The true story of Hamlet and Ophelia

Front matter

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II

THE first words uttered by Hamlet after the ghost reveals the dreadful story of his mother's adultery with Claudius, and his father's murder by him

O all you host of heaven ! O earth ! what else ? And shall I couple hell? —

are not to be found in the Actor's Edition, and, in dramatic representation, they are usually altered or entirely omitted. The succeeding words —

O, fie ! Hold, hold, my heart, And you, my sinews, grow not instant old, But bear me stiffly up — ■

are sometimes given, but not always. Actors cut this Second Soliloquy according to their individual fancy, omitting and retaining what they please.

There must be some reason for this omission, other than the length of the drama. We should expect the whole of this soliloquy to be given, because the revelation of the ghost, and its influence on Hamlet afford the whole motive for his future conduct in the play. It would seem natural to expose to the audience, as clearly as possible, every operation of Hamlet's mind, immediately after he receives a command that, in its fulfillment, results in the immolation of all but one of the principal characters in the Tragedy. That this soliloquy is omitted, or cut short, is an indication either that its importance is not appreciated, or that it contains inherent difficulties of presentation that an actor cannot overcome. I believe both reasons are operative in suppressing it, and that they both result from a mistake in punctuating the second line of the soliloquy, —

O all you host of heaven ! O earth ! what else ? And shall I couple hell ?

An actor could not, immediately after the revelation of the ghost, declaim these lines, as they stand, and present them to the ear, without exciting a sense of ridicule in his hearers. The anti-climax would be too marked to be endurable.

What is the situation — to use a play-wright's word — when these lines are spoken ? They occur very near the beginning of the play. Hamlet has already been introduced to the audience, and is represented as indulging a deep grief at his father's death, his mother's fickleness (iiot her wickedness), and his own disappointed hopes, — for he had expected the election to the throne to light on him, instead of on his uncle Claudius. On this occasion, his second appearance in the play, he has so far controlled himself in the solitary indulgence of his sorrow, that he has come at midnight to the outer platform of the castle, with two friends, expecting there to meet the dead king's ghost, which, they have told him, has already thrice appeared. The apparition comes again, and Hamlet recognizes the spirit as his father's and credits its almost incredible disclosure.

It is as the ghost vanishes, after making its horrible revelation, that these lines are spoken.

We see Hamlet, on the fading of the ghost, paralyzed by the revelation of his uncle's and his mother's wickedness, overcome by grief and horror and disgust, and by the immensity of the task he is expected to perform. He can not realize how such a burden was imposed on him as duty. He feels that the foundations of the moral world are crumbling, and, reaching after something stable and unchangeable, he exclaims (as the present punctuation enjoins) :

O all you host of heaven ! O earth ! what else ? And shall I couple hell ? O, fie !

This is not natural : who, in such a condition of mind, would call on heaven and earth, and stop to ask, or even think,

And shall I couple hell ?

It is too cold-blooded : we can not believe that Hamlet would pick his phrases at such a moment ; that he could invoke the hosts of heaven and earth, and stop to consider if he should also appeal to hell, or that he was so dainty in his speech that he exclaimed 0,fie ! at the mere suggestion. This is not Hamlet's nature. The incongruity of the questions, — what else? And shall I couple hell? — just after the invocation to heaven and earth, is shocking. It is not possible that Hamlet could pause to select his form of aspiration, and critically cry, 0,fie! on the rejection of the suggestion to couple hell, when he was possessed by so deep emotion as his succeeding words reveal. Players feel this, and if they retain the first two lines of this soliloquy they omit from them the words, — what else? and O, fie, and make And shall I couple hell? express, not a question only, but the conviction that hell too must be included in the invocation : — shall has the force of must.

What seems to be the true interpretation of these lines suggested itself in the same hour when their incongruity was first noticed. As the play was afterward read and re-read, every speech and action so fitted into and agreed with this interpretation that the conclusion was unavoidable that the mistake had been made by some modern editor, and continued without notice of the change, and therefore without correction. Thinking this, I believed that the audiences before the Restoration had understood and loved the Tragedy because this interpretation, which I thought they then possessed, gave them the key to it; and I tried to shut out from my mind every explanation of the play that I had ever entertained, and to examine it by the help of this new light, as if it were a new creation. In this I succeeded beyond my expectations ; at each reading a new harmony developed itself, and I was confirmed in my belief that an unnoticed misprint had created the mystery that envelops Hamlet.

