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 THE GENESIS OF 
 HAMLET 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLTON M. LEWIS 
 
 Emily Sanford Professor of English Literature 
 in Yale University 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 
 1907 
 

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 Copyright, 1907, 
 
 BV 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 
 Published November, 1907 
 
 THE QUINN & BODEN CO. PRESS 
 RAHWAY, N. J. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 This essay presents the chief new results of 
 a prolonged study of Hamlet with a succession 
 of college classes. I became convinced long 
 ago that the only hope of solving the Hamlet 
 problem lay in a clear discrimination between 
 Shakespeare's original contributions to the 
 story and the legendary materials that he in- 
 herited. This plan has never been fairly tried, 
 because it has heretofore been thought impossi- 
 ble to distinguish these heterogeneous elements. 
 There are, however, plenty of clues, and it is 
 necessary only that they be intelligently fol- 
 lowed. I have here pointed out the most promis- 
 ing of these, and followed them as well as I 
 could. There have been so many false starts 
 towards a solution of Hamlet that no new ad- 
 venturer can expect all his conclusions to be 
 acceptable; but I am confident that I have hit 
 upon a sound method of investigation, and that 
 by the same method others will succeed where- 
 ever I may have failed. 
 
iv Preface 
 
 All the texts necessary for my program of 
 study are in the Appendix volume of Furness's 
 invaluable Variorum Hamlet. After Dr. Fur- 
 ness, I am chiefly indebted to A. C. Bradley's 
 Shakespearean Tragedy and F. S. Boas's edi- 
 tion of Kyd's Works. Tanger's article on the 
 German Hamlet is in the Shakespeare Jahr- 
 buch for 1888. Creizenach is copiously quoted 
 by Tanger, and I have ventured to cite him at 
 second hand. The original text of the German 
 play is easily accessible in Cohn's Shakespeare 
 in Germany. Belleforest's novel is compara- 
 tively rare, and I have myself been unable to 
 consult it; but the translation in Furness is 
 vouched for as literal by Capell, Elze, and 
 others, and it was amply sufficient for my pur- 
 poses. 
 
 I have received much assistance from many 
 of my students, both from their acumen and 
 from their perplexities ; and I am sorry that 
 specific acknowledgments are impracticable. 
 
 C. M. L. 
 
 New Haven, August, 1907. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. The Theory of Coleridge .... 1 
 The play explained by defects in Hamlet's 
 character. This theory partly explains the 
 pretence of madness. It breaks down, how- 
 ever, under Hamlet's early adoption of that 
 pretence. 
 
 II. Werder's Theory 10 
 
 Theory that Hamlet's difficulties are exter- 
 nal. Too summarily dismissed by Bradley. 
 Yet not wholly sound. Divers objections con- 
 sidered. Werder at least compels a reconsid- 
 eration of Hamlet's character. 
 
 III. The First Quarto 20 
 
 The inconsistencies of the play suggest ex- 
 amination of all versions. Character of 
 First Quarto. Its variant readings clear up 
 minor difficulties. Inconsistency of religious 
 and ethical assumptions in Hamlet. Miles's 
 theory of the pirate capture. Shakespeare's 
 effort to justify Hamlet. 
 
 IV. Kyd and Belleforest 36 
 
 The pre-Shakespearean Hamlet was by Kyd. 
 Based on Belleforest's novel. Summary of 
 the novel. Explains mystery of Claudius's 
 succession. The murder not secret. The pre- 
 tence of madness not illogical. Hamlet's dif- 
 ficulties wholly external. 
 
vi Contents 
 
 PAGE 
 
 V. The German Hamlet 47 
 
 Is the German play based on Shakespeare or 
 on Kyd? Latham's theory. Objections of 
 Creizenbach and Tanger refuted. Proof of 
 derivation from Kyd. 
 
 "VI. Kyd's Hamlet 64 
 
 Light on Kyd's lost play from two sources. 
 The Spanish Tragedy; Kyd's idea of revenge. 
 The German Hamlet; Kyd's treatment of the 
 murder and the pretence of madness. Early 
 adoption of the pretence justified. Difficulties 
 external. 
 
 VII. Shakespeare's Hamlet 77 
 
 Shakespeare's methods in general. Slavish 
 adoption of Kyd's plot, freedom in interpreta- 
 tion. Suppression of external difficulties. 
 Evolution of Hamlet's character. Is Hamlet 
 insane? Is he incapable? Shakespeare's efforts 
 to humanize the story. 
 
 VIII. Shakespeare's Hamlet, Continued . . 95 
 Intrusion of the ethical element. Popular 
 conception of Hamlet. Hamlet's instructions 
 to the players. Death of Rosencrantz and 
 Guildenstern. "To be or not to be," and the 
 thought of suicide. The last soliloquy and the 
 journey to England. The "tragic fault" in 
 Hamlet. 
 
 IX. Ophelia 112 
 
 Hamlet's visit to Ophelia's closet. Did he 
 love her? The story is imperfectly told. The 
 German version. Kyd's version. Explanation 
 of Shakespeare's version. 
 
 X. Summary 128 
 
THE GENESIS OF HAMLET 
 
THE GENESIS OF HAMLET 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 XLbe Gbeorg of Colerioge 
 
 Coleridge, Schlegel, Goethe, and scores of 
 others are agreed that Hamlet is a man some- 
 how unfitted by nature for the task laid upon 
 him. This view has been widely accepted for 
 a century, and though students of the subject 
 have differed about many details, the great ma- 
 jority have united in viewing the play as the 
 tragedy of its hero's inefficiency. The difficul- 
 ties that confront Hamlet are difficulties in his 
 own nature, and another sort of hero — an 
 Othello, for instance, or a Laertes — might have 
 attained a complete revenge before the begin- 
 ning of the second act. This theory I shall 
 for convenience call by the name of Coleridge, 
 its subtlest and best-known expounder ; but it 
 must be remembered that I use his name only 
 
2 The Theory of Coleridge 
 
 for convenience, and that many details of the 
 theory have been developed far beyond his orig- 
 inal conception. 
 
 This theory sees in Hamlet a man of wide 
 and keen intellectual powers, but feeble will ; 
 and his feebleness of will has resulted directly 
 from over-development of his intellect. A per- 
 son of small mental calibre may be quick in 
 decision and headstrong in action, just because 
 the thing to be done takes complete possession 
 of him and robs him of the power of thought. 
 A man of larger mental endowment will con- 
 sider and reflect before he acts, because passion 
 and volition cannot usurp entire dominion 
 over his reflective faculties. Carry the develop- 
 ment farther, let the intellectual habit gain 
 complete ascendency, and the man will not act 
 at all; his will-power is suffocated by reflection 
 and contemplation. 
 
 In such a case, according to Coleridge's view, 
 is Hamlet. He is enjoined to avenge his 
 father's murder. A simple act is required of 
 him, an act which a narrower man might per- 
 form straightway; but in Hamlet's mind such 
 
The Theory of Coleridge 3 
 
 illimitable vistas of speculation are opened up 
 that his will shrivels before them. Though rec- 
 ognizing his plain duty, and though feverishly 
 eager to do it, he cannot force himself to action. 
 Thus he fritters time away in reflection and 
 introspection till at last he himself is involved 
 in ruin, and dies the victim of his own moral 
 paralysis. 
 
 This theory, like other theories, affords a 
 beautiful explanation of some difficulties of the 
 play, but collapses under the weight of others. 
 I will make a test case to illustrate both its 
 strength and its weakness; and to make the 
 test as decisive as possible I will apply it to the 
 most crucial problem of the play, the problem 
 presented by Hamlet's pretence of madness. 
 And I must remark first (with perhaps an ex- 
 cess of caution) that this problem is not to be 
 confused with the question whether Hamlet is 
 really mad, as some flat-footed critics have 
 thought. Whether he is mad or not, he cer- 
 tainly sometimes pretends to be; and we learn 
 from the second act that he began his pretence 
 soon after he learned of the murder. 
 
4 The Theory of Coleridge 
 
 Now why did Hamlet do this ? Here I repeat, 
 is the crucial problem of the play. The story 
 was doubtless suggested by the old Roman tale 
 of Brutus, who feigned idiocy to keep Tarquin 
 from suspecting his patriotic ambitions. This 
 was a fairly plausible story, and one's first 
 guess is that Hamlet had a like purpose. 
 On second thought, however, no such purpose 
 seems to fit Hamlet's situation. He had been 
 perfectly sane up to the time when the play 
 opens — a charming and beloved young gen- 
 tleman, the observed of all observers. If he 
 now suddenly begins to act like a madman the 
 effect will not be to allay suspicion, for Claudius 
 has as yet no suspicion at all. All that is 
 needed to keep suspicion from rising is for 
 Hamlet to remain quiet. If what Hamlet wants 
 is a chance to kill Claudius, his peculiar conduct 
 will certainly hinder more than it can help. 
 Whatever he wants, it is hard to see any ad- 
 vantage in such behavior. 
 
 In fact, of course, it was just Hamlet's 
 pretence of madness that proved fatal to his 
 design. Claudius became suspicious of him as 
 
The Theory of Coleridge 5 
 
 soon as his irrational conduct began, and set 
 spies upon him to find out his motive. Instead 
 of letting his suspicions be lulled to sleep, he 
 redoubled his vigilance. The pretence of mad- 
 ness proved a silly mistake; and one won- 
 ders that Hamlet's extraordinary intelligence 
 failed to foresee the inevitable issue. What- 
 ever we think of Hamlet, we cannot think him 
 stupid. 
 
 But here comes in the explanation by Cole- 
 ridge's theory. Hamlet's pretence becomes in- 
 telligible when we assume the morbid weakness 
 of his will. He has a restless desire to do some- 
 thing, a desire that will not be put down; but 
 even to satisfy this desire he cannot force him- 
 self to decisive action. Instead, he hits upon 
 this clever device. By feigning madness he 
 appeases his desire for action and so salves his 
 conscience; he enjoys the sense of achievement 
 without actually achieving anything; and es- 
 pecially he avoids committing himself irrev- 
 ocably to any further steps. Moreover, the 
 pretence of madness affords a safety-valve for 
 his pent-up feelings, for he can now give vent 
 
6 The Theory of Coleridge 
 
 to hysterical irony without restraint, whenever 
 passion reaches the boiling-point. But of 
 course, so far as his main purpose of revenge 
 is concerned, the plan is useless; it leads 
 nowhere. 
 
 This explanation not only grows naturally 
 out of the Coleridgean theory of Hamlet's 
 character, it also tends strongly to confirm that 
 theory ; for it is hard to find any other explana- 
 tion of the facts. But there is a flaw that 
 seems to me to ruin the whole structure. 
 
 In the last scene of the first act we have Ham- 
 let already resolving upon this pretence of 
 madness. Within five minutes of the Ghost's 
 disappearance he has gathered his friends about 
 him and administered a solemn oath: 
 
 Here, as before, never, so help you mercy, 
 
 How strange or odd soe'er I bear myself, 
 
 As I perchance hereafter shall think meet 
 
 To put an antic disposition on, 
 
 That you, at such times seeing me, never shall, 
 
 With arms encumbered thus, or this head-shake, 
 
 Or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase, 
 
 As "Well, well, we know," or "We could, an if we would," 
 
 Or "If we list to speak," or "There be, an if they might," 
 
 Or such ambiguous giving out, to note 
 
 That you know aught of me. 
 
The Theory of Coleridge 7 
 
 Moreover, Hamlet has shown in soliloquy 
 just before this passage that the course of dis- 
 simulation to which he looks forward is to be a 
 long one. The Ghost leaves him in a high pas- 
 sion, but his first thought is not that he will 
 seek immediate vengeance, it is rather that he 
 will never forget that vengeance must be his; 
 he solemnly resolves to dedicate his whole life 
 to the achievement of his purpose. 
 
 Now it seems to me that if the pretence of 
 madness were due to Hamlet's inefficiency it 
 would be presented as a course into which he 
 drifted slowly. If, after repeated vain efforts 
 to lash himself into action, he had conceived 
 this device in despair, it would be comparatively 
 easy to understand him ; but it is very doubtful 
 psychology to present him as resolving upon 
 it at once, in the white heat of his first wrath 
 and vindictiveness. The whole effect of the 
 passage, in the light of Coleridge's theory, is to 
 suggest that a train of thought passes through 
 Hamlet's mind something like the following: 
 "I am now resolved to bend all my energies to 
 this task and to sweep to my revenge with 
 
8 The Theory of Coleridge 
 
 wings as swift as meditation or the thoughts of 
 love; but I know my own nature and am well 
 aware that this heat will hardly last overnight. 
 I foresee that I shall never really do anything, 
 and that sooner or later I shall have to devise 
 some way of salving my conscience and relieving 
 my pent-up emotions. What shall I do? About, 
 my brain ! By heaven, I have it ! As soon as 
 my feelings grow too strong for me I will 
 begin to feign madness in a hysterical, ironical 
 fashion ; and I will now swear my friends not 
 to betray me, no matter how long the silly game 
 keeps up." 
 
 Is not this utterly false characterization? 
 Hamlet elsewhere more than once resolves upon 
 action ; why, then, at this moment of first and 
 highest tension, should he so elaborately re- 
 solve upon long delay and ineffectual palter- 
 ing? The whole trend of the scene seems to 
 reduce to absurdity the Coleridgean hypothesis, 
 with its subtle explanation of the feigned mad- 
 ness. Shakespeare could not have designed the 
 main lines of this scene with any such intent as 
 that hypothesis imputes to him. 
 
The Theory of Coleridge 9 
 
 The theory is fraught with other difficulties 
 in plenty. I have chosen to emphasize this 
 particular one partly because, so far as I know, 
 it has not hitherto received attention, and 
 partly because it will be of importance in later 
 chapters. For the present I ask the reader 
 merely to note that while Hamlet's pretence of 
 madness seems explicable only by the theory of 
 Coleridge, his almost instantaneous resolve to 
 make the pretence seems quite inconsistent with 
 that theory. I may add also that whatever 
 modification of the theory be adopted, whether 
 the "sentimental" view of Goethe or the "moral" 
 view of Richardson and others or the "melan- 
 choly" view ably presented by Professor Brad- 
 ley, the same difficulty confronts all who 
 attribute Hamlet's difficulties and delays to 
 internal causes ; for they all must find him, at 
 the end of the first act, with incredible swift- 
 ness and spiritual energy foreseeing and pro- 
 viding for his own spiritual impotency. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 TKHerfcer's Gbeorg 
 
 The difficulties of the Coleridgean interpre- 
 tation are so great that a precisely opposite 
 one has recently gained some favor. Professor 
 Werder and some others have maintained that 
 Hamlet's troubles were chiefly external. Ham- 
 let himself does all that can be expected of the 
 ideal hero of romance, but Ins task is impossible. 
 To feel the force of this theory we must first 
 consider what, according to Werder, this 
 task is. 
 
 Hamlet is not commanded by the Ghost to 
 "kill Claudius," he is commanded to "revenge 
 his father's murder." There is no word of kill- 
 ing, and according to Werder mere killing 
 would not answer the purpose at all. Hamlet 
 must make a public exposure of the villain and 
 force him to confession and restitution. To 
 
 rush upon him at some unguarded time and 
 10 
 
Werder's Theory 1 1 
 
 thrust a knife into his back would be easy, but 
 would it satisfy justice? The world must know 
 the story. Claudius must suffer something 
 bitterer than an instantaneous death, and Ham- 
 let himself must be established on the throne. 
 
 Hamlet's purpose therefore is to right the 
 wrong, not merely to force an exchange of 
 blood for blood. He is slow to find a way be- 
 cause no way is to be found. Claudius is all- 
 powerful and strongly entrenched, and Ham- 
 let has no evidence. If he assassinates his uncle 
 and pleads the Ghost's behest, who will believe 
 him? The world will impute his act to ambi- 
 tious jealousy, and will speedily send him the 
 way of all regicides. The play is not the trag- 
 edy of inefficiency, but the tragedy of heroic 
 endeavor in the face of insuperable obstacles. 
 Hamlet succeeds, indeed, in forcing from Clau- 
 dius himself abundant corroboration of the 
 Ghost's charge, but he pays for his success with 
 his life. 
 
 This theory, I repeat, has recently found 
 some favor, but I think it has not found quite 
 all the favor it deserves. Professor Bradley 
 
12 Werder's Theory 
 
 allows it very short shrift. "From beginning 
 to end of the play," he says, "Hamlet never 
 makes the slightest reference to any external 
 difficulty. . . . Not only does Hamlet fail to 
 allude to such difficulties, but he always as- 
 sumes that he can obey the Ghost." And hence 
 Bradley declares, "No theory will hold water 
 which finds the cause of Hamlet's delay merely, 
 or mainly, or even to any considerable extent, 
 in external difficulties." 
 
