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 The subjection of Hamlet:an essay toward 
 
 3 1924 013 138 080 
 
n 
 
The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013138080 
 
THE SUBJECTION OF HAMLET. 
 
THE 
 
 Subjection of Hamlet 
 
 AN ESSAY 
 
 TOWARD AN EXPLANATION OF THE MOTIVES OF THOUGHT AND 
 ACTION OF SHAKESPEARE'S 
 
 PRINCE OF DENMARK. 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM LEIGHTOF, 
 
 AUTHOR OF " SHAKESPEAHe'S DREAM," "tHE SONS OF GODWIN," "CHANGE," ETC. 
 
 WITH A]N" IITTEODTJOTIOI^r 
 
 BY 
 
 JOSEPH CEOSBY, Hon. M.E.S.L. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA: 
 
 J. B. LIPPING OTT & CO. 
 
 18 8 2. 
 
 ^^ 
 0/3 
 
 I I H U A U V 
 
Copyright, 1882, by William Leighton. 
 
HAMLET. 
 
 Beneath thy " inky cloak" what mystery, 
 Hidden yet half unfolded, cheats our eyes? 
 What brooding thought in thy sad bosom lies. 
 To stain young life with deep-dyed melancholy ? 
 Still by thy side stalks grim-eyed tragedy, 
 While superstitious terrors darkly rise — 
 Wringing our hearts with painful sympathies— 
 And push thee to thy fatal destiny. 
 Thou can'st not hide the struggle in thy breast : 
 Like doomed Laocoon's within the folds 
 Of deadly serpents, must thy sufferings be— 
 In vain thy heart of mystery : Nature holds 
 Such enmity to madness, 'tis confessed 
 That monster is the foe that tortures thee. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 I wo centuries elapsed after the death of the 
 Great Master of the English drama before 
 the critics discovered that he was something 
 more than a mere writer of plays. Cole- 
 ridge in England, and Goethe in Germany, turning 
 upon Shakespeare the focus of metaphysical analysis, 
 were the first to lift him out of the domain of the 
 playwright and artist, and to* exalt him to a transcen- 
 dent position among mental philosophers and mental 
 pathologists. And the chief, grand, and unique produc- 
 tion of his, on which they exercised their genius, and 
 from which they drew their illustrations, was the tragedy 
 of Hamlet; a production upon which more thought has 
 been bestowed, and more volumes written, than upon any 
 other secular work in the language. And yet how con- 
 tradictory in theory, and unsatisfactory in results, have 
 been all these speculations! Some half a dozen years 
 
8 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 ago, Karl Werder, 6f Germany, promulgated his original 
 and fascinating theory of the character of Hamlet ; one 
 so different from anything heretofore conceived of the 
 prince, and one developed with such plausible ingenuity 
 and force of illustration, that it startled for a while the 
 world of thinkers ; and men began to believe that they 
 had, at last, found a solid basis of fact on which to account 
 for the puzzling motives and actions of the character. 
 Instead of being a doubter in thought, and a procrasti- 
 nator in deed, we were told that Hamlet was a quick- 
 witted and self-reliant man of business, taking advantage 
 of every opportunity to execute his plans of revenge 
 according to his oath, and failing of success only because 
 he was hampered by surrounding circumstances. Bravely 
 and skilfully he attempted to navigate his ship over a 
 tempestuous ocean that must be crossed. He exerted 
 every nerve, tacked and veq^ ed as he best could, and light- 
 ened his hold by sacrificing every encumbrance ; but he 
 was wrecked at last upon rocks that no pilot could avoid, 
 amid storms that no vessel could withstand. [l/The ghost 
 laid upon him the duty of avenging his murder. Merely 
 to have plunged his sword into the king would have been 
 a comparatively easy task ; but what, then, would have 
 been his own position? How would the act appear to 
 the court and the people of Denmark? Thoroughly 
 satisfied though he might be that it was "an honest 
 ghost" he had seen, he had nevertheless no power to 
 
INTR OD UCTION. % 
 
 bring the apparition into court and make it testify to 
 tlie facts. He would simply have stood in the light of a 
 cowardly and cold-blooded murderer, who had despatched 
 his sovereign through private malice for cutting him out 
 of the succession. It became, therefore, his task to so 
 conduct himself as to inveigle the king into some overt 
 act or confession ; for outside the king's own breast there 
 existed no living, tangible proof of the murder, f Could 
 any circumstances be imagined more trying to bear, or 
 more difficult to overcome, than those in which the young 
 and brilliant, the determined and dutiful, the self-sacri- 
 ficing but ill-starred prince was placed? He did all in 
 his power, all within human power, that could be done ; 
 but the fates were against him. Such was Werder's con- 
 ception of Hamlet, and not a few judicious critics ac- 
 cepted it; but a more careful attention to the text, and 
 a more accurate analysis of motive, procedure, and so- 
 liloquy, revealed its weakness. It would fit occasionally, 
 but not always ; it seemed to be a key that would unlock 
 some of the cells, but failed to open all the avenues of 
 the mystery ; it disappointed quite as often as it satisfied ; 
 and so, of late years, most thinkers have come back to 
 the old and celebrated theories of Coleridge and Goethe 
 and Schlegel. It is unnecessary, even did space allow, 
 here to recapitulate them. They may be briefiy stated as 
 exhibiting the character of Hamlet on the ground of a 
 functionally defective or unbalanced organization ; his 
 
10 INTR OD UCTION. 
 
 brain was unable to bear the strain put upon it ; his in- 
 tellectual activities were too great for his physical powers, 
 and the surplusage, invading the judgment, became the 
 chief agency in overwhelming and wrecking his splendid 
 abilities. 
 
 Let us here stop for a moment, and ask ourselves why 
 it is there should be such a variety of theories respecting 
 the idiosyncrasy of this one character? Why is it that 
 we scarcely find any two critics agree in its delineation ? 
 or even any one critic agree with himself for a long time 
 together ? Some one has remarked that " Germany is 
 Hamlet ;" may we not rather say that humanity is Ham- 
 let ? not one man's, but all men's humanity. And, as in 
 looking into a mirror, we each see our own face, and not 
 those of our neighbors; and as our features differ from 
 those of others, so they at different times differ from 
 themselves ; thus it may be with regard to Hamlet ; and 
 this is why the drama is so fascinating, both in the closet 
 and on the stage. We measure Hamlet by ourselves. 
 No one who reads or sees the play with any degree of 
 enthusiasm or appreciation, but has at some time been a 
 Hamlet to himself. Every one has at some time been 
 troubled with the same restless longings of the soul, and 
 the same trials of the affections, that make up the sum of 
 the sufferings of the Prince of Denmark. It is in this 
 wonderful art of combining the concrete with the ab- 
 stract, of giving us each a portrait of ourselves, and at 
 
INTRODUCTION. H 
 
 tlie same time of making every character " not one but 
 all mankind's epitome," that the great Art-Master's 
 amazing genius, observation, and insight are particularly 
 displayed. 
 
 In the following essay, the result of long and patient 
 thought, Mr. Leighton claims to have discovered the 
 master-key that opens, with all but infallible success, the 
 very heart of Hamlet's mystery. The question. Was 
 Hamlet insane? Mr. Leighton proceeds to solve on~the 
 hypothesis of a phase of mental pathology that has 
 never, I believe, been heretofore advanced. His con- 
 fidence in his hypothesis is great, and yet not more so, I 
 venture to say, than he has clearly and ably supported. 
 He seems to say, with Fabian in Twelfth Night, — 
 
 " Fab. I will prove it legitimate, Sir, upon the oaths of judgment 
 and reason. 
 
 Sir Toby. And they have been grand-jurymen since before Noah was 
 a sailor." 
 
 When I first read this essay, I confess I was surprised 
 at the aptitude with which Mr. Leighton's hypothesis 
 harmonized and dovetailed together the seeming contra- 
 dictions of motive and action that have made the char- 
 acter such a perplexing study. I re-read the whole play 
 with the sole object in view of testing its validity ; and 
 the more I studied it, the more it grew upon me. I must 
 not anticipate the reader by stating this hypothesis. Its 
 
1 2 INTR OD UCTION. 
 
 simplicity makes it surprising tliat it has not been enun- 
 ciated before. In a recent article, " On the Uses of 
 Shakespeare off the Stage" {Harpers' Monthly, August, 
 1882), the writer says, — 
 
 " If we analyze Hamlet's amazing power of associa- 
 tion, we see its roots in his impressionable temperament, 
 while its gigantic trunk and branches appear in the 
 sudden arrest of his quiet and intellectually luxurious 
 life at the University, in his intensely painful and be- 
 wildering attitude on his return to Elsinore, and in his 
 utter incapacity — such being the excessive productive- 
 ness of his imagination — to keep an idea sufficiently long 
 in contact with reason and judgment to actualize it by 
 the firm decision of his will." This is very good, so 
 far as it goes; but the writer fails of success by not 
 pushing the idea to that point of mental unsoundness 
 which Mr. Leighton has hit upon, and which, alone, 
 seems to elucidate the true nature of Hamlet's idiosyn- 
 crasy. This presupposes an unthought-of type of in- 
 tellectual weakness, more influential, as well as more 
 common, than is generally supposed; and it may very 
 probably be that the poet took both the design and 
 coloring of his portrait from nature. 
 
 The mode Mr. Leighton has taken in solving the 
 problem of Hamlet's insanity, or otherwise, is through 
 the question, How far has the poet permitted us to know 
 the character subjectively f That his new conception of 
 
INTR OB UCTION. 1 3 
 
 it is perfect, or that it will satisfy all admirers of this 
 noble tragedy, is, I think, very doubtful ; probably more 
 than the author himself expects. Influenced by past 
 experience, I dare not personally say that here is a final 
 settlement of the question, and that further study of the 
 character would be superfluous. But whatever may be 
 thought of the solution here proposed, no one can deny 
 that the author has thrown much additional light upon 
 the subject, and has illustrated it by an exhaustive anal- 
 ysis of Hamlet that is every way interesting. The 
 growth of Shakespeare societies, and of the literature 
 which both in America and Europe is ever swelling 
 around the works of our poet, is sufficient proof of the 
 interest that is felt in them ; and every help towards a 
 better understanding of them deserves our sincere grati- 
 tude. Mr. Leighton has done more than write a clever 
 and speculative essay. He has cleared away many of the 
 difficulties, and opened up a new psychological prospect 
 from which to view and study one of the profoundest 
 characters ever portrayed in dramatic literature ; and in 
 conclusion I will only express the hope that his masterly 
 and modest production may reach the hands of numerous 
 lovers of Hamlet and of Shakespeare, who will find in it 
 as great satisfaction and pleasure as it has given to 
 His obedient friend and servant, 
 
 JOSEPH CROSBY. 
 
 Zanesville, Ohio, August 19, 1882. 
 
THE SUBJECTION OF HAMLET. 
 
 "A pipe for Fortune's finger 
 To sound what stop she please." 
 
 HE character of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, 
 as portrayed by Shakespeare, has been before 
 the world for nearly three hundred years. 
 On account of the interest pertaining to it, and 
 the remarkable tragedy of which this melancholy prince 
 is the central figure, more has been thought, said, and 
 written of it, than of that of any other imaginary 
 dramatic personage. Though the learned minds of 
 deep and acute thinkers have been engaged in this 
 consideration, and a great literature has accumulated on 
 the subject, the problem of Hamlet's mental condition 
 remains to perplex the reader of to-day ; who, in the 
 diversity of opinions, is generally forced to rely on his 
 own impressions produced by reading the play or seeing 
 
 15 
 
16 THE SUBJECTION OF HAMLET. 
 
 it acted. The problem is the more interesting that it 
 occurs in a tragedy, which, with a few other plays by 
 the same author, undoubtedly holds the highest place in 
 dramatic literature; and that the character of Hamlet 
 engages our sympathies, and provokes curiosity perhaps 
 beyond any other in the long list of dramatic heroes. 
 His is a pathetic story, and a supernatural light shines 
 upon him from the spectral figure that appears in the 
 " nipping and eager air" upon that platform at Elsinore, 
 where 
 
 " The majesty of buried Denmark 
 Did sometimes march." 
 