But when I went to the various editions, early and late, for proof of my conjecture, I found the error everywhere reproduced. The passage was the same, or varied very slightly, — an " Oh " for an " O," may be. Some few editions commented on the passage, but not to elucidate it. Steevens thought the words O, fie ! " might have been the marginal reprehension of some scrupulous reader, to whom the MS. had been communicated before it found its way to the press." Reed said of 0, fie ! " These words (which hurt the measure, and from that circumstance and their almost ludicrous turn may be suspected as an interpolation) are found only in the two earliest quartos." He did not mean the Quarto of 1603 ; this was not then discovered. Dyce thought the words might be omitted, and Capell boldly thrust them out as " impertinent in the highest degree." George MacDonald, noticing And shall I couple hell ? could only say, "He must! His father is there," and Marshall, in his Study of Hamlet, has this passage:

On the Soliloquy " O all you host of heaven! "

" This soliloquy is not a long one ; but it is a very important one. It is the key-note to that wild perturbation of mind in which Hamlet remains during the rest of this act. The vehement aspiration with which it commences —

O all you host of heaven ! O earth ! what else ? And shall I couple hell ?

is succeeded by the expression —

O, fie!

which recalls to our memories the words in the former soliloquy —

Fie on't ! ah fie !

Here the exclamation may be taken in two ways ; either as a self-rebuke for the mention of hell, or as a reproach directed against his own weakness on the part of Hamlet. I think the latter the best interpretation, especially if we consider the words which follow immediately:

Hold, hold, my heart ; And you, my sinews, grow not instant old, But bear me stiffly up."

I turned to the Folio of 1623 ; there the passage reads,

Oh all you host of Heaven ! Oh Earth ; what els ? And shall I couple Hell ? Oh fie : hold my heart; And you my sinnewes, grow not instant Old ; But beare me stiffely up.

In the Quarto of 1604 I found,

O all you hoft of heauen, 6 earth, what els, And fhall I coupple hell, 6 fie, hold, hold my hart, And you my finnowes, growe not inftant old, But beare me fwiftly vp.

and the Quarto of 1603 reads,

O all you hofte of heauen ! O earth, what elfe ? And fhall I couple hell ; remember thee ?

Nowhere did I find the reading I was searching for ; but I was not convinced that the present reading is the true one. The punctuation of the Folio was not done by Shakespeare, it differed from the Quartos, they differed from each other, and all from the modern punctuation: I believe all are incorrect. But the Quarto of 1604 was printed in Shakespeare's lifetime, " according to the true and perfect coppie " ; this Quarto does not impose any absolute interpretation of this passage on the reader ; commas, denoting a pause, are the only stops employed :

O all you hoft of heauen, 6 earth, what els, And fhall I coupple hell, 6 fie, hold, hold my hart, And you my finnowes, growe not inftant old, But beare me fwiftely vp.

It is possible that the proper punctuation was not understood by the compositor, who may have inserted these commas, believing that the actor would substitute the needed stops ; but, while an actor might, and probably would, punctuate his own manuscript copy of his part, he would not make the correction in the printed stage copy, and thus, the later editions being printed one from another, the proper pointing may never have been adopted. This seems plausible, especially when we observe that in the First Quarto, in which, however, we do not find the apostrophe,

O, fie ! Hold, hold, my heart ; And you, my sinews, grow not instant old, But bear me stiffly up —

the punctuation is much more elaborate. In the modern editions the substitutions for the commas in the Second Quarto are as follows :

O all you host of heaven ! O earth ! what else? And shall I couple hell? O, fie ! Hold, hold, my heart; And you, my sinews, grow not instant old, But bear me stiffly up.

Let us punctuate once more ; let us alter the place of an interrogation point, and read :

O all you host of heaven ! O earth ! what else ?

And shall I couple? Hell! O, fie ! Hold, hold, my heart,

And you, my sinews, grow not instant old,

But bear me stiffly up.

We know that no fault was more common than the interchange or omission of ? and ! ; and this I believe is what Shakespeare wrote.

Hamlet has just been told that his father was murdered by the uncle who is now married to his mother, and the duty to avenge this murder has been imposed on him ; he has been told that his mother's seeming virtue is a sham, that her apparent love for his father was only a cover for her intrigue with Claudius, and from the terms of the disclosure he believes that Gertrude was also a party to her husband's murder. Murderess and Adulteress, — these are the names by which he must henceforth designate his mother ! Prostrated, devastated by the disclosure, he exclaims,

O all you host of heaven ! O earth ! what else ?

What must I prepare for next ? Instead of wondering whether he shall violate the proprieties, and "couple hell" with heaven and earth, he instinctively thinks of his love for Ophelia, and contemplates it in the light of his father's revelation : the possible results of a marriage with her occur to him, and his instant repudiation of them and her, and of the idea of any marriage, is shown by the intolerant exclamations,

And shall I couple ? Hell !