 But if Hamlet "always assumes that he can 
 obey the Ghost" and never is himself conscious 
 of external difficulties, how are we to explain 
 the passages cited in the last chapter? The 
 first thought that comes to Hamlet, when the 
 Ghost has left him alone with his tremendous 
 responsibility, is that it will take him a life- 
 time to discharge it. If the difficulties were 
 "wholly or mainly" internal, he might have 
 reached this discouraged state of mind after 
 much experience of his own vacillation and in- 
 firmity, but that he should reach it in one jump 
 suggests that his difficulties are at least "to a 
 considerable extent" external. To my mind the 
 
Werder's Theory 1 3 
 
 proof is conclusive that external difficulties 
 were part of the poet's scheme when that partic- 
 ular scene was first conceived; and I am there- 
 fore obliged to admit that Werder's theory is 
 at least entitled to respect. 
 
 Yet I am not able to dispute Professor 
 Bradley's main conclusion after all. A survey 
 of the whole play detects sufficient evidence to 
 demolish Werder's theory. I have quoted only 
 two of Bradley's arguments, and I think that 
 in stating those two he has overlooked some im- 
 portant matters; but he has other objections 
 in overwhelming force. 
 
 Why does not Shakespeare show us the ex- 
 ternal difficulties more clearly, if he has them 
 in mind? When he gives any direct hint as to 
 external conditions, they seem quite opposed to 
 the demands of Werder's theory. Has Clau- 
 dius any partisan supporters at court? None 
 appear save the dotard Polonius. The people 
 are ready to rise at a word from Laertes ; and 
 it was Hamlet, not Laertes, that the people 
 especially loved. If we were weighing historical 
 conditions we might not be sure that Hamlet 
 
14 Werder's Theory 
 
 could have succeeded; but the conditions are 
 not historical but fictitious and dramatic, and 
 we may be sure that if Shakespeare had seen the 
 facts as Werder saw them he would have pre- 
 sented them differently. He would have laid a 
 strong dramatic emphasis on the King's polit- 
 ical and military supporters. 
 
 Moreover, the habitual secrecy of Hamlet's 
 proceedings is against Werder. The play that 
 was performed before the King, by Hamlet's 
 grim humor dubbed the Mouse-Trap, afforded 
 a rare chance to unmask the villain. If Ham- 
 let's difficulty were lack of evidence, could not 
 he have turned this performance to some ac- 
 count? Might not judicious hints have made 
 the test as significant to others as it was to 
 him? But he not only made no effort to turn 
 the Mouse-Trap to account, he never even 
 thought of making such an effort. His whole 
 design was secrecy. Horatio was his one con- 
 fidant, and the play was devised to satisfy his 
 own mind alone. It may be remarked, also, 
 that the Ghost had been as studious of secrecy 
 as Hamlet himself. 
 
Werder's Theory 15 
 
 The fact is that Werder's idea, — the idea 
 that Hamlet seeks justice rather than brute 
 revenge, — is a purely modern importation. In 
 such plays as Kyd's Spanish Tragedy we see 
 what the Elizabethan meant by revenge. He 
 meant the letting of blood for blood, the grati- 
 fication of a savage instinct. Shakespeare 
 might of course have entertained the broader 
 conception, but the main body of his tragedy 
 shows that he did not. The chief difference be- 
 tween Shakespeare's conception and Kyd's is 
 this : Kyd thought of revenge as a dominating 
 and controlling passion, while Shakespeare pre- 
 sents it as seemingly incapable of absorbing 
 Hamlet's whole nature. Hamlet is sometimes 
 under the influence of the passion and some- 
 times not ; but when he is, it is the mere savage 
 thirst for blood — by no means Werder's long- 
 ing for larger justice. 
 
 Finally, among the host of objections that 
 may be urged against this theory, we may fall 
 back confidently upon the pretence of madness. 
 As we have already seen, Hamlet's early resolve 
 to make this pretence, and his evident expec- 
 
1 6 Werder's Theory 
 
 tation that it will last long, count in Werder's . 
 favor; but why should he make the pretence 
 at all? Even Werder has to recognize that the 
 pretence has no objective value; it is a mere 
 safety-valve for Hamlet's agony, for the agony 
 caused by his acute and shuddering sense of the 
 awfulness of his position. 
 
 But would a man of sense and healthy will- 
 power be so unhinged by external difficulties? 
 Werder has to assume that Hamlet's attitude 
 towards his task is like that of the modern 
 symbolist towards the burden of life's mystery, 
 and thus the pretence of madness still remains 
 essentially pathological. This is so generous 
 a concession to the Coleridgeans that Werder's 
 own theory becomes largely nugatory. He 
 would have us regard the play as portraying 
 a situation impossible for any man to cope with ; 
 yet he admits that our interest is excited in 
 the hero chiefly by the hysterical and sentimen- 
 tal way in which he faces that situation. The 
 plot might have been outlined by Dumas pere, 
 but the filling-in and the characterization were 
 dreamed by a Maeterlinck. 
 
Werder's Theory 17 
 
 Still, in spite of the insuperable objections 
 to his theory, I think we are under great obli- 
 gations to Professor Werder. Taking a new 
 view of the play (even though, on the whole, 
 an inaccurate view) he has seen and clearly 
 shown some features of Hamlet's character 
 and conduct to which Coleridge had blinded us. 
 He has, for one thing, especially emphasized the 
 fact that Hamlet does not delay very long. 
 
 There are only two considerable intervals of 
 time between successive scenes in Hamlet. Be- 
 tween the first and second acts we have to as- 
 sume an interval to account for the return of 
 the ambassadors from Norway, for the arrival 
 of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and perhaps 
 for the need of sending remittances to Laertes. 
 Again, somewhere in the fourth act, there is an 
 interval while Hamlet goes to sea and returns. 
 Everywhere else the acts and scenes follow one 
 another in rapid succession. 
 
 But even these two necessary intervals are 
 minimized. As to the first, it is to be noted that 
 near the beginning of the second act we hear 
 of Hamlet's first assumption of madness, in 
 
1 8 Werder's Theory 
 
 Ophelia's account of his disordered dress and 
 erratic behavior. This seems like an immediate 
 sequel to the resolution taken in Act I. The 
 things that suggest lapse of time are the af- 
 fairs of other persons. We are told later, very 
 indirectly, that two months must have elapsed; 
 for whereas in Act I the elder Hamlet had 
 been not two months dead, in Act III Ophelia 
 says it is "twice two months." But who is con- 
 scious, between the two appearances of Ham- 
 let himself, that a long time has elapsed? And 
 the second interval is made as brief as possible. 
 The sea-voyage is short. Hamlet writes to 
 Horatio that the pirate capture was made "ere 
 we were two days old at sea." He had started 
 immediately after the Mouse-Trap, and he 
 comes straight back. 
 
 There is no long delay here. We cannot 
 say there is no delay at all, or that Shake- 
 speare does not want us to observe it, for Ham- 
 let's soliloquies are full of unrest and impa- 
 tience; but there is no reason why we should 
 blame him for it overmuch. The talk of pro- 
 crastination comes wholly from Hamlet him- 
 
Werder's Theory 19 
 
 self. I think we may fairly concede to Werder 
 that Hamlet does all we can reasonably require 
 of him. Even if we reject the notion that his 
 difficulties were chiefly external, and say that 
 he had none save the difficulty of making up 
 his own mind, can we feel that he was unreason- 
 ably dilatory about it? The matter was a 
 very grave one, and could not be decided off- 
 hand. 
 
 We may therefore find a partial satisfaction 
 in saying that, while Hamlet's difficulties seem 
 chiefly internal, they are such as any man 
 might feel. He is not slower in making up 
 his mind than any intelligent hero might be 
 permitted to be; and we cannot unhesitatingly 
 condemn him as bringing ruin upon his own 
 plans by culpable procrastination. For so 
 much light upon the play we may cordially 
 thank Professor Werder, even if it involve 
 straining some minor points in his favor; but 
 still, what are we to say about the pretence 
 of madness? That remains the knottiest diffi- 
 culty of the play, for it still seems to convict 
 Hamlet of shuffling incapacity. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 Zbc 3ffrst Quarto 
 
 The difficulties that confront any theory 
 about Hamlet induce at last a belief that no 
 single theory is admissible — that neither the 
 play nor the character is a consistent whole. 
 Such a belief comes slowly, for we are deeply 
 convinced that Shakespeare knew his men, and 
 that if they seem unintelligible or impossible 
 the blame should be ours, not his. He was 
 often a careless workman, but we trust the 
 truth and fidelity of his dramatic vision; and 
 we cannot always be sure that we have fairly 
 sounded the depths of his meaning. 
 
 But in the case of Hamlet we are on safe 
 ground. There are certain circumstances 
 under which even Shakespeare might go astray ; 
 and those happen to be just the circumstances 
 under which Hamlet was composed. If Shake- 
 speare elaborated a character not in one heat, 
 
The First Quarto 21 
 
 but at intervals extending over one or two 
 years, he might easily lose hold of the concep- 
 tion with which he started. So it was, for 
 instance, when he revived Falstaff for The 
 Merry Wives ; he gave us something very good, 
 but by no means the identical Sir John of Gads- 
 hill and Shrewsbury. Or, if, instead of rearing 
 a drama out of his own invention, Shakespeare 
 merely rewrote or repolished a tale already 
 told, perhaps already dramatized, he might 
 easily alter part of the significance of his plot 
 or his characters, and yet retain passages and 
 traits that harmonized only with the older 
 meaning. Instances of this are numerous and 
 familiar. 
 
 Now when Shakespeare wrote Hamlet he was, 
 in fact, merely rewriting an older tragedy; 
 and he rewrote it not all at once, but by in- 
 stalments. The older tragedy is lost, and 
 therefore, while many scholars now recognize 
 that Shakespeare's play is an imperfect fusion 
 of diverse elements, the task of separating them 
 and so displaying the genesis of the play has 
 heretofore been thought hopeless. I believe 
 
22 The First Quarto 
 
 that much may be accomplished by careful 
 analysis, and it is to this task that I now ad- 
 dress myself. 
 
 The so-called First Quarto, the earliest ex- 
 tant edition of Shakespeare's Hamlet, was 
 printed in 1603, but an entry in the Stationers' 
 Register seems to show that the play was acted 
 as early as July, 1602. The Second Quarto, 
 issued in 1604, bore on its title-page the asser- 
 tion that it was "newly imprinted and enlarged 
 to almost as much again as it was." The 
 assertion was true, for while the First Quarto 
 has but little more than two thousand lines, the 
 Second has nearly four thousand. The First 
 Quarto is wretchedly printed. It is apparently 
 the work of a piratical publisher who, being 
 unable to secure a manuscript copy from the 
 players, employed stenographers to take sur- 
 reptitious notes of a performance. The volume 
 is therefore a very imperfect reproduction of 
 Shakespeare's first version of the play; but 
 that it does purport to reproduce such a ver- 
 sion, and not the completed tragedy, is now 
 the universal judgment of scholars. So atro- 
 
The First Quarto 23 
 
 cious is the misprinting that we must be cau- 
 tious in examining this Quarto; we cannot 
 always be sure what we owe to Shakespeare 
 and what to the publishers ; but an examination 
 will be profitable nevertheless. 
 
 In the first place, there are in Hamlet many 
 unimportant difficulties of detail up6n which 
 the First Quarto throws much light. I will 
 begin with some of the most trivial, because 
 they happen to be the clearest illustrations. 
 In the completed play Polonius asks Ophelia 
 whether she has given Hamlet any hard words 
 of late, and she replies: 
 
 \ 
 
 No, my good lord, but, as you did command, 
 
 I did repel his letters. \. 
 
 Now Polonius, in this version of the play, 
 had not given this command, but in the earlier 
 version he had. The First Quarto reads : 
 
 Ofelia, receive none of his letters, 
 
 For lover's lines are snares to entrap the heart. 
 
 Instead of this, the revised version has made 
 Polonius say: 
 
24 The First Quarto 
 
 From this time 
 Be somewhat scanter of your maiden presence: 
 Set your entreatments at a higher rate 
 Than a command to parley. 
 
 Now it is of course utterly unimportant that 
 Ophelia should quote a command which did not 
 appear to have been given. We cannot, of 
 course, dignify the fact by calling it a blun- 
 der. But the First Quarto shows that it was 
 a little slip, and shows, too, how it happened. 
 Shakespeare expanded and altered the prohibi- 
 tions of Polonius, and did not observe that the 
 rejected lines were needed to secure perfect 
 logical coherence. 
 
 In the "nunnery" scene Ophelia makes an- 
 other interesting little slip. She brings back 
 the trinkets Hamlet has given her, saying: 
 
 Take these again; for to the noble mind 
 Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind. 
 
 This is perhaps not unintelligible, but it is cer- 
 tainly rather odd. Ophelia has been repelling 
 Hamlet's letters and refusing to speak with 
 him ; and she herself supposes that he still loves 
 
The First Quarto 25 
 
 her passionately and that her harsh treatment 
 has driven him mad. Is it like her simplicity 
 and straightforwardness to say now that the 
 unkindness is his? We can make nothing of 
 this until we examine the First Quarto, in 
 which we read as follows: 
 
 Of el. My lord, I have sought opportunity, which now 
 I have, to redeliver to your worthy hands a small remem- 
 brance. 
 
 Hereupon Hamlet breaks in with his bitter 
 invective against the dishonesty of beauty, 
 ending with "I never gave you nothing;" and 
 Ophelia, bewildered and dismayed, says: 
 
 My lord, you know right well you did, 
 
 But now too true I find 
 
 Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind. 
 
 Her feeling is natural enough; but in his 
 second version Shakespeare transposed these 
 speeches, putting Hamlet's scolding after 
 Ophelia's protest ; she laments his unkindness 
 before he has been unkind ! Doubtless Shake- 
 speare thought it better to finish quickly the 
 
26 The First Quarto 
 
 talk about the love-tokens ; and of course it is 
 no wonder that he overlooked the slight impro- 
 priety involved. 
 
 There is a curious complexity in the religious 
 assumptions of the completed play. Most of 
 the first act, with its real Ghost and his talk of 
 purgatorial fires, is conceived in the spirit of 
 medieval superstition. For the purposes of the 
 play, ghosts and purgatory must be accepted 
 without reserve. At the end of the second act 
 Hamlet for a moment doubts whether it was 
 really his father's spirit that he saw; but the 
 alternative supposition is that it was the devil; 
 for the devil has power to assume a pleasing 
 shape and may be angling deceitfully for Ham- 
 let's soul. In the third act Hamlet thinks of 
 killing his uncle at prayer, but refrains because 
 he is unwilling to send his soul to heaven. He 
 will wait till he finds him "drunk asleep or in 
 his rage," and then will despatch him straight 
 to hell. As if one could save or damn the soul 
 of another by appointing the time for his tak- 
 ing-off! With judicious circumspection we 
 
The First Quarto 27 
 
 ourselves could be more efficient saviors of souls 
 than all the missionaries. 
 
 So far as these instances show, Shakespeare's 
 imagination is moving in a world bounded by 
 the narrowest superstition of medieval Cathol- 
 icism, and Hamlet is presented consistently in 
 character. Yet in another familiar passage 
 this same man is querying whether there can be 
 any life beyond the grave. To die is to sleep; 
 but whether in that sleep dreams may come, 
 who knows? The hereafter is the undiscovered 
 country from whose bourn no traveller returns. 
 
 This interesting inconsistency need occasion 
 no wonder, for Shakespeare, even under other 
 circumstances, might have been guilty of it; 
 but in this particular case the circumstances 
 of composition were chiefly responsible. In the 
 First Quarto Hamlet's soliloquy begins as 
 follows : 
 
 To be or not to be, ay, there's the point. 
 
 To die, to sleep, is that all? Ay, all? 
 
 No; to sleep, to dream; ay, marry, there it goes, 
 
 For in that dream of death when we awake, 
 
 And borne before an everlasting Judge, 
 
 From whence no passenger ever returned, 
 
28 The First Quarto 
 
 The undiscovered country, at whose sight 
 The happy smile, and the accursed damned. 
 
 This passage gives a fair sample of the 
 printing of the First Quarto. I have modern- 
 ized the spelling and punctuation, but many of 
 the lines remain obviously corrupt. As Shake- 
 speare wrote them, for example, we can hardly 
 doubt that it was the "everlasting Judge," 
 rather than the "undiscovered country," at 
 whose sight the happy smile and the accursed 
 are damned. Yet it is clear enough that the 
 Hamlet who uttered the soliloquy was the same 
 medieval man that heard the Ghost's revela- 
 tion, suspected the agency of the devil, and 
 would not send a villain's soul to heaven. It 
 was only later, as Hamlet became the mouth- 
 piece for some of Shakespeare's own maturer 
 reflections, that the agnosticism of the Second 
 Quarto crept in. Shakespeare was then touch- 
 ing up a character conceived two years earlier. 
 
