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 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31 92401 31 37934 
 
THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET 
 
THE 
 
 Prototype of Hamlet 
 
 AMD 
 
 Other Shakespearian Problems 
 
 BY 
 
 WM. PRESTON JOHNSTON 
 
 " Look into the seed of time 
 And say which giains will grow and which will not." 
 
 — Mactcth, 1, 3. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 BELFORD COMPANY, PUBLISHERS 
 
 18-22 East iSth Street 
 

 TR0W8 
 
 PRINTINQ AND BOOKBINDINQ COMPAtft, 
 
 NEW YORK. 
 
TO MY WIFE, 
 
 MARGARET AVERY JOHNSTON, ' 
 
 WITH WHOSE ENCOURAGEMENT AND APPROVAL 
 
 THESE LECTURES WEKE WRITTEN, 
 
 THIS BOOK 
 
 IS DEDICATED. 
 
 Afril 2Stk, i8go. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 LECTURE FIRST. 
 
 HOW TO STUDY SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 The growth of literary aspiration. Definition of true litera- 
 tnre : one form of the Church of God, holy, catholic and 
 apostolic. Implicit moral culture of the drama. Shake- 
 speare's popularity and hold upon the thought of the world. 
 Advantages of Shakespeare as a study ; interesting, stimulat- 
 ing to the reason and esthetic sense; the best aid in study of 
 rhetoric, of philology, and of literature. Should be a study, 
 not a pastime. Method of study must depend on point of 
 view. Richard Grant White's dictum of reverent study. 
 Dogmatism of commentators. Where Shakespeare's writings 
 are to be found. Description of First Folio, by Richard 
 Grant White. Rectification of errors. Different aspects of 
 academic instruction in study of Shakespeare, of which the 
 ethical is the highest 
 
 Method of study. Beware of too ambitious a design. Part 
 better than the whole. Study from the historical standpoint; 
 value of the Chronicle Plays ; value of the Roman Plays. 
 Julius Caesar, for educational purposes. First step ; to read 
 it. How to pursue the study. The traveller's method of 
 comprehend'ng a city — Rome. Reconnaissance first, then 
 critical study. Shakespeare and Plutarch. The sidelights 
 and specific points of interest in Julius Caesar. Each play 
 must be studied with reference to its central idea. Illustra- 
 tions of this canon. The Tragic Quadrilateral ; Lear, 
 Othello, Macbeth and Hamlet. Natural movement and pro- 
 
8 CONTENTS. 
 
 cess of tragedy; from cause to crisis ; thence, through its 
 consequences, to the catastrophe. Illustration by triangle, 
 or by Gervinus' arch. Shakespeare preserves our sense of 
 moral proportion by adherence to this canon 
 
 LECTURE SECOND. 
 
 MACBETH. 
 
 Self-knowledge ; its attainment under the light of intelligence 
 and charity. The aid to be found in literature, the message 
 of one man's genius to all men's hearts. The perennial sway 
 of genius. Shakespeare, the supreme poet. His personality, 
 his genius, his psychology., Macbeth, his greatest poem. 
 Hallam's opinion ; Drake's, Campbell's, Gervinus'. Its 
 incompleteness in detail. An outline, or a torso ? Swin- 
 burne's view. Shakespeare's great heroic drama. Its 
 grandeur. Its problem obvious, but grand and pathetic. 
 Hamlet and Macbeth, psychological complements ; the 
 vacillating will, the lawless will. Web of the plot ; the story 
 told. Felicity in selection of time, place, plot and theme of 
 this tragedy ; the time, a golden age ; Scotland, a mysterious 
 land ; regicide, a timely and exciting theme ; the problem, a 
 contest for a human soul. 
 
 The Supernaturalism of Shakespeare. Popular beliefe as sym- 
 bols of unseen forces. The first words of a play its keynote ; 
 illustrations. The Weird Sisters. Shakespeare's intuition of 
 the loathsomeness of evil. The Weird Sisters real beings, 
 tempters, mousing owls of Satan, but with no power over the 
 conscience or will. Character of Macbeth at outset : lofty, 
 valiant, energetic, imaginative, blunt, reticent, lawlessly 
 ambitious. He entertains the temptation. His wife's part. 
 Duncan's innocence. The chiaro-oscuro of murder. The 
 action and reaction of murderous purpose. Character of 
 Lady Macbeth. Shakespeare's absolute artistic perceptions 
 in delineating characters illustrated. The feminine recoil in 
 Lady Macbeth, and her remorse and death. Macbeth's 
 indomitable energy and courage. The consequences of guilt ; 
 
CONTENTS. 9 
 
 the delxisive promises of Satan; moral isolation. The lesson 
 of Macbeth : temptation, guilt, perdition. " Fear God and 
 keep His commandments." 41 
 
 LECTURE THIRD. 
 
 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF HAMLET. 
 
 The primacy in letters. Homer's place; Shakespeare's. The 
 Baconian paradox; its weakness. Comparison of Bacon's 
 actual gifts with Shakespeare's. Goethe's inspiration from 
 Shakespeare. Coleridge's estimate. A world literature 
 impossible to any writer. Shakespeare's true relations to 
 literature, and first place in it. Hamlet, his greatest crea- 
 tion. Comparison with his other plays. Its defects and 
 — limitations but lays bare a human heart. Our debt to Goethe 
 for touching key-note of its meaning. Extracts from Wil- 
 helm Meister discussing the play. Lecturer's modifications 
 of same. Werder's antagonistic interpretation. W. W. 
 Story's criticism of the German critics. Coleridge's inter- 
 pretation ; Lowell's. Manifold solutions of the play, espe- 
 cially by the Germans ; Carl Karpf, Roetschl, Freiligrath, 
 Sievers, Rohrbach, Benedix, Rapp, Voltaire, Chateaubriand. ^/ 
 Was Hamlet's madness real or feigned? Representation, 
 the province of the poet. Shakespeare's purposS in Hamlet 
 to portray a man, and the defeat of the human will. Hamlet 
 and Macbeth are complements, illustrating individual re- 
 sponsibility for our actions. How these questions are an- 
 swered in each. Macbeth teaches the duty of rectitude of 
 will; Hamlet, of decision of will. Influence of Shakespeare's 
 germ of doubt on modern skepticism. Robert Elsmere. 
 Amiel's Journal. A Hamlet in real life. No escape from ' 
 the responsibility to act. The hesitation in the hero of Ham- \ / 
 let and the unexpectedness of the catastrophe necessary parts ' 
 of the tragic purpose. The lesson enforced, not in a type or 
 abstraction, but by portraying an individual man. Was it 
 himself? Kreyssig, Kenney, Hazlitt. " It is we who are Ham- 
 let." " A No Philosopher ; " the evolution of a human soul 
 
lO CONTENTS. 
 
 in its totality presents a portrait. Hamlet's situation beyond 
 his powers. His self-condemnation. Poetry is creation, not 
 analysis. Each character a portrait, plus Shakespeare. 
 Hamlet a likeness of the poet and of ourselves also — and of 
 another. An image of the philosophic sotd paralyzed by 
 defect of will. The lesson of prompt and resolute action. . . . "Tia 
 
 LECTURE FOURTH. 
 
 THE AUTHORSHIP OF HAMLET. 
 
 Their value my apology for extensive quotations in last lecture. 
 Who wrote the original Hamlet ? Three plays so named. 
 The accepted version, or last Hamlet, based on Quarto 
 Second, imdoubtedly Shakespeare's. The First Quarto. 
 Their titles. Their variance. Three theories to account for 
 the intrinsic character of Q I; 1st, A mangled copy of Q 2; 
 and, Clarendon Editors', partly Shakespeare's based on an 
 older play by another hand ; 3rd, an older form of play, but 
 Shakespeare's own. When Q 2 waswritten. Footnote on 
 the Inhibition. Title-pages of the two Quartos express their 
 real difference. How Q i came to be printed. Q 2 an evo- 
 lution from Q I . Q I probably an actor's copy used at the 
 Universities, but essentially Shakespearian. The First Ham- 
 let a hypothetical play, not extant; probably differing some- 
 what from Q I. This original draft generally assumed not 
 to be by Shakespeare. Burden of proof on those who deny 
 his authorship. Halliwell takes alien authorship for granted. 
 Review of evidence. Clarendon Editors believe it unworthy 
 of Shakespeare in 1589. Who was adequate to the task? 
 Fleay's conjecture of Marlowe's joint authorship. Most 
 opponents of Shakespeare's authorship argue from his want 
 of ability or preparation at that time. These arguments and 
 the Clarendon theory mutually destructive. The youthfiil 
 Shakespeare not equal to his later self, but superior to all 
 others. Probable date of composition of First Hamlet in 
 1587. C. A. Brown's opinion of its authorship. View of 
 Knight and others. Value of opinion of Clarendon Editors. 
 
CONTENTS. II 
 
 Francis Meres' list of plays considered. His opinion of 
 Shakespeare. Incorrect inference from his List. Temporary 
 eclipse of Hamlet in 1596, and reasons for its final revision 
 then. Malone's theory of Kyd's authorship. His incongru- 
 ous and untenable grounds. Skottowe, Collier, Dyce, Fleay, 
 Symonds, on this point. " The play within a play " as 
 evidence. Other instances of same. No evidence at all of 
 Kyd's authorship, and Marlowe's share a mere surmise. 
 Shakespeare alone equal to it. Shakespeare's, the only trag- 
 edies that survive. Two bands of literary wreckers at work 
 on Shakespeare. Elze's argument from Euphuism, of an 
 early production of Hamlet; also of its evolution from Ham- 
 net's birth and death. Nash's allusion in 1589. Fleay's 
 belief controverted that this refers to Shakespeare as an actor 
 only. "The Noverint." Greene's " Shakescene " in 1592. 
 Chettle's apology. Henslow's Diary says Hamlet was acted 
 in 1594. Lodge's reference in 1596. Summing up of the 
 evidence. The positive evidence all in favor of Shakespeare's 
 authorship. Flimsy character of the negative evidence. 
 Shakespeare's genius phenomenal, but not abnormal. His 
 long continued and undisputed title to this play and his 
 transcendent genius sufficient grounds for our belief. Incor- 
 rect notions of genius. Its elements. Shakespeare's con- 
 formity to its criteria. The author of First Hamlet 105 
 
 LECTURE FIFTH. 
 
 THE EVOLUTION OF HAMLET. 
 
 Shakespeare, the founder of the romantic drama. The other 
 dramatists, his successors and disciples. The exception, the 
 University Group. Fleay' surmise of collaboration with 
 Marlowe. Comment. Marlowe's ability. Baselessness of 
 the conjectural criticism that assigns Shakespeare's plays to 
 other writers. His competitors were contemporaries rather 
 than predecessors. Lyly and Peele ; Marlowe. Argument 
 based on Shakespeare's intellectual sterility, irrational; that 
 
12 CONTENTS. 
 
 on his youth, equally so. Marlowe's case. Undisputed con- 
 temporary opinion the only proof of authorship by any of the 
 dramatists of that day. Their personal obscurity. Shake- 
 speare's education. Ben Jonson's estimate of him. His 
 small indebtedness to others. His theatrical career. Venus 
 and Adonis. His ability to write the original Hamlet. Other 
 instances of equally precocious genius. Objections to Shake- 
 speare's abiUty ever to have written his plays. Smith's 
 "Bacon and Shakespeare." Theory of his nonentity con- 
 sidered. Was he a lawyer's clerk ? Lord Campbell's book; 
 Cartwright's. Inferences from his legal phraseology in Ham- 
 let. Public disregard of dramatic authors. Hartley Cole- 
 ridge's favorable deductions from the absence of proof of evil 
 against them. Shakespeare's worth as a man. Little known 
 of personality of writers even now. Contemporary opinion 
 of Shakespeare ; Ben Jonson, Meres, Weever, Sir John 
 Davies' verses. Shakespeare's call to the stage and his rapid 
 rise. His dramatic method and creative faculty. The 
 co-operative mode of producing plays ; their plots. Growth 
 of Hamlet. Revision in 1596. Reasons for it. Its pessimism. 
 W. W. Story's criticism. The personaUty in Hamlet. ' 
 Hamlet's death. Shakespeare's dream and waking. Pos- 
 sible disappointment in friendship. The dregs of sin. Entry 
 in Stationer's Register in 1602. Erroneous inferences. The 
 Last Hamlet saturated with Shakespeare's personality. 
 Hamlet, an evolution. The particular portrait becomes the 
 mirror of all mankind 134 
 
 LECTURE SIXTH. 
 
 THE PLOT OF HAMLET. 
 
 Toleration and fanaticism in critical literature. The full and 
 final significance of Hamlet not contained in first draft. The 
 highest ideals often originate in the least ambitious designs. 
 How Shakespeare came to create Hamlet ; the times, the 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 13 
 
 environment, the antecedents. The spirit of the age. Eliza- 
 bethan England, an era of awakening, action and question- 
 ing. The demand for truth. The intense nationality and 
 patriotism of Englishmen and of Shakespeare. His reverent 
 skepticism. His purpose in writing this play. Shakespeare 
 a poet, but also a courtier, a play-writer and a patriot. Pol- 
 itical uses of the drama 
 The political situation in 1586. Covert war. EHzabeth and 
 Mary Stuart. Public demand for death of latter. All of 
 Shakespeare's patrons among her enemies. Her execution 
 determined on. Attitude and character of James VI of Scot- 
 land. The Master of Gray's letter. King James to be 
 appeased. All means tried. The play as a political device; 
 instances. Loyal rage against Mary. Her death. Eliza- 
 beth's tortuous repudiation of it and peril to her Council. 
 Justification needed. The rebuke of regicide and of vacilla- 
 tion illustrated in Hamlet. ProbabiUty of Shakespeare's 
 employment. Dramatic fecundity of the day. The plot of 
 Hamlet fits the case of the murder of Damley. A pattern 
 for it twenty years old. Sir Wm. Drury's Letter. Proto- 
 types of the persons of the drama. My adoption of this 
 theory. Rev. Mr. Plumptre's pamphlet in 1796. Fumess' 
 summary of it. Resemblances of plot of Hamlet to the 
 murder of Damley. Likeness of Hamlet to King James in 
 character. Silberschlag's support of same theory. Com- 
 ments of Moberly and Hunter. Confirmation of arguments 
 by discovery of Q i in 1823. Grounds for this theory are : 
 1st, the motives of British Government for employing this 
 device; 2nd, resemblance of plot and details to death of 
 Darnley, and similarity of character of Hamlet and James. 
 Where and what is Shakespeare's Denmark. Its identity 
 with Scotland, illustrated by geography, customs and per- 
 sonal traits of the characters. Lowell's comment on the 
 condition of social transition in Hamlet. Scotland exactly 
 answers it. James VI's personal legacy of revenge. His 
 vacillating and equivocal nature and policy. Hamlet's self- 
 reproach for hesitation in revenge. Suggestions of the play 
 to the King 160 
 
14 CONTENTS. 
 
 LECTURE SEVENTH. 
 
 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET. 
 
 Origin of plot. Saxo-Grammaticus. Belleforest's version. 
 The English translation. Unlikeness to the play. Its date. 
 Contrasts. Comparison of legend and the play. The brief 
 widowhood of Mary Stuart and Gertrude. Their marriage 
 with the murderers. The physical beauty of The Ghost and 
 of Damley, and the ugliness of Bothwell and Claudius. The 
 tenure of the royal title. The title of Claudius as King 
 Consort, legal. Note on "imperial jointress." Succession 
 by bequest. Hamlet's claim. Dilemma of Hamlet. His 
 irresolution. Revenge for regicide taught him as a duty. 
 The penalty of a refusal of responsibility. The " Blood- 
 Tragedy," " Hamlet, Revenge ! ", a. stepping-stone to 
 Shakespeare's promotion. The son of miu-dered Damley 
 naturally the prototype of the son of miurdered Denmark. 
 Identity in character. Sir Antony Weldon's sketch of James. 
 Scott's, in "The Fortunes of Nigel." The Venetian Ambas- 
 sador's sketch. Bishop Racket's. Comparison of James 
 with these accounts. To Shakespeare and English loyalists — 
 the Coming Man, the Prince! Hamlet fits into this char- 
 acter. Is the creation of an ideal organic man in fiction pos- 
 sible without an actual archetype in real life ? Only mortals 
 become immortal, like Hamlet. Portraiture is representa- 
 tion of an organism as viewed in the mind of the artist. 
 An ideal is an image with something of the artist put into it. 
 Hamlet, at first altogether James, was evolved, by Shake- 
 speare putting himself into it. A Kentucky theory of Ham- 
 let as "a scoundrel." His brutality to Ophelia; his projects, 
 plots, indirections, quibblings, and cowardice. Contrasts in 
 James and Hamlet accounted for 
 
 Argument based on Hamlet's age. The same as James'. 
 Thirty years old in 1596. Proofs. Only twenty when play 
 first written in 1586. Proofs. Supposed inconsistency be- 
 tween first part of play and last due to the Revision. Fumi- 
 vall; HaUiwell's unauthorized sacrifice of the text. Peren- 
 nial youth of fictitious characters. Real people grow older. 
 
CONTENTS. 15 
 
 Hamlet grew older. " Full forty years " changed to " Full 
 thirty years," in the Revision. Goethe's portraiture of Polo- 
 nius; of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Bothwell's Confes- 
 sion. " The beauteous majesty of Denmark." Fronde's 
 Mary Stuart. Swinburne's apostrophe to her. Who was 
 Fortinbras? Summing up of the evidence. The body of 
 Hamlet is James; the Divinity that animates him, Shake- 
 speare 192 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The lectures contained in this volume were pre- 
 pared for the senior classes in Tulane College and in 
 the H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College for young 
 women. But, in deference to a wish expressed by 
 many lovers of literature, they were included in the 
 courses of free public lectures on literature and 
 science, delivered each year in Tulane University to 
 the people of New Orleans. Having proved accept- 
 able to large and intelligent audiences, they are now 
 submitted to other students who take an interest in 
 the subject, with the hope that they may add some- 
 thing in the way of suggestion to a reverent and 
 intelligent study of the great dramatist. 
 
 The author has adhered to the form of lectures 
 in which the subject was originally presented, since 
 it was the spontaneous cast of his thought, and 
 probably contains "more matter with less art" than 
 if he should attempt to conform it to a more regular 
 model. 
 
 In his interpretation of Shakespeare, truth, not 
 novelty, has been the writer's aiin ; and this, he 
 
1 8 PREFACE. 
 
 believes, is to be found in the broad lines laid down 
 by the giants of philosophical criticism, rather than 
 in the iridescence of paradox, as illustrated in lesser 
 lights. 
 
 The chief problem and main contention in these 
 papers is, however, for a proposition that may strike 
 the reader as probable, plausible, or possibly pre- 
 posterous, according to his point of view. The 
 theory is maintained that, in his original conception 
 of Hamlet, Shakespeare found the prototype of the 
 Prince in James VI. of Scotland, and that the plot 
 was greatly influenced by political events arising 
 out of the murder of Darnley and the execution of 
 Mary, Queen of Scots. The hypothesis is not alto- 
 gether novel, but the present writer arrived at it by 
 independent study, and has maintained it by facts 
 unknown to the first propounder. Whether con- 
 vincing or not, it is thought that the theory is founded 
 on sound induction, and will, at least, prove 
 curiously suggestive. If the readers of this book 
 receive from it a small proportion of the pleasure 
 the writer has felt in consulting the sources from 
 which it is derived, he will be amply repaid ; and 
 his object will be wholly attained if these lectures 
 shall be accepted among the judicious as in any 
 wise a valuable contribution to that body of Shakes- 
 pearean study which is doing so much to stimulate 
 and elevate the thought of our race. 
 
 Wm. Preston Johnston. 
 TuLANE University, 
 New Orleans, La, April, 1890. 
 
THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET 
 
 AND 
 
 OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS, 
 
 HOW TO STUDY SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 "What is the end of study ? let me know." 
 
 Love's Labor's Lost, /, i. 
 
 It is a matter of general remark that, in the last 
 few years, literature has become fashionable in New 
 Orleans. This means more than at first sight appears. 
 It means that our people, and especially our women, 
 have set for themselves a higher ideal than the old- 
 time dance and piano ; and I say this without the 
 slightest disrespect for these or any other legitimate 
 forms of recreation. The feeling has come home to 
 our best and strongest women, those who mould and 
 sway the opinions of the mass, that they must not 
 delay to enter into that higher realm of thought 
 which lifts humanity, even so much as one step, 
 nearer to the Divine Archetype. And they have 
 judged aright when they decided that this was to be 
 found in the best literature. For the best literature 
 embodies the best thought of the highest thnkers, 
 
20 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET. 
 
 addressed to the hearts of all mankind. That true 
 literature is the mother of culture, none will gainsay 
 who have nursed at her breast Literature, to be true, 
 must be holy, catholic, apostolic. It is one form of 
 the Church of God, one medium by which the Divine 
 spirit, through human means, reveals the divine truth 
 to human hearts. It is not true literature unless it is 
 holy, holy in every sense, healthgiving and inspiring 
 to the moral nature; catholic, addressed to all hearts, 
 to our common humanity; apostolic, the divine mes- 
 sage, the truth once delivered to the saints, the gos- 
 pel or word of God carried forth to the world by 
 those who are heaven-chosen to that end. Let me 
 say, once for all, that any specious form of falsehood 
 or diablerie, any ministration to the baser nature of 
 man, is neither true art nor true literature. It is 
 sham and veneering that will blister and peel and go 
 to pieces under any honest heat of discussion. That 
 an aspiration for true literature exists to-day in New 
 Orleans is, therefore, certainly a most encouraging 
 feature of our society. The question is how this 
 University may contribute somewhat towards grati- 
 fying so generous an impulse. 
 
 To this end we have had the honor this year, 
 through the kindness of Professors Ficklen and For- 
 tier, to open up to you a view of the early dramatic 
 literature of England and France, the beginnings of 
 the Drama ; for, strangely enough, under the much 
 mixed morality of the Drama, its masquerading and 
 its rough and robust wrestling with truth, we often 
 perceive the ethical problem more clearly than when 
 formulated as sententious morality. It is in no 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 21 
 
 spirit of depreciation or disparagement of other forms 
 of literature, however, that we invite you to some 
 studies in the drama, pointing out a pathway for 
 your footsteps rather than attempting to garner for 
 you its full sheaves. History and fiction are of the 
 utmost importance for both training and inspiration, 
 and may evoke the highest powers of mind and 
 soul. Poetry warms the heart, kindles the intellect, 
 and exalts the imagination. But in no other depart- 
 ment of literature is the implicit moral culture which 
 reveals character-growth more effective than in the 
 Drama. 
 
 When we speak of the Drama the mind naturally 
 reverts to the plays of Shakespeare. Next to the 
 Bible they have the strongest hold on the thought 
 of the civilized world. Without inquiring here into 
 the cause, such is undoubtedly the fact They fur- 
 nish an inexhaustible field for the ingenuity of the 
 commentator, whether his criticism touches on the 
 archaeology, the philology, or the philosophy, con- 
 tained in the text. In them the psychologist realizes 
 the evolution of human character in its artistic com- 
 pleteness, under the pressure of moral circumstances 
 and of temptation, while the great, uncritical pubHc 
 consumes edition after edition of his works, and 
 notes, essays, and commentaries innumerable, with 
 as real a sense of gratification. The rude boards of 
 the provincial theatre and the great temples of dra- 
 matic art alike resound to the utterances of the bard, 
 century after century, while boasted rivals seem but 
 an ephemeral and flitting fashion, to-day in vogue, 
 to-morrow forgotten. The popularity of Shakespeare 
 
22 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 is apparently limitless and growing ; and if, some- 
 times, it exhibits the absurdities and erratic motions 
 that deform every cultus and every form of hero- 
 virorship, yet we cannot disbelieve that it rests upon 
 a real foundation, and that a solid substratum, a 
 true bed-rock of genius, underlies the masterpieces 
 of the prince of dramatists. One great advantage 
 to be derived from the selection of Shakespeare as a 
 study by those who are entering upon the pursuits of 
 literature is that his works are deeply interesting ; 
 and it is hard to over-estimate the importance of a 
 genuine interest in the subject of any study. It 
 means present vigilant attention, vivid apprehension, 
 clear and complete conceptions, fresh and enduring 
 recollection. It means business. It means mastery. 
 It means appropriation, use, ownership, of a subject 
 
 But these plays are not merely current coin ; they 
 are thought-breeders. They arouse the dormant or 
 sluggish imagination. They people the mind, not 
 with lay figures, but with living beings, who cry 
 out continually to the heart and soul, "Awake; 
 beware." They present the problems of existence, 
 not in formulas, but in concrete men and women, 
 saying, doing, and thinking, as we say, do, and 
 think, and subjected to the immutable law of moral 
 cause and consequence. Hence Shakespeare's plays 
 are a philosophy more profound than the Dialogues 
 of Plato and the Socratic discussions, in that they 
 are exactly conformed to nature. 
 
 If the literary models of Greece and Rome are 
 the sole standards of art, the dramas of Shakespeare 
 are not art, because they vary from these standards. 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 
 
 23 
 
 But if a Gothic cathedral embodies art, though in 
 forms infinitely more complex, as truly as the 
 Parthenon, then Hamlet, as well as Antigone, is 
 art. If the landscapes of Church, or the drawings 
 of Dore, are legitimate expressions of our aesthetic 
 nature as surely as bas-reliefs from Athens or 
 Olympia, then the Merchant of Venice and the 
 Tempest are as true to fundamental art canons as 
 the Iliad, the A^cestis, or the Birds. Shakespeare's 
 creative genius constituted a new cycle of art, the 
 cycle of nature as distinguished from that of con- 
 ventional form ; and what can be more inspiring 
 than to receive the key to a new realm of art .' 
 
 Shakespeare, next to the Bible, is the best manual 
 in which to study rhetoric ; and for the simple reason 
 that rhetoric is the science and art of most effectively 
 expressing thought in language, and in Shakespeare 
 the language does not merely clothe the thought, 
 but actually embodies it. His "beauties," as they 
 are called, admirable thoughts couched in words of 
 exquisite fitness, have entered into the proverbial 
 philosophy of the British race; it may be said, 
 indeed, into the body of aphoristic wisdom of the 
 whole world. The sayings of the persons of his 
 drama have crystallized into gems of thought, and 
 longer passages linger, like familiar strains, in aged 
 and weary memories. 
 
 These works afford opportunity for the least irk- 
 some form of philological study. When language 
 study is pursued by the historical method, backward 
 or forward, we find in the sunburst of the Shake- 
 spearean drama its most vivid and iinaginative form. 
 
24 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 and a phase absolutely necessary to a complete 
 comprehension of the genius of the English tongue. 
 
 Many will be found to agree with me that for 
 a serious study of English literature, whoever else 
 may be named as second, Shakespeare must be 
 placed first. He is to us what Homer was to the 
 Greeks. I may say, though with diffidence, he is 
 more. He is our teacher, master, educator, in that 
 prime philosophy, a knowledge of the human heart. 
 Should we not make his works, then, a study rather 
 than a pastime ? If it be wise to sit where the 
 chance drops of his world-wisdom may fall upon 
 and bedew our robes, were it not better to go forth 
 like him who walks in an April shower, when spring 
 scatters her jewels with prodigal hand, till all our 
 garments are moist and saturate with the descending 
 floods ? Is it not better to be the disciple of the 
 largest and most liberal sage in all our literature 
 than to speak in the words of any other master.? 
 
 But let us suppose it admitted that Shakespeare is 
 the most, or at least a most, desirable study for the 
 lover of literature, how are we to get the best results 
 from- such study ? The method to be adopted must 
 of course depend largely on the end in view, and 
 will vary with the age, attainment, experience, and 
 tastes of the student; and it must also depend largely, 
 of course, upon the special culture of the teacher, and 
 the standpoint from which he approaches his subject. 
 But it may be laid down as a fundamental canon 
 in the study of literature that it must be pursued in 
 the literature itself, and not in what is said about it 
 That fierce Shakespearian, Richard Grant White, 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 
 
 25 
 
 says of his book, "Shakespeare's Scholar:" "It 
 attempts not to decide what Shakespeare might have 
 written or what he could have written, or to seek the 
 interpretation of his thoughts from those who pro- 
 claim themselves his prophets, but to learn from him 
 what he did write, and to study to understand that in 
 the submissive yet still inquiring spirit with which a 
 neophyte listens to the teachings of a revered and no 
 less beloved master." And then he goes on to casti- 
 gfate "the editors, commentators, and verbal critics," 
 rejoicing that he has "kept free from the contamina- 
 tion and perversion of their instruction." 
 
 While Mr. White was undoubtedly correct in his 
 main idea, and a very good understanding may be 
 had of the current of Shakespeare's thought by 
 reverent and unaided study of his text, few readers 
 will be found to agree with him, when he says, " It 
 is folly to say that the writings of such a man need 
 notes and comments to enable readers of ordinary 
 intelligence to apprehend their full meaning." It all 
 depends on what the notes are. The methods pur- 
 sued by the commentators of the last century, the 
 egotistic and elephantine dogmatism of Warburton 
 and Johnson and the wild guesses of many others, 
 are enough to provoke a more saint-like temper than 
 Mr. White's. They are well parodied by that critic 
 who said, "Shakespeare could not have written : 
 
 ' Sermons in stones, books in the running brooks. 
 And good in everything : ' 
 
 that was nonsense. He must have written : 'Ser- 
 mons in books, stones in the running brooks ; ' those 
 •w&iQ/acts that could be proved." 
 
26 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 "A reverent study," as White says, will, however, 
 accomplish much. Indeed, this is the main thing ; 
 Study, not skirmishing. Many, I trust, will be found 
 in this audience willing to devote their time to this 
 study, and it will be the object of this lecture, with- 
 out attempting at all to exhaust the subject, to fur- 
 nish a few hints that may prove useful to such as 
 are in earnest in the matter. And I may say here 
 that I feel all the real difficulties involved in my 
 present attempt, which must presuppose in my 
 audience an interest already established in the topic ; 
 and I must rely for success more upon the instruc- 
 tion conveyed than upon the amusement that is 
 generally looked for in the lecture-hall. 
 
 Having determined to study Shakespeare, the first 
 step to be taken is to discover where his writings are 
 to be found, as he wrote them. After almost three 
 hundred years of shifting and change — of process-^ 
 the text has nearly, though not quite, settled down to 
 a standard, which may, or may not, be what the poet 
 wrote. This standard, more fluctuating than a bi-me- 
 tallic one, sways gently to and fro between Knight 
 and White and Wright, and Hudson and Halliwell 
 and Hazlitt, and many, many more, of whom each 
 reader may take his choice. As a rule, I am content 
 with the admirable Clarendon edition of Shake- 
 speare's Plays, though Furness furnishes us with a 
 variety of versions in his Variorum editions, so that 
 a captious critic can pursue therein the round of 
 Shakespearian study with a go-as-you-please gait. 
 Scientific criticism has, in the crucible of common- 
 sense, reduced much of the crude ore of eighteenth 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 27 
 
 century commentary, and given us genuine metal in 
 its stead as the result. But the youthful student may 
 well ask : "Why was all this necessary? Why not 
 give us just what Shakespeare wrote ? " That is 
 exactly what the labor of a hundred commentators 
 means. But again it will be inquired: "Why all 
 their toil?" And the reply is, "To arrive at what he 
 actually did write." 
 
 It is familiar, of course, to Shakespearian scholars 
 that the Plays of Shakespeare were not printed until 
 1623, seven years after his death, and then in the 
 form known as the First Folio, which, though evi- 
 dently full of flagrant errors, "is the only admitted 
 authority for the text of his dramatic works. " The 
 First Folio contemned previous editions, as "stolen 
 and surreptitious copies, maimed and deformed by 
 the frauds and stealths of injurious impostors," and 
 aimed to give a true copy of Shakespeare's plays ; 
 but that enthusiastic student of Shakespeare, Richard 
 Grant White, scarcely overestimates the defects of the 
 First Folio itself in the following animated descrip- 
 "tion of it. "Such is the authority of this First 
 Folio, that had it been printed with ordinary care, 
 there would have been no appeal from its text ; and 
 editorial labors in the publication of Shakespeare's 
 works, except from such as might think it necessary 
 and proper to obtrude explanatory notes and critical 
 comments upon his readers, would have been not 
 only without justification but without opportunity. 
 But, unfortunately, this precious folio is one of the 
 worst printed books that ever issued from the press. 
 It is filled with the grossest possible errors in orlhog- 
 
28 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 raphy, punctuation, and arrangement. It is not sur- 
 prising that Mr. Collier estimates the corrections of 
 ' minor errors ' — that is, of mere palpable misspell- 
 ing and mispunctuation — in his amended folio, at 
 twenty thousand. The first folio must contain quite 
 as many such blunders ; and the second is worse in 
 this respect than the first. But, beside minor errors, 
 the correction of which is obvious, words are so 
 transformed as to be past recognition, even with the 
 aid of the context ; lines are transposed ; sentences 
 are sometimes broken by a full point followed 
 by a capital letter, and other times have their 
 members displaced and mingled in incomprehensi- 
 ble confusion ; verse printed as prose, and prose 
 as verse ; speeches belonging to one character 
 are given to another ; and, in brief, all the 
 possible varieties of typographical derangement 
 abound in that volume, in the careful printing of 
 which of all others, save one, the world was most 
 interested. This it is which has made the labors of 
 careful and learned editors necessary for the text of 
 Shakespeare ; and which has furnished the excuse 
 for the exhibition of more pedantry, foolishness, con- 
 ceit, and presumption than have been exhibited upon 
 any other subject — always except that of religion." 
 In the rectification of these errors, the commenta- 
 tors have gone back to earlier editions of single plays 
 for comparison, and to conjectural emendations based 
 upon common sense, uncommon sense, and often 
 upon nonsense. Every resource of antiquarian zeal, 
 philological training, and contemporaneous illustra- 
 tion has been invoked to redeem the text from its 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 29 
 
 imperfections. That the result has not been fully 
 attained as yet is only to say that human nature is 
 fallible ; but we have to-day practically a far better 
 expression of the poet's thought than could probably 
 have been heard on any stage, and certainly than 
 could have been read in any book or manuscript, 
 existing in his lifetime, or until the present time. 
 
 In academic instruction a much greater share is 
 given to philological training, to the linguistics of 
 the author, than would be practicable or profitable 
 under other circumstances ; and even here it is often 
 carried, as I have sometimes felt in my own teach- 
 ing of college classes, further than is wise, For, 
 however valuable verbal discipline may be to the 
 scholar, it is very easy to sacrifice to it more im- 
 portant considerations. The sesthetic value of the 
 author and the artistic form of his work have a 
 higher claim upon the attention of the student, while 
 the psychological side of his dramatic personages 
 and the evolution of character by touches which are 
 consummate, because the perfection of the natural 
 method in art and literature, demand our closest 
 attention. Last and best, perhaps, is the ethical 
 aspect, in which, viewing a play as an organic unit, 
 we grasp its ethical content, that implicit moral prob- 
 lem which, though not visibly exposed to the eye, 
 strikes the mind and rings the tocsin of the heart 
 and conscience like a fire alarm. Let us see how, 
 taking up the^udy of Shakespeare's Plays, we may 
 get at as much of all this as is possible under 
 ordinarily favorable circumstances. 
 
 In the first place, I should say, do not begin with 
 
30 
 
 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET. 
 
 too wide a plan, unless everything concurs to for- 
 ward your design. Recollect that an encyclopaedia, 
 useful as it is for reference, is the worst text-book 
 and the worst literature in the world, and that you 
 get les6 of real history in a universal history than, I 
 might say, in the biography of one great man — 
 Caesar, or Cromwell, or Bonaparte, or Washington. 
 If the student chance to be an ardent lover of that 
 grand segment of English history which began with 
 Runnymede and the Magna Charta, and closed with 
 the Reformation, the Renaissance, and the Rise of 
 Democratic Thought, he may select for his study 
 Shakespeare's magnificent cycle of historical dramas, 
 and even supplement them with the Chronicle plays 
 of his contemporaries, which fill the gaps he has 
 left. In these can be traced English history from 
 King John to Henry VIII. , embodied in a stirring 
 form of English literature ; and, if backed, verified, 
 and corrected by a reasonable knowledge of the 
 annals of the times, it will present to the mind a 
 most vivid picture of the age of chivalry. The 
 series is, in fact, though not in form, a grand trilogy, 
 in which liberty lifts itself, like the rainbow's arch, 
 from its rugged base of feudal privilege under the 
 Plantagenets to its splendid culmination in the con- 
 quest of France, and then declines to the catastrophe 
 of despotism under the Tudors. In the blended 
 colors of historic circumstance, personal interven- 
 tion, and race-characteristics, we may trace the 
 unerring curve of cause and consequence, and 
 behold the national progress bridging with airy span 
 the mental horizon, like a structure of the Gods set 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 31 
 
 on high by the hand of destiny. This is a noble 
 and suggestive course of study for the lover of 
 history. I do not say it is the best, for the Roman 
 Plays, Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, and Antony and 
 Cleopatra afford an equal field of research and com- 
 parative historical study, and in a finer form of 
 literature than the English Chronicle Plays. Indeed, 
 there is no single play which has been more gener- 
 ally used for educational purposes than Julius Caesar. 
 While by no means the loftiest or most perfect type 
 of Shakespeare's tragedy, it contains so many excel- 
 lences that it is well fitted for a text-book in this 
 department of study. Craik's "English of Shake- 
 speare," Abbott's Shakespearian Grammar, Rolfe's, 
 or the Clarendon, edition of the play, and numer- 
 ous commentaries can be drawn into aids' in this 
 study. 
 
 Suppose now we select Julius Caesar as our open- 
 ing study, what is the first step to be taken ? To 
 read it. Simple as this rule appears, it is not always 
 followed; and the professor or lecturer often en- 
 gages in the discussion of a play, known to his 
 listeners only after the vaguest fashion. It is best 
 for the learner to read it in his own way, at home, 
 getting what he can out of it without too much effort, 
 and laying hold on what most interests him indi- 
 vidually. Then, when he comes to the audience 
 chamber, the teacher can take him from one point 
 of view to another, until the whole tragedy gathers 
 form and rises before his vision like some fair city as 
 seen from its acropolis. 
 
 To the traveller who for the first time visits Rome 
 
32 
 
 THE PKOTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 the natural impulse must arise at once to ascend the 
 Capitol, or St. Peter's dome, and with a sweep of the 
 eye to take in the panorama of the ages, as marked 
 out in the mouldering monuments at his feet. The 
 mingled mass of ruins, relics, and recent structures 
 would convey in some half-intelligible way a con- 
 ception of the greatness and decay, the vicissitudes 
 and vitality, of the Eternal City. Gradually his 
 heart would become attuned to the key-note of fallen 
 glory, to whose rhythm its history for fifteen cen- 
 turies has been set ; and as his ear caught the far-off 
 strains of imperial sway, and the still more distant 
 martial music of republican masterhood, the whole 
 orchestra of the past would burst upon his soul. 
 Descending to its streets, he would stand in the 
 Forum, traverse the ancient ways, gaze upon de- 
 serted temples, arches of triumph, and a shattered 
 Colosseum, until the deeds of kings, consuls, em- 
 perors, and popes, and the words of poets, orators, 
 historians, and philosophers, rose to his memory and 
 grouped themselves into a perpetual pageant. Let 
 him once again mount to his coign of vantage, and 
 look down upon the maze below. With what an 
 unsealed vision will he now survey the scene. An 
 old, and an older, Rome rise before him like exhala- 
 tions, and he sees each, concrete, definite, entire. 
 Rome lives again. The analogy to the scholar who 
 first approaches some masterpiece of literature with 
 reverential eye is too close and too obvious to be 
 disregarde4. He first surveys, then studies in its 
 details, and then groups into one broad, distinct, and 
 powerful conception the entire work. It is thus that 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 
 
 33 
 
 a drama of Shakespeare may be mastered and 
 brought withjn our intellectual dominion. 
 
 Hence it seems judicious first to read the play as a 
 whole, taking- in as much of it as the mind's eye 
 can readily cover and understand with its unaided 
 power. This reconnaissance made, we come down 
 to our maps, and compare them critically with the 
 topography and all its landmarks ; that is to say, we 
 go to the sources of historical information from 
 which Shakespeare wove the plot and evolved the 
 drama, say, of Julius Caesar. These we find in the 
 pages of Plutarch ; and cold, indeed, must be the 
 imagination of the youth which does not kindle 
 under the inspiration of the old Greek biographer 
 and moralist. Yet in reading the Julius Caesar of 
 Shakespeare and the lives of the Romans by Plu- 
 tarch, one cannot but be struck with the immense 
 difference between a man of first-rate talents and 
 a man of genius ; though it would be fairer to say, 
 between Shakespeare and any other writer. A por- 
 traiture by Plutarch stands like the Parthenon, a per- 
 fect building, in the cold gray of dawn ; but, when the 
 sunhght of Shakespeare's creative force falls upon its 
 front, from the Acropolis which -serves as its pedestal 
 to its very summit it glows with the divine splendor 
 of intellectual illumination. 
 
 Still, Plutarch's Lives cannot be called history, 
 according to our modern philosophical and scientific 
 conception of history, as actual fact permeated with 
 essential truth. They are moral ideals illustrated by 
 legendary pictures. If the purpose of the teacher 
 embraces in its scope historical instruction, as has 
 
34 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 generally been my own case, he may properly 
 require some reading of the events of the Julian 
 period from such manual as may be preferred, and, 
 if possible, a rapid study of Froude's vivid biography 
 of "the foremost man of all this world." Further, 
 it will certainly be a great gain if the teacher can, 
 during these studies, point out how nearly each 
 author conforms to actual fact and how nearly to 
 ideal verity, and, noting their discrepancies, invite 
 inquiry and diecussion of whatever questions may 
 arise, great and small, whether it be the true charac- 
 ters of the arch-conspirators, or even the names, 
 spelling, and birthplaces of the more obscure. And 
 here it may be added that this is not so much for 
 the value of the facts themselves, as for their use as 
 pegs to hang thoughts upon, links in the mnemotech- 
 nic chain which binds together the whole body of 
 the argument. 
 
 It may properly be asked whether this method 
 does not really violate the grand canon laid down 
 in the beginning o&this essay, that -literature should 
 be taught in literature, and not in what is said about 
 it. There is danger of this, and it must be avoided. 
 The excursions should be rapid and not too wide. 
 But still, to see any object distinctly, to comprehend 
 it fully, we must not be content with a glance or 
 even a single view of it ; we mu.st see it under every 
 light and shadow, and from every point of view. 
 And if we make our prime study of the play of 
 Julius Caesar historical, it is because the author him- 
 self conceives it as real history, though under some- 
 what crude forms. On the other hand, in the study 
 
AND OTHER SBAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 35 
 
 of other plays, such as the Tempest or As You 
 Like It, the historical element may be very sum- 
 marily dealt with, or even entirely neglected. 
 
 Now, when we again take up the play, it is no 
 longer a play ; it is a life. And it is not a screed 
 about a life, but a live life being lived ; people plan- 
 ning, plotting, striving, quarrelling, killing, and dying 
 greatly and nobly. As then we proceed to review 
 the drama, scene by scene and act by act, the ques- 
 tion continually arises, what bearing has this word, 
 or passage, or rendering on the theories, political, 
 ethical, or psychological, which have- been engaging 
 our attention. Comment, suggestion, and inquiry 
 should invite the student to the contemplation- and 
 solution of these. Was Caesar's usurpation neces- 
 sary or justifiable? Was his genius for destruction 
 or for organization ? By what casuistry do the 
 champions of de jure and de facto governments vin- 
 dicate the protagonists of the Roman Common- 
 wealth ? Was Caesar rightfully slain ? Should Brutus 
 have died as he did ? What was Caesar's appari- 
 tion ? But it is not necessary to multiply these 
 questions. They will occur to each one according 
 to his mental constitution or education. Their con- 
 sideration and solution set the student thinking, and 
 develop the power to originate and discuss, which is 
 one grand object of literary culture. 
 
 By this time each student has his theory, right 
 or wrong, of the whole play. In working out 
 the details, the language has become familiar 
 by repeated reference. Unconsciously almost, the 
 reajier has caught the spirit of the play, and the 
 
36 THE PROTOTYPE 0F HAMLET, 
 
 words which embody it rise naturally to his lips. 
 But they rise, not with parrot-like iteration, but as 
 the expression of kindling thought. The time has 
 now arrived for the student to formulate his views in 
 well-considered essays, and to become familiar with 
 the beauty, force, and fitness of the more splendid < 
 or significant passages, sounding their depths, and 
 plucking out the very heart of their mystery. 
 
 During the whole of the aforementioned course 
 of instruction the philological value of particular 
 words, and their history and use, may be brought 
 under discussion. With such a text-book in hand as 
 Craik's English of Shakespeare, the danger is of 
 doing too much rather than too little of this sort of 
 work. To allure the student into paths of English 
 philology, not to exact from him a formal task 
 therein, but still more to elucidate the text, should 
 be the teacher's object. Hence, these investiga- 
 tions should be incidental, and not as the goal of 
 steady effort. 
 
 It is not too much to say that a body of students 
 will rise from a study of Julius Csesar according to 
 the method I have sketched, not only enlightened 
 by valuable information and fuller knowledge of how 
 to obtain it, but with a larger view of the value of 
 literature itself and keener appetite for its pursuits ; 
 in a word, liberalized, set free from that thraldom to 
 the letter which kills high thought, and with their 
 feet set in the right path toward a true culture. 
 
