet are elaborated in the introductory notes to the different scenes, and the interest of the story is not diminished but enhanced by observing the dramatic structure of the play.

But there is another conflict involved beside the contest between the two protagonists. One sometimes hears a tragedy spoken of as if it were merely a play with an unhappy ending. But the thing that really makes a tragedy is — to use a German poet's phrase — the human spirit in conflict with itself or with the course of the world. In Romeo and Juliet, the first of Shakespeare's great tragedies, the conflict is of the latter type. It is Fate, as embodied in the family and the state, against which Romeo and Juliet — like the heroes of Greek tragedy — contend in vain. But in the later Shakespearean

XX Introduction

tragedies, the emphasis is on the conflict of the hero with himself — or rather, perhaps, the conflict within him of opposing passions or tendencies — that leads to his undoing. The great heroes of tragedy — Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, Lear, QEdipus, Faust — are exceptional persons, to be sure ; but they are the battleground of contending forces that are universal in their application and in their appea^ And the great tragedies hold their lasting power because the tragic struggle is thus universal, as well as because it finds embodiment in actions of compelling, sometimes of enthralling, interest. The mere story of Hamlet — of his contest with the King — thrills even the occupants rr the cheapest gallery ; but it is the tragic conflict within Hamlet himself that challenges and holds our deeper interest.

And the problem of Hamlet himself is one of the most baffling — and fascinating, too — in all literature. He is so real a person that men talk and write about him as they do about Caesar or Napoleon or any of the great complex figures that have really lived. And no attempt to pluck out the heart of his mystery will ever be wholly successful, just because he is so absolutely real a person. But two or three of the most famous attempts to explain him may be given, as bringing out, at all events, certain phases of his complexity. That of Goethe is perhaps the best known of all : ^

To me it is clear that Shakespeare meant, in the present case, to represent the effects of a great action laid upon a soul unfit

^Wilhelm Meister's Lehrjahre, Book IV, Chapter XIII (Carlyle's translation). This view is admirably criticised in one

Descriptive Bibliography xxxi

Richard III.

King John.

Three historical dramas, each dealing with the struggles and downfall of an English king.

II. THE PERIOD OF GREAT HISTORIES AND COMEDIES

The Merchant of Venice.

The story of two young lovers who are brought together by the devotion of a faithful friend, and who in turn save this friend from the revenge of Shylock the Jew.

The Taming of the Shre^w.

An ingenious farcical comedy, in which a shrewish wife is tamed into gentleness.

King Henry IF, Parts I and II.

Stately pictures of English civil wars, interspersed with the delightful comedy of Falstaff and his companions.

King Henry V.

A picture of the English conquests in France, centering around Henry V as a national hero.

Merry Wives of Windsor.

A laughable series of practical jokes played on Falstaff.

Much Ado About Nothing.

As You Like It.

Tavelfth Night.

Three romantic comedies of the highest rank. Much Ado combines the delightful wit-combats of Beatrice and Benedict with the touching story of a lady unjustly accused but finally cleared. As You Like It is a picture of pastoral life far from the world's uproar in the forest of Arden. Tiuelfth Night traces the fortunes of a shipwrecked heroine who by unselfish devotion wins a noble lover.

AlVs Well That Ends Well.

Troilus and Cressida.

Measure for Measure.

Three bitter, sarcastic comedies, revealing the baser aspects of human nature.

xxxii Descriptive Bibliography

HI. THE PERIOD OF GREAT TRAGEDIES

Julius Casar.

A picture of the national upheaval connected with the death of Caesar. Its central figure is the noble but misguided patriot Brutus.

Hamlet.

One of the most thoughtful and poetical of dramas, centering around the story of a son called to avenge a murdered father.

OihellG.

The tragedy of a noble but passionate man who becomes the dupe of a villain, and through mistaken jealousy murders his innocent bride.

King Lear.

The tragedy of ingratitude. King Lear gives all his lands to his two eldest daughters, but their cruelty leads to his death and that of his one faithful child Cordelia.

Macbeth.

A terrible picture of the retribution which follows ambition and murder. Macbeth assassinates his predecessor to become king, but is overthrown and dies miserably in the hour of defeat.

Antony and Cleopatra.

The tragedy of a great soldier who sacrifices an empire for love of a fascinating but wicked woman,

Timon of Athens.

The tragedy of a noble Athenian who ruins himself by unwise generosity.

Coriolanus.

The tragedy of a noble Roman whose brave but unreasonably haughty spirit makes him the enemy and desolator of his country.

IV. ROMANTIC TALES OF SHAKESPEARE'S LATER

YEARS

Pericles.