 Toward the end of the play, when Claudius 
 has been seeking Hamlet's life, and it is clear 
 
The First Quarto 29 
 
 that Hamlet must act quickly if he will save 
 himself, he refers to Horatio the question 
 whether it is not right to kill. 
 
 Does it not, think'st thee, stand me now upon — . . . 
 
 is't not perfect conscience 
 
 To quit him with this arm? 
 
 This speech is the main stay of certain critics 
 who believe that Hamlet's trouble throughout 
 the play was a moral scruple. He was stout 
 enough of heart and will to kill Claudius at any 
 time; but was it really right for him to take 
 upon himself the vengeance of the Eternal? 
 
 Professor Bradley rejects this theory of the 
 play, and, I think, rejects it properly. As he 
 pertinently asks, if that was Shakespeare's 
 meaning, "why in the world did he conceal that 
 meaning till the last act?" So much, indeed, 
 has been urged against this theory that I need 
 not review the arguments here; I will remark 
 only that it is especially open to the objections 
 urged against the Coleridgean theory in the 
 first chapter. It certainly cannot be accepted 
 as a satisfactory explanation of the play. 
 
30 The First Quarto 
 
 Turning, however, to the First Quarto, we 
 find that Hamlet's remarkable question about 
 "conscience" is not there at all. Moreover, it 
 is fairly clear that the omission was not the 
 printer's or stenographer's fault ; the speech 
 was not written till Shakespeare revised the 
 play, for it occurs in a wholly new scene. It 
 is an integral part of the scene in which Ham- 
 let tells Horatio of the fate of Rosencrantz and 
 Guildenstern ; and in the First Quarto Horatio 
 receives the information by letter. 
 
 It appears, therefore, that in the first ver- 
 sion Hamlet was not troubled with moral 
 scruples ; they formed no part of Shakespeare's 
 original conception. But when he rewrote the 
 play, the question what Hamlet really ought to 
 do had begun to interest Shakespeare, and he 
 naturally represented it as interesting Hamlet. 
 This is a matter of somewhat more importance 
 than the slips considered hitherto, and I shall 
 return to it in a later chapter. 
 
 In the completed play, Hamlet's letter to 
 Horatio tells of the sea-voyage and the pirate 
 
The First Quarto 31 
 
 capture. The odd phrasing of the letter sug- 
 gests that perhaps the capture was not acci- 
 dental, but prearranged by Hamlet. Miles 
 points out certain lines spoken by Hamlet to 
 his mother, before his departure, as tending to 
 confirm this suggestion: 
 
 For 'tis the sport to have the enginer 
 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. Oh, 'tis most sweet 
 When in one line two crafts directly meet. 
 
 And we remember Hamlet's last utterance 
 before he embarked: 
 
 Oh from this time forth 
 My thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth. 
 
 These last lines are almost an absurdity, if 
 we accept the ordinary interpretation of the 
 play. Hamlet utters his strongest expression 
 of resolute vindictiveness just as he is turning 
 his back upon his task perhaps forever ! Such 
 silliness seems beyond even the Coleridgean 
 theory of his character. But if we may under- 
 
32 The First Quarto 
 
 stand that he knows his uncle's purposes, that 
 he is complying with them only in appearance, 
 and that he had a definite plan in mind when 
 he uttered those vague hints to his mother, then 
 the whole story of the sea-voyage becomes fairly 
 intelligible. 
 
 Now neither of the passages quoted above 
 is in the First Quarto; nor is the pirate cap- 
 ture narrated there. The letter to Horatio 
 says that Hamlet's ship has encountered ad- 
 verse winds, that he has been set ashore and 
 has returned safe to Denmark, and that his 
 companions have gone on to England. The 
 change of plan is utterly unexplained; we can- 
 not discover why Hamlet was "set ashore" or 
 why his guards have abandoned him. 
 
 Shakespeare evidently saw the weakness of 
 this when he was making his final revision. It 
 would not do, having started Hamlet towards 
 England, to bring him back without explana- 
 tion. Some story must be concocted to account 
 for his separation from Rosencrantz and Guil- 
 denstern. Accordingly Shakespeare invented 
 the device (rather lame, to be sure) of bringing 
 
The First Quarto 33 
 
 up a pirate ship to capture Hamlet and carry 
 him home. 
 
 Now the objection to Miles's theory is that 
 it seems a little far-fetched. It is dangerous 
 to construct elaborate theories upon detached 
 hints. But here, in one sense, the hints are not 
 detached; they are a group of new elements 
 which were all introduced together. When 
 Shakespeare was revising his play he inserted 
 the letter telling of the pirate capture, and 
 at the same time he inserted Hamlet's promise 
 to his mother that he would outwit the adver- 
 sary, and also his parting resolve to be bloody 
 from this time forth. This consideration adds 
 appreciable weight to Miles's argument. 
 
 I do not care to maintain, however, that the 
 pirates were hired for the occasion; indeed I 
 care little whether they were or were not. The 
 incident was a minor one, collateral to the plot ; 
 and Shakespeare, in his concern to get Hamlet 
 decently back to Elsinore, may not have con- 
 sidered its remoter implications. But still, 
 even if we wholly reject Miles's theory, the 
 simultaneous addition of all these passages 
 
34 The First Quarto 
 
 throws light upon Shakespeare's conception. 
 His last touches were designed to give the most 
 favorable color to Hamlet's conduct, and to 
 slur over his inaction. The audience were to 
 understand, despite his temporary withdrawal 
 from the scene, that he was attending strictly 
 to business and that he would do something 
 soon. To this subject also I shall return again. 
 
 From all this investigation not very much 
 has resulted. Some minor difficulties, including 
 several which I have not mentioned, may be 
 solved by examination of the First Quarto ; 
 but the greater puzzles of the play, after the 
 most diligent comparative study of the two ver- 
 sions, remain as baffling as ever. Hamlet's 
 character is essentially the same in 1603 that 
 it is in 1604. He is younger, perhaps less pes- 
 simistic, and certainly less of a philosopher, but 
 he is the same man. Above all, his pretence of 
 madness is as inexplicable in the First Quarto 
 as in the Second. It can have no objective 
 purpose, yet its immediate adoption precludes 
 the subjective explanation. 
 
 But our examination of the First Quarto has 
 
The First Quarto 35 
 
 not been wasted labor. It has at least con- 
 firmed our suspicion that the play lacks con- 
 sistency; and the few minor discoveries already 
 made encourage us to hope for better results 
 if we pursue our line of inquiry a little farther. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 IkBfc anD JBelleforeet 
 
 I have suggested two possible explanations 
 of the inconsistencies in Hamlet, first, the fact 
 that Shakespeare wrote parts of the play at 
 different times, and second, the possibility that 
 as he was only rewriting an old play he may 
 have retained from his original some materials 
 that failed to harmonize with his own concep- 
 tion. The preceding chapter has proved the 
 first explanation sound as far as it goes ; but 
 it does not go far. In the remaining chapters 
 I shall examine the sources of the play, and 
 by comparing Shakespeare's tragedy with the 
 work of his predecessors attempt to sift out 
 those ideas which were peculiarly his own. 
 
 An entry in the diary of the theatrical man- 
 ager, Philip Henslowe, shows that he received 
 eight shillings for a performance of Hamlet 
 36 
 
Kyd and Belleforest 37 
 
 on June 9th, 1594 ; and in a pamphlet published 
 by Lodge in 1596, a certain character is com- 
 pared to "the ghost which cried so miserally 
 [sic] at the theatre, like an oyster-wife, 'Ham- 
 let, revenge !" These allusions prove the quon- 
 dam existence of a pre-Shakespearean Hamlet, 
 though no such play is now extant ; and the 
 following from Nash's prefatory epistle to 
 Greene's Menaphon, printed in 1589, shows that 
 the author of the play was Thomas Kyd. 
 
 It is a common practice now-a-days, amongst a sort 
 of shifting companions that run through every art and 
 thrive by none, to leave the trade of Noverint whereto 
 they were born and busy themselves with the endeavors 
 of art, that could scarcely latinize their neck-verse if 
 they should have need. Yet English Seneca read by 
 candle-light yields many good sentences, as "Blood is 
 a beggar," and so forth; and if you entreat him fair 
 in a frosty morning he will afford you whole Hamlets, 
 I should say handfuls, of tragical speeches. But O 
 grief! Ternpus edax rerum, what's that will last al- 
 ways? The sea exhaled by drops will in continuance 
 be dry; and Seneca, let blood line by line and page by 
 page, at length must needs die to our stage: which 
 makes his famished followers to imitate the Kid in 
 Aesop who, enamored with the Fox's new-fangles, for- 
 sook all hopes of life to leap into a new occupation; and 
 these men, renouncing all possibilities of credit or esti- 
 mation, to intermeddle with Italian translations. 
 
38 Kyd and Belleforest 
 
 This passage, I say, shows that Kyd was the 
 author of the pre-Shakespearean Hamlet. The 
 cogency of the proof has been disputed, but I 
 think unreasonably. "Noverint" was the first 
 word of a common legal form, now usually 
 rendered in English by "Know all men by these 
 presents ;" and "the trade of Noverint" there- 
 fore means the trade of the scrivener. Kyd's 
 father was a scrivener, and Kyd might there- 
 fore well be described as leaving that trade for 
 the stage. Like most of his contemporaries, 
 Kyd was much under the influence of Seneca. 
 He was too good a Latin scholar to be depend- 
 ent upon English translations ; but he had his 
 academic education only from the Merchant 
 Taylors' School, and the contemptuous insinu- 
 ation of the university-bred Nash is therefore 
 easily understood. Moreover (to quote Profes- 
 sor Boas) "in 1588 Kyd appears to have 
 given up, at least temporarily, his work for 
 the stage, and to have leapt into the 'new occu- 
 pation' of a translator from the Italian." Thus 
 an extraordinary tissue of coincidences iden- 
 tifies him with that imitator of Aesop's "Kid" 
 
Kyd and Belleforest 39 
 
 who could write whole Hamlets of tragical 
 speeches. There is slight further evidence of 
 like purport, but I think the argument needs 
 no bolstering. 
 
 Kyd's Hamlet is now lost; but we have the 
 French "novel" upon which it was based. This 
 is one of the histoires tragiques of Francois de 
 Belleforest, published in 1572 and translated 
 into English some years later. Whether the 
 original or the translation was used by Kyd 
 is uncertain. The oldest extant copy of the 
 English version is dated 1608, but it may have 
 existed much earlier. Kyd, however, was well 
 able to use the original French; and it seems 
 most likely that the translation was suggested 
 in part by the popularity of Kyd's play, or 
 even Shakespeare's. 
 
 Belleforest begins his story substantially as 
 follows: (I substitute Shakespeare's proper 
 names for the less familiar originals — Claudius 
 for Fengon, Hamlet for Horvendille, etc.) 
 The elder Hamlet and Claudius, two brothers, 
 were joint governors of a province in Denmark. 
 Hamlet married the King's daughter, Gertrude, 
 
4o Kyd and Belleforest 
 
 and so kindled his brother's jealousy. Claudius 
 assembled a band of men and fell upon Ham- 
 let as he sat at a banquet, and slew him. He 
 publicly avowed the deed, but asserted that he 
 had done it in defence of Gertrude, whom Ham- 
 let was on the point of slaying. Claudius then 
 married Gertrude; and upon her father's death 
 he became King of Denmark in her right. The 
 younger Hamlet was a child when his father 
 was murdered. As he grew older, he realized 
 that Claudius must fear him, and would hardly 
 let him come to man's estate if he seemed capa- 
 ble of seeking vengeance. Accordingly he imi- 
 tated the Roman Brutus, pretending to have 
 lost his wits. 
 
 Here, first, a minor matter is to be noted. 
 The elder Hamlet was never King of Denmark, 
 and Claudius reigned only by right of his wife. 
 This answers simply enough a question which 
 puzzles every reader of Shakespeare's play: 
 how did Shakespeare's Claudius become king? 
 Steevens was first to give the explanation now 
 commonly accepted, that Denmark was an elect- 
 ive monarchy and that Claudius was chosen 
 
Kyd and Belleforest 41 
 
 by the electors because the younger Hamlet 
 lacked influence and prestige. But clearly it 
 was not so that the story originally shaped 
 itself. In later parts of the novel it seems that 
 Belleforest himself has forgotten the facts, for 
 he speaks as if the elder Hamlet had been king 
 and Claudius had made himself his heir by the 
 murder. Naturally enough, therefore, Kyd and 
 Shakespeare after him were themselves in the 
 dark about the succession. One line in the play 
 ("popped in between the election and my 
 hopes") does indeed suggest that Steevens's 
 idea had occurred to Shakespeare, but there is 
 nothing else to support it. Shakespeare never 
 took the trouble to work the matter out. 
 
 But a far more important feature of the 
 novel is its plausible account of the pretence of 
 madness. The murder, according to Bellefor- 
 est, was open and notorious. This fact is 
 partly obscured, to be sure, by a statement that 
 Claudius effected it "in such sort that no man 
 once so much as suspected him," but the con- 
 text clears up the apparent inconsistency. 
 These words mean merely that no man doubted 
 
42 Kyd and Belleforest 
 
 his veracity when he cunningly pretended to 
 have acted in Gertrude's defence. And later, 
 it seems, the truth leaked out and the whole 
 story was known. 
 
 Even at first, then, everybody knew that 
 Hamlet's father died by y the hand of Claudius. 
 Hamlet himself knew it, and Claudius knew 
 that he knew it. Hamlet was very young, for 
 the murder is narrated in the same sentence with 
 his father's marriage, and the marriage is ex- 
 pressly stated to have been part, at least, of 
 the murderer's provocation. Claudius knew 
 that Hamlet would inevitably harbor revenge 
 in his heart and become dangerous when he 
 grew up; and Hamlet's device, therefore, is at 
 least plausible enough for all purposes of fic- 
 tion. The pretence of madness becomes trouble- 
 some in Shakespeare's play, and demands ex- 
 planation by some subtle analysis of Hamlet's 
 character; but that is only because the murder 
 has been made secret, and Claudius has no rea- 
 son to dread Hamlet. 
 
 I resume Belleforest's narrative. Among the 
 friends of Claudius there was one who suspected 
 
Kyd and Belleforest 43 
 
 Hamlet of counterfeiting, and obtained leave 
 to spy upon him in his mother's chamber. Ham- 
 let discovered him and stabbed him through 
 the arras. Thereupon Claudius became uneasy, 
 but he dared not openly kill Hamlet. Accord- 
 ingly he sent him with two trusty ministers to 
 England with a letter urging the English king 
 to put him to death. But Hamlet, while at sea, 
 purloined the letter and substituted another, 
 urging the death of the two ministers and re- 
 questing for Hamlet himself the hand of the 
 king's daughter in marriage. The trick suc- 
 ceeded and Hamlet made a long sojourn in 
 England. 
 
 Thereafter, returning to Denmark, Hamlet 
 contrived to assemble the supporters of Clau- 
 dius, to ply them with liquor, and by setting 
 fire to their banqueting-hall to destroy them 
 all. Hastening then to the apartment of 
 Claudius, he found him undefended, and had 
 no difficulty in despatching him. By a long 
 public oration he won the allegiance of the 
 Danish people, and his coronation was cele- 
 brated with general rejoicing. 
 
44 Kyd and Belleforest 
 
 This condensed digest suffices to show that 
 Belief orest's novel meets all requirements of the 
 theory framed by Werder in explanation of 
 Shakespeare's play. In Belleforest Hamlet's 
 difficulties are external, and they are many and 
 grave. He wants more than brute revenge; 
 he wants the crown, and to win it he must over- 
 come not only Claudius but all his supporters. 
 Claudius is strongly entrenched, and Hamlet 
 stands practically alone against him. Hamlet 
 has at the outset a difficult task even to save 
 his own life, to say nothing of planning re- 
 venge. His undertaking seems indeed im- 
 possible, though he accomplishes it: for he 
 accomplishes it by an equally impossible 
 trick. The story of the holocaust is crude 
 fiction. 
 
 Moreover, there are in Belleforest no subjec- 
 tive difficulties. Just here is the most striking 
 difference between the novel and the play. 
 Belleforest's Hamlet never procrastinated. He 
 sojourned a year or more in England, while 
 the Hamlet of the play only started on the voy- 
 age thither; but while the Coleridgeans regard 
 
Kyd and Belleforcst 45 
 
 the later hero's departure as a turning-away 
 from his high purpose of revenge, his proto- 
 type incurs no such reproach. Neither in his 
 English life nor in his pretence of madness can 
 we detect any suggestion of shrinking or 
 deviation. 
 