 I might here pause, as the foregoing illustrates 
 one method of studying Shakespeare, which has 
 greatly commended itself to me. But it may be 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN' PROBLEMS. 37 
 
 well to remark that each play must be studied with 
 reference to its centre of interest, and with a treat- 
 ment varying according to its central idea. Guided 
 by this canon, the reader, if his taste or fancy 
 attracts him to the comedy rather than the tragedy 
 ' of Shakespeare, will find therein a wonderfully wide 
 range of character, incident, and eloquent or witty 
 speech, and always, too, a cenbal or dominant idea 
 that will repay his search. The Merchant of Venice 
 oscillates between extremes, from the tender dal- 
 liance of moonlit lovers to the "perilous verge of 
 intensest tragic motive, while, in elaborating its plan 
 of construction, Gervinus traces through the tangle 
 of its plots a design arabesque in its intricacy. As 
 You Like It has been made familiar to lovers of the 
 stage by many charming actresses, and the inelan- 
 choly Jaques, with his pessimistic meditations, is 
 better known than any actual gentleman of his day. 
 And under the airy movement and poetic concep- 
 tion of the Tempest is veiled a very mine of spiri- 
 tual force, as the sunimer cloud is charged with the 
 electric bolt. 
 
 Still guided by this canon, we may, for instance, 
 take up that superb Quadrilateral of Tragedy, whose 
 grim bastions frown down upon all adventure that 
 would scale their impregnable ramparts ; for Lear, 
 Othello, Macbeth, and Hamlet still stand as the very 
 citadel of Shakespeare's fame. Li these, as in most 
 of Shakespeare's tragedies, we may discover the 
 normal evolution of the plot, as pointed out by 
 Gervinus, and which must' have been suggested by 
 an unerring instinct of genius to Shakespeare. The 
 
38 
 
 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 natural movement and process of tragedy is from 
 cause to crisis, and from crisis to catastrophe. A 
 triangle, or 'perhaps an arch, as suggested by Ger- 
 vinus, will fairly present the development of the 
 
 tragic process from cause to catastrophe. 
 
 / 
 
 Criris. 
 
 The first two acts should exhibit the moral and 
 intellectual conflict between opposing motives, 
 which ought naturally to culminate near the middle 
 of the third act, or centre of a play, in a decisive 
 deed, the consequences of which should, in the 
 latter half of the tragedy, show its necessary effect in 
 the final catastrophe. The opening scenes display 
 the persons of the drama, and lay down the condi- 
 tions of the plot. The controlling motive should 
 there develop itself, leading the protagonist, or hero, 
 to that event which constitutes the crisis of the 
 action, and which, under the decision of his free- 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 39 
 
 will, becomes a destiny to him. He has by his own 
 deeds made a bed, and must lie in it. He has dug a 
 pit, and he will fall into it. He has set toils, and he 
 cannot escape from them. As a chief interest in the 
 causative, or early, half of the tragedy is in observ- 
 ing the oscillation of the balance, the scruple that 
 decides the tempted man in making choice of his 
 course, so in the last two acts we are aroused to 
 a still keener curiosity, and perhaps sympathy, in 
 watching his struggle to escape from the conse- 
 quences of his act, or in witnessing the silent and 
 inevitable steps by which, guiding his descent to 
 the catastrophe, Nemesis exacts her penalty, through 
 expiation or destruction. 
 
 In a drama thus constructed, the attention is kept 
 aroused, the sense of symmetry is satisfied by a just 
 balance of the parts, and the moral lesson which is 
 the ultimate purpose of the tragedy is duly and 
 clearly enforced. Shakespeare, with all his alleged 
 disregard for form, preserves, as a rule, the sense of 
 moral proportion in his plays by an adherence to 
 this canon of dramatic construction, constituting, as 
 it does, the fundamental and only genuine unity in 
 the playwright's art. 
 
 In Macbeth and Hamlet the historical and mythi- 
 cal element admit and require some discussion, but 
 the main interest centres on their psychology, and 
 this has been illustrated by so many hands as to 
 demand here a mere allusion. The reaction of 
 motive and deed upon character, resulting in conse- 
 quences which form the staple of the drama, will, in 
 these tragedies, employ the powers of instructor and 
 
40 J hE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET. 
 
 disciple in the work of analysis, and finally in that 
 supreme effort of reconstruction which beholds the 
 spiritual image that is mirrored in the incidents of 
 the play, and evolves its moral purpose from shadowy 
 belongings. 
 
 The artistic beauty and wonderful imagery of these 
 tragedies are brought out in their full force while 
 following the clue of character woven into their 
 royal drapery ; and tangled and perhaps insoluble 
 mysteries of human destiny are proposed, which 
 test and measurably baffle our curiosity and subtle 
 questioning. 
 
 In the short course of lectures which I purpose to 
 give, it is possible to approach the study of the 
 Shakespearian drama from only one or two sides. 
 If broader aspects of the theme are desired, as they 
 certainly are most desirable, they are at hand in the 
 most alluring form, and can be found in the essays 
 of Hudson, Whipple, Lowell, Richard Grant White, 
 Charles Knight, and many others. 
 
 The lectures following will be confined to a single 
 one on Macbeth, in which its ethical aspects are 
 more particularly treated, and five lectures on Ham- 
 let, which I hope may not prove unacceptable to the 
 lovers of the nobler forms of the drama. If they 
 shall stimulate thought, invite inquiry, and lead to a 
 more correct appreciation of our greatest poet, their 
 object will have been answered. 
 
 Personally, I am amply rewarded if I can in the 
 least do my part to stir the teeming literary aspira- 
 tion of New Orleans to a calm and loving survey of 
 the higher walks of literature. 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 41 
 
 MACBETH. 
 
 " Thriftless ambition that will ravin up 
 Thine own life's means." 
 
 Macbeth, II., 4. 
 
 Know thyself. Such is the mandate of the best 
 Greek philosophy, and such the mandate of the last 
 scientific criticism. We all desire knowledge, and 
 this self-knowledge especially invites our inquiry. 
 But there is no algebra of the understanding which 
 has formulated the spiritual nature in abstract terms. 
 Our only really valuable knowledge of the imma- 
 terial spirit comes to us in a different way. It breaks 
 upon us, as we get out of the darkness into the light, 
 by looking steadily at man — at his spiritual essence, 
 as it is manifested all about us, in the meanest as 
 well as in the greatest. And we grasp this knowl- 
 edge in its fulness by looking at this poor human 
 soul, not under the glare of artificial lights, but in the 
 softened glow of God's own sunshine, under the 
 chastening influence of that sweet charity which 
 is the divinest of our faculties. This light of intelli- 
 gence, and this sweetness of charity together consti- 
 tute that culture which sums up modern philosophic 
 education. 
 
 It is not for all of us, or any of us, to walk in the 
 
4'? THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 full light of the meridian sun ; perhaps it is not best 
 for us so to do ; but still we must seek for light 
 everywhere. One of our best aids in this acquisi- 
 tion of self-knowledge, this clear conception of the 
 human soul, is found in literature. I mean by litera- 
 ture the message of one man's genius to all men's 
 hearts. The great masters, the leaders of thought, 
 the princes and pontiffs of poesy and philosophy, the 
 bards and sages, have each their message, fire-winged 
 and voiceful, which summons its circle of disciples, 
 and creates its school or sect. Take Homer, and 
 now, twenty-five centuries having passed, we see 
 Great Britain's Prime Ministers, Gladstone, master of 
 finatK:e, leaving his budget to explain the intricacies 
 of Homeric thought, and Derby, the sturdy states- 
 man, translating the resounding lines of the Iliad 
 into English verse ; and Pope and Cowper, and 
 Lang, and our American Bryant, and a hundred 
 more, each making his own version of the father of 
 song. Think how Aristotle has swayed the minds of 
 age after age of reasoners, and how Plato still asserts 
 a claim to dominion wherever philosophy lifts her 
 eyes to the stars. But I may not dwell too long on 
 this quickening power of literature, with its divine 
 messages to the human race, lest I be drawn aside 
 from the special subject of this essay. 
 
 When we look abroad through the wide provinces 
 of literature for a man to whom all concede that 
 divine insight into the human soul which is the real 
 definition of genius, and from whose words we may 
 catch its inspiration, and obtain that self-knowledge 
 which is literature's highest function, common 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 43 
 
 acclaim, the voice of the many and the voice of the 
 mighty, accords a supreme excellence to Shake- 
 speare. Critic and philosopher and poet unite in 
 assigning to "the poor player" a seat in the trium- 
 virate of the world's greatest thinkers. In the very 
 slag and cinder of his volcanic genius lie embedded 
 precious bits of moral truth and sparkling gems of 
 thought, but his greatest creations have become our 
 ideals of philosophy and art. 
 
 Time forbids that I should enter here on any 
 extended discussion of the characteristics of the man 
 Shakespeare and of his genius. ■ But it is a pleasant 
 thought that enough of him is known to leave the 
 image of a calm and genial man, whose broad 
 humanity was lit up by the sunshine of a cheerful, 
 happy temper. His intellect was subtle, playful, and 
 capacious ; and Coleridge told but half the tale when 
 he named him "the myriad-minded." In the radiant 
 circle of Elizabethan dramatists, each a star of the 
 first splendor, he was the central sun. He is the 
 greatest of English poets. 
 
 The Elizabethan drama was the natural outgrowth 
 of previous literary and social conditions, and the 
 highest legitimate embodiment of the poetry of the 
 age. It was not an accidental or conventional mode 
 of expression with Shakespeare and his contempo- 
 raries, but the normal, necessary and spontaneous 
 image of their minds. With his grand imagination, 
 his all-embracing sympathy with man and nature, 
 and his wonderful and intuitive insight into the 
 human heart, he was enabled, in his own language, 
 " to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature ; to show 
 
44 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the 
 very age and body of the time his form and pressure. " 
 Thus Shakespeare's peculiar gift is not to analyze, 
 not to describe, but to reflect, as the polished crystal, 
 all that passes before its magic surface. As you look 
 therein the phantom passions and spectral imagin- 
 ings which have haunted the habitations of your 
 own heart rise in visible form to warn, to ennoble, 
 and to redeem it. The guilty Lady Macbeth cries 
 to her lord : 
 
 " Your face, my thane, is as a book where men 
 May read strange matters." 
 
 Your hearts, my hearers, are as a book writ with 
 stranger matters still ; and this master-magician 
 holds it up that you may read therein. 
 
 The great poet uses his mother tongue as an 
 instrument of such volume, range, and melody that 
 his readers are continually tempted to string those 
 pearls of language, which we call ' ' the beauties of 
 Shakespeare." And yet this is but his smallest 
 function. It is as psychologist, philosopher, and 
 master of the problems of the human heart that we 
 must regard him, as we reverently approach the 
 study of his mighty tragedies. 
 
 The dramas of Shakespeare make up a psychology 
 none the less complete because it is concrete in its 
 forms. Opinions vary as to which is the greatest of 
 his works. Biit this is a question of little practical 
 moment. In each, the form and the play of thought 
 are exactly fitted to the spiritual conception which is 
 the central idea of the drama. In the skill and sub- 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 45 
 
 tlety with which the moral powers and manifold 
 intellectual activities of man are manifested to the 
 mind's eye, and in the philosophy of life, Hamlet is 
 peerless and perennial. And still other plays of the 
 master-workman evince his versatility, resources, 
 and imagination, and his complete control over the 
 materials, methods, and instrumentalities of his 
 magic art. But Macbeth is his greatest poem. 
 
 That I am not unsupported in this position, I quote 
 flallam, who says: "The majority of readers, I 
 believe, assign to Macbeth the pre-eminence among 
 the works of Shakespeare ; many, however, would 
 rather name Othello, and a few might prefer Lear to 
 either. The great epic drama, as the first may be 
 called, deserves, in my own judgment, the post it 
 has attained, as being, in the language of Drake, 
 ' the greatest effort of our author's genius, the most 
 sublime and impressive drama which the world has 
 ever beheld.'" Nor are Drake and the judicious 
 Hallam alone in this opinion. Campbell, in his life 
 of Mrs. Siddons, says: "I regard Macbeth, upon 
 the whole, as the greatest treasure of our dramatic 
 literature. " Gervinus, the great German commenta- 
 tor, says : "It stands forth uniquely pre-eminent in 
 the splendors of poetic and picturesque diction, and 
 in the living representation of persons, times, and 
 places. " 
 
 Whether Macbeth is the greatest of Shakespeare's 
 plays or not, I think there can be no doubt that it is 
 his greatest poem. This is the more remarkable as 
 it is probable from internal evidences that it never 
 received the finishing touches so necessary for the 
 
46 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 perfection of a work of art, but stands like some 
 colossal statue — the dream of a seer — ^the stupendous 
 outline of a great soul-study, conceived in its entirety 
 in the mind of the artist. We discover gaps in the 
 plot, confusion in the metaphor, details half com- 
 pleted, and a lack of those final thoughts which, like 
 sweetest roses before a killing frost, blossomed forth 
 in his last version of Hamlet. But this very incom- 
 pleteness compels us, as it were, to enter the charmed 
 circle of the poet's imaginings, view the author's 
 mind in the processes of creation, and share with 
 him in the solemn mystery of the production of this 
 grand drama. 
 
 It may be, as Swinburne suggests, "that the sole 
 text we possess of Macbeth has not been interpolated, 
 but mutilated." He describes it as " piteously rent 
 and ragged and clipped and garbled in some of its 
 earlier scenes ; the rough construction and the polt- 
 foot metre, lame sense and limping verse, each 
 maimed and mangled subject of players' and printers' 
 most treasonable tyranny contending as it were to 
 seem harsher than the other." Yet, along with the 
 wise and deep-seeing authors before cited, this most 
 musical of critics tells us, "But if Othello be the 
 most pathetic. King Lear the most terrible, Hamlet 
 the subtlest and deepest, work of Shakespeare, the 
 highest in abrupt and steep simplicity of epic tragedy 
 is Macbeth." 
 
 In the spirit of this suggestion I am prepared to 
 admit that Macbeth viay he (for I dread dogmatism) 
 rather the torso of some, masterpiece of our dramatic 
 Phidias than the uncompleted ideal of his tragic 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 
 
 47 
 
 muse. But dropping metaphor, the greatness of the 
 events, the rapidity of the action, the compression of 
 the thought, the fervor of the diction, and the sim- 
 plicity and directness of the moral movement, render 
 it a noble example of tragic art Macbeth is not 
 only, as Hallam called it, the great epic drama, but 
 also the great heroic drama. The action is shrouded 
 in mysterious gloom, or lurid with an unholy super- 
 natural light ; the persons of the drama move in 
 shadow, vast, sombre and majestic, like beings of 
 some older and larger creation. As in the Iliad, 
 Achilles, Ulysses, and Agamemnon deal with the 
 Immortals, give the sword-thrust or receive the 
 wound, so when Banquo and stout Macduff, the 
 saintly Duncan and bloody Macbeth, enter the field 
 of vision, the meaner race of mortals vanishes from 
 sight. Hence the artistic effects of this play are not 
 produced by nice gradations of shade, but by strong 
 contrasts of color in scene, incidents, circumstance 
 and character. The elements are in tumult ; and the 
 landscape, black beneath the lowering storm-cloud, 
 is, nevertheless, belted with peaceful bands of sun- 
 shine. Fell murder and dire cruelty work out their 
 purposes on innocence and loyalty, and final retri- 
 bution is met " dareful, beard to beard" by defiant 
 remorse. Macbeth, is indeed, a tremendous epic in 
 dramatic form — an epic in the rush and swirl of its 
 objective action, but a very psean of subjective evo- 
 lution struck from the fervid lyre of a heart white hot. 
 But implicit within the folds of its royal drapery of 
 poetry, indeed, at the very heart of its ancient legend, 
 couches one of the problems of destiny — a mystery 
 
48 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 of the human soul — which we would do well to 
 pluck forth, and lay bare to the scrutiny of our 
 intelligence. 
 
 I have not selected this tragedy because its prob- 
 lem is the most difificult to solve, for, on the con- 
 trary, it is the most obvious ; but it is one of the 
 grandest and most pathetic. It is the old story of 
 temptation, crime and retributive justice. Hamlet 
 and Macbeth were finished almost about the same 
 time ; Hamlet, as an idea which had grown through 
 a series of years and been worked out to its consum- 
 mation ; and Macbeth, probably suggested by it, 
 hurled from the crater of the author's imagination 
 into the empyrean. Together they constitute the 
 obverse and reverse of the heaven-stamped medal we 
 call the human will. They are psychological com- 
 plements of each other. In Hamlet the renunciation 
 of the human will is balanced by the despotism of 
 will in Macbeth. In Hamlet, "the courtier, soldier, 
 scholar, the expectancy and rose of the fair state," is 
 "quite, quite down" — and why? Because, a morbid 
 conscience and irresolute heart keep his subtle intel- 
 lect in play, until the moment for action has passed, 
 and his vacillation overwhelms with ruin all his 
 house. But the Thane of Glamis, audacious, merci- 
 less and prompt, closes with his opportunity, and on 
 the instant puts his soul past surgery. All must bend 
 or break before the energy of his tremendous will 
 and his lawless lust of dominion. But Nemesis fol- 
 lows him too, and his crime works out its inevitable 
 penalty. 
 
 But let us come now to the play itself, and consider 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 
 
 49 
 
 the material and web of the plot, and how its moral 
 purpose is evolved. A mediaeval legend from Hol- 
 inshed's dry Chronicle furnishes the incidents of the 
 story. Following this outline, but weaving into it 
 striking features from other similar tales, the author 
 wins the credence of his audience by an apparent 
 adherence to historical fact ; while his perfect dra- 
 matic instinct teaches him to produce the profoundest 
 impressions by conforming these rigid materials to 
 the standard of ideal, universal, essential truth. Here 
 is the story of Macbeth : Duncan, the saintly, but 
 feeble, King of Scotland, is assailed by rebellion and 
 invasion, which are repelled by his two generals, 
 Macbeth and Banquo, who win public commendation 
 and the rewards of the King. While returning from 
 victory, they meet upon a blasted heath the three 
 Weird Sisters, who hail Macbeth as Thane of Glamis, 
 Thane of Cawdor, and King of Scotland hereafter, 
 and predict for Banquo that his offspring shall ascend 
 the throne. Banquo's sturdy honesty rejects the bait, 
 but Macbeth's restless ambition hovers around the 
 unholy prediction. The messengers of the King 
 meet him, and announce tjiat the King has given 
 him the titles and estates of the rebellious and van- 
 quished Thane of Cawdor. Already, by inheritance, 
 he was Thane of Glamis. 
 
 " Two truths are told, as happy prologues to the 
 swelling act of the imperial theme." 
 
 A fiendish suggestion has planted in his breast a 
 wicked thought. He entertains it there, and it gathers 
 and grows into a purpose to fulfill the prophecy. 
 While this is taking shape, a fatal hint infuses the 
 
 4 
 
JO THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 poison of lawless ambition into the veins of his wife, 
 and the "dear partner of his greatness" becomes the 
 partner of his guilt When he hesitates, she urges 
 him to the execution of the crime, through which 
 he will ascend the throne. He avails himself of a 
 friendly visit of the King to murder him ; and then, 
 to conceal his own guilt, stabs the sleeping chamber- 
 lains. Duncan's sons, alarmed for their safety, fly. 
 Macbeth charges them with the murder, and himself 
 ascends the throne. His usurpation now seems es- 
 tablished, and all goes well with him ; but he cannot 
 feel secure while Banquo lives, for Banquo witnessed 
 his temptation and may profit by his crime, while his 
 stainless integrity stands like a perpetual reproach to 
 Macbeth's disloyalty and guilt. He must die. Ban- 
 quo is waylaid and assassinated; but his "blood- 
 boltered " ghost rises at a royal banquet to shake the 
 soul of Macbeth with horror. In his desperate desire 
 to search out the future, the murderous usurper seeks 
 the witches, and, lured by their infernal lights, he 
 butchers in cold blood the wife and children of Mac- 
 duff, Thane of Fife, who has tied to the true prince, 
 Malcolm, in England. But this cruelty does not 
 prosper. Suspicion, hatred and horror follow him. 
 His wife, pursued by remorse, kills herself. And af 
 last, cheated by the fiends he trusted, the tyrant falls 
 in battle by the hand of Macduff, and the son of the 
 murdered Duncan ascends the throne. From these 
 simple materials, the skilful hand and informing spirit 
 of the great artist built up a royal palace in the realm 
 of thought. 
 The felicity of Shakespeare's genius shows itself in 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 5 1 
 
 the selection of the time and place and plot of this 
 tragedy. Surely, these are not accidents. The venue 
 is laid in the border-land of fact and fable. Macbeth 
 was a contemporary of that Edward the Confessor 
 whose reign lingered for generations in the fancy of 
 Saxon England as a golden age. It was to Shake- 
 speare a heroic age ; and the figures and events of his 
 creation loom up loftily through twilight and mist, 
 too large and vague perhaps, did not human passions 
 so sharply define them. 
 
 But the place as well as the time of the drama evoke 
 a vivid interest. Scotland, though neighboring, was 
 yet almost unknown to Englishmen of that day, and 
 a series of tragic events and the calamities of kings 
 had just linked its history with that of England.* 
 
 * It has been ingeniously maintained, and not without considerable 
 evidence, that Shakespeare visited in person the scene of the action 
 in Macbeth. Among other curious proofs is a letter quoted in the 
 Athaeneum (No. 2830, January 21, 1882). This letter is published 
 by Mr. Edward J. L. Scott. 
 
 British Museum, Jan. 17, 1882. 
 
 I have lately come across (in a volume of correspondence between 
 the English and Scotch courts during the negotiations for the mar- 
 riage of James VI. and Anne of Denmark) a letter of "surpassing 
 interest as regards the whereabouts of Shakespeare between 1587, 
 the date when he left Stratford enrolled as a member of Burbage's 
 company of players, called the Queen's company, and 1591, the 
 date of his beginning to write alone as an author (see Fleay's Shake- 
 speare Manual, pp. 4 and 5). 
 
 The letter, which I here subjoin, is from Henry le Scrope, ninth 
 Baron Scrope of Bolton, Governor of Carlisle and Warden of the 
 West Marches, to William Asheby, English ambassador at the court 
 of James VI. : 
 
 " After my verie hartie comendacion on a letter receyved from 
 
52 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 James I. had but just come to the throne; and, to 
 Southern eyes Scotland lay like a mountain lake, half 
 robed in romance and half veiled in mystery. Under 
 the enchanter's wand, this gloomy background faded 
 into a land of shadows, the curtain of the unseen 
 world was lifted, and the powers of the air mingled 
 with human actors as persons of the drama. 
 
 The staple of the story, too, is not without strong 
 parallelisms to events which had recently greatly 
 excited the public mind. Earl Cowrie's conspiracy, 
 aimed at the life of James I., was still fresh in the 
 memories of men. The plots known as "the Main " 
 
 Mr. Roger Asheton, signifying unto me that yt was the kinges 
 earnest desire for to have her majesties players for to repayer into 
 Scotland to his grace ; 
 
 " I dyd furthwith dispatche a servant of my owen onto them 
 wheir they were in the furthest part of Langkenshire, wheropon 
 they made their returne heather to Carliell, wher they are and have 
 stayed for the space of ten dayes, wherof I thought good to gyve 
 you notice in respect of the great desyre that the kyng had to have 
 the same to come onto his grace ; and withall to praye yow to give 
 knowledg therof to his Majestie. So for the present, I bydd yow 
 right heartilie farewell. 
 
 " Carlisle, the XXth of September, 1589. 
 
 " Your verie assured loving friend, 
 
 " H. SCROPE." 
 
 There is no further letter relating to the subject among Asheby's 
 correspondence, but it is very interesting to think that Shakespeare 
 visited Edinburgh at the very time when the witches were tried and 
 burned for raising the storms that drowned Jane Kennedy, mistress 
 of the robes to the new queen, and imperilled the life of Anne of 
 Denmark herself. 
 
 Mr. Scott adds : "In that case the witches in ' ' Macbeth ' ' must 
 have had their origin from the actual scenes witnessed by the player 
 60 many years previously to the writing of that drama in 1606." 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 53 
 
 and "the Bye," for the murder of the king and the 
 enthronement of his cousin, Arabella Stuart, had 
 lately occurred; and the trials of Sir Walter Raleigh 
 and others had awakened the liveliest interest touch- 
 ing regicide and the breach of a clear title to the 
 crown. If, as best conjectured, this play was com- 
 pleted early in 1606, then it came just on the heel of 
 the Gunpowder Plot, which had been fixed for No- 
 vember 5th,. 1605 ; and the trials of the wretched 
 fanatics who had compassed the destruction of King 
 and Parliament had made the popular mind familiar 
 with projects of slaughter and the casuistry of assas- 
 sination. Shakespeare's treatment of his theme com- 
 mended itself not only to the prince, but to the people ; 
 and while he adapted it to the spirit of the age, and 
 even to the passing mood of the public, he evinced 
 his transcendent genius by producing a poem of 
 perennial interest, the spectacle of a titanic nature 
 utterly cast down and ruined in its great spiritual 
 struggle. Neither in prologue, nor in epilogue, nor 
 in the mouth of any interlocutor, does the author 
 announce the moral of the play. Yet he who runs 
 may read. It is the contest for the soul of a man. 
 The powers of darkness wrestle with and vanquish 
 him. 
 
 We can properly understand this tragedy only by 
 first understanding its supernaturalism. To do this 
 aright we must look at it from the author's stand- 
 point. There is scarcely any subject in literature 
 more fascinating than the study of post-mediaeval 
 supernaturalism as embodied in the plays of Shake- 
 speare. This is an age and country of a skepticism 
 
54 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 SO general and pervading that we find it hard to con- 
 ceive of the immense mass of superstition which 
 overlaid the Christianity of the Middle Ages. Folk- 
 lore, the hierarchy of angels and demons, the realm 
 of faery, the habits and manners of ghosts ; witch- 
 craft with its laws, customs, cultus, and criminal 
 practices ; auguries, oracles, sorcery and other mani- 
 festations of occult power ; spells, talismans, elixirs, 
 and alchemy conjuring with the unknown and un- 
 subdued forces of nature ; astrology and the influence 
 of the stars ; the meaning of dreams and visions ; 
 in a word the whole world of the unreal had been 
 systematized into a complete code and body of su- 
 pernatural mythology, believed alike by peasant and 
 prince, by learned and unlearned, and by all classes 
 of the community. Rehcs of this remain imbedded 
 in our earlier literature, like flies in amber ; and other 
 relics still yet crop out in the fancies, the follies and 
 the crimes of the present generation. This vast ma- 
 chinery of mythology, which then represented to the 
 popular mind the secondary causes through which 
 God governs his universe, seems to us but the kalei- 
 doscopic phases of a disordered dream, a mirage, 
 "an unsubstantial pageant." But to our ancestors it 
 was as real and solid as the rock-ribbed earth. 
 
 In Shakespeare's day, the British people was in the 
 prime of national manhood. The light was breaking, 
 and the emancipated human intellect was waking 
 from the dreams of a thousand years. The prophetic 
 soul of Shakespeare accepted the popular beliefs as 
 modes of expression, and employed them as symbols 
 for the unseen forces of nature and spirit, in which 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 55 
 
 dwell activities more potent than even superstition 
 could conjure up. And it was through this high 
 poetic and philosophic power, this eminent gift of 
 imagination and understanding working together, 
 that he produced the terrible and highly idealized 
 conception of supernatural agency embodied in the 
 Weird Sisters. These and Banquo's ghost, the ap- 
 paritions, the omens, the air-drawn dagger, the mys- 
 terious voice, are but the signs and formulas through 
 which he represents the problem of evil, with which 
 Macbeth grapples, and which he solves to his own 
 temporal and eternal ruin. 
 
 A canon of Shakespearian criticism, somewhat 
 fanciful perhaps, has been advanced, that the first 
 scene, or even the first words, of a play, will often 
 strike the keynote of the entire action. In Macbeth, 
 certainly, they have a curious significance. The en- 
 chanter waves his wand, and the tragedy begins. 
 Where? "In a desert place," or "open place," as 
 some will have it; "with thunder and lightning." 
 Is it on land or sea, or do the witches "hover 
 through the fog and filthy air ? " Whether we picture 
 it as a barren heath, or above the ferment of the 
 deep, we know that "the secret, black and midnight 
 hags " are gathered on the confines of hell, with the 
 gates ajar. Amid the tumult of the elements, and 
 the mutterings of familiar spirits, the ominous ques- 
 tion is shrieked forth, 
 
 " When shall we three meet again ? " 
 
 This is answered by these "juggling fiends," when 
 they next appear as tempters of Macbeth. The fine, 
 
56 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 lyrical movement of the scene reaches its highest 
 pitch in the diabolic suggestion of the chorus, 
 
 " Fair is foul, and foul is fair." 
 
 This phrase symbolizes the reversal of the divine 
 order of nature, the love of evil for its own sake, the 
 unforgivable sin. That this is not a mere conceit is 
 evinced by the very first words that Macbeth utters, 
 
 " So foul and fair a day I have not seen." 
 
 This is the human response to the infernal sugges- 
 tion, and points to the moral confusion which infects 
 the fairest state of man. This cannot be accidental. 
 It is but one instance among many in Shakespeare 
 where the echo of the mysterious footfall of the 
 future is heard by an inner sense, and the word of 
 unconscious prophecy is uttered. By this I do not 
 mean that those omens and prodigies cited after 
 Duncan's death, nor the predictions of the witches, 
 but something subtler, akin to the derided and dreaded 
 presentiment of evil. 
 
 Attention has been called to Shakespeare's art in 
 opening the play with words that are in fact a pre- 
 lude to its action. 
 
 A curious illustration of the ineptitude of much of 
 the comment and emendation of Shakespeare will be 
 seen in the following extract from "Story's Conver- 
 sations in a Studio. " (Vol. I, p. 94) showing how 
 another poet can stumble as to this very opening. 
 
 "Nothing can be more absurd in many respects 
 than Burger's translation of 'Macbeth. ' Poet, though 
 he was, he seems to have lost all sense of poetry or 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 
 
 57 
 
 reason in this translation, in which, in fact, he so 
 ludicrously travesties the original, that one cannot 
 but smile at the absurdities he introduces. The fact 
 is, that Burger, who was a very vain man, thought 
 himself far superior to Shakespeare, and kindly 
 assisted him, and eked out his shortcomings. Think 
 of this opening in ' Macbeth ' : — 
 
 ' Soldier. Hold ! not in such a hurry, good sir. 
 Guard. Now, then ? 
 
 Soldier. I prithee, what is it you will tell the king ? 
 Guard. That the battle is won. 
 Soldier. But I have been lying. 
 
 Guard. Lying rascal ! Then thou art indeed with thy wounds 
 a desperate joker. 
 
 This is a literal translation of one of Burger's im- 
 provements to Shakespeare. " 
 
 An instance of the dramatic second-sight mentioned 
 above is exhibited in Duncan's comment on the ac- 
 count of Cawdor's repentant death : — ■ 
 
 " There's no art 
 To find the mind's construction in the face ; 
 He was a gentleman on whom I built 
 An absolute trust — " 
 
 Just here the new Thane of Cawdor enters with 
 murder and treason in his heart, interrupting the 
 reflection, while the king verifies and exemplifies in 
 his words and conduct the aphorism he has just 
 uttered. 
 
 Again, where Banquo for the last time leaves the 
 King, he says : 
 
 " A heavy summons lies like lead upon me, 
 And yet I would not sleep." 
 
58 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET. 
 
 Here there is something more than meets the ear, 
 for the next moment Macbeth, charged with mur- 
 derous purpose, greets him. In act i, scene 2, 
 Duncan begins, " What bloody man is this ? " On 
 this Bodenstadt comments, "This word 'bloody' 
 reappears on almost every page, and runs like a red 
 thread through the whole piece. In no other of 
 Shakespeare's dramas is- it so frequent." Again, 
 Macbeth, while plotting Banquo's murder, urges him 
 to attend the banquet. " Fail not our feast," he 
 says. Banquo's promise, " My Lord, I will not," is 
 fulfilled in a sense unexpected by either, or by the 
 reader, when his " blood-boltered " ghost rises at the 
 appointed place to shake with horror the marble heart 
 of merciless Macbeth. Our secret sins find us out. 
 Retribution is the debt never repudiated. The d^vil 
 keeps his appointments. 
 
 The manner in which our poet has portrayed the 
 Weird Sisters is but a solitary proof among many 
 how far he was superior in real moral insight to the 
 greatest even of the great poets who are sometimes 
 named with him. Milton, most learned and religious, 
 most metaphysical and most musical of poets, con- 
 ceives Satan as the archangel ruined, who wins our 
 human sympathy by the dazzling sublimity of his 
 superhuman pride and despair. But Shakespeare's 
 clearer and nobler perception of the essential ugli- 
 ness and deformity of sin compels him to strike 
 nearer the truth. The Weird Sisters, who embody the 
 idea of evil, are beastly and loathsome, as well as 
 terrible. 
 
 The beings called in this tragedy "the Weird Sis- 
 
AND OTH'ER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 59 
 
 ters " are not the malignant, yet impotent, old witches 
 against whom the royal demonologist levelled the 
 statute of 1604. Nor are they mere abstractions, per- 
 sonifications of the wicked promptings of Macbeth's 
 heart. Though "bubbles of the air," they are not 
 "fantastical." Real essences, prompters of sin, min- 
 isters of the evil one, and, like the Scandinavian 
 Valkyrias, " posters of the land and sea," they brood 
 over fields of slaughter, stir the elements to strife, 
 and derange thg moral and material order of the 
 world. Such tasks are the work of strong fiends ; 
 but, as if in illustration of the essential connection of 
 all evil, they do its drudgery with zeal. They mix 
 the hell-broth of foul, venomous things, inflict and 
 gloat over pain and misery, and yet are full of petty 
 spite and filthiness. They are tempters to sin and 
 can produce human suffering ; but they have no com- 
 pulsion for the soul, and recoil baffled from the 
 assault on innocence. When the Weird Sisters struck 
 the chord of unlawful aspiration in the bosom of 
 Macbeth, it swelled into a symphony of treason and 
 murder. But no irresistible necessity constrained 
 him. Not fate, but his own free will, determined his 
 downward career. And this is shown in that con- 
 summate touch of art by which Banquo is placed by 
 the side of Macbeth and subjected to similar tempta- 
 tions, yet preserves his integrity unsullied, and dies a 
 martyr to his loyalty. The mousing owls of Satan, 
 the revolting caricature of humanity in its possible 
 degradation, have merely to offer Macbeth the vast 
 suggestion, and its echoes reverberate through his 
 hollow and arid heart, until unhallowed reverie grows 
 
6o THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET. 
 
 into guilty intention, and this ripens into crime. 
 Thomas a — Kempis says well : 
 
 "For first a bare thought comes to the mind ; then 
 a strong imagination ; afterwards delight, and evil 
 motion and consent." So was it with Macbeth. He 
 withstood not the beginnings of evil, and the end 
 was utter ruin. 
 
 A true conception of the character of Macbeth, in 
 whose soul the strife is waged, is necessary to grasp 
 the real purpose of the play. This we may learn 
 from the estimate put upon him by the popular voice, 
 by his intimates, and by her to whom he had re- 
 vealed "the naked frailties " of his soul. His solilo- 
 quies, too, unlock secret chambers into which the 
 observer looks with sidelong glances. There he dis- 
 cerns the difference between this man before and 
 after temptation, which, at the last, is the immeas- 
 urable distance between innocence and guilt, between 
 a soul under probation and a soul betrayed and lost. 
 
 When the play opens he was to his followers and 
 peers, "brave Macbeth," "valor's minion," "Bel- 
 lona's bridegroom." The King calls him "valiant 
 cousin," "worthy gentleman," "noble Macbeth," 
 "peerless kinsman." In his own words, he had 
 
 "Bought 
 Golden opinions from all sorts of people." 
 
 His wife, who thought she knew the man, says of 
 him in her first soliloquy : 
 
 "Yet do I fear thy nature. 
 It is too full o' the milk of human kindness 
 To catch the nearest way : thou would'st be great \ 
 Art not without ambition, but without 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 6 1 
 
 The illness should attend it ; what thou wouldst highly, 
 That wouldst thou holily ; wouldst not play false, 
 And yet would'st wrongly win." 
 
 With full allowance for the energy of the speaker's 
 passion and ambition, this careful analysis portrays 
 a mixed character. Macbeth's own ideal of himself 
 is lofty : 
 
 " I dare do all that may become a man ; 
 Who dares do more is none." 
 
 The air-drawn dagger and the voice that "cried 
 to all the house," echoes of a conscience, startled 
 and aghast, are proofs of an imagination both sensi- 
 tive and magnificent, even were the thoughts not 
 uttered in heroic vein. But then, again, this capa- 
 cious nature is cankered by selfishness. 
 
 There is in Macbeth's language a very distinct in- 
 dividualization, characteristically Shakespearian. His 
 conversation is marked by a direct energy and blunt 
 brevity, not uncommon with men of action, used to 
 command. Like a true master of fence, reticence 
 is his guard. He comes to the point without parley, 
 and keeps at bay his fellow-men. But, on the other 
 hand, in self-communion, and in converse with that 
 other self, his wife, his imagination Ufts itself in 
 widening circles, like the eagle's flight, to its pride of 
 place. After the murder, he replies to the salu- 
 tations of the Thanes : 
 
 " Good morrow, both. 
 
 Macduff. — Is the King stirring, worthy Thane? 
 Macbeth. — Not yet. 
 
 Macduff. — He did command me to call timely on him. 
 I have almost slipped the hour . 
 
62 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 Macbeth. — I'll bring you to him. 
 Lennox. — Goes the King hence to-day ? 
 Macbeth. — He does ; he did appoint so." 
 
 And to Lennox's description of the night, he an- 
 swers : "Twas a rough night." An examination of 
 the play will show that he maintains this manner of 
 speech throughout. 
 
 It is worth while to note, how in the excitement 
 of preparation for his last battle, the tone of Macbeth 
 changes as he addresses one or another of the inter- 
 locutors. He contemptuously damns the "cream- 
 faced loon " who shows fear, and flings a wrathful 
 " Liar and slave " at the messenger who brings the 
 bad news of Birnam Wood; to his last friend, his 
 armor-bearer, Seyton, he pours out his heart in sym- 
 pathetic and confidential frankness ; and, in the next 
 moment, engages the doctor, the man of learning, in 
 an ironical, yet highly imaginative conversation. 
 
 His exalted imagination, his vaulting ambition and 
 his nearness to the throne had lured his thoughts to 
 forbidden fields. Haunted by the glories of the 
 royal state, he saw within the circle of the diadem 
 power and fame, and (such is human weakness) 
 some vision of compensatory beneficence. And this 
 view is countenanced by the Chronicle, which de- 
 scribes him as a just, vigorous and religious monarch. 
 All this was embraced in his scheme of 
 
 " Solely sovereign sway and masterdom," 
 
 in the way of which only the feeble Duncan stood ; 
 Though Macbeth declares the first " supernatural 
 soliciting " of the Weird Sisters, a 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 63 
 
 ' ' Suggestion 
 Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair 
 And make my seated heart knock at my ribs. 
 Against the use of natiu'e.'" 
 
 yet we find him presently contemplating himself as 
 mounting the throne, 
 
 " If chance will have me king, why chance may 
 Crown me, without my stir."' 
 
 A friend's mischance is to be the airy stepping 
 stone from thought to deed. Macbeth nurses these 
 'black and deep desires." When he meets his wife 
 after all his achievements, his first words are 
 " My dearest love, 
 Duncan comes here to-night ; " 
 and hers, 
 
 ''And when goes hence? " 
 
 to which he significantly replies, 
 
 " To-morrow — as he purposes." 
 
 It is she who shapes the horrid thought in its com- 
 pleteness, 
 
 " O never 
 " Shall sun that morrow see." 
 
 There is a tremendous force of purpose in this short, 
 strong phrase. Each word stands out like a boss 
 upon an iron mace. Across this sombre hatching of 
 conspiracy, the arrival of the saintly Duncan falls 
 like a burst of sunshine. He pauses a moment 
 before the castle gates in calip enjoyment of the fair 
 aspect of the peaceful scenery. He says to Banquo : 
 "This castle hath a pleasant seat ; the air 
 Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself 
 Unto our gentle senses." 
 
 Banquo, with the same human eye, takes note of 
 
64 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 "This guest of summer, the temple-haunting martlet," 
 
 and briefly draws a picture of tranquil beauty. What 
 an outlook of nature smiles upon us. Then, like the 
 last rays of the setting sun, Duncan's innocence 
 casts its beams upon the portals of that grim abode 
 of conspiracy and sudden death. With absolute 
 trust and courtly grace he enters the castle. The 
 confiding gentleness with which he commits himself 
 to the hands of his assassins is very touching. 
 
 But once within the sepulchral jaws of this trea- 
 sonable den, and all is changed. Murder lurks in the 
 murky air. No supernatural machinery is needed to 
 show that here the fiends have mastery. The im- 
 pulse has been given, and man's wickedness works 
 out the plot. In a gray and vaulted hall, dimly we 
 discern two figures whispering in shadow, and an 
 air-drawn dagger, — "on its blade and dudgeon gouts 
 of blood which were not so before " — and then, 
 
 " Methought I heard a voice cry, ' sleep no more,' 
 Macbeth does murder sleep." 
 
 Duncan lies murdered in his bed. Macbeth had 
 made his choice, and henceforth to him, 
 " Fair is foul, and foul is fair." 
 
 But he had not done "the deep damnation of his 
 taking off" on kinsman and king, without hesitation 
 and debate. The progress and growth of evil is 
 powerfully illustrated in the reaction of guilt by 
 which Macbeth and his wife mutually urge each 
 other onward and downward. He first touched the 
 fatal spring of her ambition, and instantly her whole 
 nature glowed with the cold intensity of the electric 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 65 
 
 light Then, when he seemed to vacillate before the 
 threats of vanquished virtue and an awakened coii- 
 science, the spirit he has raised in the wonian's bosom 
 will not down, but lifts its serpent crest to taunt with 
 hissing tongue, and lure and urge him relentlessly to 
 the bloody deed. Her hard, cold, narrow and direct 
 intellect sees no end but the diadem, no means but 
 the dagger. Her unbending, yet feminine, wicked- 
 ness employs every stratagem of diabolical rhetoric 
 to hold him to his purpose ; she knows him to be 
 fearless, aggressive, audacious, and, with a purpose 
 once fully formed, prompt and decisive. This was 
 the temper which had made him so dauntless a sol- 
 dier on the field, and so fortunate a commander. To 
 fix that purpose in the contest between conscience 
 and will, she combines a tremendous energy with 
 fiendish subtlety. When he seems about to cast aside 
 his dark design, she holds him to it by first suggest- 
 ing it to him as her work, not his. 
 
 ' ' He that's coming 
 Miist be provided for ; and you shall put 
 This night's great business into my dispatch." 
 
 She knows him well ; for, once resolved, he truly 
 
 says : 
 
 "I am settled, and bend up 
 Each corporal agent to this terrible feat." 
 
 And SO he is led on and on down the dark and 
 winding stairway of death and hell. 
 
 While the poet's function in Macbeth was, as I 
 have said, the evolution of a moral problem, and not 
 specially the delineation of character, yet Shake- 
 
 5 
 
66 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 speare's absolute artistic perceptions would not per- 
 mit him to portray a character inconsistent with 
 itself. Did time permit, I could readily demonstrate 
 this in each person of the drama. It is Shake- 
 speare's special gift to condense a whole character 
 and display it in a few words, as a flash of light- 
 ning, in blackest midnight, reveals a landscape. 
 
 Thus, while in Holinshed's Chronicle Banquo is 
 Macbeth's accomplice, the poet, ennobling his char- 
 acter and idealizing his integrity, makes him serve a 
 higher purpose. And so we find Banquo described 
 by Macbeth, who says of him, 
 
 "There's none but he 
 Whose being I do fear."- 
 
 And again. 
 
 Our fears in Banquo 
 Stick deep ; and in his royalty of nature 
 Reigns that which would be feared : — 'tis much he dares, — 
 And to that dauntless temper of his mind, 
 He hath a wisdom that doth guide his valor 
 To act in safety." 
 
 Macduff, "noble, wise, judicious," "child of in- 
 tegrity," and full of "noble passion," yet is ever 
 hasty and rash. The gracious and gentle Duncan 
 suffers for his childlike trustfulness, while his son, 
 the wary Malcolm, exhibits in every word and act 
 the caution and worldly wisdom in which his father 
 is deficient. His prudential virtues receive their pro- 
 per temporal reward, while Duncan, sacrificed on the 
 altar of his own credulity, wears the crown of martyr- 
 dom. Even in the subordinate characters of the 
 play, we find this coherence, as in the queen's gen- 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 67 
 
 tlewoman, who, in her reticence and propriety, is 
 still ever a gentlewoman indeed. 
 
 But to my mind the nicest analysis and most care- 
 ful synthesis could not so truly construct a wicked 
 woman, as Shakespeare has created one in Lady 
 Macbeth. The whole gamut of criticism has been 
 run by the commentators in characterizing her. 
 From the verdict of those, who, with the bereaved 
 Malcolm, describe her as ' ' the fiendlike queen, " we 
 may pass to the opposite view of the German critic, 
 Leo. This profound pundit says of her, "the wife, 
 on the other hand, at the side of a noble, honorable 
 husband, always faithful to the right, would have 
 been a pure and innocent woman diffusing happiness 
 around her domestic circle, in spite of some asperi- 
 ties in her temper." Even this genial estimate can- 
 not so far remove prejudice as to enable us to 
 imagine Lady Macbeth as a pleasant person to have 
 about the house. She is a typical murderess : yet 
 she is a woman, not a fiend ; a woman, and a 
 queen. 
 
 We have seen her finishing the work of over- 
 throwing Macbeth's conscience, which the Weird 
 Sisters had begun. She says of Duncan, 
 
 " I could have stabbed him as he slept." 
 
 Yet she did not.. There is a vast distance between 
 intensity of desire and power of execution. Her 
 feminine nature recoiled from the deed itself, though 
 not from its contriving. Unlike Macbeth, she had 
 seen no daggers, heard no voices ; but she could 
 not actually stab the sleeping Duncan. She excuses 
 herself thus, 
 
68 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 "Had he not resembled 
 My father as he slept, I had done't." 
 
 Mrs. Siddons, the dark-browed queen of tragedy, 
 fancied that Lady Macbeth was "fair, feminine, nay 
 perhaps even fragile," vaulting ambition kindling 
 " all the splendors of her dark, blue eyes." But crime 
 has no special complexion — blonde or brunette — no 
 more than has female fascination. 
 
 She is guilty, but a queen, and retains, even under 
 the shadow of her inexpiable sin, the lofty refine- 
 ment of her birth and rank. In the horror and con- 
 fusion of Duncan's death, she swoons. This is the 
 turning point in her fate. Then the bubble of am- 
 bition burst. How hollow and delusive it all seems 
 
 now. 
 
 " Nought's had, all's spent. 
 Where our desire is got without content ; 
 'Tis safer to be that which we destroy 
 Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy." 
 
 At first, clinging to the last plank of human sym- 
 pathy and love left from the wreck, she bends herself 
 to the task of consoling her husband — but in vain. 
 For herself, nothing is left but remorse. The stiff 
 fibre of her pitiless heart had stretched too far — and 
 broken ; but not in repentance, only in the agony of 
 a never-dying dread. The hand that a little water 
 was to cleanse bears "a damned spot." She 
 
 "Is troubled with thick coming fancies 
 That keep her from her rest." 
 
 Walking in her troubled sleep, she cries : 
 
 "What ! will these hands ne'er be clean ? 
 Here's the smell of blood still ; all 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 69 
 
 The perfumes of Arabia will not 
 Sweeten this Httle hand. O ! O ! O !" 
 
 Well may the doctor exclaim : 
 
 "What a sigh is there ! the heart is sorely charged." 
 
 Well might she wish herself with pious Duncan in 
 his peace. At last there came a cry of women, and 
 the Queen was dead. 
 
 At the point of Duncan's doom, Macbeth trembled, 
 and his wife chided him as "infirm of purpose." 
 But his man's nature was made of the sterner stuff. 
 As he stepped from crime to crime, what with the 
 swing of his sceptre and his angry work of repres- 
 sion, he became "bloody, bold and resolute." Baf- 
 fled by juggling friends, betrayed by courtiers, and 
 bereft of wife, his heart did not break, nor his brain 
 become frenzied. He opposed himself, like a Titan, 
 to the vengeance of heaven and the dread of hell — 
 fear of man he never knew. The props of infernal 
 prophecy sank under him, and yet he would not 
 fly. Then, " championed to the utterance with fate," 
 at the last he falls like a soldier, sword in hand, 
 unrepenting and defiant. 
 
 The poetic justice which assigns awakened sensi- 
 bility as a necessary part of the penalty of sin is 
 incorrect. Macbeth displays a more usual form of 
 punishment. A gradual hardening of the heart, a 
 constant moral descent with neither ability nor wish 
 to recall the lost innocence and an increasing cata- 
 logue of crimes ensue, until the whip of scorpions 
 and the avenging Furies are needed to shake his ob- 
 durate soul. In him we learn that there is no dis- 
 connected sin, but that offences are the links in an 
 
70 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 endless chain, harnessing cause to remotest conse- 
 quence, and dragging the guilt-burthened soul down- 
 ward forever. We saw him at first, with "love, 
 honor, obedience, troops of friends." And now, in 
 
 their stead, 
 
 "Curses not loud but deep, mouth-honor, breath. 
 Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not." 
 
 It is thus that Satan fulfills his promises. Even 
 in the moment of fruition, when success seemed to 
 have justified his usurpation, he received a bitter 
 foretaste of his awful future. Shakespeare does not 
 palter with this aspect of crime. He fills the meed 
 of temporal prosperity for the murderer, crowns 
 him, surrounds his throne with obsequious courtiers, 
 crushes his enemies, and gives him all — 
 
 " Thou hast it now : King, Cawdor, Glamis, all, 
 As the weird women promised." 
 
 But he does not give him one happy moment 
 Lady Macbeth says to him : 
 
 " How now, my lord ! why do you keep alone, 
 Of sorriest fancies your companions making ? " 
 
 He bewails that they must 
 
 "Sleep 
 In the affliction of the terrible dreams 
 That shake us nightly ; better be with the dead, 
 Whom we, to gain our place, have sent to peace." 
 
 The moral isolation of Macbeth and his wife is 
 marked from the moment of his crime. The fissure 
 gradually widens until it becomes an abyss of dis- 
 trust, hatred and revolt The thanes fall away, the 
 soldiers blench, 
 
 "And none serve with him but constrained things. 
 Whose hearts are absent too.'.' 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 71 
 
 This moral isolation — this segregation from human 
 sympathy — ends in the alienation of the guilty pair; 
 and their mutual affection, once so tender, closes in 
 cold disregard. Selfishness is the essence of sin, and 
 in absolute selfishness it finds its consummation. 
 
 Macbeth is a tragedy indeed. It is the spectacle 
 of a human soul, which, under no depostism of des- 
 tiny, but in the exercise of a lawless will, accepts the 
 bribe of the tempter, and thus makes a destiny for 
 itself — the destiny of perdition. We see a man of 
 might, with his feet planted on a rock. To win a 
 gilded bauble he plunges into the sea. He is a strong 
 swimmer in the arms of the whirlpool ; but they are 
 , arms which will not give up their prey. The lesson 
 of Macbeth is a sad and solemn one. It bids us look 
 into the abysses of our own souls, lest therein may 
 lurk some motive to tempt us to our doom. And it 
 teaches this lesson by exhibiting a human soul — a 
 grand heroic soul — tempted, struggling, betrayed, 
 lost. 
 
 In the words of the Preacher, the son of David, 
 King in Jerusalem : "Let us hear the conclusion of 
 the whole matter : fear God, and keep His command- 
 ments : for this is the whole duty of man. For God 
 shall bring every work into judgment, with every 
 secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be 
 evil." 
 
72 THE PROTOTYPE OP HAMLET, 
 
 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF HAMLET. 
 
 "You would pluck out the heart of my mystery." 
 
 Hamlet, II., 2. 
 
 The republic of letters has its first, or central, 
 place — its throne. Even if merely a primacy among 
 peers, the suffrages of the world, howsoever irregu- 
 larly ascertained, insist upon a First to fill it. 
 Homer long enjoyed this distinction, and his Satur- « 
 nian reign has its partisans ; but English-speaking 
 men will not have it so, and a new sovereign now 
 sways the Olympus of thought and imagination — 
 one Shakespeare — with the divinity that doth hedge 
 a king. There are rebels who held out against this 
 usurpation, but in vain. Dion Boucicault shows 
 most ingeniously how much has been done for 
 Shakespeare's reputation by play-actors, the "Stars" 
 of the stage. It may be so, but these stage triumphs 
 are but one small fraction of his mighty influence on 
 modern thought ; one facet, among many, of the 
 diamond that reflects back to the questions of 
 philosophy, poesy and prudential common-sense, 
 answers that are accepted as oracles, Delphic and 
 divine. 
 
 The Baconian contention, rooted not in reasonable 
 protest but in mere love of paradox, is really a com- 
 pliment to Shakespeare. It presupposes that what 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 
 
 73 
 
 he did was impossible to any but a genius of the 
 highest order, with the best training, and with all 
 the advantages of wealth, leisure and opportunity. 
 And yet who was Homer? A blind nobody; 
 though Wolf and the Wolfians, anticipating modern 
 industry, would have him transformed into a poetical 
 syndicate or Pan Hellenic Ballad Trust Company. 
 The plays of Shakespeare, argue the Baconians, are 
 too great to have been written by a mere play-writer ; 
 a philosopher must have done them ; no less a one, 
 indeed, than the mighty Bacon, powerful, subtle, 
 aphoristic, could have produced such dramas. This 
 Baconian- myth logic might make William M. Evarts 
 the creator of Lord Dundreary, and Gladstone the 
 only possible author of the Idyls of the King. The 
 fundamental mistake in all this consists : first, in as- 
 signing all training to the schools; second, in deciding 
 a priori where, on whom, and how, will descend the 
 divine gift of genius. Shakespeare, however, did 
 have just the training to fit him for this work, and 
 Bacon did not ,- but, more than all, the same Provi- 
 dence who bestowed on Bacon acumen and breadth 
 of view gave Shakespeare insight. The whole con- 
 troversy implies, argues from, the fact of a master 
 — a mighty thinker — as the author of these plays. 
 Bacon's analysis went through the world of thought, 
 clearing and classifying things with the sword of the 
 spirit. He saw with clear perception their true rela- 
 tions, and the law which expressed their order. But 
 his talents were other than those of the poor player 
 who possessed the magic art of literary creation, who 
 had received the gift of vision and of prophecy and 
 
74 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 tongues, and who could summon from the world of 
 idea existences that have put on the garb of humanity 
 and become immortal. Think of it, indeed ; are not 
 the persons of his drama more real, more distinct, 
 than the personages who then strutted as the great, 
 and believed that they were moving and moulding 
 the world, but who are now to us mere faded 
 phantoms, shadows in the lamentable past, extin- 
 guished candles, burnt to the socket, with some faint 
 odor left of smoke and grease ? But it is not to our 
 purpose here to enter upon the great Baconian con- 
 troversy, and we dismiss it until we have the final 
 verdict of a court of last resort. We will assume 
 William Shakespeare. Credo ! 
 
 William Shakespeare, playwright, stage manager, 
 prudent man of business, who didst bequeath thy 
 second best bed, for reasons explicable in sentiment, 
 to thy relict, whilom fair Anne Hathaway, stand 
 forth and justify this thy preposterous claim to the 
 primacy in the republic of letters ! "Fair sirs, I 
 make no claim. In my day, for bread and better- 
 ment, I wrought, doing what my hand found to do. 
 I printed few books. True, I made plays, and 
 gathered shells and seaweeds along the shore, where- 
 with the sons of men might beguile some idle hours 
 — in thinking. And yet — and yet — it did sometimes 
 seem to me that in me I had that which might have 
 fathered all of poetry and all of philosophy. But the 
 ocean was too vast, and thought — O, thought ! — too 
 wide, and so — " 
 
 But not thus, gentle spirit, can thy claim — or 
 claim for thee — be set aside. Serenely mayest thou 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 
 
 75 
 
 smile at all the angry war of words between the 
 champions who would canonize and the contestants 
 who would crucify thy personality. But thy cause 
 is in safe charge ; and even as Aaron and Hur 
 stayed the hands of Moses, so shall Goethe and 
 Coleridge uphold thine. 
 
 The inspiration which Goethe received from 
 Shakespeare is thus described by him ; speaking as 
 Wilhelm Meister, he says : 
 
 " Yes ! I cannot recollect that any book, any man, 
 any incident of my life, has produced such import- 
 ant effects on me as the precious works to which by 
 your kindness I have been directed. They seem as 
 if they were performances of some celestial genius, 
 descending among men, to make them, by the mild- 
 est instructions, acquainted with themselves. They 
 are no fictions. You would think, while reading 
 them, you stood before the unclosed awful books of 
 Fate, while the whirlwind of the most impassioned 
 life was howling through the leaves and tossing 
 them fiercely to and fro. The strength and tender- 
 ness, the power and peacefulness of this man have 
 so astonished and transported me, that I long vehe- 
 mently for the time when I shall have it in my 
 power to read farther. 
 
 "All the anticipations I have ever had regarding 
 man and his destiny, which have accompanied me 
 from youth upwards, often unobserved by myself, I 
 find developed and fulfilled in Shakespeare's writ- 
 ings. It seems as if he cleared up every one of our 
 enigmas for us, though we cannot say : ' Here or 
 there is a word of solution.' His men appear like 
 
76 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 natural men, and yet they are not. These, the most 
 mysterious and complex productions of creation, 
 here act before us as if they were watches whose 
 dial plates and cases were of crystal, which pointed 
 out, according to their use, the course of the hours 
 and minutes, while, at the same time, you could dis- 
 cern the combination of wheels and springs that 
 turned them. The few glances I have cast over 
 Shakespeare's world incite me, more than anything 
 beside, to quicken my footsteps forward into the 
 actual world, to mingle in the flood of destinies that 
 is suspended over it, and at length, if I shall prosper, 
 to draw a few cups from the great ocean of true 
 nature, and to distribute them from off .the stage 
 among the tnirsting people of my native land. " Under 
 which wonderfully mixed metaphor, the great Ger- 
 man advanced an idea. 
 
 Coleridge writes thus: "I believe Shakespeare 
 was not a whit more intelligible in his own day than 
 he is now to an educated man, except for a few 
 local allusions of no consequence. And I said he is 
 of no age — nor, I may add, of any religion, or party, 
 or profession. The body and substance of his 
 works came out of the unfathomable depths of his 
 own oceanic mind ; his observation and reading, 
 which were considerable, supplied him with the 
 drapery of his figures." (Table Talk, vol. 6, p. 506.) 
 
 Great as was the genius of Shakespeare, his judg- 
 ment was at least equal to it. 
 
 The sweeping nature of Coleridge's characteriza- 
 tion of Shakespeare as the exponent of a world 
 literature has been questioned on the broad ground 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 77 
 
 that no such literature and no such character can or 
 does exist, but that every writer and thinker being 
 limited and conditioned by his age and country, by 
 antecedent conditions and actual environment, can 
 only reflect or embody a segment of a national and 
 epochal literature. Of course we can all see that 
 the arc of one man's genius does not, and cannot, 
 include or encompass the entire circumference of 
 humanity, but Shakespeare's point of observation 
 seems nearer the centre than any other man's since 
 St. Paul. We must not be too literal with Goethe and 
 Coleridge, and men who use the vernacular, instead 
 of scientific formulas. The truth is often larger than 
 the fact, though it must contain it The plane on 
 which move such minds as Tennyson's, Spencer's 
 and Gladstone's, and that on which crawls the glow- 
 worm that serves the Australian savage, or the slum 
 dweller of New York, for light of intellect, seem 
 parallel, one in the empyrean, the other in the slime, 
 but with no point of approach. And yet Shake- 
 speare did conceive, create, Hamlet and Christopher 
 Sly, Prospero and Caliban, Falstaff and Othello, and 
 had learned the secret of intellectual reconciliation 
 between phases of humanity the most diverse. So 
 that, though it is true that in the " Roman citizens " of 
 Coriolanus or Julius Caesar we discover the London 
 Mob, and no Romans ever had the opinions, or 
 exact modes of thought, that Shakespeare portrays in 
 them, still neither shall this concern us, for they had 
 hearts and passions which bellowed forth rage or 
 applause, in different idiom truly, but with the same 
 pulsations that now stir all hearts. Surely it is not 
 
yS THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 too much to call him the "many-minded." If not 
 absolute, universal, as nothing human, finite, can be, 
 yet, as touching profounder depths, revealing in 
 clearest light deeper abysses, and embracing wider 
 relations than any other, must we not fairly assign 
 to Shakespeare a quasi universality, and such actual 
 primacy, and even sovereignty, in the world of 
 letters, as is gained by common consent and general 
 suffrage ? 
 
 If the first place in literature be assigned to Shake- 
 speare, so, though not without dissent, the first place 
 among his creations must be accorded to Hamlet 
 Admit that Macbeth is a grander poem, that in dra- 
 matic conception and execution Othello excels it, 
 that Lear stirs blacker depths in the Stygian pool, 
 that in the music of its cadences the Tempest beats 
 with a finer rhythm, that in a dozen of his dramas he 
 holds the mirror more squarely to the exterior 
 realities of life around us, and that in Hamlet a 
 hundred faults may be found, yet, after all, we say 
 this is marvellous, this is the masterpiece of the 
 master. ~~ — 
 
 Strange 4hat this should be so, as this play is, in 
 form and conception, the least dramatic of Shake- 
 speare's great plays. Many of its situations, it is true, 
 are sufficiently striking to warrant its popularity with 
 the groundlings as well as with the scholars and 
 critics ; but a bare comparison will show how 
 inferior as an acting play it is in tragic movement to 
 Macbeth, Richard III., and other tragedies, and 
 notably to Othello, which that able and admirable 
 critic and scholar, Professor Thomas R. Price of 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 79 
 
 Columbia college, has demonstrated, I may say, to 
 be Shakespeare's best acting play. 
 
 Why Hamlet should be regarded as the paragon of 
 plays is, indeed, perplexing, if we look merely to its 
 defects and limitations. The plot, at bottom, is 
 barbarous, inconsequent, incoherent ; the action 
 drags ; the crisis is an anti-climax ; the catastrophe 
 not a consequence of the action, but of the want of 
 action, "for this effect defective comes by cause," 
 as pedantic Polonius says. And occult questions of 
 life, death, immortality, free-will and fate propounded 
 receive no reply, except the cruel answer of the 
 Sphinx to those who failed to solve her riddles, the 
 bloody enigma of the catastrophe — destruction. 
 What, then, does it all mean ? Why do we turn 
 again and again to the melancholy Dane with such 
 intense and sympathetic interest? Why ask with 
 .him the questions he has left unanswered ? Because, 
 in Hamlet the poet has bared a human heart. We 
 look into its magic mirror and see our own hearts 
 there. 
 
 While it is evident that Goethe, in the confidence 
 of his own genius, felt able to improve on Shake- 
 speare, and make a version of Hamlet better fitted to 
 the wants of the stage at least, and aile it is still 
 more evident that in this estimate of his own powers 
 he was mistaken, yet we must not forget the fact 
 that to him more than to any one else is due a true 
 method of interpretation of the master. With his 
 powerful intellect, vivid imagination, and robust 
 ethical sense, concentrated upon a kindred genius, 
 even though higher and broader than his own, he 
 
8o THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 was able, almost intuitively, to arrive at truths, which 
 later, more learned and analytic, criticism has not 
 been able to shake. We owe it to him that he 
 arrested the thought of his century and compelled it 
 to regard the great works of Shakespeare, not with a 
 mousing and mechanical mental anatomy, but 
 broadly, in the entirety of their conception, and 
 from a spiritual point of view. If the following 
 characterization of Hamlet be incomplete, erroneous 
 indeed in part, as I think it is, yet in the extracts 
 which follow, expository of the play, this first truly 
 great commentator has been unsurpassed by his 
 successors. He says : 
 
 "Soft, and from a noble stem, this royal flower 
 had sprung up under the immediate influences of 
 majesty ; the idea of moral rectitude with that of 
 princely elevation, that feeling of the good and 
 dignified with the consciousness of high birth, had' 
 in him been unfolded simultaneously. He was a 
 prince, by birth a prince ; and he wished to reign, 
 only that good men might be good without obstruc- 
 tion. Pleasing in form, polished by nature, cour- 
 teous from the heart, he was meant to be the patron 
 of youth and the joy of the world. 
 
 " He was calm in his temper, artless in his con- 
 duct, neither pleased with idleness nor too violently 
 eager for employment. The routine of an university 
 he seemed to continue at court. He possessed more 
 mirth of humor than of heart ; he was a good com- 
 panion, pliant, courteous, discreet, and able to forget 
 and forgive an injury, yet never able to unite himself 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 8 1 
 
 with those who overstepped the limits of the right, 
 the good, and the becoming.'' 
 
 "Calm" is certainly not the term to use of this 
 restless intellect and eager heart ; nor "artless," of a 
 genius born for intrigue and full of all resources, 
 except the direct way. In all the rest, the Interpreter 
 seems to have read aright this wonderful character, 
 but the subtlety of the prince has escaped, or be- 
 guiled, the search of the poet. 
 
 Goethe continues: "Figure to yourselves this 
 youth, this son of princes ; conceive him vividly ; 
 bring his state before your eyes, and then observe 
 when he learns that his father's spirit walks ; stand 
 by him in the terrors of the night, even when the 
 venerable ghost appears before him. He is seized 
 with boundless horror ; he speaks to the mysterious 
 form ; he sees it beckon him ; he follows and hears. 
 The fearful accusation of his uncle rings in his 
 ears the summons to revenge, and the piercing, oft- 
 repeated prayer, ' Remember me ! ' 
 
 "And, when the ghost has vanished, who is it 
 that stands before us? A young hero panting for 
 vengeance ? A prince by birth rejoicing to be called 
 to punish the usurper of his crown ? No ! trouble 
 ■and astonishment take hold of the sohtary young 
 man ; he grows bitter against smiling villains, swears 
 that he will not forget the spirit, and concludes with 
 the significant ejaculation : 
 
 " ' The time is out of joint ; O, cursed spite, 
 That ever I was born to set it right ! ' 
 
 "In these words, I imagine, will be found the key 
 to Hamlet's whole procedure. To me it is clear that 
 
82 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 Shakespeare meant, in the present case, t o repres ent 
 t he effect of a great action laid upon a soul unfit for 
 le perform ance ot it. In this view the whole play 
 seems to me to be composed. There is an oak tree 
 planted in a costly jar which should have borne only 
 pleasant flowers in its bosom ; the roots expand, the 
 jar is shivered. 
 
 "A lovely, pure, noble, and most moral nature, 
 without the strength of nerve which forms a hero, 
 sinks beneath a burden it cannot bear and must not 
 cast away. All duties are holy for him ; the present 
 JsjQSLjisad. Ii^1possibilitiS5"Tiave beerr-retjuired- of 
 him, not in themselves impossibilities, but such for 
 him. He winds and turns, and torments himself; 
 he advances and recoils ; is ever put in mind, ever 
 puts himself in mind ; at last does all but lose his 
 purpose from his thoughts, yet still without recover- 
 ing his peace of mind. 
 
 " It pleases us, it flatters us, to see a hero acting 
 on his own strength, loving and hating at the bidding 
 of his heart, undertaking and completing, casting 
 every obstacle aside, and attaining some great end. 
 Poets and historians would willingly persuade us 
 that so good a lot may fall to man. In Hamlet we 
 are taught another lesson ; the hero is without a 
 plan, but the play is full of plan. Here we have no 
 villain punished on some self-conceived and rigidly 
 accomplished scheme of vengeance ; a horrid deed is 
 done ; it rolls along with all its consequences, drag- 
 ging with it even the guiltless ; the guilty perpetrator 
 would, as it seems, evade the abyss made ready for 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 8 3 
 
 him ; yet he plunges in, and at the very point where 
 he thinks he will escape and happily complete his 
 course. 
 
 " For it is the property of crime to extend its mis- 
 chief over innocence, as it is of virtue to extend its 
 blessings over many that deserve them not ; while 
 frequently the author of the one or of the other is not 
 punished or rewarded at all. Here is this play of 
 ours, how strange ! The pit of darkness sends its 
 spirit and demands revenge, in vain ! All circum- 
 stances tend one way and hurry to revenge, in vain ! 
 Neither earthly nor infernal thing may bring about 
 what is reserved for fate alone ; the hour of judgment 
 comes ; the wicked falls with the good ; one race is 
 moved away that another may spring up. " 
 
 While such is Goethe's view, since reflected and., 
 refracted in half a hundred German mirrors, Karl 
 Werder*, in a very ingenious and able argument, 
 has adopted a theory directly contrary to it Ac- 
 cording to this theory, Hamlet's will was not at 
 fault, but the situation made it morally impossible 
 for him to obtain a proper vengeance by killing the 
 King. He was more or less convinced of Claudius's 
 guilt, but he had no evidence except the revelation 
 of the Ghost, who could not be produced to prove 
 his own assassination and the innocence of Hamlet, 
 brought to trial as a parricide and regicide. The 
 crime was improbable ; the proof of it impossible. 
 Werder argues that his object was not to kill Clau- 
 dius but to force him to confess, or display, his guilt, 
 and that he pursued this purpose constantly, and by 
 the best means possible. Moreover, he insists that 
 * Furness' Variorum Hamlet, II., 354. 
 
84 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 the drama moves rapidly to this conclusion. He 
 fixes as the turning point in the play Hamlet's mis- 
 take in swerving from his purpose when he kills 
 Polonius, after which event he is powerless. But 
 the King, as the second person in the piece, then 
 takes upon himself the solution of the knot, by 
 action, and thus brings ruin upon his own head ; so 
 that, at last, guilt works out its own retribution, and 
 secret crime comes to light. All this, and much 
 more, is carefully argued with much subtlety of rea- 
 soning, but after all with more speciousness than 
 solidity. It is the elaboration of paradox. How 
 does common-sense view it.? Shakespeare and his 
 audience realize that a great crime has been com- 
 mitted, and that " Hamlet, Revenge ! " is the burden 
 of the theme. Much that Werder says is true, 
 though not altogether new. Claudius was not a 
 usurper in any proper sense, but held a legal title as 
 King Consort, and his slaughter, without more ado, 
 was not, dramatically-speaking, possible. But, if 
 Hamlet's purpose was to make manifest his guilt, 
 which we may for argument's sake admit, surely the 
 worst way possible was to attempt to entrap him 
 into a confession. And, moreover, there is little in 
 the language of the interlocutors to favor such a 
 theory, for the play of Gonzago is too thin a device 
 to rest a hypothesis upon ; while Hamlet's contin- 
 uous whetting of his purpose to kill the King, and 
 the ghost's supernatural invocation to the deed in 
 the 4th act show that the poet's conception of Ham- 
 let's mission was the punishment of the murderer. 
 For instance, Hamlet says, "I say, we will have no 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 85 
 
 more marriages : those that are married already, all 
 hut one, shall live : the rest shall keep as they are. " 
 
 Mr. W. W. Story, a very competent and pleasant 
 critic, pointing out the weakness of German criticism 
 on Shakespeare, says : "Even Goethe's 'Analysis of 
 Hamlet,' much as it has been praised, seems very 
 poor to me — not to be mentioned for insight and 
 sympathetic sense with, for instance. Lamb, Coleridge, 
 or Hazlitt." While this is true, it must be remem- 
 bered that they had the benefit of Goethe's interpreta- 
 tion before them, and the powerful aid of a common 
 mother tongue and the same national instincts to 
 guide them in comprehending the author. 
 
 And though the Analysis is full of obvious errors 
 and incoherences, a step in the dark toward truth, it 
 does not deserve Story's censure, that it is "boring 
 and mechanical," for it struck the true keynote for 
 all the rest. But it is true that one very signal defect 
 in German criticism of Shakespeare is the want of per- 
 spective. Story says truly, " The Germans have the 
 vice of anatomizing Shakespeare, and laying him out 
 into parts and pieces, and admiring the worst as much 
 as the best. They find admirable reasons to show 
 that the notoriously ungenuine parts of his plays are 
 as admirable as the others. When they once go in to 
 praise, they praise everything." 
 
 Hear, however, what Coleridge says : "I believe 
 the character of Hamlet may be traced to Shakespeare's 
 deep and accurate science in mental philosophy. 
 Indeed, that this character must have some connec- 
 tion with the common fundamental laws of our 
 nature may be assumed from the fact that Hamlet 
 
86 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 has been the darling' of every tountry in which the 
 literature of England has been fostered. In order to 
 understand him, it is essential that we should reflect 
 on the constitution of our own minds. Man is dis- 
 tinguished from the brute animals in proportion as 
 thought prevails over sense ; but in the healthy pro- 
 cesses of the mini, a balance is constantly maintained 
 between the impressions from outward objects and 
 the inward operations, of the intellect : — for if there 
 be an overbalance in the contemplative faculty, man 
 thereby becomes the creature of mere meditation, 
 and loses his natural power of action. Now, one of 
 Shakespeare's modes of creating characters is to con- 
 ceive any one intellectual or moral faculty in morbid 
 excess, and then to place himself, Shakespeare, thus 
 mutilated or diseased, imder given circumstances. 
 in Hamlet he seems to have wished to exemplify the 
 moral necessity of a due balance between our atten- 
 tion to the objects of our sense, and our meditation 
 on. the workings of our minds, — an equilibrium be- 
 tween the real and the imaginary worlds. In Ham- 
 let this balance is disturbed : his thoughts, and the 
 images of his fancy, are far more vivid than his 
 actual perceptions, and his very perceptions; instantly 
 passing through the medium of his contemplations, 
 acquire, as they pass, a form and a color not naturally 
 theirown. Hence weseeagreat, an almost enormous, 
 intellectual activity, and a proportionate aversion 
 to real action, consequent upon it, with all its symp- 
 toms and accompanying qualities. This character 
 Shakspeare placed in circumstances, under which it 
 is obliged to act on the spur of the moment : — Ham- 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 87 
 
 tSt is brave and c areles s of deathj but he vacill ates 
 from sensibility, and procrastinates fromUigug-ht, and 
 lostis Llitf puwur 01 action in the energy of resolve. 
 Thus it is that this tragedy presents a direct con- 
 trast to that of Macbeth ; the one proceeds with the 
 utmost slowness, the other with crowded and breath- 
 less rapidity. * 
 
 " Hamlet's character is the prevalence of the 
 abstracting and generalizing habit over the pmctical. 
 He does not want courage, ski.l, will, or opportun- 
 ity ; but every incident sets him thinking ; and it is 
 curious, and, at the same time, strictly natural, that 
 Hamlet, who all the play seems reason itself, should 
 be impelled, at last, bv mereac cident, to effect h is 
 Q^iectvl have a smack of Hamlet myself, if I may 
 sayso*) {Table Talk Vol. 6., p. 285.) 
 
 Lowell carries forward and develops these ideas of 
 Goethe and Coleridge when he says, " Hamlet knows 
 only too well what 'twere good to do, but he palters 
 with everything in a double sense : he seesthe grain 
 of good there is in evil, and the grain of evil there is in 
 good, as they exist in ,the world, and, finding that he 
 can make those feather-weighted accidents balance 
 each other, infers that there is little to choose between 
 the essences themselves. He is of Montaigne's mind, 
 and says expressly that ' there is nothing good or ill, 
 but thinking makes it so.' He dwells so exclusively 
 in the world of ideas that the world of facts seems 
 trifling, nothing is worth the while ; and he has been 
 
 * Notes on Hamlet, Complete works, Coleridge, vol. IV., p. 144 
 (Harper Bros., 1858.) 
 
88 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET. 
 
 SO long objectless and purposeless, so far as actual 
 life is concerned, that, when at last an object and an 
 aim are forced upon him, he cannot deal with them, 
 and gropes about vainly for a motive outside of him- 
 self that shall marshall his thoughts for him and 
 guide his faculties into the path of action. He is the 
 victim not so much of feebleness of will as of an 
 intellectual indifference that hinders the will from 
 working long in any one direction. He wishes to 
 will, but never wills. His continual iteration of re- 
 solve shows that he has no resolution." {Lowell's 
 Among my Books, p. 214.) 
 
 ' ' If we must draw a moral from Hamlet, it would 
 seem to be, that Will is Fate, and that. Will once 
 abdicating, the inevitable successor in the regency is 
 Chance. Had Hamlet acted, instead of musing how 
 good it would be to act, the king might have been 
 the only victim. As it is, all the main actors in the 
 story are the fortuitous sacrifice of his irresolution. 
 We see how a single great vice of character at last 
 draws to itself as allies and confederates all other 
 v^eaknesses of the man, as in civil wars the timid 
 and the selfish wait to throw themselves upon the 
 stronger side." (LoweWs Among my Books, p.22^). 
 
 Why is the play of Hamlet what it is, and not 
 something else ? This has long been a question for 
 the critics. The fundamental idea, the principle that 
 directed the action and produced the situations of 
 the play, has been eagerly sought by scores of com- 
 mentators, who have hinged it upon this or upon 
 that theory of Hamlet's character or condition, 
 whence all the rest is logically derived. 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 8,9 
 
 To collate or review the manifold methods of 
 inlerpretation of this tragedy adopted by commenta- 
 tors, except in a summary way, is not to my present 
 purpose. One will have us believe that Shakespeare 
 is striving to reproduce realistically a picture of that 
 rude Viking life referred to in the legend of Saxo 
 Grammaticus, on vi'hich the play is founded; and 
 this, though the historic sense and historic perspec- 
 tive are modern, even recent, and Shakespeare, who 
 was a psychologist, not a scientist, wore his array 
 of facts as loosely as Hamlet his sable mantle. 
 Among the Germaris, and, for that matter, among 
 certain Americans also, it is not uncommon to repre- 
 sent Shakespeare as anticipating with prophetic ken 
 some later development of metaphysics or philoso- 
 phy, and illustrating it in his dramas. Now he is a 
 Neo-Hegelian in the third stage of consciousness, 
 and, interpreting him according to the formulas, we 
 are called upon to read through the thin veil of 
 word-play and plot the final facts of Being prefigured 
 in his types : — and, if they are not there, so much 
 the worse for Shakespeare. Or, again, an ingenious 
 Max-MuUerite, or G. W. Coxologist, discovers that 
 Hamlet is the unravelling of some Norse saga, the 
 hatching of a myth Qg'g laid in the Dawn of History, 
 in the primeval past. Carl Karpf offers us this exqui- 
 site gem of criticism : Hamlet's father, "Orvandell, 
 (the Frozen Toe), the chilblain, is as the lightning 
 spark, the hypostasis of Thor." 
 
 Furness, in his invaluable Variorum edition, gives 
 us a complete mine of these dissentient opinions ; 
 some grave and well considered, many most whim- 
 
90 
 
 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 sical and fantastic* Roetschl (II. p. 294) tells us, that 
 "in Hamlet, Shakespeare has, like a prophet, seized 
 the nature of the German character in its deepest 
 significance. Hamlet's strength and weakness are 
 the strength and weakness of the German people." 
 Freiligrath, begins a poem, beautifully translated by 
 Mrs. Wistar (p. 379) : '^Yes, Germany is Hamlet ! " 
 Sievers (p. 223) says : "t We ourselves trust in the 
 sequel to prove that this drama is intended to repre- 
 sent the peculiar, fundamental principle of Prot- 
 estantism." He says also: "What the poet here 
 represents is the torture and weakness of a nature 
 that has fallen out with the world, and lost its hold : 
 it is the break of the consciousness which robs the 
 soul of faith, and renders it incapable of all self-for- 
 getting devotion, of all elevation above selfN The 
 great Protestant idea of man's need of faith, of faith 
 as the condition of his peace, and the fulfilment of 
 his mission as a moral being, this it is to which this 
 profoundest and most moving of all the works of 
 Shakespeare's genius owes its origin." While such 
 a conclusion may possibly be implicit somewhere in 
 the teachings of this drama, it assuredly requires a 
 most strained interpretation to set it out as the origi- 
 nal purpose or as the fundamental principle, which 
 Shakespeare intended to represent in it. Rohrbach 
 (p. 306) says, "That Shakespeare meant to portray 
 in Hamlet a sickly talking hero." Again, we have 
 found Werder picturing him as a man ever ready to 
 strike, to cut the Gordian knot. He tells us, "The 
 
 * Quotations not otherwise marked are from Furness' Hamlet, 2d 
 vol. 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 91 
 
 piece knows no delay." One man, Dr. Benedix, 
 (p. 351) regards the whole play as a bungling mis- 
 take. And Moriz Rapp (p. 295) comes to the con- 
 clusion, "that the scheme of the work was from the 
 beginning wrongly contrived, i.e., undramatically. " 
 Play-goers and thinkers have thought otherwise. 
 
 Voltaire says of Hamlet, that " it is a vulgar and bar- 
 barous drama that would not be tolerated by the vilest 
 populace of France or Italy." "One would imagine 
 this piece to be the work of a drunken savage." 
 
 Froude points out very well the ineptitude and 
 incongruity of much of the criticism and alteration 
 of Shakespeare in the following passage : 
 
 " Gibber and others, as you know, wanted to alter 
 Shakespeare. The French king, in Lear, was to be 
 got rid of; Cordelia was to marry Edgar, and Lear 
 himself was to be rewarded for his sufferings by a 
 golden old age. They could not bear that Hamlet 
 should suffer for the sins of Claudius. The wicked 
 king was to die, and the wicked mother ; and Hamlet 
 and Ophelia were to make a match of it, and live 
 happily ever after. A common novelist would have 
 arranged it thus ; and you would have had your com- 
 fortable moral that wickedness was fitly punished, 
 and virtue had its due reward, and all would have 
 been well. But Shakespeare would not have it so. 
 Shakespeare knew that crime was not so simple in its 
 consequences, or Providence so paternal. He was 
 contented to take the truth from life ; and the effect 
 upon the mind of the most correct theory of what 
 life ought to be, compared to the effect of the life 
 itself^ is infinitesimal in comparison.'' 
 
92 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 Chateaubriand, whom some people consider him- 
 self somewhat shallow and showy, speaks of Ham- 
 let as : "This tragedy of maniacs, this royal bedlam 
 in which every character is either crazy or criminal, 
 in which feigned madness is added to real madness, 
 and in which the grave itself furnishes the stage with 
 the skull of a fool, etc. " 
 
 All which shows that tastes differ, and that the 
 yardstick of French, or even German, philosophy 
 and criticism is not the measure for the orbed genius 
 of the greatest of poets. 
 
 The question so often started, so much and so 
 ably discussed, of Hamlet's madness seems to be 
 hardly a question at all, though each critic has his 
 theory. Hamlet says he will feign madness ; and, 
 even when so feigned, it is most doubtful to the per- 
 sons of the drama, and should not be so at all to the 
 audience. The whole thing seems to turn upon a 
 play upon words. If we are all mad, as some 
 allege, Hamlet was mad. Was he then sane? If 
 sanity means perfect health of mind, body and soul, 
 surely not. Who is.? Certainly we have here a 
 soul in sore distress, a willow bending before the 
 storm of life, bending this way and that, even as old 
 saws advise, and yet at last wrenched from its rooted 
 bed and swept into utter vacuity and failure, because 
 it obeyed the law of its being and was a willow and 
 not an oak? Yet oaks, too, go down before tem- 
 pests sent for their rending, even as willows are torn 
 up when the hurricane strikes them. The resistance 
 of the one or of the other is merely a measure of the 
 force of the tornado. But, willow or oak, Hamlet 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 93 
 
 was not equal to "the blast from Hell" he en- 
 countered. 
 
 We must remember, too, that, in the old legend, 
 Hamlet's madness was but put on, for a purpose. 
 And if Shakespeare makes it real, not feigned, what 
 lesson are the sound in mind to draw from it? 
 Ophelia's madness was real ; if Hamlet's also, then 
 would we have upon the stage the counterplay of a 
 mad hero and a mad heroine — "a mad world, my 
 masters ; " Bedlam brought home to us as the picture 
 of mankind. That noble and majestic reason was 
 harshly wrung no doubt, but not overthrown. If 
 the scenes of this drama are but pictures of lunacy, 
 its moral purpose might be as well subserved by a 
 book of dreams, the shuffled cards dealt by Incubus 
 to the sleeping. 
 
 I have shown how the commentators ring the 
 changes on every crotchet and conceit that may be 
 imagined. But, after all, it is to Goethe that we owe 
 the clue that has led to the solution of the question, 
 first and last, of the signiticance of Hamlet. Was 
 not Goethe right (p. 333) when 'he says : "They 
 come and ask me what idea I meant to embody in 
 my Faust? As if I knew and could tell ! To depict 
 the reign of love, of hatred, of hope, or despair, and 
 whatever the states and passions of the soul may be, 
 is native to the poet, and it is his success simply to 
 represent them." 
 
 Does Shakespeare, indeed, intend at all in Hamlet, 
 to propound a theory, to elucidate a fundamental 
 principle ? Not perhaps as a formula, but surely in 
 concrete human form. There is in it a man and an 
 
94 , THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 idea Is it not the true solution of the entire mystery, 
 that Shakespeare meant to portray a Man, the great- 
 est of all the mysteries of creation — with what 
 lesson we may derive from that man's failure ? The 
 Prince of Denmark is not an epitome of the virtues 
 and vices, but a man, a real man, a human soul in 
 contest with fate. • We mount with him, and tread 
 the airy paths of the spirit ; with him we look into 
 the seething depths of our natures and see suggested 
 there, in Hamlet's indecision and abdication of the 
 issue of events to circumstance, the defeat of the 
 human will in its war with destiny, and that aspect 
 of our being, which, however insoluble, forever 
 stares at us — the very Gethsemane of the finite soul, 
 the impotence of man in the world of spirit. This is 
 the chief value, this the perennial interest, this the 
 real significance of this wonderful drama. 
 
 Hamlet and Macbeth are, as has been often shown, 
 the complements of each other in the tragic presenta- 
 tion of one of the most momentous questions that 
 ever engaged the mind of man — that of the personal 
 responsibility of the individual for his actions. Each 
 of these plays propounds this problem for our solu- 
 tion after its own fashion. There are different ways 
 of putting and answering questions. Socrates had 
 his way, a most unfair one truly, however skilful and 
 delightful. So they may be put and answered in 
 sermons or in squibs ? Shakespeare put his in stage 
 plays, and answered them in enigmas. This great 
 question of Fate and Free Will, or some aspects of it 
 he debates in both Hamlet and Macbeth. Answer, 
 Macbeth, in thine own way, and thou, Hamlet, in 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 95 
 
 thine. Take thy unhallowed will, like the image of 
 a false god, Macbeth, into the temple of thy soul, and 
 pass through the fire to Moloch. And, thou, Hamlet, 
 cast thy purposes like jetsam from a struggling ship, 
 upon the waste of waters, and leave thy helm to play 
 of wind and wave, and the hulk shall drift till the re- 
 morseless sea devour all. Macbeth teaches the pri- 
 mal duty of rectitude of will ; Hamlet, of decision of 
 will. The former rebukes the vacillation which hes- 
 itates between right and wrong, the latter the vacil- 
 lation between action and procrastination. Macbeth 
 says, ' ' Shall I do it, right or wrong ? " Hamlet, ' ' Right 
 or wrong, I cannot do it ? " Each pays the penalty of 
 his sin. The claim, the right, the obligation, the ne- 
 cessity, in the scheme of Providence, of the energetic 
 exercise of a free will is the grand ethical and theo- 
 logical lesson taught in Hamlet. This is its lesson" 
 for all men, as I have striven heretofore to explain ; 
 but that Shakespeare intended it originally for a nar- 
 rower and more special and personal scope and 
 application I think is most probable, and this I shall 
 endeavor to show hereafter in these lectures. 
 
 Without citing the libraries which have been writ- 
 ten on Hamlet, the quotations I have given from 
 some of the grandest thinkers of modern times 
 evince the influence of the play and its creator upon 
 the world of thought. Its germ of Doubt has become 
 a full blown skepticism : its individual scrupulosity 
 a widespread habit of mind. This is curiously illus- 
 trated in the Journal of Amiel, translated by the 
 gifted author of Robert Elsmere, who seems to have 
 found in the Swiss professor the prototype for at least 
 
q6 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET. 
 
 two of her characters. Hamlet was intended as a 
 warning against hesitation ; Amiel saturates himself 
 with Hamlet, and, as Hamlet, becomes hesitation 
 incarnate. 
 
 Amiel says, 8th Nov. 1852, " Responsibility is my 
 invisible nightmare. To suffer through one's own 
 fault is a torment worthy of the lost, for so grief is 
 envenomed by ridicule, and the worst ridicule of all, 
 that which springs from shame of oneself My priv- 
 ilege is to be the spectator of my own life drama, 
 to be fully conscious of the tragi-comedy of my own 
 destiny — that is to say, to be unable to take my own 
 illusions seriously, to see myself, so to speak, from 
 the theatre on the stage, or to be like a man looking 
 from beyond the tomb into existence ; " and much 
 more to the same effect. He tells us, "Shakespeare 
 must have experienced this feeling often, and Ham- 
 let must express it somewhere. " So Amiel, neglect- 
 ing the purpose of the poet, and the moral of the 
 play, and fascinated by the opium dream of vacilla- 
 tion in Hamlet, spent thirty years in " craven scruple 
 of thinking too precisely on the event," making small 
 mark upon his time, and left for legacy some cloud- 
 work of introspective psychology, and for warning 
 his failure in life's purpose. Hamlet's influence on 
 the life of this man, who extorts a languid admiration, 
 may be illustrated by the following extracts from his 
 Journal, which are curiously illustrative. 
 
 "6th July, 1853. "Why, in general, am I better 
 fitted for what is difficult than for what is easy. Al- 
 ways for the same reason. I cannot bring myself to 
 move freely, to show myselt without a veil, to act on 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 
 
 97 
 
 my own account and act seriously, to believe in and 
 assert myself, whereas a piece of badinage which 
 diverts attention from myself to the thing in hand, 
 from the feeling to the skill of the writer, puts me at 
 my ease. It is timidity which is at the bottom of it. 
 There is another reason too, — I am afraid of great- 
 ness, I am not afraid of ingenuity, and, distrustful as 
 I am of my gift and my instrument, I like to reassure 
 myself by an elaborate practice of execution. All 
 my published literary essays, therefore, are little else 
 than studies, games, exercises, for the purpose of 
 testing myself. I play scales, as it were ; I run up 
 and down my instrument, I train my hand, and 
 make sure of its capacity and skill. But the work 
 itself remains unachieved. My effort expires, and, 
 satisfied with the power to act, I never arrive at the 
 will to act. I am always preparing and never 
 accomplishing, and my energy is swallowed up in 
 a kind of barren curiosity — these are the two obsta- 
 cles which bar against me a literary career. Nor 
 must procrastination be forgotten. I am always 
 reserving for the future what is great, serious, and 
 important, and meanwhile I am eager to exhaust 
 what is pretty and trifling." This is a long draught of 
 Amiel, and I would not indulge myself in parading 
 what may, in one sense, be but the morbid mask- 
 ing of a recluse, out worn with self-contemplation ; 
 but every close student of Hamlet will recognize in 
 this self-portraiture an able and critical study, an 
 exact portrayal, of the mind of Hamlet. The disciple 
 had lost himself in his master. 
 