What else f does not mean, W r hat else can I invoke ? What else shall I unite with heaven and earth? What else can I turn to for aid? — but it is the broken-hearted cry of a young soul who finds himself bereft of father, of kingdom, and of his faith in woman's love and virtue. What else can be taken from him ? From what quarter can a new blow be dealt him ? What else remains ? As a sequence to this thought comes the recollection of what had promised him a life of happiness. Ophelia's love — that still is his. But the revelation of the ghost has made him clear-sighted : he had already marveled at his mother's shortlived grief; before the disclosure of her guilt he had reached the conclusion, '^Frailty, thy name is woman." Now he instantly measures Ophelia by her, he compares the two, and from his knowledge of Ophelia's character (he had .given private time to her) he conceives that she will be as pliant under temptation as his mother has been : she will be no crown of rubies to him : a marriage with her will be no true union. He asks the question full of derision, of loathing, and of indignation","]

*" And shall I couple?

and, answering it to his wounded heart, he rejects her then and there ; rejects her with an oath that shows his disgust at the possibilities his derisive word has suggested. By this renunciation Hamlet strips himself of all that makes youth lovely and life desirable; he pulls down upon himself the temple of his love, and he staggers as he stands amid the ruins. We know what his thoughts are, and our hearts ache in sympathy with his, as he contemplates the barrenness of his future life. Gradually he recovers himself, and slowly says : " O fie ! " [Fie upon this weakness.]

Hold, hold, my heart,

And you, my sinews, grow not instant old,

But bear me stiffly up.

Does not this reading, without any alteration of the text, cast a new light on Hamlet's character, and on all the conduct of the play? Does not the whole play become explicable the moment we put the interrogation point after the word couple f By the interpretation that this change allows, I hope to show that all Hamlet's words and actions before this question (demonstrations which we do not see, but which we know were made) are consistent with his love, all after it consistent with his repudiation of Ophelia : from this moment we think of Hamlet as an unhappy lover, and Ophelia's relation to him is made much more prominent and beautiful. By this interpretation, the play becomes the subject of practicable, interesting study and analysis, the words and acts of the principal characters fall into a harmony, most of the obscure passages can be illuminated, and the whole scheme, plot, and progress of the play becfome more interesting. By this interpretation the necessity for believing Hamlet insane is removed; it is made to appear that he did fulfill his father's command without unnecessary delay, and his discrimination of character is marvelously exhibited.

I feel sure, however, that Shakespearean students will not at once be willing to accept it ; they do not yet realize how absolutely essential it is. The reader, who can review and study the different scenes of the Tragedy, may, even without this interpretation, by piecing them together, construct the story, but without understanding every part, for each reader conceives a different interpretation for certain passages. But the auditor, who sees the drama on the stage and is hurried along with its rapidly changing action, must, thus early in the play, hear this explicit expression of Hamlet's intention to renounce Ophelia, in order to enable him to apprehend the object of Hamlet's represented and reported actions in the succeeding scenes ; without this expression, he could not divine it. The proof of this is that they are not understood now by either readers or hearers.

A play-goer who has not read the play carefully does not and can not understand it as it is now presented on the stage ; from one hearing he could not even get a coherent idea of the story. Hamlet's visit to Ophelia's closet, his conversation with Polonius, his letter to Ophelia, seem utterly without motive until the third act, when he finally repudiates the maiden ; up to that time and beyond, they seem only the manifestations of Hamlet's madness, arising from no special cause, and having no special fitness of application.

The play is not understood by readers and careful students even. Think how widely their interpretations differ. They can not all be right, but each one would contend that Shakespeare intended to represent the special things that his interpretation makes possible. Shakespeare could have meant to present only one story ; it was not meant to change with the varying points of view from which different students considered it. I think that the interpretation I suggest for — if it be presented on the stage, or considered in the study, furnishes the one key that unlocks every difficulty in the play, and I hope that even ripe scholars will be tolerant until they have examined the whole play with reference to it. It may be more difficult for them to come to a judgment than for a mind ignorant of Shakespearean criticism, for they will first have to set aside their already accepted interpretations.