 There are in Belleforest's novel many fea- 
 tures of minor interest which I need not detail. 
 Thus there is an elaborate though not wholly 
 consistent characterization of Gertrude, a 
 vague suggestion of the story of Ophelia, and 
 a curious hint of the comic aspect of insanity. 
 I may note too, in passing, that the story has 
 a happy ending; for though Belleforest contin- 
 ues his narrative to Hamlet's death, the part 
 in which we are interested does end happily. 
 That part of the plot became tragic only 
 when it was dramatized. For the present, 
 however, we are concerned only with the 
 main conception of Hamlet's character and 
 conduct. 
 
 We must remember that Shakespeare may not 
 have known Belleforest's novel. I believe that 
 he never saw it. In studying it, we are work- 
 
46 Kyd and Belleforest 
 
 ing up towards Shakespeare's source from 
 behind. Our ultimate purpose, however, is to 
 learn something about the missing link between 
 Belleforest and Shakespeare; and that missing 
 link is the lost play of Thomas Kyd. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 Gbe <3erman Ibamlet 
 
 The German Hamlet is a play entitled 
 Der Bestrafte Brudermord (Fratricide Pun- 
 ished). It was first printed at Berlin in 1781, 
 from a manuscript which can be traced back 
 only to 1710 ; but it is evidently a work of much 
 earlier date. It presents in dramatic form the 
 familiar story of Shakespeare's Hamlet, but 
 with variations as striking as the resemblances. 
 It is obviously related to the English play, but 
 is the work of a very inferior craftsman. 
 
 When the German play was first critically 
 studied, it was thought to be a clumsy adapta- 
 tion of the First Quarto. The curious fact 
 that Polonius appears in the First Quarto under 
 the name Corambis and in the German Hamlet 
 as Corambus, suggested this conclusion at once. 
 More recently another bit of evidence has been 
 47 
 
48 The German Hamlet 
 
 detected in the order of scenes in the several 
 versions. In Shakespeare's completed play the 
 arrival of the strolling players is announced in 
 the jsecond act, and the "to be or not to be" 
 soliloquy comes in Act III, followed by the 
 "nunnery" scene. In the First Quarto the lat- 
 ter passages come in Act II, before any men- 
 tion of the players. In the German play the 
 soliloquy is lacking; but the nunnery scene is 
 clearly paralleled in Act II, Scene 4, while the 
 players are announced two scenes later. These 
 facts seem sufficient to establish provisionally 
 that if the German play was derived from 
 Shakespeare at all, it was derived from his first 
 version — either from the First Quarto or di- 
 rectly from some true copy of the play which 
 that quarto misrepresented. 
 
 More minute examination, however, suggested 
 to several scholars (especially Dr. Latham) 
 that the German play was adapted not from 
 Shakespeare at all, but from that earlier play 
 now ascribed to Kyd. Latham found two 
 passages in Hamlet containing reminiscences 
 of the classics, and in each case the German 
 
The German Hamlet 49 
 
 play seemed to him closer to the Latin original 
 than Shakespeare. This could not be, he 
 argued, if the German author were copying 
 Shakespeare; it seemed probable that both he 
 and Shakespeare were copying a third drama- 
 tist, without suspecting the reminiscent char- 
 acter of the text, and that the German author 
 was the more slavish in his reproduction. The 
 argument is sound enough except in its prem- 
 ises, but I confess I cannot feel sure that the 
 German is closer to the Latin. Latham also 
 detected an allusion in the German play which 
 pointed to a pre-Shakespearean origin. The 
 German Hamlet says, when Claudius is sending 
 him to England: "Ay, ay, King; just send me 
 off to Portugal so that I may never come back 
 again." This, said Latham, is an allusion 
 to the unfortunate expedition to Portugal in 
 1589, in which eleven thousand soldiers per- 
 ished. The inference is that the source-play 
 must have been written shortly after that date ; 
 and hence it must have been Kyd's, not Shake- 
 speare's. 
 
 Latham's conclusion is most welcome to every 
 
50 The German Hamlet 
 
 student of the genesis of Hamlet, for if he was 
 right the German play will surely teach us 
 something about the lost tragedy of Kyd. 
 But his argument has been elaborately answered 
 (especially in Germany by Creizenach and 
 Tanger) and his theory is no longer generally 
 accepted. I must admit that the grounds of 
 his conclusion are weak, and that it would take 
 little to upset him ; but let us see what has been 
 brought forward. 
 
 The only formidable argument of Creizenach 
 and Tanger is based upon four passages in the 
 German Hamlet to which there are close paral- 
 lels in the Second Quarto of Shakespeare, but 
 none in the First. Two of the four will suffice 
 for illustration. In the German play one of 
 Ophelia's mad scenes ends as follows: "The 
 King has invited me to supper and I must run 
 fast. Look there ! my coach, my coach !" In 
 Shakespeare's play she says, "Come, my coach ! 
 Good night, ladies; good night, sweet ladies; 
 good night, good night;" but in the First 
 Quarto the passage is missing. Again, the 
 unimportant character called Francisco in 
 
The German Hamlet 51 
 
 Shakespeare's final version appears in the First 
 Quarto without a name; he is simply "First 
 Sentinel ;" but in the German play he reappears 
 as Francisco. 
 
 / What is to be argued from these facts? 
 Everybody recognizes that the German play 
 cannot be merely an adaptation of Shake- 
 speare's final version ; such a supposition is re- 
 futed by the name Corambus. Now Creizenach 
 and Tanger contend that it cannot be derived 
 solely either from the First Quarto or from any 
 earlier version of the play, such as Kyd's ; and 
 they say this is proved by the name Francisco 
 (and the three other coincidences referred to 
 
 ___above). Accordingly Creizenach conjectures a 
 lost Quarto of Shakespeare's play, intermediate 
 between the First and the Second; while Tan- 
 ger, more careful and elaborate in his argument, 
 derives the German play from the First Quarto, 
 and believes that the four coincidences are due 
 to stage interpolations made at a late date by 
 persons acquainted with Shakespeare's com- 
 pleted play. This is the explanation now ac- 
 cepted by most scholars who have weighed the 
 
52 The German Hamlet 
 
 evidence, including most notably Professor 
 Boas. 
 
 I agree that the four coincidences cannot be 
 due to chance ; but I feel little disturbed by the 
 conclusion based upon them, for an all-impor- 
 tant consideration has been overlooked. The 
 First Quarto is only a very imperfect repro- 
 duction of Shakespeare's first version. It is 
 disfigured by mistakes and omissions. It is evi- 
 dent that the short-hand reporters were unable 
 to keep up with the actors. When their notes 
 were unintelligible, the printers sometimes re- 
 produced them as they stood and sometimes 
 made liberal cuts. I will adduce a single in- 
 stance, the first that I find at a random opening 
 of the book. In the completed play the Ghost 
 says to Hamlet: 
 
 If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not; 
 
 Let not the royal bed of Denmark be 
 
 A couch for luxury and damned incest. 
 
 But, howsoever thou pursuest this act, 
 
 Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive 
 
 Against thy mother aught; leave her to heaven. 
 
 In the First Quarto this passage is abridged as 
 follows : 
 
The German Hamlet 53 
 
 If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not; 
 But howsoever, let not thy heart 
 Conspire against thy mother aught; 
 Leave her to heaven. 
 
 Is it not clear that Shakespeare's original 
 manuscript contained the whole clause italicized 
 above, or at least its equivalent? The abridged 
 version is imperfect in both sense and metre, 
 and cannot be as Shakespeare wrote it. Yet 
 if the German Hamlet happened to reproduce 
 the words "howsoever thou pursuest this act," 
 Creizenach would have cited them along with 
 the other coincidences ; he would say that the 
 play could not be derived from Kyd because 
 these words were not written till after the time 
 of the First Quarto ! 
 
 If the play is derived from Kyd we must 
 expect to find in it a number of passages of 
 just this sort — passages which were in Kyd 
 and which were copied by Shakespeare in both 
 his first and his second version, but which, by 
 error, were omitted from the piratical First 
 Quarto. Four is not an unreasonable number, 
 in view of the printer's gross bungling. To 
 
54 The German Hamlet 
 
 my mind, indeed, the presence in the German 
 play of unique features from both quartos, — 
 Corambus from the First and Francisco from 
 the Second, — affords, under the circumstances, 
 a very strong argument for the derivation 
 from Kyd. That derivation explains the co- 
 incidences easily and naturally, while the 
 explanations of Creizenach and Tanger, given 
 above, are complex and round-about, and are 
 over-weighted with matter of very doubtful 
 conjecture. 
 
 On the whole, therefore, I feel that Latham's 
 theory of the origin of the German Hamlet has 
 not yet been successfully assailed. The bril- 
 liant analyses of Creizenach and Tanger have 
 actually fortified his theory, and if there were 
 nothing further to be said I should regard it 
 as provisionally established by a decided weight 
 of evidence. But there are other arguments 
 which have not yet been advanced, which will 
 establish Latham's theory beyond question. 
 
 One argument — a minor one, perhaps — may 
 be based on the manner of Hamlet's return from 
 the English voyage. In the German play, a 
 
The German Hamlet 55 
 
 separate scene is devoted to Hamlet's escape. 
 He appears in a remote spot with two bandits, 
 who tell him that by the King's orders they 
 are about to kill him. Hamlet, after some 
 parley, appears to resign himself to the inevi- 
 table, but begs leave to say one prayer. "After 
 that," he assures them, "I am ready to die. 
 But I will give you a signal; I will turn my 
 hands toward heaven, and the moment I stretch 
 out my arms, fire ! Aim both pistols at my 
 sides, and when I say 'shoot !' give me as much 
 as I need; and be sure to hit me so that I shall 
 not be long in torture." 
 
 The bandits accordingly stand beside Ham- 
 let with pistols aimed until he gives the signal; 
 but then he throws himself forward on his face 
 and they shoot each other ! Hamlet searches 
 their bodies and finds a letter, whereupon he 
 soliloquizes as follows : "This letter is written 
 to an arch-murderer in England; should this 
 attempt fail, they had only to hand me over to 
 him, and he would soon enough blow out the 
 light of my life. But the gods stand by the 
 righteous. Now will I return to my father, to 
 
56 The German Hamlet 
 
 his horror. But I will not trust any longer 
 to water ; who knows but what the ship's captain 
 is a villain too? I will go to the first town and 
 take the post." 
 
 Now in the First Quarto we are told merely 
 that Hamlet's ship was "crossed by the conten- 
 tion of the winds,"* and that he was "set 
 ashore," while the ship, with Rosencrantz and 
 Guildenstern in it, went on to England. This 
 was a feeble and unsatisfactory evasion, and 
 Shakespeare found it necessary, in his second 
 version, to introduce the pirate ship and let it 
 capture Hamlet. I can explain the weak 
 handling of this business in the First Quarto 
 only by supposing that Kyd had devised an in- 
 cident which Shakespeare preferred to sup- 
 press. Now the German author does not gen- 
 erally expand much upon his original; he 
 abridges almost everything, and his whole play 
 is only half as long as the First Quarto; but 
 if his original was any version of Shakespeare's 
 
 *In the German play (V. 2), when Hamlet tells Hora- 
 tio of his adventure with the bandits, he says they 
 had all gone ashore while the ship lay at anchor 
 because of contrary winds. 
 
The German Hamlet $y 
 
 play, the bandit scene was an elaborate and 
 gratuitous expansion. This is hard to be- 
 lieve. 
 
 If, on the other hand, we accept Latham's 
 theory, the facts are easily explained. I be- 
 lieve that in Kyd's lost play there must have 
 been something substantially like the scene with 
 the bandits. The German author, adapting 
 Kyd's play, has somewhat mangled the inci- 
 dent, for he has omitted altogether the fate of 
 Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, apparently con- 
 fusing them with their ruffian hirelings ; but 
 he has retained the essentials. The scene seems 
 to us very crude and ridiculous, but it is by no 
 means beneath the Elizabethan taste for melo- 
 drama. It is, I think, just such an incident 
 as Kyd might have devised; and of course it 
 is such an incident as Shakespeare would have 
 rejected. He did, I believe, reject it ; but found 
 no time, in the haste of his first revision, to elab- 
 orate a decent substitute. 
 
 I have thought that in some other details of 
 the German play, as in this scene with the ban- 
 dits, there lurked evidence in support of 
 
58 The German Hamlet 
 
 Latham; but we will delay no longer over de- 
 tails. His hypothesis is made solid fact by 
 consideration of the general drift of the play. 
 It is to this, rather than to correspondences of 
 detail, that I wish chiefly to direct attention. 
 In the total conception of the story, and es- 
 pecially in respect to those matters already 
 noted as of crucial significance, the German 
 play is much closer to the spirit of Belleforest's 
 novel than to that of Shakespeare's play; and 
 here, I think, we have conclusive evidence that 
 it was derived from Belleforest directly 
 through Kyd, and not (more indirectly) 
 through both Kyd and Shakespeare. 
 
 le most striking single characteristic of 
 ''Shakespeare's Hamlet, as most students under- 
 stand him, is procrastination. Whether we get 
 the impression from the dramatic action or 
 from Hamlet's soliloquies, whether we regard it 
 as culpable or as blameless and inevitable, the 
 idea of procrastination is unmistakably present 
 iij the play. But in the German Hamlet the hero 
 never procrastinates. There is delay, but only 
 delay for which he is not responsible. He is 
 
The German Hamlet 59 
 
 never an instant in doubt;* from beginning 
 to end he is only waiting for a chance. He 
 is restless under the necessity of delay; but he 
 never reproaches himself, as does Shakespeare's 
 hero; he merely bewails the necessity. For il- 
 lustration, we may compare two characteristic 
 utterances. Shakespeare's Hamlet says: 
 
 Now whether it be 
 Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple 
 Of thinking too precisely on the event, — 
 A thought which, quartered, hath but one part wisdom 
 And ever three parts coward, — I do not know 
 Why yet I live to say "This thing's to do," 
 Silh I have cause, and will, and strength, and means, 
 To do't. 
 
 As against this, the German Hamlet says : 
 
 Unfortunate Prince! how much longer must thou live 
 without peace? How long dost thou delay, O righteous 
 Nemesis, before thou whettest thy righteous sword of 
 vengeance for my uncle, the fratricide? Hither have I 
 come once more, but cannot attain to my revenge, 
 because the fratricide is surrounded all the time by so 
 many people. 
 
 *Except where he catches the King at prayer; and 
 there his reason for deferring his revenge is obviously 
 a real one, not a pretext. 
 
60 The German Hamlet 
 
 The reason for the delay, as explained by 
 the words italicized, is that Hamlet cannot get 
 at the King. This difficulty is in the German 
 author's mind throughout; it is the fundamen- 
 tal idea of the play. It is emphasized almost 
 at the very beginning, when Hamlet tells his 
 plan to Horatio. 
 
 My worthy friend Horatio, through this assumed mad- 
 ness I hope to get the opportunity of revenging my 
 father's death. You know, however, that my father 
 is always surrounded by many guards; wherefore it may 
 miscarry. Should you chance to find my dead body, 
 let it be honorably buried; for at the first opportunity 
 I will try my chance with him. 
 
 Horatio's reply is a fruitless attempt to dis- 
 suade Hamlet from his revenge ! 
 
 In Shakespeare's play, on the other hand, 
 there is nowhere the least explicit suggestion 
 of this difficulty. In almost ludicrous oppo- 
 sition to the conditions shown in the German 
 play, we find in Shakespeare only a single men- 
 tion of the King's guards ; and that is when 
 the King asks where they are! "Where are 
 my Switzers?" he cries, when Laertes, unop- 
 
The German Hamlet 61 
 
 posed, is breaking down the door and rushing 
 in upon him. 
 
 In the German play, too, the reason for the 
 pretence of madness is clear enough. Hamlet 
 tells Horatio the Ghost's story as soon as the 
 Ghost has left him, and at once declares his 
 purpose to feign madness. "From this moment 
 I will begin a feigned madness; and, thus 
 feigning, so cunningly will I play my part 
 that I shall find an opportunity to avenge my 
 father's death." And again, a little later: 
 "I will now go and, feigning madness, wait upon 
 him until I find an opportunity to effect my 
 revenge." The reason, I say, is clear enough. 
 It may not be a very good reason ; I think it is 
 not; but there is no mystery about it, and no 
 possibility of mistaking it. 
 
 In all these particulars the German writer 
 is reproducing, as if from Belleforest, ideas of 
 which Shakespeare affords no hint. In Belle- 
 forest, Hamlet has a difficult task, and the diffi- 
 culty is wholly external. Claudius has strong 
 supporters about him, whom Hamlet must ac- 
 tually bum up before he can kill the King. 
 
62 The German Hamlet 
 
 Hamlet never procrastinates and never doubts 
 his duty or his own purpose, but is vigilant for 
 his first opportunity. And in Belleforest, 
 finally, the feigned madness has a purpose 
 clearly defined and announced. 
 
 These considerations seem to me conclusive. 
 A blundering playwright like the German could 
 hardly have cleared up Hamlet's motives and 
 brought them so squarely into focus, if he had 
 had only Shakespeare's vague hints to start 
 with. No playwright, however stupid, could 
 have failed to catch from Shakespeare some 
 suggestion of the hero's doubts and perplexi- 
 ties ; and this playwright was certainly not 
 clever enough to eliminate all those things on 
 purpose, and to substitute, with thoroughgoing 
 consistency, the idea of external difficulty. 
 And finally, if we can suppose that the most 
 vital elements of Shakespeare's play were de- 
 liberately ignored by the German, can we also 
 suppose that by blind chance he substituted for 
 them those very elements which had been in 
 Belleforest's novel, and which the English 
 dramatist had thought fit to reject? Such 
 
The German Hamlet 63 
 
 a coincidence as this is so incredible that I ven- 
 ture to call it impossible; and I therefore con- 
 clude, with an assurance that will last until I am 
 very rudely shaken, that the German Hamlet is 
 an adaptation from Kyd. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 IKbo's Ibamlet 
 
 Our next aim must be to determine, so far as 
 is possible and important, the nature of Kyd's 
 lost play, in the hope of thus solving the mys- 
 tery of Shakespeare's revision. There are two 
 ways of approaching this problem. First, by 
 study of Kyd's Spanish Tragedy, a play strik- 
 ingly like Hamlet in its groundwork of plot 
 and situation, we may familiarize ourselves with 
 Kyd's mental calibre and his habits in construc- 
 tion and characterization. Second, by com- 
 parison of Shakespeare's Hamlet with the Ger- 
 man play, and of both with Belleforest's novel, 
 we may hit with certainty upon many elements 
 which must have been present in Kyd's play. 
 The former method is the less satisfactory, for 
 it necessarily leaves much to the vagueness of 
 conjecture. We will consider it first, and 
 briefly. 
 
 The chief character in The Spanish Trag- 
 64 
 
Kyd's Hamlet 65 
 
 edy, Hieronimo, undertakes to avenge the mur- 
 der of his son. He has found his dead body, 
 and is at first ignorant who killed him. A 
 mysterious letter from the mistress of the vic- 
 tim names the murderers ; they are two young 
 men of the highest station, a nephew of the 
 King of Spain and a son of the Viceroy of 
 Portugal. Hieronimo devotes his life to re- 
 venge, but is conscious of the extreme difficulty 
 of his task. He recognizes also, despite his 
 moral certainty that the letter is genuine, that 
 he must seek corroborative evidence before he 
 acts. In the latter part of the third act the 
 murderers overreach themselves, and unwit- 
 tingly afford Hieronimo the confirmation he 
 needs. He makes futile efforts to win a hear- 
 ing before the King, and his mind temporarily 
 gives way under the strain ; but eventually he 
 contrives to engage both the guilty princes in 
 an amateur performance of a tragedy, with 
 himself and the bereaved mistress ; and he and 
 the lady bring the performance to a startling 
 climax by stabbing first their royal fellow- 
 actors and then themselves. 
 
66 Kyd's Hamlet 
 
 The significant feature, for us, of Kyd's 
 handling of this material, is the singleness of 
 purpose with which Hieronimo addresses him- 
 self to his task. He is wholly possessed with 
 the spirit of revenge. At first he does not 
 know who his enemies are, but he is determined 
 to punish them if he can discover them. When 
 they are denounced to him, he still must obtain 
 conclusive proof; but, given that proof, he has 
 no atom of doubt about his duty. 
 
 Professor Boas says : "The cardinal weak- 
 ness in the play, which prevents it ranking 
 among dramatic masterpieces, is Kyd's fail- 
 ure in an adequate psychological analysis of 
 [Hieronimo's] motives for this delay. Inaction 
 only becomes dramatic material when, as in 
 the case of the Shakespearean Hamlet, it is 
 shown to be rooted in some disease of character 
 or will. But Hieronimo's procrastination is 
 due at first merely to ignorance of who the 
 murderers are, and afterwards to a suspicion 
 of [the lady's] designs. It is not till toward 
 the close of the third act that there is the 
 suggestion, in [Hieronimo's] self-reproaches, 
 
Kyd's Hamlet 67 
 
 of infirmity of purpose as a contributory 
 cause." 
 
 Apart from its marked Coleridgean bias, this 
 criticism is mainly just; but I am disposed to 
 quarrel with the last sentence. I doubt if Kyd 
 means anywhere to suggest infirmity of pur- 
 pose as the cause of delay. Hieronimo's mind, 
 it seems to me, is unhinged by the very strength 
 of his purpose and the seeming hopelessness of 
 accomplishing it ; but the obstacles are purely 
 external. There are passages in which he med- 
 itates suicide ; but this is not from disgust with 
 his task, it is from despair of achieving it. 
 In other passages he masks his purpose, feign- 
 ing love for his enemies ; but this is mere craft 
 and cunning. The purpose itself looms large 
 in his mind from the beginning, and the single 
 passion of revenge usurps complete dominion 
 over his soul. 
 
 This is a striking fact; and it is the one 
 fact which I wish to emphasize in this brief 
 survey of The Spanish Tragedy. Kyd's pur- 
 pose was less to depict human nature than to 
 depict a certain tragic passion. His Hieronimo 
 
68 Kyd's Hamlet 
 
 acts not as a real man under such circum- 
 stances, but rather as an imaginary incarnation 
 of revenge. Professor Boas says, "there is 
 no adequate psychological analysis of Hieron- 
 imo's motives for delay." I think the motives 
 for his delay were clear enough, and needed no 
 psychological analysis ; the motives that Pro- 
 fessor Boas thinks imperfectly analyzed were 
 not in Kyd's mind at all; but it is true that 
 there is no adequate psychological analysis of 
 Hieronimo's vindictiveness. The spirit of re- 
 venge is assumed by Kyd as a postulate, and 
 his dramatic art is exercised merely to exhibit 
 this spirit in untrammeled and supernatural 
 activity. 
 
 This, however, is a line of argument in which 
 we cannot get away from the personal equa- 
 tion ; and I am unwilling to depend upon any 
 reasoning in which I am opposed to the highest 
 scholarship. There is, as I have already indi- 
 cated, a better method of getting at Kyd's 
 Hamlet, namely by ^comparison of its parent 
 stock ( Belief orest) with its two derivatives 
 (the German play and Shakespeare's). It is 
 
Kyd's Hamlet 69 
 
 evident that any element common to two of 
 these three versions of the story must in all 
 probability have been present in Kyd's play. 
 That is to say, whatever we find in both Belle- 
 forest and the German adapter, or in both 
 Belleforest and Shakespeare, must have been in 
 Kyd; for how else could the later dramatist 
 have stumbled upon it? And whatever we find 
 common to the German dramatist and Shake- 
 speare must also have been in Kyd, unless we 
 are willing to accord large privileges to chance 
 coincidence. By sorting out, therefore, all the 
 ideas that occur in any of the three authors, 
 and bringing together again all that are found 
 ♦ in any two, it should, in theory, be possible to 
 effect a skeleton reconstruction of Kyd's play. 
 This we are now in position to do, so far as our 
 purpose demands. 
 
 The action of Kyd's play begins with a 
 night scene at Elsinore. There are sentinels 
 on the watch. Their talk discloses that in 
 former watches they have seen a ghost. Hora- 
 tio joins them. The Ghost appears and is rec- 
 ognized as resembling the late king. Hamlet 
 
jo Kyd's Hamlet 
 
 is told, and joins the others. During the watch, 
 sounds of revelry are repeatedly heard within, 
 and there is comment on the new King's merry- 
 making; but Hamlet is sick at heart over his 
 father's death, his mother's hasty marriage, 
 and his own exclusion from the succession. 
 The Ghost reappears, beckoning to Hamlet, 
 who follows him. The Ghost says he has but a 
 short time to stay; he must return to purga- 
 tory; his brother killed him, pouring hebenon 
 in his ear while he slept in his garden ; and 
 he demands revenge. Hamlet swears to avenge 
 him, the Ghost disappears, and Hamlet rejoins 
 his friends. Before telling them anything he 
 demands an oath which they take upon his 
 sword, the Ghost mysteriously echoing his words 
 from without. Hamlet, inferring the Ghost's 
 displeasure, decides not to tell at once of 
 his experience, and waits till he is alone 
 with Horatio. To him only he tells the whole 
 story, announces that he undertakes the diffi- 
 cult and perilous task of slaying the murderer, 
 and that as a means to his end he will feign 
 madness. 
 
Kyd's Hamlet 71 
 
 In this summary of the opening scenes of 
 Kyd's play, the first fact to be noted is that 
 Kyd invented the Ghost.* In Belleforest the 
 murder was open and notorious, though Clau- 
 dius cunningly feigned a justification. Kyd 
 made the murder secret and allowed it to be 
 revealed only to Hamlet by his father's spirit. 
 This was a brilliant dramatic device, serving 
 both to emphasize the isolation of the hero and 
 to impart to the whole story of revenge that 
 supernatural grewsomeness of which Kyd was 
 enamored, and of which he made effective use 
 in The Spanish Tragedy. But the device, with 
 all its cleverness, entailed serious embarrass- 
 ments. 
 
 Kyd kept Hamlet's pretence of madness, 
 somewhat as he found it in Belleforest. Now 
 after Kyd had made his one great change in 
 the story, the pretence of madness ceased to be 
 very reasonable. The German hero avows that 
 he made the pretence because it would help him 
 to an opportunity for vengeance; and this 
 
 *This, by the way, is independently shown by Lodge's 
 allusion, page 37, ante. 
 
J2 Kyd's Hamlet 
 
 motive, adopted without change from Belle- 
 forest, was doubtless the only one allowed Ham- 
 let by Kyd. It had become a very poor one, 
 however; and indeed no sufficient motive could 
 have been alleged, for the device, from a prac- 
 tical point of view, was now worse than useless. 
 Perhaps Kyd did not observe that the pre- 
 tence of madness became valueless when the 
 murder was made secret, though I think it 
 equally likely that he saw the difficulty and 
 ignored it. The pretence was dramatically 
 effective; it must, indeed, have won a great 
 part of the success of the play ; and to Kyd's 
 way of thinking success was ample justification. 
 Retaining, then, the pretence of madness, 
 Kyd retained also the assumption that this pre- 
 tence was a practical step towards the hero's 
 end, although in fact the bottom had dropped 
 out from this assumption. It was natural and 
 proper, therefore, to let Hamlet resolve upon 
 his pretence at once, as soon as he had heard 
 the Ghost's story. This was the course sug- 
 gested by Belleforest, who makes the pretence 
 of madness the starting-point for the story of 
 
Kyd's Hamlet 73 
 
 the boy-prince; and when the difficulties of the 
 task were wholly external, and the pretence was 
 assumed to be a helpful measure, there was no 
 reason why it should not be adopted at the 
 outset. The instantaneous determination to 
 feign becomes unintelligible, we must remember, 
 only when the difficulties of the task are seen 
 to be internal and when the pretence is no longer 
 regarded as having a practical value. 
 
 I will outline the rest of Kyd's play only 
 in part. The brief account given of the Ger- 
 man Hamlet in the last chapter tells nearly all 
 that we need know. Kyd's hero is never in 
 doubt as to his duty, though at first he wants 
 confirmation of the Ghost's accusation. He 
 takes advantage of the visit of the players to 
 surprise the King with a representation of his 
 crime in dumb-show. He kills Polonius (Co- 
 rambis) by mistake, while the latter is eaves- 
 dropping. The Ghost visits him a second time, 
 apparently not because dissatisfied with Ham- 
 let's procedure, but merely to make a good stage 
 effect. Hamlet declines to kill the King at his 
 first opportunity, because he is then at prayer. 
 
74 Kyd's Hamlet 
 
 Hamlet is sent on a voyage for England; but 
 he returns and achieves his revenge at last, 
 though at the price of his own life, in the dis- 
 order attending the combat with Laertes. 
 
 I have said that the feigned madness was a 
 practical step. It is clear, however, that Kyd 
 gave it dramatic coloring by letting it express 
 Hamlet's agonized distraction. The German 
 play has little tragic atmosphere of any sort, 
 but there is enough resemblance here to Shake- 
 speare's tragedy to suggest that in Kyd the 
 madness was not a purely intellectual effort; 
 the scenes of feigning were highly emotional. 
 Yet we also know from The Spanish Tragedy 
 that they can have demanded no subtlety of 
 psychological insight in their creator. Kyd's 
 Hamlet, like Hieronimo, suffered from the in- 
 tensity of his passion for revenge, not from its 
 impotency. Though his sufferings were per- 
 haps most in evidence when he was feigning 
 madness, for then indeed he partly discarded his 
 mask, yet it is certain that the pretence was 
 not consciously adopted as a safety-valve for 
 his emotions, and it is almost equally certain 
 
Kyd's Hamlet J$ 
 
 that Hamlet was in no need of a safety-valve. 
 He was an ideal romantic hero, master of him- 
 self and intent upon his purpose. He may 
 have reproached himself for the delay, as 
 Hieronimo did, though this does not appear 
 in the German play; but, if so, it must have 
 been very clear (as in The Spanish Tragedy) 
 that his apparent self-reproach was only the 
 effect of his impatient despair at the restraint 
 imposed from without. There was nothing for 
 which he could seriously blame himself, and, 
 above all, Kyd did not intend that he should 
 be blamed by anybody else. 
 
 If now we consider how far the theories of 
 Coleridge and Werder might have been applied 
 to Kyd's play, we shall find neither of them 
 wholly applicable. Coleridge's theory, indeed, 
 does not apply at all; for though Hamlet will 
 not act without further assurance, and though 
 he suffers profound distress at his inability 
 to act more promptly, yet he does all that the 
 most uncompromising apostle of revenge could 
 reasonably require. 
 
 Werder's theory, on the other hand, is ap- 
 
j6 Kyd's Hamlet 
 
 plicable to this extent: Hamlet is restrained 
 by external difficulties, and acts throughout 
 with the single purpose of overcoming those 
 difficulties. But his ultimate purpose is by no 
 means to secure such complete justice as Wer- 
 der dreams of. He is animated by the brutish 
 passion for revenge. He wants blood for 
 blood, that his father's spirit may be appeased 
 and his own thirst quenched. He will save him- 
 self harmless if he can, to be sure, for he has 
 the human instinct of self-preservation; but 
 self-preservation is a side-issue. He contem- 
 plates the possibility that he may lose his life 
 in his attempt, and he is willing to lose it if 
 need be; he will kill Claudius as soon as he 
 can, whatever the result, for to kill Claudius 
 is his one overmastering desire. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 Sbafceepeace's Ibamlet 
 
 Shakespeare was not a ready inventor of 
 incident. He took full advantage of the Eliz- 
 abethan license of borrowing, and adopted 
 ready-made plots wherever he found them. He 
 made alterations, of course; but they were 
 usually slight. In the story of Silvia, and 
 again in the story of Hermione, he twisted 
 tragedy into comedy, while in King Lear he 
 turned a happy ending into wholesale tragedy ; 
 but in general his changes were less revolution- 
 ary. The making of plot-material was not his 
 business. 
 
 What he did feel to be his business was the 
 realization of character. His original provided 
 him with a good story, but the characters 
 were often no more than puppets. Stirring 
 deeds were done, but as to what manner of men 
 did them the older writers were apt to be non- 
 77 
 
j8 Shakespeare's Hamlet 
 
 committal. Giraldi's Iago and Holinshed's 
 Macbeth are men of straw. Shakespeare's task 
 was to retell Giraldi's story and Holinshed's 
 history, and in the retelling to make Macbeth 
 and Iago live. Perhaps he consciously put the 
 question to himself, "What kind of men must 
 these have been, to do as they did?" At any 
 rate, it is by imagining him to put such a ques- 
 tion that we can most easily revive in our own 
 minds his processes of creation. By these proc- 
 esses he made new and original characters ; but 
 the materials of which he made them were his 
 borrowed plots. 
 
 In Hamlet, therefore, it does not surprise us 
 to discover that almost all the plot was old. 
 Shakespeare would be especially sparing of in- 
 vention when he was not newly dramatizing 
 fiction or history, but only remodeling material 
 already dramatized. In such cases he always 
 retained the main outlines of his original, some- 
 times even minute details of the scenario. He 
 was content to put new wine in the old bottles. 
 
 Of course Shakespeare reproduced those in- 
 consistencies which Kyd had already imported 
 
Shakespeare's Hamlet 79 
 
 into the Hamlet story. By making the murder 
 secret, Kyd had made the pretence of madness 
 absurd ; yet he had retained it, and Shakespeare 
 retained it too. Kyd's Hamlet had had a very 
 difficult task to accomplish, and had foreseen 
 that it would take a long time ; and Shakespeare 
 followed Kyd step by step through the scenes 
 in which this foresight was shown. His Ham- 
 let, like Kyd's, resolves at once upon the pre- 
 tence of madness, and prepares for an indefinite 
 period of suspense by swearing everybody to 
 secrecy. 
 
 Here, however, Shakespeare is not content 
 with merely taking over the existing difficulties 
 of his plot; he actually creates new difficulties. 
 Kyd, it will be remembered, had narrowed the 
 scope of Hamlet's task, limiting it to mere sav- 
 age vengeance ; but he had retained from 
 Belleforest the notion that Claudius was hard 
 to get at. Hence it was proper for Hamlet 
 to foresee long delay and at once plan to face 
 it. But Shakespeare, though he keeps the 
 passage in which the difficulty of the task is 
 foreseen, eliminates the difficulty itself. In 
 
80 Shakespeare's Hamlet 
 
 Shakespeare's play Claudius is not hard to get 
 at. There is no evidence that Hamlet could 
 not have run upon him and given him his death 
 at any time, had he so chosen. 
 
 Shakespeare's reasons for retaining those 
 passages which his own exposition thus made 
 absurd were doubtless very simple. The pas- 
 sages were good in themselves, and they were 
 already in the play. I believe that he could not 
 have written any such passages if the whole 
 play had been a new invention of his own. 
 In that case the details of his creation, com- 
 ing to life in his imagination simultaneously, 
 must have been consistent with one another. 
 But the nature of Shakespeare's genius was 
 creative, not critical. The unity and consist- 
 ency which in a wholly original creation would 
 come unsought, could hardly come in a revision 
 of Kyd's curious play unless by processes of 
 rigid critical analysis. For such processes 
 Shakespeare had neither time nor inclination. 
 To the reader who has found it tedious to fol- 
 low my reasonings, this will seem indeed no 
 wonder. 
 
Shakespeare's Hamlet 81 
 
 It is easy, therefore, to understand why 
 Shakespeare retained the embarrassments cre- 
 ated by Kyd; but why did he create new ones 
 by eliminating the difficulty of Hamlet's task? 
 Why is it only in the German Hamlet that we 
 hear of the King's body-guard, of Hamlet's 
 vigilant watch for an opportunity to kill, and 
 of the possibility that his dead body may be 
 found somewhere by Horatio? 
 
 The obvious answer is that Shakespeare sup- 
 pressed all this evidence of the difficulty of the 
 task chiefly because that difficulty did not in- 
 terest him. He cared little for adventure. He 
 indulged his audiences with it in Pericles and 
 Cymbeline, but in general his plays are free 
 from it. He saw men's acts not as exertions 
 made upon external objects but as results of 
 internal struggles ; he was interested in effects 
 of character and will, not of muscle and agility. 
 
 Accordingly Shakespeare instinctively slight- 
 ed things that to Kyd were essentials. In Kyd, 
 as in Belleforest, Hamlet could not kill Clau- 
 dius, while to Shakespeare the only question of 
 any interest was whether Hamlet would. The 
 
82 Shakespeare's Hamlet 
 
 evidence that he could not, therefore, has been 
 quietly dropped out as immaterial and irrele- 
 vant. Yet Shakespeare has confused his own 
 design by retaining passages appropriate only 
 to the design of his predecessors ; he allows his 
 Hamlet to act on occasion as if he could not, 
 although it seems clear all the time that he 
 could if he would. 
 
 But though the plot was thus made still more 
 incomprehensible by Shakespeare's waning in- 
 terest in melodrama, it had been bad enough 
 as he first found it in Kyd. As was his wont, 
 he addressed himself to the creation of the 
 necessary characters, and the first question 
 that suggested itself may well have been this: 
 "What kind of man must this Hamlet have 
 been, the impossible hero of this impossible 
 plot? What kind of man, with such a task 
 thrust upon him, would go off on so imprac- 
 ticable a side-track? What is the meaning of 
 this absurd pretence of madness? How can I 
 possibly make it go?" 
 
 In some such way as this, I think, the pre- 
 tence of madness was the starting-point from 
 
Shakespeare's Hamlet 83 
 
 which Hamlet's character was evolved, and it 
 may well have determined the whole course of 
 its development. The sensitive, passionate 
 nature of the Hamlet whom we know, the hys- 
 terical intensity of his agony when his cherished 
 ideals are shattered, even his histrionic fancy 
 for playing with his own instinctive loath- 
 ings — all these traits seem to have sprung up 
 in Shakespeare's imagination as he worked 
 backwards from the feigned madness. He 
 could account for that strange device only as 
 a safety-valve for the ebullitions of Hamlet's 
 own passion. He could see no exterior motive 
 for it at all; and as the motives assigned by 
 Kyd were uninteresting as well as insufficient, 
 he suppressed all reference to them. I do not 
 believe, however, that this suppression was con- 
 scious and deliberate. 
 
 The idea of the safety-valve was, I think, 
 wholly original with Shakespeare; but even if 
 we suppose some germ to have been latent in 
 Kyd's play, we must recognize in Shakespeare's 
 development of it a brilliant feat of genius. 
 Yet in working it out he has had to bring 
 
84 Shakespeare's Hamlet 
 
 Hamlet so near the verge of chronic hysteria 
 that some critics have denied his sanity, while 
 most have thought him an incapable weakling: 
 and even by going to this extreme Shakespeare 
 has not achieved the impossible task of making 
 the plot plausible. 
 
 Some critics, I say, have pronounced Ham- 
 let insane. Such, especially, has been the diag- 
 nosis of certain expert alienists. Now if the 
 incidents of the play were facts instead of fic- 
 tion, I am sure we should have to accept this 
 judgment, and anyone in real life who talked 
 and acted exactly as Hamlet does would be 
 locked up; but the incidents are not facts. 
 The futility of his conduct and the wildness 
 of his language do not suffice to condemn the 
 hero of the drama ; for he cannot be mad unless 
 Shakespeare intended him to be, and his conduct 
 is no proof of Shakespeare's intent. Nearly 
 everything that Hamlet did was a legacy to 
 Shakespeare from Belleforest and Kyd. They 
 did not mean to cast doubt upon Hamlet's 
 sanity, and no doubt is cast upon it by Shake- 
 speare's acceptance of their inventions. If we 
 
Shakespeare's Hamlet 85 
 
 want competent evidence of Hamlet's insanity, 
 we must seek it in Shakespeare's own contribu- 
 tions to the play; they are Shakespeare's com- 
 ments, so to speak, on his borrowed plot, and 
 they alone can be trusted to declare his mind. 
 Of course they emphatically proclaim Hamlet 
 sane. 
 
 But most critics have stopped short of 
 insanity and have charged Hamlet only 
 with weakness and incapacity. From Goethe, 
 Schlegel, and Coleridge, to Boas, Bradley, and 
 Raleigh, all but a few have taken the view dis- 
 cussed in my first chapter. I have shown that 
 their interpretation cannot avail for the play 
 as a whole, for, even if Shakespeare meant what 
 they suppose, he has certainly left in the play 
 much that is inconsistent with that meaning. 
 But was that meaning his? 
 
 Here again Ave must remind ourselves that 
 the play is not fact, but imperfectly digested 
 fiction. If it were fa'ct, we might argue from 
 Hamlet's dilatory pretence of madness, from 
 his willing departure for England, indeed from 
 all his conduct that is known to us, that he was 
 
86 Shakespeare's Hamlet 
 
 just such a palterer as the Coleridgeans think 
 him. But as it is, we know that we have no 
 right to reason so. We may not call the pre- 
 tence of madness dilatory. It was clever and 
 practical strategy in the original; and Kyd 
 and Shakespeare, by obscuring its practical 
 value, have not necessarily converted it into 
 imbecility. The journey to England was not . 
 a willing abandonment of Hamlet's design. In 
 the original it was a plan imposed upon him 
 by irresistible authority, and no other course 
 was open to him under the circumstances. 
 Shakespeare has projected some of these cir- 
 cumstances into the fourth dimension, but by 
 what right may we treat them as non-existent? 
 It would be very strange if Shakespeare 
 adopted for his Hamlet the whole Coleridgean 
 conception. He was merely repolishing a play 
 with a typical romantic hero, a man ready and 
 quick in action and whole-souled in devotion to 
 his task. There is no hint that his conduct 
 deserves anything but praise. Both Kyd and 
 Belleforest clearly meant to represent Hamlet 
 as doing just what they imagined he ought to 
 
Shakespeare's Hamlet 87 
 
 do ; or at any rate he did more than this, rather 
 than less. Now Shakespeare read character 
 more profoundly than his predecessors, and 
 sometimes took new views of his heroes' diffi- 
 culties and duties; but I recall no instance of 
 his turning a model of virtue into a dreadful 
 example of vice. When he follows an old plot 
 as closely as he does in Hamlet, retaining the 
 whole story practically intact, together with 
 most of the stage business, is it conceivable that 
 he would transfigure its entire meaning? It 
 would be as if in Othello he had made Desde- 
 mona really guilty, and Iago an honest coun- 
 selor ! 
 
 Such radical changes did not occur to 
 Shakespeare. He was economical of inven- 
 tion — to borrow the happy phrase of Professor 
 Wendell — and between his sources and his own 
 creation we look for easier transitions. He cut 
 his characters not to suit a vagrant fancy, 
 but for the plots in which they belonged. He 
 made Proteus an aesthetic sentimentalist be- 
 cause no other kind of character would do what 
 Proteus did. He added refinements of egotism 
 
88 Shakespeare's Hamlet 
 
 and selfishness to the Coriolanus of Plutarch, 
 for in no other way could Shakespeare account 
 for his disloyalty. He made Bertram a cad, 
 for how else could the plot be rationalized? 
 
 So it must have been with Hamlet. If in 
 Kyd's play there had seemed to be no external 
 difficulties, and if Kyd's hero had been guilty 
 of inexplicable procrastination, Shakespeare 
 might naturally have made him a man of weak 
 will, even if no such trait were clearly marked 
 in the original; and he might then have evolved 
 in his own mind all that interesting Coleridgean 
 notion of the active powers stifled by the con- 
 templative. But in Kyd's play Hamlet was not 
 guilty of procrastination, and the external dif- 
 ficulties were plainly in evidence throughout. 
 Even if we grant that the Coleridgean concep- 
 tion is a possible one, and within range of 
 Shakespeare's understanding of human nature, 
 there was nothing in Kyd to stimulate Shake- 
 speare's invention to such activity. Antecedent 
 probability is therefore against the theory of 
 Coleridge. 
 
 Antecedent probability is a precarious guide 
 
Shakespeare's Hamlet 89 
 
 when we are studying the operations of genius, 
 but provisionally I think we shall do well to 
 follow it one step farther. Seeing that Shake- 
 speare was not likely, a priori, to do as Cole- 
 ridge thinks he did, let us ask ourselves what 
 he was likely to do with such a plot and such 
 a character as he found in Kyd. I think we 
 shall find an answer that will fit the facts. 
 
 We have seen that Kyd was a shallow philos- 
 opher. He studied passions, not men. He 
 meant to represent Hamlet as doing just what 
 he ought to do; but his Hamlet was primarily 
 a personified craving for revenge. Like Hie- 
 ronimo, he belonged not to real life but to the 
 conventional world of the old revenge tragedy, 
 and his passions and desires were regulated 
 (and in Kyd's scheme were to be judged) by 
 that world's conventional standards. 
 
 This vi ew c ould jiot Jnterest Shakespeare ; 
 but much else in the play interested him deeply. 
 He found there a noble, capable, and strong 
 man, a man in every way admirable, suddenly 
 called upon to dedicate himself to a savage 
 passion. The call is the most urgent one con- 
 
go Shakespeare's Hamlet 
 
 ceivable, proceeding from his father's grave; 
 and the hero obeys it and gives his life in the 
 pursuit of his revenge. This was the story 
 Shakespeare had to tell, and our question is : 
 how would he be likely to tell it? 
 
 He would be likely to repeat substantially as 
 he found them all facts that interested him ; 
 he would make no change, even in characteriza- 
 tion, except such as the situation itself sug- 
 gested, or such as were necessitated by his own 
 larger views of life; but he certainly could not 
 take over the shallow psychology of Kyd. He 
 would follow Kyd in presenting an admirably 
 heroic youth driven to vengeance by an irre- 
 sistible impulse; but he would emancipate him- 
 self wholly from Kyd when he came to consider 
 how the youth would feel about it. Shake- 
 speare's hero would not be an incarnate demon 
 of revenge, and the conventional standards of 
 the revenge tragedy would be thrown over- 
 board. Hamlet himself says, "Give me that 
 man that is not passion's slave, and I will wear 
 him in my heart's core." Those words, as 
 everybody perceives, seem to express Shake- 
 
Shakespeare's Hamlet 91 
 
 speare's own mature ideal of manhood; and it 
 is that ideal that we should expect to see put 
 to the test in Hamlet. 
 
 In Kyd's play the hero was kept waiting 
 several weeks, but his opportunity came at last. 
 Shakespeare, I believe, meant to tell the same 
 story, but to present the man's life and emo- 
 tional experiences as they must really have 
 been during the interim. He has slighted the 
 obstacles, for he was not interested in them; 
 and they might be taken for granted. The 
 interesting problem was how it would feel to 
 be in Hamlet's place. The sensitive, affection- 
 ate, impulsive character of Hamlet has already 
 sprung to light in Shakespeare's imagination, 
 out of the pretence of madness ; and the an- 
 swer to the present problem is that such a man 
 in such a situation would be in an almost hope- 
 less quandary. At times he would be all for 
 blood, for in the best of us the brutish pas- 
 sions are still strong; but in the best of us 
 such moods are not enduring, and there would 
 be times when Hamlet could hardly persuade 
 himself back into his fury if he tried. He 
 
92 Shakespeare's Hamlet 
 
 achieves his revenge; he achieves it, indeed, as 
 soon as circumstances permit; but that is not 
 the point. The point is that, looking down 
 deep into his soul, we see him achieving it in 
 spite of almost infinite reluctance. 
 
 Such, I think, was Shakespeare's conception 
 of his hero. I cannot believe that his Hamlet 
 is to blame for any irresoluteness. If we judge 
 him by the standards that prevail in The 
 Spanish Tragedy, and especially if we accept 
 the data of the play as a complete account of 
 the situation, we must condemn Hamlet for not 
 taking the life of Claudius at once. But our 
 judgments are not regulated by those stand- 
 ards, and we know that the play tells the story 
 but imperfectly. 
 
 The Coleridgeans, I think, read Hamlet's 
 character just as Shakespeare read it, except 
 for their imputation of a feeble will. They 
 have superposed this defect upon the character 
 because they have made both the mistakes men- 
 tioned in the last paragraph. In the first place, 
 they have taken such things as the pretence 
 of madness and the journey to England for 
 
Shakespeare's Hamlet 93 
 
 facts by which Hamlet was to be interpreted; 
 and, in the second place, they have judged that 
 he falls short of perfection just in so far as 
 he falls short of the pre-Shakespearean ideal 
 of the avenger. 
 
 So far as we know, it never occurred to 
 Shakespeare that Hamlet was incapable of 
 achieving any task, however great, if he wanted 
 to; or that, in the present instance, he ought 
 to have been more eager than he was. In a 
 sense, Shakespeare did with the character ex- 
 actly what Kyd had done; that is, he let Ham- 
 let behave exactly as he imagined a noble- 
 minded prince would behave under the circum- 
 stances. Kyd, however, saw the story in the 
 lime-light of a conventional stage, while Shake- 
 speare saw it in the light of a profound knowl- 
 edge of human nature. 
 
 If at a spiritualistic seance your own father's 
 spirit should summon you to kill your uncle, 
 how would you feel? You probably do not 
 believe in spiritualism, just as Shakespeare 
 probably did not believe in ghosts; but if you 
 can waive your disbelief, you will see that the 
 
94 Shakespeare's Hamlet 
 
 situation presents a very pretty problem. I 
 think you will also see that Shakespeare's solu- 
 tion is much more plausible than Kyd's, and 
 that it implies no disparagement whatever of 
 Hamlet's strength of mind. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 Sbaftespeare's Ibamlet (Continued)* 
 
 A slight confirmation of my view of Hamlet 
 is found in those curious lines about conscience 
 which were added in Shakespeare's second ver- 
 sion.* The ethical idea had by that time be- 
 come of interest to Shakespeare, though there- 
 tofore it had not been prominently before him. 
 In his first conception, the question was not one 
 for debate as to what Hamlet ought to do; it 
 was rather a question for dramatic intuition 
 as to what he would do and how he would feel. 
 But moral scruples could not be far away 
 from a character thus conceived. There was 
 not merely the possible doubt whether Hamlet 
 had a right to kill Claudius if he wished to, 
 there was also the doubt whether he was bound 
 to do so if he did not. Both doubts are ex- 
 pressed in Hamlet's question to Horatio, and 
 *Ante, p. 29. 
 95 
 
96 Shakespeare's Hamlet 
 
 both are natural developments from the con- 
 ception which I have imputed to Shakespeare. 
 Conversely, their presence in the Second Quarto 
 strengthens the belief that that was really his 
 conception, for any other would have been less 
 likely to receive these particular accretions. 
 
 The conception which I attribute to Shake- 
 speare is really the popular conception. Au- 
 diences do not condemn Hamlet as a weakling; 
 they are with him all the time. This is because 
 they take unconsciously the same common- 
 sense attitude that Shakespeare took. Theories 
 like those of Coleridge and Werder are elab- 
 orated by close students of the text, reasoning, 
 as we have seen, from irreconcilable data. 
 They would hardly suggest themselves to a 
 first-night audience, and it was for the first- 
 night audience that Shakespeare wrote. The 
 play is perhaps the most striking example of 
 Shakespeare's makeshift methods, but it is also 
 a most striking proof of his genius ; for he 
 has portrayed his hero so vividly that the glar- 
 ing inconsistencies of the plot pass unnoticed, 
 and unsophisticated audiences get precisely the 
 
Shakespeare's Hamlet 97 
 
 effect intended. They admire and pity the 
 hero, and they do not blame him. It is only 
 the closet student that detects the flaws of the 
 plot and unjustly lays the blame on the hero's 
 shoulders. 
 
 The Coleridgean theory is supported by 
 many passages to which I have as yet made no 
 reference; but none, I think, offer any serious 
 difficulty. Either they have been misunder- 
 stood, or they are merely embarrassing legacies 
 from Kyd's play. The first which I shall con- 
 sider belongs to the former class. 
 
 Hamlet's celebrated instructions to the play- 
 ers are counted as supporting Coleridge's 
 theory. How extraordinary, say the theorists, 
 that Hamlet's wits go so far afield in their 
 wool-gathering ! Now, at last, he has some- 
 thing to do, and a normal man would be strain- 
 ing every nerve for the test; but Hamlet's 
 coaching is utterly irrelevant; it is an abstract 
 discussion of the general principles of art ! 
 Or perhaps he descends to the concrete and 
 tells the clown not to go outside of his part; 
 but, as we afterwards learn, there is no clown's 
 
98 Shakespeare's Hamlet 
 
 part in the Mouse-Trap ! Here, argue the Cole- 
 ridgeans, Shakespeare's purpose to damn his 
 hero is most apparent. Even at a critical 
 emergency, Hamlet cannot keep to the issue; 
 his practical energies are swallowed up in gen- 
 eral reflections. 
 
 But of course we must remember that the 
 audience have not yet seen The Mouse-Trap. 
 They do not know that there is to be no clown. 
 Hamlet seems to be coaching thoroughly and 
 energetically. Afterwards, to be sure, if we 
 reflect, we shall see that very little of his ad- 
 vice was particularly relevant to this curious 
 play ; but who is likely to think back in this 
 way? We must credit Shakespeare with the 
 intent to produce the impression which he 
 actually produces, namely, that Hamlet is a 
 practical man of rare sense as well as wide 
 culture. And of course Shakespeare seizes the 
 opportunity to say more things than the pur- 
 poses of his plot demand. 
 
 The trouble here is simply that many critics 
 are out of touch with the stage, and forget 
 that the scene in question is drama, not history. 
 
Shakespeare's Hamlet 99 
 
 Another passage which is often similarly mis- 
 interpreted is that which tells of Hamlet's 
 escape from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. It 
 is not easy to justify the forgery and murder, 
 even by the questionable plea of self-defence ; 
 and from the light-hearted carelessness of Ham- 
 let's narration it is possible to infer I know 
 not what bugs and goblins in his character. 
 But no such inferences are legitimate here, and 
 no moral justification of Hamlet's act is needed. 
 Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are minor and 
 rather tiresome personages. Their death is not 
 exhibited on the stage, and little emphasis is 
 placed on it even in narration. Under the cir- 
 cumstances, our uppermost feeling is that we 
 are glad to have them die, and we congratulate 
 Hamlet upon his cleverness. Shakespeare 
 sees life in the light of intense moral con- 
 victions, but, as Professor Raleigh has delight- 
 fully impressed upon us, the light does not 
 always illumine the backgrounds of his pic- 
 ture. 
 
 The "to be or not to be" soliloquy is a trump 
 card for the Coleridgeans. Professor Brad- 
 
ioo Shakespeare's Hamlet 
 
 ley comments on it as follows: "Hamlet en- 
 ters, so deeply absorbed in thought that for 
 some time he supposes himself to be alone. 
 What is he thinking of? 'The murder of 
 Gonzago,' which is to be played in a few hours, 
 and on which everything depends? Not at all. 
 He is meditating on suicide; and he finds that 
 what stands in the way of it, and counterbal- 
 ances its infinite attraction, is not any thought 
 of a sacred unaccomplished duty, but the 
 doubt, quite irrelevant to that issue, whether 
 it is not ignoble in the mind to end its mis- 
 ery, and still more, whether death would end 
 it." 
 
 Is it true that Hamlet is here meditating 
 suicide? I rather accept the interpretation of 
 the soliloquy originated by the sturdy common- 
 sense of Dr. Johnson. Hamlet is thinking not 
 of committing suicide but of actively pursuing 
 his revenge. The latter course, he knows, is 
 a dangerous one; and hence he queries whether 
 it is better patiently to endure outrage or 
 valiantly to throw away life in the effort to 
 right it: 
 
Shakespeare's Hamlet 101 
 
 Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer 
 The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, 
 Or to take arms against a sea of troubles 
 And by opposing end them? 
 
 How can the words "by opposing end them" 
 mean suicide? Hamlet adds that the question 
 is made doubly serious by the uncertainty of 
 conditions beyond the grave. But for this con- 
 sideration, he says, many of the poor and op- 
 pressed would seek a voluntary death; but 
 there is here no reference to himself. He does 
 not return to his individual concerns unless 
 perhaps at the very end of the soliloquy, where 
 he seems to say, in effect: "The uncertainty 
 that unnerves the would-be suicide is the same 
 thing that partly daunts me, the would-be 
 avenger." 
 
 Thus conscience does make cowards of us all, 
 And thus the native hue of resolution 
 Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, 
 And enterprises of great pith and moment 
 With this regard their currents turn awry. 
 
 The soliloquy, thus understood, is a perfectly 
 natural one for the Hamlet of my interpre- 
 tation. Such a train of thought might pass 
 
102 Shakespeare's Hamlet 
 
 through his mind at any time, but it is es- 
 pecially appropriate now, for it is the eve of 
 action. The Mouse-Trap is Hamlet's first 
 overt act, 'and amounts virtually to a declara- 
 tion of war. He is not shrinking; he has al- 
 ready partly committed himself, and the next 
 time we see him he is making final preparations. 
 The soliloquy shows only that he faces the situ- 
 ation intelligently and deliberately. He is like 
 a duelist who, in the act of crossing swords, 
 remarks ironically to himself: "This is a very 
 questionable business that I am engaged in." 
 
 In the First Quarto this soliloquy precedes 
 the arrival of the pla3 r ers. It thus shows Ham- 
 let's mind before he has devised a test of the 
 King's guilt and before there is prospect of 
 immediate action. Curiously enough, too, the 
 passage from the second line to the eighth (in- 
 cluding my first quotation) is omitted. There 
 is no suggestion that Hamlet is meditating 
 vengeance. Unless we are misled by printers' 
 omissions, the Hamlet of the First Quarto is 
 certainly meditating suicide. 
 
 With this soliloquy, as we find it in the First 
 
Shakespeare's Hamlet 103 
 
 and Second Quartos respectively, we must com- 
 pare the two versions of another soliloquy. 
 There is a passage in the first act in which, 
 according to the Second Quarto, Hamlet cer- 
 tainly does meditate suicide, while according to 
 the First he certainly does not; so that the 
 curious conditions shown in the "to be or not 
 to be" soliloquy are exactly reversed. 
 
 O, that this too too solid flesh would melt, 
 Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew ! 
 Or that the Everlasting had not fixed 
 His canon 'gainst sel f -slaughter ! 
 
 The reading of the First Quarto is as follows: 
 
 O, that this too much grieved and sallied flesh 
 Would melt to nothing, or that the universal 
 Globe of heaven would turn all to a Chaos! 
 
 Now is it likely that these oddly reciprocal 
 discrepancies between the two versions are due 
 to imperfect transcription? Or may we say 
 that they existed between the versions as 
 Shakespeare actually wrote them? I think we 
 may. The case last cited is clear, for the First 
 
104 Shakespeare's Hamlet 
 
 Quarto shows no gap; it has a substituted 
 clause which is quite intelligible, though en- 
 tirely different from the clause about self- 
 slaughter. It is pretty certain, therefore, that 
 the latter was an afterthought. In the case of 
 the "to be or not to be" soliloquy I feel less cer- 
 tain, but I think a similar conclusion is suffi- 
 ciently warranted. At the point in the First 
 Quarto at which the soliloquy occurs, there was 
 no special impropriety in Hamlet's thinking 
 of suicide ; and there would have been no special 
 propriety in his thinking of the danger of his 
 task. At the point to which the soliloquy is 
 transposed in the Second Quarto, there is a 
 special propriety in his thinking of the danger, 
 as I have just pointed out ; while the inferences 
 of Professor Bradley show the remarkable im- 
 propriety in his thinking of suicide. All this 
 seems unlikely to be chance coincidence. 
 
 What really happened was probably this : 
 When Shakespeare first rewrote Kyd's play, he 
 allowed Hamlet to think of suicide at a point 
 after the Ghost's revelation and before the ar- 
 rival of the players. This may well have been 
 
Shakespeare's Hamlet 105 
 
 a faithful copying of Kyd, and Hamlet's rea- 
 son for thinking of suicide, like Hieronimo's, 
 was his despair of accomplishing his revenge. 
 When Shakespeare made his final revision of 
 the play he canceled this incident, for, with the 
 external difficulty of Hamlet's task, his motive 
 for suicide had vanished from the foreground 
 of Shakespeare's imagination. A fleeting sug- 
 gestion of suicide was inserted, however, before 
 the interview with the Ghost, and the soliloquy 
 in which the suggestion had formerly occurred 
 was transposed to a point just before the 
 Mouse-Trap, and converted into a reflection 
 upon the gravity of the impending crisis. 
 After the Hamlet of the revised version has 
 once learned of the task that is put upon him, 
 he talks no more of self-slaughter; that notion 
 flits across his mind only when there is nothing 
 else to occupy it but idle melancholy. Of 
 course all these careful readjustments could 
 hardly have been made if Shakespeare had been 
 trying to show Hamlet's incapacity for action. 
 After the Mouse-Trap there remains no rea- 
 son for delay that Shakespeare cares to empha- 
 
106 Shakespeare's Hamlet 
 
 size, and in consequence Hamlet's mind seems 
 now more settled. There is no more of the old 
 impotent self-reproach, except in a single solil- 
 oquy which I shall discuss shortly. Hamlet 
 talks more openly to his mother, to Rosencrantz 
 and Guildenstern, and to Polonius. When we 
 compare this virtual unmasking with his pre- 
 vious diplomatic reserve, it seems clear that he 
 now intends present action. Heretofore he has 
 never intended anything of the sort. He has 
 seemed to reproach himself for the harrowing 
 delay and has vehemently urged himself to do 
 something; but he has never expected to act 
 soon, for he has seen that there was nothing 
 to be done. Clearly his change of attitude is 
 due to the success of the Mouse-Trap. He 
 spoke truly when he said that if Claudius should 
 but blench he knew his course ; and he now 
 means to seize his first opportunity. He does 
 not seize it, for it comes when Claudius is 
 praying, and the Hamlet of the plot is too 
 superstitious to kill him on his knees ; but an- 
 other opportunity seems to offer itself when 
 he thinks the King is eaves-dropping, and Ham- 
 
Shakespeare's Hamlet 107 
 
 let thrusts his rapier through the arras with- 
 out an instant's hesitation. 
 
 The soliloquy referred to in the last para- 
 graph is uttered just as Hamlet goes to take 
 ship. It ends with the resolution to be "bloody 
 or be nothing worth," discussed in an earlier 
 chapter. This soliloquy is missing in the First 
 Quarto, and was added when the pirate capture 
 was devised. Its meaning becomes clear only 
 when it is studied in connection with that 
 incident. 
 
 The fundamental difficulty here is that in- 
 volved in Hamlet's ready acquiescence in the 
 journey to England. It has been hard hitherto 
 to account for this except as a striking illus- 
 tration of Coleridge's theory; and under Cole- 
 ridge's theory the farewell soliloquy proved too 
 much, for it proved Hamlet an idiot. Some bet- 
 ter explanation must be found. 
 
 A naive explanation would be that if Ham- 
 let had not gone away the play could not have 
 continued through two more acts, for matters 
 were coming rapidly to a head. I do not re- 
 member whether anyone has actually offered 
 
108 Shakespeare's Hamlet 
 
 this explanation ; but Mr. Bernard Shaw might 
 have done so, and it contains a smack of the 
 absurd good sense for which he is distinguished. 
 In Belleforest and Kyd, as we have seen, the 
 journey to England was satisfactorily ac- 
 counted for ; Hamlet went because he could not 
 help himself. As the story changed in the re- 
 telling, the skeleton of this particular incident 
 remained, though the flesh and blood had dried 
 away. It was a troublesome impediment, but 
 Shakespeare could not renounce it, for it was 
 an integral part of his whole inheritance. It 
 was literally true that the play could not go 
 on without it. 
 
 In his first version Shakespeare made no se- 
 rious effort to cope with the difficulty; but in 
 his final revision he invented simultaneously the 
 pirate capture, Hamlet's foreknowledge and 
 confident assurance of success (as revealed in 
 his talk with the Queen), and the soliloquy now 
 in question. All these passages may easily be 
 regarded as inspired by a common purpose, 
 namely to represent Hamlet as still fully mind- 
 ful of his task. If Shakespeare had received 
 
Shakespeare's Hamlet 109 
 
 all these passages as legacies from Kyd, and 
 had himself invented Hamlet's calm acquiescence 
 in the departure for England, I should judge 
 that the latter was devised to make Hamlet'a 
 speeches ridiculous ; but as precisely the oppo- 
 site is true, and the speeches are Shakespeare's 
 own contributions to the total effect, I accept 
 them at their face value and judge that they 
 were devised to smooth over the difficulties of 
 the situation and induce us to overlook them. 
 The device was not a happy one, and the solil- 
 oquy in particular might well provoke question 
 in a careful reader's mind ; and it is likely that 
 Shakespeare observed this, for the soliloquy is 
 omitted again in the Folios. It was unques- 
 tionably written by Shakespeare, but either by 
 him or by his authorized editors it was subse- 
 quently canceled. 
 
 My view of Hamlet robs the tragedy of a 
 certain significance, but it is a kind of signifi- 
 cance that we have no right to demand. The 
 Coleridgeans say that the hero's infirmity justi- 
 fies the tragic ending of the play. It is his 
 "tragic fault," and, like Macbeth's ambition or 
 
iio Shakespeare's Hamlet 
 
 the pride of Coriolanus, it entails his ruin. But 
 Professor Baker has sufficiently shown that the 
 tragic fault, though demanded by some critics, 
 was not deemed indispensable by Shakespeare. 
 He told a story, he did not philosophize about 
 it. He usually kept the ending as he found it ; 
 but when he did make a change, as in King 
 Lear and The Two Gentlemen of Verona, it 
 was not for ethical reasons, it was to secure 
 artistic harmony with the spirit of the narra- 
 tive. Cordelia does not deserve to die, but her 
 death "goes" well in the play; or at any rate 
 Shakespeare thought so when he devised it. 
 