 Again Amiel tells us : " Every situation is an 
 
98 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 equilibrium of forces ; every life is a struggle between 
 opposing forces working within the limits of a cer- 
 tian equilibrium." "The man who insists upon see- 
 ing with perfect clearness before he decides, never 
 decides." "I am always trifling with the present 
 moment. Feeling in me is retrospective. My refrac- 
 tory nature is slow to recognize the solemnity of 
 the hour in which I actually stand. An ironical 
 instinct, born of timidity, makes me pass lightly 
 over what I have, on pretence of waiting for some 
 
 other thing at some other time I trifle even 
 
 with happiness out of distrust of the future. " These 
 instances could be multiplied to any extent : but it 
 is Hamlet, not Amiel, we have to deal with, and it 
 is only because Amiel was a Hamlet in actual life, 
 painting his prototype, while trying to photograph 
 himself, that we reproduce and dwell upon his 
 words so fully here. 
 
 As with Amiel the Genevese, so with Goethe and 
 the German host who have enlisted under the ban- 
 ners of Hamlet ; to all these, and Jo thinkers a nd 
 dreamers everywher e, the t rag edy of Hesi ta-tion has 
 o'er topped thetraged£ _ja£.Actiafl. Hanalfil—reigns. 
 Fontius Pilate washed his hands, saying, ' ' I am 
 innocent of the blood of this just person " : but all 
 the waves of the ocean and all the tides of time will 
 not wash his soul clean from the blood-guilt he 
 incurred when he refused to do what he knew was 
 right. 35[e_caimQt^avoid the responsihility of action 
 
 ^ delay, or words of renunciation, 
 h Hamlet,"~StTakespeare's fundamental canon of 
 dramatic construction, organic unity in the action, 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 99 
 
 is apparently violated, but not really so. The condi- 
 tions which ordinarily lead to a sin of commission 
 culminate here in a sin of omission. The interest is 
 maintained up to the crisis, which consists, not in a 
 fatal decision of the hero, but in a fatal indecision. 
 It is the prince's failure to act, to do, at the point of 
 fate, what the audience has a right to expect him to 
 do, that culminates in — procrastination. His defect 
 of will is the crisis. He lets slip his opportunity, 
 and evades the appointed task. He shirks his re- 
 sponsibility, and pursues a waiting policy. His is 
 a Fabian campaign, a sort of generalship, which, 
 successful once in history, has served since as the 
 apology for a thousand military abortions. In the 
 latter half of Hamlet, the action is necessarily incon- 
 sequential. As the crisis consisted in an abdication 
 of volition, it could have no consequences. Anarchy 
 ensued in the moral government of the situation, 
 until Fate, taking up the abandoned sceptre, decided 
 a cause whose arbitrament belonged properly to the 
 realm of the human will. What redeems this part of 
 the play is the succession of brilliant stage situations 
 springing from the intrigue and involutions of plot, 
 together with the splendid lights and shades of a 
 soul displayed under the electric glow of Shake- 
 speare's psychology. 
 
 And yet we are not to believe that this movement 
 in Hamlet is any more a mistake, or less profound, 
 than that which dictates the motif of some grand 
 operatic performance. A believer in Shakespeare's 
 keen common-sense, his mastery of the theatre in 
 all its aspects, and his artistic and literary insight, 
 
lOO THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 will not concede that the rhythm of the action in 
 Hamlet is an accident even, or that the suspense, 
 the ebb and flow of the tragic tide, and the unex- 
 pectedness — the lightning bolt — of the royal calam- 
 ity, ^schylean in its final inevitableness, are other 
 than parts of a purpose, the harmony of perfect art. 
 The master knew what he was about, and, to produce 
 desired effects, used the right means to the proposed 
 end, putting aside all others. 
 
 I have said that in the unfolding of this great 
 drama of fate and free-will, Shakespeare taught his 
 lesson by bringing within range of our mental vision 
 the soul of a man. This is the true solution ; and, 
 when we say a man, we mean a particular man, 
 not man — a type, a generalization, an abstraction, 
 a phantasy, which never existed, and never will. 
 But what man 1 It has been often said, and well 
 said, that, in Hamlet, Shakespeare turned out his 
 own soul for the study of the world. Kreyssig 
 (p. 302) declares that, "From the rich troop of his 
 heroes, Shakespeare has chosen Hamlet, as the ex- 
 ponent, to the spectators and to posterity, of all that 
 lay nearest to his own heart. " 
 
 Kenny (p. 177) beautifully expresses a thought 
 more or less clearly shadowed by many others: 
 " Hamlet is, in some sense, Shakespeare's most typi- 
 cal work. In no other of his dramas does his high- 
 est personality seem to blend so closely with his 
 highest genius. It is throughout informed with his 
 skepticism, his melancholy, his ever-present sense of 
 .the shadowiness and the fleetingness of hfe." But 
 perhaps Hazlitt more clearly strikes the keynote 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. loi 
 
 when he says, (p. 155), " It is we who are Hamlet." 
 In " Hamlet's Traits of Character," "by a No Phil- 
 osopher" (p. 351), the correct view of Shakespeare's 
 mode of literary production herein is well set forth. 
 " It is not in Hamlet, as in other pieces of Shake- 
 speare's, the history of a single passion, the develop- 
 ment of a few mental qualities, good or bad, that is 
 set before us. In this drama Shakespeare sets him- 
 self a greater task ; to make clear and intelligible 
 from the whole structure of the piece, a human soul 
 in its totality, in its fluctuating action, and in the 
 finest vibrations by which the nerves are thrilled. 
 This drama may not, indeed, be a mere portraiture of 
 character, but yet a development, or rather a self un- 
 folding, of a character face to face with the misery 
 of this world. According to this design of the 
 whole, Shakespeare does not mark single defects, 
 but, painting and adding,- he unfolds, partly by 
 action and partly by inaction, the lineaments which 
 combine to form a piquant and original portrait." 
 
 The truth often lies between the extremes of 
 interpretation. Hamlet may be conceived as not 
 deficient in ordinary will power, as equal to the 
 exigencies of ordinary affairs, or even more largely 
 endowed. But still the situation in which he is 
 placed is beyond his powers. Perhaps he is not to 
 be blamed for want of success, which mortals cannot 
 command ; but we feel, time and again, that he pro- 
 nounces his own condemnation, which the circum- 
 stances justify, when he trifles with his opportunity. 
 " Thus conscience does make cowards of us all, 
 And thus the native hue of resolution 
 Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought ; 
 
102 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 And enterprises of great pith and moment, 
 With this regard their currents turn awry, 
 And lose the name of action." 
 
 This is the explanation of Hamlet's defect and the 
 warning to all like him. And his self-reproaches in 
 Act 2, Scene 2, are echoes of this thought. 
 
 " Oh what a rogue and peasant slave am I, " etc. . . . 
 " But I am pigeon livered and lack gall 
 To make oppression bitter." 
 
 One of the surest ways to misread and misinterpret 
 the true spirit and purpose of this play, or of any of 
 Shakespeare's plays, is to presuppose that the Dram- 
 atist, the Poet, the Maker, has violated the funda- 
 mental law of poetical production. Poetry is creation, 
 not analysis. It is a correlation of spiritual forces 
 with their material forms, resulting in a concrete 
 entity. Science may dissect it, criticism may ex- 
 pound it, but, unless a soul has been breathed into it 
 by the inspiration of genius, it must be "a thing of 
 shreds and patches," a puppet, a skeleton perhaps, 
 but not a living, enduring poem ; and in no form of 
 poetry is this more true than in the drama. As Cole- 
 ridge says of him, "Shakespeare is the Spinozistic 
 deity — an omnipresent creativeness." Shakespeare, 
 of all men, did not plan Moralities, did not dress up 
 abstractions — Virtue, Loyalty, Piety, etc., — to act a 
 little charade. Had he done so the dust of centuries 
 would have entombed his dramas, along with the 
 Miracle Plays and Moralities of his predecessors. 
 But they live. And why .' Because they were born, 
 not made ; of poem, as well as of poet, it is true, 
 " Nascitur, nonjii." 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 103 
 
 Shakespeare's persons of the drama are veritable 
 men, not lay figures ; and they are organic men, not 
 mechanical toys — manikins. In each we behold 
 Shakespeare's conception of an individual, often 
 grander, more heroic, in proportions, than the origi- 
 nal, because Shakespeare himself was greater. And 
 thus with care we may discover in his portraits the 
 original, plus the hand, the head, the kindly smile, 
 the capacious brain of the artist himself. 
 
 Hence, as Hazlitt says, Hamlet is a portrait. 
 Whose portrait he was originally intended for is one 
 thing ; what he became in process of development is 
 another. Far be it from me to deny that in the 
 completed Hamlet who speaks to us from the Second 
 Quarto, who speaks to us from under the vizard of 
 Booth, we hear a voice that is truly Shakespeare's. 
 We do see his veritable likeness there, and our own 
 also. The great dramatist has projected himself 
 into his creation, and taught him to utter the 
 thoughts that shook his own high-wrought soul as 
 it trembled in the balance. This is one side of the 
 many-sided man, at a critical juncture of his life, and 
 the speculation and wide discourse that iflash from 
 the lips of the melancholy Dane are inspirations 
 such as the Delphic God gave out through the voice 
 of his human oracle. .^ 
 
 If we cast aside his inky robes, and consider 
 young Hamlet, not as a prince, but as a man, we 
 discover the secret of his wide and perennial interest 
 for us. The imagfe- of the philosophic soul, reflected 
 from the mirror of the poet's. mind, "stands posed in 
 sweetness and strength, like a demi-god. Before it is 
 
104 TffE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 the heavy burthen of life, weighted with cares, with 
 conflicting and doubtful duties, with certain peril, 
 and with possible crime. In the shadowy lines of 
 the spirit we behold the intellect perplexed, the con- 
 science appalled, the will paralyzed, and the whole 
 man borne down in a vain struggle with destiny. 
 Equipped from a full armory with every weapon of 
 the intellect, a fatal d efect of will mars and ruins all. 
 Is not such a picture, projected from the depths 
 of the poet's nature for the teaching of the world, 
 an open confession as it were, a crying aloud ; "I 
 have sinned .^ " Here is "that unmatched form 
 and feature of blown youth, blasted with ecstasy," 
 and "quite, quite, down;" "and, in his up-shot, 
 purposes mistook fallen on the inventors' heads." 
 Purpose, decision, prompt and resolute action, this is 
 the lesson for the King, for the Court, for us, for 
 the world, for future generations, and, perhaps, most 
 of all. for the easing of the poet's own heart and 
 conscience. 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 105 
 
 THE AUTHORSHIP OF HAMLET. 
 
 " Unless my study and my books be false, 
 The argument you held was wrong." 
 
 1 Henry VI., I. i. 
 
 If my interpretation of the Significance of Hamlet 
 seems to any one more like to a cento of others' 
 opinions than to a cast of my own thought, I might 
 plead a goldsmith's apology, who should think his 
 jewel none the worse that it showed more of gems 
 than of setting. But of this excuse I will not avail 
 myself, for, little as I may obtrude my own views, 
 they are the conclusions of a quarter of a century of 
 mingled interested inquiry and unconscious cere- 
 bration. My theories of Shakespeare and his works, 
 such as they ar e, have been fus ed over the slow fires 
 of a lifetime of<^dmirin g contempla tionT^or I cannot 
 call it real study : and the treasures that I have im- 
 bedded in the slag of my essay are there as illustra- 
 tions — forcible for intrinsic worth, or beautiful for 
 expression — of results obtained through my own 
 examination and independent reflection. So much, 
 I may be permitted by way of apology for my 
 method. 
 
 Who wrote Hamlet ? Shakespeare, of course ! 
 But is it of course .■' The Baconian theory aside, it is 
 conceded that Shakespeare did write the play, as it 
 
106 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 is presented to us in the best modern texts, and as 
 it is acted by the most reputable tragedians. But 
 where did the play come from, and how much of it 
 is really Shakespeare's in kernel, as well as in shell ? 
 This has seemed to be a hard nut for Shakespearians 
 to crack, and this lecture is designed to show that it 
 is more simple than has been imagined, and that 
 many of the difficulties were rather of men's own 
 making than intrinsic to the subject. 
 
 Modern criticism agrees that there were three plays 
 called Hamlet. Our accepted version, which is sub- 
 stantially the same in all the best recent editions, 
 with mere slight verbal deviations and varying con- 
 structions, rests upon the volume published in 1623 
 by the companions of Shakespeare, and known as the 
 First Folio, as verified and modified by reference to 
 the edition authorized by Shakespeare himself, the 
 Second Quarto of 1604, which it probably followed. 
 All the best modern editions may be regarded as 
 containing the genuine Hamlet, and are as nearly 
 Shakespeare's as human research can rehabilitate the 
 thought of three centuries ago. The Second Quarto, 
 on which they finally rest, is distinctively and assur- 
 edly genuine. It is not merely Shakespearian, it is 
 Shakespeare's ; it is Shakespeare ! Let us name 
 it the Last Hamlet 
 
 It is well known how indifferent, if not averse, to 
 the publication of his plays was Shakespeare, as were 
 many other dramatists of his day. It is, however, 
 sufficiently clear why he authorized the publica- 
 tion of Hamlet in 1604 in the form known as the 
 Second Quarto. In 1603 an edition of Hamlet was 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 
 
 107 
 
 printed, now known as the First Quarto. Tlie title 
 of this book was : "The tragicall Historie of Ham- 
 let Prince, of Denmarke By William Shakespeare. 
 As it hath beene diuerse times acted by his Highnesse 
 seruants in the Cittie of London : as also in the two 
 Vniuersities of Cambridge and Oxford, and else- 
 where." The next year the Second Quarto was pub- 
 lished with the following title-page : "The Tragi- 
 call Historie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke. By 
 William Shakespeare. Newly imprinted and en- 
 larged to almost as much again as it was, according 
 to the true and perfect Coppie, '' etc. , 1604." The two 
 versions vary widely, and there has been much dis- 
 pute as to why they should so differ, when printed 
 so nearly together, and each purporting to give 
 Shakespeare's play. 
 
 There are three theories as to the intrinsic character 
 of Quarto First (Q i). One theory is that it is merely 
 a mangled copy of the true version as we have it in 
 Quarto Second ; and that the discrepancies between 
 them are due to the fact that it was carelessly taken 
 down in short-hand, during the representation, and 
 that the blanks were filled in from memory by an 
 incompetent person, who mutilated and marred it in 
 the reproduction. This view necessarily attributes 
 the authorship to Shakespeare. 
 
 A second theory is summed up in the view taken 
 by the Clarendon Editors, and is thus entitled to all 
 the weight mere authority can give, though they 
 admit that it is "conjectural, and based to a large 
 extent on subjective considerations." According to 
 this theory we have, in the Second Quarto, for the 
 
Io8 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET. 
 
 first time, the Hamlet of Shakespeare. The Claren- 
 don Editors reach this conclusion, although "in 
 the Quarto of 1603 we have the whole 'action' of 
 the play : that is to say, the events follow very 
 much in the same order, and the catastrophe is the 
 same." The following- is their view: " we venture 
 to think that a close examination of Quarto First will 
 convince any one that it contains some of Shake- 
 speare's undoubted work, mixed with a great deal 
 that is not his, and will confirm our theory that the 
 text, imperfect as it is, represents an older play in a 
 transition state, while it was undergoing a remodel- 
 ling, but had not received more than the first rough 
 touches of the great master's hand." 
 
 This opinion has been held by many eminent 
 commentators ; but, on the other hand, the weight of 
 authority rests with a third theory, that Q i, though 
 evidently an older and feebler play than the Last 
 Hamlet, — Q2 — , was in fact largely, if not altogether, 
 Shakespeare's work, and gives the play as it was 
 performed before it was recast by the author about 
 1596, or 1597, and as it now exists. 
 
 When the Hamlet of Q 2 took its form, it is not quite 
 easy to say. Singer puts the date at 1597, Malone 
 at 1600. Richard Grant White and Clark and Wright 
 place the date between 1598 and 1602. I prefer the 
 earliest of these dates, or even 1596, as the initial 
 point of the Last Hamlet, though its revision may have 
 lasted till 1603, and, it is not improbable, considering 
 the ways of authors, that even after the pirated First 
 Quarto was published, and when the Second Quarto 
 was in its birth-throes, in 1604, Shakespeare may 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 
 
 109 
 
 have welcomed its coming with some rose of poesy, 
 or set therein as a coronal for the newcome Prince, 
 Scotch James, or Hamlet the Perennial, some of the 
 jewels we prize the most. 
 
 " In 1 597 the Lord Admiral's players were restrained 
 for a time from playing, in consequence of having 
 brought out Nash's Isle of Dogs, a play in which 
 personal satire was probably introduced, and for 
 which the author was imprisoned. " (Hamlet, Clar. 
 Ed. Preface). Nothing is said of " Innovation," or 
 "Inhibition," in Q i, which contains the old cast of 
 Hamlet ; but Q 2 has in regard to the Gonzago play- 
 ers, "I think their inhibition comes by the means of 
 the late innovation. '' This is not without significance 
 as to the point of time when the recast of the play 
 was made ; for if the Inhibition was but just issued 
 when Shakespeare was rewriting Hamlet, nothing 
 could be more natural than an allusion to it as a 
 matter of deepest interest to actors and playgoers. 
 
 The Second Quarto is declared to be a "true and 
 perfect copy,'' "newly imprinted and enlarged to 
 almost as much again as it was. " The First Quarto, 
 on the other hand, only claims to be an actor's 
 copy," Hamlet," " as it has been divers times acted 
 by his Highness' servants," etc. These phrases 
 probably express the true distinction between them. 
 There was no wish, or inclination, on the part of the 
 Company of The King's Players, to which Shake- 
 speare belonged, to publish its plays, the repertory of 
 which, while it remained exclusively its own, con- 
 stituted a valuable stock-in-trade. But, it is probable 
 that in 1603 there was a lively public interest in the 
 
no THE PHOTOTYPE OF HAMLET, • 
 
 popular play of Hamlet, and, to profit by this, an 
 "enterprising" publisher, one "N. L. ," procured and 
 put upon the market an actor's copy, probably an 
 imperfect one that had been cast aside — likely enough, 
 one that had been used at one of the Universities 
 mentioned in the imprint, and which had fallen into 
 "innocuous desuetude." But in the meantime, the 
 great dramatist had rewritten and expanded this play 
 which had formerly held the stage, and which neither 
 he, nor his company, was now willingto acknowledge 
 as the full-grown child of his genius. He does not 
 repudiate the First Qnarto, as not his work, in the 
 imprint of Q 2, but suggests its imperfections, its 
 incorrectness and its obsolete form. Quarto Second 
 was issued from a correct copy of this new cast of 
 the play, though it was printed with the customary 
 carelessness of the age. 
 
 The discrepancies between the two forms of the 
 play are too marked to permit the supposition that the 
 one is a mere mutilation of the other ; and, inferior 
 as Q I is to Q 2, it is too consistent, and too good an 
 acting play as it stands, to be accepted as a mere 
 fragment. To my mind Q 2 exhibits change, process 
 and development from Q i ; and in conception as 
 well as in form. It contains three thousand seven 
 hundred and nineteen lines, while Q i numbers only 
 two thousand one hundred and forty three lines, 
 nearly verifying the statement of the imprint, that it 
 had been enlarged to almost as much again. The 
 language differs' widely, the order of scenes is not 
 the same, and even the names of persons of the drama 
 are changed. In Q i, Polonius is Corambis ; Rey- 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS, m 
 
 naldo, Montano ; Osric, "a braggart gentleman ; ' and 
 there are other minor variations in the names. But 
 the play itself is substantially and essentially the 
 same; "all the action of the amended Hamlet is to 
 be found in the first sketch ; " and this is a very 
 essential point. 
 
 The First Quarto had independent merits of its 
 own, sufficient, indeed, to commend it to a certain 
 class of minds as the better form of stage play even, 
 and it has served as the basis of such plays in Ger- 
 many. This, however, is chiefly due to its brevity 
 and greater rapidity of action. In it the actual mad- 
 ness of Hamlet appears more probable, while in Q. 2 
 the language that might lead us to believe that mad- 
 ness real is modified. So the guilt of the Queen is 
 more emphasized in Q 2 ; and other points of differ- 
 ence might be noted. 
 
 Knight well says: "The character of Hamlet is 
 fully conceived in the original play, whenever he is 
 in action. It is the contemplative part of his nature 
 which is elaborated in the perfect copy." The great- 
 est and most radical change from the earliert to the 
 later tragedy, however, is in the infusion of a loftier 
 tone of thought. The former was a drama of plot 
 and situations ; but the speculative reason of Shake- 
 speare has breathed into the mature Hamlet his own 
 spirit, which finds play in its noblest passages. 
 Much more might be said, but the main point is that 
 the earlier play served only as the stalk and bud for 
 the great tragedy, and that in the full blown Hamlet 
 we have the flower of Shakespeare's admirable judg- 
 ment and ripe imagination. 
 
112 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET. 
 
 I have said there were three Hamlets. The last 
 Hamlet, that of Q 2, undoubtedly Shakespeare's, 
 which substantially took its present cast about 1597 ; 
 the earlier Hamlet of Q i, in parts questionably 
 Shakespeare's, according- to sorrie critics ; and an- 
 other, or the First Hamlet. My theory of Q i is that 
 it was a stage copy of the earlier version, and was 
 probably dropped from the stage by Shakespeare's 
 Company, in or before, 1596, or possibly on account 
 of the Inhibition in 1597 ; although it may have been 
 produced by amateurs elsewhere, "at the Universi- 
 ties," later. It was printed for the first time in 1603, 
 and, crude as it appears to us, must present the 
 drama after it had been considerably developed from 
 its original rudimentary form, by accretions, sugges- 
 tions and amendments. 
 
 Corrupt as is the text, and inferior as Q. i may seem 
 to some, it evinces in every part the essential feat- 
 ures of a Shakespearian creation. The only doubt 
 of this is based upon intrinsic evidence of very 
 shadowy texture. But at all events it is the earliest 
 form of the play remaining to us. The earliest draft 
 of the tragedy — the First Hamlet — is a hypothetical 
 play, of which no copy exists, and which we cannot 
 certainly prove was at all different from Q i, but 
 which may be assumed to have existed, and which 
 might well be entitled, " Hamlet, Revenge ! ", as it 
 was mockingly called by Shakespeare's satirists. 
 
 We have now traced this play backward to its ear- 
 liest verified form. Writers generally agree that 
 an inceptive play, or original cast of a play, called 
 Hamlet, did exist, and was acted as early as 1 589, ot 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 
 
 113 
 
 fourteen years before Q i was printed. As to whether 
 this is the play we have in Q i, or not, there has been 
 discussion. If not contained in Q i, it is no longer 
 extant. W ejiave no c ertain proof t hat Q i doe s not 
 contain this original rast nf H amlet, but the cirr.iim- 
 stances lead to a contrary belief, and to the view 
 that it is much developed from the first sketch. 
 Fleay says, Hamlet is "Founded on an older play 
 now lost." 
 
 It has been generally assumed, or admitted with- 
 out question, that this original play was not com- 
 posed by Shakespeare, but by some one else, though 
 some of the most learned and careful of his editors 
 see no ground for such an opinion. While these 
 lectures may add little that is really new to the 
 knowledge of a subject which has been so thoroughly 
 examined by patient scholarship, and while no abso- 
 lute demonstration can be made of any theory of it 
 without the discovery of additional evidence, yet it 
 is hoped that the facts herein presented will at least 
 throw upon the genesis and evolution of this drama 
 a light strong and clear enough to exhibit who was its 
 original author, and when, how, and why, it was 
 written. 
 
 And if it should turn out that my contention in the 
 matter is right, and that Willi am Shakespeare was t he 
 builder of Hamlet from the bottom up, my hearers 
 may conclude that the upshot is much like "the 
 Dutch takmg Holland." But then again it is some- 
 thing if we can prove once in a while that things are 
 what they seem, and that to the common-sense of 
 mankind is occasionally accorded a clearer vision of 
 
 8 
 
114 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 the truth than to the combined green-goggles and 
 strabismus of literary thaumaturgists. 
 
 There is diversity of opinion as to who wrote the 
 original play. Usually, the burden of proof would 
 rest upon those who deny the first conception of a 
 play to its author ; here this rule of evidence has been 
 reversed, and it is assumed that Shakespeare did not 
 originate Hamlet Halliwell, whose opinion, as such, 
 is entitled to the greatest deference, sums up one 
 theory as follows in his "Dictionary of Old Plays." 
 He cites : "Hamlet. A play with this title acted at 
 Newington Theatre by the Lord Admiral's and Lord 
 Chamberlain's men, June 9th, 1594. It preceded 
 Shakespeare's tragedy, and is several times alluded 
 to by contemporary writers." 
 
 This statement takes for granted the point at issue, 
 but it rests solely upon conjecture, and no extrinsic 
 evidence is offered to prove who was the author. 
 Now, as has been said, either Q i represents the 
 earliest draft of Hamlet, or, as is more generally 
 believed, there was a still ruder version in possession 
 of the stage for many years, as stated by Halliwell. 
 If the former supposition be true, whoever else had a 
 hand in it, it was, to all intents and purposes, Shake- 
 speare's. If the latter, we shall have to consider what 
 other tragic author so well satisfies the conditions 
 required for its production. To my mind the evidence 
 appears conclusive that the same hand laid the founda- 
 tion that placed the capstone upon this admirable 
 literary edifice. As I have said before, the burden of 
 proof rests upon those who deny its authorship to 
 the man whom contemporary opinion, with no glim- 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 115 
 
 mer of a doubt, assig^ned it to. Let us review the 
 evidence. 
 
 The Clarendon Editors hold that the internal evi- 
 dence shows that Q i was inadequate to the genius 
 of Shakespeare. Much more so would be a lamer, 
 ruder, version of the play. In 1597 he was, indeed, 
 capable of greater things — of the greatest, — ^for it was 
 then that he wrote the last Hamlet ; but ten years 
 earlier, when it was first hatched, his was a fledgling's 
 wing, and not the flight of the eagle. But even then 
 it would be difficult to point to any one in 1587, or 
 1588, capable of producing it, except Shakespeare 
 himself, or perhaps Marlowe. Hence Fleay (Shake- 
 speare Manual, p. 41) says, "I have little doubt that 
 the early Hamlet of 1589 was written by Shakespeare 
 and Marlowe in conjunction, and that portions of it 
 can be traced in Quarto First, as Corambis Hamlet." 
 
 On the other hand, much of the argument by other 
 advocates of a prae-Shakespearian play is directed 
 against Shakespeare's ability in 1589, aged 25 — much 
 less in 1585, aged 21, — to produce even a rough draft 
 of Hamlet, or indeed any sketch at all for the stage. 
 Whatever may be the weight of either argument, they 
 do not consist. They are mutally destructive ; and, 
 indeed, the truth probably lies between the extremes. 
 Shakespeare at 21 could not have produced the 
 Hamlet we have, to which these critics evidently 
 revert, but he was quite adequate to the original play, 
 and better able to write it than any other man. It 
 would seem that those who deny to Shakespeare the 
 authorship of the original draft of Hamlet should 
 suggest who else did, or could, compose it. If it 
 
1 1 6 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 were a work of genius, and even the germ of Hamlet 
 must have had merit, who besides Shakespeare, or 
 Marlowe, could have written it ? If it were crude, 
 or rude, with the mere potentialities of its supreme 
 excellence, why could not the same man originate it, 
 w^ho subsequently developed it? Is not any other 
 conjecture mere guesswork, or a mythopoic process? 
 
 Timmins, in his preface to the Devonshire Ham- 
 lets, says, "My conviction is that in Q i we have a 
 ■ rough hewn ' draft of a noble drama, (written prob- 
 ably in 1 587-1 589). Fleay also puts the first Ham- 
 let in 1589. Some writers place its date even earlier, 
 and Furness, with all the lights before him, fixes on 
 1585-6. But we can safely say that it must have 
 been written before 1589 — as early as 1588 — to call 
 forth the satirical allusions to it, written by rivar 
 authors in 1589, which recognized it as a well known 
 play then ; and, there can be scarcely a doubt that it 
 must have appeared in the previous year, 1587, or 
 even in 1586, to have come into public notice and 
 favor by 1589. 
 
 The following incidental opinion from one of the 
 more brilliant critics of Shakespeare has its value. 
 
 " Thus, since, he certainly possessed a share in 
 the theatre, in 1589, we may well credit the account 
 of the performances, in that very year, of his Ham- 
 let ; that is, as it was first played, wanting its present 
 grander poetry and passion. We have no vestige of 
 Hamlet in its first state ; but if it was not superior to 
 his Romeo and Juliet, before that tragedy was re- 
 written, there is not the slightest difficulty in sup- 
 posing it was one of his first dramatic attempts." 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 
 
 117 
 
 (Chas. Armitage Brown in "Shakespeare's Autobio- 
 graphical Poems," p. 28). t 
 
 Chas. Knight, who cannot be too much commended 
 for the spirit in which he edited Shaliespeare and the 
 methods he employed, says : 
 
 " Not a tittle of evidence exists to show that there 
 was any play of Hamlet but that of Shakespeare ; and 
 all the collateral evidence upon which it is inferred 
 that an earlier play of Hamlet than Shakespeare's 
 did exist, may, on the other hand, be taken to prove 
 that Shakespeare's sketch was in repute at an earlier 
 period than is commonly assigned to its date." He 
 concludes that "the Taming of the Shrew and Ham- 
 let were both very early productions of Shakespeare. " 
 There is scarcely a doubt that Romeo and Juliet 
 belongs to the same period. Knight's view is held 
 substantially by a number of the ablest commentators 
 on Shakespeare, though they differ in details ; among 
 others, Delius, Elze, Staunton, and Gervinus. 
 
 To my mind the strongest argument against Shake- 
 speare's authorship of the earlier play is the dictum 
 of the Clarendon Editors, whom I have always found 
 it unwise hastily to disagree with. In philological 
 questions and the decision of disputed interpretations, 
 they evince a skill and critical faculty rarely at fault 
 Indeed, if they had not assigned their reasons for it, 
 their decision, usually so judicious, would be almost 
 conclusive with me. But when they allege, "a com- 
 plete absence of positive evidence," "for Shake- 
 speare's connection with the play before 1602," they 
 go too far. They all quote, as "strong negative 
 evidence", the omission of Hamlet from a list of 
 
1 1 8 THE PROTOTYPE OP HAMLET, 
 
 Shakespeare's plays made by Francis Meres in 1598. 
 But this is a non sequitur, as other of his plays were 
 omitted in the list, and plays which are doubtful were 
 included in it, as Titus Andronicus and Love's Labor's 
 Won. But, to save the point of the omission, the 
 Clarendon Editors exclude from the catalogue of 
 Shakespeare's plays, Pericles and Henry VI, which 
 are not mentioned in Meres' list 
 
 The whole value of Meres' List, as evidence, may 
 be summed up as follows. Francis Meres, a schol- 
 arly and competent writer, in his "Wits' Treasury,'' 
 in 1598, gives the first direct notice of Shake- 
 speare's works, naming twelve of his plays, among 
 which Hamlet is not mentioned. He places Shake- 
 speare, as a poet, with Homer, Virgil and Ovid and the 
 Greek Tragedians, and with Sidney, Spenser, Daniel, 
 Drayton, WarneV, Marlowe and Chapman, the most 
 admired poets of his own age. He adds, ' ' As Plautus 
 and Seneca are accounted the best for Comedy and 
 Tragedy among the Latins, so Shakespeare among 
 the English is the most excellent in both kinds for 
 the stage : for com edy, witness h is Gentlemen of 
 Verona, his Errors, his Love's Labor's Lost, his 
 Love's Labor's Won, his Midsummer Night's Dream, 
 and his Merchant of Venice ; for tragedy, his Richard 
 II, Richard III, Henry IV, King John, Titus An- 
 dronicus, and his Romeo and Juliet" Identifying 
 Love's Labor's Won as All's Well that Ends Well, are 
 we to treat this as an accurate and exhaustive list of 
 plays which had then been produced by Shakespeare .? 
 It is almost certain that Henry VI (1st part), Pericles, 
 The Taming of the Shrew, and probably Much Ado 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 119 
 
 about Nothing- were in existence when Meres printed 
 his boofc. Nor does it seem to have been the intention 
 of Meres to give this as a full list of Shakespeare's 
 plays, else why does he employ this word ' ' wit- 
 ness," which seems to imply that his purpose was 
 merely to cite his favorite plays, or those then most 
 in vogue ? And it might well be that the early plays 
 not mentioned by him had, after a more or less 
 successful career upon the stage, fallen into temporary 
 neglect. Indeed, it might be conjectured that such 
 partial eclipse induced Shakespeare to withdraw 
 Hamlet from the stage for final study and revision 
 about this time, which gave us his mature Hamlet, 
 as we now have it, though I beg that no one will con- 
 sider me as attaching undue importance to such mere 
 conjectures. But it may have influenced him, as the 
 Inhibition may likewise have weighed with him, and 
 the death of his son, and domestic sorrows, and per- 
 sonal discontents, and most of all the fullness of 
 literary inspiration and its urgency and solicitings. 
 I think, however, it will be admitted as significant that 
 Meres does not mention Pericles, Henry VI, or the 
 Taming of the Shrew, which without doubt had en- 
 joyed popularity and were at least attributed to Shake- 
 speare. And it is worth noting, too, that, at the date 
 of Meres' publication, 1598, Shakespeare's greatest 
 plays had not been yet produced. For some reason 
 that epoch opened to him the portals of a new spiritual 
 life, and a new line of dramatic creation. Othello, 
 Macbeth, Lear, Cymbeline, the Tempest, and many 
 others, on which his reputation chiefly rests, followed 
 his Last Hamlet. Thus, then, though the secondary 
 
120 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET. 
 
 plays of Shakespeare placed him, at thirty-four years 
 of age, in the estimation of Meres and his contempo- 
 raries, with the greatest poets, and above all those 
 who are held out to us as possible authors of Hamlet, 
 we are asked to believe that, at twenty-three or twenty- 
 four years of age, he lacked the invention to adapt an 
 old legend to the stage, and had to depend upon some 
 forerunner, who never otherwise evinced any capacity 
 for great works, for help to lay out for him the ground 
 plan of the play. It is Meres, too, who says, " that 
 the Muses w^ould speak with Shakespeare's fine filed 
 phrase, if they would speak English," which I com- 
 mend to those who have argued his personality away, 
 or who portray him as a phantom or a fraud or an 
 ignoramus. 
 
 Malone (in 1821) says, " Perhaps the original 
 Hamlet was written by Thomas Kyd, who was the 
 author of one play, (and probably of more) to which 
 no name is affixed. In Kyd's Spanish Tragedy, as 
 in Shakespeare's Hamlet, there is, if I may say so, 
 a play represented within a play ; if the old play of 
 Hamlet should ever be recovered, a similar interlude, 
 I make no doubt, would be found there," etc. But 
 what of it.? How does it matter? There is nothing 
 in this sort of criticism. The same device will be fre- 
 quently found in the annals of the stage, as in the 
 "Rehearsal." But facts appear, which are indeed 
 curious, if we remember that Malone's hypothesis has 
 been passed along from one commentator and histo- 
 rian to another almost unquestioned. 
 
 Skottowe and Collier, in turn, speak of "the old 
 play of Hamlet," as antecedent to Shakespeare's, as 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. \ 2 1 
 
 if of course, but offer no proof. Lowndes, in his 
 "Bibliographer's Manual," mentions " Kyd's old play 
 of Hamlet." Dyce thinks that the First Hamlet 
 " might have been written by Kyd.'' All this proceeds 
 upon the hypothesis thatShakesgeai:e_waa-^ mere 
 adapter of other man's plays, and could make none 
 of hiTown — an entirely groundless assumption. 
 
 Mr. Fleay puts down the Spanish Tragedy as prob- 
 ably written before, 1589, though not published until 
 1594. Symonds, in "Shakespeare's Predecessors" 
 (page 486), describing "the Tragedy of Blood,'' as 
 he calls it, says, "Thomas Kyd — if Hieronymo and 
 the Spanish Tragedy are correctly ascribed to him — 
 may be called the founder of this species. About his 
 life we know absolutely nothing, although it may be 
 plausibly conjectured that he received a fair academi- 
 cal education." Thus Hamlet is to be attributed to 
 Kyd, about whom this able literary historian knows 
 nothing, because of a supposed analogy to the 
 Spanish Tragedy, the authorship of which is doubtful. 
 And why ? Because each is a Tragedy of Blood, and 
 has a play within a play. But this is rather a reason 
 for assigning the foundling "Spanish Tragedy" to^^ 
 Shakespeare than Hamlet to Kyd. Here is one play 
 of uncertain paternity with an interlude in it ; but 
 almost all of Shakespeare's earliest plays have some 
 thing of the sort ; argal, Kyd wrote Hamlet ! 
 
 Passing by the Gonzago Play in Hamlet, we find 
 the Taming of the Shrew tacked on to an induction, 
 and played before the famous Christopher Sly. It 
 was produced about 1589, and Hamlet the same year, 
 or earlier, as Fleay tells us, and as is probable. 
 
122 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 Midsummer Night's Dream, written in 1 59^3, if not 
 earlier, has its play within a play — a most worshipful 
 interlude ; and Love's Labor's Lost has a masque, in 
 which rustic actors come in to be derided by the 
 lords and ladies. The play within a play was a 
 natural theatrical device at a period when the most 
 favored part of the audience occupied seats on the 
 stage, a survival of which appears in our modern 
 fashionable and inconvenient proscenium boxes. It 
 belonged, too, to a period of the utmost confusion in 
 literary forms, when an ingenious combination of 
 several plots was a frequent and favorite resort of the 
 playwrights. The Masque was used constantly by 
 Marston, Webster and Tourneur in their Tragedies ; 
 and Greene has an Induction to his James IV., in 
 which Oberon, King of the Fairies, has the chief part. 
 The play within a play was a relic among the tradi- 
 tions of the stage, and Shakespeare, or the manager 
 under whom he wrote, retained it in his earlier 
 dramas ; but his true artistic instinct soon disembar- 
 rassed itself from an artifice more or less clumsy, and 
 which lost its theatrical propriety as the drama 
 assumed the form with which Shakespeare himself 
 chiefly stamped it. 
 
 Halliwell says in his edition of Karl Simrock's 
 Remarks, in regard to the ascription of the earliest 
 Hamlet to Thomas Kyd : "This is mere conjecture. 
 If, as is most probable, an older play on the subject 
 of Hamlet existed at the time when Shakespeare wrote 
 his tragedy, we have no evidence whatever that will 
 lead us to believe that it was written by Kyd. " 
 
 Here the case stands. No proof is adduced for the 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 123 
 
 authorship of Kyd, who has been generally assumed 
 to be the writer of the First Hamlet ; and for Marlowe's 
 greater, or lesser, share in its composition, we have 
 only such evidence as may be drawn from the con- 
 clusion that he had an abler and more forceful genius 
 than Shakespeare. It is not difficult to sympathize 
 with the enthusiasm which seeks to rescue from an 
 unmerited oblivion a genius like Marlowe's, and to 
 rehabilitate it in the empire of thought. But his own 
 proper niche must be assigned to each, and every 
 statue must stand upon its own pedestal. We must 
 not rob, or borrow, one shred of reputation from any 
 other to deck him whom we would honor. Marlowe's 
 fame must depend on Faustus, the Jew of Malta, and 
 Edward II, and we can gain nothing by claiming for 
 him without proof, the title to Hamlet 
 
 The whole theory of a prae-Shakespearian Hamlet 
 proceeds upon the supposition that Shakespeare 
 could not write it, but that somebody else could. 
 Who was this somebody? Why should Kyd, or 
 even mighty Marlowe, be summoned from oblivion' 
 to sit as teachers to him who cast them all into the 
 darkest shade? This is not the way we reason 
 about other matters. Plots, it is true, were then 
 common property. No rule of courtesy forbade the 
 use by one writer, or many, of the same plot or theme 
 employed by other authors. Collaboration was 
 common enough; but, when we are shown any 
 other tragedy approaching Shakespeare's, we may 
 concede the point that he needed a teacher to coach 
 him in tragedy-making at twenty-five, or even at 
 twenty-one, years of age. 
 
124 
 
 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 Curiously enough, out of all the swarm of play- 
 writers of his era, Shakespeare is not only the great- 
 est tragedian, but the only dramatist whose tragedies 
 hold the English stage with an unceasing, never- 
 fatiguing interest. We find sweet and noble poetry, 
 powerful situations and other merits enshrined in the 
 forgotten dramas of others, but they remain now 
 merely as stately monuments. Occasionally some 
 tragedy by another is revived for the personal behoof 
 of a "Star,'' who thinks it fitted to his personal qual- 
 ities, but it soon passes beneath the horizon, and 
 only Hamlet, Othello, Lear, and Macbeth remain, 
 shining on continually, like the constellations that 
 cluster around the Polar Star. 
 
 Two bands of destructives are at work on Shake- 
 speare. I trust they will not deem rne discourteous, 
 for I respect their motives, when I style them literary 
 wreckers. One would transfer his entire literary 
 estate in the lump to the rich heritage of the late 
 Lord Bacon ; the other is sedulously striving to dis- 
 tribute his dramatic effects and fame among the 
 poverty-stricken ghosts of his contemporaries. In his 
 own day, and for nearly two hundred years there- 
 after, nobody else was even hinted at as having so 
 much as dipped his finger into Hamlet But a pedant 
 dropped an ovum of alien authorship, and it hatched to 
 a bee in his bonnet ; and now a swarm that have sucked 
 the honey of Shakespeare's flowers are for hiving it in 
 other men's waxen cells. One play they give, on the 
 strength of the internal evidences, to some unknown 
 or forgotten writer ; another, to some other ; until, 
 in this parting of his vestments, the great dramatist 
 
AND OTHEK SHAKESPEARIAN PKOBLEMS. 125 
 
 is left in rags and almost naked. What we need is 
 some honest Shakespearian who will take the time, 
 toil and trouble to wipe out the baseless fabric of 
 these " internal evidences " that evince nothing. 
 
 It will scarcely be denied that somebody wrote 
 Hamlet as early as 1589, or earlier. Elze adduces 
 as a bit of circumstantial evidence for a much earlier 
 production of the play, and its Shakespearian author- 
 ship, the following facts : fi rst that Euphuis m is 
 ridiculed in the scenes with Osric and with the 
 Gravedigger. He tells us that, in the scene with 
 the latter, Hamlet alludes to the "th ree years " since 
 the "age has grown so picked." Lyly's Euphues 
 was published in 1581 — possibly in 1579; so that 
 1585 would approximate the term for it to become 
 the vogue. And he ingeniously concludes that this 
 marks the birth of the play. Again, in 1585, Shake- 
 speare's son Hamnetwas born, and within a year 
 Shakespeare is believed to have left Stratford and 
 sought his fortunes in London, at the age of twenty- 
 two. Elze pointedly adds, "Is it not readily con- 
 ceivable that at the ver y beginning of his c aregr he 
 should have chosen a subject for his p en which bore 
 the samename_ ^his beloved bo y, and that he should 
 have Fecurred to it afterwards with undisguised pref- 
 erence .' Hamnet died ini526j and this blow must 
 have fallen most heavily on the father, may possibly 
 have led him to take up once more this spiritual 
 child of the same name. Who can estimate the 
 effect which grief for his only son may not have had 
 in producing that deep-seated melancholy and dis- 
 taste for the vanity of the world which have found in 
 
126 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 this tragedy their immortal expression ? This view- 
 is emphasized by the philosophical and passionate 
 speculation of Hamlet, in the second or complete 
 play, but not in the earlier draft of it." Hamlet, or 
 Hamnet, was a not uncommon forename in that day 
 and in the vicinity of Stratford, and Hamnet is also 
 found as a surname thereabouts. 
 
 The earliest allusion to Hamlet is by Nash in an 
 Epistle prefixed to Greene's Menaphon, printed in 
 1589, and possibly in 1587, as there is some ground 
 for believing, and reads as follows : "It is a com- 
 mon practice now a dales amongst a sort of shifting 
 companions, that runne through every arte and 
 thrive by none, to leave the trade of Noverint where- 
 to they were borne, and busie themselves with the 
 indevours of arte, that could scarcelie latinize their 
 necke-verse if they should have neede ; yet English 
 Seneca read by candlelight yeeldes manie good sen- 
 tences, as ' Blould as a beggar,' and so forth ; and 
 if you intreate him faire in a frostie morning, he will 
 afford you whole Hamlets, I should say Handfulls, 
 of tragical speaches. " 
 
 Fleay, a recent w^riter of great industry, research 
 and ingenuity, asserts that Simpson had demon- 
 strated that this only refers to Shakespeare as an 
 actor, and hence that this passage has no reference 
 to his authorship of Hamlet. To me it seems that 
 "to latinize their neck verse," i.e., to put into Latin 
 a verse from the Psalms so as to give them "benefit 
 of the clergy," and by this text save their necks from 
 the gallows, was rather the function of a writer than 
 of a play-actor, who has no need of Latin now, and 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 
 
 127 
 
 had none then ; and the reading of an English, or 
 translated, Seneca, for quotation, paraphrase, or plag- 
 iary, was in like manner work for the closet and not 
 for the stage. Moreover, it is well-nigh certain that 
 Shakespeare never played leading pAts, or won 
 much distinction as an actor, and that he had ac- 
 quired considerable means within four years after he 
 arrived in London. He could not have made much 
 money as an actor, hence we must infer that it was 
 as a writer, and shareholder in his company. But, 
 whoever the author may be, the quotation from 
 Nash shows that there was a play of Hamlet, written 
 by somebody who is styled a 'Noverint,' as early as 
 1589, at least. We shall discuss later whether this 
 Noverint was Shakespeare, but it may be said here 
 that Lord Campbell's small book on " Shakespeare's 
 Legal Acquirements, " l eaves little doubt that he w as 
 in e^rly lif" 'I^Hf^TZ'n^ "'' r>ttnrneY'.s clerk. 
 
 A Boston gentleman, Mr. Franklin Fisk Heard, has 
 also produced an agreeable and well-considered little 
 book on "Shakespeare as a Lawyer,'' which fortifies 
 this view. 
 
 But these references, as allusions to Shakespeare, 
 received confirmation some years later, 1592, in the 
 slurs of Greene, who had grown more and more 
 embittered against this "Johannes Factotum," "this 
 Shakescene '; a versatile Jack-of-all-trades, who wrote, 
 doubtless, in many manners, tragedy, comedy, his- 
 tory, and likewise acted in his own dramas, and who 
 had on hand a poem, ' ' Venus and Adonis ", that 
 won for him the patronage of the young Maecenas 
 of Southampton. 
 
128 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 This wretched Greene, in his Groatsworth of Wit, 
 published in 1592, uses language, which cannot refer 
 to any other than Shakespeare, as the play upon 
 his name evinces, as well as the reference to a line 
 in Henry VI, Part 3, "O tiger's heart, wrapt in a 
 woman's hide." He says, 
 ."An upstart crow beautified * with our feathers 
 that, with his 
 ' Tiger's heart, wrapt in a player's hide '," 
 supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank, 
 verse as the best of you, and, being an absolute 
 Johannes Factotum, is in his own conceit the only 
 Shakescene in a country, etc." Stress has been laid 
 upon the fact that Greene assails him here as 'a 
 player ' : but, if such be the fact, still player and 
 playwright were almost synonyms at that day, so 
 the distinction goes for nothing ; and the language 
 applies as well to the one as the other. 
 
 Chettle, in his Kind Hart's Dream, 1592, thus apol- 
 ogizes for, or repudiates, the foregoing : 
 
 "About three months since died Mr. Robert 
 Greene, leaving many papers in sundry booksellers' 
 hands, among others his Groatsworth of Wit, in 
 which a letter written to divers playwriters is 
 offensively by one or two of them taken : and 
 because on the dead they cannot be avenged, they 
 wilfully forge in their conceits a living author ; and 
 after tossing it to and fro, no remedy but it must 
 needs light on me .... With neither of them that 
 take offense was I acquainted, and with one of them 
 
 » " Beautified is h vile phrase." Was this introduced in reply 
 to Greene? Hamlet, Clarendon. Act 2, S. 2, v. III. 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 
 
 129 
 
 (Marlowe?) I care not if I never be. The other 
 (Shakespeare ? ) whom at that time I did not so much 
 spare as since I wish I had .... that I did not I 
 am as sorry as if the original fault had been my 
 fault ; because myself have seen his demeanor no 
 less civil than he excellent in the quality he pro- 
 fesses. Besides, divers of worship have reported his 
 uprightness of dealing, which argues his honesty ; 
 and his facetious grace in writing, that approves his 
 art ... . I protest it was all Greene's, and not 
 mine nor Master Nash's, as some have unjustly 
 affirmed." 
 
 The significance of these attacks by the envious 
 and dissolute Nash, and the gifted, but profligate, 
 Greene, will be apparent, when we remember that 
 they belonged to a riv aljaand of dramatic authors, 
 and attributed their literary failures to the malign 
 influence of the company of players in which 
 Shakespeare had become the most important writer. 
 We know from Henslow's Diary (p. 8) that Hamlet 
 continued to hold the stage, and was acted June 
 9th, 1594, by a company of players, to which Shake- 
 speare belonged. Lodge, in 1596, refers to it (p. 9), 
 when he mentioned, "Ye ghost which cried so 
 miserally (sic) at ye theater, like an oisterwife, 
 Hamlet, Revenge!" 
 
 Permit me now to call your attention to the follow- 
 ing points. The First Hamlet was played in or 
 before 1589 ; probably two or three years earlier. In 
 1589, it was ascribed to a N overi nt, or attorney's 
 clerk. Competent persons, learned in the law, dis- 
 cover in the undoubted work of Shakespeare 
 
 9 
 
I30 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 evidences, very weighty if not entirely conclusive, 
 that he was well equipped with legal phraseology, 
 full of it, and in his earliest writings quite saturated 
 with it The allusions o f his ri vals a little later 
 seem to fix upon him a connection with this play of 
 Hamlet, so that, in default of a claimant even to 
 this nom de plume of Noverint, we must leave the 
 holder in possession. All the positive evidence is 
 
 (in favor of Shakespeare's authorship : popular opin- 
 ion, competent contemporaneous witnesses, his own 
 unquestioned ownership, a y«asz-copyright, the ad- 
 
 ) missions of his enemies, and the claims of his friends, 
 colleagues and posthumous publishers. The attempt 
 to parcel out the plays of Shakespeare among the 
 dramatists of his day is a failure, because there is 
 no testimony to lead to such a conclusion. The 
 dividers of the spoil cannot agree among themselves 
 as to who is entitled to share in it, and the beggars 
 they would clothe in the purple betray their person- 
 ality in every phase of their mock royalty. The 
 only evidence cited against this view is of that filmy 
 and esoteric character which depends on the intui- 
 tions of critics as to style, or on its conformity to cer- 
 tain arbitrary rules of another school, which are con- 
 tinually found at fault and misleading. More or less 
 value may be attached to Elze's opinions on the 
 coincidence in names and dates of the birth and 
 death of Shakespeare's son, with the inception and 
 revision of this tragedy. The omission from Meres' 
 list could not be passed over, because so much has 
 been made of it by diligent commentators, but when 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 
 
 131 
 
 examined without prejudice, it seems too slender a 
 thread to hang a theory on. 
 
 It may, in view of all the facts, be affirmed that all 
 the positive and extrinsic evidence is in favor of Shake- 
 speare's authorship of the original Hamlet, while the 
 belief that anybody else wrote it, or had any special 
 share in, or claim to, its production, rests upon mere 
 hypothesis. To accept it, we must admit that Shake- 
 speare was not only phenomenal, but abnormal, and 
 by some miracle was suddenly transformed from a 
 reprobate call-boy to the imperial ruler of thought 
 and imagination. I do not deny that as extraordi- 
 nary instances maybe produced of the rise of men as 
 of their reverses, often independent of merit, where 
 opportunity has played henchman to ability, and 
 greatness has been thrust upon fortune's favorites. 
 But the empire of the mind, unlike success in tem- 
 poral matters, is above these caprices. It must with- 
 stand and survive every assault that can be made, 
 and hence must rest upon reality. Shakespeare's 
 supremacy remains, because what he has said was 
 better said, and better, than other men's utterances. 
 
 The certitude of Shakespeare's authorship of Ham- 
 let, ah ovo, rests chiefly, after all, in default of dis- 
 proof, on his undisputed title for so long a time and 
 on the transcendent ability of the man. And if this 
 discussion has no other value it would seem not 
 fruitless, if it brings home to us the great fact of the 
 immense difference in the natural endowments of 
 men — a fact which all the radical and levelling in^ 
 fluences of the age are tending to disparage or deny. 
 It is a difference measured by the abyss betwixt im- 
 
1 3 2 THE PRO TO TYPE OF HAMLE T, 
 
 becility and genius. It has been the fashion of late 
 to confound genius with plodding industry ; as it was 
 formerly, with a spasmodic and eccentric vivacity of 
 fancy. Both conceptions are entirely erroneous. 
 Genius belongs to him who has been lifted up by 
 nature, and is the gift which, because of this higher 
 point of view, confers a wider horizon, a clearer 
 vision, and a deeper insight. Energy is a crucial test 
 of genius, as well as its motive power. No endow- 
 ments merit the name, ormeanth.e thing, unless they 
 are accompanied by an energy so irresistible that it 
 will not accept denial or defeat in its inquiry and 
 effort for loftier altitudes of life and thought. Energy 
 is an essential constituent of genius ; is its very sym- 
 bol. On the other hand, mere nervous irritability of 
 intellect, play of fancy, and gushes of eloquence are 
 but the fragments of imagination and reason, and 
 have to be brought into organic unity, and held in 
 well ordered process, in order to be classed with the 
 phenomena of genius even. Sanity, like energy, is a 
 final test of genius. Shakespeare's possession of the 
 sanity and energy of genius establishes the verity of 
 his endowments. 
 
 The arguments that would deny to Shakespeare 
 the authorship of the First Hamlet and his other 
 early plays depend upon the theory of mediocrity as 
 a universal fact. All that is required to give assur- 
 ance that he could take a story as he found it, inform 
 it with his own personality and make of it an immor- 
 tal play, is to pre-suppose that he had this gift of 
 genius as I have described it. 
 
 That this young man from his first appearance in 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 
 
 133 
 
 London exhibited all the criteria of genius is evident 
 from the little we know of his life. Those who only 
 looked to the ease with which he wrote ^nd to the 
 outward form of his plays, but not to the inner light 
 that fills them, spoke of him as an untutored child of 
 nature. Milton, trained in all the knowledge of the 
 schools, says, 
 
 "Sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child, 
 Warbled his native woodnotes wild, " 
 
 and this has been the common view of him. But he 
 was more than this. 
 
 His whole career is one of the noblest testimonies 
 on record to the sanity of genius. From the first he 
 set himself to master that organ of expression, lan- 
 guage, which was to utter his tuneful thought, be it 
 in sonnet, poem or play. His habits and life were 
 so governed as to enable him to achieve that inde- 
 pendence which should place him above "the 
 oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely." He 
 evinced an immense ability to labor, and an irresist- 
 ible impulse for literary creation — the embodiment of 
 thought. His toil was upward; aspiration winged 
 his sandals, and imagination grew the pinions that 
 lifted him above his peers and his successors. We 
 know that Shakespeare wrote the last Hamlet, we 
 are sure that he wrote the second,, and who but he 
 could have written the very first Hamlet ? 
 
134 
 
 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET. 
 
 THE EVOLUTION OF HAMLET. 
 
 " As this temple waxes, 
 The inward service of the mind and soul 
 Grows wide withal " Hamlet, I. 3. 
 
 In the last lecture I endeavored to show "Who 
 wrote Hamlet," and offered some proofs that not 
 only the last, or completed, Hamlet, was Shake- 
 speare's, but that the very earliest, or hypothetical, 
 Hamlet, also originated with him. I shall now pro- 
 ceed to fortify this view by additional arguments 
 showing the utter improbability that it was the pro- 
 duction of any of his contemporaries, together with 
 some further proofs that Shakespeare himself wrote 
 it. My purpose is then to exhibit the manner in 
 which it was developed from a rough sketch to the 
 world-renowned tragedy, together with the subtle 
 influences which perhaps called up from the poet's 
 heart its wonderful soliloquies. 
 
 We are too prone to overlook the fact that Shake- 
 speare was not only the greatest dramatist of his own, 
 or any other age, but that he was the founder and 
 creator of the romantic drama as we have it. Nearly 
 all the greater dramatists of that period were the suc- 
 cessors of Shakespeare, and, indeed, his disciples. 
 The exception was the group that composed the so- 
 called "University wits," who have been supposed 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 
 
 135 
 
 to constitute a rival school of the prophets : Peele, 
 Greene, Nash, Lodge, and Marlowe, to whom may- 
 be added, Lyly and Kyd. But Fleay throws great 
 doubt upon their alleged association, if he does not 
 disprove it, and makes a plausible showing for friend- 
 ship and collaboration between Marlowe and Shake- 
 speare. 
 
 In view of Shakespeare's wonderfully genial nature, 
 and his victory over the prejudices of all who came 
 into actual contact with him, it seems not improbable 
 that this Surmise of Fleay may have a basis of solid 
 fact. Too much weight, perhaps, should not be laid, 
 however, upon his generous allusion in "As You 
 Like It " to Marlowe, after his wretched and untimely 
 end : 
 
 " Dead Shepherd, now I find thy saw of might : 
 ' Who ever loved that loved not at first sight.' " 
 
 the second line being quoted from Marlowe's Hero 
 and Leander. 
 
 Flashes of wit, bursts of eloquence, flights of poetry 
 and erratic glimpses of dramatic truth abound in the 
 writings of the brilliant band of Bohemians just 
 named ; but none of their plays still hold the stage, 
 and to but one of them can be accorded eminent 
 genius. Christopher Marlowe, in his brief and ill-regu- 
 lated career, evinced powers, which, if matured and 
 chastened, might have added a star of the first mag- 
 nitude to English Literature; but still he is as much 
 inferior to Shakspeare as he is superior to the boon 
 companions, who, with their phosphorescence, 
 lighted him the way to dusty death. It is generally 
 assumed that Shakespeare is indebted to Marlowe, or 
 
136 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 others of this crew of rival writers, or to certain (or 
 uncertain) other obscure and unknown playwrights, 
 who are conjectured to have prepared the way for 
 the great dramatist, by providing him with the rough 
 drafts of his dramas, while he merely adapted such 
 outline plays to the stage. An ingenious guess as 
 to such an origin, say of the First Hamlet, is assumed 
 as a basis of argument; and from this postulate is 
 drawn a series of inferences, which are passed on as 
 sober statements, and are finally handed down as 
 historic facts. The evidence for such a concatena- 
 tion is entirely hypothetical, drawn from the inner con- 
 sciousness of commentators, and to me seems as base- 
 less and apocryphal as the Bacon-myth matter, (or 
 no matter), and fit only for dismissal to limbo. These 
 phantom dramatists, conjured from oblivion, never 
 appear in any better light than as shadows of the 
 coming poet. The oldest of the so-called University 
 group, Lyly, was only about ten years the senior of 
 Shakespeare ; and, according to Fleay, only two of 
 Lyly's and one of Peele's plays were published before 
 Shakespeare's arrival in London, and most of the 
 work of the entire group was done between that date 
 and 1594, when Shakespeare had already become 
 rich and famous. Marlowe's plays, too, were writ- 
 ten about the same time with Shakespeare's ' earlier 
 efforts ; so that Shakespeare's dramatic competitors 
 were more strictly his contemporaries than his prede- 
 cessors. 
 
 On one ground or another, often very slight, it is 
 assumed that these literary adventurers all began to 
 produce plays as soon as they came to London, and 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 137 
 
 exhausted themselves by 1592 or 1593; but that 
 Shakespeare, not only the greatest, but the most suc- 
 cessful, of them all, was sterile until they had finished 
 their careers, when he burst into a sudden fecundity, 
 and in about ten or twelve years produced his galaxy 
 of dramas. The whole theory is, to my mind, irra- 
 tional and preposterous. Why should Shakespeare 
 alone be assumed to have been idle, or incompetent, 
 because the barren records of the time do not furnish 
 specifically the dates of his productions, when this is 
 true of all the rest of the dramatists of that period. 
 
 Marlowe, the greatest of his competitors, was only 
 three months older than Shakespeare, and came to 
 London about the same time as Shakespeare, or after 
 him. Very little is known of him, and that little, 
 sadly enough, is the story of neglected opportunities, 
 wasted gifts and a blasted life ; nevertheless, he has 
 been styled, "The Father of English dramatic 
 poetry." Though the language is too strong, yet it 
 may be fairly conceded that in his hands blank verse 
 first acquired a dignity and power that gave a new 
 meaning to the language of the drama. Symonds 
 assigns the production of his first tragedy, " Tambur- 
 laine," to 1587, when he was but twenty-three years 
 of age ; and Bullen, in his Life of Marlowe, con- 
 cluded that Tamburlaine ' ' had been presented on the 
 stage in, or before, 1588, probably 1587." Why, 
 apriori, could not Shakespeare have written the First 
 Hamlet at twenty-three, as well as Marlowe, Tam- 
 burlaine? There is not more proof that Marlowe 
 wrote Tamburlaine than that Shakespeare wrote the 
 first Hamlet ; indeed, Malone inferred, on poor data 
 
138 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET. 
 
 it is true, that Tamburlaine was written by Nash. I 
 am not inclined to give more than due weight to tra- 
 dition, but uncontradicted contemporary opinion is 
 certainly of more value than paradoxical doubts of 
 the same, resting often on shadowy surmises. Why 
 should not Marlowe's Tamburlaine have been written 
 by Marlowe, and Kyd's Spanish Tragedy by Kyd, 
 and Shakespeare's Hamlet by Shakespeare? The 
 popular voice and the belief of intimate friends and 
 hostile critics took it for granted in their own day 
 and generation, and we have no other evidence so 
 good. It is no disparagement to Shakespeare to say 
 that Marlowe was of a more precocious genius, 
 that he came to London better prepared by educa- 
 tion for a successful career, and that his reputation was 
 won earlier. But to treat Shakespeare as a scholar, 
 follower, or imitator, of Marlowe, is fanciful. They 
 were contemporaries, and, starting together in the 
 flight for fame, rose with well-matched strength till 
 Marlowe fell, while Shakespeare's transcendent pin- 
 ion mounted and bore him on to the empyrean. 
 
 The lives of all these men are quite as obscure as 
 Shakespeare's early history. We may agree with 
 Halliwell who says, (Outlines, 8th ed. Vol. i, p. 95), 
 "There is not, indeed; a single particle of evidence 
 respecting his career during the next five years, that 
 is to say, from the Lambert negotiation in 1587, un- 
 til he is discovered as a rising actor and dramatist in 
 1592 :" and the same may be said of his rivals, 
 but this only proves of how little personal impor- 
 tance a playwriter was esteemed at that day. Hal- 
 liwell regards this as the "chief period irt Shake- 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 
 
 139 
 
 speare's literary education, as undoubtedly it was ; 
 but it does not follow that it had not been built upon 
 a good foundation, or that it was, during this time, 
 vm productive. If intrinsic proof has any value, 
 Shakespeare's early writings, as well as his later, 
 evince that, however little he may ,have had in 
 youth of the refinements of culture, he had gone 
 through 'the grind,' and had been put solid on 
 the corner stone of schoolboy Latin, although he never 
 acquired the somewhat unwieldy learning of Ben 
 Jonson and the Universities. But then all the winds 
 of heaven and the angels who make up the ministry 
 of nature were ushers in the school he went to, so 
 that he learned the secrets that make a seer. 
 
 Greene, Peele, Nash and Marlowe all died young 
 and disreputably, but they left literary remains that 
 have helped a later inspiration in literature. But 
 contemporary opinion, foreshadowing the verdict of 
 history, is best seen in Ben Jonson's verse. After 
 the death of all these poets, he hesitates not to place 
 Shakespeare first of them all : 
 
 ' ' All tell how far thou didst our Lily out shine, 
 Or sporting Kyd, or Marlowe's mighty line." 
 
 While he might find in contemporary writers the 
 stimulus of rivalry, the greatest debt Shakespeare 
 owed them was in the instances they afforded his 
 true artistic instinct and practical mind of what to 
 avoid. Doubtless, so far, they were most valuable 
 teachers ; but, at all events, they were scarcely 
 more to him than Jane Porter to Scott, or Miss Bur- 
 ney and Fielding to Thackeray and George Eliot — . 
 precursors of the dawn. 
 
I40 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 What are the facts? In 1589, this young man of 
 21, unable to resist the impulse of genius that called 
 him to a literary career, left his native Stratford for 
 London. The leading actor then in London, Burbage, 
 was a Warwickshire man ; and Greene, also a lead- 
 ing member of the Lord Chamberlain's Players, to 
 which he probably attached himself, was from Strat- 
 ford itself It has been not unreasonably inferred 
 that it was under the patronage of these able men — 
 able in their vocation — that the young adventurer 
 entered on his theatrical career. Fleay says he wrote 
 Venus and Adonis in 1588, though it was not pub-, 
 lished until 1 593 ; but, in the absence of any proof in 
 the matter, it is not improbable that he brought 
 the poem to London in his pocket, as Sam Johnson 
 long afterwards brought his Irene, with such differ- 
 ent (and indifferent) success. It is almost certain 
 that in the next year he was one of a company of 
 players, Lord Strange's, as Fleay concludes, or, as 
 been commonly held, the Lord Chamberlain's, to 
 which he remained attached for a quarter of a cen- 
 tury. Three years afterward he was a shareholder 
 in the Globe Company, and later became one of the 
 leading members. We have seen that a play called 
 Hamlet was probably acted in 1586, or 1587, almost 
 certainly in 1588, certainly in 1589. We know 
 that the reputed author proved eventually to be a 
 man of extraordinary genius, of a great facility 
 and fecundity in dramatic production, and that his 
 rise in his profession was phenomenally rapid. 
 While this may have been in some measure due to 
 the charm of his manner and his sterling character, 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 141 
 
 yet his success was primarily and principally profes- 
 sional. He built his reputation and won his position 
 on the solid foundation of merit in the line of his 
 legitimate work — poetry and the drama. Venus and 
 Adonis, which won the admiration of the Court and lit- 
 erary guild from the first, early evinced what a fount- 
 ain of poesy he possessed ; and his plays soon gave 
 him an importance in that branch of the art also. He 
 is said to have been a fair actor in secondary parts, 
 but his usefulness in his company was as the author 
 of plays that won for it wealth, public favor and the 
 first place in the dramatic art. When we regard the 
 metrical and artistic finish of Venus and Adonis, it is 
 incredible that any argument should be based upon 
 the insufficiency of Shakespeare in merely technical 
 skill to accomplish any rhetorical feat at that period. 
 
 Despite the objections offered to Shakespeare's 
 ability to write the rough sketch of Hamlet in 1586, 
 at, say, twenty-two years of age, there is nothing in 
 it unprecedented in literature or other walks of life. 
 Pope, who commenced his literary career at sixteen, 
 and published his exquisite Rape of the Lock at 
 twenty-three, might be cited as far more precocious. 
 The wretched, but gifted, Chatterton finished his 
 career by suicide at eighteen. Milton wrote his 
 magnificent Hymn to the Nativity as a college 
 exercise at twenty-one. Burns, Shelley, Byron, Keats, 
 all wrote well at about the same age. 
 
 Gerald Griffin had sketched his tragedy of Gisippus 
 when he was fourteen and finished it at eighteen, 
 when the great actor Macready thought it worthy 
 
142 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 his impersonation ; and this was not his only work 
 completed at that age. 
 
 And in Shakespeare's own day, his contemporary, 
 Marlowe, showed a like premature genius ; while 
 Ben Jonson's first and most successful dramatic work 
 is assigned to his twenty-third year. It really seems 
 strange that any weight should have been attached 
 to this argument. The difficulty at twenty-one, or 
 two, is not in producing a work of the imagination, 
 but in speculative thought, artistic finish and practical 
 dramatic workmanship, in which the earlier Hamlet 
 may well have been deficient. A mere play was not 
 then thought worthy the best efforts of an author, 
 and Hamlet, at first, was probably, in some sort, "a 
 pot boiler. " It may be conceded that neither Shake- 
 speare, nor any other man, could have written Ham- 
 let, as we now have it, at such an early age, but we 
 know also that such was not its earliest form, or 
 indeed its form at all, until twelve or fourteen, perhaps 
 sixteen, years later, when life had taught him its les- 
 sons. 
 
 There is really no a priori reason why a man of 
 high order of dramatic genius might not have framed 
 the plot and written an acting play of Hamlet at the 
 age of twenty-two years. But some critics assume 
 that in Shakespeare's case there were personal reasons 
 why he could not then, or ever, have written this, or, 
 indeed, any, of his plays. It is very difficult to argue 
 with gentlemen of this persuasion, as they all feel 
 that they hold a brief — have a cause to maintain. As 
 a characteristic specimen of this sort of estimate of 
 the poet, I give here what Mr. Wm. Henry Smith, in a 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PRaBLEMS. 143 
 
 ■took entitled, "Bacon and Shakespeare" (Chapter 
 2,nd), calls, "A Brief History of Shakespeare." 
 
 " William Shakespeare's is, indeed, a negative 
 history. 
 
 Of his life all that we positively know is the period 
 of his death. 
 
 We do not know when he was born, nor when, 
 nor where, he was educated. 
 
 We do not know when, nor where, he was married, 
 nor when he came to London. 
 
 We do not know when, where, or in what order, 
 his plays were written, or performed ; nor when he 
 left London. 
 
 He died April 23rd, 1616." 
 
 That is one way of putting it ; it iS, indeed, about 
 the sum of the Bacon-Myth argument ; and is, in 
 fine, the reduciio ad absurdum of the whole theory of 
 Shakespeare's nonentity, as based upon negative evi- 
 dence. And yet if Mr. Smith had been as diligent to 
 find out all that could be known of Shakespeare as 
 he was not to find anything, he might have learned 
 a good many facts, such as they are. -j.alliwell has 
 shown how much may be known about him through 
 honest investigation. If we do not know the day of 
 his birth, we have the record of his christening, which 
 was then done a few days after, and was considered 
 more essential. We do not know when, nor where, 
 he was educated, but we do know that he entered 
 life armed cap-a-pie, able at all points to vanquish, 
 " those twin gaolers of the daring heart, low birth 
 and iron fortune. " 
 
 The tradition, whatever that is worth, was that 
 
144 "^^^ PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 Shakespeare was a lawyer's clerk ; and Malone, who 
 first rejected the idea, on fuller examination of the 
 internal evidence, concluded that such was the case. 
 Lord Campbell's citations sustain this view in his 
 monograph, "Legal Acquirements of Shakespeare," 
 though his conclusions are cautiously stated. Lord 
 Campbell adduces a great deal of internal evidence 
 from Shakespeare's plays to prove his familiar knowl- 
 edge of the law, the fair inference being that he was 
 a "Noverint", so-called, an attorney's clerk, before 
 he left Stratford for London. The Baconians attempt 
 to show that the author of his plays was a wonderful 
 lawyer, and hence was not Shakespeare ; but, though 
 his law knowledge seems sound and sure, many 
 attorney's clerks have had more learning and more 
 law. 
 
 The evidence summed up by Lord Campbell, Mr- 
 Cartwright and Mr. Heard is, to my mind, as con- 
 vincing as any such internal evidence can be that 
 Shakespeare was an attorney's clerk, and a good 
 one, in his youth, which was a better education than 
 Dickens had — and yet Lord Macaulay did not write 
 David Copperfield ! 
 
 Robert Cartwright, in "The Footsteps of Shake- 
 speare ", attempts to prove that he studied law, after 
 he came to London, a most improbable theory. But, 
 in doing so, his quotations show Shakespeare's famil- 
 iarity with law at the time when he wrote Hamlet, 
 and his saturation with legal phrase and thought, 
 that kept coming to the surface. Now, Cartwright 
 assumes that Pericles, Titus Andronicus and the Two 
 Gentlemen of Verona were Shakespeare's first plays, 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 145 
 
 and believes that Hamlet was certainly in existence 
 \\\ 1589, and was most probably written in 1588. 
 The first three plays have few legal indicia, Hamlet 
 a great many ; hence he infers that Shakespeare 
 studied law between the production of that first batch 
 and Hamlet. Doubt has been thrown on Shake- 
 speare's authorship of Pericles and Titus Andronicus ; 
 and the Two Gentlemen of Verona was probably a 
 collaboration in which he was the junior, though 
 more gifted, partner. If these views are correct, or 
 if his chronology be wrong and Hamlet was written 
 first, Cartwright's argument goes for nothing in favor 
 of the time when he thinks Shakespeare studied law, 
 but for much as to what he knew about it, and as to 
 the close connection between Hamlet and his legal 
 studies. Fresh from his attorney's work at Stratford, 
 when he tried his prentice hand on Hamlet, he then 
 naturally spoke in its terminology. As his experience 
 widened and his vocabulary enlarged, this peculiarity 
 would be less apparent ; and, though it might crop 
 out, it would not b« obtruded. The display of some- 
 what cheap classical learning in the Gonzago Play 
 and elsewhere in Hamlet evinces freshness, rather 
 than maturity, in the author, and probably belonged 
 to the first draft of the play. The most valid inference 
 from the legal phraseology that appears so often in 
 Hamlet is that this play was, in some form, one of 
 his earliest productions, if not his very earliest essay 
 in the dramatic art. Is the thought altogether irra- 
 tional that, because it was his first-bom, it retained 
 such a hold on his imagination and affection, and 
 
 10 
 
146 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 won for itself the birthright, and became the heir of 
 his genius ? 
 
 Recurring to Mr. Smith's brief and contemptuous 
 "Biography of Shakespeare," we can claim we do 
 know when, and where, and whom, he married, and 
 a good deal of such stuff as registers, etc., are made 
 of, about his parents and ancestors and children, and 
 about his mortgages and deeds and his last will. 
 We do not know all about when, where, or in what 
 order, his plays were performed ; but we know quite 
 as much of all these and other personal details, 
 as we know concerning a dozen or more of the 
 other leading dramatists of the age. What do we 
 know of any of them ? Who then cared for these 
 players and writers ? If there was anything evil, or 
 equivocal, in their lives and conduct, be sure that, in 
 the fierce light of religious fanaticism and the bur- 
 rowing of bookworms, it has a far better chance to 
 escape oblivion than their better deeds. 
 
 "The evil that men do lives after them; 
 The good is oft interred with their bones ; " 
 
 and this is especially true of the Elizabethan drama- 
 tists. 
 
 In Shakespeare's time, dramatic authors were of 
 small consideration, and, when mentioned, it is the 
 least creditable side of their lives which is turned up 
 to gratify public curiosity ; they are to be remembered, 
 it appears, by their follies, their vices and their ec- 
 centricities only. Hartley Coleridge, in his Life of 
 Massinger, truly says : 
 
 "The lives of our great dramatists, 'of the great 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS, i/^-j 
 
 race,' furnish few materials for drama. They are 
 provokingly barren of incident. They present neither 
 complicated plots, nor striking situations, nor well- 
 contrasted characters. In their own age they were 
 overlooked as too familiar — in the next, cast aside as 
 unfashionable." 
 
 Dwelling on the immense research that has been 
 brought to bear upon all that concerns those literary 
 giants, he continues: "It is very well that so few 
 reputations have suffered by the scrutiny ; for, had 
 the great dramatists been conspicuous for either vice 
 or folly, they would not have shared the fate of the 
 heroes before Agamemnon. They lived in an age of 
 personality. The great eye of the world was not 
 then, any more than now, so intent on things and 
 principles, as not to have a corner for the infirmities 
 of individuals." 
 
 "The success or poverty of a dramatist might 
 excite no more sensation than similar vicissitudes in 
 the fortunes of a strolling player, or any other ' unfor- 
 tunate ' living from hand to mouth. Yet less were 
 simple respectability and moderate prosperity calcu- 
 lated for public notice. " 
 
 The more orderly and uneventful the lives of any 
 of these players, or dramatists, the more likely were 
 they to escape the denunciation of Puritanic play- 
 haters, or the still more fatal admiration of the disso- 
 lute reprobates who hung around the purlieus of the 
 theatres. Shakespeare was, therefore, fortunate in 
 coming down to us pictured by the hands of the 
 titanic geniuses who knew him best. As painted 
 by Ben Jonson, the very chief of the literary guild, 
 
148 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET. 
 
 he was a man of worth, gentle and genial, who 
 sought not fame, but found her nestling at his feet. 
 His good business habits are matters of record, and 
 are best evinced in the fortune he acquired. He 
 retired from a highly successful career in the heydey 
 of his triumphs, at forty six-years of age, to a quiet 
 rural life ; and this is the best answer to those who 
 stigmatize him as greedy and dissolute. Most of his 
 contemporaries we know only through their misfor- 
 tunes. All that is certainly known of Marlowe, 
 Greene, Peele, Beaumont, Fletcher, Massinger, Ford 
 and the rest, even including Ben Jonson, could be 
 printed in a few pages. So that it were strange if 
 Shakespeare's life could not be put into a nutshell. Of 
 the man Shakespeare, we may know but little, if we 
 exclude vague rumor, unverified and conflicting tra- 
 dition, the gossip of scandal-mongers, and unwar- 
 rantable inference. But with his position as an 
 author it is different. We must draw a distinction 
 between the personal and the literarj career of 
 writers of that age, or of any age. How much, even 
 in this era of the printing-press, does anybody really 
 know of our great writers ? True, there are reposi- 
 tories in biographical dictionaries, magazine articles, 
 etc., from which we can disinter more or less of fact 
 and fiction about them. Blot these out, and write 
 down what you really know about Tennyson, Brown- 
 ing, Anybody. How much is it ? What we do really 
 know is what concerns us, their literary value. And, 
 of Shakespeare, we can learn from his contempo- 
 raries his place in their esteem as well as if he lived 
 to-day. Ben Jonson sounds no uncertain note in his 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 149 
 
 praise. Harsh, rugged, critical, to others — critical 
 even to Shakespeare — he loved the man, ' ' only this 
 side of idolatry." 
 
 Meres tells us, "The sweet witty soul of Ovid 
 lives in mellifluous and honey-tongued Shakespeare." 
 And Weever, still earher in 1596, also calls him 
 " honey-tongued," and of his works tells us, "Some 
 heaven-born goddess said to be their mother." A 
 Mournful Ditty," on the Queen's death in 1603, calls 
 him "brave Shakespeare;" and the lofty Sir John 
 Davies, in 1607, addresses some verses, "To our 
 English Terence, Mr. Will Shakespeare : " 
 
 "Some say, good Will, which I in sport do sing, 
 Had'st thou not played some kingly parts in sport, 
 Thou had'st been a companion for a king. 
 And been a king among the meaner sort. 
 Some others rail ; but rail as they think fit, 
 >Thou hast no railing, but a reigning wit; 
 And honestly thou sowest which they do reajj, 
 So to increase their stock which they do keep." 
 
 Which verses may be commended to "some 
 others," who, in this our own day, "rail," as if this 
 man's existence had been a personal grievance to 
 them. In his own day he was reviled, but reviled 
 not«gain, and that wit, or wisdom, of his, which 
 was acknowledged as regnant, when he was yet but 
 little over two score years of age, by one of the lead' 
 ing writers of the age, reigneth still, and still will 
 reign. 
 
 Such, at least as I conceive the facts, were the man 
 and the situation, which may be summed up as fol- 
 lows : the son of a village tradesman — scion of a 
 
1 50 THE PRO TO TYPE OF HAMLE T, 
 
 family of honest repute, but of decaying fortunes — 
 growing up amid the influences of rural England, 
 in one of its manliest and most brilliant epochs, 
 when it burgeoned and burst into most glorious 
 blossom, found himself on the threshold of life. 
 While yet a callow youth, unchecked passions and 
 the recklessness of the times had burdened him with 
 a family. Instead of yielding to an almost foregone 
 fate, he looked up. His mighty gifts, revelations of 
 genius, far stretching vistas into the invisible realm 
 of thought and imagination, came to his lowly home 
 from nature and man and all the voices of the 
 universe. But, from his whole subsequent career, it 
 is evident, that with them came a resolve to adjust 
 all that he was, and all that saw in those upper 
 realms, to the conditions of his surroundings. He 
 had the mighty creative faculty, which seems not to 
 have been denied in some measure to Marlowe and 
 others, but with it he had also a robust moral nature 
 and common-sense, and, to speed the keel, an unfail- 
 ing energy ; and it is the union of these qualities that 
 constitutes genius. 
 
 Circumstances, the bent of his inclination, and 
 that insight which was self-revealing, led him to the 
 play house. He obeyed the call of destiny. He 
 became an actor, and thus got his foot into the 
 stirrup. Not long was it before he was able to 
 mount Pegasus. In the dreams of his youth, when, 
 we can believe without shame, a wayward exuber- 
 ance may have drawn him along with boon com- 
 panions to play Robin Hood with Sir Thomas Lucy's 
 deer, as an unverified legend asserts, or even while 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 
 
 151 
 
 poring over the Law French of black letter tomes, 
 he may have caught from nature, or the spiritual 
 universe, or from the very imps of perversity in the 
 crabbed texts themselves, the airs that grew into 
 higher melodies of thought and became immortal 
 dramas. But the Noverint has become a play actor, 
 a hard life, though, at the Elizabethan Court, one with 
 all the inspiration that comes from an atmosphere 
 surcharged with electricity. Plays are needed by his 
 Company ; drunken, reprobate Greene, who sells his 
 plays twice over to rival theatres, cannot be trusted 
 to write them ; Burbage, the leading ' star ' of the 
 hour, must have a tragedy. What more likely than 
 that this ambitious tyro should write a play, in imita- 
 tion of what he had seen in his native village, where 
 we know that dramatic performances had been given 
 while he was still a youth there, or that, following 
 the lead of Lyly, Kyd or Marlowe, he should attempt 
 "a tragedy of blood '' — a " Hamlet, Revenge I " 
 
 This is such an opportunity as, like the Faery train, 
 is only seen by them to whom the second-sight is 
 given. This young man seizes it ; and, three or four 
 years later, we find him fifth in the list of stock- 
 holders of the Company, and already enough known 
 to fame to stir the bile and bitter enmity of disap- 
 pointed rivals. Henceforth his career was one of 
 uninterrupted success, so that the nickname given in 
 jest became a reality, and he was, in truth, "William 
 the Conqueror." 
 
 All of us know something of Shakespeare's method. 
 Plot given, or taken, it maybe ; then a play that men 
 will sit through and knit their brows, weep with, per- 
 
152 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 chance, and ponder over, and come again ; in a 
 word — a success. And hence we find Hamlet, which 
 should be counted among his earliest plays, as has 
 already been shown, in conception so little dramatic 
 as to its final outcome, if the dramatic consists in 
 action merely, and yet so striking in its isolated situa- 
 tions, and with so self-determined a movement in its 
 essential or intrinsic action. Little care did the bold 
 pioneer in romantic drama take for unities, conven- 
 tionalities, or the consistency of outward things. Ana- 
 chronisms, solecisms, historical inaccuracies that 
 would have shocked Baron Verulam, abound in him, 
 but they did not confound him. But then he put men 
 and women, not puppets, upon the stage ; and, most 
 of all, he put something of himself, and of the Divine 
 Spirit that moved him, into his characters ; and so 
 they live. He was limited by stage requirements 
 needed to render his tragedy a success as an acting 
 play; but, to these, his artistic intuitions" and expe- 
 rience on the stage enabled him readily to conform. 
 And beyond this he had the impulse and the con- 
 straint of genius to gratify his own creative faculty and 
 power of large discourse, " looking before and after." 
 This was a law of his being, as Maker, Master, Wizard, 
 Sovereign Elect of the Drama, and, as it would seem, 
 of all literature. 
 
 No greater damage could then be done a troop of 
 players than to print their plays, and thus rob them 
 of their monopoly of acting them. They were ad- 
 dressed to the senses, the eye and ear, and not to 
 that more subtle communion with the intelligence 
 through the printed page. It was the habit of these 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS 153 
 
 companies to take any old, or popular, story, and give 
 such a version of it as suited the conditions of the 
 case, the times, the audience, the abilities of the ac- 
 tors, and, to, a small extent, the spectacular effect. 
 What this legend of Hamlet was, and who was the 
 prototype of the Prince of Denmark, I shall discuss 
 later on. But at first it was only a cartoon that he 
 sketched. It seems certain that anybody's sugges- 
 tion, interpolation, or addition, if clearly an improve- 
 ment to a play, would be freely accepted. Literary 
 jealousies and sensibilities had small place in com- 
 positions chiefly anonymous, among a co-operative 
 company, where gain and joint dramatic success were 
 the prime objects. This was the advantage that the 
 young and obscure, biat gifted, man would have. 
 His utility would be readily recognized, and he 
 would speedily become indispensable. 
 
 Shakespeare, like other dramatists of his day, took 
 his plots in the main as he found them. He was not 
 solicitous, or too careful, as to the material on which 
 he was to imprint the seal of his genius. Marble or 
 sandstone, Corinthian brass or cherry stones, were 
 indifferent to him. The crude, refractory stuff would 
 become precious with the signature, ' W. Shakespeare. ' 
 This is not to say that Shakespeare thought of the 
 matter thus, or did himself justice therein, but it is to 
 state a fact. He took his plots from anywhere, recast 
 them to suit the exigencies of the play-house, and 
 then, with the transmuting force of his genius, con- 
 formed them to the eternal verities. 
 
 Let us suppose, then, that Shakespeare made a 
 sketch, as we would now term it, of this tragedy ; and 
 
154 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 that in 1586 or 1587 his company put it, such as it 
 was, upon the stage. Every representation of it might 
 bring with it some alteration which his own dramatic 
 intuitions, or the expertness of actors, would sug- 
 gest, so that at last, the play would crystallize into 
 the shape in which we have it in the First Quarto, 
 and in which it probably held the stage, until about 
 1596, when it seems to have fallen for a time into 
 obscurity. In 1586, Hamlet was to Shakespeare a 
 youth of twenty ; only two years his junior, his dear 
 younger brother and confidant — perhaps in some 
 degree, his own image or double ; — in 1596, Hamlet 
 had become a man of thirty, who had chewed the 
 bitter-sweet cud of life, and who had seen, too, its 
 illusions shattered. Hamlet developed by just so 
 much as Shakespeare did. 
 
 It is probable that Shakespeare thus in 1596 again 
 took up this fruitage of his springtime, and, under 
 social, political and personal conditions entirely dif- 
 ferent from those of its original conception, elaborated 
 it to the comprehensive scope of the Second Quarto, 
 or Last Hamlet. This was apparently at a crisis in 
 his life. 
 
 Hamlet seems, from the profound melancholy 
 which pervades its soliloquies, which, indeed, under- 
 lies it, to have been written in a season of defeat to 
 its author. This may havS been in part some reverse 
 of fortune, or threat of disaster, of the details of which 
 we are not aware. But as the dissatisfaction is spir- 
 itual, rather than material, it is more probable that 
 this gloom resulted from the awakening of a high 
 and noble spirit to a consciousness of its own defects, 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS, 155 
 
 limitations, and moral reverses, and from an unavail- 
 ing struggle for an outlet from the valley of the 
 shadowr of death. 
 
 The pessimism in this play has been accounted 
 for by the death of his only son in 1596, and the loss 
 of other near and dear relations about that time. 
 Political and financial events may have contributed 
 to it. Self-reproach for a life which had not been 
 regulated by an absolute standard of right, perhaps, 
 more than both of these, bred those doublings, ques- 
 tionings, and moral defiances to a universe with the 
 law and perfection of which he was not in accord. 
 
 Mr. W. W. Story thus gracefully puts forward a 
 suggestion that has occurred to others as well as 
 himself 
 
 " He is as perfectly impersonal as a mirror held 
 up to nature. 
 
 ' He nor commends nor grieves. 
 Pleads for itself the fact, 
 As unrelenting Nature leaves 
 Her every act. ' 
 
 Yet here and there one seems to catch a personality, 
 and this last citation brings one to my mind. There 
 is always a certain insistence on the delight of mere 
 living, and a certain horror Of death, which seems to 
 me to show that to him life w.as a great joy, and death 
 to his active nature had a peculiar repulsion. One 
 sees this constantly in Hamlet, which is, perhaps, the 
 least impersonal of all the characters he ever drew, 
 and represents a mood which comes to all imagina- 
 tive natures at a certain period of life, and through 
 which he was passing when he wrote this play. The 
 
156 THE PROTOTyPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 sphinx riddle of humanity, and of life and death, was 
 then troubHng his reason and his consciousness, and 
 so weighing upon him that it gives a color to all the 
 meditations of Hamlet that is doubtless completely 
 true to Hamlet dramatically, but that has a certain 
 somewhat beyond the dramatical truth and of a per- 
 sonal character. I cannot exactly explain why this 
 is, but I cannot help feeling it." (Story's Conversa- 
 tions in a Studio, vol. I. page 113). 
 
 Though Shakespeare's only son Hamnet was the 
 namesake, as well as the godson, of his early friend, 
 Hamnet Sadler, and Hamlet was the name used in 
 the old story on which the play was based, still the 
 coincidence has some significance, especially if we 
 admit that Shakespeare made his first draft of the 
 tragedy soon after the birth of his son. It seems that 
 about that time this legend of Hamlet must somehow 
 have fastened itself upon his imagination, and en- 
 gaged his prentice hand. But the coincidence of 
 Hamnet's death in 1596 with Shakespeare's revival of 
 interest in his early production at that time is more 
 remarkable. For some reason, as we may judge 
 from internal evidences in his works, this was a crit- 
 ical period, and, to some extent, a turning point, in 
 his career. He took up Hamlet again with no boyish 
 hand, but with the grasp and power that have made 
 it a world poem. 
 
 None can tell how much this man had built upon 
 the future of his only son. It is the quality of ambi- 
 tious, imaginative, altruistic, natures to go out of 
 themselves in their dreams of advancement. Shake- 
 speare felt that his profession and the hard conditions 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 157 
 
 of his fate had shut him out from the full rewards of 
 his genius in his own generation. All the traditions 
 and prejudices of his country and time pointed to the 
 establishment of his family — the founding of a house 
 — as the most legitimate and honorable aim of a man 
 in his, or any, position. It is easy to recall Sir Walter 
 Scott's similar fruitless dream of Abbotsford and a 
 county family. This was the meaning of Shake- 
 speare's thrift, his wish for wealth, his purchases of 
 land, his claim to a coat of arms, his aspiration to be 
 a country gentleman. But his dear boy died, and all 
 was shattered. His dream was dissolved. He was 
 alone, 'a barren sceptre inhisgripe', with no son to 
 stand in the gate and uphold his name. Men speak 
 of the bitterness of death ; but the bitterness of life ! — 
 we will not speak of it. 
 
 It is likely also that the friends at Court, on whom 
 he counted, he found cold, or, in the crooked cabals 
 of the time, thwarted in his and their designs. But, 
 again, it is only too probable, from the internal 
 evidences of the sonnets and from traditions that have 
 come down to us, and from the very nature of things, 
 that he had not held himself entirely aloof from the 
 temptations of life, and, having tasted the cup of sin, 
 that he had to drink its bitter dregs in repentance. 
 Thus we may readily conceive how the vision of this 
 full orbed single soul could, with such large discourse, 
 behold the soul of man, and mirror it, and manifest 
 it to us in this self-revelation. 
 
 An entry in the Stationer's Register in 1602, speaks 
 of a proposed copy of Hamlet, "as it was lately 
 acted." The Clarendon Editors infer from this that 
 
1 5 8 THE PRO TO TYPE OF HAMLE T, 
 
 Hamlet then enjoyed only a recent popularity ; but 
 to me it seems that this implies that improvements, 
 or changes, had then recently been introduced into its 
 earlier versions. All along he had been putting more 
 of his dramatic art, his stage experience, and his knowl- 
 edge of life, into it, as it grew to the clear and definite 
 proportions of the first Quarto. But now into this Re- 
 vision in the Second Quarto, the last Hamlet, he put 
 himself. He thoroughly saturated it with his own 
 personality, and, by the interpenetration of his own 
 entity with the wavering shape of the Danish Prince, 
 gave his great tragedy its present poetic and magnifi- 
 cent form. The volcanic flashes of his genius reveal 
 profoundest depths, intellectual and moral, of their 
 source — the perturbed spirit of the author. How the 
 gems of Shakespeare's rationality came to be imbedded 
 in that strange, crude, barbarous, old legend, may then 
 be best accounted for, according to our conviction, 
 by the evolution of this tragedy of Hamlet. Evolution ! 
 Yes, it is just in this fact that Hamlet was an evolu- 
 tion, Shakespeare's evolution and not another's, that 
 most of the difficulties of the play, its inconsistencies 
 and contradictions of action, character and incident, 
 may be explained, and in some degree removed. To 
 its genesis and growth, it owes its perennial interest. 
 "Born, not made : " trite, but powerful expression of 
 the immeasurable difference between dead matter and 
 living force ! Springing up from some germ dropped 
 into the fecund imagination of the poet, it grows with 
 his growth, and draws its sap and fibre from the storm 
 and sunshine of his soul ; and, at last, it becomes a 
 mighty monarch of the forest, like the cedar that 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN- PROBLEMS. 159 
 
 guards the slopes of Libanus, or the gigantic redwood 
 that towers in our own Yosemite, or some Druidical 
 oak of its native soil. It has stood in our literature 
 now for more than three centuries, and the magic 
 circle of its shadows still fall upon the heart with the 
 same, or a deeper, sense of mystery and spiritual 
 meaning than when it first came into being. So that 
 the perfect Hamlet — at first the picture of a particular 
 man, as I conceive, and then the mirror of all man- 
 kind — fully justifies the claim made for it in my 
 former lecture to pre-eminence as the greatest creation 
 of the greatest poet the world has ever seen. 
 
l6o THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET^ 
 
 THE PLOT OF HAMLET. 
 
 "This play is the image of a murther done in ? 
 
 Hamlet, III. 2. 
 
 Though this be madness, yet there is method in it." 
 
 Hamlet, II, 2. 
 
 In my lecture on " The Significance of Hamlet," I 
 believe I evinced no low estimate of the tremendous 
 mystery and meaning of this mighty drama of the 
 Human Will. If I have succeeded in apprehending 
 these aright, it is by following in the footsteps of 
 powerful and profound intellects of an older genera- 
 tion, availing myself of their suggestions, and at- 
 tempting to arrive at somewhat more exact and 
 definite results. If others arrive at a different result, 
 it would seem childish to quarrel with them for opin- 
 ions on a subject so impersonal, and, I might say, so 
 intangible. Still, as the odium theologicum appears to 
 seize on so many Shakespearian commentators, one 
 would feel a nervous dread of advancing any criti- 
 cism, if sensitive to personal animadversion. Hence, 
 I ought to say in this connection that, while reject- 
 ing the Baconian Paradox, it is still with very great 
 respect for the industry, ingenuity, acumen and logic 
 of many advocates and adherents of that school. I 
 am forced to believe the whole theory erroneous, 
 groundless, but I attribute the error of its disciples, 
 not to a lack of reasoning power, but to this or that 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. i6l 
 
 mistake in the premises. Statements are accepted as 
 facts which rest upon little evidence, and, from these, 
 large inferences are made ; but the argumentation is 
 vigorous enough when once set going. Its advo- 
 cates reason as if they held a brief in the case. 
 
 This preamble may be the more necessary as I am 
 myself in this lecture about to venture upon a theory 
 which has not met acceptance at the hands of the 
 critics, even when it has attracted their attention, and 
 which has been dismissed by a recent able writer, 
 the author of "The Mystery of Hamlet," with super- 
 cilious contempt. Now, while I am quite willing to 
 concede that any new, or disputed, point in Shake- 
 spearian criticism should be advanced with becom- 
 ing diffidence, nevertheless, I must frankly submit 
 what I conceive to be the most probable explanation 
 of the origin of the play of Hamlet. If I am in error 
 in this view, I shall still hope to show that there is 
 something in it that deserves consideration at least. 
 
 The significance of the play of Hamlet involves 
 one ofthe great problems of human existence. Shake- 
 speare has put this problem into the mechanism and 
 action of the drama, and it enlists our interest and 
 holds our intellects attent, as when the sculptor makes 
 the marble speak to the inner sense of the beholder, 
 or the architect builds a poem and a creed into the 
 bricks and mortar of some grand cathedral. But it 
 does not necessarily follow that the origin of the 
 play was upon a plan in which the details from the 
 first filled out the broad lines of the large theme. 
 Such is not, as a rule, the genesis of the greatest 
 creations of literary genius. The grandest results 
 11 
 
1 62 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 are not those which spring- from the most ambitious 
 designs. Not the subject, but the treatment, lends 
 dignity. The material employed is often but the 
 common clay of our humanity, intended for mere 
 homely uses ; it is the inspiration of the Divine 
 Reason that enables the poet to render it sublime. 
 His large discourse, his lofty imagination, and his 
 soulful energy seize upon a story — a crude legend 
 perhaps, or a trivial plot — and represent the persons 
 who share in it, and it grows to greatness under his 
 hand, as its phases reveal the interaction of emotion, 
 intellection and will. It becomes the unconscious 
 display of the poet's own spirit in his work, and 
 hence an ideal in art. 
 
 What I am leading up to is that it was not neces- 
 sary for Shakespeare to analyze and consciously for- 
 mulate his whole theory of Being — to perceive 
 clearly the image of the human mystery in Hamlet — 
 to see reflected there in its magic mirror the full-size 
 likeness of himself — when he made the first draft of 
 his stage play. It was born, it grew, it became the 
 splendid flower of his genius. But, at first, it was a 
 play meant for the stage, though probably intended 
 for other purposes, as well as for mere amusement 
 Its immediate purpose may have been to instruct a 
 particular audience ; but it contained enough of wis- 
 dom for its voices to reach out to all mankind. 
 "Their line has gone out through all the earth, and 
 their words to the end of the world. " 
 
 All the comment and criticism on the character of 
 Hamlet has not gone much deeper than Goethe's 
 thought, though a fuller unfolding of it may give us 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 163 
 
 a better comprehension of him. And here the ques- 
 tion may be started, how did Shakespeare come to 
 conceive, to create, such a character? AAd, again, 
 how did Shakespeare come to conceive such a char- 
 acter ? Pregnant questions, but not unanswerable ! 
 For answer, we must look to the times, the environ- 
 ment, the antecedents. Few will deny the influence 
 of prevalent thought — of the Time-Spirit — and of the 
 moulding activity of the environment upon literary 
 production. To these, Shakespeare was amenable. 
 They are seen in his quips, in his grossness, in his 
 euphuism, in the turn and trick of his phrase, in the 
 quick, lambent fire of his thought, in the audacity 
 and largeness of his imagination. The age just gone 
 by had been an era of revolt and overthrow. Protes- 
 tantism had hurled down the Church of Rome in 
 England, and new forms, institutions, doctrines and 
 modes of thought had rushed in to supplant the old. 
 The England of Elizabeth was a new world, a re- 
 building of society. Strange things were in the air. 
 Drake was sweeping the Spanish Main, and Raleigh 
 planting the English race on a virgin continent. 
 Bacon was building a new philosophy ; and Puritan- 
 ism and Parliamentary government, in the search for 
 truth and justice, were hardening their sinews for 
 later strife and triumph. All was astir, in confusion. 
 Had chaos come again ? Not so, for a surety. But 
 all things were in question — facts, creeds, philoso- 
 phies ; and yet reason still remained as Chief Inquis- 
 itor. What men sought was to build not upon shams 
 and delusions, but upon the Truth. But, "What is 
 Truth?" O, question of the ages, first asked with 
 
1 64 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 lisping tongue by primeval man ; most memorably 
 demanded of Him, who standing before a Roman tri- 
 bunal, was Himself the answer ! Yes, this was, and 
 is, the question. Bishop Butler says: "I mean to 
 make truth the business of my life ; " and Nathaniel W. 
 Taylor tells us, " Let us be true ; this is the highest 
 maxim of art and of life, the secret of eloquence and 
 virtue, and of all moral authority." And these are 
 but faint modern echoes of Ridley and Latimer, who 
 lighted two candles in England that have not since 
 gone out ; as, indeed, these again were but rever- 
 berations of Epictetus and St. Paul. The Norman 
 mind, intensely egotistic and independent, was also 
 subtle, intellectual and religious. It had shaped the 
 thought of England to chronic protest and revolt 
 against all alien domination, temporal and spiritual. 
 In that great revolt, the Protestant Reformation, 
 every element in England concurred. Its power was 
 as a national contest. Patriotism, love of liberty, the 
 passion for fame and the energy of individual enter- 
 prise fenced the throne of Elizabeth with the swords 
 of gentle and simple alike. So that, as a rule, the 
 great mass of those even who adhered to the old 
 religion were Englishmen first and pre-eminently ; 
 and, though there were fanatics of another kidney, 
 the Catholic lords and yeomen rose to resist the 
 Armada. So the Puritan Stubbs, whose hand had 
 been stricken off for freedom of speech, waved the 
 bloody stump, as he shouted, "God save Queen 
 Elizabeth ! " ; and his comrade who suffered with him 
 sturdily cried out, "There lies an honest English 
 hand 1 " The freedom of the individual spirit to seek, 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 165 
 
 and to find, the way, the truth, and the life, was im- 
 plicit in the new gospel, in whatever forms it may- 
 have been couched. England was never more en- 
 thusiastically English than then. 
 
 Shakespeare, an observer, a thinker, a maker, but 
 always too, an Englishman, and young and ardent, 
 was in the very maelstrom of English thought and 
 feehng. To him, as to every high soul, the question 
 comes : "Man : what, why, whence, whither?" " I, 
 too," says Arcturus, " Will cast my ray into the black 
 abyss, and enlighten the darkness." But not a star in 
 all the firmament, savfe the Day-Spring from on high, 
 can do more than make this darkness visible. When 
 all are reaching out blindly toward the Infinite, shall 
 the master-thinker — the Seer — hold back his hand 1 
 Shall he not vaticinate .? What is truth ? What is 
 man 1 Is there a metaphysical order in the universe ? 
 Is Fate all ? Is free-will naught ? Do the books tell 
 it ? Have the priests solved it .■' Such is the virgin 
 skepticism that with reverent hand, in Shakespeare, 
 lifts the curtain of the unknown. Into Hamlet's 
 sad musings, Shakespeare projected his own soul 
 and the spirit of his times, but he has also evinced 
 prophetic vision, and heralded the dominant idea of 
 the coming centuries. He it was, no less than the 
 philosophers, preachers and martyrs, who with sweet- 
 est accent ushered in the phantom doubt, that has 
 since so stirred and guided modern thought His 
 wand evoked Goethe, it trained Darwin and Spencer, 
 and disciplined Kingsley and Dean Stanley. And, O 
 inconceivable thought ! that this arch-magician 
 should be but a playright ! In the eternal fitness of 
 
1 66 THE PROTOTVPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 things, how could he be less than an Inductive 
 Philosopher, an Apothegmatic Essayist, and a Lord 
 Chancellor and Viscount St. Albans ? 
 
 Is it possible for us to discover now why this play 
 was written, for what purpose, to what end? To 
 amuse! Surely — but no more? To instruct! In- 
 dubitably — but whom, wherefore ? The World ! Yes. 
 the world, large and small ; that little world, the 
 Court of his puissant and high-stomached princess, 
 the Virgin Queen, and those other millions who have 
 since soliloquized with Hamlet and wept with the 
 fair Ophelia. But was there no great personage to 
 whom the lesson of Hamlet might carry a present 
 lesson of special significance, to whom it might be 
 a matter of pith and moment ; and was there no 
 coterie to whose policy its teachings might render ac- 
 ceptable service ? Perhaps it may be difficult to prove 
 this in manner and form, to demonstrate it beyond 
 controversy ; but, in the prevalent nebulosity about 
 Shakespeare's plays, and the natural interest every 
 aspect of them excites, some suggestions on these 
 points may not be unacceptable, which the diligent 
 antiquarian may, if he please, afterwards work out to* 
 fruitful results. 
 
 In the study of Shakespeare's plays, not only the 
 method of his art engages us, but this wherefore I 
 Why Hamlet, and not something else.? Why did 
 Shakespeare write this particular play in this particu- 
 lar way, at the particular point of time when it was 
 first acted ? To some minds accident is a sufficient 
 cause, and we do, indeed, find insignificant things 
 often the proximate causes of great events. But 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 167 
 
 most causes are adequate ; and the more adequate, 
 the more explicable are they. In considering the 
 production of a play andits raison d'etre, itis notamiss 
 to recollect not only the literary skill and method 
 of the author, but what manner of man he was. I 
 have already tried in few words to depict the 
 Elizabethan epoch as an era of awakening, the leafy 
 June of English thought. I have described Shakes- 
 peare, too, as a high-souled poet and consummate 
 artist, a seer to whom all the windows of the soul 
 were open, from the outlooks of which a thousand 
 vistas of the world of man declared themselves to his 
 vision. Such is the poet, as he stands like Moses 
 upon Horeb, and as we see him in the fullness of his 
 intellectual stature. But when his pontifical robes 
 are cast aside, and he descends into the arena of 
 actual life, we find that Shakespeare was a man of 
 affairs too ; nay, even a man about town ; he was a 
 writer with a patron, a writer for a patron ; he was also 
 an active member of a stage company, playing second 
 best parts, but adapting, even composing, immortal 
 dramas. But, most of all, he was an Englishman, and, 
 as such, both a patriot and a politician. His patriot- 
 ism breathes through the mighty music of his dramas, 
 even as the undertone comes to us, in the awful rush 
 and roar of waters at Niagara. He puts into the 
 mouth of Falconbridge, one of his favorites and a 
 most typical Englishman the words : 
 
 "This England never did, and never shall, 
 Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror, 
 But when it first did help to vfound itself." 
 
 King John, V. 7. 
 
l68 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 Public affairswere neither unknown, nor uncared for 
 by him. He had a right to feel an interest in them. 
 Was not his father, the wool-stapler, " of the corpo- 
 ration of the borough .' " By birth he belonged to 
 that sturdy middle-class, which, by patient, persistent 
 resolution, has wrung its liberties from Crown and 
 nobles, and with them the control of England. But, 
 though, as a strolling player, he had swung away from 
 his local moorings and parish politics, he had drifted 
 into that vast pool, the Court and its purlieus, in 
 which all the great movements of the realm were 
 matters of keenest personal interest. In that brilliant 
 circle of versatile Bohemians, "the Queen's poor 
 players," to which he belonged, all questions of poHti- 
 cal moment, as well as the artistic side of life, were 
 discussed with vivid curiosity. They were, as a rule, 
 the dependents, or partisans, of some powerful and 
 munificent patron, and were warmed or chilled as 
 the sunshine of royalty fell upon, or was withdrawn 
 from, their Maecenas. In modern political phrase, 
 they were his "henchmen ; " and their duty was not 
 only to amuse the leisure, but oftentimes to serve the 
 purposes or advance the fortunes, of their chief. 
 This is illustrated in this very tragedy of Hamlet, 
 when the Player King and his company perform a 
 part not found in the roles of dramatic companies — 
 "to catch the conscience of the King. " To his com- 
 pany of players, a politic patron might very well com- 
 mit the delicate task of conveying an unwelcome truth 
 in pleasing form, or of suggesting lines of action that 
 might not be declared, or of hinting in allegory what 
 he might wish attempted in action. 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 169 
 
 In 1586, the point of time at which we will assume 
 that the first draft of the play of Hamlet was con- 
 ceived, the political horizon was lowering, and a 
 death struggle seemed imminent between the party 
 of reaction and the English Court. The former 
 centred its hopes on the captive Queen of Scots ; 
 while England, apart from the papistical faction, 
 looked to Elizabeth as the pole-star in the politi- 
 cal firmament. War with Rome existed in Eng- 
 land, though undeclared and waged with poison 
 and poignard only ; but none the less war, because 
 tacit and with conspiracy as the strategy of closet 
 and council chamber. High and mighty ones ad- 
 vised the assassination of Elizabeth, and she herself 
 tried to instigate the jailers of the Queen of Scots to 
 murder her privately after her condemnation. 
 
 Plot followed plot, all to end abortively under the 
 lynx-eyed vigilance of Burleigh and Walsingham. 
 The Duke of Norfolk, two Earls of Northumberland, 
 William Parry, and others, perished because of their 
 attempts; but, in 1586, the formidable conspiracy, 
 known as " Babington's ", brought matters to a head. 
 Mary Stuart was regarded as the centre of the 
 machinations aimed at the life and throne of Eliza- 
 beth, whose masculine spirit and genius for finesse 
 did not shrink from the death-grapple. Without pro- 
 nouncing here on the right or wrong of this intricate 
 question, from the point of view of the English Coun- 
 cil and Court and of the patriot faction, and, possibly, 
 of Elizabeth herself, the death of "Queen Mary had 
 become necessary to secure her safety and the peace 
 and glory of England. I do not say that this view 
 
170 
 
 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 was correct, but it was that of the worldly-wise 
 councilors of Elizabeth, and, so far as success justi- 
 fies policy, it has such further sanction. The national 
 party, as well as enthusiastic Protestants, believed in 
 and supported this course. 
 
 You must permit me here to assume, without argu- 
 ment, as correct, the view of Froude, based, in part, 
 upon the rep-esentations of Chasteauneuf, the French 
 Ambassador to the King of France : "The Council 
 and people generally," he said, "were earnest that 
 she should be executed, but he did not think Elizabeth 
 herself would consent to extremities if she could 
 help it." Secretary Davison confirmed the opinion 
 of the French Ambassador. 
 
 It is very difficult to decide positively by what 
 name the Company went to which Shakespeare first 
 attached himself, nor is to it our present purpose ; 
 whether Lord^Leiggster's, Lord Strange's, the Queen's, 
 or the Lord Chamberlain's, matters very little. Lei- 
 cester and Lord Hunsdon, the Lord Chamberlain, 
 were almost equally involved in the proceedings 
 against Mary, and in the Council voted for her con- 
 demnation and execution. And, though the Stanleys 
 were Catholic, Lord Strange's father. Lord Derby, 
 was a violent Loyalist, and rallied to Elizabeth when 
 the Spanish Armada was threatening. The patrons 
 of Shakespeare_andhis fellow-gibers were, Irom 
 whatevef^mgti?^, hostile toTlieJiueen of^ots, and 
 we find Shakespeare attachecTuirough life to, what 
 might be called, in such a network of intrigue as the 
 Court of Elizabeth presented, the National Party, or 
 to that branch of it at least that Leicester and Essex 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 171 
 
 headed. Southampton, his patron, was Essex's 
 nearest friend. When Mary fell however, Burghley, 
 Walsingham, Leicester, the noble Sussex, Hunsdon, 
 and many more, felt that a hard necessity required 
 her death. Let us suppose this inchoate policy tak- 
 ing shape. Suppose the execution of Queen Mary 
 settled upon, or discussed even, as the true cutting of 
 a tangled political knot, and we may safely assume 
 that these far-sighted and ambidextrous statesmen 
 would neglect no means to justify so audacious a 
 stroke, or at very least to try the temper of that 
 doubtful middle opinion that counts for so much. 
 This was to be reconciled. After the execution these 
 arguments became the more necessary in view of 
 the attitude of Elizabeth, who repudiated all responsi- 
 bility for it, and when her chief councilors were in 
 peril of life and property from her. 
 
 But there was another factor that could not be dis- 
 regarded, namely, King James of Scotland. James 
 was the son of the woman whose death upon the 
 scaffold was foredoomed. It is hard to conceive any 
 line of argument, or set of circumstances, that would 
 wring from this champion of the divine right of 
 kings a compromise with regicide, or from a son 
 even a tacit assent to his mother's ignominious execu- 
 tion. But Elizabeth knew her man. Great is Ego 
 always ; but, in that cold heart and clear, tortuous 
 brain. Self reigned supreme. First of all, he was a 
 Stuart, which always meant a multitude of mean- 
 nesses, and a mass of littlenesses. He was King of 
 Stotland too, and heir presumptive to the throne of 
 England by grace of the Great Queen, under whose 
 
172 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 wing he dodged and fluttered as a sub-King or King- 
 let, — a stripling prince of twenty — the sole royal 
 chick in her brood of aspirants. By her support he 
 maintained his authority over a turbulent nobility; 
 and his mother's imprisonment, or death, was the 
 only sure guaranty of his privilege to reign at all. 
 His title was defeasible quite, if Queen Mary got the 
 upper hand. Such an event would upset his throne, 
 and even put in peril his sacred person, so precious 
 to himself ; for questions would be started that the 
 sword alone could settle. It is well known that 
 Mary's resentment at his alliance with Elizabeth 
 induced her to assent to a plan for his capture and 
 deposition. His only real safety lay in the protec- 
 tion of England. Nevertheless, a King is a piece on 
 the national chessboard not to be despised ; — nay, 
 even a Kinglet, if he be a son and a man, must be 
 taken into account. The crooked Cecilian policy, 
 looking to James as its future monarch, owed to him 
 this deference, that a fair plea be made for its harsh 
 deed, as a sop to the royal conscience, if no more. 
 To this end, it is probable, no argument was omitted, 
 nor any means neglected. True, EHzabeth hated 
 James, as the son of her rival and her own rightful 
 heir, but she was too wise to ignore him. To James 
 and to the world, then, must be justified the hard 
 necessity, the cruel compulsion, of the bloody deed. 
 The Master of Gray, James' go-between with the 
 English Government, which had bought him, writ- 
 ing to Archibald Douglas, September i8, 1586, says, 
 of the king : "His opinion is it cannot stand with 
 his honor that he be a consenter to take his mother's 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 
 
 173 
 
 life, but he is content how strictly she be kept, and 
 all her old knavish servants hanged, chiefly they 
 that be in hands. For this you must deal warily to 
 . eschew inconvenients, seeing- necessity of all honest 
 men's affairs requires she was taken away." (Froude, 
 History of England, XII. 292). 
 
 Every plea, direct and indirect, would be put forth. 
 We know that both money and promises were used, 
 and Sir Robert Carey, son of Shakespeare's patron, 
 the Lord Chamberlain Hunsdon, was sent on a spe- 
 cial mission to placate the wounded honor of king 
 James. Among other agencies, the stage might well 
 be employed for the teaching of important political 
 object lessons. A play that should stir the minds 
 and hearts of the Court, then the center of intellectual 
 and political activity, against the unhappy captive 
 queen, was an engine too powerful to be overlooked. 
 Nor was James, with his fondness for pageantry and 
 the theatre, apt to disregard such teaching. The vivid 
 presentation of a case, odious indeed, yet closely 
 analogous to Mary's own, might make that queen 
 appear to him as the victim of a just retribution. It 
 has already been pointed out that in this very tragedy 
 of Hamlet a play is interpolated, as in Shakespeare's 
 conception a proper political device. Such a device 
 was not foreign to his ideas, or to the resources of 
 diplomacy. The powerful tragedy of Edward II, by 
 Christopher Marlowe, was also produced about this 
 time ; Warton thinks it was written in 1590. It may 
 have been earlier ; but, whether written before or 
 after the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, it was 
 a similar case of the killing of a king with the con- 
 
174 
 
 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET. 
 
 nivance of his guilty queen, another blast to blow into 
 flame the popular indignation against such naughty 
 deeds, and to palliate, excuse, or justify, such a doubt- 
 ful political act as the execution of the sovereign of 
 a sister country. 
 
 We find this use of the play, as well as of other 
 forms of literature, for political purposes, quite fre- 
 quent in English history. Plumptre cites Rowe's 
 Tamerlane in 1702, Addison's Cato in 171 3, Mallet's 
 Elvira in 1763, and the Fall of Mortimer in the same 
 year, as notable instances of this appliance ; and the 
 reader can recall many instances, in our own day, of 
 the same kind; for instance, the Octoroon and Uncle 
 Tom's Cabin. 
 
 England was on fire with loyal zeal and Anti-Papist 
 rage ; and it is not unlikely that a young, impulsive 
 and ardent soul, the playwright Shakespeare, should 
 share in the general patriotic delirium, in which all 
 classes were involved. On Mary's trial (if such it 
 can be called), the charges against her were that she 
 had "conspired the destruction of Queen Elizabeth 
 and of England and the subversion of religion." 
 
 Parliament in an address to the Queen, November 
 5th, 1586, urged that the sentence upon the Queen 
 of Scots be immediately carried into execution, "be- 
 cause, upon advised and grave consultation, we can- 
 not find that there is any possible means to provide 
 for your Majesty's safety, but by the just and speedy 
 death of said Queen." 
 
 " When the judgment of the Commissioners was 
 proclaimed in London by sound of trumpet, the bells 
 tolled many peals for twenty-four hours, bonfires 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 
 
 175 
 
 blazed in the streets, and the citizens appeared intox- 
 icated with joy, as if a great victory had been obtained 
 over a foreign enemy. These rejoicings were re- 
 doubled on the news of her execution. " (Campbell's 
 Lord Chancellors, v. 2, p. 123). 
 
 In extracts from the "Register of the Stationers" 
 (Vol. 2, p. 145), we find, as early as May 30, 1581, 
 licensed to Garrath James, a ballad, declaring the 
 Treason conspired against the King of Scots. 
 
 In the entries of 1587, we find a number of ballads 
 and pamphlets justifying the execution of Mary, 
 Queen of Scots; among others, "An excellent ditty 
 made as a general rejoicing for the cutting off the 
 Scottish Queen", licensed nineteen days after her 
 death. 
 
 On the 8th of August, 1587, was licensed, "A ditty 
 of Lord Darnley, sometime King of Scots." 
 
 Mary was execut ed February i, 1587. In the eyes 
 of Shakespeare and of the Engllih people, the plots 
 . against Elizabeth in the name of the deposed Queen 
 were acts of treason and rebellion. To them the 
 captive was but a conspirator, while Elizabeth was 
 queen, the queen, and poor Mary's taking off seemed 
 butJhe just penalty of attempted regicide. This and 
 the murder of Darnley are the crimes to which the 
 author points as demanding retribution. It is to this 
 view and these feelings, that we must attribute such 
 passages as the following : 
 
 "There's such a divinity, etc." (Act iv, S. 5, L. 118). 
 
 "The single and peculiar life is bound, etc." (Act 
 iii, S. 3, L. 10.) 
 
 The latter of these quotations, however, is not in 
 
176 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET. 
 
 the First Quarto, and may very well have been added 
 much later to please the absolutist tendencies of either 
 James or Elizabeth. 
 
 When Mary's head had fallen on the block, what- 
 ever may have been Elizabeth's real sentiments, we 
 know that she utterly repudiated the act, disgraced 
 her secretary Davison, sent Burleigh to the Tower, 
 and ominously hinted that but for their services she 
 would have had the heads of Burleigh, Walsingham 
 and Leicester. Now was the time then for them and 
 their friends to bestir themselves, and, if Hamlet was 
 not produced before that time, there was a pressing 
 exigency in which it might well do good service. 
 We cannot say positively that it was at this moment 
 that it first appeared, but it would seem a time when 
 a reason for it is most evident. 
 
 Let us assume now that the policy of Mary's 
 execution had been determined upon or had even 
 been carried out, and that the Lord Chamberlain, or 
 the Earl of Leicester, or Lord Hundson, should give 
 a hint that a play on such a theme, with plot pointed 
 out or left to the invention of the playwright as we 
 may decide, would be most graciously received, 
 and, indeed, munificently rewarded. Whoever else 
 may have been called to stir in this matter, we may 
 rest assured that the hand of one William Shakespeare 
 was pre-eminent therein. The era of dramatic in- 
 cubation had dawned. Ten years later, about 1596, 
 new plays, tragedies, comedies, pastorals, masques, 
 revels, what not, were -hatched like spring chickens 
 — forty in less than two years in the theatres in which 
 this Shakespeare, then at the head of his profession, 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 177 
 
 was actor, manager, or playwright. But even now 
 he was recognized as a power. He may have been 
 a pot-hunter in literature, writing for bread or gold, 
 but then and always he was a Titan. Without doubt 
 he was the lawyer's clerk, yclept by the jealous 
 Nash, " a Noverint," who had a hand in the tragedy, 
 the burthen whereof was ' ' Hamlet ! Revenge ! " If 
 anything could make us doubt this fact, it would be, 
 as has been said, the dissent of such critics as Richard 
 Grant White and the Clarendon editors ; but, though 
 it may put us in a quandary to disagree with them, 
 the weight of evidence seems for Shakespeare's 
 authorship. Indeed, assuming the First Quarto to 
 represent this version, as in substance it most prob- 
 ably does, though enlarged, improved and developed, 
 we may say we ^raow Shakespeare wrote it ; just as 
 we say Michael Angelo did this and Raphael this, 
 because no other could; just as we say, this is the 
 work of the lightning, this of the whirlwind, and this 
 of the ocean, because heaven employs no less agencies 
 for such effects. So, if we find the first Hamlet un- 
 equal to Shakespeare's best handiwork, yet we know 
 it to be his, because it is better than the best of other 
 men. But this first draft must be regarded as the 
 sapling which grew into a giant oak, with arms ever 
 sturdier and unfolding a finer foliage. 
 
 Let us suppose our author to have received his 
 commission. If it please any idolater better, let him 
 believe the spring of it to have been in Shakespeare's 
 own national, patriotic and Protestant feeling. But 
 we must not forget that, however honest a man he 
 may have been, he was by profession a courtier's 
 12 
 
178 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 courtier, the minister in a minor court. It may be 
 remembered that the " Midsummer Night's Dream" 
 contains an allusion to a mermaid, supposed to be 
 aimed at Mary Stuart, coupled with a compliment to 
 Elizabeth, as "a fair vestal," — though this was prob- 
 ably written in 1592. The poet, however, has received 
 his inspiration from heaven or the Council. A play 
 is wanted that will fit the case ; broad in its bearings, 
 stirring in its incidents, human enough in its relations 
 to call a halt in thought, and yet subtle to touch this 
 particular grievance of royal assassination to the 
 quick with fatal suggestion. What shall the plot be 1 
 First of all, the murder of a king, and the marriage 
 of his widow with, the murderer — and then there must 
 needs be a young prince, who in the mazes of doubt 
 is called to revenge. 
 
 If Shakespeare desired a pattern for Hamlet, or for 
 Darnley's death, he might have found it, indeed may 
 have heard of it, in the curious spectacle enacted be- 
 fore the Lords at Stirling, within a fortnight after 
 MaJ:yJ§_marriage tp Bothwell. 
 
 Amongme letters of Sir Wm. Drury to Cecil is one 
 quoted by Miss Strickland (Queens of Scotland, Vol. 
 5,265), in which he says. May 26, 1567 : "There 
 hath been an interlude of boys played at Stirling, 
 which hath much offended the Earl of Bothwell, for 
 the same was the manner of the king's death, and the 
 arraignment of the Earl, who in the play he that did 
 represent him was hanged, meaning but in sport." 
 The boy player was, as it appears, hanged too long, 
 and came near dying. 
 
 There is a rude old legend in Saxo Grammaticus, 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS, jyg 
 
 known to learned clerks, which Belleforest, after a 
 fashion, put into French in his " Histoires Tragiques, 
 about 1570; which again was translated into Eng- 
 lish, as the "'Hystorie of Hamblet." This was 
 court literature, and the story seems made to hand to 
 suit the case of James and his mother. But, if it mis- 
 carry, after all what is it but a fable, done over for the 
 stage, and no scandal meant ? Under feigned names, 
 poor, base, vicious, handsome Darnley, a royal 
 simulacrum, shall come back in this day dream to a 
 more real life, as "my father's ghost," and bloody 
 Bothwell, that " adulterate beast," shall live again as 
 the felon king. And the quqen ? — the queen ! There 
 is, alas, but one queen whose unhappy fate has been 
 to marry with her husband's murderer, and she is now 
 in the toils, and-Nemesis glides on the stage. Ham- 
 let .' In this Prince of Denmark, " that unmatched 
 form and feature of blown youth," whom shall all 
 men see but that fair bud of royal promise, the 
 modern Solomon, the young King James, who, with 
 his quiddities and bookish ways, may even himself, 
 perchance, perceive his own princely likeness in this 
 looking glass. Some commentators have even be- 
 lieved that they have found the pattern of Polonius 
 in Lord Burleigh, Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, or other 
 of Elizabeth's Council,' and, it maybe also, ofRosen- 
 crantz and Guildenstern and Osric in the minions and 
 butterflies of the Court. Sans doute, had we tlje 
 chance to parley with some shrewd maid of honor of 
 that day, we would know it all. We have been told, 
 I believe, that Essex, or Sir Philip Sidney, sat for the 
 portrait of Hamlet. But we have not so far to go ; 
 
1 80 THE PRO TO TYPE OF HAMLE T, 
 
 for Shakespeare's picture of the heir of Denmark is 
 more than a likeness, it is the very counterpart, of 
 the heir of England. In King James we may find 
 the prototype of Hamlet 
 
 I cannot hope to establish this claim unchallenged ; 
 but, having exhibited what I conceive to be a 
 sufficient political motive for the production of this 
 play, before entering on a consideration of the plot I 
 beg leave to note the following circumstances. 
 Some twenty years ago I observed the striking 
 points of likeness in the murder of Darnley to the 
 plot of Hamlet, and the resemblance of James 
 and Hamlet in character, and supposed that the 
 discovery was original with me. I subsequently 
 found, however, that nearly a century ago the Rev. 
 Mr. Plumptre had pointed out some of the more 
 obvious of these parallelisms. Though I have the 
 pamphlet, Furness' succinct statement of the points 
 in Plumptre's pamphlet gives its substance with 
 sufficient clearness ; and this I quote, in order to ac- 
 cord due credit to the first finder, especially as he set 
 great store by his discovery. I subjoin Carl Silber- 
 schlag's paradoxical additions to it. * Furness says : 
 
 "In 1796, James Plumptre, M.A., published some 
 observations on Hamlet, etc., being an attempt to 
 prove that (Shakespeare) designed (this tragedy) as 
 an indirect censure on Mary, Queen of Scots. In 
 this volume the author assumes that since Shake- 
 speare in 1592 did not hesitate, in the Midsummer 
 Night's Dream, to -compliment Elizabeth at the ex- 
 pense of Mary, he would have no scruples in still 
 * Furness' Variorum Hamlet, Vol. 11, p. 236. 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. i8i 
 
 further flattering his royal mistress in 1596 (the date 
 when Hamlet was written), by adding his drop to 
 the flood of calumny poured out over her rivaL This 
 hypothesis obliges him to maintain that the Queen 
 in Hamlet was an accessory to her husband's death." 
 "Plumptre adduces the following passages and 
 allusions to show that Shakespeare had Mary, Queen 
 of Scots, directly in mind when he wrote them ; ' In 
 second husband let me be accursed 1 None wed the 
 second but who killed the first;' (HI. ii, 169 ;) and 
 • The instances that second marriage move are base 
 respects of thrift, but none of love.' — (lb. 172), 
 ' which, says the author, ' appear to be so strongly 
 marked as almost of themselves to establish the 
 hypothesis.' Next, Gertrude's haste to marry the 
 murderer of her husband. Lord Darnley_^as— mur- 
 dered on the. lothFebr uary, 1567 ^— aad-Mary^was 
 married t o Bothwell on the 14th of May following, a 
 space ^f tim e but just exceeding three months. 
 Lord Darnley was the handsomest young man in the 
 kingdom, but of a weak mind ; it is remarkable in 
 Hamlet no compliment is paid to the murdered 
 king's intellectual qualities. Bothwell was twenty 
 years older than Mary, and is represented as an ugly 
 man by the historians. He was also noted for his 
 debauchery and drinking, two circumstances which 
 Shakespeare seems never to lose sight of in his char- 
 acter of Claudius. Ophelia's allusion to the ' beau- 
 teous majesty of Denmark,' IV. v., Plumptre says 
 is inapplicable to Gertrude, because ' she was past 
 the prime of life, not to say old,' whereas it applies 
 most justly to Mary, who was only forty-five when 
 
1 8 2 THE PRO TO TYPE OF HAMLE T. 
 
 she was beheaded, and very beautiful. In the be- 
 ginning of Hamlet the hero is represented as very 
 young, but in the graveyard we are told that he was 
 thirty years old. 'James was just thirty at the 
 writing of this play. ' Whereupon Plumptre remarks : 
 ' Shakespeare seems to have been so blinded by the 
 circumstances he wished to introduce that he has 
 fallen into many improbabilities between his two 
 plans.' Shakespeare mentions the King as having 
 been taken off, " in the blossom of his sin," ' which,' 
 says Plumptre, ' is incompatible with the ideas we 
 have of the King's age in the play, but most truly 
 applicable to Lord Darnley.' In Hamlet's delay 
 Shakespeare had in mind the backwardness of James 
 to revenge his father's murder. 'Among other re- 
 markable coincidences between the plot of Hamlet 
 and the circumstances attendant on Mary and James, 
 we may enumerate that of Dr. Wotton being sent 
 into Scotland by Elizabeth as a spy upon James, and 
 who afterwards entered into a conspiracy to deliver 
 him into her hands.' Here we have the part of 
 Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. ' The incident of 
 Polonius being murdered in the presence of the 
 Queen, in her closet, bears a resemblance to the mur- 
 der of Rizzio in Mary's apartment.' 'Both well had 
 poisoned Mary's cup of happiness, and it was her 
 marriage with him that was the cause of her sorrows 
 and death.' 
 
 "In 1797, Plumptre published an Appendix, in 
 which additional parallelisms are given, and great 
 stress is laid on the effects of poison on Darnley ; 
 Knox and Buchanan ' mention the black and putrid 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 183 
 
 pustules which broke out all over his body ; ' this 
 corresponds to the tetter, which ' bark'd about, most 
 lazar like, with vile and loathesome crust, all the 
 smooth body ' of Hamlet's father. Hume's descrip- 
 tion of James (vol i, p. i, 4, 4to ed,) is cited to show 
 that the character of Hamlet is his character, ' but it 
 is a flattering likeness ; it is James drawn in the 
 fairest colors ; his harsh features softened and his 
 deformities concealed.' Hamlet's love of the stage 
 and patronage of the players resembled James's. 
 Finally, from travellers' accounts, Plumptre infers 
 that ' the shore on which !^lsinQr£.sta^s consists of 
 ridges of sand, rising one above the other ; ' there 
 could not, therefore, be any ' dreadful summit of a 
 cliff that beetles o'er his base,' and 'looks so many 
 fathoms down ' amid such scenery ; but this descrip- 
 tion suits Salisbury Crags and Holyrood Palace." ' 
 
 "This theory of Plumptre's (who, by the way, 
 apologizes in his preface for any typographical errors 
 to be found in the volume, on the ground of his exces- 
 sive anxiety to publish his views before he could be 
 anticipated and robbed of the glory of his discovery), 
 this theory was treated with silent indifference for nigh 
 three-quarters of a century, until a few years ago. It 
 was revived in Germany, apparently without any sus- 
 picion that it was not novel. Carl Silberschlag, in the 
 Morgenblatt, Nos 46, 47, i860, brought forward the 
 same arguments with which we are familiar to prove 
 that under Gertrude was veiled an allusion to Mary 
 Stuart, that Hamlet was James, and Claudius, Both- 
 well. But the ingenious German scholar went farther, 
 and found that other characters in the tragedy had their 
 
1 84 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 prototypes among James's contemporaries. The 
 laird of Gowrie had a father's murder to avenge, -and 
 had lived in Paris, and had a faithful servant named 
 Rhynd, and met his death in' an attempt by stratagem 
 on the life of the King. All this prefigures Laertes 
 and Reynaldo ; unfortunately, an air of burlesque is 
 cast over the theory by the argument gravely uttered, 
 that Laird is pronounced just like {ganz so klingt) 
 Laertes ! After the death of the Laird, his bride, 
 Anna Douglas, became insane, — hence Ophelia. In 
 the 'vicious, mole' i, iv, 24, Silberschlag finds cumu- 
 lative evidence of the truth of his theory." He 
 identified it with James's congenital horror of a drawn 
 dagger." 
 
 " Moberly noticed, though not in reference to this 
 theory of Plumptre's, that the language with which 
 Hamlet speaks of the dead body of Polonius is almost 
 exactly the same as that used by the Porter at 
 Holyrood in reference to the dead body of Rizzio. 
 (See HI, iv, 215)." 
 
 ' ' Hunter ( New Illustrations, etc. ii, 204 ) says if 
 the composition of Hamlet can really be carried back 
 to a time before 1589, ' there may be some ground 
 for the opinion of those who have thought that there 
 were strokes in it levelled at the Queen of Scots, who 
 was put to death in 1587.' In view of what has 
 been advanced in these lectures there can be no doubt 
 about the date being thus early. 
 
 It cannot be said that Plumptre presented his argu- 
 ment with much force. He was so enamoured of his 
 .idea that every possible suggestion seemed addi- 
 tional proof to him, and his zeal really injured his 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 185 
 
 cause. Then no sufficient motive was suggested by 
 him for the adoption of this play of Darnley's Murder 
 by the author. Besides, much additional evidence 
 has been brought to view since Plumptre's day, 
 which throws light upon questions which could not 
 be answered without it. The first known copy of Q i 
 was only discovered in 1823, nearly a generation 
 later, by Sir Henry Bunbury, and it is from the com- 
 parative study of this with Q 2 that some of the 
 strongest proofs of this theory are derived. It has 
 been so constantly asserted that the play of Hamlet 
 was written by Shakespeare after 1597, and from ten 
 to fifteen years later than its earliest production by 
 some other author, that the points of resemblance in 
 the murders have been disregarded by commentators. 
 In 1597, Darnley's murder and Mary's execution 
 were no longer in the arena of politics. There would 
 be no political motive for selecting these incidents, 
 or their analogue, as the basis of an appeal on the 
 stage to king or people. But if the view be adopted 
 that Shakespeare wrote the original acting-play of 
 Hamlet in 1586 or 1587, most of the objections 
 disappear to the theory that the plot pointed to the 
 murder of Darnley and Mary's connivance in it, which 
 were then on every tongue. Her execution was 
 then the question of the day ; his patrons were all 
 personally deeply interested in the issue; all Europe 
 was excited over it ; and it was even used by Spain 
 as a justification of the invasion of England by the 
 Armada. 
 
 Am I right, then, in supposing that this play was 
 originally intended to recall to memory the death of 
 
1 86 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 Darnley, and to spur the timid James to connive at 
 his mother's death, and perhaps even go beyond 
 in pursuing his father's murderers? The Council 
 may even have had in view the abhorrence of the 
 Queen's death pretended by Elizabeth, whether it 
 were real or disingenuous, and found in Hamlet, 
 " the Encourager of Hesitancy.'' The three grounds 
 for believing such the original intention of the tragedy 
 should be first, the motives of the English Govern- 
 ment and of Shakespeare himself in bringing out the 
 play, which have been^ already perhaps sufficiently 
 illustrated ; second, the resemblance in the plot and 
 details of the play to the death of Darnley and the 
 attendant circumstances ; and, lastly, the resem- 
 blance, shall I say identity, of the character of 
 James I with that of Hamlet. 
 
 Furness' summary has given us Plumptre's argument 
 in which the analogy of the plots is discussed, though 
 somewhat hastily and heatedly. But I would ask 
 the reader to follow me in this matter calmly. Let 
 us look at the ' terrain. ' Where is Hamlet located ? 
 German criticism thinks him into Germany. Dr. 
 Eckardt (i i 303 >j says : " Hamlet is a character of the 
 North, where all life is more earnest and intense, 
 etc." Bierne (11, 289) says : "Hamlet has a Northern 
 soil, and a Northern heaven." Zimmermann (p. 341) 
 says : "his character was found in the Danish world." 
 And so with others. But all this is superficial. True, 
 the play is of "Hamlet, prince of Denmark." But 
 what did the word Denmark signify to Shakespeare? 
 All his men are in reality British ; but they are veri- 
 tably men, and hence all can, or may, comprehend 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 187 
 
 them. To the German, they are Germans ; to the 
 Dane, Danes ; to us, Americans. It is quite evident 
 that Shakespeare knew nothing and cared nothing 
 about Denmark — as such. His geography was of the 
 most elastic kind. His Bohemia has a coast — an 
 absolutely requisite one. But there is much to induce 
 us to believe that if the word ' Scotland ' was every- 
 where substituted for Denmark, and the whole pa- 
 geantry were transposed from Elsinore to Edinburgh, 
 we would have a graphic conception of the pictures 
 that Shakespeare was making in his own mind, as 
 he composed Hamlet. It is probable that Shake- 
 speare visited Scotland in 1589 to play before the 
 king ; and the touches that characterize the locality 
 may have been introduced after that period, though 
 there is no good reason why he should not have 
 learned about the topography before that from books 
 and travellers. One of his patrons. Lord Hunsdon, 
 had been onamissionto Scotlandin 1584, andhis son 
 was also there in April, 1587, two months after Mary's 
 death. The scenery is Scottish. The platform where 
 Hamlet sees his father's ghost well describes Holy- 
 rood, the palace of James, — "the dreadful summit of 
 a cliff that beetles o'er his base . . . and look so many 
 fathoms down," but is entirely unlike Elsinore, which 
 stand upon a series of sandy ridges. 
 • We must bear in mind that there is nothing really 
 medieval in the play, nor any attempt to conform it 
 to the thought or customs of any former, much less a 
 remote or barbarous, age. All is contemporaneous. 
 The drunkenness and debauchery assigned to Den- 
 mark, which certainly did belong historically to 
 
l88 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 Hamlet's own barbarous era and country, were like- 
 wise the vices prevalent in Scotland. And, as the 
 usurping Bothwell was one among the grossest exam- 
 ples of both vices in actual life, so Claudius, who fills 
 his part in the play, is stigmatized throughout as the 
 leader in all orgies. These assaults are put into the 
 mouth of the Prince, the archetype of the youthful 
 Solomon, who had not as yet displayed in full his 
 taste for strong drink and other hereditary tendencies. 
 He says satirically to Horatio, "We'll teach you to 
 drink deep ere you depart" (i, 2, 175). Again, 
 
 " The King doth wake to-night aud take his rouse, 
 Keeps wassail, and the swaggering up-spring reels ; 
 And as he drains his draughts of Rhenish down, 
 
 etc. (i, 4, 10). " This heavy-headed revel", "they 
 clepe us drunkards, " "the bloat king," and many 
 other similar expressions, are censures, which, though 
 applicable enough to England then, still more forcibly 
 point to Scotland and to Bothwell. 
 
 The Denmark of Shakespeare's Hamlet is not the 
 Denmark of Saxo-Grammaticus, nor, indeed, of any 
 other aga or time. Lowell says * : 
 
 "In Hamlet, though there is no Denmark of the 
 ninth century, Shakespeare has suggested the pre- 
 vailing rudeness of manners quite enough for his 
 purpose. We see it in the single combat of Hamlet's 
 father with the elder Fortinbras, in the vulgar wassail 
 of the king, in the English monarch being expected 
 to hang Rosencrantz and Guildenstern out of hand, 
 merely to oblige his cousin of Denmark, in Laertes, 
 sent to Paris to be made a gentlemen of, becoming 
 '•Among my Books," p 208. 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 189 
 
 instantly capable of the most barbarous treachery 
 to glut his vengeance." . , . "All through the play 
 we get the notion of a state of society in which a 
 savage society has disguised itself in the externals 
 of civilization." 
 
 These remarks of Lowell, in his admirable essay 
 on ^'Shakespeare Once More," are just, and, taken in 
 connection with Shakespeare's method of appropriat- 
 ing what was at hand as the material into which he 
 infused his vitalizing spirit, instead of hunting for it 
 from afar, indicate that this Denmark of Hamlet was 
 not only not a Denmark of the ninth century, but not 
 Denmark at all, except in name. His spiritual Den- 
 mark was in the recesses of his own soul ; his fleshly 
 Denmark was all about him. Nor had he far to go 
 to find that which was at once sufficiently familiar for 
 popular interest and yet remote enough for stage illu- 
 sion. Scotland was near at hand; Scotland was "a 
 burning question ; " yet it was not trite or common 
 place in London in the last quarter of the sixteenth 
 century. And, measured even by such standard as the 
 grossness of English manners, Scotland, in Shake- 
 speare's day, offered a striking contrast, from its still 
 ruder and more revolting forms of licentiousness, in- 
 temperance and cruelty, and invited the censure he 
 affixes to the Court of Denmark. Courtiers could 
 readily read between the lines. We have only to 
 consult the writings of contemporaneous travellers to 
 learn these facts. 
 
 Lowell says: "Shakespeare seems purposely to 
 have dissociated his play from history by changing 
 nearly every name in the original legend. The mo- 
 
190 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET. 
 
 live of the play — revenge as a religious duty — 
 belongs only to a social state in which the traditions 
 of barbarism are still operative ; but with infallible 
 artistic judgment Shakespeare had chosen, not un- 
 tamed Nature, as he found it in history, but the period 
 of transition, a period in which the times are always 
 out of joint, and thus the irresolution which has its 
 root in Hamlet's own character is stimulated by the 
 very incompatibility of that legacy of vengeance he 
 has inherited from the past with the new culture and 
 refinement of which he is the representative. " 
 
 Without intending it, Lowell has here described 
 the exact social phase of Scotland, after the Refor- 
 mation and before the Union, a veritable era of 
 transition, and also the condition under which James 
 found himself. He had been educated by his mother's 
 bitterest enemies. Crafty and irresolute by nature, 
 and trained in casuistry as well as in theology, his 
 lot was cast in a time of religious and political revol- 
 ution, a very "sea of troubles," with the personal 
 legacy of revenge from a murdered father. How to 
 acquit this debt was the question he had to meet. By 
 punishment of the guilty, says the ghost, says his 
 own first impulse, says the invisible chorus which 
 seems to swell the symphony of revenge. By sui- 
 cide, by submission, by delay, reply the timorous 
 vacillating heart and the subtle speculative intellect 
 And while this debate defers decision. Fate steps in 
 and mates the King, and sweeps from the board all 
 the chief pieces in this game of life. And shall the 
 real Prince, him of Scotland, take no lesson from all 
 this? 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 191 
 
 Was it nothing to James that Hamlet, lamenting 
 his father, cries out, 
 
 "Yet I, 
 A dull and muddy mettled rascal, peak. 
 Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause, 
 And can say nothing ; no, not for a King, 
 Upon whose property and most dear life 
 A damned defeat was made." 
 
 Will it be believed that a plot so personal to him, 
 with a moral so pointed and so applicable, was not 
 intended for him, or that he took no note of it ; and 
 that, with his eager chase of questions of conscience, 
 "motes to the mind's eye," it may not have weighed 
 with him to soothe his scruples in patching up an 
 alliance with the slayers of his mother? We know, 
 as a fact, that while he professed a bitter indignation, 
 he took no action, and accepted the fruits of the 
 bloody deed. Doubtless many arguments commended 
 themselves to him ; peace, a pension, Protestantism ; 
 why not, too, as a case of conscience, the religious 
 duty of revenge ? "If thou hast nature in thee bear 
 it not," says the Ghost. 
 
 I have now sketched out for you how this great 
 drama most probably originated, with some of the 
 resemblances of the plot to Darnley's murder. That 
 the play had its source in a political pamphlet and grew 
 to a world-poem does not at all militate against the 
 theory. In my next and last lecture, I will endeavor 
 to offer satisfactory evidence, as I believe, that Ham- 
 let was at first drawn as a portrait of James VI. of 
 Scotland. 
 
193 
 
 THE PHOTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET. 
 
 " If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. 
 
 Merchant of Venice, III., I. 
 " No counterfeit, but the true and perfect image of life, indeed. 
 
 I Henry IV., V., 4. 
 
 I have in my former lectures, I Hope, made clear 
 to the minds of my audience the powerful psycholo- 
 gical insight with which Shakespeare revealed the 
 dark places of a human soul, ai;d that he was able to 
 do so because it was with an actual human soul that 
 he was dealing. I have laid before you some of my 
 reasons for beheving that I had discovered the indi- 
 vidual men upon whose labyrinthine nature he had 
 turned the focal light of his inquiry. In this lecture 
 I will adduce further proofs to show that in this 
 identification of the archetype, I was not mistaken. 
 
 Suppose we now take this matter de novo, 
 unbiassed by any of the great authorities who have 
 set out with theories to establish in regard to it. To 
 begin at the beginning, Saxo Grammaticus, a writer 
 of the twelfth century, gives a rough legend of one 
 Amleth, who was in truth a historical character, reg- 
 nant in Jutland, toward the close of the sixth century. 
 Belleforest, a French writer, printed a version of this 
 legend, about 1570, from which it is said a translation 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 
 
 ^"iZ 
 
 was soon afterwards made into English. Furness 
 thus describes it : "This prose narrative is a bald, 
 literal, and, in many respects, uncouth translation." 
 The only copy extant was printed in 1608, but it is 
 generally believed that the translation itself was made 
 soon after the original book was printed 1570. Collier 
 characterizes this production thus: (Ibid p. 88,) "It 
 will be found that the tragedy varies in rftany import- 
 ant particulars from the novel, especially towards the 
 conclusion ; that nearly the whole conduct of the 
 story is different; that the catastrophe is totally dis- 
 similar, and that the character of the hero in the prose 
 narrative is utterly degraded below the rank he is 
 entitled to take in the commencement. The murder 
 of Hamlet's father, the marriage of his mother with 
 the murderer, Hamlet's pretended madness, his inter- 
 view with his mother, and his voyage to England, 
 are nearly the only points in common. " It is, indeed, 
 ably contended b)' Elze, in which Furness agrees 
 with him, that the prose history of Hamlet in English 
 was of later date than the first sketch of the play. 
 In my opinion, while this is true, at least of the version 
 in the edition of 1608, it is not a matter of great con- 
 sequence. The playwright, whoever he was, that 
 conceived the first sketch of Hamlet, was after all 
 indebted to the legend, in whatever form he learned 
 it, for but the merest outline of the action and situa- 
 tions, nothing for the language, nothing for the char- 
 acterization, nothing for the motive, the rational 
 causes, that lead to the catastrophe. Capell says 
 (p. 87) "It is rather strange that none of the relater's 
 expressions have got into the play,'' except when 
 13 
 
194 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 Hamlet cries out, "A rat, a rat," which is not in 
 Belleforest, and was probably taken from the play, 
 in the later editions of the translation. The same 
 may be said of Hamlet's reproaches to his mother. 
 In nought else does the diction of the two produc- 
 tions conform. Again, nothing could be more unlike 
 than the characters. In the legend, the persons of 
 the drama are vikings, who wade red-handed through 
 blood, striking straight at the throats of their antag- 
 onists. Their stratagems are the clumsy ambuscades 
 of half savage warriors. But this rude limning has 
 been filled in by a master hand in' the play, and is 
 supplemented by the craftiest finesse in action and the 
 subtlest'speculation in thought. And so of the motive ; 
 in the legend, revenge and a throne are the stakes, 
 and the action is a combat of broadswords and shields ; 
 in the tragedy, an intellectual mastery — a triumph in 
 statecraft — seems the aim, waged by a practice of 
 poisoned foils, a play of rapiers between masters of 
 fence. It appears more than probable that some 
 reader of Belleforest's French Chronicle, or perhaps 
 of the English translation, had given an oral outline 
 sketch of the legend of Hamlet to the playwright — 
 the unknown playwright whom I have identified 
 with Shakespeare, and who first called into being this 
 unique work of genius. 
 
 Let us see how near the two stories approach each 
 other. In the old legend. King Rorik of Denmark 
 has a daughter, Geruth, or Gertrude, whom he marries 
 to Horvendile, one of his "valiant, warlike lords." 
 When Rorik dies, Horvendile becomes King, as is 
 evident, in right of his wife, the Queen, heiress of 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 195 
 
 Rorik. His brother Fengon murders him, and he 
 too, marrying the widow, becomes king by the same 
 title, with the consent of the realm. It was by his 
 marriage with Queen Mary that Damley got his title, 
 "King Henry"; and it was thus that his murderer, 
 Bothwell, hoped to mount the throne. 
 
 It has always been a mooted question, both in the 
 play and in Darnley's taking off, whether the Queen 
 were an accessory before or after the fact ; but cer- 
 tainly, in both cases, in a brief three months she 
 married with the murderer. Indeed, the coincidence 
 in time is significant Hamlet cries out, 
 
 " Scarce two months dead, etc." 
 
 And again, "Look you how cheerfully my mother 
 looks, and my father died within these two hours " ; 
 to whom Ophelia, "Nay, 'tis twice two months, my 
 lord:" and in his Soliloquy (Acti, Sc. 2), "but two 
 months dead, nay, not so much as two ; " and yet 
 again, ' ' Nay, not a month. " Darnley was assassinated, 
 February loth by Bothwell, who married Queen 
 Mary, May 14th. Hamlet's expressions are inten- 
 tionally extravagant ; Ophelia's, deprecatory. To- 
 gether, they emphasize the essential point, the in- 
 decent haste of the nuptials. 
 
 When we come to consider the death of Darnley, 
 and the relations of Mary and Bothwell, we cannot 
 fail to be struck by the wonderful similarity of the 
 situations. Damley, with all the intrinsic baseness of 
 his nature, was yet a prince of royal lineage and one 
 of the handsomest men of his time, and was espe- 
 cially noted for his splendid presence ; he was nearly 
 
196 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 seven feet in height. Mary is said to have conceived 
 a violent passion for him, which a short matrimonial 
 experience converted into an intense hatred. It was 
 not to the purpose of the poet to indicate how ill 
 deserved was the love and how well merited was the 
 hatred. But it was believed, whether true or not, 
 that Mary's relations with Bothwell, before Darnley's 
 death, were criminal. There can be no doubt that 
 Bothwell murdered him, and that Mary married 
 Bothwell scarcely three months thereafter. Her 
 apologists alleged that her marriage was under duress; 
 but the appearances, at least, were against her, and 
 the marriage was in open day, and of its date we 
 can have no doubt. The poet did not in Hamlet 
 clearly define his view as to whether the Queen was 
 an accomplice before the fact, or not. It was neither 
 necessary nor prudent to enter on that discussion. 
 
 Shakespeare points to the beauty of the lawful 
 husband, and the contrast with his murderer more 
 than once : 
 
 " See, what a grace was seated on his brow ; 
 Hyperion's curls, the front of Jove himself, 
 An eye like Mars to threaten and command ; 
 A station like the herald Mercury 
 New lighted on a heaven-kissing hill ; 
 A combination and a form indeed. 
 Where every god did seem to set his seal, 
 To give the world assurance of a man : 
 This was your husband." 
 
 " Look you now, what follows : 
 Here is your husband, Uke a mildewed ear. 
 Blasting his wholesome brother." 
 
 Hamlet in melancholy mood points the contrast. 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS, igy 
 
 " Hyperion to a satyr, " which suggests the rugged 
 adventurer who had murdered "King Henry"; and 
 he recalls Mary's transient, yet doting, passion for 
 Darnley : 
 
 " Heaven and earth ! 
 Must I remember ? Why she would hang on him,- 
 As if increase of appetite had grown 
 By what it fed on ; and yet within a month — " 
 
 And here may be noted the influence of the tenure 
 of the royal title upon the mind of Hamlet, as con- 
 ceived by Shakespeare and his contemporaries, which 
 was quite different from the view taken of it by most 
 of the commentators at the present day. It is now 
 nearly always assumed that Claudius was a mere 
 usurper, and that it was veriest imbecility in Hamlet 
 to hesitate to strike down the wretch who had robbed 
 him of his lawful inheritance. But such was not 
 actually the case. In the legend, and presumably in 
 the play, the Queen was as veritably sovereign as 
 Victoria now is ; and Hamlet had no rights while 
 she lived. Claudius, too, as King-Consort, was the 
 legitimate monarch. He styles Gertrude, 
 " Our sometime sister now our queen, 
 The imperial jointress to this warlike state." * 
 
 No note of insurrection, revolt, opposition, or 
 even protest, is recorded of Hamlet, or the Court, or 
 nation, against his accession. 
 
 * Schmidt's Shakespeare Lexicon defines "jointress" here as 
 "a dowager", which is substantially the meaning ; a jointure 
 being an estate in lieu of dower. The idea involved is that she 
 was sovereign of Denmark by right after her first husband's 
 death, and not, as it is sometimes interpreted, joint- tenant, or 
 sharer, of the throne with Claudius. 
 
198 TBE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET. 
 
 Inheritance of the throne by assent, as well as by 
 consent, was not unknown to the English constitution. 
 Indeed, assent is a tacit and implied consent, which 
 was generally procured as the ratification, and not 
 as the origin, of the title. 
 
 True, Hamlet calls Claudius, 
 
 '' A cut purse of the empire and the rule, 
 That from a shelf the precious diadem stole 
 And put it in his pocket. (Ill, 4, 100). 
 
 But this properly refers to the crime with which he 
 paved his way to the throne, and which tainted a 
 good title ; just as Richard III.'s legitimate accession 
 to the throne was vitiated by the murder of his 
 nephews. Claudius announces Hamlet as his heir, 
 and the courtier Rosencrantz considers his prospect 
 for the succession "as advancement." There were 
 many aspirants to the hand of Mary after the deaths 
 of Darnley and Bothwell, and these all expected to 
 share the throne with her. 
 
 With the transmission of the crown by royal 
 bequest, the English Nation was also quite familiar. 
 Henry VIII. was in the habit of giving it away by 
 testament. Edward VI. also tried to do so. Elizabeth 
 later confirmed James I. 's legitimate title by an alleged 
 "dying voice." In the play, Hamlet exclaims : 
 
 " I cannot live to hear the news from England. 
 But I do prophecy the election lights on Fortinbras : 
 he has my dying voice." This is doubtless an im- 
 plication of some suzerainty in England, but it points, 
 at least, to the looseness of the hereditary principle 
 in early English history, of which there were so 
 many precedents ; as, for instance, William Rufus, 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 
 
 199 
 
 Henry I. , Stephen, John, Henry IV. , Richard III. and 
 Henry VII. 
 
 The title of Claudius to the throne was good 
 enough, if it had not been based upon treason, adul- 
 tery and murder. Hamlet was still heir-apparent to 
 the throne, to which he could look forward also as 
 "the most immediate to our throne," by the adoption 
 and declaration of Claudius. It was a hard dilemma in 
 which he was placed, for as the ghost could not be pro- 
 duced in court, to accuse Claudius of an improbable 
 crime and there was no writ that ran into Purgatory, 
 if Hamlet killed the king he would have stood con- 
 victed of quasi-parricide, and of regicide, and would 
 have achieved infamy, instead of the crown. Werner, 
 Corson, and others rely upon this to prove that 
 Hamlet was not irresolute ; but a resolute man is one 
 who is equal to arduous occasions, not merely to 
 easy ones. 
 
 This matter of regicide was "a living issue "at 
 that day. The fall of kings and the mighty ones of 
 earth was just then a common subject for men's 
 thoughts, to which Sackville's grand poem had led 
 the way. Macbeth and Lear and Shakespeare's 
 historic cycle sound all the changes of the imperial 
 theme. But here is a goodly king done to his death 
 by the treasonable guile of a foul upstart, and his 
 cherished wife consenting to the atrocious crime and 
 raising the assassin to share her bed and throne. 
 What should the princely heir in such case do, warned, 
 or not, by visions from beyond the grave.? His 
 father's ghost bids him, " Revenge." . His own faint 
 
200 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 heart holds him ever back. He is not to touch his 
 mother's form, but to wring her heart 
 
 Could he listen unmoved to the self-reproach of his 
 own "counterfeit presentment," pointing out revenge 
 as the path of duty ? 
 
 " How all occasions inform against me, 
 And spur my dull revenge 
 
 How stand I then, 
 That have a father killed, a mother stained, 
 Excitements of my reason and my blood, 
 And let all sleep ? 
 
 O, from this time forth, 
 My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth." 
 
 But if he refuses his mission, and inflict not justice 
 upon the murderer, if he leave not the guilty queen 
 to the vengeance of heaven, or her enemies, then — 
 then — on him, on all, shall fall the wrath of an out- 
 raged deity, and the divine Nemesis will overwhelm 
 the fated house in one universal wreck. The lesson 
 of Hamlet is not against indecision in minor matters, 
 but for boldness and resolution in the most momen- 
 tous issues, and under the most difficult and trying 
 circumstances. The object is not to exhibit the fail- 
 ure of a feeble will, but to show that Fate demands 
 as an adversary whom she will respect a Will ade- 
 quate to any possible human conditions. "Human 
 fortitude should be equal to human adversity." It is 
 hardly possible that such a lesson and warning would 
 fall without effect either upon the Court or the injured 
 prince : — and who was there to pity that most seem- 
 ing guilty queen .? 
 
 How much of Hamlet is James or portraiture, how 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 20 1 
 
 much Shakespeare or spiritual projection, it would be 
 be hard to estimate. This was the age of dramatic 
 incubation; and from the germ of that precocious 
 Blood-Tragedy, "Hamlet, Revenge!" a political 
 pamphlet in intention, grew an immortal poem. But it 
 was the action, not the speculation which ten years 
 later was introduced into it, that made it sud- 
 denly the target of envious rivals, a favorite at Court, 
 and one of the author's chief stepping-stones to for- 
 tune and fame. 
 
 What could be more natural than that the son of 
 murdered Darnley should stand as prototype for the 
 son of murdered Denmark ? And, if our surmise be 
 correct, that the lesson was for James, what more 
 effective way could be devised than to point the moral * 
 in the principal person of the Drama ? But, in stating 
 this hypothesis, I have been often met with the 
 exclamation, "But how unlike are Hamlet and 
 James in character ! " ; to which my reply is, " How 
 like ! " Let us see if this can be made good. 
 
 In looking at the character of James, we must not 
 regard him with the eyes of Sir Walter Scott, who 
 portrayed him in his debauched old age, nor even as 
 he appeared to contemporaries after drunkenness and 
 craft and cowardly cruelty and vicious indulgence 
 had done their perfect work in him. 
 
 Scott follows Sir Antony Weldon, who thus 
 describes him Ipng after the date of Hamlet, and 
 when he had become king of England. 
 
 "James I. was ofa middle stature, more corpulent 
 through (z'.e., by means of) his clothes than his body, 
 yet fat enough. His legs were very weak, having 
 
202 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 had, as was thought, some foul play in his youth, or 
 rather before he was bom, so that he was not able 
 to stand at seven years of age. That weakness 
 made him ever leaning on other men's shoulders. 
 His walk was ever circular." 
 
 We are reminded in this description of the allusion 
 to Hamlet, by the Queen ; ' ' He's fat and scant o' 
 breath." 
 
 Scott, in the fortunes of Nigel, gives the follo^ying 
 as his own estimate of James : " He was deeply 
 learned, without possessing useful knowledge ; saga- 
 cious in many individual cases, without having real 
 wisdom ; fond of his power, and desirous to maintain 
 and augment it, yet willing to resign the direction of 
 that, and of himself, to the most unworthy favorites ; 
 a big and bold asserter of his rights in words, yet 
 one who tamely saw them trampled on in deeds ; a 
 lover of negotiations, in which he was always out- 
 witted ; and one who feared war, where conquest 
 might have been easy. He was fond of his dignity, 
 while he was perpetually degrading it by undue famil- 
 iarity; capable of much public labor, yet often neg- 
 lecting it for the meanest amusement; a wit, though 
 a pedant ; and a scholar, though fond of the con- 
 versation of the ignorant and uneducated. Even his 
 timidity of temper was not uniform ; and there were 
 moments of his life, and those critical, in which he 
 showed the spirit of his ancestors. He was laborious 
 in trifles, and a trifler where serious labor was re- 
 quired ; devout in his sentiments, and yet too often 
 profane in his language ; just and beneficent by 
 nature, he yet gave way to the iniquities and oppres- 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 
 
 203 
 
 sion of others. He was penurious respe.cting money 
 which he had to give from his own hand, yet incon- 
 siderately and unboundedly profuse of that which he 
 did not see. In a word, those good qualities which 
 displayed themselves in particular cases and oc- 
 casions, were not of a nature sufficiently firm and 
 comprehensive to regulate his general conduct ; and, 
 showing themselves, as they occasionally did, only 
 entitled James to the character bestowed on him by 
 Sully — that he was the wisest fool in Christendom." 
 (Fortunes of Nigel, Vol. i, p. 89). This is James 
 indeed, but it is not all of James. At this very period 
 of his life, he was able to make a far more favorable 
 impression on quick-witted and practiced diploma- 
 tists ; and I can say this, though I hold the entire 
 breed of Royal Stuarts in profound disgust 
 
 Corvero, the Venetian Ambassador, in 1609, de- 
 scribes James I., then 43 years of age, as "of moderate 
 height, of a very good complexion, of an agreeable 
 presence, and of a very robust constitution, which 
 he endeavors to preserve in its vigor. He ardently 
 loves hunting, etc. " ' ' He knows how to exercise the 
 art of reigning, and is endowed with an excellent 
 understanding and extraordinary learning, having 
 earnestly applied himself to study during his youth, 
 but now he has entirely abandoned it." "He is very 
 gentle, an enemy to cruelty, a lover of justice and 
 full of good will." " He loves tranquillity, peace and 
 repose; he has no inclination for war." (Rye's Eng- 
 land as seen by Foreigners, pp. 229, 230). This 
 vein of hatred of strife, except the war of words, runs 
 all through the character of Hamlet. 
 
204 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 Bishop Hackett, in his Life of Lord Keeper Williams 
 (fol. 693, p. 38) says : "The King's (James L) table 
 was a trial of wits. The reading of some books 
 before him was very frequent while he was at his 
 repast. He was ever in chase after some disputable 
 doubts, which he wbuld wind and turn about with 
 the most stabbing objections that ever I heard; and 
 was as pleasant and fellow-like in all those discourses, 
 as with his huntsmen in the field." (Idem, p. 277). 
 This brings to mind Hamlet's wonderful word-play 
 with Polonius and the courtiers, and with his dear 
 friend Horatio. 
 
 I desire not to lay too much stress on minute resem- 
 blances, but one can scarcely help finding in these 
 characterizations a likeness to Hamlet : "Sagacious 
 in many individual cases, without having real wis- 
 dom," "a big and bold asserter of his rights in words, 
 yet one who tamely saw them trampled on in deeds," 
 "a lover of negotiations,"" "a wit though a pedant, 
 and a scholar though fond of the conversation of the 
 ignorant and uneducated," "even the timidity of his 
 temper was not uniform, and there were moments of 
 his life, and those critical, in which he showed the 
 fpirit of his ancestors." 
 
 Is not this the student from Wittenberg, scintillat- 
 ing, versatile, eloquent, infirm of purpose, jesting 
 with fops and grave-diggers, who would not, or could 
 not, put to the test his uncertain title to the throne, 
 yet in a moment of supreme peril and agony executed 
 dire vengeance on his murderous enemy, as did 
 James, justly or unjustly, on Gowrie? But Shake- 
 speare did not see James VI. of Scotland at twenty 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 205 
 
 or even at thirty years old, as Scott saw him two 
 centuries later. In their primy youth, all the Stuarts, 
 mean as they were, had a certain beauty and glamour 
 full of a promise which was as surely blasted by the 
 secret canker of hereditary perfidy. James I, was 
 not without it. A prig and a pedant doubtless he 
 was, even before he came to man's estate, still the 
 eyes of loyalty beheld in him a youthful Solomon. 
 He was a student, well informed, one might say 
 learned, fit to have been at Wittenberg, or elsewhere, 
 with Hamlet, or as Hamlet. He wrote books. He 
 had, too, a certain sort of wit of his own, compounded 
 of drollery to the limit of buffoonery, word-dialectics, 
 and a native shrewdness that was truly Scotch. Full 
 of foolery, he was by no means a fool ; and over- 
 flowing with sententious words of wisdom, he was 
 yet the least wise of men. All the Stuarts, in a man- 
 ner, realized the epigram on Charles II, 
 
 "Whose word no man relies on, 
 Who never said a foolish thing, 
 And never did a wise one." 
 
 It will be remembered that James prided himself 
 upon his "state-craft", by which he meant crooked 
 counsels to compass infamous designs. His full- 
 blown treachery was not as yet known of men, for 
 in his youth he was only an apt neophyte in i6th 
 century king-craft. But his foxy cunning and ready 
 falsity were already cropping out. The Scotch 
 Council knew him, Burleigh knew him, Elizabeth 
 probably knew him ; but, in the eyes of the great 
 world, he was still the Heir Presumptive, the Coming 
 Man. To courtiers, actors, authors, he appeared 
 
2o6 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 peaceable, not turbulent, gracious, fond of learning 
 and literature, the patron of men of letters, a very- 
 Augustus but for his poverty, a prince held under a 
 hard constraint of fortune by a rebellious nobility 
 and the haughty domination of England. What a 
 study he must have been to those psychologists, the 
 politicians and the playwriters. What possibilities 
 are in him, this sagacious stripling of twenty, intent 
 to exalt and aggrandize his royal state, and yet so 
 self-indulgent ! And this vacillation of his — is it 
 cowardly wavering and congenital faint-heartedness, 
 the fruit of Rizzio's fatal ending, or is it the quintes- 
 sence of a tortuous policy ? Who shall say ? But, 
 whatever it be, it is the canker that threatens a brood 
 of future ills to the state, the people, and the royal 
 house. So much we may say now, looking back- 
 ward, and so much may have been plain to a Mait- 
 land of Lethington, a Burleigh, a Walsingham, and 
 even to the eye of the youthful seer, who read so 
 truly the secrets of human hearts. To the young 
 enthusiasts of England, James was indeed the Com- 
 ing Man ; and to a loyalist and conservative, such as 
 Shakespeare, he might well stand for Ophelia's por- 
 trait of the Prince : 
 
 " The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's eye, tongue, sword. 
 The expectancy and rose of the fair state." 
 
 How great potentialities of good and evil lay enfolded 
 in such a character. What prospects, expectations, 
 predictions strewed his path. Anid it was, seeing 
 these, that the tragedy proved to be a prophecy, in- 
 stead of a warning, to the vacillating and fated house 
 of Stuart. 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEAKIAM PROBLEMS. 207 
 
 " Such may be the character of James I," says the 
 Hamlet-loving Shakespearian, "But surely you do 
 not mean to compare the noble Dane to this perverse 
 and crooked King, even when you make the best of 
 him ? " Bearing in mind that the James and the 
 Hamlet of 1587 were not the same as a decade later, 
 we may still answer, "yes!" The grand soliloquies 
 belong to the Hamlet of 1597 not to the Hamlet of 
 1587 : and, to paraphrase Dun Scotus, the difference 
 between Scot and sot was, indeed, merely the interval 
 between Prince and King. Much as Hamlet may 
 enter into our secret moods, commend himself to our 
 metaphysical introspection, and interest us in his per- 
 sonal fortunes, still he is just this creature that we 
 have described James to be, only magnified by 
 Shakespeare's loyalty, interpenetrated by Shake- 
 speare's personality, and idealized by Shakespeare's 
 genius. Shakespeare did not portray unmixed types, 
 but men. It was because he had a man before his 
 mind's eye, that in Hamlet he painted a man ; and 
 because this Hamlet is a man true to nature, that, in 
 this truth to nature, he is full of subtle contradictions. 
 This, indeed, it is that endows him with so profound 
 an interest to us, because, in this waywardness of 
 spirit, we see ourselves. 
 
 And just here may I be allowed to ask the question 
 whether the creation of an ideal organic man in 
 fiction, 
 
 "One of the few, the immortal names 
 That were not bom to die," 
 
 is possible without an actual archetype in real life ? 
 To me it seems that any particular effort by analysis 
 
2o8 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 and synthesis to build up an imaginary man must 
 inevitably result in a puppet, or a Frankenstein, or, 
 as the highest achievement of such art, in a literary 
 picture or statue. Now, we all feel that there is in 
 Shakespeare's characters, in Hamlet especially, who 
 is now under our observation, something different 
 from this. We feel that he is a real man, whose heart 
 we see beating against his ribs, whose inarticulate 
 sobs reach us, as well as his cries of protest against 
 the disorder in the universe. Why is this so ? We 
 can lend ourselves easily enough to the illusion of the 
 stage when it portrays the humors of men, under the 
 masterly hand of Ben Jonson or Sheridan ; but we 
 know the difference. If Claudius were, indeed, "a 
 king of shreds and patches," he would long ere this 
 have been consigned to the lumber room. When 
 Hamlet steps upon the stage, we feel that this is not 
 mere acting. He is a resurrection, not a reconstruc- 
 tion. Under that inky robe a living spirit dwells. He 
 is perennial, immortal, because he did once live. If 
 an actual man had not stood as the pattern of that 
 lofty dreamer, if Prince Hamlet were merely the 
 coinage of the poet's brain, not the portraiture of an 
 individual man, then long since he would have been 
 but potsherds, the broken crystals of a vase, of which 
 the intrinsic form was lost in pervasive space. If I 
 am asked whether prototypes existed of Romeo, Fal- 
 staff, Hotspur, Shylock, Prospero, Lear, Macbeth, 
 Othello, and all that goodly company, from whose 
 actual, living lineaments the artist painted these 
 wonderful portraits, I answer, ' yes.' Who they were 
 I cannot now say, but I think I can tell you who stood 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 209 
 
 with brooding brow, while Shakespeare drew " the 
 dejected, 'havior of his visage." It was the young 
 King James of Scotland, who has written in his tab- 
 lets, ' ' Remember thee ! Ay, thou poor ghost, while 
 memory holds a seat in this distracted globe ; " and 
 again, "O, most pernicious woman ! ", and lastof all, 
 "O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain ! " 
 
 While I may not permit myself to be drawn aside 
 into a too elaborate discussion of this question, I feel 
 that an answer is due to those who shall object that 
 artistic creation is the realization of an ideal, and not 
 mere extrinsic photography. This is true ; but an 
 ideal is not a conglomeration of qualities, or an adjust- 
 ment of parts brought together from hither and yon ; 
 it is essentially portraiture. For portraiture is the 
 representation of an organism under the conditions in 
 which it is viewed by the mind of the artist. We 
 cannot say that the picture, or the dramatic character, 
 is the absolute copy of the model. It is the semblance 
 of the model as the artist beholds it, or as he chooses 
 to behold it ; as it is, or as he feels it should be ; and 
 as the first is his image of it, so the last is his ideal. 
 But the ideal is but the image with something of the 
 artist put into it ; a modification merely, not a com- 
 plete creation, not a literary fabric. So, as I conceive 
 Hamlet to have been written, Shakespeare made him, 
 at first, perhaps altogether James, but, as his own soul 
 and reason entered more and more into the contem- 
 plation and evolution of this favorite character, 
 Hamlet grew in speculation, if not in character, with 
 each touch, more like the player and less like the 
 Prince, and hence nobler and grander ever. 
 14 
 
2 1 o THE PRO TO TYPE OF HAMLE T. 
 
 If we do not assume Hamlet to be a perfect char- 
 acter, (being so like ourselVes, as we all imagine), 
 but take him up, and examine his record, as we may 
 say, we shall discover more than ordinary blemishes, 
 indeed acts that disclose radical defects. I am not 
 disposed to take so extreme a view of the case as was 
 propounded to me by a distinguished statesman of 
 Kentucky. " My theory of Hamlet," said he, "is 
 that he was a rascal, sir ; a scoundrel, sir. He was 
 a villain, and deserved the penitentiary, if, indeed, 
 not the gallows. His treatment of Ophelia ought to 
 have outlawed him. No gentleman would speak to 
 a lady as he did, much less desert her as he did. 
 Think, too, of that scoundrelly trick on Rosencrantz 
 and Guildenstern. Would a man of honor put up a 
 job like that? And as for his courage — why, the 
 whole thing shows that he took it all out in talk. He 
 wouldn't fight. " This may be thought rather harsh 
 judgment ; but, certainly, in all of Hamlet's projects, 
 plots, indirections, outbursts of rage, hesitations, 
 quibblings with conscience, vengeance in words and 
 wavering in deeds, profound philosophy and paltry 
 action, we may find a likeness to the Royal Solomon. 
 There are people who find Macbeth a modest gentle- 
 man, and Hamlet a heroic, resolute, direct man ; but 
 such is not the verdict of common-sense. His affec- 
 tation of madness, his tortuous conduct with Ophelia, 
 his conceit that "he play's the thing, 
 
 "Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King," 
 his counterplot, when "benetted round with vil- 
 lainies," for the destruction of Rosencrantz and Guil- 
 denstern, his determination to slay the King and his 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 21 1 
 
 wasted opportunity, evince a faint heart, an unready 
 hand and a wavering will. We seem to behold 
 Gowrie entrapped and slain ; Sir Thomas Overbury 
 perishing in prison, "between the pass and fell 
 incenocd points of mighty opposites ; " and Raleigh 
 lingering in a dungeon and dying on the scaffold for 
 too faithful service. Indeed, even in such minor 
 details as his contempt for female love and his entire 
 trust in his favorite Horatio, we may discover in 
 Hamlet a likeness to James, who disliked women, 
 neglected his queen, and lavished an overweening 
 fondness on his male favorites. 
 
 A very strong contrast might be drawn, it is true, 
 between the formality of James' mind, and the lofty 
 imagination and profound speculation of Hamlet ; 
 but it must be borne in mind that Buchanan — good 
 schoolmaster, man of great talents,- — made James, 
 (what there was of him), and that Shakespeare made 
 Hamlet. Shakespeare portrayed James as Hamlet ; 
 but into that earthen vessel he threw the sublime 
 light of his own genius until the vase becomes trans- 
 lucent as crystal. This is the endowment of genius. 
 It is thus that the artist will paint Caesar Borgia with 
 a Satanic beauty, and Milton will plant upon the 
 brow of the foul fiend himself the majesty of an un- 
 conquerable pride. 
 
 There arc some very striking evidences in the play 
 itself confirmatory of the view that the prototype of 
 Hamlet was a real person, not a fictitious one, and 
 that this person was King James of Scotland. In 
 the accepted version of the drama, based upon the 
 Second Quarto, Hamlet is clearly stated to be thirty 
 
2 1 2 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 years old. In the grave-digger scene (Act. V. S. i), 
 occurs the following conversation : 
 
 Hamlet. How long hast thou been a grave-maker ? 
 
 First clown. Of all the days in the year 
 I came to't that day that our last 
 King Hamlet o'ercame Fortinbras. 
 
 Hamlet. How long is that since ? 
 
 First clown. Cannot you tell that ? Every fool can tell that. 
 It was the very day that young Hamlet was born.... I have 
 been sexton here, man and boy, thirty years." 
 
 Hamlet recollected well, 'Poor Yorick,' whose 
 "Skull now hath lain you, i' the earth three and 
 twenty years," as the grave-digger tells us. 
 
 Hamlet says, "Alas, poor Yorick ! I knew him, 
 Horatio ; a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent 
 fancy. He hath borne me on his back a thousand 
 times, etc." This would suit very well the jester's 
 play with a boy of six or seven. Since then three 
 and twenty years have passed, and now he is thirty. 
 This all seems sufficiently explicit, even if we neglect 
 the Queen's comment on his fencing, "He's fat and 
 scant of breath ;" a sentence which, by-the-bye, does 
 not occur in Q i, as it would not have been true of 
 James at twenty, when the first play was written. 
 The prototype had grown stout, as well as ten years 
 older, in the interim between the first cast of the 
 play, and the last version. It seems evident, there- 
 fore, that, for some purpose, the poet fixes the age of 
 Hamlet at thirty. If this play were revised, or, as 
 we should rather say, rewritten, in 1596, as we have 
 shown to be probable, Hamlet was then just the 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 2 13 
 
 same age with James, who was born in 1566. 
 
 But to represent Hamlet as thirty years old creates 
 a very serious discrepancy in the play, which the 
 critics have not been able satisfactorily to account 
 for. Blackstone says, "The poet in the fifth act had 
 forgot what he wrote in the first. '' In all the earliest 
 parts of the play, Hamlet appears to us, indeed, as 
 in the first flower of youth. The very first allusion 
 to him is as " young Hamlet." 
 
 Laertes (Act. i, Sc. 3), speaks of Hamlet's love for 
 Ophelia thus, 
 
 " For Hamlet, and the trifling of his fevor. 
 Hold it a fashion, and a toy in blood, 
 A violet in 'Aisyouih oiprimy nature." 
 
 This toy in blood, i.e. caprice of impulse, this 
 sweet flower of nature's springtime, has no proper 
 reference to a man of thirty. 
 
 And Polonius says to her, (Act. i, Sc. 3, v. 123), 
 
 " For Lord Hamlet, 
 Believe so much in him that he '\^ young. 
 And with a larger tether he may walk 
 Than may be given to you." 
 
 This language is only applicable to early youth. 
 Indeed, the critics agree, with few exceptions, that 
 he was a youth, somewhere between 17 and 21 
 years of age. Richard Grant White puts him at 
 twenty. He and his companions came back from 
 the University of Wittenberg to attend his father's 
 funeral, and he proposes to return. And, though it 
 
214 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 is urged by some who cannot deny the authenticity 
 of the text, which makes him thirty, that students of 
 that age may be found at the German Universities, 
 yet such is not a princely custom now, and less so 
 was it in Shakespeare's time, an^ age of strenuous 
 action. 
 
 Furnivall says: "The two parts of the play are 
 inconsistent on this main point in Hamlet's state." 
 And HalHwell, to reconcile so patent a discrepancy, 
 even ventures oonjecturally (or arbitrarily rather), to 
 alter the text from "thirty years" to "twenty," and 
 from ' ' twenty-three " to a " dozen years. " In this last 
 instance he follows the reading of the First Quarto, 
 which embodied the earlier Hamlet, written ten 
 years before the Revision, contained in the author- 
 ized version of Q 2. Such a change gives consistency 
 to the action, though not to the character as devel- 
 oped in the Second Quarto, where Hamlet's intro- 
 spection reveals a larger experience of life than 
 belongs to early manhood. Besides, it is an unwar- 
 ranted sacrifice of the text, which no critic has a 
 right to make. Much of the language and action of 
 Hamlet is explicable by supposing him a youth of 
 twenty, which would be unworthy of a man of 
 thirty. The whole tone of address to him by the 
 King and Queen, combining authority and solicitude, 
 seems to assume his youth and dependence, and to 
 lack that implicit deference, which is almost instinc- 
 tively paid to maturity, even in inferiors. Polonius 
 patronizes him, and the easy approach of courtier 
 friends reveals docility and lack of state. The recon- 
 ciliation of these difficulties consists in constantly 
 
A^D OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 2 15 
 
 bearing in mind that Q i regarded a youth of twenty ; 
 and that in that earlier version everything is con- 
 sistent with that view of him. But v^hen the last 
 Hamlet was written, the prototype had become a 
 man of thirty, and this fact is so impressed upon 
 the author's mind ihat he says so. But then his 
 revision was chiefly by additions and interpolations 
 in language and thought, and the changes of fact 
 made were of very obvious points. The Second 
 Quarto emphasizes the fact that Hamlet is thirty 
 years of age, a fact unnecessary to the action ; but it 
 neglected to alter the by-play, the minor touches, 
 which had in the earlier play pointed to and illus- 
 trated his youth. He was left a student, etc. It is 
 as if a painter were to re-touch the portrait of a 
 maiden, giving her the face of a matron, but leaving 
 to her the dress of girlhood, and all the flowers of 
 May. The explanation seems" to be that in the ear- 
 liest version he did have in view a youth of twenty, 
 and so painted him ; but when, a decade later, he 
 re-wrote the play, as his hero — an actual man — had 
 grown ten years older, he stated that fact, he made 
 him thirty, he changed "the dozen years" since he 
 was a little lad to " three and twenty ; " but, with his 
 customary play-house carelessness, he overlooked 
 many touches which had marked his youth. In the 
 First Quarto the grave-digger says : 
 
 " Looke you heres a skull hath bin here this dozen yeare." 
 In the later version he puts it : 
 
 " Here's a skuU now hath lain you i' the earth three and twenty 
 years." 
 
 "A dozen " is twelve, but it is not used to signify 
 
2i6 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET. 
 
 exactness of time, except that it must have been so 
 long, at least since Yorick was playfellow of the 
 boy Hamlet. Now, in the Second Quarto, Hamlet 
 is made thirty years of age, and this "dozen" is 
 altered to "twenty-three," indicating that ten or 
 eleven years had passed since that first draft of the 
 play. In that lapse of time a real character would 
 growjust so much older; but a fictitious character, the 
 figment of the author's brain, or the creature of an 
 old romance, would not have gained a day in age. 
 In the mind of his creator, to him would belong a 
 perennial youth. Oliver Twist is always young ; 
 the fat boy is a boy still. From this it appears that 
 whoever might be the prototype of Hamlet, he must 
 have been a real person at least, whether James or 
 some other ; and the only question is whether any 
 other was more likely than James to be such proto- 
 type. 
 
 In the First Quarto, in the Interlude, the Player 
 King opens his speech to the Queen with the words : 
 " Full forty years have passed, their date is gone, 
 Since happy time joined both our hearts as one, etc." 
 
 The "forty years" have here no special signif- 
 icance, except to indicate the special atrocity of the 
 murder. But in the Second Quarto, the King's speech 
 is altered, and lines inferior in melody and vigor, but 
 more explicit, are substituted : 
 
 " Full thirty times hath Phoebus' cart gone round 
 Neptune's salt wash and Tellus' orbed ground ; 
 And thirty dozen moons, with borrowed sheen, 
 About the world have times twelve thirties been, 
 Since love our hearts and Hymen did our hands 
 Unite, commutual in most sacred bands." 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 217 
 
 Why this change ? Is it not evident that it is to 
 conform in general terms to the age assigned to 
 Hamlet by the Grave-digger, to his thirty years when 
 the play was recast I 
 
 When Shakespeare made this play, notable people 
 sat for their portraits, and, when the gallery was 
 finished, many had been the touch by which he had 
 transformed the evanescent figures of the Court into 
 immortals,- beings more real, more historical than the 
 originals. I have read a good deal of criticism on 
 Hamlet, but nowhere have I seen the character of 
 Polonius better portrayed than by Goethe. The gift 
 of genius, insight, seeing through shams the "naked 
 frailties " of the soul, enabled him to account this 
 typical courtier at his true value. It is this gift, 
 which at a later day so endeared the large-hearted 
 Thackeray to us. Shakespeare meant to portray some 
 particular personage when he put Polonius on the 
 the stage. Who was this grave and reverend cham- 
 berlain, with his wise saws, his apt allusions, his 
 worldly wisdom and his spiritual blindness? Here 
 is a problem not yet solved. Was it Burleigh or Sir 
 Nicholas Throckmorton, or some lesser wight, who 
 had offended the players or their patron .-' Who can 
 tell ? When a consensus of critics accepts James as 
 Hamlet, I will unriddle the rest of it. Wilhelm 
 Meister loquitur : 
 
 "I engage," said he, " on this occasion, to present 
 a meritorious person in his best aspect. The repose 
 and security of this old gentleman, his emptiness and 
 his significance, his- exterior gracefulness and interior 
 meanness, his frankness and sycophancy, his sincere 
 
2 1 8 THE PRO TO TYPE OF HAMLE T, 
 
 roguery and deceitful truth, I will introduce with all 
 due elegance in their fit proportions. This respect- 
 able, gray-haired, enduring, time-serving knave, I 
 will represent in the most courtly style ; the 
 occasional roughness and coarseness of our author's 
 strokes will further me here. I will speak like a 
 book when I am prepared beforehand, and like an 
 ass when I utter the overflowings of my heart. I 
 will be insipid and absurd enough to chime in 
 with everyone, and acute enough never to observe 
 when people make a mock of me. I have seldom 
 taken up a part with so much zeal and roguish- 
 ness. " 
 
 Wilhelm had also allowed both Rosencrantz and 
 Guildenstern to continue in his play. "Why not 
 compress them into one .' " said Serlo. "This 
 abbreviation will not cost you much." 
 