 Hamlet's mind is endowed with some of the richest 
 gifts the greatest of poets could bestow. His conversa- 
 tion exhibits flashes of the most brilliant wit, charming 
 imagiiiations and fancies that crown him with a poetical 
 halo, subtilties of thought which delight and astonish us, 
 while the dignity and grace of his language compel ad- 
 miration, even when judgment disapproves of his course 
 of action. Yet, with all this brilliance, he fails to act 
 in any definite line of consistent purpose ; neglects what 
 he deems a sacred duty ; wastes himself in trifling occu- 
 pations ; descends to the ignoble part of a court-jester ; 
 breaks the heart of a lady he dearly loves ; uselessly and 
 recklessly kills her father, with no sign of sorrow or 
 remorse for the deed ; insults a brother's legitimate grief 
 
TEE SUBJECTION OF HAMLET. 17 
 
 at her grave; and finally goes stumbling to the catas- 
 trophe of his death, the most complete failure, in the 
 direction of the avowed purpose of his life, ever recorded. 
 To endeavor to understand why this is so, and exactly ^ 
 what Shakespeare meant by this enigmatical prince are 
 the objects of the present inquiry. It is not proposed 
 to cite the opinions of the world's thinkers upon Ham- 
 let's mental condition, — this has already been done exten- 
 sively and elaborately ; and those wishing to review such 
 opinions are referred to the second volume of Mr. Fur- 
 ness' admirable edition of the play, — but to present the 
 character of the prince as it presents itself to a reader ; 
 to mark certain peculiarities as they appear, and from 
 them try to find a key to his action and a means of 
 unfolding " the heart of his mystery." 
 
 The original story of Hamlet, written by Saxo Gram- 
 maticus early in the thirteenth century, only became 
 known in an English version, and adapted to the stage 
 near the end of the sixteenth century. As it first ap- 
 peared in English dress, it was either a translation out 
 of the collection of Belleforest, a French writer, who 
 probably copied from Bandello, an Italian novelist, or 
 a play founded on the story as told by Belleforest or 
 Bandello. Mr. Collier, in his introduction to The 
 Hystorie of Hamblet, states, " The only known copy of 
 this novel is preserved among Capell's books at Cam- 
 bridge, and bears date in 1608, but there can be little 
 
18 THE SUBJECTION OF HAMLET. 
 
 doubt that it had originally come from the press con- 
 siderably before the commencement of the seventeenth 
 century. That a play upon the story of Hamlet had 
 been written some years before 1590 we have every 
 reason to believe. On the 9th of June, 1594, Hens- 
 lowe registers in his diary, preserved at Dulwich College, 
 that Hamlet was performed by his company while acting 
 at Newington Butts, apparently in conjunction with the 
 association to which Shakespeare belonged ; it was then 
 an old play, and produced him only eight shillings as 
 his share of the receipts, though, when new pieces were 
 represented, his proportion at the same period was usually 
 more than three pounds. Malone confidently, though 
 conjecturally, assigned the Hamlet mentioned by Hens- 
 lowe to Thomas Kyd ; it is often alluded to by contem- 
 poraries, and there is not a moment's doubt that it was 
 written and acted many years before Shakespeare's 
 tragedy of the same name was produced." * Mr. Richard 
 Grant White is confident that portions of this early 
 Hamlet appear in the Quarto of Shakespeare's play 
 printed in 1603, where the actor, who furnished the 
 printer from an unreliable memory, had to be pieced 
 out with the older play. 
 
 How much of this old play Shakespeare (writing 
 
 * Shakespeare's Library : edited by William Hazlitt, vol. ii, part i, pages 
 213 and 214. 
 
THE SUBJJ^CTION OF HAMLET. 19 
 
 sometime between 1600 — not earlier, the best authorities 
 agree — and July 26, 1602, when this play was entered 
 in the Stationers' register) adopted may never be known, 
 nor what hint, if any, it afforded him to his conception 
 of the character of his chief personage. 
 
 The Hamlet of the Hystorie is utterly unlike Shake- 
 speare's hero. In t^at old story the Prince of Denmark 
 plays mad in the most unequivocal manner : " Hee rent 
 and tore his%clothes, wallowing and lying in the durt 
 and mire, his face all filthy and blacke, running through 
 the streets like a man distraught, not speaking one worde, 
 but such as seemed to proceede from madnesse and mere 
 frenzie, all his actions and jestures beeing no other then 
 the right countenances of a man wholly deprived of all 
 reason and understanding ; in such sort, that as then hee 
 seemed fitte for nothing, but to make sport to the pages 
 and rufi&ing courtiers, that attended in the court of his 
 uncle and father-in-law."* Counterfeiting insanity in 
 this coarse manner, there is no hint that his brain was 
 really diseased ; indeed his strength of intellect, will, and 
 general capacity are highly commended. Except in 
 certain of the circumstances in which he is placed, he 
 is not like Shakespeare's Hamlet; therefore his rude 
 characterization in the story affords no safe clue to the 
 
 * Shakespeare's Library : edited by William Hazlitt, vol. ii, part i, 
 page 231. 
 
« 
 
 '? V 
 
 20 THE SUBJECTION Q^ SAMLET. 
 
 t • 
 
 solution of the question we seek to answer. As no help 
 
 to a proper understanding o£|Hamlet can be obtained 
 from these originals, let us proceed tq his delineation by- 
 Shakespeare. ' 
 
 A more difficult position can hardly be imagined than 
 that in which the Prince of Deib^ark is placed. He 
 seems to have been in complete dgperjiience upon the j 
 will of his uncle, with no estate, power, following, or 
 influenbe of his own. The king describes Ms place, — 
 
 " Our chiefest courtier, cousin, and ojjr son." 
 
 The king's pronoun, " our," plainly , indicated his 
 'nephew's absolute subjection. While brddjjiing over the 
 disgrace of his mother's too-hasty marriage, and^ feeling 
 an instinctive distrust of her new husband, the startling ^ 
 disclosure of the ghost comes to fill him with horror and 
 dread of the cruel duty of revenge imposed upon him, — 
 a filial duty, yet one he cannot proclaim to the world 
 without better proof of his uncle's guilt than his own 
 relation of the words of the ghost. If he should act 1/ 
 promptly, and kill the king, what account of his deed 
 can he give to the court and the people? The story 
 of the ghost? When has a ghost story, with no cor- 
 roboratory proof, been held a good excuse for killing a 
 king? This will not do. Then there is the horrid 
 doubt of the authenticity of the ghost, — 
 
 >^ 
 
THE SUBJECTION OF HAMLET. 21 
 
 " 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, 
 As he is very potent with such spirits, 
 Abuses me to damn me." 
 
 It is evident that he must not proceed too hastily ; 
 the circumstances of his father's death are to be made 
 plain to the world by other means than the ghost story ; 
 then, and not until then, Hamlet can proceed to direct 
 
 ; retribution ; for the right of a son to avenge a father's 
 death upon his murderer was not only accorded, but 
 the act demanded by the code of morality held by the 
 
 Scandinavian people of old Denmark. ' 
 
 To show proof of the guilt of King Claudius might 
 ^be a difficult task ; but it is one that should be possible 
 to the brilliant intellect of Hamlet. We may fairly ex- 
 \ pect of his mental superiority over the king and all the 
 ^/ court, that he will proceed with carefully weighed and 
 \ matured plans to direct success ; make plain the mur- 
 derer's guilt ; overwhelm him with just retribution ; and, 
 as the crown of his undertaking, place himself on Den- 
 mark's throne. But this is what Hamlet does not do. 
 He makes no plans worthy of the name. It is true that, 
 by a dramatic representation of his father's murder, he 
 entraps his guilty uncle into a confusion that confirms 
 the ghost's story to his own mind, and perhaps to that of 
 Horatio ; but there are no other prepared witnesses, as 
 
22 THE SUBJECTION OF HAMLET. 
 
 there might have been ; and the only practical result of 
 this "mouse-trap" is to make the king aware that his 
 nephew knows the damning history of his guilt, and to 
 set in motion more careful and dangerous plots against 
 that nephew's life. 
 
 ^---This failure to accomplish, in any satisfactory way, 
 /the mission so solemnly and preternaturally assigned to 
 (him has been explained in various ways. He has been 
 declared mad, and not mad; he has been deemed des- 
 titute' of the nerve to act ; he has been called a pro- 
 crastinator, a trifler with the awful issues placed in 
 his hands. Goethe pictures him as "an oak tree 
 planted in a costly vase, which should have received 
 into its bosom only lovely flowers ; the roots spread out, 
 the vase is shivered to pieces, — a beautiful, pure, noble, 
 and most moral nature, without the strength of nerve 
 which makes the hero, sinking beneath a burden which 
 it can neither bear nor throw off."* These poetical 
 pictures by the great German poet have been often 
 adopted, and other notable thinkers have modified them 
 in various way; while others have found objections to 
 / such belief 
 •^ / ' Hamlet meets the ghost's first suggestion of revenge 
 I with an alacrity that argues no lack of nerve, — 
 
 * New Variorum Shakespeare : edited by H. H. Furness, vol. iv, page 
 273. 
 
THE SUBJECTION OF HAMLET. 23 
 
 " Haste me to know't, that I, with wings as swift 
 As meditation or the thoughts of love, 
 May sweep to my revenge." 
 
 And when the ghost has disappeared, the prince's soliloquy 
 breathes the most determined nerve and resolution ; there 
 is not a word or phrase that betrays the least indication of 
 wavering. When joined by his friends, his language has 
 lost its violence, and is flighty ; but, considered as the 
 expression of a sane mind, surely that of a man who has 
 the nerve to do what he proposes. A heart and hand 
 incapable, through fear, tenderness, or repugnance to 
 '' violence, of carrying into execution the intents of the 
 mind, constitute the conditions which are understood as / 
 lack of nerve. Hamlet's words are always fearless ; so, 
 /too, are his acts. In his mother's chamber he both speaks 
 I and acts with nervous promptitude. In the sea-fight, the 
 \<5hurch-yard, the fencing match, he shows that he has the 
 Verve to act. But he does not act with any effective force 
 in the direction of his mission ; and hence it has been 
 claimed that he is without the nerve to do so ; but there 
 may be another reason : A mind that cannot hold to 
 ONE INTENT would be a sufficient reason. If he has not 
 so much command of his own will as to be able to keep 
 a predetermined purpose in view through all the circum- 
 stances of his surroundings, in every interview with the 
 people of the court, his mother, and the king, but is 
 influenced and controlled by any prevailing disposition. 
 
24 THE SUBJECTION OF HAMLET. 
 
 any idiosyncrasy unconnected with his mission, his mind 
 lacks the governing power of judgment, and this lack is 
 to be insane, unsound; for the worst forms of insanity 
 are the working of mental faculties without judgment. 
 
 Is not this lack of continuous governing power Ham- 
 let's condition ? He extricates himself from the hands of 
 the king's servants, who are conveying him to England, 
 with a prompt decision that shows abundance of nerve, 
 taking advantage of circumstances as none but a man of 
 nervous force could do, and accomplishing his little plot 
 with plenty of daring and cunning, but following no 
 plans except the momentary ones that call for immediate 
 execution. Throughout the play he is constantly acting 
 with nervous alacrity according to the dictates of a won- 
 derfully keen but eccentric intellect; yet we do not find 
 a consistency in his actions indicating a decided line of 
 conduct, nor any leading up to a design for the accom- 
 plishment of the duty to which he has vowed his life. 
 He is constantly falling into entanglements which come 
 of circumstances, generally the influence of other minds. 
 In spite of his brilliant intellect, which dazzles and over- 
 awes all with whom he comes in contact, and which 
 always charms an audience, we are, during the play, and 
 long before its conclusion, made aware that he is not the 
 man to accomplish the duty to which he has been called, 
 and which he has zealously undertaken. While we are 
 thus disappointed in him, we do not lose either interest or 
 
THE SUBJECTION OF HAMLET. 25 
 
 admiration, but are drawn to him by a strange sympathy, 
 and filled with a magnetic pathos that flows from him, — 
 a pathos which, as a sane being, he does not always 
 deserve, and which, upon reflection, we do not find 
 worthily bestowed on such a cowardly and unfeeling 
 plotter as a sane Hamlet would be. 
 