The adventures of a family who are long separated and finally united.

Descriptive Bibliography xxxiii

Cymbeline.

A Winter's Tale. '

Two stories of mistaken jealousy, with frequent threats of disaster but with a happy ending. Cymbeline is a story of ancient Britain ; the scene of the Winter's Tale is laid in Sicily and Bohemia.

The Tempest.

The story of an exiled duke on an enchanted island. Here he brings his enemies within his power and is restored to his dukedom.

King Henry VIII.

A series of picturesque events in the life of King Henry and Cardinal Wolsey.

Shakespeare's non-dramatic works include:

Venus and Adonis (1593).

The Rape of Lucrece (1594).

Sonnets (1609).

The Passionate Pilgrim (1599).

A collection of short poems, containing a few by Shakespeare.

YARD

Interior of Fortune Theater

The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark

DRAMATIS PERSONS

Claudius, king of Denmark.

Hamlet, soti to the late, and nephew to the present king,

PoLONius, lord chamberlain.

Horatio, friend to Hamlet.

Laertes, son to Polonius.

voltimand, "1

Cornelius, |

UUILDENSTERN,

OSRIC, I

A Gentleman, j

A Priest.

Bernardo, f oincers.

Francisco, a soldier.

Reynaldo, a servant to Polonius.

Players.

Two clowns, grave-diggers.

Fortinbras, prince of Norway.

A Captain.

English Ambassadors.

Gertrude, queen of Denmark, and mother to Hamlet. Ophelia, daughter to Polonius. '

Lords, Ladies, Officers, Soldiers, Sailors, Messengers, and other

Attendants.

Ghost of Hamlet's Father.

Scene: Denmark.

\\ 11 '

The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark

Scene I Elsinore. A platform before the castle

Francisco at his post. Enter to him Bernardo.

Ber. Who's there?

Fran. Nay, answer me: stand, and unfold yourself.

Ber. Long live the king!

Fran. Bernardo?

Ber. He.

Fran. You come most carefully upon your hour.

Ber. 'Tis now struck twelve; get thee to bed, Francisco.

Fran. For this relief much thanks: 'tis bitter cold, And I am sick at heart.

Ber. Have you had quiet guard?

Fran. Not a mouse stirring. lO

Ber. Well, good night.

If you do meet Horatio and Marcellus, The rivals of my watch, bid them make haste.

Fran. 1 think I hear them. Stand, ho! Who's there?

Enter Horatio and Marcellus.

Hor. Friends to this ground.

Mar. And liegemen to the Dane.

Fran. Give you good night.

Mar. O, farewell, honest soldier:

Who hath relieved you?

Fran. Bernardo hath my place.

Give you good night. [Exit.

Mar. Holla! Bernardo!

Ber. Say,

What, is Horatio there?

Hor. A piece of him.

Ber. Welcome, Horatio; welcome, good Marcellus. 20

Mar. What, has this thing appear'd again to-night?

Ber. I have seen nothing.

Mar. Horatio says 'tis but our fantasy.

And will not let belief take hold of him Touching this dreaded sight, twice seen of us: Therefore I have entreated him along With us to watch the minutes of this night. That if again this apparition come.

He may approve our eyes and speak to it.

Hor. Tush, tush, 'twill not appear.

Ber. Sit down a while ; 30

And let us once again assail your ears. That are so fortified against our story. What we have two nights seen.

Hor. Well, sit we down,

And let us hear Bernardo speak of this.

Ber. Last night of all,

When yond same star that's westward from the pole Had made his course to illume that part of heaven Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself. The bell then beating one, —

Enter Ghost.

Mar. Peace, break thee off; look, where it comes again! Ber. In the same figure, like the king that's dead. 41

Mar. Thou art a scholar; speak to it, Horatio. Ber. Looks it not like the king? mark it, Horatio. Hor. Most like: it harrows me with fear and wonder. Ber. It would be spoke to.

Mar. Question it, Horatio.

Hor. What art thou, that usurp'st this time of night,

Together with that fair and warlike forrri

In which the majesty of buried Denmark

Did sometimes march? by heaven I charge thee, speak !

Mar. It is offended.

Ber. See, it stalks away! 50

Hor. Stay! speak, speak! I charge thee, speak!

[Exit Ghost.

Mar. 'Tis gone, and will not answer.

Ber. How now, Horatio! you tremble and look pale:

Is not this something more than fantasy?

What think you on't?

Hor. Before my God, I might not this believe

Without the sensible and true avouch

Of mine own eyes.

Mar. Is it not like the king?

Hor, As thou art to thyself: