PR Cornell IKnivmitu ptbtat| BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME ' FROM THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF HenrQ M. Sage 1891 Af.i(ps.4rV :.: /Mmij Cornell University Library PR 2807.V44 The Hamlet problem and its solution, 3 1924 013 138 619 THE HAMLET PROBLEM AND ITS SOLUTION BY EMERSON VENABLE CINCINNATI STEWART & KIDD CO. 1912 S c6 Copyright, 191*, By STEWART & KIDD CO. Entered at Stationers' Hall, London, England All Sights Keserved The theory advanced in these pages was first suggested by the author at the close of a series of lec- tures on Hamlet delivered in the spring of 1907, and was afterwards presented in a paper read before the Literary Club of Cincinnati, October 17, 1908. Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tlie Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013138619 " Report me and my cause aright To the unsatisfied." Hamlet, Act y, Scene 11. THE HAMLET PROBLEM AND ITS SOLUTION THE HAMLET PROBLEM AND ITS SOLUTION Two hundred years oLjodlical..j[iiscus- slon have nqt_ suffice^^to rfiConcUfi-xonflict- mg*"impressIons regarding the .scape— of Shakespeare's design, in The Tragedy of Harmlet. No theory which has yet been advanced to explain the unifying motive of the drama has found universal acceptance among scholars, who, however they may seem to agree in their Interpretation of particular passages, entertain widely diver- gent opinions concerning the character and conduct of the Prince of Denmark. Why does the brave and high-spirited Hamlet, whosfe prophetic soul anticipates the Ghost's horrible disclosure with the im- petuous assurance : THE HAMLET PROBLEM " Haste me to knoVtv that I, with wings as swift As meditation or the thoughts of love, May sweep to my revenge I " — why^does this noble and imperious youth not only fall to swee p to"B!S~tS- -rcngerlBul delay "the performance of the act" for. days and. Wfteks and months, — though all the while, as he himself bit- terly confesses (Act IV, Scene IV), he has " cause and will and strength and means to do it," and though he feels him- self exhorted to the deed by " examples gross as earth " ? Tha^ the critic, when rnnfrnnfrRd hy the problem of Hamlet's delay, is npt jus- tified in brushing It aside as an immaterial issue, or in disposing of it in vag ue and gen- eraTterms a s bemg at b est a consideration of jnino r importance, rpay readily be in- ferred from the, emghasls directly.. laid- upon tibie-. question in Hamlet's soliloquies an^ in his confidential^ discourse with Hq- ratip. T^o othei- interest has Shakespeare 4 AND ITS SOLUTION kept so constantly before his audience. It would seem, indeed, as though the great dramatic master might have cherished secret doubts as to whether his one judi- cious critic, whose opinion " o'erweighs a whole theatre of others," would appre- hend the true motive of the tragedy unless the subjective conflict of the Prince were thrust into relief by the employment of every method of dramatic emphasis within the sphere of his resourceful art. All of H amlet's longer soliloquies. exceptiiTpTh e very first (Act I, Scene II), which occurs before' he has "been" infofme3'*oF~Sie. ap- pearance of The "GfiosfTaHdnEKe loEloquy begrnnhigr ""To~BF]^"not W be, " Se ar directly upon the paramount question. — ■ the wherefore of his delay in wreaki ng vatigeance~u pon his unc le. All other questions of the play, however significant may be their relation to the theme, re- ceive subordinate emphasis, and seem to depend for their settlement upon the solu- S THE HAMLET PROBLEM tion of the central dramatic problem, the peculiar difficulties of which have led to the wildest vagaries in the field of Hamlet Interpretation. What solutions of that problem, it may be asked, have been suggested by leading writers on the subject? An ade- quate exposition of the many Ingenious and plausible theories which have orgl- nated In England, Germany, and America, would fill volumes. Qnly «-hp. hripfpsf- ppf?-, si ble discussion, therefore, of fiv e typical Kypotheses that have found the wiHesfac- c eptance aimong &hakesp"Mir ian"critics, will here be attempted.^ / Some~idea may'at the outset be gained regarding the different standpoints from which the question has been viewed, when It is noted that of the five representative 1 For a comprehensive survey of the literature of Hamlet criticism the reader is referred to Professor A. C. Bradley's epoch-marking volume, Shakespearean Tragedy, 1905. AND ITS SOLUTION theories which we have selected for con- sideration, the first four attribute Hamlet's delay wholly to internal or subjective causes, — moral, intellectual, or pathologi- cal, — ^ while the fifth and latest in origin discovers a sufficient reason for his delay in causes purely objective. First in origin among theories of the former class, — > those which seek in sub- jective causes an explanation of Hamlet's delay, — is the so-called " sentimental " view of Hamle t, which hnds iFs~cKief ex- positor J nTGoetRej whose critical conclu- sions are briefly summarized in the fol- lowing sentences from Wilhelm Meister (1795) /"To me it is clear that Shakespeare sought to depict a great deed laid upon a soul unequal to the performance of it. In this view I find the piece composed throughout. Here is an oak-tree planted in a costly vase, which should have re- ceived into its bosom only lovely flowers; 7 THE HAMLET PROBLEM the roots spread out, the vase Is shivered to pieces. A beautif ul, r"*-", nnhU^-anA most moral nature, without t he st rengt h of nerve wETch makes the hero, sinks beneath a bu rden which IcT an ne ither ~15earI".Oor tE rowolF; every duty is holy to him,rzr this too hard. The impossible is required of him, — not the impossible in itself, but the ifflpOSSible to Kiifn" ' — An — obvious and fatal objection to Goethe's view of Hamlet, and to all kin- dred theories, instantly arises when we con- sider the triumphant outcome of the drama and the important role played by the Prince in determining its issues. So far from being represented by Shakespeare as a weakling, *' without the strength of nerve which makes the hero," Hamlet not only [bears with fortitude the tragic burden laid \upon his soul, but ultimately accomplishes, \m a single lightning stroke, a heaven-de- termined deed of retribution so vast that (the act of mere human vengeance which 8 AND ITS SOLUTION it involves is completely merged in the di- viner purpose. Thus Hamlet infinitely more than performs the sacred duty which Goethe would have us believe to be " too hard " for him, and what the German poet characterizes as not the impossible in it- self but the impossible to Hamlet, be- comes, in the light of Hamlet's procedure, a relatively trivial issue. — To which con- clusive refutation of the " sentimental " theory may be added the trenchant argu- ment of Professor Bradley, who, in his illuminating volume, Shakespearean Trag- edy, disposes of Goethe's hypothesis in the following words : " This conception, though not without its basis in certain beautiful traits of Ham- let's nature, is utterly untrue. It is too kind to Hamlet on the' one side, and it is quite unjust to him on another. . . . For the * sentimental ' Hamlet you can feel only pity not unmingled with contempt. . . . But consider the text. This shrink- THE HAMLET PROBLEM ing" flower-like youth — how could he pos- sibly have done what we see Hamlet do? What likeness to him is there in the Ham- let who, summoned by the Ghost, bursts from his terrified friends with the cry: Unhand me, gentlemen! By heaven, I'll make a ghost of him that lets me; the Hamlet who scarcely once speaks to the King without an insult, or to Polonius without a gibe; the Hamlet who storms at Ophelia and speaks daggers to his mother; the Hamlet who, hearing a cry behind the arras, whips out his sword in an instant and runs the eavesdropper through; the Hamlet who sends his ' school-fellows ' to their death and never troubles his head about them more; the Hamlet who is the first man to board a pirate ship, and who fights with Laertes in the grave; the Hamlet of the catastro- phe, an omnipotent fate, before whom all the court stands helpless, who, as the truth 10 AND ITS SOLUTION breaks upon him, rushes on the King, drives his foil right through his body, then seizes the poisoned cup and forces it vio- lently between the wretched man's lips, and in the throes of death has force and fire enough to wrest the cup from Hora- tio's hand ('By heaven, I'll have it I') lesjt he should drink and die? This man,^ the Hamlei;-£i£-t he;_pla-y7' is-ar4iecQitj ^ Jerri- ble figure. H" w^'ild ^■^ ve been formid- able to Othello jyrMach^ TTtKelen- timental Hamlet had crossed him, he would have hurled him from his path with one sweep of his arm." The second of the typical hypotheses which we have selected for brief review is known as the " conscience " theojr y. Ac- cording to this assumption . " Hamlet was regtrai|}£d — hf conscifiticfi on — sl-^jjuotzI scruple : he was unable to convince himself that it was right to avenge his father." — ■ The " conscience " theory, though less ob- jectionable than the " sentimental " theory, II THE HAMLET PROBLEM being not so manifestly at variance with our impression of Hamlet as a masterful and heroic nature, finds no substantial sup- port in the first four acts of the play, and fail s to account satisfactorily for the u nre- lentinjg^ja rcasm with which the Prince re- proaches himself for his delay. In obe- dience to the imperative monitions of honor, Hamlet assumes that he ought im- mediately to avenge his father's murder; nor do the soliloquies afiford the least evi- dence that he is consciously deterred from vengeance by a moral scruple. I t may be added that the " cons rien ce " t heory rests mainly o n the narrow basis of a single speech of Hamlet to Hofafio" Jn_ Set V, ' Scene ITIl! ■:— " Does it not, thinks't thee, stand me now up on," etc. — iThis^a^age undoubted ly involves a q ues- ttion of conscience; but the speec h occurs I n the closing scene of the play, and to ^ve fhe^ lines a retrjractiye_W£nification not m accord with the earlier progressive impres- 1 2 AND ITS SOLUTION sion s vividly st amped on the mind by the several soh loguies. were to fail to appre- hend the simplest and most fundamental principle of all dramatic and all literary art. We come now to the third and, per- haps, most widely accepted of the sub- jective explanations of Hamlet's delay. T his hypothesis, which assumes that the c ause'of hirTnacti on is irresolution sprin g- ing tronT aii " excess of the refl ective or speculative liabi't bi: mind 7' o?iginated in England and Germany slStniiltaneously, in the first decade of the nineteenth century, and has been appropriately named, after its authors, the Schlegel-Coleridge theory. Schlegel says of the play : " Th e who le is intended to show that a calculating con- slderation which"e3iausts~20rthe relations and possible" conSequences'Xif a deed, must cripple the^ower of acting; as"Hamlet hImselT'expresses' it : ~~ " '**"" 13 THE HAMLET PROBLEM 'And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought; And enterprises of great pith and moment, With this regard, their currents turn awry, And lose the name of actisn.' . . . He is a hypoc rite towards himself; his far-f etched scruples are ottenmerepre- texts to- eover"^^ Jteant, of determination : thoughts, as he says, on a different occa- sTcttT, which have" ~ 'but one part wisdom And ever three parts coward.' He has no firm belief in himself or in an ything else. . . . He loses himselF~ in labyrinths of thou ght." Coleridge discovers in Hamlet " an al; most-enormous intellectual activity and a prop ortionate aversion to real action con- sequentupon it." "Wfeit.^^ti]tsJiaslc. fatilt of the Schlegel- Coleridge theory? Wherein does this hy- PPthgsls fail to satisfy the vital xequire- ments j)f th e play? The answer to these - 14 - AND ITS SOLUTION q uestions is not far to seek. The theor y implies an inadequate conception of the scoprtrf nchrailniia~slniilar to tHat which ; rend^reirGdiiffii^TIaMuSrititipn^ ; andoiihg. later view seems to answer mor e nearly to our ISmagh^Ke-iinpcession " of the character and conduct of Hamlet, it is only because the error which it in- volves, though similar in kind, is less in degree. The objection which has been urged against the " sentimental " theory may, indeed, be urged with equal force against any other theory which attributes Hamlet's delay to a special fault or morbid bias of nature. The " almost enormous intellectual activity " of Hamlet, as diag- nosed and symptomized by Coleridge and Schlegel, is a morbid limitation not less in- compatible with the conception of Hamlet as protagonist of a drama of triumphant moral achievement, than is the unheroic want of nerve characteristic of Goethe's Hamlet. if THE HAMLET PROBLEM Perhaps the most conspicuous cause of the wide diversity of opinion as to the na- ture of Hamlet's internal struggle is the tendency (almost universal among critics)' to disregard the fact that the person, Ham- let, yexists only as an organic element of the play, and that therefore any attempt to analyze the character as a thing apart from its dramatic relations must neces- sarily prove futile. The most astounding result of such an attempt is exhibited in the fourth of our typical theories, which assumes that Ham - l et is mad , or that he is the victim of acutie mela ncholia, bein g subject to sudHgn^out- b reaka pf .i nsunp an d viol e nt p assienr In view of what has been said in the fore- going paragraphs, it will readily be per- ceived that the "madness" theory is wholly indefeinsibre."" "The arguments whicET coiifiife "fhe "fhebry of Goethe and that of Schlegel and Coleridge, reduce to mere absurdity any hypothesis which at- i6 AND ITS SOLUTION tributes Hamlet's delay to conditions purely pathological. As a stimulating offset and ■ corrective to all such views, it will not be unprofit- able, at this point, before proceeding to the consideration of the fifth and last of our typical theories, to quote a few perti- nent sentences from an eminently sane ap- preciation by the late George Heniy Miles, the American poet-critic, whose brilliant " Review of Hamlet," first pub- lished in 1870, is said to have influenced Edwin Booth in his interpretation of the: tragedy : " There is never a storm in Hamlet over which the ' noble and most sovef eign reason ' of the young prince is not as vis- ibly dominant as the rainbow, the crown- ing grace and glory of the scene. . . . The most salient phase of Hamlet's char- acter is his supejrb intellectuallsuperiQrTty to all comers. . . . The fundamental charm of Hamlet is its amazing elo- 17. THE HAMLET PROBLEM quence ; its thoughts are vaster than deeds, its eloquence mightier than action. The tragedy, in its most imposing aspect, is a series of intellectual encounters. . . . But the difficulty of representing this I The enormous difficulty of achieving a true tragic success, less by the passions and trials than by the pure intellectual splendor of the hero! . . . For the fundamental idea of the tragedy is not only essentially non-dramatic, but peculiarly liable to mis- representation ; since any marked predomi- nance of the intellectual over the animal nature is constantly mistaken for weak- ness. . . . The difference between a strong man and a weak one, though inde- finable, is infinite. ... A close review of j the play will show that Hamlet is strong, not weak, — that the basis of his character is strength, illimitable strength.. There is not an act or an utterance of his, from first to last, which is not a manifestation of power. Slow, cautious, capricious, he AND ITS SOLUTION ma g. sometimes be. or se em to be; but al- resistless." "^ '" ITmight have been expected that In his interpretation of the tragedy the eloquent :writer whose words we have just quoted should have thrown added light on the disputed question of Hamlet's delay; but this is not the case. Like other critics, great and small, when he undertakes to explain the significance of the soliloquies, he leaves the reader in uncertainty as to the precise nature of Hamlet's internal struggle. J, T he fifth and last of the typical t heor- les demanding special consideration, ap- proaches the 'pr oblem from a~v!EWpoint directly antitheticaljo^thata^^^S^^jall the "theories thus far discussed, and, in- stead of attributing E^nl^s delaytb "sub- j S£tiv]g.jCjtuses, ascri bes it wholly to CTO ses external. This revolutionary hypothesis, which has received the endorsement of 19 THE HAMLET PROBLEM several Shakespearian scholars of distinc- tion, dates back to about the middle of the nineteenth century, and is fitly named, after Its German authors, the Klein-Werder theory. Referring to the assumption of all the leading critics, with Goethe at their head, that Hamlet's hesitation is due to some in- ternal cause, Werder writes : " For my own part I must flatly dissent from this conclusion. Let me ask, first of all, would Hamlet have dared to act as these critics almost unanimously demand that he should have done? Can Hamlet, or can he not, so act? It Is certainly a pertinent question. I maintain that he could not have thus acted, and for piirely obj ective reas Otts: — Tbcface 6f fhie"case, the force of all the circumstances, the very nature of his task, directly forbid It. . . . What is Hamlet to do? What is his actual task? A sharply defined duty, but a very different one from that which the critics 20 AND ITS SOLUTION have imposed upon him. It is not to c rush the Kin g at once — he Coul3"c6nnnit no greater blunder — but to bring him to confession, to unmask and'"c6hviCt~4mH. That is 'Hamle£^'laslc7lnS~first, fli!Ure!!t,v i nevTTa'BIe'giiit vr^ ' " The Klein-Werder theory, though in somrimp6rtam:'TESp6BSiriiTfrHo«er har- mony with t^e larger movement "of" the play than any ie.aj:lier view, is wholly at variance with Jhe text where it touches the .^vital question of Hamlet's mternal stmggle. To one disregarding the" ob- vious import of the soliloquies, Werder's hypothesis might seem plausible ; but it an- swers the baffling question by answering it away! Werder's solution of the problem resembles the solution of a perplexing puz- zle : the puzzle being deciphered, the mys- tery is gone. This writer's most serious error, as will later be made evident, lies in his failure to distinguish between what may be termed Hamlet's absolute duty 21 THE HAMLET PROBLEM and the special duty imposed by the Ghost. But not to enter, at this point, into a dis- cussion which will engage us at consider- able length in subsequent pages, we will cite two objections among many formu- lated by Bradley, — either of which, we believe, is sufficiently potent to demolish the whole glittering structure of the Klein- Werder theory : ( i ) " From beginning to end of the play, Hamlet never makes the slightest reference to any external dif- ficulty." (2) "Not only does Hamlet fail to allude to such difficulties, but he al- ways assumes that he can obey the Ghost, and he once asserts this in so many words ( ' Sith I have cause and will and strength and means To do't,' IV. iv. 45)."' — To which unanswerable objections it is super- fluous to add the equally effective argu- ment of Professor Tolman, that, " In spite of an amount of soliloquy which is unex- ampled in dramatic literature, this theory 22 AND ITS SOLUTION Is obliged to assume that Hamlet fails to express the one purpose which fills his mind." aj II In the province of interpretative criti- cism, imaginative insight and intuition are at best but aids of a settled science which must proceed in accordance with the un- varying principles of an impersonal logic. The terms art and criticism are, in a sense, antithetical. Art is " creation " ; criticism is " discovery." Literature in its tran- scendent forms is an organic birth, issuing from the throes of exalted imagination. It is complete and absolute — not less complex and perfect in its internal rela- tions than the mind which bodies it forth. Thus, like life itself, it must forever baf- fle and inspire, inviting the curious reason to probe its deeper meanings and to deter- mine the unifying laws of its structure. Criticism, whether analytic or synthetic, 24 THE HAMLET PROBLEM though in its higher operations it must needs derive its potency from rapturous sources akin to creative genius, is, lilce all other science, objective in method, its mode being none other than the familiar one of induction and deduction. In approaching the special subject be- fore us we may therefore assume that, whatever may be the true explanation of Hamlet's delay, no solution of the problem derived from a consecutive study of the soliloquies in the light of Shakespeare's dramatic method, can be accepted as the correct solution, unless it be in harmony with conclusions reached by J^ductlve in- ference in a comprehensive survey of the general design of the play, as revealed in its leading issues. Thus, from the stand- point of interpretative criticism, the ques- tion, " What is the special nature of Ham- let's internal struggle?" is involved in a larger question : — " In view of Hamlet's relation to the total dramatic action, what 25, THE HAMLET PROBLEM must be the general import of that struggle?" To begin, then, with the most compre- hensive impressions left upon the mind by the total action of the drama, it may be affirmed that there are two main conclu- sions in which modern Shakespearian au- thorities agree : — the first, that in the tragedy of Hamlet, Shakespeare presents the human situation m its broadest rela- <*i6iis, imaging man as circumscribed in all his actions by Divine Providence ; — the second, that the character of Ha mlet, t he central person of the dr ama, is with out doubt the most nearly u niversal of Shake- speare's master creations; tEatJ~Tn~fIie many-sidedness~oFhis "nuncl, he seems, as ^t were, to typify the human race, repre- senting an epitome of man's nature,/' Of these two mutually involving con- ceptions, the former and more comprehen- sive, — 'that relating to the general design of the play, — has been dwelt upon by all 26 AND ITS SOLUTION the leading critics from Gfl£the_toBrad- le y ; w hile the latter conception, — that re- lating to the character of the Prince, — has received and is receiving special em- phasis from Shakespearian scholars of our own day, who, however they may differ as to the cause of Hamlet's inaction, are in perfect agreer;nent as to the univer- sality of his most severeign intellect and spirit. Whatever the point of view from which the drama is regarded by recent writers, this idea of the representative nature of the Prince is somewhere emphasized and elucidated in their discussions. The gen- eral tendency of present-day criticism touching the question of Hamlet's char- acter may readily be discerned by a cur- sory perusal of the abundant periodical literature on the subject, recorded in " Poole's Index " for the past decade. This tendency Is well shown in the fol- lowing extract from an article by J. Chur- 27 THE HAMLET PROBLEM ton Collins, in The Contemporary Review (November, 1905) : " As every man, according to Coleridge, is born either a Platonist or an Aristote- lian, so there is no human being in whom some of the characteristics of Hamlet do not exist . . . HamletJs-not so much an individual as humanity individualized, ' not so much man in integrity as man in solution. Probably no poet, no artist, no philosopher, has ever existed, who would not recognize a kinsman in him, and who would not read more than one chapter of his own most secret history in this all-typi- cal delineation. . . . He exhibits, some- times by turns and sometimes simultane- ously, but always in excess, all that is im- plied in the emotional and aesthetic, and all that is implied in the reflective and philo- sophic temper. . . . Fatalist and sceptic, stoic and epicurean, alike claim him and have reason to claim him. There is not a phase in the dread never-ending conflict 28 AND ITS SOLUTION between destiny and human will and be- tween the law in man's members and the law that is without, which has not its sym- bol in his