 If it be claimed that upon the real or feigned insanity 
 of Hamlet so much has been written, and both sides of 
 the question had such ardent advocates, that this question 
 has been sufficiently discussed, and by such able thinkers, 
 that what they have failed to develop has little chance of 
 being elucidated, yet, we must remember, that it is just 
 this problem that meets every student of English litera- 
 ture when he comes to the consideration of a play justly 
 declared a masterpiece of the language; for Hamlet's 
 psychological condition is the key of the drama, and the 
 reader must, perforce, examine it for himself, however 
 much it has been previously discussed. If he consults 
 authorities for the solution of his doubts, he will find the 
 question not plainly determined for him, as able argu- 
 ments and famous names are ranged on both sides. 
 
 In the Hystorie the hero pretends madness after the 
 manner of that Roman Brutus who counterfeited a fool ; 
 but, because this is so in the original story, it by no 
 means follows that Shakespeare intended his hero to play 
 the madman, for it is observable, as before mentioned, 
 that, in the methods of their conduct, the two Hamlets are 
 
 4 
 
26 TEE SUBJECTION OF HAMLET. 
 
 very different. There is no agreement between Shake- 
 speare's graceful and intellectual prince and the hero of 
 the Hystorie. As the conduct is different, so may the 
 cause be ; for it is very easy to understand how the great 
 dramatist may have preferred to give his Hamlet a real 
 infirmity rather than present him in the part of a cheat, 
 whose counterfeiting, however difficult his position, has in 
 it something of the nature of cowardice, a quality very 
 detrimental to a hero. If it be said, as it has been, that 
 a crazy hero makes "the whole play a chaos," and de- 
 prives it of tragic interest, or that Hamlet's broad and 
 acute intellect precludes the thought of insanity, it may 
 be shown that both of these positions can be disputed. 
 
 Is it not probable that a doubt of Hamlet's sanity 
 increases the mystery of his movements, making us 
 watch more intently his words and actions? Does not 
 his flightiness, alternating with exhibitions of the most 
 brilliant intellectual power, give him an added interest 
 
 Qin our eyes, the interest of uncertainty ? If we believe 
 n his clear, unhesitating judgment, we know that he 
 ^as a protecting power in the strength of his brain to 
 invert all the dangers that threaten him; but, on the 
 other hand, how perilous and uncertain is his position, 
 if, urged by noble intents towards great deeds, he goes 
 onward with no safe guide of judgment, like a rudder- 
 less ship in a dangerous sea, where the curl and break 
 of each wave may be on the sharp point of a destroying 
 
THE SUBJECTION OF HAMLET. 27 
 
 rock, and no controlling power to avoid the wreck ! If 
 it can be shown that "a constant principle" governs 
 all his changes and makes a perfect key of his conduct, 
 will not the discovery of this " principle" conserve the 
 unity of action essential to tragedy, and preserve and 
 make deserving that pathos which a writer claims Ham- 
 let's insanity would destroy ? 
 
 In answer to the other objection, that Hamlet's high 
 faculties of intellect of themselves disprove insanity, it 
 >4will be found that the reverse of this is true. It is a 
 ( I fact often presented in the world's history, and doubtless 
 well known to Shakespeare, that those who have ac- 
 complished the highest and most brilliant mental efforts 
 have sometimes been marked by eccentricities bordering 
 on insanity, and, in some cases, actually merging in it. 
 It is not necessary to prove this by quoting the long list 
 of illustrious madmen ; one instance will suffice : Tor- 
 quato Tasso, Shakespeare's contemporary, was an un- 
 happy madman, and many fine passages of his great 
 epic were, doubtless, written in a maniac's cell, where he 
 is said to have composed much of his famous poem. 
 His death occurred only five or six years before the 
 tragedy of Hamlet was written, and, from his unfortunate 
 mental condition, Shakespeare may have had the hint 
 that shaped the characterization of his crazy prince. So 
 long ago as the time of Aristotle, the insanity of genius 
 had been observed, for " Nullum magnum ingenium sine 
 
28 THE SUBJECTION OF HAMLET. 
 
 mixtura dementise" has been quoted as coming originally 
 from that wise old Greek. 
 
 Simple melancholia, without delusion, is classed among 
 the forms of insanity ; and, indeed, a great majority of 
 cases of insanity commence with a state of emotional 
 perversion of a depressing and sorrowful character. I 
 quote from a medical work the description of certain 
 symptoms of the melancholia of insanity : " The patient's 
 feeling of external objects and events is perverted, so 
 that he complains, of being strangely and unnaturally 
 changed ; impressions which should rightly be agreeable, 
 or only indifferent, are felt as painful."* If this con- 
 dition be compared with Hamlet's account of himself, II, 
 2, the descriptions will be found very similar, almost 
 identical : " I have of late — but wherefore I know not — 
 lost all my mirth, foregone all custom of exercises ; and, 
 indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition that this 
 goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory ; 
 this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave 
 o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with 
 golden fire, — why, it appears no other thing to me than 
 a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors." 
 1^ That Hamlet was afflicted with melancholia, before the 
 disclosures of the ghost gave him any possible reason for 
 covering his acts with the pretence of madness, is suffi- 
 
 * Reynolds' System of Medicine, vol. i, page 592. 
 
THE SUBJECTION OF HAMLET. 29 
 
 ciently obvious from the words of the king and queen, 
 and his own soliloquy, I, 2. It will scarcely be claimed 
 that Hamlet plays melancholia, as a preliminary stage of 
 madness ; for such refinement of acting would be " caviare 
 to the general," little likely to be appreciated by his 
 audience of the Danish court, who must have been alto- 
 gether incapable of being impressed by such subtilties, 
 and on whom this finesse would have been utterly 
 thrown away. 
 
 "In Hamlet occur the following conditions : a mind 
 unnaturally brilliant, and of that character commonly 
 associated with eccentricities of thought and habit, and 
 peculiarly liable to the disease of insanity ; a deep 
 sorrow, the death of his father; a disappointment in 
 his uncle's advancement to the regal power of Den- 
 mark instead of his own ; a feeling of dishonor in his </ 
 mother's hasty marriage, — all pressing disturbingly upon 
 his thoughts ; and an oppression of melancholy exactly 
 that which, in nine cases out of ten, precedes and ac- 
 corapanies attacks of insanity. Thus constituted and 
 affected, he sees the ghost of his father under circum- 
 stances of peculiar horror ; listens to a dreadful story 
 of fratricide, and is commanded by his unearthly visi- 
 tant 
 
 " Doom'd for a certain term to walk the night, 
 And for the day confined to fast in fires," 
 
 to avenge the murder of his father upon his uncle 
 
30 THE SUBJECTION OF HAMLET. 
 
 father-in-law. With such an accumulation of condi- 
 tions, excitements, horrors, and griefs in, a nervous, deli- 
 cate, sensitive organization and a highly imaginative 
 brain, what result might be expected? even more than 
 melancholia : insanity. And this is what actually oc- 
 curred. Although the great poet has covered the forms 
 of Hamlet's lunacy with the flashings of his wit and 
 eloquence, the power and pathos of his thoughts ; 
 yet, nevertheless, he has depicted them with wonder- 
 ful accuracy. It would have been a phlegmatic Dane, 
 indeed, that could have kept an even mind in Ham- 
 let's place ; not such a being as Shakespeare has 
 drawn, — a being thrilled with fanciful imaginings ; 
 with intense yearnings toward the beautiful, the 
 noble, and the true ; with the most chivalrous sense 
 of honor ; with womanly tenderness ; with divine as- 
 pirations. Upon such a nature, the philosopher of 
 mind knew well that the conditions he imposed would 
 disturb the balance of intellect ; and none but he could 
 have delineated, in so masterly a manner, the aberra- 
 tions of the mind which he thus forced into the weird 
 regions of insanity. 
 
 When a person is suspected of insanity he is watched, 
 and all his words and actions examined to note if they 
 indicate any form of the suspected disease, any peculiar 
 aberration of mind or prevailing idiosyncrasy. Let us 
 do so with Hamlet, and note how he bears such scrutiny. 
 
THE SUBJECTION OF HAMLET. 31 
 
 " King. But now, my Cousin Hamlet, and my son, — 
 Hamlet. A little more than kin, and less than kind ! 
 King. How is it that the clouds still hang on you? 
 Hamlet. Not so, my lord ; I am too much i' the sun." 
 
 The first utterance of Hamlet is marked as "an 
 aside" by modern editors, and usually so rendered by 
 actors. In tlie Folios and Quarto of 1604 there is 
 nothing to indicate that such was the intention of the 
 author, — Warburton being the first to so print it. It 
 seems unnecessary there should be soliloquy here to hint 
 what is soon to be plainly expressed, viz., Hamlet's dis- 
 \--n trust of his uncle. The hint, too, would be likely to be 
 ^ lost on an audience hearing the play for the first time, 
 because of its ambiguity ; but the remark is of that dis- 
 respectful, suggestive kind which the prince is in the 
 habit of making to the king. Hence there would appear 
 to be no sujBficient reason for Warburton's innovation, as 
 the line has more force and keener meaning if spoken to 
 the king. The king's words refer to the relationship 
 between himself and Hamlet, but they fall from his lips 
 in such inquiring manner as if he would put a probe into 
 the thoughts of his nephew, whose melancholy condition 
 excites his distrust. The response is instant, and the 
 probe pushed back into the mind of the king. Hamlet 
 reads his uncle's suspicion, that a harsh opinion of his 
 overhasty marriage and of his unfavorable inclination 
 toward his nephew, with, perhaps, even darker doubts, 
 
32 THE SUBJECTION OF HAMLET. 
 
 are causes of that nephew's brooding sadness; and he 
 reflects the suspicion, retorting what he reads, in words 
 of biting, but subtile meaning. This first encounter of 
 words is like the flash in the eyes of two who would 
 quarrel, a clearer revelation of feeling to them than the 
 plainest words could express ; but it is Hamlet who is 
 imprudent in this revelation : it does not help him, and 
 puts his opponent on guard. On the king's part, any 
 intimation of suspicion of or unfavorable intent toward 
 
 " My Cousin Hamlet, and my son," 
 
 SO long as that intent is apparent to its object alon«, is no 
 imprudence; for his careful words cannot be construed 
 against him by queen, court, or people, even if any cau- 
 tion is necessary ; but there seems to be no such need, as 
 he is clothed with power, and the prince has none. So 
 Hamlet's 
 
 " A little more than kin, and less than kind !" 
 
 refers to the king, and not to himself; and is spoken in 
 an exclamatory, scornful way, without a purpose ; being 
 apparently struck out of his mind by the collision of 
 thought meeting thought, as flint and steel strike fire. 
 Without giving any recognition of his nephew's words, 
 the king goes on very calmly with his interrupted ques- 
 tion, — 
 
 "How is it that the clouds still hang on you?" 
 
THE SUBJECTION OF HAMLET. 33 
 
 In the reply of the prince, reference to the questioner's 
 thoughts again comes back to him, while at the same 
 time the words seem in literal answer to his question, — 
 
 " Not so, my lord ; I am too much i' the sun." 
 
 Here the meaning is evident: the courtly reference to 
 enjoyment of the sun's rays, that beam from the face of 
 royalty, is a reflection of the feeling of the gay throng 
 that surrounds the throne ; but another meaning reaches 
 the uncle : this is a new presentation of the guilty knowl- 
 edge in the king's breast, that the sunlight of festivities 
 of marriage with his brother's widow is unbecoming to 
 him, to the queen, to Hamlet, to " the majesty of buried 
 Denmark," — even if he loses the reproach of the final 
 pun, — 
 
 " too much i' the sonj' 
 
 The king has spoken; but elicited no satisfactory 
 answer. To all but himself — and possibly the queen — 
 Hamlet's words show a profound melancholy; but the 
 king sees in them a reckless defiance, — perhaps madness. 
 They have given him food for thought, and he pauses 
 to digest it, feeling himself dazzled by the intellectual 
 brilliance and subtilty of his son-in-law, and inclined to 
 examine the premises carefully before proceeding, though 
 conscious that he is in no danger, and has committed 
 
 5 
 
34 THE SUBJECTION OF HAMLET. 
 
 no imprudence, unless permitting the prince to read his 
 thoughts may be so deemed. 
 The queen now speaks, — 
 
 "Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted color off, 
 And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark. 
 Do not forever, with thy veiled lids. 
 Seek for thy noble father in the dust. 
 Thou know'st 'tis common : all that live must die. 
 Passing through nature to eternity. 
 
 Hamlet. Ay, madam ; it is common. 
 
 Queen. If it be. 
 
 Why seems it so particular with thee? 
 
 Hamlet. ' Seems,' madam ? nay, it is ; I know not ' seems.' 
 'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother, 
 Nor customary suits of solemn black, 
 Nor windy suspiration of forced breath, 
 No, nor the fruitful river in the eye, 
 Nor the dejected 'havior of the visage, 
 Together with all forms, moods, shows of grief. 
 That can denote me truly : these indeed ' seem' ; 
 For they are actions that a man might play ; 
 But J have that within which passeth show ; 
 These but the trappings and the suits of woe." 
 
 Hamlet's first reply to his mother is simply assent, as 
 if his mind were more engaged by her thoughts than in 
 framing a reply ; but when she gives hini a word that 
 suggests an answer, he immediately repeats her word, 
 turning against her, in the most powerful and exquisitely 
 subtile manner, the reproach she intends. The queen's 
 question, interpreted into directness, is, Why does your 
 grief seem more than mine, when I have the same cause 
 
THE SUBJECTldN OF HAMLET. 35 
 
 for sorrow as yourself, but give mine no such uncommon 
 and unnecessary particularity ? As Hamlet has reflected 
 what he found in the thoughts of the king, so, also, he 
 reflects the queen's ; and with a subtilty of language even 
 more delicate than before, inasmuch as his reply to the 
 queen has an outward seeming of respect, almost of afiec- 
 tion. To all the court, except the king and queen, he is 
 simply emphasizing his sorrow ; but his mother finds in 
 his words a keen reproach upon her vain professions of 
 sorrow, which she perceives he knows to be hypocritical, 
 by his showing how easily such seeming can be simulated ; 
 her own guilty thoughts making the application of the 
 reproach to her condemning soul. She is silenced, and 
 cannot utter another word until the king, coming to her 
 rescue with a long speech, turns to her that she may 
 second his request; then, very submissively, she makes 
 prayer to her son to comply with the royal wish : and it 
 will be noticed that this prayer is in a difierent manner 
 from her previous question. 
 Hamlet replies, — 
 
 " I shall, in all my best, obey you, madam.'' 
 
 This time, as the queen's words indicate only motherly in- 
 terest, her son's reply is simply obedient. The king again 
 addresses his nephew; but receiving no answer, speaks 
 a few lines to the queen; and then all go out except 
 
36 THE SUBJECTION OF HAMLET. 
 
 I 
 J^ Hamlet, who remains to soliloquize. He wishes lie were 
 
 ^^ead, that suicide were not contrary to God's ordinance, — 
 common wishes of madmen, — and expresses profound dis- 
 
 Ji gust of the world and life, — usual symptoms and expres- 
 sions of melancholia. Then he reflects upon his mother's 
 hasty marriage, the inferiority of his uncle to his father, 
 the loving kindness of his father to his mother, her re- 
 spondenceto that love; and so working himself into the 
 violence of passion, rails against this second marriage 
 which he terms incestuous — a term not really applicable 
 to such a marriage, which was not only in accordance 
 with law, but considered eminently proper. But Hamlet's 
 train of thought is evidently suggested by what he has 
 just read in the minds of the king and queen ; it is their 
 effect on him. The king's consciousness of guilt, and the 
 queen's of, at least, fault, bring to the prince this violent 
 and unreasoning condemnation that gives the only fault 
 he yet knows of them, — and this not a fault in the 
 common estimation of Denmark, — the worst of names. 
 But his violence is soon exhausted, and he falls again 
 into his gloom and melancholy, with the despairing 
 thought, — 
 
 " But break, my heart ; for I must hold my tongue !" 
 
 Horatio, Marcellus, and Bernardo enter and respect- 
 fully greet the Prince of Denmark, who receives them 
 with cordiality, and converses cheerfully with Horatio, 
 
THE SUBJECTION OF HAMLET. 37 
 
 appearing to catch from his brother-student the frank 
 spirit of fellowship, which springs from sympathies 
 and recollections that come of their relationship at the 
 University and student friendship, and which at once 
 appeals to him in his friend's greeting; thus for the 
 moment giving direction to and engrossing his mind. 
 No trace of his late thoughts or melancholy appears 
 until Horatio refers to his father ; but when that friend 
 relates how an apparition of the late king haunts "the 
 platform" where Marcellus and Bernardo hold their 
 watch, he is eagerly interested in the strange story they 
 tell, questions all of them concerning the details of the 
 visitation, and is much moved by their recital. As his 
 thoughts lately drew their color from what he found in 
 the hearts and thoughts of the king and queen, he now 
 absorbs immediately the interest which his friends feel in 
 the affair of the ghost. This appears entirely natural, 
 as the circumstances appeal so peculiarly to him as to 
 hide his idiosyncrasy. He concludes this interview by 
 requesting his friends — for exactly what reason he does 
 not explain — not to make known what they have seen, 
 and by making an appointment to watch with them for 
 the reappearance of the ghost, which he delares, with no 
 lack of courage, he will address, — 
 
 " Though hell itself should gape 
 And bid me hold my. peace.'' 
 
38 THE SUBJECTION OF HAMLET. 
 
 His visitors gone, Hamlet soliloquizes in four lines con- 
 cerning the ghost, which now — being the latest excite- 
 ment — holds his thoughts completely. In this excite- 
 / ment his melancholy has dissolved, nor does it reappear 
 until the affair of the ghost is over. 
 
 Hamlet next appears upon " the platform" with Ho- 
 ratio and Marcellus in their watch. They hear the 
 flourish of trumpets and firing of cannon that sound for 
 the king's revels. The prince becomes, in accordance 
 with his usual habit, deeply interested in the theme 
 Wwhich these sounds suggest, and dismisses for the time 
 ' all thought of the ghost he has come to interview, as he 
 eagerly enters into the consideration of his uncle's habits 
 and the national fault, concerning which he expresses 
 very fully his unfavorable opinion. But the entrance of 
 the ghost instantly diverts his thoughts and powerfully 
 impresses his mind : from which time until the final dis- 
 appearance of the spectre he is entirely occupied with 
 this supernatural visitant and the story it tells. This 
 visitation is so wonderful, and the ghost's story so in- 
 teresting, that we feel no surprise that Hamlet should 
 absorb from it all its grim horror, and readily fall into 
 agreement with the spectre as to the mission it "unfolds": 
 but still, in so doing, the prince is following a habit 
 which has become a disease of his mind : that of having i 
 
 HIS THOUGHTS CAPTUKED BY WHOEVER SPEAKS TO HIM, 
 OR BY THE LAST EXCITING CIRCUMSTANCE, TO THE EX- 
 
TEE SUBJECTION OF HAMLET. 39 
 
 CLTJSION OR CONFUSION OF ALL THE PREVIOUS DETERll 
 MINATIONS OF HIS WILL. ' 
 
 The ghost gone, the prince, wrought to much pas- 
 sionate excitement, swears, in a violent soliloquy, to per- 
 form its requirements, and to devote his life singly to the 
 mission thus impressively laid upon him by the shadow 
 of his father. Horatio and Marcellus are naturally 
 curious to learn what has been revealed; for the inter- 
 view has been private between the prince and the spectre; 
 and they urge Hamlet to tell them about it. But a 
 strange hysteria has seized the disturbed Prince of 
 Denmark ; his words are " wild and whirling," and 
 the awful influence of the spectre, with some entangle- 
 ment of his mind by his companions' curiosity and 
 the dramatic subterranean movements of the ghost, 
 which Horatio declares to be " wondrous strange," com- 
 bine to make his words and actions unintelligible to his 
 friends, and a puzzle to the reader who has not found 
 a key to his mysterious conduct. He speaks to his 
 father's spirit in tones and phrases of mockery and 
 irreverence, and to the questioning of his companions 
 returns only ^quizzical banter. This mental condition 
 is not natural to a sane mind that has just been con- 
 fronted with such solemn circumstances, and assigned 
 so grave a duty ; but it is, doubtless, the condition an 
 unsound mind might assume, when pushed over into 
 the realm of unreason by the excitement of seeing a 
 
40 THE SUBJECTION OF HAMLET. 
 
 ghost and being so wrought on, as was Hamlet, by the 
 phantom's horrid story. 
 
 The appearance, to several persons, of the ghost of 
 the dead king is a circumstance so extraordinary as to 
 excite the suspicion that Shakespeare was led into a 
 fault by too close adherence to that early play of Ham- 
 let, which has already been mentioned. He was prob- 
 ably tempted to this by the inducements which existed 
 to use an objective ghost. The tone of solemn terror it 
 imparts, the popularity of genuine ghost stories, the in- 
 terest sure to come with its introduction, the scenic effect, 
 — these are undoubtedly valuable to a play ; and hence 
 were held in proper estimation by so skilful a play- 
 wright as Shakespeare. But in no other case has he 
 yielded to this temptation ; elsewhere his ghosts are 
 subjective, dreams or hallucinations ; the later appear- 
 ance of the ghost in this play being of such character. 
 Hence we may believe the fault of an objective ghost 
 was not originally Shakespeare's. It might have been 
 a favorite feature of the drama he revised, — a feature 
 much cried up by the unreflecting crowds that thronged 
 the play-house, gaped with many a preternatural thrill 
 at the unearthly visitant, and drank in with eager cu- 
 riosity its horrors. Shakespeare's own more cultivated 
 judgment may have been overruled by the urgency of 
 literary or theatrical friends, or play-house partners, 
 who probably declared that it would never do to give 
 
THE SUBJECTION OF HAMLET. K 41 "^ 
 
 up the ghost. So a genuine ghost appears, though the 
 author of this rifacimento of the old play must have felt 
 that such popular feature was an aesthetic fault, yet a 
 fault he dared not remove lest his play be " damned" by 
 an arbitrary public that demanded its taste for the su- 
 pernatural should be gratified by a veritable ghost. It 
 will be noticed that, while others see it, its unfoldings are 
 for Hamlet only : he is the especial mind upon which it 
 is to act, — the mirror in which we more truly behold and 
 measure it than we can by its objective reality. As a 
 thing, the ghost is absurd and contemptible ; we know it 
 to be a fraud, and feel that it is only fit to create a smile 
 of derision ; but, in its effect on Hamlet, this obvious 
 impostor becomes at once clothed with dignity and ma- 
 jesty ; it is a true element of tragic force, and we lose 
 sight of its impossibility and absurdity. In the phe- 
 nomena its appearance creates in Hamlet, its objectivity 
 is dissolved and forgotten. In management of effects, 
 Shakespeare has atoned as much as possible for his fault 
 of the ghost, and concealed its absurdity by his won- 
 derful art. If this shadow of " buried Denmark" had 
 appeared to Hamlet only, all its effects would have been 
 legitimate; but we would have understood thatjhe story 
 of the murder of the elder Hamlet, as related by the 
 "spectre, grew out pf suspicions that wexe active in the 
 bosom of his son; and that the latter's melancholy im- 
 aginings, disturbed brain, and unsettled fancies had sum- 
 