It may be objected that, after all, the interpretation I suggest must be proved from the play, and that it only adds another to the many theories that have already been advanced. To this I reply — with modesty, and an ardent desire to be proven in the wrong if I be wrong — that it seems to me the theory I advance destroys all other theories ; it furnishes the one and only coherent, comprehensible, provable explication of the Tragedy of Hamlet. For nearly three hundred years it has been possible to misunderstand, not special passages only, but the fundamental intention of the play ; during that time no satisfactory explanation of all its obscurities has been advanced. I believe this theory explains them; and this belief, based on careful study and comparison, ought to excuse the seeming vanity and presumption of the preceding statement. Therefore with the assumption that Shakespeare wrote,

And shall I couple ?

I intend now to review the progress of the play. As a preliminary step I shall arrange a synopsis of the tragedy which will indicate the time at which each thing was done or said, in its proper relation to the time each other thing was done or said. Much of the confusion of our ideas has resulted from a confusion of time. The Folio of 1623 does not divide the whole play into acts : the beginning of the first act, of course, is plain, and the beginning of the second act is placed, in the Folio, where w r e still place it. This division is correct as far as it goes, but in the Folio there is no further discrimination of the acts. I do not know any edition that is correctly divided throughout, although what should be the division is appreciated by various Shakespearean scholars, and Marshall indicates pretty nearly the proper scheme of time; but the usual arrangement of acts and scenes has been productive of a great deal of misunderstanding. To investigate the play properly we must fix in our minds a correct scheme of the time occupied in each scene, and its relation, in closeness or distance, to all that precedes and all that follows it.

III

Six months is the space of time covered by the T?'agedy of Hamlet. This includes the time from the murder of the elder Hamlet to the final clearing of the stage. This period of six months is divided into three periods of about two months each : the first period includes the time from the king's murder through the night on which his spirit reveals itself to Hamlet ; the second period includes the time that elapses between the revelation of the ghost and the hour of Hamlet's departure from Denmark; and the third period includes the time from Hamlet's departure from Denmark to the end of the play.

The occurrences of only the last two days of each of these periods are presented on the stage, i.e., six days in all. Into six days is crowded the portrayal of Claudius's perfidy, Hamlet's misery, and Ophelia's madness. Six days present to us Hamlet receiving the command of his father's spirit, Hamlet determining that the command is binding, and Hamlet gladly yielding up his life after performing every particular of the ghost's behest. To make this evident, we must examine the sequence of the scenes, and the time occupied in their representation.

The action is represented as taking place in Denmark; but Shakespeare, from whatever source he received the suggestions for his plays, transplanted them to England, and adapted them to English surroundings, conforming them to the customs of the time in which he lived. It is winter when the play opens, probably December:

'Tis bitter cold.— I. i. 8.

The air bites shrewdly : it is very cold. — I. iv. i.

It is barely two months since the king was killed while sleeping in his orchard, where he hardly would have taken his siesta, had the month been later than October.

Marcellus seems to fix the time of the opening of the play as very near Christmas:

Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated, The bird of dawning singeth all night long : And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad ; The nights are wholesome ; then no planets strike, No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm, So hallow'd and so gracious is the time. — I. i. 158.

This seems to suggest itself to his mind as an explanation for their escaping injury from this " extravagant and erring spirit "; the spell of the season may have been upon it.

The play ends in the spring — the last of April or the first of May. This is indicated by the flowers that Ophelia distributes, and those of which she makes her fantastic garlands (IV. v. 175 ; IV. viii. 169), daisies, pansies, columbine, crow-flowers, nettles, and long-purples. All these are flowers of early summer, and in England, where the seasons are more forward than with us, they bloom in April and in May. Ophelia gathers them the day before the last day of the play.

The time of the opening scene is at the end of the First Period of two months. The whole of this period does not appear in representation ; part of it appears in narration only. The address of Claudius (I. ii. 1) informs us of the death of the late king, and his marriage with his widow, and Hamlet's First Soliloquy (I. ii. 129) shows us that his father has been dead about two months :

But two months dead : nay, not so much, not two :

and also that within a month of his father's death his mother has married again :

within a 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 —

. . . married with my uncle.

This soliloquy fixes the time of the opening scene as at the end of the first period of two months. The occurrences of only the last two days of this period are represented in the play.

Scene I. Act I. The first scene occupies the time from midnight until daybreak

Ber. 'Tis now struck twelve ; get thee to bed, Francisco. — I. i. 7. Hor. But, look, the morn, in russet mantle clad,

Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastward hill. — I. i. 166.

In it the ghost for the third time appears to the watch, who agree that they must tell Hamlet of the circumstance.

Scene II. Act I. The second scene opens in the morning, some hours later

Mar. I this morning know

Where we shall find him most conveniently. — I. i. 174.