story and in his conduct. . . . Sp fluid and mobile is his nature, so re- spmm^Tffidr'pKiEc his~sylnpathies, that he is not simply' ~ mojjIHiJHbulxtr^ns- forrufid^-iOLwhatfor the moment appeals to^rimv— And with such ImifeHOTnlDes he enter into the life of the instant, and iden- tify himself with it, that what in other men are merely moods, become in him lit- tle less than phases of existence. He thus appears to be not one man but many, pass- ing with the plasticity of his creator's genius into sphere after. sphere of intel- lectual and emotional activity, the poet lavishing on him in each of these trans- formations the choicest treasures of his wit, his wisdom, and his eloquence." To this elaborate analysis of Hamlet's mind and personality, may be added the final conclusions of a recent American 29 THE HAMLET PROBLEM writer, Walter Libby, who, in an article entitled " The Evolution of Hamlet Criti- cism," published in Poet-Lore ( 1904) , rec- ognizing the Shakespearian universality of Hamlet's character, finds refuge for baf- fled criticism in the generalizations of " a view anticipated by Coleridge, . . '. that Hamlet is the typical man of genius." *' The question of Hamlet's character," he observes, " has acquired its great impor- tance because one has divined here not merely the development of an individual, but the evolution of the race." That the conception of Hamlet so strongly emphasized by recent writers con- forms in essential respects to the impres- sion invariably left upon the imagination* by an uninterrupted perusal of the play, is evidenced by numerous ingenious theories of an earlier date, which have sought to convert the Prince of Denmark into the embodiment of such comprehensive ab- stractions as Paganism, Protestantism, 30 AND ITS SOLUTION Germany, the World, in each of which theories the later view is either implied or foreshadowed. But the breadth of Shakespeare's design in the creation of the character of Hamlet is subtly intimated in the text. It is no accident, assuredly, but a consideration of vital artistic significance, that the author has introduced into this drama (Act II, Scene II), and has put into Hamlet's own mouth, the impressive words of that con- summate prose description of ideal man, which, as a characterization of the human type, is unparalleled in literature: " What a piece of work is manl How noble in reason 1 how infinite in faculty I inj form and moving, how express and admi-{ ^ rable ! in action, how like an angel 1 in ap- prehension, how like a god I the beauty of the world I the paragon of animals 1 " Who, with judgment unwarped by mad- ness theories, on reading these words in the responsive mood of natural criticism, 31 THE HAMLET PROBLEM can fail to associate them with the impres- sion left on the mind by the character and conduct of Hamlet himself? But Shakespeare is even more explicit. Lest the suggestive import of the passage should be lost on his audience or reader, in the very next scene (Act III, Scene I) he has placed upon the usually uneloquent lips of Ophelia the following lines descrip- tive of the Prince: "Oh, what a noble mind is here o'erthrovrnt The courtiei'a, scholar's, soldier's, eye, tongue, sword ; The expectancy and rose of the fair state, The glass of fashion, and the mould of form, The obserVd of all observers, quite, quite down I " — which lines are followed a moment later by another reference to Hamlet's " noble | and most sovereign reason," and, again, tol his " unmatched form and feature." — ( Could anything in dramatic art be more clearly indicative of the author's ideal mo- 32 AND ITS SOLUTION tlve in the creation of the central character of this tragedy? Not less significant is the introduction into the next scene (Act III, Scene II), of that other passage of memorable prose, in which Shakespeare, through the medium of Hamlet, defines, once for all, in com- prehensive phrase, the supreme function of dramatic art: — " To hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure." — In this, the first of his great philosophic tragedies, Shakespeare exhib- its life in its ultimate and eternal relations; — he holds the mirror up to universal nature, representing man as conditioned and circumscribed in all his actions by an omniscient Providence, now promoting and now thwarting human will, but ever inti- mating the absolute Good. The relative breadth of the poet's de- 33 THE HAMLET PROBLEM sign may be inferred from the fact that the tragedy of Hamlet is unique among Shakespearian dramas in that it involves accident as a fundamental consideration of the theme. This Is clearly shown (in ac- cordance with Shakespeare's characteristic method of balance and contrast) by the antithetical nature and conspicuous setting of the two most obvious examples of accident, from which such mighty con- sequences flow, and which, indeed, consti- tufe the very turning-points of the dra- matic action. We refer, of course, on thq one hand, to Hamlet's disastrous sword'' thrust through the arras, involving the un- intended slaughter of Polonius; and, on the other hand, to his miraculous and for- tunate venture of meeting and boarding the pirate ship, whereby he is providentially brought back to Denmark, to consum- mate his appointed task. And Shake-, speare does not leave us in any doubt | regarding the special signi ficance of t heag^ 34~" AND ITS SOLUTION , "Cj idente iyas witness Hamlet' s own after - gene ralizationS~rn reftiTence to each tate- luTiKeafe — ^Toward the end of the scene which opens with the accidental killing of Polonius, and in which the Prince of Den- mark, striving for his mother's salvationJ wrings her heart with bitter reproach, Hamlet, in a prophetic moment of spirit- ual exaltation, utters the following words : "Once more, good night; And when you are desirous to be blest, I'll blessing beg of you. — For this same lord, [Pointing to Polonius. I do repent; but heaven hath pleas'd it so, To punish me with this and this with me, That I mu^ be their scourge and minister." Hamlet discerns in the defeat of his in- ^ tended purpose a special revelation of j providential design, according to which > his soul, through the chastisement of re- \ morse, is purged and prepared for its ap- j pointed mission. In like manner and with equal clearness 35: THE HAMLET PROBLEM has Shakespeare indicated, by means of impressive generalizations put into the mouth of Hamlet, the artistic motive in the case of the second obvious instance of accident. Referring to his miraculous es- cape from the snares of royal knavery, the Prince, upon his return to Denmark, in hisi disclosures to Horatio, preludes the acj count of his daring venture, with the re| flection : "Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well When OUT deep plots do fail; and that should teach us There's a divinity that shapes our ends, J Rough-hew them how we will." "^ To which words, Horatio, with an abso- lute finality of phrase so exceptional with that reticent character as to arrest atten- tion, responds : " That is most certain," " Therms a divinity that shapes our ends/ " I Perhaps no other line ever penned by Shakespeare has found a more universal 36 AND ITS SOLUTION response in the souls of men. The sub- lime words have become hackneyed by fa- miliar repetition. But the special connec- tion in which they were first uttered, by the Prince of Denmark, is rarely consid- ered. Their philosophic import in the tragedy of Hamlet, as throwing light upon the vital implications of accident, is but vaguely apprehended by the average reader. Certain it is, however, that no other single generalization of the play car- ries with it a more far-reaching suggestive- ness than this utterance of Hamlet; no one line indicates more clearly the scope of the author's dramatic design. Numerous other occurrences in the play serve to illustrate the operation of Divine Will through accident. Not to attempt to exhaust the theme, only two minor in- stances will here be cited to show that the conception of Providence revealing itself in modes of chance or opportunity, is vital to the whole design. The first of these 37 THE HAMLET PROBLEM subordinate examples is the fortuitou s qoming o f the " playe rs " to Elsinore ; the second, is -th e unexpe ctgd_suHH«ening of Hamlet to his mo ther's chamberj^^ ter the ominous ^""play-scene." Witness ~what ' mighty spiritual purposes these otherwise !, trivial occurrences are made to serve 'through the sovereign reason of the iPrince. In the former instance Hamlet 'becomes the Heaven-appointed scourge of one human soul; in the latter, Heaven's " scourge and minister " unto another. Enough has been said to show that the inception of Omniscient Providence con- rolling the destinies of men is paramount in the tragedy of Hamlet, and involves, therefore, directly or indirectly, all is- sues of the drama. In the other trage- dies, — Macbeth, for example, to which Hamlet bears a close kinship, — the oper- ations of Providence are less obviously in- dicated: they constitute, at best, but the shadowy and awful background of the cen- 38 AND ITS SOLUTION tral human scene; the supernatural action is purposely obscured, and serves to throw the human action into relief. But it is otherwise with the tragedy of Hamlet, in which the operations of Providence are so expressly indicated — brought to the fore- ground and thrust on the view in such con- crete detail — that the larger philosophi c concept ion of Divine Will shap ing the af- tairs ot luell iiiighl well b6 legarded as -thg ^prinCJ Ea^ thpmp^ *hp all-ohgnrKing mn- tive of the play, were it not for the en- grossing fascination of the central tragic figure, in whom th« convergent lines of dramatic interest meet. •^ In the transcendent mystery of prov- idential design involving both the objective and the subjective world, lies the only true enigma of Hamlet's delay. Not only is the Prince thwarted from without by the inscrutable workings of Providence: he is equally thwarted from within. Ham- let's mystery is, thus, our mystery; his uni- 39 THE HAMLET PROBLEM verse, the faithful reflex of our own. To attempt, therefore, in an absolute sense, to go back of Hamlet's mystery, or the mys- tery of Hamlet's world, and " pluck it out," so to speak, were to attempt not merely to go back of Shakespeare's art, but to go back of Shakespeare. Enough that the poet has left the secret of God's infinite design — a mystery, ^ Only by clearly distinguishing between the subject and the subject-matter of the play, between the enigmatic mystery in- herent in the theme and the legitimate problem which presents itself in the dra- matic unfolding of the theme, shall we be able to differentiate with certainty the known from the unknown quantities which the problem involves. From the generalization which we have reached regarding the universality of Hamlet's nature, what inference must be drawn? In view of the breadth of the author's design in this tragedy and the or- 40 AND ITS SOLUTION ganic relation of the central person to that design, one conclusion is unavoidable: that since Hamlet, In the many-sidedness of his character, may be said to typify man- kind, representing, as it were, the univer- sal human, his internal struggle must be typical and representative. Whatever may be the peculiar dramatic implications of that struggle, however rigidly Shake- speare may have found his art restricted by the crude materials of his plot, it is certain that the vital conflict revealed in Hamlet's soliloquies is but the image of a conflict silently waging in every human soul. But Hamlet, as protagonist of this drama, is no merely passive instrument of fate : he is an active moral agent. Moral- ity, in the broadest and deepest sense, is the basic element of his character. Every' duty is holy to him — duty to father, to mother, to man, to God. Hamlet's re- ligious earnestness of nature combines with filial piety, intense social affections, and 41 THE HAMLET PROBLEM austere virtue, to form a character fitly representing ideal manhood, — a character not less unwavering in its adherence to the principles of loyalty and self-sacrifice, than its antithesis, the character of Macbeth, is absolute in its abandonment to the oppo- site principles of selfishness and Heaven- defying ambition. A suggestive comparison may be drawn between the tragedies, Macbeth and Ham- let, which present a most striking contrast : not, indeed, in motive, — for they bear a remarkably close ethical kinship, being, as it were, dramatic sermons on the same grand and universal theme, — but in the point of view from which the theme is con- templated, Hamlet being the positive and Macbeth the negative presentation of the same vast thesis. It is not so much in na- tive mental powers as in moral attitude that the central tragic persons, Macbeth and Hamlet, differ. The two characters are similarly endowed with certain gen- 42 AND ITS SOLUTION eral capacities of intellect and imagination, the philosophic reason and the poetic ap- prehension, which enable them to discern at all times " the moral properties andi scope of things," an d to prevision the ' evenyhanded justice w h irh thf Pivi n" ~Juc^e shall mete out to human souls i n thisi world or in the^world-tacome. But 'in Hamfefs^n aturelihese powers are rooted m the deepsml of a pr ofoundly religiou s rnol so roth Macbeth, whose intellectual nature countervails the spiritual. Macbeth finds his perfect foil in Macduff; Hamlet, in Claudius. In the subtle artistic contrast between the Prince of Denmark and his villainous uncle, the critic may discover the key to Hamlet's true cha,racter. In the light of that con trast, how monstrous, how shallow, how absurd, any description of Hamlet's tem^ peramerit which would attribute to mor- bid or weakling causes that cloud-hung and ominous melancholy so opposite to the dis- 43 THE HAMLET PROBLEM sembling King's all-sanguine mood. In the gathered clouds of that melancholy lurks the lightning of a terrible retribu- tion, — the bolts which shall blast and pu- rify the " rotten " state of Denmark. The overwhelming mood which gives pause to every resolution and retards every action, is the index and proof of Hamlet's uni- versality of soul in the presence of infinite and eternal forces which can neither be un- derstood nor controlled by man. Hamlet is struggling at every moment, with al- most superhuman faculties, to comprehend the mystery upon which every slightest deed must depend for its moral efEcacy. And what inference must be drawn from the emphasis laid throughout the play upon the profound morality of Hamlet, — em- phasis so obvious as to make the hero ap- pear at times in a haloed light, as the em- bodiment of all the spiritual forces of man, — at other times almost as a reli- gious agent? One conclusipn certainly 44 AND ITS SOLUTION can not be amiss : Hamlet's struggle, what- ever its special nature, is, in the broadest sense, a moral struggle. ^ AS Ill Why have critics failed to discover the true nature of Hamlet's subjective expe- rience? No such baffling problem pre- sents itself in the other great tragedies, — Macbeth, Lear, and Othello, — ^concern- ing the underlying motives of which Shakespearian scholars are in substantial agreement. The design of each of these tragedies, — nay, of every other play of Shakespeare, — is relatively obvious : which fact should go to show that in the case of the exceptional drama the fault is not with Shakespeare, as some have presumed to suggest, but with the critics, who, when approaching the study of Hamlet, have seemed to waver in their faith in the uni- form consistency of Shakespeare's dra- matic method. Shakespeare's method 46 THE HAMLET PROBLEM never varies in its essential features. The principles of dramatic art which clearly re- veal his underlying purpose in Macbeth, Lear, and Othello, are precisely the same as those by which the theme of Hamlet is suggested. — 'And what are the uniform principles of art in accordance with which Shakespeare's tragedies are constructed? In each of the greater tragedies, where the interest is profoundly psychological, supreme importance attaches to the so- liloquies; for it is only by the light they shed upon the action of the drama that its deeper motive may be truly discerned. But Shakespeare's art, strictly adheiring to the avowed purpose of holding the mir- ror up to nature, like nature, exhibits its organic laws indirectly, and only to the comprehensive vision of scientific method. The direct statement of his theme, in so many words, if this, indeed, were within the possibility of language, is precluded by the very nature of his task. But the 47 THE HAMLET PROBLEM design is perfect, and the soliloquies, and the generalizations which they embody, reveal the symmetry of that design by clearly distinguishing the several stages of the psychic movement. Of special signifi- cance in the light they shed upon the theme are these generalizations when they mark the close of scenes and acts, where their cumulative effect is most pronounced, and where they may be said to serve as obvious sign-boards indicating the trend of the dramatic action. And what is true of the generalizations of soliloquy applies with equal force to all important speeches which disclose the inmost reflections of the central character. Such, in brief, is Shakespeare's method. Such are the uniform rules of his art as it relates to the conspicuous setting-forth of his theme. The selfsame principles which underlie the construction of Shake- speare's other great tragedies find consum- mate illustration in the play of Hamlet, in 48 AND ITS SOLUTION which drama the soliloquies ate arranged in just gradation, exhibiting clearly, and stage by stage, the progress of the moral struggle, the turning-point being at the middle of the play, while the divisions of scene and act are almost invariably marked by significant generalizations. Th e failure of rrittrg tn differpntiate the jeveral stages of Hamlet's moral de- velopment has arj sfip nnt frnm any, dp^ria- tlon in dr a matif! metho d, on Sha1fpspe a.i:£!s- Egrk..baLin)ia a. di.ffiailty-i.nhprf,nf in thfi them.6^__In each of the other great trag- edies is represented the deterioration or utter ruin of a soul. The tragedy of Hamlet exhibits the mind of man in its upward struggle. This moral transfor- mation is not an evolution it um ah ignoble to a noble state, from "bad to good , but rather a development from immature t o matarejnaaJihsiodr-ii'-Miaxt^^ spiritual r^tmngr It Is owing to the occult and subtle nature of Hamlet's transformation 49 THE HAMLET PROBLEM that the successive stages of his moral progress have not been clearly discerned. With the view of determining the cen- tral motive of the tragedy, let us now examine, in the light of Shakespeare's dramatic method, the latter half of the p— ■ ■ ■ I f fateful scene l(Act I, Scene V)jin which Ha^xUfcrtJii hearing from his father's lost the harrowing disclosure of his uncle's crime, instantly commits himself tOj vengeance, and in which the initial staee si ■^ his moral struggle are presented. Thel Ghost withdraws, waving sorrowful fareJ well: "Adieu, adieu! Hamlet, remember me." The Ghost vanishes. Hamlet, his heart wrung with anguish, his mind distraught by powerful conflicting emotions, cries: "Remember thee I Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat In this distracted globe. Remember thee I Yea, from the table of my memory 50 AND ITS SOLUTION I'll wipe away all trivial fond records, All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past, That youth and observation copied there, And thy commandment all alone shall live Within the book and volume of my brain, Umnixed with baser matter; yes, by heaven!" The action advances. Horatio and Mar- cellus rush in. Hamlet indulges in " wild and whirling words," — that is, in whirl- ing words of irony uttered with intent to obscure his dread secret, in stress of tragic emotion unintelligible to his ques- tioners. He swears his friends to secrecy, and the act ends. But with what signifi- cant words ? Not, as might have been ex- pected by the reader, — not with a vehe- ment renewal, on Hamlet's part, of the passionate resolve already formed. Quite the contrary. T he duty has expand ed to unanticipated proportions. Pervaded by a tra ^cy6nse~6iynofiYTE spons1Siiiriy, Ham- let exglajn^ : ~""~ ~~~" "The time is out of joint; — O cursed spite^ J I That ever I was born to set it right! " / THE HAMLET PROBLEM In this moment of prophetic illumina- tion it is evident that the mandate re- ceived from the Ghost has translated itself into a vast, an impersonal, a religious duty I Not Hierely is Hamlet to kill the| King: he has assumed the prodigious ta^ of setting aright the disjointed time. ' {} But his father's commandment returns to mind with renewed intensity. The larger purpose is too vague and shadowy to avail against feelings of self-reproach arising as_jjaralet contemplates the sacred personal duty which he has not yet dis- chaEgiad,_aadLwhich jQUlxagedJlIu^ mons him to perform. He reels into sel?- disgust, ~He accuses himself of "cowir dice an d beastly obliyig n.;-^ But the more he knows a nd the more he thinks, the less pos- itive^comes the assurance that lie is not right in delaying the deed.~'''N6t impo- tence of will, nor niorBi'd Irresolution, but the inherent moral forces of his nature, delay his course until at last, by direct in- ■52 AND ITS SOLUTION tervention of the " divinity that shapes our ends," he consummates the task for which all his life, all his sorrow, all his aspiration, have prepared him. . .* <; , , vs*-, - Thus by implication we have anticipated the final step in our solution of the special problem presented in the soliloquies. _Jt has been show n that Ha mlet's inte rnal stnigglgis , in the broadest sense , a moral struggle, an ^ that, as such, it s ymbolizes a u niversal experience of th e race. We are now prepared for the final inference : That Hamlet's subjective conflict repre- sents the profoundest and subtlest of all struggles: — the conflict forever waging in the human soul between the personal and the impersonal motives of life, — a conflict not between clearly defined wrong and clearly defined right, but rather be- tween two rights, the one relative and the Qther absolute. Our theory, therefore, finds its symbol in a figure the very reverse of that pro- 53 •.•.^^ THE HAMLET PROBLEM posed by Goethe. Instead of a beautiful, most moral, but unheroic nature, sinking beneath the weight of a duty too great for it to bear, we see in Hamlet a mighty soul which, far from sinking, rises in stat- ure and in strength beneath an ever-in- creasing burden. Sh akespeare, instead o f showing the effect oT " a great deed T^d upon aT soul unequal to the performanca of it^'^-fes" diow^nT a irrmted deed, of -qaesl tionable expediency when considered in its absolute and eternal bearings, laid upon^a soul too great for its performance as an unrelated obligation of mere personal revenge. This solution of the problem which, ba£3ing Hamlet, has baffled all the critics, is the only solution which is in harmony with every scene and every syllable of the play, and this solution alone affords an adequate and truly psychological explana- tion of the tragedy. In the comprehensive monologue, " To ^ , AND ITS SOLUTION be or not to be," which appears in the third act, the artistic center of the play, may be discerned the profounder impli- cations of Hamlet's moral struggle as tjT)ifying a universal human experience. Here only, in the drama, does Shake- speare present the thwarting problem in Its wider ethical bearings. It will be ob- served that in this soliloquy the lesser question of vengeance is for the time for- gotten, or, more truly speaking, merged and lost in the greater question of the im- minence of divine law. — And what are the larger connotations of the tragedy, dis- coverable in Hamlet's speculative thoughts in this monologue? Here, at the calm tidal center of the drama, drop the plum- met of exploring criticism to Its profound- est depths. " T o be o r not to be, that Is the q uest ion . ": That is", mdeed, _g /tg ulti- m ate question of man , involving all other questions which arise from the conflict be- tween the finite and the eternal issues of 55 THE HAMLET PROBLEM life. And what is Hamlet's answer to the all-comprehen sive Inquir y ? — Death, to the weary'^h'S'isuriering spirit,— ^eafh~as the dreamlesi~end~(^allp^^^wefera con- summation devoutly to be wished." But man, tHrduglitiie dfead of something after deatK7~shHnEs ' from suicide." Yet-death shall come to all I — ^Man yearns for release from the ills of life, but he dare not pre- determine the date of that release ; he dare not forestall the edict of an inscrutable destiny to consummate his devout desire. He must endure the burden of earthly ex- istence until, at the appointed hour. Heaven fulfils his wish without his own contriving. — What, now, are the implica- tions of this mighty human paradox as it touches the subordinate question of Ham- let's delay in executing vengeance upon his uncle ? " To be or not to be " : This, assuredly, is no question of the killing of a murderous kingl But the same " dread of something after death," which " puz- AND ITS SOLUTION zles the will, and makes us rather bear the ills we have than fly to others that we know not of,"^ — this same inexplicable fear, which refrains the hand from suicide, operates obscurely as a deterring influence in all his reasonings concerning the act of mortal retribution to which Hamlet is impelled by every honorable instinct of blood. The divine authority which fore- warns against " self-slaughter," admon- ishes no less against revenge. " Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord." " Thou shalt not kill." Eternal issues are at stake for both the slayer and the slain. Thus we see that the ultimate moral implication of the question, " .Why not,, end Xinels--4>.wn-Jife— bjL -sttidde.2^_is identic^LsitJL. that of the question, " W hy not kill the King?".jiQ4.jy[?at the self-ac- cusatJOJl. ..of . cowardice invoive3~in~~tfie gloemy-geneparlieation, ''^'JrSifr^^^congciea£e.,,_^ doth..make cowards of us all," is, in the final analysis, identTcaI"m"natiire'lSlthrth€ THE HAMLET PROBLEM biflter..j:qprQa£bL_with which Hamlet ar- raigns himseLf for having so long^eferred the execution of his fatherT'dread com- mand. We ourselves, on reading the tragedy or witnessing its performance, are ba£Sed and perplexed by the obstinate question- ings that perplex and baffle Hamlet, giv- ing pause to passionate action. And why ? Because, in imagination, we find ourselves, like Hamlet, confronted by an inscrutable situation. Because, like Hamlet, we re- spond with instant and impetuous deter- mination to the Ghost's imploring appeal, and ourselves assume the task of vengeance which outraged nature summons him to perform, and to which his will is spurred by every virtuous instinct of loyalty, of reverence, and of filial devotion. Be- cause, like Hamlet, we recognize within our own nature honorable excitements both of reason and of blood impelling to the deed. Because, in this instance, 58 AND ITS SOLUTION vengeance Is idealized. Retributive justice cries out for the life of the murderer, the diabolical horror of whose crime neither human nor divine law may condone. Moreover, the act of vengeance in this case implies self-sacrifice, involving no immediate personal gain. Being once re- moved from self, the personal motive is obscured, and so receives a seemingly moral sanction. Weighed in the merely human scale, vengeance were justified: It is " questionable " only when considered in Its absolute and eternal bearings. Some writers appear to assume that Hamlet, If cross-examined on the subject- matter of his meditation, could have been Induced to answer in unequivocal terms his own self-arraignment. Such an as- sumption fails to recognize the true func- tion of soliloquy, which is to exhibit the secret operations of the mind, to reveal the speaker's Inmost thought and feeling. Hamlet's insistent self-questioning Is by 59 THE HAMLET PROBLEM no means merely rhetorical: it implies in- scrutable mystery. Shakespeare has pu t int o, soliloquy all that PJa mlet knew con- c eming the ca use gf his o^jf-jn^rfiorrfand to^^ssum e that this h Jiot^ true, were not only to accuse Shakespeare of departing from his_uajai-iiJbaaesLmgjJujd-" ; -^ were to ignore the fact that we ourselves have'^h^rrra- quaMed-sanetiott to the mo- tive o£ vengeance, -and that for Hamlet's delay no better explanation can be offered tha'h that suggested by his own words con- sidered in the light of the totaL dramatic action. The mandate of the Ghost appeals to a natural impulse of blood rather than to a sense of moral duty, and quick obedience to that mandate, as at first conceived by Hamlet, involves no other motive than that of personal honor and filial devotion. Yet the obligation of vengeance is none the less real in that It is purely personal. And, under the irresistible control of 60 AND ITS SOLUTION Shakespeare's art, the reader is com- pelled to view the situation through the eyes of the central character. He is com- pelled in imagination to assume the task of vengeance, to enter into Hamlet's moral struggle, so dimly understood, and to fol- low with approval his reasonings through- out the play; and only at the end of the last act does he come deliberately to weigh the passionate motive in the balance of conscience. That the obligation of vengeance sym- bolizes the relative or personal as opposed to the absolute duty, may be inferred not only directly, from the phraseology em- ployed by the Ghost and by Hamlet in reference to the passionate ' motive, but also indirectly, from the significant fact that in Hamlet's last soliloquy (Act IV, Scene IV), in which he declares that he is " exhorted " to the deed by " exam- ples gross as earth," the only example cited is that afforded by the conduct of 6i THE HAMLET PROBLEM EoitiuhiaSis- ^n example of rash and liair-brained adventure in the name of honor merely,' — an " example gross as ^SsHthillJndeed, of action prompted by am- bitious pri3erTn-«hich honor is farthest removed from moral "oWi^^ion. This " delicate and tender prince." the h eroic folly of whose" exploit against Poland Hamlet contrasts with his owrfliraction, is, be it Xemembered, the same feckless youttifc_ " of unimproved ^raetal Edt 'and full," who, shortly before, had " sharked p^ lisfpf ^awlftM resnli^tps" fnr some ^^W^"^ -enterprise against Denniark. and all without the sanction or even the knowledge of his " bed-rid " uncle, king of Norway, who, as we afterwards learn from Voltimand, is " grieved that so his sickness, age, and impotence " should have been thus " falsely borne in hand " by his nephew. The true significance of this soliloquy lies in its neg ative implica- tion. No better example of irrational ''-""' 62 AND ITS SOLUTION af^finn spriafftTT^trnm hnnnfaTit;>-4H«ifa'r|r«^ Qf_yood^ could well be conceived, than" this of Fortinbras, cited by Hamlet to his own disparagement and self-reproach. 63 IV The theory advanced in these pages rests squarely upon the text, and derives its chief support from universally ac- cepted data. Act by act and scene by scene, in the light of this theory, we may trace the progress of Hamlet's moral de- velopment, as indicated by stages of a crucial conflict of motives relating to the question of vengeance, and by correspond- ing phases of a change in mental attitude toward life. ^ The successive stages of Hamlet's trans- forming struggle, — of the conflict of mo- tives relating to the question of vengeance, — are presented, respectively: in the third soliloquy, beginning, " O all you host of heaven 1" (Act I, Scene V) ; in the fourth soliloquy, " O, what a rogue and 64 THE HAMLET PROBLEM peasant slave am II" (Act II, Scene II) ; in the soliloquy beginning, " How all occasions do Inform against me!" (Act IV, Scene IV) ; and, finally, in the earnest question put to Horatio (Act V, Scene II) : " Does it not, thinks't thee, stand me now upon," etc.. In which It may be seen that the personal motive and the Im- personal are all but mutually reconciled In Hamlet's consciousness. Hamlet's change In mental attitude to- ward life Is precisely Indicated through the medium of soliloquy and dialogue. His attitude of mind at the beginning of the play — before he has learned of his father's murder and assumed the task of vengeance — Is revealed In the opening lines of the first soliloquy (Act I, Scene 11) ; the Intermediate phase of his trans- formation Is represented In the familiar monologue, " To be or not to be," at the middle of the play (Act III, Scene I) ; while the culminant and final stage of his 65 THE HAMLET PROBLEM development is marked by philosophic generalizations addressed to Horatio in the closing scene (Act V, Scene II). Hamlet's crucial and transforming struggle, while it originates in the con- flict of motives consequent upon the as- sumption of the task of vengeance, and therefore finds its first expression in the soliloquy_ immediately following the de- parture of the Ghost, is anticipated and foreshadowed in the OTjejiiag-^liloquy (Act I, Scene II), which not TJiiiy serve to exhibit Hamlet's mental attitude to- ward life, but is artfully constructed with reference to the whole complex psycholog- ical design. It will be observed that this soliloquy (" O, that this too too solid flesh would melt!") falls naturally into three clearly marked divisions, which follow one another in vital sequence, and which comprise, respectively, the first four lines (ending with the word, " self-slaugh- ter"), the next five lines (ending with, 66 AND ITS SOLUTION "Possess it merely"), and the rest of the soliloquy ^twenty-two lines). In the first of these divisions Hamlet is repre- sented as shrinking with spiritual anguish from the tragic burden of existence. That this aversion to life does not arise from morbid causes or from any inherent weak- ness in Hamlet's nature, but that, on the contrary, it springs from profound moral sensibility, is shown in the second division of the soliloquy, where the Prince con- templates with abhorrence and revulsion the sensual grossness of the world. This feeling of abhorrence and revulsion in- creases in intensity as Hamlet, passing in thought from the general to the special, reflects upon his mother's " incestuous " union. Hamlet chafes under the restraint which compels him to silence (" But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue 1 "), but he does not, as yet, recognize within himself the imperative obligation which summons man to the responsibility of ac- 67 THE HAMLET PROBLEM tion. Life Is, indeed, a duty, but as yet it is a duty of suffering endurance merely, and not of performance. Nevertheless, in this first soliloquy the antithetical ele- ments of Hamlet's crucial struggle are negatively suggested by the fact that the all-environing grossness which renders life " weary, flat, stale, and unprofitable," and from which he shrinks with moral loath- ing, here presents itself to his mind in two aspects, the one impersonal and re- lating generally to the world, the other personal and relating to his mother and his uncle. In Hamlet's rfiird _j^jQguy (Act I, Scene V) we discSw-tKemitial stage of his moral transformation, the first signifi- cant change in moral attitude toward life and life's obligations, immediately conse- quent upon the assumption of the task of vengeance. It will be observed that the psychic process depicted in this monologue is just the reverse of that portrayed in 68 AND ITS SOLUTION the first soliloquy, the transition in thought being from the particular to the general, from the personal to the impersonal. We have noted in an earlier paragraph that, through the operation of subconscious, ex- pansive forces in Hamlet's nature, the mandate of the Ghost, in a prophetic mo- ment of moral illumination at the end of the scene, translates itself into a universal duty. The passionate impulse of venge- ance yields place to an imperative sense of moral obligation, tragic in its depth, felt toward the world. Radical indeed is the change already wrought in Hamlet. Though he deplores the inexorable condi- tions of his fate, the duty of life is converted from an obligation of mere passive endurance to one of positive per- formance. — The soliloquy under present discussion exhibits the first convulsive throes of Hamlet's transforming struggle. The seed of discord has been sown. Hamlet is self-committed to the act of 69 THE HAMLET PROBLEM vengeance. But the dread command- ment of the Ghost not only imposes on his soul the personal obligation of revenge (" If thou hast nature in thee, bear it notl "), but also enjoins a moral caution: "But, howsoever thou pursuest this act, Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive Against thy mother aught." The subtle import of this qualifying in- junction, as revealing the true nature of Hamlet's inward struggle, may be inferred from the fact that, while in the earlier stages of that struggle he assumes that the execution of his revenge implies the im- mediate killing of the King, he at no time yields so far to the sway of passionate impulse as to constrain his will to instant action by the binding force of oath. The oath to which he does bind himself at the close of this soliloquy commits his soul not to immediate vengeance, but merely to the remembrance of the Ghost's command- 70 AND ITS SOLUTION ment. No .allusion is made to the im- petuous determination already formed. In the moments of release from the ex- traordinary tension to which Hamlet's mind has been subjected in the presence of the Ghost, the thought of vengeance, — so absolute is the sway of reactionary moral forces within his nature, — is in abeyance, if not entirely absent from con- sciousness. The powers of volition are partially suspended. Imagination has free play. But the operations of reason, though spasmodic, and though revealed to the reader only in broken sentences, have reference to his mother's degrada- tion and his uncle's unspeakable crime and hypocrisy : " O most pernicious woman ! O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain! My tables, — meet it is I set it down, That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain; At least I'm sure it may be so in Denmark." The act of writing indicated in the stage- 71 THE HAMLET PROBLEM directions at this point need not be re- garded as merely symbolic. It is literal in its signification, being at one with the psychological action clearly denoted by the language of the passage. Conscious doubt as to the truth of his own moral intu- itions (the "honesty" of the Ghost) has not entered Hamlet's mind. Deliberation and self-analysis havp not yet conspired to undermine the foundations of self-trust. But imagination can not compass the mon- strous crime, which, though accepted in consciousness as indubitable, presents to Hamlet's reason the aspect of unreality. Amid the whirl of conflicting passions, the abhorrent fact is jotted down in visual, signs, in order to fix in Hamlet's distracted mind the fatal record of the King's guilt. The subjective process here depicted is fol- lowed in the next soliloquy (Act II, Scene II) by a reactionary mood of self-analysis and doubt. Absolute moral conviction does not replace this wavering uncertainty 72 AND ITS SOLUTION until the successful stratagem of the "play- scene " (Act III, Scene III) has furnished Hamlet with conclusive evidence of his uncle's crime. Before proceeding to consider Ham- let's fourth soliloquy (Act II, Scene II), which, like each of his subsequent mono- logues, in Act III and Act IV, can be clearly understood only when studied in its relation to the general design, we wish once more to emphasize the fact that the psychic experience the earlier stages of which are depicted in soliloquy, is the transforming process of moral growth, an unfolding of the mind in its upward struggle, a de- velopment from immature to mature man- hood. Whatever age we may assume for Hamlet, the student lately returned from Wittenberg, the text leaves no doubt as to his age at the end of the play. From the words of the grave-digger we learn that the Prince, at the time of his return to Denmark after the fateful sea-voyage, is 73 THE HAMLET PROBLEM just thirty years old, the approximate age of intellectual maturity among men, the period in which culminate those mighty and revolutionary changes which, from the " passion-chaos " of youth, evolve the philosophic reason. Hamlet, in the ear- lier scenes of the play, though he possesses all the noblest attributes with which lavish nature endows her chosen sons, is dis- tinctly " young Hamlet," — Hamlet the paragon of " blown youth." Not so in the fifth act, where his discourse to Hora- tio reveals a mind which through the disci- pline of experience has fully developed all its sovereign powers. To preserve consistency in the psycho- logical design of the play, Shakespeare, according to his usual method, has pur- posely left indefinite the length of time required by the dramatic action. The intervals which may be supposed to elapse between acts and even between scenes are not precisely indicated. The period which 74 AND ITS SOLUTION intervenes between the events of the last scene of the first act and the occasion of the soliloquy beginning, " O, what a rogue and peasant slave am 1 1 " (Act II, Scene II), though relatively brief, is to be measured by days, perhaps, rather than by hours. Amid the detested surroundings of the actual world, the Ghost's command- ment returns to memory with insistent force. It requires only the player's pa- thetic rehearsal of the story of Priam's slaughter ^nd the tragic grief of Hecuba, to cause Hamlet's pent-up emotions to burst forth in impassioned monologue. The Prince of Denmark here assumes that, in fulfilment of an honorable duty, he ought instantly to avenge his father's mur- der, and he can think of no reasonable justification or honorable excuse for his delay; nevertheless, an imperative voice from the depths of his spiritual nature gives pause to rash impulse. He is obedi- ent to a deterring instinct which, though 75 THE HAMLET PROBLEM but darkly understood, he dare not ignore. The true import and supernatural author- ity of this restraining force become evident to him as events proceed, but here the re- straint is only operative as holding his pas- sions in leash and his judgment in suspense. The mighty subjective forces deterring him from vengeance, though inexplicable, are tentatively construed as premonitory instinct forewarning against precipitate action. Striving to reconcile the dictates of reason with the dissuading whispers of his spiritual nature, and groping vainly to discover in outward conditions the suffi- cient cause and justification for an appar- ently inconsistent reluctance proceeding wholly from within, Hamlet, with skepti- cal precaution, is led to question the " hon- esty " of the Ghost, — to doubt the validity of his own well-founded convictions re- garding his uncle's crime, — concluding that the true " grounds " for his delay may be, perchance, not lack of resolution or 76 AND ITS SOLUTION courage, but a want of evidence " more relative " than that furnished by the super- natural witness of a phantom : "The spirit that I have seen May be the devil; and the devil hath power To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps Out of my weakness and my melancholy, I As he is very potent with such spirits, I Abuses me to damn me. I'll have grounds ■ ( More relative than this. The play's the thing I Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king." In the interval between the conception and the execution of the ingenious plot by which Hamlet essays to " catch the con- science of the king," — in this interval of temporary release from insistent thoughts of immediate vengeance and from feelings of self-reproach consequent upon a morti- fying sense of neglected obligation, — Hamlet's mind reverts to philosophic questionings concerning human life and destiny, exploring with prescient awe the infinite regions of speculation, while his tongue utters the solemn and sublime ,77. THE HAMLET PROBLEM words of that profound soliloquy which, whether taken alone or in its organic re- lation to the progressive action of the tragedy, grandly illustrates the breadth of Shakespeare's dramatic design. No other passage in the play is more familiar to the popular mind than the impressive mono- logue beginning, " To be or not to be," which, owing to the universality of its theme, no less than to the solemn and medi- tative note which lends characteristic charm to the deep-meaning lines, has come to be regarded by the popular tribunal as peculiarly " Hamlets soliloquy," being, in fact, peculiarly an utterance of the " uni- versal " Hamlet. It has been pointed out. In an earlier paragraph, that in the passage which now claims our attention may be discovered the profounder implications of Hamlet's strug- gle as typifying a common experience of the race. The CQwardice-of " conscience," to which Hamlet here attributes man's in- 78 AND ITS SOLUTION stin ctive rev ulsion to suicide, is, in the final analysis, identical with the inexpli- cable reluctance which, in the preceding soliloquy, gave rise to self-accusations of personal cowardice, and with the dimly recognized moral scruple to which, in the soliloquy next following, the Prince, still goading himself to passionate vengeance with the unrelenting lash of sarcasm, ap- plies the terms " craven " and " coward." This cowardice proceeds from " con- science," that is, from man's intuitive recognition of the law that is impersonal and divine. We have said that the soliloquy, " To be or not to be," is peculiarly an utterance of the " universal " Hamlet. This is" true, but not in the absolute sense that Hamlet's gloomy reflections at this point in the play voice the ultimate conclusions of human wisdom. The attitude of mind denoted by Hamlet's course of reasoning in this soliloquy is no more truly character- 79 THE HAMLET PROBLEM istic of the Prince than are the earlier and the later phases of his intellectual and spiritual progression. His mental atti- tude at the end of the play (Act V, Scene II) is tranquil and philosophic. Resigna- tion, acquiescence, impersonal devotion to duty in the highest sense, — these are the attributes of his moral wisdom as revealed in his speeches to Horatio in the closing scene. At the beginning of the play, we behold Hamlet oppressed by a burdening sense of the infinite responsibility resting upon his individual soul, a responsibility from which he fain would shrink, but dare not, alas, lest he should contravene an or- dinance of Heaven : "O, that this too too solid flesh -would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew I Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd His canon 'gainst self -slaughter ! " The change of mental attitude revealed in the soliloquy, " To be or not to be," though subtle, is nevertheless clearly 80 AND ITS SOLUTION marked. Hamlet is still under the domi- nant control of the personal motive. He still measures the worth of life by stand- ards of selfish interest and desire. But he has now come to view the human situation more judicially, more profoundly, and with a more philosophic eye. He speaks, in this soliloquy, not for himself alone, but for all mankind ("Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all "), for all mankind who have not yet come unto the highest estate of moral wisdom. The next two soliloquies of Hamlet,— that beginning, " 'Tis now the very witch- ing time of night" (Act III, Scene II), and that which opens with the words, " Now might I do it pat, now he is pray- ing" (Act III, Scene III), — reveal the dark and ominous drift of a passion di- rectly consequent upon Hamlet's now abso- lute moral certainty of his uncle's crime, resulting ' from the King's guilty self-be- trayal at the "play-scene." That the 8i THE HAMLET PROBLEM Prince recognizes the perilous tendency of this ascendant passion, is clearly manifest in the first of these monologues, which re- lates primarily to his mother, and which, in its closing lines, recalls to the reader's thought the solemn forewarning of the Ghost : "'Tis now the very 'witching time of night, When churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out Contagion to this world; now could I drink hot blood. And do such bitter business as the day Would quake to look on. Soft! now to my mother. heart, lose not thy nature; let not ever The soul of Nero enter this firm bosom; Let me be cruel, not unnatural; 1 will speak daggers to her, but use none; My tongue and soul in this be hypocrites: How in my words soever she be shent, To give them seals, never, my soul, consent I " In the second of the two soliloquies, — that which relates to the King at prayer, — Hamlet checks the impulse to instant 82 AND ITS SOLUTION action, only to indulge, in imagination, an ideal vengeance appalling in the horror of its retributive justice. He contemplates not merely the sacrifice of life for life : — In return for the purgatorial pains presum- ably being suffered by his father, he would doom to eternal torment his uncle's soul : "Up, sword, and know thou a more horrid hent: When he is drunk asleep, or in his rage, Or in the incestuous pleasure of his bed; At gamingj swearing, or about some act That has no relish of salvation in't; Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven, And that his soul may be as damn'd and black As hell, whereto it goes." Passion has reached its climax . last full\i The dee d of veng eance-is - at last fully 3etht = mined "pon,— -thekillingofthe,_^ing wHen-Ti&-JLS_JlalMM.t-.som6.-a6 t ^^^^ fe i fc -has no relish of ^alvation in't." How soon thereafter does jHan det's fell purpose cul- minateJn-actIoiU--Jr.h£jh rust throu gh the arras is intended for the King. "" ^'^""^" 83 THE HAMLET PROBLEM It has been shown that in the accident fatal to Polonius we may discern the hand of destiny thwarting Hamlet's purpose, and that the tragic disaster consequent upon the impetuous sword-thrust may be interpreted as a divine rebuke, a heavenly chastisement and warning. Hamlet^ vio- lent. Jfi£d_Ji_JiewaUed_b£_hIs_jnoth^ as " jash and bloody." It has been charac- . terized jy an emi nent critic as an act of " blind passion," of " hot impuls ive rage." Neither of these descriptions is precisely true. Hamlet's mortal stroke, though im- petuous, can not, strictly speaking, be re- garded as " rash." Still less can it be said to spring from blind passion or ungovern- able rage. Hamlet is here by no means an irresponsible agent. Swift, intuitive judgment preceded the homicidal volition, and the lightning thrust which followed is wholly consistent with that quick decision. The judgment, however, is erroneous, be- ing prejudicially influenced by the vengeful 84 AND ITS SOLUTION passion to which the Prince has given unre- strained indulgence since the moment of his uncle's guilty self -betrayal, the proof of the " honesty " of the Ghost having been misconstrued by Hamlet as a justifi- cation of his bloody course of thought and as an incitement to speedy revenge. The accidental killing of Polonius marks the turning-point at once of the dramatic and of the psychological action of the tragedy. We see here depicted the cru- cial phase of an elemental < experience. T he p ersonal motive of revenge, which, in the first nair*oF¥EFpIayJ^~gains"§Ugremacy over Hamlet's will, "with disastrous conse- quence in the death of an unintended vic- tim, gradually yields dominion to the authority of an impersonal motive. The larger ideal is at first but vaguely ap- prehended, and only in exalted moments, but by degrees, along with the ripening of Hamlet's mind ever alive to the progress of providential event, this ideal becomes 85 THE HAMLET PROBLEM clearly manifest, furnishing the standard and test of right, by which the lesser mo- tive is judged. The inference to be derived from the fact that in the impetuous sword-thrust through the arras, in the middle of the play, Hamlet executed a predetermined and deliberate purpose, — that he is vouchsafed complete indulgence, in thought and in act, of his vengeful pas- sion, only to discover that his mortal stroke thwarts his design, entailing tragic dis- aster, — is unmistakable. Without taint- ing his soul with the guilt of intended evil, the untoward event startles his mind from the contemplation of inward to that of out- ward fact. It thus widens his intellec- tual horizon, opening his consciousness to the imminent authority of divine law oper- ating visibly in the objective world. The full significance of this divine rebuke, — this negative lesson, — is purposely ob- scured at this point in the play. But the 86 AND ITS SOLUTION incident, nevertheless, is interpreted by Hamlet as a symbol and a revelation. Hereafter his mind shall be ever on the alert for the heavenly signal. Truth which is derived from self-analysis and introspective thought, is partial. Per- fect wisdom shall come only with the knowledge of external truth which is written in the ways of Providence. To " reasonings of the mind turned inward " must be added reasonings of the mind turned outward. To knowledge of the law that is within man's members must be added knowledge of the law that is divine. Concerning the occasion and significance of Hamlet's last soliloquy (Act IV, Scene IV) , something has already been said. It has been shown that the example of For- tinbras, whose reckless venture against Poland involves not only the hazard of his own life, but the " imminent death of twenty thousand men," — an example cited by Hamlet to his own dispraise, — is 87 THE HAMLET PROBLEM an instance " gro ss as earth " o f action springing from ambitious pride, irPwliich the motive ot honor (the personal mo- tive) is farthest removed from moral duty. Regarding the import of this soliloquy as marking a subtle but significant phase in Hamlet's transforming struggle, a few additional words of explanation are re- quired. Hamlet's utterances at this point in the play, while they denote a reactionary mood of self-distrust analogous to that revealed in his fourth soliloquy (Act II, Scene II), exhibit, nevertheless, a more advanced stage of thought and feeling, induced by the precedent subjective expe- rience of Act III. From the throes of penitent anguish a higher spiritual life is 'struggling to be born. Conscience, the authoritative force of which is confessed in the previous soliloquy ( " To be or not to be ") as forbidding the act of self- slaughter, now asserts its^way in conscious- ness as a negative factor in all his reasofl- 88 AND ITS SOLUTION ^igs concerning the act of vengeance. Be It oBsetved/'Kowever, that itFaiithority is as yet only negative, being recognized merely as a deterrent force, and not as a clear and positive intimation of right. Passion is still at war with conscience, the sovereignty of which is contemptuously disputed by reason. The moral impulse Is still characterized by Hamlet as mere " craven scruple," — the " conscience " which " doth make cowards of us all." Hamlet Is here represented not as certain of the wisdom of his inaction, but only as less absolute In the assurance that he Is not right In delaying the deed of vengeance. He dimly recognizes, at best, the " one part wisdom " of the thought which In- sistently admonishes against precipitate action. In this soliloquy we find Hamlet for the last time fanning the embers of vindictive passion — ^ those ever-subsiding fires which are now rendered Ineffectual by the countervailing authority of con- 89 THE HAMLET PROBLEM science. His inward struggle, having be- come less violently emotional, more dispas- sionate, is represented in terms almost wholly intellectual. We feel that the con- flict is nearing its end, and that Hamlet is now far removed, mentally and spiritually, from any impulsive act of mere personal revenge, — notwithstanding the final ex- clamatory words of vain resolve with which he essays to revive a dying purpose. The mind and character of Hamlet are again and again brought into sharp con- trast with other and lesser intellects and natures. To the reader who, viewing Hamlet's situation through Hamlet's self- depreciatory eyes, is prone to exalt the character and laud the conduct of Fortin- bras as furnishing an ideal of heroic man- hood worthy of Hamlet's emulation, the pathetically unheroic transformation of Laertes in Act IV, Scene VH, — his sudden conversion from the reckless and uncom- promising champion of honor to the des- 90 AND ITS SOLUTION picable estate of a mere dupe of villainy, the willing, tool of a vile king, — pre- sents an insurmountable difficulty, the effect of the latter incident, in such case, being to neutralize the impression received from the previous scene. It has been noted in an earlier paragraph that the character of Hamlet finds its perfect an- tithesis in that of Claudius, the contrast between these " mighty opposites " consist- ing in the fact that while the former em- bodies in an ideal manner the attributes and tendencies of a most noble and moral nature, the latter typifies the reverse human qualities. The contrast between Hamlet and Laertes, unlike that between Ham- let and Claudius, is not the contrast be- tween a virtuous and a vicious nature, but rather that between a profound and a superficial mind. From the speeches of Laertes in Act IV, Scene V, or from his words in Act I, Scene III, the reader has no reason to doubt the essential justice of 91 THE HAMLET PROBLEM Hamlet's magnanimous description of Ophelia's brother as a " very noble youth." The motive of revenge, prompted by filial devotion, is not less commendable in Laertes than in Hamlet. It is in their mental attitude toward life and life's re- sponsibilities that the two characters differ so radically. Ultimate and eternal issues have little or no weight with Laertes. In pursuance of vengeance he would give to neglect all other obligations, whether hu- man or divine: "To hell, allegiance! tows, to the blackest devil I Conscience and grace, to the profoundest pit! I dare damnation. To this point I stand: That both the worlds I give to negligence. Let come what comes; only I'll be reveng'd Most throughly for my father." Such blustering words of reckless prof- anation reveal, not indeed an ignoble nature, but a mind incapable of profound moral discernment, — a mind which in its overweening presumption can as readily 92 AND ITS SOLUTION defy the holy ordinances of Heaven as re- nounce all vows of earthly allegiance. Though not without heroic traits, the superficial Laertes, true son of the shallow Polonius, is pathetically lacking in all the sovereign attributes of mind and character which constitute Hamlet's greatness, en- abling him to discern beneath the outward shows of life the eternal verities of the spiritual world. 93 In the foregoing paragraphs attention has been confined mainly to the ear- lier stages of Hamlet's internal struggle, as revealed through the medium of solil- oquy in the first four acts of the play. It remains for us now to consider, in its rela- tion to that struggle, the culminant phase of his moral evolution, as indicated by his discourse to Horatio in Act V. What, pre- cisely, is the change wrought in Hamlet by experience and reflection during the period of his enforced absence from Denmark? As the result of protracted meditation on his miraculous and providential exploit, what is his final outlook upon the world of man, and what his mental attitude toward the question of vengeance? We have shown that the crucial conflict depicted in 94 THE HAMLET PROBLEM Hamlet's soliloquies is the transforming process of mental and moral growth, an intellectual and spiritual ripening. Ham- let's solemn utterances to Horatio, in the fifth act, reveal a mind which through tragic ordeal has come into the heritage of moral wisdom. Only in the fifth act does the Prince of Denmark move before us in the complete majesty and splendor of his matured faculties. His mind is now serene — his will no longer in opposition to the will of Heaven. His violent men- tal conflict has subsided, and something like a settled peace has come upon his soul. Soliloquy is at an end; purpose and action are at last in close accord ; and for the first time in the play*Hamlet's philosophic gen- eralizations concerning human life and destiny may be construed as Shakespeare's ultimate word on the problematic theme. The fifth act comprises two scenes. The first scene opens with Hamlet's satiric moralizings at the edge of the newly-made 95 THE HAMLET PROBLEM grave, and closes with the dramatic inci- dent in which, impelled by a " towering passion " evoked by the " bravery " of Laertes' grief for Ophelia, Hamlet leaps into the grave. Scene II opens with Ham- let's solemn rehearsal of the " circum- stance " of his providential return to Den- mark on the pirate ship, and ends with the fatal fencing-match and its tragic sequel of divine retribution. Hamlet's reflections in Scene I, — his somber meditations on the vanity of hu- man ambition, pride, and power, — denote a mind engrossed with the consideration of infinite and eternal issues. There could be no greater error than to assume that his caustic animadversions on the presumption of the lawyer and the poli- tician, on the sycophancy of the courtier, and on the common destiny which awaits all mankind, — which humbles the tower- ing pride of an Alexander or a Caesar, even as it silences the frivolous mirth of a 96 AND ITS SOLUTION Yorick, — are to be construed as evidence of cynicism or fatalism on Hamlet's part. In the depths of his nature Hamlet is neither a cynic nor a fatalist. His irony questions not the spiritual verities of life. In spite of the seemingly fatalistic tenor of his mood, his whimsical speculations at this point are in no wise incompatible with an absolute acceptance of the providential wisdom of God. Hamlet's discourse in Scene II denotes a more exalted mood and a more advanced phase of thought than are represented in the previous scene, and implies a change in mental attitude induced by the mortifying realization that in an unguarded moment of " towering passion " he had forgotten himself to Laertes, in whose cause he now beholds the image of his own. In the in- terval of self-analysis immediately follow- ing the stormy outburst at Ophelia's grave, Hamlet's soul is again brought before the judgment-bar of conscience, and by a sec- 97 THE HAMLET PROBLEM ond " chastisement of remorse," which operates as a final and authoritative check upon self-indulgent passion, is prepared at last for its complete spiritual awakening. Sharp indeed is the contrast between the mocking and ironic humor of his reflec- tions on the vanity of human presumption, and the sober and reverent mood in which he ponders the infinite mystery of Provi- dence. On reading the opening lines of Scene II we are at once struck by Ham- let's air of abstraction, th& manner of one absorbed in the contemplation of ultra- mundane things. We are impressed, like- wise, by the solemnity of his utterances, denoting in the speaker's mind: (i) a recognition of the certitude of Provi- dential Wisdom shaping the affairs of men ; (2) religious resignation to the will of Heaven, by which, through conscience, his action is now wholly controlled; and (3) a deepened sense of the inscrutable mys- 98 AND ITS SOLUTION tery of human life. With absolute con- sistency and precision of detail has Shakespeare depicted the culminant phase of Hamlet's moral development, — Ham- let's attitude of mind in the closing scene being indicated not only by philosophic generalizations ("There's a divinity that shapes our ends " ; " We defy augury : there's a special providence in the fall of a sparrow," etc.) in which the Prince formulates his religious faith, and by the prevailing tenor of his discourse to Horatio, but also by specific observations of a more abstruse character concerning the subconscious operations of his own mind under the miraculous control of omniscient intelligence, implying on Ham- let's part a recognition of man's occult and mysterious relation to the supernatural order. Our interpretation of the tragedy of Hamlet may fittingly conclude with a brief 99 THE HAMLET PROBLEM analysis of the one remaining passage of the play requiring elucidation in view of the theory advanced in these pages. The passage to which we refer, the only pas- sage in Act V bearing directly on the ques- tion of vengeance, occupies a subordinate setting in the text, immediately after Ham- let's account of his providential exploit, and, from its suspended character as an un- answered and unanswerable question, par- takes somewhat of the nature of soliloquy, and depicts with marvelous delicacy of shading the last subtle phase of Hamlet's internal struggle: "Does it not, thinks't thee, stand me now upon — He that hath kill'd my king and whor'd my mother, Popp'd in between the election and my hopes, Thrown out his angle for my proper life. And with such cozenage — is't not perfect con- science To quit him with this arm? and is't not to be damn'd. To let this canker of our nature come In further evil ? " IOC AND ITS SOLUTION It will be observed that the question of vengeance here presents itself to Hamlet's mind in a dual aspect. No longer does the Prince of Denmark regard the killing of the King as an immediate and unrelated obligation. He now contemplates the deed both from the personal and from the impersonal viewpoint; and instead of arraigning himself, as on previous occa- sions, for the cowardice of neglected ac- tion, he here dispassionately weighs the passionate motive in the balance of con- science, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, seeks to reconcile this motive with the absolute monitions of religious duty. His words clearly denote an attitude of mind in which the conflicting elements of his protracted moral struggle are all but mutually harmonized. Horatio does not venture an answer to questions of con- science and duty which time and circum- stance alone can answer. Complete recon- cilement of the personal with the imper- lOI THE HAMLET PROBLEM sonal motive does not occur until the heaven-determine d moment when Ham- let consummates his appointed task, only as the sable curtain of death is falling on the last scene of all of his tragic human story. 1 02 POETS OF OHIO Selections Representing the Poetical Work op Ohio Authors from the Pioneer Period to the Present Day, with Biographical Sketches and Notes. BY EMERSON VENABLE One Volume, 8vo, 356 pages, printed on fine antique laid paper and bound in full cloth; with handsome frontispiece comprising portraits of leading authors. Net $1.50, The Ohio State Journal. — " This volume contains biographical " sketches of thirty-four of the poets of Ohio, with copious quotations showing the character of their poetic genius. Comparisons are hardly proper, but it may be pardonable to claim that no State in the Union can make a better showing of poetic expression than Ohio. These pages sustain such a claim. . . . Gallagher, Howells, Kinney, the Carys, the Fiatts, Lytle, Venable, Edith Thomas, Dunbar, Read, and all that bright galaxy of poets who have expressed in happy lyric the inmost soul of the State they honored — let us never cease in honoring them, and let us often take down the record of their inspiring thoughts, and give to our own lives their benediction*2and their grace." The Sun (New York) . — " The great State of Ohio, not con- tent with being the maker of Presidents and of capable citi- zens for public offices, takes pride likewise in its poets. . . . It is a very respectable showing that the Buckeye State makes, . . . Ohio has no reason to be ashamed of her Par- nassus.*' The Chicago Evening Post. — " It is surprising how largely the popular American poetry of yesterday is represented in this collection." The Cincinnati Enquirer, — *' The volume ' Poets of Ohio * is remarkable and deserving of careful attention. In the first place, it is a WQrk; not a mere popular compilation hastily gathered and put together without special order or purpose, but a scholarly and critical presentation, according to an historical plan, of what its editor considers the best, and only the best, poetical literature of a period and section of our country exceptionally productive in that form of writ- ing, which period' and section, Jiowever, have not hitherto been made the subject of adequate treatment as to their lit- erary importance by any competent pen." The Commercial Tribune (Cincinnati). — "Of the notable in- tellectual development of the people of Ohio there can be no better evidence than is furnished by Mr. Venable's attract- ive and remarkable book. . . '. The volume may be heartily commended to all teachers. It should be put in every school library of the State, for from it our youth can learn that Ohio, Mother of Presidents, is also the Mother of Poets." 105 The Ohio Educational Monthly. — " It ought to be the jo;jr and pride of every one who appreciates literature that Ohio has made such a noble contribution to poetry and to have the choicest of these poems with sketches of their authors gath- ered together in a single volume. Mr. Venable has done us all a splendid service and for this we should all be grateful." The Catholic Columbian. — " More than a mere collection of poems, more than an Ohio anthology, more than a literary text book is the volume entitled ' Poets of Ohio.' ... It is, indeed, all of these; but it is, in addition, a beacon light thrown upon the past history of the State, her eminent sons and daughters, her legends, her beauties of landscape, and especially upon the traditions of literature which, even in pioneer days, were part of the heritage of Ohio, claimed from her ancestry of the Eastern seaboard." The Dial (Chicago). — " Ohio has had thirty-four poets deemed worthy of inclusion in this volume, and many of them are of more than local renown. . . . Altogether, Ohio makes almost as creditable a showing in poetry as in politics. The book is dignified in appearance and in editing, ' 1 06 A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD BY WILLIAM HENRY VENABLE AUTBOK OF "A Dream of Empire," "Beginnings of Lit- erary Culture in the OhA) VALLEy," " Footprints of THE Pioneers," " Tales from Ohio Historv," " Saga of the- Oak and Other Foeus," " Floridian Sonnets," etc. Handsomely bound — Ked Buckram, Net $1,25, Literary Digest. — " Mr, Venable has a charming talent as a writer and it has never been exhibited more fully than in these delightful reminiscences of his own life." New York Times. — " It is evident that Dr. Venable had a happy and an interesting boyhood, and his account of it makes a most wholesome book for the reading of the boys and girls of to-day.^' The Dial. — " The charm of pioneer life in the backwoods is felt in every chapter and almost every page of ' A BUCK- EYE BOYHOOD ' from the pen of a Buckeye author of note. Dr. William Henry Venable." Newark Call.—" The author combines historic realism with im- agination, invests the scenes of his boyhood with a charm that is idyllic and the story of his youthful days is inter- esting and is told with mingled humor and pathos, mirth, satire, wisdom and philosophy." The Salt Lake Tribune. — " This is a most entertaining story in which the boy of seventy years ago is described through all his boyhood aiid youthful experiences. The work is de- cidedly an attractive one, written in a manner sure to cap- tivate the reader and hold him fast to the end." Grand Rapids Herald.—" ' A BUCKEYE BOYHOOD ' is one of the most delightful sketches of rural life in Ohio yet issued." Buffalo Express. — ^"Dr. William H. Venable, the Ohio poet, novelist, and historian, has written a delightful account of his early years. It is an entertaining chronicle." The Pittsburg Dispatch. — ^"An absorbing narrative, replete with humor and pathos, mirth, satire, wisdom and philos- ophy." Worcester Evening Ganette. — " The book deserves a place on library shelves quite near Charles Dudley Warner's ' Being a Boy.' " Chicago Tribune. — " Dr. Wm. H. Venable presents with felici- tous ingenuousness and some reality the homely ^ictures^of ordinary country life in southern Ohio. It is interesting and edifying." 5'fl« Francisco Chronicle. — " The book is of instructive value." STEWART & KIDD COMPANY, Publishers, Cincinnati. 107