 6 
 
42 THE SUBJECTION OF HAMLET. 
 
 moned up this hallucination. But the fact that others 
 see what Hamlet sees makes the ghost a veritable thing ; 
 and yet ghosts were not believed in by sensible, culti- 
 vated minds in Shakespeare's day. Hence, to build a 
 serious, impressive play, a creation of power and beauty, 
 on such an impossible thing as a ghost, is a conspicuous 
 fault, and one that cannot have been an original thought 
 of Shakespeare's, but must have come from the play- 
 wright who first dramatized the story. Shakespeare's 
 play continually appeals to us with the force of positive 
 truths, therefore, it should have had a more secure foun- 
 dation than the story of an objective ghost. 
 '", In the first scene of Act II, occurs Ophelia's description 
 V of Hamlet in one of his mad fi.ts. That Hamlet loved 
 Ophelia, we have not only his word, but a tone of thought 
 through all the scenes that give any indication of his 
 feeling toward her, which cannot be mistaken as having 
 any other source than love. While this is plain, his 
 conduct to the sweet girl is so harsh and wild that it 
 cannot be classed under any of the known phenomena 
 of love. Feeling in his heart a fervent and sincere 
 passion, the object of that affection would have been the 
 last, not the first person before whom he would have 
 exhibited tricks of counterfeited madness. The most 
 consummate skill in acting would have been required 
 to play a part before her, in the manner described by 
 Ophelia ; and the method of it and the thought to have 
 
( \ 
 
 THE SUBJECTION OF HAMLET. 43 
 
 dictated it, both would have been most repugnant, and, 
 indeed, impossible to a tender, sensitive, and honorable 
 mind. To believe that Hamlet could have calmly pre- 
 meditated, and then carried into effect, with more than /^, 
 an actor's art, this scene, would be lowering his dignity 
 as a hero and as a gentleman, and giving him a coarseness 
 and harshness of nature entirely foreign to his relation 
 to Ophelia and the sentiment of love, and in the most 
 positive disagreement with his nature as elsewhere shown; 
 as, for instance, the tenderness of his expression of affec- 
 tion to Horatio. It would be a phase of character 
 suitable enough for the Hamlet of the Hystorie, but 
 disgusting in a hero of such exquisite sensibilities as 
 Shakespeare has given to his hero in many scenes. The 
 scene can be understood in this way.( Conscious of an 
 j increasing infirmity of mind, Hamlet would dread its 
 ^ effect upon the object of his love, until much dwelling 
 upon so sad a theme brought him to that condition which 
 Ophelia describes. Thus he appears before her in a 
 veritable fit of madness, not counterfeited, but induced] 
 by imagination of what disastrous results must come to 
 his love by reason of his infirmity, and the sad termina- 
 tion it will bring to his heart-passion. His condition 
 is thus brought about in exactly the same way in which 
 he is always affected by circumstances : there is the en- 
 tanglement of his mind by the thoughts that come to it, 
 until completely absorbed and abstracted by such con- 
 
44 THE SUBJECTION OF HAMLET. 
 
 templation, and wrought upon by the passions of love 
 and disappointment, he loses all restraint of reason and 
 becomes a lunatic. Conceive a noble and tender lover 
 afflicted with an apprehension of growing madness. In 
 contemplation of such a misfortune, a dreadful malady 
 thus thrust between him and his love, would not the 
 thoughts which would then possess him be likely to 
 increase the idiosyncrasy, we have observed in Hamlet, 
 to more determined madness? In this way we can 
 understand the sad scene, and it is an admirably por- 
 trayed phase of such infirmity of intellect; but how 
 poor, how contemptible it is, if we consider it only a 
 piece of acting ! 
 
 In the mean time the king and queen are speculating 
 upon the "transformation" of the prince. The guilty 
 conscience of the king stimulates his suspicions ; and 
 Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are sent to probe Hamlet's 
 fevered brain. Then Polonius gives his version of Prince 
 Hamlet's madness in prosy, but very amusing, rhetoric. 
 He is not right that Hamlet is mad for love of his 
 daughter ; but partly right in that the love of the prince 
 for his daughter has been the cause of mental excitement 
 which induced paroxysms of madness. He has a clue to 
 ^he truth, but not the capacity to follow it with proper 
 prudence. The wisdom of Polonius is narrow, though 
 his mind is filled with wise, but somewhat musty, maxims. 
 He is, perhaps, in his dotage ; for he seems to be utterly 
 
THE SUBJECTION OF HAMLET. 45 
 
 -J ^\i/ ignorant of the terrible secret that undermines the throne 
 of Denmark, and fills the atmosphere of its court with a 
 fatal, moral contagion, — a secret that is weaving a tragedy 
 about him, in the midst of which he walks, wise in his 
 own conceit ; and when at last he meets the catastrophe 
 of his death, he dies so foolishly and uselessly that we 
 can feel but little sorrow at his end. 
 
 Hamlet enters, and plays at words with the garrulous 
 old councillor. He is often considered, at this time, as 
 playing crazy, and enjoying such frivolous employment; 
 but it seems more probable that, perceiving the prying, 
 questioning manner of Polonius, and divining instantly 
 his desire to penetrate "the heart of his mystery," he 
 reflects, as usual, the cunning of his questioner ; and is 
 thus rather acted upon than acting. Caught by the 
 demon always lying in wait to ensnare him, he joins to 
 the cunning of Polonius his own subtilties of thought 
 and adroitness of expression, which baffle and puzzle the 
 conceited old chamberlain more and more with every 
 sentence he utters. 
 
 " Polonius. Do you know me, my lord ? 
 Hamlet. Excellent well ; you are a fishmonger." 
 
 ^ That is, you are fishing for my secret that you may sell 
 it to the king. 
 
 " Polonius. Not I, my lord. 
 Hamlet. Then I would you were so honest a man." 
 
46 THE SUBJECTION OF HAMLET. 
 
 For what you are doing is not honest : you are trying to 
 entrap me with words. 
 
 " Polonius. Honest, my lord ? 
 
 Hamlet. Ay, sir; to be honest, as the world goes, is to be one man 
 picked out of ten thousand." 
 
 A moral maxim exactly in the manner of Polonius, whose 
 mind, at this moment, Hamlet is unconsciously mimicking 
 to the utter confusion of the bewildered old man. 
 
 "Polonius. That's very true, my lord. 
 
 Hamlet. For, if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a god 
 kissing carrion" — 
 
 That is, — Hamlet was going on to express the thought, — 
 if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, how likely it is 
 that the loathsome faults of dishonesty should come to 
 the selfish and worldly hearts of men as readily as worms 
 to a carcass, in the light of life and action, which is, like 
 the sun, a creative god; but he suddenly breaks off in 
 the midst of this moral sentence, which has greatly 
 bothered the editors, to inquire, — 
 
 "Have you a daughter? 
 
 Polonius. I have, my lord. 
 
 Hamlet. Let her not walk in the sun : conception is a blessing : but not 
 as your daughter may conceive. Friend, look to't." 
 
 Here Hamlet refers to his former speech concerning 
 
THE SUBJECTION OF HAMLET. 47 
 
 the sun's breeding maggots in carrion, deducing there- 
 from that the world may breed dishonesty in Polonius' 
 daughter : then he puns on conception, mocking the old 
 councillor with his " conception is a blessing," when he 
 sees his listener has no conception of his meaning. 
 Polonius, catching this reference to his daughter, com- 
 prehends nothing else; but, rightly enough, sets down 
 Hamlet's subtilty to craziness, and concludes "he is far 
 gone." Hamlet's further remarks bother Polonius still 
 more with quips and quaintness ; for the latter does not 
 recognize his own narrow cunning, its mustiness spiced 
 with the flayor of the prince's wit and imagination ; and 
 the sudden and bewildering turns of his whimsical com- 
 panion constitute " a happiness" — Polonius wisely enough 
 exclaims in an aside, — " that often madness hits on, which 
 reason and sanity could not so prosperously be delivered 
 of" It is noticeable in this interview that Hamlet's 
 remarks are throughout in quizzical mockery of the mind 
 of Polonius, — that is, quaintly argumentative; and that 
 they are all born out of his companion's mind, not his 
 own ;,^i^tiie^ mind of the chamberlain gives color and 
 
 ducting a " mouse-trap" for " the^ k'ing,'^n#i,9.^^.Sl^! !?" 
 \j iso contriving a trap for his nephew, into which, if the 
 atter had been feigning madness, he would probably have 
 mact iiollj^, ' a "m t;Tnng~wiiicJi is~~ar~ie;^>,i^j,g ^g ^^ arranged 
 symptom of Hamlet's disease. ""^'^'-^ the kj 
 
 Polonius having taken his leave, the two spiiiTKosen- 
 
48 THE SUBJECTION OF HAMLET. 
 
 crantz and Guildenstern, enter; these Hamlet greets 
 heartily as his fellow-students ; but something of con- 
 straint and method in their conversation at once conveys 
 to the subtile brain of the prince their purpose, and catches 
 _Jhis thoughts. With his usual acute habit, he permeates 
 their minds with the mysterious power of his own, and 
 receives some portion of their craftiness ; finds their 
 secret, and humiliates them into confession of it; then, 
 entangled with the theme he has absorbed from them, 
 goes on to expatiate on his melancholy, which he explains 
 in a magnificent prose passage, part of which has already 
 been quoted, until his companions refer to the arrival of 
 a company of actors. Then, as if his mind were changed 
 in an instant, like the turning over of an hour-glass, it 
 takes a new direction ; he forgets his melancholy, on 
 which he has been discoursing so eloquently, and his 
 unstable brain is at once filled and involved with thoughts 
 connected with the players. At the entrance of Polonius, 
 who comes to announce the actors, but whose mind is, 
 doubtless, still connecting the prince's lunacy with his 
 daughter, Hamlet's thoughts, distracted for an instant 
 from the actors,. fl~>^ +'" '^- ' "" \ 
 
 "Have you a daughter? 
 
 Polonius. I have, my lord. 
 
 Hamlet. Let her not walk in the sun : r.oTip.p.p tion is a. Mpaainp; ; butmji' 
 as your daughter may cqnfi**-"''^ ^^ Camc iu p^Mur, c,to. , — tcmT-^ 
 
 'SO'' the pious chanson." But, from this 
 excursion, Jiis thoughts soon return to the players, with 
 
THE SUBJECTION OF HAMLET. 49 
 
 whom they become completely entangled during the re- 
 mainder of the act. So full is he of theatre and actors 
 that he recites " with good accent and good discretion" — 
 Polonius declares — a speech from one of their plays, and 
 calls on one of the actors to continue. His mind is so 
 excitedly interested in all this that he immediately pro- 
 poses to have a play rendered in proper form. The 
 -^ actor's mention of the murder of King Priam has flashed 
 into Hamlet's mind remembrance of his king-father's 
 ^--^jnurder ; so he mixes up his mission as an avenger with 
 the actors, and proposes to write his father's taking-off 
 into a play to be set before King Claudius. At the 
 V-<leparture of the players, he bursts into soliloquy, in 
 which his solemn promise to his father's ghost _ and the 
 i actors are confusedly mingled; and declares his resolve 
 ""to use theatrical machinery in the construction of a trap, 
 
 " Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.'' 
 
 While Hamlet, his mind thus filled with theatrical 
 ideas which the actors have suggested, is intent on con- 
 structing a " mouse-trap" for the king, that personage is 
 also contriving a trap for his nephew, into which, if the 
 latter had been feigning madness, he would probably have 
 fallen. This snare, suggested by Polonius, is an arranged 
 meeting between Hamlet and Ophelia, at which the king 
 and his councillor are to be present as eaves-droppers, 
 
 7 
 
50 THE SUBJECTION OF HAMLET. 
 
 in the hope that the prince's secret will appear during 
 the interview. This plot is carried into effect, and at its 
 — j commencement Hamlet is uttering his famous soliloquy, 
 
 " To be or riot to be ? — that is the question,'' etc. 
 
 ~^This is a contemplation of death as an escape from 
 the difficulties that surround him, a common theme of 
 insane minds. Indeed, it has been claimed that a per- 
 fectly healthy mind will never entertain the thought of 
 self-destruction. The prince's brain was probably caught 
 by the theme of death from dwelling on the "mouse- 
 trap," which was now so much in his thoughts, and 
 which was an act of death. What conclusion he might 
 have reached, had he followed the argument to the end, 
 cannot be asserted, though his mind seemed dwelling 
 principally on objections to suicide, and fortifying itself 
 against an unreasoning tendency or insidious temptation 
 to " shuffle off this mortal coil" ; but this train of 
 thought is interrupted by seeing Ophelia. 
 
 With his wonderful power of reading hearts and 
 minds, Hamlet dives into poor Ophelia's thoughts ; and, 
 though his first sentences seem spoken automatically, 
 soon discovers that she is speaking and acting a part; 
 and is, in fact, the bait of a trap set by the king and her 
 father. His irritable brain lights up with the fires of 
 frenzy at this discovery, and, mingling together in con- 
 
THE SUBJECTION OF HAMLET. 51 
 
 fusion his own insanity and her dishonesty, he lashes the 
 bewildered girl with monstrous accusations and taunts of 
 cruel bitterness. As his excitement grows, his language 
 becomes startling and incoherent, until, no longer a 
 prince or lover, he is completely controlled by his in- 
 firmity, and proceeds to unwarrantable harshness and 
 injustice. The eaves-droppers do not know what to 
 make of it ; but the king's doubts are not set at rest, for 
 
 " Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind." 
 
 The next scene is that of Hamlet's advice to the 
 actors, in which he is again deeply engaged and inter- 
 ested in the players' art, and gives them a lecture upon 
 acting which is, undoubtedly, in itself most reasonable 
 and excellent, though too learned in theatrical art to 
 come from one so inexperienced as a prince of Denmark 
 must have been. This is one of those occasional pas- 
 sages where the author himself appears, and we can see, 
 in imagination, as we read these lines of admirable in- 
 struction to players, the stage-manager, William Shake- 
 speare, drilling his company of actors, his noble and 
 thoughtful face lighted up by the magical fire of his 
 genius, and his calm voice restraining undue violence, 
 but stimulating efibrt, while he repeats his rules for the 
 government of their simulated passion. 
 
 While there is no lack of orderly reason in what 
 
52 THE SUBJECTION OF SAMLET. 
 
 Hamlet says to the players, — his mind, as usual, being 
 drawn away from his own affairs, and, indeed, from all 
 else, by the fascination of the circumstance of the mo- 
 ment, — we may yet find it difficult to understand how 
 a sane person of Hamlet's excitable temperament, placed 
 in his perplexing circumstances, could thus coolly dis- 
 course of the theatre and instruct the players while in 
 such a mood of suicide and frenzy as we have seen on 
 this eventful day. 
 
 The " mouse-trap" is about to be enacted ; but before 
 this occurs Hamlet meets Horatio, and, reading in that 
 true friend's kind eyes and trusty words the evidences 
 of his deep affection, proceeds — with his accustomed 
 tendency to take color, like the chameleon, from what is 
 nearest him — ^to reflect the beauty of his friend's char- 
 acter. His further conversation with several persons 
 before and during the play is exceedingly flighty, 
 though subtile and witty, and indicates a highly excited 
 condition, due, undoubtedly, to the distraction of many 
 cross influences ; but it will be noticed that he takes 
 tone from each speaker, and catches up with wild in- 
 tentness each theme, while the indecency of some of 
 his remarks may be interpreted as the effect of the cor- 
 rupt morality which must, under all the circumstances 
 of the time and the story, have pervaded the Danish 
 court, and which, accordingly, found expression in the 
 words of this weather-cock of a prince. 
 
THE SUBJECTION OF HAMLET. 53 
 
 The "mouse-trap" is similar to the ghost's descrip- 
 tion of his taking off. When the player -murderer 
 pours poison in his. sleeping victim's ear, Hamlet, under 
 the influence of the dramatic show, and unable to con- 
 tain himself, cries to his uncle, " He poisons him i' the 
 garden for's estate. His name's Gonzago : the story is 
 extant, and writ in choice Italian ; you shall see, anon, 
 how the murderer gets the love of Gonzago's wife." 
 ^^Then, when the king rises, his nephew calls theatrically 
 to him, " What, frighted with false fire !" but Claudius 
 rushes away in terror and confusion, and Hamlet re- 
 mains to shout in theatrical frenzy to his friend Horatio, 
 
 y " Why, let the strucken deer go weep, 
 ^ The hart ungalled play ; 
 
 For some must watch, while some must sleep : 
 So runs the world away. 
 
 Would not this, sir, and a forest of feathers, — if the rest 
 of my fortunes turn Turk with me, — with two Provincial 
 roses in my razed shoes, get me a fellowship in a cry of 
 players, sir?" 
 
 He seems to exult more in the success of his dramatic 
 piece than to be impressed by the verification of the 
 ghost's story. When he does allude to this verification, 
 it is still in theatrical bombast and burlesque versifica- 
 tion. Calling for music, he indulges his excitement with 
 more rhyme. In all this he appears to be playing actor 
 
 \ 
 
54 THE SUBJECTION OF HAMLET. 
 
 ^although he has no audience now but his confidential 
 
 friend — rather than Prince of Denmark, evidently con- 
 
 \^ tirolled by the theatrical fiend that has possession of his 
 
 will and imagination. Is this the delineation of a sane 
 
 \, mind? or the picture of an idiosyncrasy plunging its 
 
 ^^ possessor into positive insanity ? What madder act could 
 
 Hamlet possibly perform than his last cry to the king ? 
 
 "\ It was the crazy triumph of an actor making a point ; it 
 
 accomplished nothing ; helped nothing in the direction of 
 
 his mission ; it was not even playing mad ; for it showed 
 
 to the king his nephew's knowledge of an arranged 
 
 meaning in the play ; a knowledge which was not a 
 
 symptom of insanity, but a light of purpose shining 
 
 through the murk of his whimsical actions in such a way 
 
 as might well create the fear that it would, by and by, 
 
 kindle a dangerous conflagration. Its results were to put 
 
 the king fully on his guard, and compel his careful action 
 
 against a conspirator who was capable of showing so 
 
 much approach to design in his madness. 
 
 Rosencrantz and Guildenstern bring a message from 
 the queen, but are met by Hamlet with polite mockery. 
 Presently, when their despicable treachery to him has 
 had time to sufiiciently impress and fire his brain, he 
 exhibits his contempt of the two spies in the most marked 
 manner, but throughout the interview his conversation 
 is quaint and flighty, showing that the theatrical im- 
 pression is still upon his mind, though the actual 
 
THE SUBJECTION OF HAMLET. 55 
 
 direction of his thoughts is given by the pair of courtiers. 
 Polonius returns to urge again the queen's message, and 
 the prince, caught in an instant by the puzzle in the 
 old chamberlain's head over his madness, perplexes him 
 anew by a ludicrous exhibition of his suspicions. 
 
 Left alone, Hamlet again soliloquizes in much ex- 
 citement, and still in the theatrical vein which is the 
 result of the deep effect which the play has produced 
 in his distempered brain. On his way to the queen's 
 chamber he sees the king at prayer ; his first motion is 
 to kill him, but, allowing his mind to dwell on the 
 thought, that his wicked uncle's religious exercise may 
 have, at this moment, the effect of purifying his soul 
 of the terrible crime with which it is stained, his en- 
 tangled brain goes wandering away along a line of subtile 
 sophistry suggested by his uncle's attitude of devotion 
 and certain religious dogmas, until the avenger is lost 
 in the sophister, and the momentary impulse that made 
 him draw his sword dies away. He has just had a 
 verification of the ghost's story; he is satisfied of the 
 king's guilt ; the murderer is before him and his own 
 drawn sword is in his hand; he now knows that no 
 time will be more suitable for the act he has sworn to 
 do, for he must have become aware that, with his infirmity 
 of mind, he cannot carry into execution such careful 
 plans as will make his uncle's guilt plain to the world ; 
 he has all the teaching of that wild warrior Northland 
 
"^. 
 
 56 THE SUBJECTION OF HAMLET. 
 
 that tells him his father's spirit calls for the blood of 
 his assassin, which it is his duty to shed ; but in spite 
 of all this his infirmity compels forgetfulness of every- 
 thing but the fancies of the moment, and his purpose 
 melts out of his thoughts, while his brain is filled with 
 extravagant and unhealthy imaginings. So unhealthy 
 and foul are these imaginative suggestions that, in a sane 
 Hamlet of his fine intellectual perceptions, they would 
 be most pernicious blots, showing a depraved moral 
 nature ; but, seen as the effects of his idiosyncrasy, they 
 appear wicked things thrust upon him, not emanating 
 from his own soul. 
 
 He is received by the queen, with Polonius hidden 
 behind the arras. His mother commences to lecture 
 im upon his conduct, but with his usual rapidity of 
 reflection, he takes his cue from her and proceeds to 
 pour forth a torrent of reproaches and accusations. In 
 alarm she calls for help, a call which foolish Polonius 
 echoes behind the arras, but is immediately slain by 
 Hamlet, who cries in theatrical bombast, 
 
 N 
 
 " How now ! a rat? Dead, for a ducat, dead !" 
 
 as he thrusts his sword through the old chamberlain. 
 
 Here we see how our crazy prince is capable of killing 
 
 \the king,- — as he possibly imagines he is doing at this 
 
 time, — or any one else when the fancy to do so seizes 
 
TEE SUBJECTION OF HAMLET. 57 
 
 him to the exclusion of other fancies; to this extent, 
 no more and no less, he is capable of action. Dis- 
 covering who is his victim, Hamlet dismisses him from 
 his thoughts with a few contemptuous words, and then 
 takes his mother fully to task upon her whole line of 
 
 /conduct. This he urges with great extravagance of words 
 / and excitement of manner, wrought more and more by 
 ;' the theme which is controlling him, until, while hurling 
 invectives at his uncle, his excitement produces hallu- 
 cination, and he beholds a vision of his father. This 
 
 -spectre is evidently a creature of his disease, for the 
 queen does not see or hear the unearthly visitor, and her 
 conclusion very naturally is that her son is mad. At 
 the departure of the ghost she exclaims, — 
 
 " This is the very coinage of your brain : 
 This bodiless creation ecstasy 
 Is very cunning in. 
 
 Hamlet. Ecstasy ! 
 
 My pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep time, 
 And makes as healthful music : it is not madness 
 That I have utter'd : bring me to the test, 
 And I the matter will re-word ; which madness 
 Would gambol from." 
 
 Of this denial of insanity Dr. Bucknill says : " Ham- 
 let offers as tests of his sanity that his pulse is temperate, 
 that his attention is under command, and his memory 
 faithful ; tests which we are bound to pronounce about 
 
58 THE SUBJECTION OF HAMLET. 
 
 as fallacious as could well be offered, and which could 
 only apply to febrile delirium and mania. The pulse 
 in mania averages about fifteen beats above that of health ; 
 that of the insane generally, including maniacs, only 
 averages nine beats above the healthy standard; the 
 pulse of melancholia and monomania is not above the 
 average. That a maniac would gambol from reproducing 
 in the same words any statement he had made, is true 
 enough in the acute forms of the disease, but it is not 
 so in numberless instances of chronic mania, nor in 
 melancholia, or partial insanity. The dramatic repre- 
 sentations which are in vogue in some asylums prove 
 the power of attention and memory preserved by many 
 patients ; indeed, the possessor of the most brilliant mem- 
 ory we ever met with was a violent and mischievous 
 maniac. He would quote page after page from the 
 Greek, Latin, and French classics. The Iliad and the 
 best plays, of Moliere, in particular, he seemed to have 
 at his fingers' ends."* 
 
 The scene between Hamlet and his mother, just de- 
 scribed, has never been surpassed in dramatic effects, 
 power, and interest, nor in the eloquence and beauty of 
 its language ; it has, however, been called episodical, 
 as not advancing the action of the play, but this criticism 
 
 * The Mad Folk of Shakespeare, by John C. Bucknill, M.D, F.E.S. 
 Second edition, page 111. 
 
THE SUBJECTION OF HAMLET. 59 
 
 certainly fails if the principal action of the play is the 
 development of Hamlet's lunacy. At the close of the 
 scene the prince refers to the purpose of the king to send 
 him to England, and, with a madman's cunning, boasts 
 that he will outwit his uncle's scheme : he cries, 
 
 " Let it work ; 
 For 'tis the sport to have the engineer 
 Hoist with his own petar ; and't shall go hard 
 But I will delve one yard below their mines, 
 And blow them at the moon.'' 
 
 This displays a spirit of braggadocio very little in 
 accord with a reasonable mind looking forward into the 
 thickness of coming perils, — perils of the most serious 
 kind, as the prince's acuteness divines ; but it is exactly 
 in the manner of a crazy spirit of madness, defiant in 
 very recklessness. 
 
 With more contemptuous words over the dead cham- 
 berlain, — words in singular disagreement with the 
 queen's description, in the next scene, of his weeping 
 over his victim, — he drags out the body to hide it, with a 
 maniac's petty cunning, in some hole or corner. In the 
 remaining scenes of this act he meets all the circum- 
 stances that come of his misdeed of killing Polonius with 
 defiant mockery, which is either the reckless frenzy of 
 insanity or the most exquisite acting, — and for the latter 
 the exciting events of the day and his previous condition 
 
60 THE SUBJECTION OF HAMLET. 
 
 of nervous hysteria would have been ill preparation. 
 His wit is constantly flashing forth on all who are about 
 him. He tells the king, on being questioned, where he has 
 hidden the body, but in no terms of respect. It seems 
 scarcely possible that the highest endowment of intellect 
 in a sane mind could carry its possessor through these 
 scenes, especially when we consider the emotions which 
 would be agitating at this time the heart of a sane 
 Hamlet. 
 
 Dragged before the king on account of the murder of 
 an inoffensive old man beloved by the court, and the 
 father of Ophelia, while confessing his act, yet, withal, 
 this marvellous prince retains his moral superiority over 
 the king and all, and pours out his contempt of the 
 monarch, before his face and in presence of the courtiers, 
 in biting words and brilliant flashes of wit. 
 
 The possessor of the average of moral perceptions and 
 endowments would be so much and seriously affected by 
 the discovery that his hasty and reckless act has slain an 
 innocent, though perhaps foolishly offending man, who 
 was, moreover, the father of the woman he loved, as to 
 be rendered incapable of acting this part of cold and 
 mocking flightiness ; but it is just the condition of mind 
 and mode of action that might be expected of one of 
 Hamlet's brilliance of intellect and noble but nervously 
 excitable character, when forced by disturbing circum- 
 stances out of a state of melancholia into an actual fever- 
 
THE SUBJECTION OF HAMLET. 
 
 61 
 
 fit of insanity, — every faculty preternaturally heightened, 
 his bitter wit overflowing, all tenderness and every tie of 
 moral obligation burnt into cinder by the wild fire of his 
 brain, judgment utterly overthrown, and all his won- 
 derful powers unrestrained by any curb of reason, fear, 
 custom, or law. 
 
 Hamlet, on his way to England, meets soldiers 
 marching 
 
 " to gain a little patch of ground 
 That hath in it no profit but the name ;" 
 
 and the sight fills his inflammatory brain with a host 
 of images drawn from the consideration of what small 
 reasons induce military ardor and enterprise. As usual, 
 he is for the moment captured by these thoughts, that 
 mix themselves up, as did the actors, with his mission, 
 making a strange medley which his intellectual endow- 
 ments render into a kind of eloquent coherence. The 
 remainder of the fourth act is taken up mainly with the 
 episode of Ophelia's madness. That this is unlike Ham- 
 let's is not an argument that both are not actual cases of 
 disease. Ophelia's mind is completely overturned, while 
 Hamlet's is only so much disordered as to make him an 
 irresponsible agent of action, though the thoughts of his 
 teeming brain continue to flow in some approach to 
 natural order, but ever at the suggestion of whatever cir- 
 cumstances engage his attention. With him control of 
 
62 THE SUBJECTION OF HAMLET. 
 
 judgment is relaxed, and will-power lost ; nevertheless, at 
 times his conversation is not only sufficiently orderly, 
 but, as we have seen, intellectually brilliant. In her all 
 is confusion : no judgment, no order, no natural sequence 
 of thoughts. Her insanity is many stages advanced be- 
 yond his, and exhibits different phenomena. 
 
 In the first scene of the last act. Prince Hamlet and his 
 best friend, Horatio, come to a church-yard, where they 
 overhear two grave-diggers singing merrily as they dig. 
 The mind of the prince, taking color as usual from his 
 surroundings, moralizes over the skulls tossed carelessly 
 forth by the sexton's spade. There is no trace in his con- 
 versation of his perplexing thoughts, dangerous position, 
 or awful mission. He talks over the philosophy of life 
 and death with the calmness of a professor of craniology. 
 At length, unable to resist the fascination of even these 
 rude minds, he engages in conversation with one of the 
 diggers, who is a practical joker and a merry fellow in 
 spite of his grave occupation ; and actually taking tone 
 and the cue to his thoughts from this knight of the 
 spade, the Prince of Denmark bandies ^ords with a 
 sexton ; but, as we are forced to acknowledge, in this 
 case meets a wit sharper than his own for such coarse 
 encounter. 
 
 _ At sight of a skull which the sexton assures him is 
 that of Yorick, the king's jester, he falls once more to 
 moralizing as only he can moralize, and evidently with 
 
THE SUBJECTION OF HAMLET. 63 
 
 his whole heart and mind in this theme of the moment. 
 His mind goes wandering away and chasing fancies on a 
 path of imaginative suggestion, while his thoughts, fouled 
 by church-yard airs, seem to take morbid delight in pic- 
 turing the most repulsive images of mortality, of which 
 skulls and graves are the hints which have caught and 
 control him. But in this unhealthy occupation he is 
 ^1 stopped by the entrance of a funeral procession, which 
 I conveys the body of poor Ophelia to its last resting- 
 ' place. The corpse is laid in the grave, into which her 
 brother Laertes leaps in a passion of grief, which, though 
 ' excessive, seems legitimate enough, and bids them 
 
 " Now pile your dust upon the quick and dead, 
 Till of this flat a mountain you have made 
 To o'ertop old Pelion, or the skyish head 
 Of blue Olympus !" 
 
 This is cue enough for Hamlet's madness to catch the 
 infection, and he takes it the more readily that his heart 
 and brain are laboring in the excitement of learning 
 that the sweet lady he loved is dead. Hence we may 
 look for a fit of more than ordinary violence in the di- 
 rection of his usual idiosyncrasy; nor do we look in 
 vain. He mimics the passion of Laertes in the same 
 theatrical style of extravagant words, thus exhibiting 
 his constant mania of losing his own direction of 
 thought by the suggestion of an exciting circumstance. 
 
64 I'SE SUBJECTION OF HAMLET. 
 
 "Hamlet [advancing]. What is lie whose grief 
 
 Bears such an emphasis? whose phase of sorrow 
 Conjures the wandering stars, and makes them stand 
 Like wonder-wounded hearers ? This is I, 
 Hamlet the Dane !" 
 
 After grappling with Laertes in a desperate struggle 
 on Ophelia's coflan, they come out of the grave, and 
 Hamlet, raving, cries to the brother of the lady whom 
 his own acts have destroyed, — 
 
 " Swounds ! show me what thou'lt do : 
 "Woo'tweep? woo't fight? woo't fast?. woo't tear thyself? 
 Woo't drink up eisel? eat a crocodile? 
 I'll do't. Dost thou come here to whine? 
 To outface me with leaping in her grave? 
 Be buried quick with her, and so will I : 
 And, if thou prate of mountains, let them throw 
 Millions of acres on us, till our ground, 
 Singeing his pate against the burning zone, 
 Make Ossa like a wart ! Nay, an thou'lt mouth, 
 I'll rant as well as thou. 
 Queen. This is mere madness ; 
 
 And thus awhile the fit will work on him ; 
 Anon, as patient as the female dove, 
 When that her golden couplets are disclosed, 
 His silence will sit drooping. 
 Hamlet [although he was the aggressor]. 
 Hear you, sir ; 
 What is the reason that you use me thus ? 
 I loved you ever. — But it is no matter. 
 Let Hercules himself do what he may. 
 The cat will mew, and dog will have his day." 
 
 Hamlet's madness is so apparent in this scene that it 
 
THE SUBJECTION OF HAMLET. 65 
 
 needs no further comment than the remark that, as 
 always, it takes its form from the prominent circum- 
 stance, which happens to be the theatrical display by 
 Laertes of his grief. It will be noticed that Laertes 
 tacitly admits Hamlet's insanity, for he utters no word 
 to him in all his aggression, except his first exclamation 
 when that madman leaps into the grave and assaults 
 him; the king and queen call him mad; Horatio bids 
 him " be quiet ;" and, at the end of the scene, in obedi- 
 ence to the king's command, — 
 
 " I pray you, good Horatio, wait upon him" — 
 
 that gentleman performs the part of a madman's keeper, 
 and leads him off. The prince had one of his worst fits, 
 and to believe that it was counterfeited is to make him 
 desecrate his love of Ophelia and all the best and holiest 
 feelings of the human heart by this disgraceful scene 
 over her dead body, at a moment, too, when the shock 
 of her death first comes to him, — a despicable action 
 which no right-minded man could possibly perform for 
 the purpose of carrying on a sham, which might just as 
 well be acted elsewhere. 
 
 In the next scene Hamlet relates to Horatio how he 
 extricated himself from the fate planned for him by his 
 king-uncle. His trick of changing the tenor of the king's 
 letter so fatally for his schoolmates, a piece of cunning 
 
66 THE SUBJECTION OF HAMLET. 
 
 very likely to pop into an intellectual madman's brain, 
 is an act which we prefer to attribute to craziness rather 
 \^ / than to the deliberate purpose of an unclouded mind. 
 That the pair of courtiers may have deserved their fate 
 is possibly true, — though we are not compelled to sup- 
 pose them cognizant of the king's design ; indeed, their 
 carrying the letter to England in Hamlet's absence 
 would indicate their ignorance of its purport; — ^but the 
 act that sent them to their destruction was not princely. 
 