Claudius, in a room of state in the royal castle, addresses his courtiers, dispatches ambassadors to Norway, gives Laertes leave to return to France, and reproaches Hamlet for the continued exhibition of his grief at his father's death. Hamlet consents to remain in Elsinore, and, by his First Soliloquy, informs us of his unhappiness, and of his disgust at his mother's inconstancy. He is interrupted by Horatio and the sentinels, who tell him their story, and he decides to watch that night himself.

Scene III. Act I. Scene III. is subsequent to the preceding, but on the same day. In it Ophelia is introduced. Laertes, in bidding her farewell, cautions her most earnestly to guard her honor : Polonius enters, and, after Laertes' departure, he repeats his son's caution, showing great fear that his daughter may not preserve her virtue. That Scene III. is on the same day as the preceding one is shown by Scene IV., which follows it, and which represents Hamlet carrying out his determination :

I will watch to-night. — I. ii. 242.

SCENE IV. ACT I. Scene IV., on the platform outside the castle, takes place at midnight of the day we have been considering, just twenty-four hours after the opening of the play:

Hor. I think it lacks of twelve.

Ham. No, it is struck. — I. iv. 3.

In this scene Hamlet is waiting with his friends for the ghost, who enters almost immediately after twelve. The ghost beckons Hamlet, who leaves the platform with it.

Scene V. Act I. Scene V., on another part of the platform, opens a few minutes later, and the action continues until dawn.

Ghost. The glow-worm shows the matin to be near. — I. v. 89.

In this scene Hamlet is told by the ghost, that his father was murdered by his uncle, and that his mother was false to her husband during his lifetime. He is commanded to revenge his father and remove Claudius from " the royal bed." He accepts the obligation, and, in consequence of the revelation of his mother's adultery, determines that he will not marry, expressing this in the words of the Second Soliloquy :

And shall I couple ? Hell !

His friends come to seek him, and he swears them to secrecy as to what they have seen and heard, and as to the cause for his conduct should he at any future time " see fit to put an antic disposition on."

This closes the first act, at daybreak of the second day. The time consumed in this act is part of two days — from midnight of the first day to dawn of the second day, and from morning of the second day to dawn again. These two days end the First Period of about two months.

The Second Period of about two months passes, with the exception of the last two days, before we again see any of the characters of the play. That about two months elapse is deduced from a passage in Act III., Scene II. Hamlet says, during the mock-play :

What should a man do but be merry? for, look you, how cheerfully my mother looks, and my father died within these two hours. — III. ii. 131.

Ophelia replies —

Nay, 'tis twice two months, my lord.

We have already seen, in Act I., that the elder Hamlet had then been dead about two months. Two months therefore intervene between the first act and the mock-play, and the mock-play (as will appear) takes place the next night after the second act opens. All the action of Act II. is continuous, though not all of it occurs in one place.

SCENE I. ACT II. The opening scene of the second act represents a room in Polonius's house. The time is probably early morning. I think this because Polonius would naturally start off a post to his son, who has been two months in France, early in the day: this he does on the opening of the second act. As Reynaldo, the messenger, departs, Ophelia enters and tells her father that Hamlet, in a very perturbed state of mind, and disheveled condition of apparel, has just entered and left her chamber. I think this also indicates early morning. 'vAfter a sleepless night, without arranging the disorder of his clothing, Hamlet rushes into Ophelia's presence, hoping to decide by sight of her whether he is right in doubting her ability to resist temptation. The decision is given against her, and he leaves her as abruptly as he came. Ophelia hastens to tell her father of the occurrence, and Polonius, concluding that Hamlet is mad for Ophelia's love, determines to go at once to the king to tell him that this is the cause of the change in Hamlet's bearing. He sets out for the castle, and while he is going thither we are shown —

SCENE II. Act II. This represents a room in the castle. The action is continuous with the preceding. The king and queen receive Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, for whom they have sent, hoping their society may prove beneficial to Hamlet, who is overcome with melancholy. (Recollect that Hamlet has been sad since his father's death, and that the revelation of the ghost, while it gave him ground to hope for a change in his situation, has given him additional cause for grief. It has constrained him to doubt his mother and Ophelia. He has been unable to convince himself that the story of the ghost is true, and, from its enormity, he fears that the apparition was the devil, inciting him to commit murder.) Polonius arrives from his house, as these gentlemen are leaving the royal presence, — they are going to find Hamlet. Polonius announces that the ambassadors to Norway who had been dispatched two months before (I. ii. 33) have returned, and he also informs the king that he has found the cause of Hamlet's madness. He brings in the ambassadors, who make their report, and then assures the king and queen that Hamlet is mad for Ophelia's love, and reads them the letter the prince has written to her. He suggests that a meeting of Hamlet and