 " Heaven keep me from all such curtailments!" 
 answered Wilhelm : " They destroy at once the 
 sense and the effect. What these two persons are, 
 and do, it is impossible to represent by one. In 
 such small matters we discover Shakespeare's great- 
 ness. These soft approaches, this smirking and 
 bowing, this assenting, wheedling, flattering, this 
 whisking agility, this wagging of the tail, this allness 
 and emptiness, this legal knavery, this ineptitude 
 and insipidity, — how can they be expressed by a 
 single man .'' There ought to be at least a dozen of 
 these people, if they could be had ; for it is only in 
 society that they are anything ; they are society 
 itself ; and Shakespeare showed no little wisdom and 
 discernment in bringing in a pair of them. Besides, 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 
 
 219 
 
 I need them as a couple that may be contrasted with 
 the single, noble, excellent Horatio. " 
 
 When Bothwell was captured in 1567, he was taken 
 before Eric Rosencrantz, Governor of Bergen, who 
 sent him to the king of Denmark. In 1576 Bothwell 
 died in prison in Denmark, and Mary and her friends 
 claimed that he made a confession, exculpating her 
 from all share in her husband's murder. The genuine- 
 ness of the confession was denied, and Mary prayed 
 that an appeal be made to the witnesses, among whom 
 was one " M. Gullanstarn," as she spelt it. The coin- 
 cidence with the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of 
 Hamlet is curious. The latter name, though of the 
 ancient nobility, has often been dishonored. 
 
 Shakespeare did not neglect another aspect of the 
 courtier in Osric ; and even Laertes presented features 
 often seen in the train of " Good Queen Bess." 
 
 Too much stress ought not, perhaps, to be laid 
 upon Ophelia's eulogy of " the beauteous Majesty of 
 Denmark, "a proper tribute to Queen Mary in 1586, at 
 forty-four, and still more so at the time of Darnley's 
 murder, but a strained compliment to the mother of 
 a man of thirty, whose over-ripe charms would 
 scarcely have stirred to fratricide "that adulterate 
 beast," who seemed to have sought, through guilt, 
 the woman as much as the Queen. 
 
 Froude says of her in regard to Babington's 
 Conspiracy : " She was the old Mary Stuart still, the 
 same bold, restless, unscrupulous, ambitious woman, 
 and burning with the same passions, among which, 
 revenge stood out prominent. Hers was the panther's 
 nature — graceful, beautiful, malignant, tmtamable. 
 What was to be done with her ? " Perhaps, we 
 ought all to thank God that she has been dead so 
 
220 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 many centuries before we were born, and pray to 
 God that there may be few left like her. 
 
 It has seemed to me (am I led by the phantom of 
 the Scottish sorceress ?) that in the Play of Hamlet 
 not enough is made of the Queen. She was one to 
 breed all evil passions in the heart of man, and to 
 gild them with the fascination of an irresistible 
 beauty, an architect of ruin, a sure guide to moral 
 anarchy. To me she seems portrayed in Swinburne's 
 apostrophe to Queen Mary : 
 
 " Love hangs like light about your name, 
 As music round the shell ; 
 No heart can take of you a tame 
 Farewell, 
 
 Yet when your very face was seen, 
 
 111 gifts were yours for giving : 
 Love gat strange guerdons of my queen 
 
 When living. 
 
 O diamond heart, unflawed and clear, 
 The whole world's crowning jewel ! 
 
 Was ever heart so deadly dear, 
 So cruel ? ' ' 
 
 Problems are sometimes started which are not easy 
 to solve. On the theory that the vizard of Hamlet 
 covered the face of James, a latent threat seems 
 suggested in Fortinbras' claim, that he had "some 
 rights of memory to this Kingdome. " What princely 
 soldier, "fresh from conquest, " might answer to this 
 young hero's unchallenged usurpation .? Could it be 
 Essex.? Hardly in 1586-7, though the phrase may 
 have come into the play at a later day. Could it be a 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 221 
 
 covert compliment to the plausible and poisonous 
 Leicester, who posed as patron of Puritan and play- 
 actor alike ? Have Hamlet's dying words any 
 significance in them beyond the sound? 
 
 " I cannot live to hear the news from England; 
 But I do prophecy the election lights 
 On Fortinbras : he has my dying voice." 
 
 If the royal line failed, it was England which 
 would settle the succession on a prince alien to 
 Denmark, i.e. to Scotland. However, both England 
 and Scotland were full of Pretenders with small 
 pretense of title. 
 
 Now, then, let us go back for a moment, and see 
 how this matter stands. In the years 1586 and 1587 
 there existed a strong motive on the part of the 
 English Government to foment hatred against the 
 name and memory of Mary, Queen of Scots. The 
 hostility of the Government was but a reflection of 
 the national feeling which was intense. It was also 
 necessary to embitter the antagonism of James VI. 
 of Scotland against his mother as much as possible. 
 All the arts of diplomacy were employed for this 
 purpose ; spies, go-betweens, subsidies, bribery, 
 and whatever fear or flattery or favor could accom- 
 plish. It has frequently been a device of courts to 
 utilize the stage to accentuate political action. The 
 stage at that particular period was largely used to 
 enforce personal views and to gratify personal ends. 
 Now, at this critical moment, a play appears with a 
 plot picked up apparently by accident, but with 
 strikingly similar points to the murder of Darnley. 
 
222 THE PROTOTYPE OF HAMLET, 
 
 It is laid at the Court of Denmark, but all the drapery 
 is more Scotch than Danish. The scenery is of 
 Edinburgh, not Elsinore. The drunkenness and de- 
 bauchery might attach to one as well as the other. 
 The character of the usurping Claudius might well 
 have been drawn from that of the ruthless and auda- 
 cious Bothwell. And numerous allusions go to establish 
 the essential identity of the plots of Hamlet with Darn- 
 ley's murder. But, in addition to all this, James and 
 Hamlet possess, with all their superficial differences, 
 remarkable and radical points of resemblance in char- 
 acter. I have endeavored to show that Hamlet must be 
 the likeness of a real man. When ' ' Hamlet " was first 
 written, in 1586, he was twenty years old, and so was 
 James ; when James reached thirty, the play was re- 
 written, and, lo ! Hamlet had become thirty also. The 
 curious circumstance that he keeps step in years 
 with James corroborates the probability that it was 
 James who sat for the portrait of Hamlet. 
 
 We find Shakespeare employing Hamlet as his 
 mouthpiece, his oracle, the vates into whom he has 
 breathed his divine afflatus. Hamlet utters his choic- 
 est thoughts, his profoundest suspirations, his most 
 perplexed problems of life. But, surely, he did not 
 intend to reveal himself fully therein. He propounds 
 the riddle, but he does not even hint his own guess 
 of its meaning. He is speaking, but it is through 
 another ; and what more exalted spokesman or inter- 
 preter could he select than his future King. " I am 
 but a player," he says to his soul, "but my thoughts 
 are royal thoughts ; my winged words, heaven-born 
 and heaven directed, befit the lips of a king. " So 
 
AND OTHER SHAKESPEARIAN PROBLEMS. 223 
 
 that, according to my view, we have the poet, like 
 an Apollo, standing invisible by the side of his Pytho- 
 ness, who utters the voice of inspiration in sentences, 
 pregnant though obscure. The body of Hamlet is 
 James, but the Divinity who guides the motions of 
 his soul is Shakespeare. 
 
 THE END. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Abbott's Shakespearian Gram- 
 mar, 31. 
 
 Academical Study of Shakes- 
 peare, 29. 
 
 Action in Hamlet, The, 7S-9, 
 
 99. '02. 152. 158- 
 
 Actors, their status, 146-7, 168. 
 
 Age of transition, 188-9, '9°' 
 
 Algebra of the spirit, 53 to 60. 
 
 Amiel's Journal, 95-6-7-8. 
 
 Among my books, 188--9, 190. 
 
 Analysis of Hamlet. (See Ham- 
 let.) 
 
 Anne Hathaway, 74. 
 
 Antony and Cleopatra, 31. 
 
 Apology for quotations, 105. 
 
 Arch of Gervinus, 38. 
 
 Assassination, 50, 169, 178, 
 
 Atheneum, Letter in, 51. 
 
 Attorney's clerk. (See Shakes- 
 peare, a Noverint.) 
 
 Bacon, Genius of Lord, 73. 
 
 Baconian paradox, 72-3, 124, 
 142-3-4, 160. 
 
 Banquo, 49, 50, 55, 57, 58, 59, 
 63, 66. 
 
 Beauties of Shakespeare, 44. 
 
 'Beauteous majesty of Den- 
 mark,' 181, 219. 
 
 'Beautified,' 128. 
 
 Belleforest, 179, 194. 
 
 Bierne, 186. 
 
 Biographies of Shakespeare's 
 contemporaries, 135 to 139, 
 146-7-S. 
 
 Bishop Butler, 164. 
 Benedix, 91. 
 
 Blackstone, Sir Wm., 2 13. 
 'Bloody,' 58. 
 'Blood-boltered,' 58. 
 Bluntness of Macbeth^ 61-2-3. 
 Bodenstadt, 58. 
 Booth, Edwin, 103. 
 Bothwell, 178, 181-2, 188, I9S-6, 
 ^ 219, 222. 
 
 Boucicault, Dion, 72. 
 Brown, Charles Armitage, 117. 
 Buchanan, Geo., 211. 
 Bullen, 137. 
 
 Bunbury, Sir Henry, 185. 
 Burbage, 140, 151. 
 Burger's Macbeth, 57. 
 Burleigh, Lord, 169, 171, 176, 
 179, 205-6, 217. 
 
 C 
 
 Campbell, T., 45. 
 
 Campbell, Lord, 127, 134, 144, 
 166, 175. 
 
 Capell, 193. 
 
 Canons of dramatic construc- 
 tion, 37, 38, 55, 99, 100, 152. 
 
 Carey, Sir Robert, 173. 
 
 Cartwright, Robert, 144-5. 
 
 Central idea of drama, 37, 55-6. 
 
 Charles II., 205. 
 
 Chateaubriand, 91. 
 
 Chauteauneuf, 170. 
 
 Chettle, 128. 
 
 Chivalry, 30. 
 
 Chronicle Plays, 30. 
 
 Cibber, Colley, 91. 
 
 Clarendon Editors, 26, 31, 107- 
 8-9, US, 1 17-8, 157, 177. 
 
226 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Claudius, 84, 181, 183, 188, 194, 
 
 197-8-9, 222. 
 Coleridge, Hartley, 146-7. 
 Coleridge, Samuel T., 43, 75- 
 
 6-7, 91, 102. 
 Collaboration, 115, 123, 135, 
 
 153- 
 
 Collier, 120, 193. 
 
 Comedy of Errors, 108. 
 
 Commentators , their dogma- 
 tism, 25, 28, 160-1. 
 
 Comparison with Bacon, 73-4' 
 
 Conscience, 61. 
 
 Contagion of crime, 59, 63, 65, 
 
 70- 
 Contagion of weakness, 87, 95, 
 
 98. 
 Contemptuous biography, 143, 
 
 146. 
 Contemporary excellence, 124, 
 
 134-5-6-7-8-9. 
 Contemporaries, theur obscurity, 
 
 123, 136, 146-7. 
 "Conversations in 3 Studio," 
 
 56-7, 85, I5S-6. 
 Coriolanus, 31. 
 Corson, 199. 
 Courtiers, 168, 179. 
 Corvero, 203. 
 Craik's English of Shakespeare, 
 
 31. 36. 
 Crime, Macbeth' s, 50. 
 Crisis of Hamlet, 87. 
 Crisis of tragedy, 38-9. 
 Critical ineptitude, 56-7, 67, 
 
 91-2. 
 Criticism, Erroneous methods, 
 
 85, 124, 130-1, 136, 143, 160-1. 
 Criticism, Foreign (See Goethe 
 
 and Werder, also), 56-7, 67, 
 
 85, 89, 90, 91-2, 17s, 183-4, 
 
 186-7. 
 Culture, 41. 
 
 I) 
 
 Darnley, Murder of, 173-4-5, 
 178 to 185, 191, 195-6-7-8. 
 
 Dates. (See Hamlet.) 
 
 Davies, Sir John, 149. 
 
 Davison, Secretary, 170, 176. 
 
 Delius, 117. 
 
 Delusion of sin, 62, 68, 70. 
 
 Disuse of Quarto First, log-l 10. 
 
 Denmark, Shakespeare's, l85 to 
 190, 222. 
 
 Devonshire Hamlet's, 116. 
 
 Decisiveness, Hamlet's, assert- 
 ed, 83-4, 90, 199. 
 
 Defects in plot of Hamlet, 79, 
 152. 
 
 Derby, Lord, 161. 
 
 Derby's Iliad, 42. 
 
 Destructive criticism, 124, 130, 
 160. 
 
 Dilemma, Hamlet's, 199. 
 
 Disappointment, Shakespeare's, 
 148. 
 
 Dogmatism of commentators, 
 24, 28, 1 60-1. 
 
 Drake, 45. 
 
 Drama, The Elizabethan, 20, 
 
 43-4. 
 
 Drama, its poetic basis, 102. 
 
 Drama, Founder of the Roman- 
 tic, 134 to 139, 151-2. 
 
 Dramatic epic, 46. 
 
 Dramatic fecundity, 176. 
 
 Dramatic unities. 37 to 40, 98-9, 
 
 152. 
 Dregs of sin, 148. 
 Drunkenness and debauchery, 
 
 187 to 190, 222. 
 Drury, Sir Wm., 178. 
 Duncan, 49, 50, 57-8, 60, 63-4, 
 
 66. 
 Dyce, 121. 
 
 E 
 
 Early authorship of Shakes- 
 peare, 115 to 144, 150, 176- 
 
 7-8. 
 Eckardt, 186. 
 Edward II, 173 
 Elements of genius, 131-2-3, 
 
 150. 
 
INDEX, 
 
 227 
 
 Elsmere, Robert, 95. 
 Elsiuore, 183, 187, 222. 
 Elze, 107, 125, 130, 193. 
 Elizabeth, Queen, 160, 162-3-4, 
 
 167, 169, 170, 177. 
 Elizabeth's court, 151, 168. 
 Elizabeth's council, 167, 169, 
 
 170-1-2-3, 176-7-8, 186. 
 Elizabethan age, 53-4-5-6, 163- 
 
 4, 167-8-9. 
 Elizabethan drama, 20-1, 43-4. 
 Elizabethan dramatists, 43, 124, 
 ■ 134 to 139, 146-7-8, 176, 186. 
 'Encourager of hesitancy,' 186. 
 Energy a test of genius, 131-2- 
 
 3. ISO- 
 Energy of Shakespeare's times, 
 
 163. 
 English nationality, 163, 164. 
 'English of Shakespeare,' 31, 
 
 36- 
 Epic tragedy, Macbeth, 46. 
 Essex, 171, 182, 220. 
 Esthetic value of Shakespearian 
 
 study, 22-3, 29. 
 Ethical value of Shakespearian 
 
 study, 29. 
 Evil, Problem of, 58-9, 60. 
 Euphuism, 125. 
 
 • Fat and scant of breath,' 212. 
 Fate and Free Will, 48, 59, 79, 
 
 82-3, 88, 91-2-3-4, 99, 100, 
 
 157. 165, 190, 200. 
 Faust, 93. 
 
 Ficklen, Prof. John R., 20. 
 Final touches to Hamlet, 109, 
 
 112, 157-8-9. 
 First Folio, 26-7-8-9, 106. 
 First Quarto, 107 to 112, 116, 
 
 "9. 175-6, 185. 
 First words of Macbeth, 55. 
 Fleay, 113, 115-16, 121-2, 126, 
 
 I3S-6, 140. 
 Folklore, 54. 
 
 Footsteps of Shakespeare, The, 
 
 144. 
 Fortier, Prof. A., 20. 
 Fortinbras, 220-1 . 
 ' Fortunes of Nigel,' 202-3. 
 Free Will. (See Fate and Free 
 
 WUl.) 
 Freiligrath, 90. 
 French critics, 91-2. 
 Froude, J. A., 34, 91, 170, 219. 
 ' Frozen Toe, The, ' 89. 
 Furness, Variorum, Hamlet, 26, 
 
 89, 180 to 186, 193. 
 Furnivall, 214. 
 
 Genius, Elements of, 131-2-3, 
 
 150. 
 Genius, Inspiration of, 102. 
 Genius, Precocity of, 140-1-2, 
 
 176-7. 
 Geography, Ideal, 187. 
 German critics. (See Goethe 
 
 and Werder.) 56-7, 67, 85, 
 
 89, 90-1, 17s, 183-4, 186-7. 
 • Germany in Hamlet, ' 90. 
 Gertrude. (See The Queen.) 
 Gervinus, 45, 117. 
 Gervinus' arch, 38. 
 Globe Company, 140. 
 Gowrie, Earl, 52. 
 Gravedigger, The, 212, 215. , 
 Greene (Dramatist), 122, 126-7- 
 
 8-9, 135, 151. 
 Greene (Actor), 140. 
 Gerald Griffin, 141. 
 Goethe's inspirations from 
 
 Shakespeare, 75-6-7. 
 Goethe's interpretation of Ham- 
 let, 79, 80-1-2-3, 93, 98. 
 Goethe's "Polonius," 217. 
 Goethe's ' ' Rosencrantz and 
 
 Guildenstern," 218. 
 Gonzago Play, The, 85, 121, 
 
 145, 216. 
 Guildenstern, 179, 182, 189, 
 
 218-9. 
 
228 
 
 ZNDEX. 
 
 "Groat's-worth of Wit, The," 
 
 128. 
 Gunpowder Plot, 53. 
 
 H 
 
 Hackett, Bishop, 204. 
 
 Hallam, 45. 
 
 Halliwell, 26, 113, 122, 138, 
 
 143, 214. 
 Hamlet the Play. 
 
 Alterations by critics, 91-2. 
 
 Fate and Free Will, 48, 79, 
 82-3, 88, 92 to 100, 157, 
 
 165, 190, 200. 
 
 Gonzaga Play, The, 85, 
 120-1-2, 145, 216. 
 Hamlet, The First. 
 Author, 112 to 119, 120 to 
 
 123, 130-1, 13s to 139, 
 
 142, 152, 177. 
 Its date, 112, 115, 125 to 
 
 130, 140-1, 145, 169, 185. 
 Notices, 1 12-13, 126 to 129, 
 
 152-3-4, 178. 
 " Hamlet Revenge ! " 129, 
 
 151. '77- 
 Hamlet of Quarto First, 107-8, 
 110-11-12, 116, 119, 175-6, 
 
 185- 
 
 Last Hamlet, The, 106 to 109, 
 111-12, 116, 119, 125, 152 
 to 159. 
 
 Lesson of Hamlet, 82-3, 87-8, 
 93 to 104, 182, 190. 
 
 Method of production, 151- 
 
 2-3-4- 
 Motives for production, 162-3, 
 
 166, 171, 173-4, 178. 
 Origin, 116, 123, 142, 151 to 
 
 154. 161, 173-4, 178-9, 180 
 
 •92-3. 
 Paragon of Plays, The, 37, 
 
 45. 78-9, 152. 
 
 Parallel virith Macbeth, 48, 
 78-9, 87, 94-5. 
 
 Parallelisms to Damley's mur- 
 der, 173-4-5. 178 to 185, 
 191, 195 to 198. 
 
 Plot, Crisis of, 99. 
 
 Plot, Development of, 48, 151 
 
 to 158, 162. 
 Plot, Rudeness of, 79, 152. 
 Portraitures in play, 100 to 
 
 104, 183, 201 to 207, 209 to 
 
 211, 222-3. 
 Queen as accessary, 181, 185, 
 
 195-6-7- 
 Revenge as a duty, 173, 188- 
 
 9-190-1, 199-200. 
 Scene of action, 186, 190. 
 Shakespeare's personiity in 
 
 Hamlet, 100 to 103, 154 to 
 
 158, 165. 
 Significance, Theories of its. 
 
 Author, 94. 
 
 Coleridge, 85-6-7. 
 
 French critics, 91-2. 
 
 German critics, 85, 89-90-I. 
 
 Goethe, 79 to 83, 85. 
 
 LoweU, 87-8, 188-9-90. 
 
 "No Philosopher," loi. 
 
 Plumptre, 180 to 186. 
 
 Werder, 83-^.. 
 Value as an acting play, 78-9, 
 
 99, 102, 152, 158. 
 Hamlet the Prince. 
 Character. 
 
 Alleged madness, 92-3 ,111. 
 
 Craft, 81, 210-11. 
 
 Indecision, 48, 80 to 88, 
 93 to 104, 199, 200. 
 
 Introspection, 86 to 89, 94 
 to 100, 154-5. 
 
 Learning, 80. 
 
 Melancholy, 100, 154-5-6. 
 
 Pessimism, 154 to 158. 
 
 Skepticism, 100. 
 
 Self-reproach, ioi-2, 191. 
 
 Word-Play, 179. 
 Characterizations. 
 
 Amiel, 95 to 98. 
 
 Coleridge, 85 to 87. 
 
 Goethe, 80-1-2-3. 
 
 German critics, 89, 90-1. 
 
 Kentucky critic, 210. 
 
 Lowell, 87-8. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 229 
 
 As an exponent of Shake- 
 speare, 100 to 103, 154 to 
 158, 165. 
 
 Hamlet, a portrait, loi, 103-4. 
 
 Likeness to James I, 183, 201 
 to 207, 209-10-11, 222-3. 
 
 Mirror of all mankind, loi, 
 
 ^'57-8-9- . , ,_ 
 Organic unity of character, 
 
 98, 99, 100-1-2. 
 
 Hamnet Shakespeare, 119, 125, 
 
 130, 156-7-8. 
 Hardihood of Macbeth, 60, 69. 
 Hazlitt, 26, 100, 103. 
 Heard, F. F., 127, 144. 
 Henry IV., 118. 
 Henry VI., 108, 119, 128. 
 Henry VIII., 30. 
 Henslow's Diary, 129. 
 Hero and Leander, 136. 
 Heroic drama, Macbeth, 46. 
 Hesitation. (See Indecision.) 
 Hieronymo, 121. 
 Histoires tragiques, 179. 
 Historical plays. The, 30 to 37. 
 Holinshed, 49, 66. 
 Holyrood, 183-4, 187. 
 How to study Shakespeare. (See 
 
 Lecture I.) 
 Hudson, 26, 40. 
 Hume, David, 183. 
 Hunsdon, Lord, 170-1, 176, 179. 
 Hunter (New Illustrations), 184. 
 Hypostasis of Thor, 89. 
 " Hystorie of Hamblet," 179. 
 
 Ideals, Creation of, 207-8-9. 
 Impotence of man, 82. (See 
 
 Fate.) 
 Incorrect notion of genius, 121- 
 
 2-3- 
 Indecision of Hamlet, 48, 80 to 
 
 88, 93 to 104, 199-200. 
 Inhibition of 1597, The, 109, 
 
 112, 119. 
 "Innovation, The late," 109. 
 
 Interlude, The, 216. 
 Introspection, 86 to 89, 94 to 
 
 100, 154-5. 
 "Isle of Dogs," 109. 
 Isolation of Guilt, 70-1. • 
 
 James I. 
 Craft, 190. 
 Fondness for theatre,, 173, 
 
 183. 
 Hume's character of James I., 
 
 183. 
 Indecision, 172, 182, 185, 
 
 igo-l. 
 James in 1586-7, 171-2, 179, 
 
 igo-i. 
 Likeness to Hamlet, 183, 201 - 
 2-3-4-5-6-7, 209, 210-11, 
 222-3. 
 "Joannes Factotum," 127-8. 
 Johnson, Dr. Sam., 25, 140. 
 "Jointress," its meaning, 197. 
 Jonson, Ben, 139, 142, 147-8. 
 Joy of life, 155. 
 Julius Caesar, 31 to 37. 
 
 K 
 
 Karpf, C, 89. 
 
 Kenney, 100. 
 
 Kentucky theory of Hamlet, 
 
 210. 
 Keynote in first words, 55. 
 Keynote of Hamlet, 82-3, 93 to 
 
 104, 157, 182, 190. 
 Keynote of Macbeth, 55-6. 
 Kreyssig, 100. 
 
 "Kind Hart's Dream," 128. 
 King John, 30, 118, 158. 
 King Lear, 37, 46, 78, 91-2. 
 Knight, Charles, 40, iii, 117. 
 "Know Thyself! " 41. 
 Kyd, Thomas, 120-1-2-3, 135, 
 
 138, 139. 151- 
 L 
 Lady Macbeth, 44, 60, 63 to 69. 
 Laertes, 184, 188, 213, 219. 
 
236 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 " Legal acquirements of Shake- 
 speare," 127, 144. 
 
 Legend of Hamlet, 178-9, 188, 
 192-3-4. 
 
 Legend of Macbeth, 49-50. 
 
 Leicester, Lord, 170-1, 176, 
 221. 
 
 Leo's criticism, 67. 
 
 Lesson of Hamlet, 82-3, 87-8, 
 93-4-5, 98, ICO to 104, 190. 
 
 Lesson of Macbeth, 53, 71, 82-3. 
 
 Literary aspiration, 19, 20. 
 
 Literary collaboration, 115. 123,' 
 
 «25. 
 
 Literary education, 128-9. 
 
 Literature; its definition, 19-20. 
 
 Literature; its quickening pow- 
 er, 19, 20-1-2, 42. 
 
 Literature to be studied in liter- 
 ature, 24, 34. 
 
 Lodge, 129, 134. 
 
 Lost Soul, A, 71. 
 
 Love of evil, 50. 
 
 " Love's Labor's Lost," 118-9, 
 122. 
 
 "Love's Labor's Won," 119. 
 
 Lowell, Jas. Russell, 40, 87-8, 
 188-9-90. 
 
 Lowndes, I21. 
 
 Loyal zeal, 155, 165-6. 
 
 Lyly, 124, 13s, 136, 139, 151. 
 
 Lyric power of Macbeth, 46. 
 
 M 
 Macbeth (Lecture 2d), 41 to 71, 
 Burger's unconscious traves- 
 ty, 57- 
 Character of Macbeth, 61-2- 
 
 3. 65, 69-70. 
 Complement of Hamlet, 48, 
 
 94-5- 
 Dramatis Personae. (See Lady 
 
 Macbeth, Duncan, etc.) 
 Estimates of the play, 40, 
 
 45-6. 
 Grandeur, Its, 37, 47, 78. 
 Incompleteness, 45. 
 Keynote, 55-6-7, 94-5. 
 
 Lyric movement, 55-6- 
 Moral lesson, 39, 53-4-S. ^S" 
 
 69-70-1. 
 Parallel with Hamlet, 48, 
 
 94-5- 
 
 Plot, 49, 50-1-2. 
 
 Remorse of Lady Macbeth, 
 44, 60, 63, 69. 
 
 Remorse of Macbeth, 69-70. 
 
 Reticence of Macbeth, 61-2. 
 
 Scotland of Macbeth, 51-2. 
 
 Shakespeare's greatest poem, 
 45-6-7-8- 
 Mad, Was Hamlet? 92-3, iii. 
 Madness, 93. 
 Malone, 120, 144. 
 Man, the greatest mystery, 94. 
 Marlowe, Christopher, 1 15-6, 
 
 123, 128, 135 to 139, 142, 
 
 156. 173- 
 Mary, Queen of Scots, 160 to 
 191. (See also James I., Darn- 
 ley and Bothwell.) 
 Apostrophe by Swinburne, 
 
 220. 
 An accessory to Darnley's 
 murder, 181, 185, 195-6-7. 
 English hatred and machina- 
 tions, 169 to 176. 
 Execution, 175, 185. 
 Fascination, 220. 
 Innuendoes of Sh. ? 180-1, 
 
 184. 
 Marriage to Bothwell, 178-9, 
 
 181-2. 
 Master of Grey's letter, 172-^3. 
 Murder of Damley, 173-4-^5, 
 
 178-9, 181, 191. 
 Political intrigues, 169 to 176. 
 Plumptre's argument, 174, 
 180 to 184. 
 Masque, The, 122. 
 Massinger, Life of, 146. 
 Master of Grey, 172-3. 
 Menaphon, Greene's, 126. 
 Merchant of Venice, 37, 118. 
 Meres, Francis, ii8-<J-20, 130, 
 149. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 231 
 
 Metaphysics of Shakespeare, 
 
 156, 165. 
 Method of Composition, 151- 
 
 2-3- 
 Method of study, 31 to 37. 
 "Midsummer Night's Dream," 
 
 108, 122, 178, 180. 
 Milton, 141. 
 
 Milton on Shakespeare, 133. 
 Milton's Satan, 58. 
 Mirror of all mankind. The, 
 
 158-9. 
 Mixed metaphor, Goethe's, 76. 
 Moberly, 184. 
 Moral culture of the drama, 20, 
 
 43-4- 
 Moral of Macbeth, 39, 53-4-5, 
 
 65, 69-70-1. 
 Moral proportion. Sense of, 
 
 38-9. 
 Motives for producing Hamlet, 
 
 162-3, "66, 171 to 178. 
 "Much Ado About Nothing," 
 
 108. 
 Murder of Duncan, 45, 63. 
 " Mystery of Hamlet, The," 
 
 161. 
 Mythology, 54. 
 
 N 
 
 Nash, Thomas, log, 125-6-7, 
 
 129, 135, 138, 139. 
 National progress, 30, 163-4. 
 ' ' Neckverse, To latinize their, ' ' 
 
 126. 
 Nemesis, 39, 48, 58, 69-70-1, 
 
 179, 200. 
 "No Philosopher," loi. 
 Norman mind. The, 164. 
 Noverint, The, 126-7, 129, 130, 
 
 I44-S> 151- 
 
 O 
 
 Odium theologicum, l6o. 
 Opportunity, 131, 151. 
 Original design of Hamlet un- 
 
 ambitious, 142, 152-3, 161, 
 
 178. 
 Osric, 21 9. 
 Othello, 37, 45-6, 78. 
 Ownership of plays, 106, 109- 
 
 iio, 152-3. 
 
 Paradox, Werder's, 83-4, go, 
 
 199. 
 Paragon, Hamlet, The, 37, 45, 
 
 78-79, 152. 
 Parallel between Bacon and 
 
 Shakespeare, 73-4. 
 Parallel between Hamlet and 
 
 Macbeth, 48, 78-9, 87, 94-5. 
 Parallel between Shakespeare 
 
 and Marlowe, 137-8-9. 
 Parallel between Shakespeare 
 
 and Plutarch, 33. 
 Parallelisms between Hamlet 
 
 and Darnley's murder, 173- 
 
 4-5, 178 to 185, igi, ig5 to 
 
 198. 
 Patriotism of the English, 164-5, 
 
 174-5- 
 Patriotism of Shakespeare, 158- 
 
 9, 165, 167-8. 
 Patronage, 127, 167-8, 170-1. 
 Peccavi, 104, 157. 
 Peele, 135-6, 139. 
 Pericles, 118-9, 144-5. 
 Permanence of Shakespeare's 
 
 influence, 22, 124, 149, 159. 
 Persons of the drama, 91. 
 Pessimism, 154-5-6-7. 
 Perturbed spirit. The, 157-8-9. 
 Play actors, their standing, 
 
 167-8. 
 Play within a play, 85, 121-2, 
 
 145, 216. 
 Plays as political devices, 168, 
 
 173-4, 176-7-8. 
 Players, Companies of, log, 140, 
 
 170. 
 Player Kling, The, 216. 
 Plots, common property, 123. 
 
232 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Plot of Hamlet, 79, 99, 151 to 
 154, 161, 173-4, 179. I93-4-S- 
 
 Plot of Macbeth, 49-50. 
 
 Plots against Elizabeth, 160. 
 
 Plots against James I., 52-3. 
 
 Plumptre, Rev. James, 180 to 
 186. 
 
 PlutSrch and Shakespeare, 33. 
 
 Poetry the basis of the drama, 
 102. 
 
 Poet's function is representation, 
 
 93-4- 
 Politics, Elizabethan, 164, 168 
 
 to 179. 
 Polonius, 179, 182, 184, 213, 
 
 217-8. 
 Portraiture in Hamlet, 97, 100- 
 
 1-2-3-4, 157-8, 200-1, 207 to 
 
 217. 
 Prse - Shakespearian Hamlet , 
 
 "4-5. 123- 
 
 Precocious genius of Shake- 
 speare, 44, 114 to 142, 154 to 
 158, 176-7. 
 
 Precocity of genius, 137, 141-2. 
 
 Pretenders, Royal, 220-1. 
 
 Primacy in letters, 21-2, 42-3, 
 72 to 78, 152. 
 
 Proscenium boxes, 122. 
 
 Protestantism of England, 163-4. 
 
 Prototype of Hamlet (Lecture 
 7th). Also (James I). 
 
 Quadrilateral, The tragic, 37, 
 
 124. 
 Queen, The, an accessary ? 181, 
 
 185, 195-6-7. 
 Quarto First, 107 to 112, 116, 
 
 119, 175-6, 185. 
 Quarto Second, 106 to II2, 116, 
 
 119, 125, 152 to 159. 
 " Queens of Scotland," 178. 
 
 R 
 
 Rapp, M,, 91. 
 
 Reaction of guilt, 64-5. 
 Reasons for Revision, 119, 154, 
 
 158. 
 Recast of Hamlet, The final, 
 
 108, 119, 154, 157-8. 
 Regicide, 5, 23, 174 to 178, 199. 
 Remorse of Lady Macbeth, 44, 
 
 60, 63, 69. 
 Remorse of Macbeth, 69-70. 
 Representation, the poet's func- 
 tion, 93-4. 
 Resolution Duty of, 104. 
 Responsibility, Human, 96-7-8. 
 Reticence of Macbeth, 61-2. 
 Revenge, Ethics of, 188-9, '90-i> 
 
 199, 200. 
 Revenge, The legacy of, 173, 
 
 189-190-1. 
 Reverent study, 24-5-6. 
 Richard II., 168. 
 Richard III., 78, 118. 
 Rizzio, 182, 184, 206. 
 Robert Elsmere, 95. 
 Roetschl, 90. 
 Rolfe, 31. 
 Rohrbach, 90. 
 Royal tide, 62, 81, 84, 194 to 
 
 199. 
 Romeo and Juliet, 1 17-8. 
 Rosencrantz, 179, 182, 188, 218. 
 " Rye's England seen by for- 
 eigners," 203. 
 
 Sackville, Lord, 199. 
 Sanity, Hamlet's, 92-3, iii. 
 Sanity of genius, 132-3, 150. 
 Satan, a deceiver, 70. 
 Satan, Milton's, 58. 
 Saxo-Grammaticus, 178, 188, 
 
 192. 
 Scotland, its manners, 187 to 
 
 190. 
 Scotland, Macbeth's, 51-2. 
 Scotland visited by Shakespeare, 
 
 52, 187. 
 Scott, Sir Walter, 157. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 m 
 
 Scott's, Sir Walter, James I., 
 
 201-2-3. 
 Scrope's, Baron, letter, 51-2. 
 " Second-best bed, " 74. 
 Second Quarto, 106 to 112, 116, 
 
 119, 125, 152, 159. 
 Selfishness the essence of sin, 7I; 
 Self-knowledge, 41-2. 
 Self-revelation, 148. 
 Self-reproach of Hamlet, 101-2, 
 
 191. 
 Self-estimate of Macbeth, 61. 
 Shakespeare. 
 Ability, Transcendent, 43-4, 
 74 to 78, 100, 102, 131-2-3, 
 138, 150-1-2, 161-2, 177. 
 Ambition in Life, 156-7. 
 Arrival in London, 125, 127, 
 
 140. 
 Art, gg-ioo, 102, 140-1, 152, 
 
 161-2, 167, 190. 
 As an actor, 126-7-8, 140,151. 
 Aspiration, 133, 150-1. 
 Attacks on him, 126 to 129. 
 Attorney's clerk. (See Nov- 
 
 erint.) 
 Aversion to publication, 106, 
 
 109, 152-3. 
 "Beauties of Shakespeare," 
 
 23, 44. 
 Biographical Materials, 138-g, 
 143, 146 to 149, 150-1, 
 
 156-7. 
 Business talents, 148, 167. 
 Characterization of him, 118, 
 
 120, 126, 128-9. 
 Contemporary estimates, 118- 
 
 19-20, 128-9, 133, 139, 149. 
 Contemptuous biography, 143, 
 
 146. 
 Courtier, A., 167-8, 177-8. 
 Creative faculty, 1 00, 102, 
 
 141, 150 to 153, 158. 
 Dramatic skill, 44, 50 to 53, 
 
 91-2, 98-9, 100, 141, 152, 
 
 190. 
 Early authorship, 115 to 144, 
 
 150, 176-7-8. 
 
 Early environment, 139, 143 
 
 to 146, 150 to 154, 163 to 
 
 170. 
 Education, 139, 143^, 150 
 
 to 154. 
 Energy, 132-3. 
 Facility, 140. 
 Father of romantic drama, 
 
 134 to 139. 
 Fecundity, 14D. 
 Genial temper, 129, 135, 140, 
 
 148. 
 Ideality, i8g. 
 Inspiration to others, 22, 75, 
 
 76. 
 "Joannes Factotum," 128. 
 Learning, 144-5. 
 Legal phraseology, 144-5. 
 Literary primacy, 21 to 24, 
 
 42-3, 72 to 78, 152. 
 Manifoldness, 43, 72, 77-8, 
 
 102. 
 Metaphysics, 156, 165. 
 Method of composition, 151- 
 
 2-3- 
 Moral vision, 58, 69-70-1, 
 
 74-S. 77, 91-Z, 99-100,167. 
 "Noverint," 126, 127, 129- 
 
 130, 144-5, 151, 177- 
 Parallel with Bacon, 73. 
 Parallel with Marlowe, 125 to 
 
 129. 
 Parallel with Plutarch, 33. 
 Patriotism, 158-9, 165, 167-8, 
 
 177. 
 Patrons, 167-8, 170-1. 
 Permanence of influence, 22, 
 
 124, 149, 159- 
 Personality in Hamlet, His, 
 
 100 to 103, 154 to 157, 165. 
 Pessimism, 154 to 157. 
 Poetic skill, 141. 
 Popularity, 21. 
 Precocious genius, 141-2, 176- 
 
 7- 
 Psychology, 44, 154 to 158. 
 Quasi universality, 43, 76-7- 
 
 8, 102. 
 
234 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Shakespeare [Continued). 
 Rapid rise, 151. 
 Reality of his characters, 43- 
 
 4, 66-7, 74, 91-2. 103, «S2. 
 186-7. 
 
 Rhetoric, 23, 44, 141. 
 
 Sanity of his genius, 132-3, 150. 
 
 Skepticism, 95, 100, 155, 165. 
 
 SupernaturaUsm, 53 to 60. 
 
 Teachers, Alleged, 123,138-9. 
 
 " This Shakescene, " 128. 
 
 Visit to Scotland, 52, 187. 
 
 Worth as aman, 129,135, 148. 
 
 Writings, where found, 26 to 
 
 29, 106 to 112, 116, 119, 
 
 125, 152, 159, 175-6, 185. 
 
 "Shakespeare as a lawyer," 
 
 127, 144. 
 " Shakespeare's Legal Acquire- 
 ments," 127, 144. 
 "Shakespeare's Scholar," 25. 
 "Shakespeare, The footsteps 
 
 of," 144. 
 Shakespearian Study. 
 
 Academic instruction, 29, 30 
 
 to37- 
 Advantages, 21, 22-3-4, 29, 
 
 36- 
 
 Historical point of view, 30, 
 
 33 to 36. 
 Method of study, 24, 29 to 37. 
 Psychological study, 38-9-40, 
 
 44. 
 Reverent study, 24-5-6. 
 
 Sidney, Sir Philip, 180. 
 
 Sievers, go. 
 
 Significance of Hamlet. (See 
 Lecture 3d.) Also i6l-2. 
 
 Silberschlag, 180, 183-4. 
 
 Skepticism of Shakespeare, 95, 
 100, 15s, 165. 
 
 Skepticism, 154, 163-4-5-6. 
 
 Skottowe, 120. 
 
 Smith, Wm. Henry, 142-3, 146. 
 
 Social conditions of Shake- 
 speare's times, i88-g, 190. 
 
 Soliloquies, Hamlet's, 154-5, 
 207. 
 
 Soul-paralysis, 69, 95 to 99, 104. 
 
 Southampton, Earl of, 127, 171. 
 
 "Spanish tragedy. The," 120-1. 
 138. 
 
 Spirit of the age, 163, 165. 
 
 Spiritual symbolism, 53 to 60. 
 
 Stability of Shakespeare's in- 
 fluence, 22, 124, 149, 158-9 
 
 " Stationers' Register, The," 
 
 157, '75. 
 
 Staunton, 117. 
 
 Story, Wm. W., 56-7, 85, 155-6. 
 
 Strange, Lord, 140, 170. 
 
 "Strickland's Miss, Q. of Scot- 
 land," 178. 
 
 Study of Shakespeare. (See 
 Shakespeare Study.) 
 
 Summary, Authorship of First 
 Hamlet, 130-1. 
 
 Summary, Argument for pro- 
 totype, 221-2. 
 
 Supernaturalism of Shakespeare, 
 
 53 to 6o- 
 Sussex, Lord, 171. 
 Swinburne on Shakespeare's 
 
 plays, 46. 
 Swinburne's apostrophe to Mary 
 
 Stuart, 220. 
 Symonds, 120, 137. 
 
 Talents and genius, 33, 91-2, 
 I 3 1-2-3. 
 
 "Tamburlaine," 137-8. 
 
 "Taming of the Shrew," 117- 
 8-9, 121. 
 
 Taylor, Nath'l W., 164. 
 
 Teachers, Shakespeare's al- 
 leged, 123, 138-9. 
 
 Tempest, The, 35, 37, 78. 
 
 Tests of genius, 131-2-3. 
 
 Text, Sacrifice of the, 214. 
 
 Text, verity of, 26 to 29, 106. 
 
 Thomas a-Kempis, 60. 
 
 Theories about Hamlet. (See 
 Hamlet.) 
 
 Theory of Hamlet, Kentucky, 
 
INDEX. 
 
 235 
 
 Theory, Plumptre's, i8o to i86. 
 "Thirty years old," 182,211 
 
 to 216. 
 Throckmorton, Sir Nicholas, 
 
 179, 217. 
 Time-Spirit, The, 163, 165. 
 Timrains, 116. 
 Title to throne, Claudius', 84, 
 
 I94-S> 197-8-9- 
 " Titus Andronicus," 118, 144, 
 
 145- 
 Topography of Hamlet, 183, 
 
 i8fr-7-8, 222. 
 Topography of Macbeth, 5 1 . 
 "Tragedy of blood. The," 
 
 121, 151. 
 Tragic art, 37-8, 99, 100. 
 Tragic quadrilateral, 37, 124. 
 Travesty, Unconscious, 57, 89, 
 
 90. 
 "Truth, What is ? " 163-4. 
 "Two Gentlemen of Verona." 
 
 118, 144, 145. 
 
 U 
 
 Unconsciousness of geniuG, 153. 
 Universality in hterature, 43, 
 
 76-7-8, 102. 
 " University wits," 134-5-6. 
 
 Vacillation of Hamlet, 48, 94-5, 
 
 99. 
 Vacillation of Amid, 96-7-8. 
 
 Venus and Adonis, 127, 140-1. 
 "Vicious Mole," 18. 
 Voltaire's criticism, 91. 
 
 W 
 
 Walsingham, 169, 171, 176, 205. 
 
 Warburton, 25. 
 
 Weldon, Sir A., 201-2. 
 
 Weever, 149. 
 
 Weird Sisters, The, 55-6, 58-9, 
 
 62-3. 
 Werder's Theory, 83-4, 90, 
 
 199. 
 Whipple, 40. 
 White, Richard Grant, 24 to 
 
 28, 40, 108, 177, 213. 
 Whole duty of man, 71. 
 Wilhelm Meister, quoted, 75-6, 
 
 80-1-2-3, 217-8. 
 Witches, 52, 54. 
 Withdrawal of Hamlet from 
 
 stage, 108. 
 Will and Fate, 48, 59, 79, 82-3, 
 
 88, 92-3-4, 99, 100, 165, igo, 
 
 200. 
 "Wit's treasury," 118. 
 Wotton, Dr., 182. 
 
 "Yorick, Poor," 212. 
 
 Z 
 Zimmerman, i86c 
 
Cornell University Library 
 PR 2807.J73 
 
 The prototype of Hamlet, and other Shake 
 
 3 1924 013 137 934