 To Hamlet and Horatio comes Osric, a court-butterfly; 
 and, in the euphuistic language in fashion at the English 
 court when this play was written, and which Shakespeare 
 found a fit subject for his ridicule, conveys to the prince 
 a message from the king. This is a request that, to de- 
 \ cide a wager the king has laid, Hamlet will accept a 
 friendly challenge to fence with Laertes. Caught with 
 the glitter of Osric's words, Hamlet becomes an euphuist, 
 and mimics the gay court-fly with mocking disdain ; not 
 only entering, perforce, into that mockery with a keen, 
 quizzical spirit, but seeming to catch eagerly at the pro- 
 posal of a bout with the foils, as if it suggested amusement 
 and interest to him. His brain is ever inflammable, 
 caught by the last sight or the last sound, always in- 
 capable of holding a purpose, although that purpose may 
 "haunt him from time to time with the delusion that it 
 is the moving cause of his action. The poor ghost has 
 .^placed his cause in very incapable hands, and the avenging 
 
THE SUBJECTION OF HAMLET. 67 
 
 of his murder hangs on uncertain chance ; it is, indeed, 
 accomplished at last, but, by the craziness and incapacity 
 of his agent, comes amid a general ruin that falls not 
 alone on his murderer, but on his own son and widow. 
 
 Although Hamlet has a premonition of coming dis 
 aster, which he confides to his friend, he disregards that 
 friend's advice, and goes on with interest, even with 
 eagerness, to the fencing bout. In a speech, most manly 
 if spoken by a madman in an interval of comparative 
 freedom from his malady, but utterly mean if the speaker 
 be a counterfeiter of madness, he begs Laertes' pardon for 
 the misfortunes he has brought upon him, and declares 
 that what he has done must be set down to madness. 
 This he does clasping Laertes' hand, and professing 
 brotherly love. Can we believe the heart of the brilliant 
 Prince of Denmark so base as to descend into this abyss 
 of lies ? If so, all the glory and dignity of the play have 
 departed, and no moralist can ever patch up and re- 
 burnish the defaced and tarnished soul of this false hero. 
 
 The play of Hamlet, by the dishonesty of its chief 
 personage, loses rank, and can never fail, after such con- 
 clusion has been reached, to bring with it uncomfortable 
 and ugly thoughts, and our condemnation, not only of 
 its hero, but of the plan of the drama, where Hamlet, 
 as the chosen agent of Claudius' punishment, should 
 represent virtue against vice, as Richmond does against 
 the wicked Gloster. 
 
N 
 
 N 
 
 M 
 
 68 THE SUBJECTION OF HAMLET. 
 
 Hamlet and Laertes fence; and the play of fighting 
 so acts on the impressible mind of the prince as to bring 
 about the reality of a deadly encounter; the courtly 
 game at the foils is changed into an angry scuffle, in 
 which rapid and desperate blows are exchanged; the 
 combatants close, grapple, and change weapons ; struck 
 with the same venom, both are mortally wounded. 
 Meantime the queen has drunk from the cup prepared 
 by the wicked king for his nephew, and cries that she 
 ;is poisoned; Laertes confesses his baseness, and pro- 
 claims the king's treachery, and Hamlet kills the king. 
 Before dying the prince forgives Laertes, and earnestly 
 calls on Horatio to set him right with the world, — 
 
 ' If thou did'st ever hold me in thy heart, 
 Absent thee from felicity a while, 
 And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain, 
 To tell my story." 
 
 Jf 
 
 In his last words, at the moment of death, this unfor- 
 tunate prince seems more free from the curse of the mad- 
 \l ness that has embittered his life and induced the frightful 
 tragedy that closes the play than during all the preceding 
 V scenes. 
 
 So Hamlet has passed in review before us, and we 
 must make up our verdict upon his condition. We find 
 his mind constantly diverted from one theme to another, 
 forgetting purpose and duty by contact with circum- 
 
THE SUBJECTION OF HAMLET. gg 
 
 stances and other minds, entangled witli every mind he 
 meets by a strange magnetism that makes him assume its 
 thoughts, or reflect or mock its manner of thinking. 
 This power of absorbing the thoughts of other minds 
 would indicate the highest order of intellect, if its pos- L 
 sessor retained the force of his own will, purpose, and 
 complete identity ; but this is not the case with Hamlet, 
 who yields himself and all his powers of thought to . 
 every influence that comes to him, betraying at once 
 whatever knowledge he has gained, — the creature and 
 never the director of circumstances. He plunges eagerly 
 into each excitement with boyish zeal. He is like a child 
 sent upon an errand, who chases each butterfly he sees, 
 climbs for birds' nests, picks berries, and runs after every 
 bright-tinted flower that catches his eye, until he has 
 completely lost his way ; nor is his wandering redeemed 
 because between each episode he remembers the errand 
 upon which he has been sent. The child wanders be- 
 cause his fancies are more active than memory or judg- 
 ment. Hamlet goes astray from precisely the same 
 reason: but in him maturity of intellect should have 
 made judgment and memory the lords of his action, and 
 his failures can only be set down to unsoundness of mind. 
 When not under excitement or the magnetism of other 
 minds, he is plunged in melancholy and contemplates 
 suicide. Under any excitement he is easily wrought to 
 violence, and, when the fit is on him, proceeds to unwar- \j 
 
70 THE SUBJECTION OF HAMLET. 
 
 rantable excesses, as in his interviews with Ophelia and 
 in the graveyard scene. 
 
 It has been claimed that Hamlet's conversations with 
 Horatio and his marvellous soliloquies can be put in 
 \i evidence against the charge of insanity. In every case 
 these conversations and soliloquies reflect his subjection 
 to some other mind or circumstance, or to compound in- 
 fluences. His soliloquies are often marvels of thought, 
 and exhibit far-reachings of intellectual power ; but they 
 run brilliantly along lines of reflection that are suggested 
 to him from without, not within, and there is often — 
 perhaps always — a feverishness in them that is not 
 healthy. 
 
 His mind is phenomenal for acuteness and subtilty, 
 nd still more so for the splendor of its flights of im- 
 agination, but this does not prove his rationality. On 
 the contrary, the abandon with which he follows any line 
 of thought suggested to him is significant of an unbal- 
 anced intellect; for when the strong curb of reason is 
 on every thought, fancies are restrained and the lawless- 
 ness of imagination controlled between certain lines that 
 hold in their wholesome restrictions a normal, well- 
 balanced mind. There is no restraint on Hamlet's im- 
 agination, and its wild lawlessness awes and enchants us, 
 — enchants by the weird fascination we feel in contem- 
 plating the exercise of unrestrained powers that dare to 
 plunge into fathomless deeps or try to scale the heavens. 
 
THE SUBJECTION OF HAMLET. 7I 
 
 Hamlet is constantly in the condition of the subject 
 of a mesmerist, — if there are such conditions of the sane 
 mind as mesmerists claim. His will yields itself par- 
 tially or completely to whatever crosses his path, — king, 
 queen, Ophelia, Horatio, Polonius, courtiers, actors, even 
 down to Osric and the grave-diggers ! Yes, the skull 
 of Yorick mesmerizes him, and night and darkness so 
 work on his sensitive imagination that he exclaims, — 
 
 "Now could I drink hot blood, 
 And do such bitter business as the day 
 Would quake to look on !" 
 
 A graveyard sends his thoughts upon the loathsome 
 track of the decay of mortality, and he follows Alex- 
 ander's dust to the loam that stops a beer-barrel. 
 
 This, to such extent, and in a mind so full of 
 preoccupations, is abnormal, — a growing malady that 
 pushes him on to frivolous or to desperate acts, accord- 
 ing to the character of the influences that magnetize 
 him. Yet Hamlet's is not always passive subjection 
 to the mesmerizing agent : it is subjection to influ-' 
 ences that give direction to his mind, or that open to 
 this most intellectual of all subjects the mind of the 
 mesmerist, in a mysterious way, — it is a mingling of 
 mesmerist and subject, while the individualities remain; 
 the subject's will being paralyzed or eccentrically or 
 fantastically diverted into a previously unconsidered 
 
72 THE SUBJECTION OF HAMLET. 
 
 direction. He is often the subject of compound influ- 
 ences, and the magnetic lines that draw him cross and 
 conflict, producing distractions and confusion. 
 
 Mad? So only can we reconcile him with himself, 
 and give him a consistent, understandable character. 
 Never a feigner of madness ; but whenever his words 
 indicate this, it is the cunning devil of insanity that 
 speaks, seeking to hide its acts beneath a veil of lies. 
 How can we believe in the failure of such a stupendous 
 intellect as Hamlet's would be, if its keenness, activity, 
 and subtile powers were under the direction of sound 
 judgment? All the clumsy force of the murderer-king 
 would fall at once before it; the truth would be pro- 
 claimed, and guilt punished. We recognize Hamlet's 
 marvellous powers of brain, but while they amaze and 
 dazzle us, we see their possessor going constantly astray. 
 He has knowledge, energy, keenness, imagination, and 
 a rare power of reading men's thoughts ; but, alas ! di- 
 recting force of judgment is wanting. His mind is a 
 kaleidoscope, always brilliant, but its brightness twisted 
 into distorted forms at every turn, — no identity of shape, 
 no constant figure. His is a mingling of opposites im- 
 possible under the rule of reason ; hence we must place 
 him in the realm of unreason, where we find an ex- 
 planation of those "bad dreams" that vex him, 
 making "Denmark a prison," the "majestical roof" 
 of the heavens " a foul and pestilent congregation of 
 
THE SUBJECTION OF HAMLET. 73 
 
 vapors," and terrifying his soul in its contemplation 
 of a future life. There are nobleness and meanness; 
 acuteness of intellect and weakness of judgment; 
 gentle, sympathetic perception and unfeeling harshness ; 
 lofty aspirations and contemptible falsity; the highest 
 moral principle, and taking life with a contemptuous 
 mock, — we must reconcile these and more, if we say, not 
 mad. No sane being can combine such contrarieties; 
 but a madman is capable of everything from the most- 
 sublime to the most mean. 
 
 Mad? So only has the play a continuity of pur- 
 pose, as exhibiting the struggle of a majestic, graceful, 
 and most brilliant mind in the grasp of a dread disease 
 that blights every noble faculty by the palsy of its 
 withering touch, while the flashes of wit and genius 
 which dazzle our sight are but signs of the death 
 agonies of that brain, around which the fatal malady 
 is pouring its suffocating fogs. It is a fatal overthrow 
 of reason, not in one stunning shock, but by insidious ap- 
 proaches of an enemy that exerts its most powerful ef- 
 forts in hours of trial and in the emergencies of life 
 when the soul has greatest need of all its powers and 
 the clear light of intellect. We think of Laocoon in 
 the folds of the serpents : there is, as to this inner 
 struggle, the silence of the statue and the same piteous 
 appeal to our hearts. This is tragedy. What conflict 
 without can be compared to that inward battle of a 
 
 10 
 
74 THE SUBJECTION OF HAMLET. 
 
 human soul with the demon of insanity ? Such an 
 enemy has terrors to daunt the boldest. Who can look 
 into the eyes of a madman without a shudder of sym- 
 pathetic horror? The furies that gathered around un- 
 happy Orestes, and hissed terror at him from the wild 
 tangles of their serpent hair, were fainter horrors than 
 " the shapeless things that come upon the melancholy 
 creature doomed to insanity. 
 
 Mad? So only is Prince Hamlet noble. If he is a 
 sham and a cheat, debasing his soul with lies, tram- 
 pling on the purest affections, sacrificing Ophelia's in- 
 I nocent life, let us tear from our hearts the fascination 
 and glamour he has cast over us, and see him as he 
 is, a cruel and ignoble plotter, who has not even the 
 crown of success with which to hide the ugliness his 
 unfeeling selfishness has stamped upon his brow. 
 
 The unerring intuitions of a woman's heart give to her 
 \ f words a broader wisdom than her judgment is capable of 
 in Ophelia's despairing cry : 
 
 " O what a noble mind is here o'erthrown ! 
 The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, sword. 
 The expectancy and rose of the fair state. 
 The glass of fashion and the mould of form, 
 The observed of all observers, quite, quite down ! 
 And I, of ladies most deject and wretched. 
 That sucked the honey of his music vows. 
 Now see that noble and moat sovereign reason 
 Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh I" 
 
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