 In a revenge play it was artistically neces- 
 sary that the hero should die in achieving his 
 purpose. Thus, to give a hypothetical illus- 
 tration, Shakespeare might have made a re- 
 venge tragedy out of Holinshed's story of Mac- 
 beth by simply making Macduff the hero in- 
 stead of the King; and if he had done so the 
 etiquette of the literary species would have de- 
 manded that both Macbeth and Macduff 
 should die in the fight at Dunsinane. So when 
 Kyd dramatized Belleforest's novel he, as a 
 
Shakespeare's Hamlet 1 1 1 
 
 matter of course, sacrificed his hero at the end 
 of the play. In Kyd, be it remembered, there 
 is no hint of weakness in Hamlet's character. 
 
 It cannot have occurred to Shakespeare 
 either that the ending should be altered or that 
 it needed any profounder justification than 
 was already provided. That justification, as 
 I have explained, seems to me artistic rather 
 than ethical; but the difference, after all, is 
 chiefly a difference in terms. If the philosophi- 
 cal critics demand an ethical basis for every 
 play, they may find one for Hamlet even under 
 my interpretation. The hero of a revenge 
 tragedy, they may say, dies because he cher- 
 ishes an unholy passion. Shakespeare's Ham- 
 let, seen from this point of view, is exactly like 
 Kyd's, and I will concede that he dies because 
 of his tragic fault; but I insist that the fault 
 is not his reluctance to avenge his father 
 promptly, it is his willingness to do so at all. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 ©pbella 
 
 Hamlet's curious conduct in Ophelia's 
 closet, as described by her to Polonius, has 
 proved as puzzling to the critics as it was to 
 the lady herself. Some have held that he was 
 led thither by the pure ecstasy of love, that 
 he was indulging his eager desire merely to 
 look upon her face, and that the disorder of 
 his dress and the eccentricity of his behavior 
 were natural and unstudied symptoms of his 
 passion. Others have gone a little farther, 
 and held that Hamlet is here taking a last 
 farewell; for under the burden of his task he 
 recognizes that love and wedded felicity are 
 not for him, and that he must tear her out of 
 his heart forever. 
 
 The latter interpretation is consistent with 
 the Coleridgean theory, for it is not clear that 
 
Ophelia 1 1 3 
 
 Hamlet need make any such renunciation. 
 Belief orest's hero, who has a much more difficult 
 task than Shakespeare's, actually marries on the 
 eve of his vengeance. If Shakespeare's Hamlet 
 is giving up the love of Ophelia by a deliberate 
 effort, it must be because he magnifies to him- 
 self the demands of his situation. He has 
 not the strength to act, but his preparations 
 for action are huge. All that he holds most 
 dear is sacrificed to his impotent purpose in 
 advance. 
 
 My own interpretation of the incident is less 
 romantic. I think that Hamlet's sole purpose 
 is to deceive. Ophelia's story to Polonius is 
 the first news of Hamlet in the second act, and 
 the first act closed upon his resolve to feign 
 madness. The effect of this sequence cannot 
 be blinked. The audience know that Hamlet 
 intends "to put an antic disposition on," and 
 they are waiting to see him begin. Ophelia 
 rushes in. "Oh, my Lord, I have been so af- 
 frighted! Lord Hamlet, with his doublet all 
 unbraced, no hat upon his head, his stockings 
 fouled," etc., etc. Any intelligent listener 
 
ii4 Ophelia 
 
 must connect this scene with the last; and so, 
 I think, must Shakespeare have intended. 
 
 That such was the meaning of the scene in 
 Kyd is clear from the German play. In the 
 first act Hamlet announces his resolve to feign 
 madness. In Act II Ophelia runs to Coram- 
 bus and the King and cries: "Alas, father, 
 protect me! Prince Hamlet plagues me. He 
 lets me have no peace." Hamlet himself is seen 
 following her, and the King and Corambus hide 
 behind the arras. Then comes the nunnery 
 scene; and the scene which follows immediately 
 after begins with Hamlet's saying to Horatio: 
 "My worthy friend, through this assumed mad- 
 ness I hope to get the opportunity of revenging 
 my father's death." 
 
 The First Quarto corroborates the testimony 
 of the German play. Ophelia enters in alarm 
 and Corambis asks what is the news. She pref- 
 aces her narrative of the facts with a state- 
 ment of her conclusion : 
 
 O young Prince Hamlet, the only flower of Denmark, 
 
 He is bereft of all the wealth he had; 
 
 The jewel that adorned his feature most 
 
 Is filched and stolen away; his wit's bereft him. 
 
Ophelia 1 1 5 
 
 Then follows her narrative of Hamlet's visit 
 to her closet. As in the Second Quarto and the 
 German play, this is the first news of Hamlet 
 since his resolve to feign madness. 
 
 There was an impropriety in giving to 
 Ophelia the lines just quoted, for in the ensuing 
 scenes it appears that Hamlet's madness has 
 been under observation for some time. The 
 King is troubled about it, and has already sum- 
 moned Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as detect- 
 ives. The fact of Hamlet's madness is well 
 known ; only the cause remains obscure. 
 Ophelia, therefore, had no business announcing 
 it as a new thing. She did so only because 
 it was in Shakespeare's mind that this would 
 indeed be the first announcement to the audi- 
 ence. In the final revision the error is partly 
 corrected. Ophelia merely tells the bare facts 
 about Hamlet's visit, and Polonius infers that 
 the cause of his madness is love. In the next 
 scene, both in the final version and in the First 
 Quarto, Polonius accordingly announces to the 
 King that he has discovered "the very cause 
 of Hamlet's lunacy." 
 
1 1 6 Ophelia 
 
 Thus it appears that the slight change in 
 the revised version was intended only to cor- 
 rect an error; Shakespeare was not altering 
 the scene in its main significance. There is, 
 I think, only one possible difference between 
 Shakespeare's understanding of the facts and 
 Kyd's ; and in the existence of even that dif- 
 ference I have no confidence. In Kyd's play 
 it is possible that Hamlet's visit to Ophelia 
 was the first revelation of his supposed mad- 
 ness. In Shakespeare's play it is certainly an 
 afterthought of Hamlet's. He has for some 
 time feigned madness in a general way, and 
 Claudius suspects him. Hamlet now sees that 
 he must give his madness a specific and harm- 
 less character; and accordingly he pretends 
 that it springs from slighted love. 
 
 All these considerations cast a taint upon 
 the genuineness of Hamlet's love for Ophelia. 
 His treatment of her can no longer be explained 
 as due to a lover's agony. It is cold-blooded 
 and deliberate. Besides, how could we ever 
 have supposed that Hamlet misread Ophelia's 
 simple nature, as the common exegesis assumes 
 
Ophelia 117 
 
 that he did? His behavior is sufficiently heart- 
 less in any view, but if he loved her it is in- 
 explicable. 
 
 Some other indications point the same way. 
 How is it that Hamlet always treats Polonius 
 with ridicule and contempt? Modern sentiment 
 does not tolerate such indecency in a lover; 
 and if we question whether Shakespeare could 
 share our delicacy in such matters we have only 
 to consult Romeo or Ferdinand. Shakespeare 
 knew the gentleman's code as well as we do. 
 But, above all, we find in Hamlet's soliloquies 
 the plainest indication that he cared nothing 
 for Ophelia. The soliloquy is used by Shake- 
 speare to show us the most secret thoughts of 
 his characters ; and in Hamlet's most secret 
 thoughts Ophelia is never once present. 
 
 On the other hand, Ophelia tells Polonius in 
 the first act that Hamlet hath importuned her 
 with love in honorable fashion, and hath given 
 countenance to his speech with almost all the 
 holy vows of heaven. Polonius attaches little 
 importance to this; but we know Hamlet bet- 
 ter than he does, and we cannot believe him a 
 
1 1 8 Ophelia 
 
 villain. In the fifth act Hamlet himself tells 
 his mother that he loved Ophelia more than 
 forty thousand brothers. Now in spite of his 
 palpable lie to Laertes (which has given much 
 unnecessary trouble) we know that Hamlet is 
 no liar. Must we not, then, believe him here? 
 
 It is easy to find an explanation of these 
 inconsistencies that will be partly satisfactory. 
 Ophelia, we may say, is a rare sweet girl, but 
 by no means the woman to take deep hold upon 
 Hamlet's affections. He loved her once, but 
 only as one loves a child or a flower. When 
 his father lived, and he was young in experience 
 as well as in years, she fascinated his sentimen- 
 tal fancy with her flower-like beauty. Though 
 his heart was never deeply engaged, he could 
 yet be honest in all the vows he made her — 
 honest, though mistaken. Now, however, man- 
 hood has been thrust suddenly upon him and 
 the summer days are ended. It was the poetical 
 boy in Hamlet that loved Ophelia; the serious 
 man never did, and does not now. Yet in a 
 moment of sudden shock, as when he learns 
 that it is her grave over which he has been 
 
Ophelia 1 1 9 
 
 grimly jesting, memories of his former fancy 
 overwhelm him ; and in his words to the Queen, 
 though he is as mistaken as before, he is, as 
 before, entirely sincere. 
 
 This explanation is only partly satisfactory. 
 If it accounts for Hamlet's failure ever to 
 think about Ophelia, it does little towards 
 reconciling us to his cruel use of her. More- 
 over, a still more serious objection can be made 
 against it. If the story of Ophelia means no 
 more than this, what is its pertinence to the 
 rest of the play? The subsidiary plot becomes 
 interesting only from Ophelia's point of view ; 
 she is the heroine of a little tragedy of her 
 own, which to Hamlet is a matter of indiffer- 
 ence. The interest of the tragedy is not 
 increased, but merely divided, by the complica- 
 tion. It is as if, in the middle of Romeo and 
 Juliet, Shakespeare had devoted several scenes 
 to the desolation and despair of Rosaline. 
 
 There are other difficulties connected with 
 Ophelia, but as they perhaps depend upon sub- 
 jective judgments, it would be unwise to em- 
 phasize them. I refer to such things as her 
 
1 20 Ophelia 
 
 madness. What causes it? It is ascribed in. 
 the play to her father's death; but I myself 
 cannot feel that this is a sufficient cause. She 
 appears twice in conversation with her father, 
 but on neither occasion is any fondness shown 
 between them; and neither speaks of the other 
 with affection. It would be easier to under- 
 stand her insanity if she knew that Polonius 
 was slain by her lover, but that fact seems to 
 have been kept secret. Hamlet's own supposed 
 madness and consequent harshness to her might 
 conceivably explain her disorder; but they are 
 not assigned as causes in the play. Her mad- 
 ness, therefore, seems a rather conventional 
 device for disposing of her. 
 
 For all these reasons we conclude that the 
 true story of Ophelia is not fully told in 
 Shakespeare's play. It may have been a con- 
 sistent part of Kyd's scheme, but Shakespeare 
 failed to work it out, and we have in his text 
 only the disjecta membra of the original epi- 
 sode. For this reason the inferences that have 
 ordinarily been drawn about Hamlet's char- 
 acter from his treatment of Ophelia are un- 
 
Ophelia 121 
 
 warrantable and probably misleading. Those 
 inferences have been somewhat at variance with 
 my view of Shakespeare's purpose, and I have 
 therefore thought it best to devote this whole 
 final chapter to an analysis of the story. It 
 remains only to explore the genesis of this story, 
 and so to find a specific explanation of Shake- 
 speare's negligence. It will be possible in this 
 way, I believe, to clear up most of our 
 difficulties. 
 
 In the German Hamlet Ophelia apparently 
 goes mad before it is known that her father 
 is dead. It is nowhere suggested that his 
 death had anything to do with her calamity. 
 Her ravings are all about an unnamed lover, 
 for whom she is perpetually mistaking somebody 
 else. One would suppose that this lover must 
 be Hamlet, but this is by no means clear. She 
 has shown no interest in Hamlet. She mentions 
 him only once, and that is in her complaint to 
 Corambus : "Alas, father, protect me ! Prince 
 Hamlet plagues me. He lets me have no peace." 
 Hamlet, too, shows no real interest in Ophelia. 
 As I have said above, he pretends to have gone 
 
122 Ophelia 
 
 mad with love of her; but there is no sugges- 
 tion that his love was anything more than a 
 pretence. For his declaration at the grave, 
 in Shakespeare's play, and for the holy vows 
 with which Shakespeare's Ophelia says he 
 wooed her, the German author gives no equiva- 
 lents. Ophelia's insanity is a ludicrously con- 
 ventional piece of play-making. She seems to 
 be in the play only to supply a second female 
 part and to give Hamlet a chance for feigning 
 madness. When she has served the dramatist's 
 purpose she goes mad herself and commits 
 suicide. 
 
 Kyd, of course, cannot have perpetrated 
 such silliness as this. The fault is with "the 
 German adapter, or perhaps even with subse- 
 quent abridgments of his work. Moreover, 
 the German play is so different in these particu- 
 lars from Shakespeare's that comparison of the 
 two affords no certainty as to what Kyd did 
 write. It is clear only that Kyd's Hamlet used 
 Ophelia to explain his madness, that in the 
 nunnery scene he cast her off in a feigned 
 rage, and that she went mad and killed her- 
 
Ophelia 123 
 
 self. Whether Kyd's Hamlet really loved 
 Ophelia, and, if he did, why he cast her off, 
 are questions which must be answered con- 
 jecturally. 
 
 But as to the first of these questions con- 
 jecture may be confident. Hamlet must have 
 loved Ophelia, and Kyd must have conceived 
 their unhappy relations as an integral part of 
 Hamlet's tragedy. Otherwise Kyd would 
 hardly have invented the story at all; and the 
 isolated intimations that Shakespeare gives in 
 his first and fifth acts are not likely to have 
 been interpolated gratuitously. 
 
 It is less easy to see why Kyd's Hamlet cast 
 off his Ophelia. There are several ways in 
 which Kyd might have conceived the affair, 
 and our data are too vague for a decisive choice 
 between them. Perhaps Hamlet deliberately 
 sacrificed his hope of happiness in love, lest it 
 should interfere with his revenge. Perhaps 
 there was no deliberation, but love died a 
 natural death as Hamlet's heart filled with the 
 darker passion. Or — and for this ingenious 
 and plausible suggestion I am indebted to a 
 
1 24 Ophelia 
 
 friend and fellow-student* — perhaps Hamlet 
 acted deliberately but with no distinctly prac- 
 tical motive; perhaps, without psychological 
 analysis, Kyd merely manipulated his hero 
 according to the etiquette of revenge tragedy. 
 Hamlet cast off Ophelia because it was fitting 
 that his decks should be thoroughly cleared for 
 action. 
 
 Whichever of these suggestions we accept, 
 Shakespeare's treatment of the theme can now 
 be intelligibly explained. If Kyd's story was 
 sheer stage convention, it could hardly appeal 
 to Shakespeare ; he left Hamlet's affection little 
 more than a form of words because he was 
 not convinced of its depth. If Kyd's Hamlet 
 made a deliberate sacrifice to his revenge, this 
 too would seem to Shakespeare more conven- 
 tional than real, and he could follow Kyd only 
 half-heartedly. And whether the sacrifice was 
 deliberate or not, any process by which the 
 passion of revenge supplanted in Hamlet's 
 heart a genuine passion of love would hardly 
 be reproduced by Shakespeare, for it would 
 *Miss E. W. Manwaring. 
 
Ophelia 125 
 
 necessitate a very different treatment of the 
 passion of revenge from that which he was 
 driven to adopt. Kyd's Hamlet was possessed, 
 and might do all that became a monomaniac; 
 but Shakespeare's Hamlet could do only what 
 may become a man. 
 
 Hamlet's conduct, too, was cruel. The dis- 
 courtesy and the inhumanity that he shows in 
 Shakespeare's play are certain not to have been 
 more softly presented by Kyd. They were 
 proper enough in the hero of a pre-Shake- 
 spearean tragedy ; for there the design was to 
 exhibit passions rather than persons, and an 
 audience sympathetically consumed with the 
 blood-thirst would care little for the amenities 
 of good society. But Shakespeare's effort was 
 to realize character. What could he do with 
 such unpliant material as this? 
 
 Finally, Shakespeare was just now not in- 
 terested in love-stories. He was writing plays 
 like Julius Casar and Measure for Measure, 
 in which love played no part, or like Troilus 
 and Cressida, in which it is strangely des- 
 ecrated. His springtime of romance was 
 
126 Ophelia 
 
 ended and his Indian summer had not begun. 
 Some half-dozen years, earlier a pathetic tale 
 of two star-crossed lovers had sufficiently typi- 
 fied to him the tragic meanings of life; but 
 now other issues looked larger. Hamlet's man- 
 ner of bearing the hideous burden of his re- 
 venge was the theme of this story. It was a 
 subject never before worked out, and to Shake- 
 speare it was profoundly interesting; but for 
 the unintelligible love-story he cared nothing. 
 The two motives of this tragedy might seem 
 incongruous to anyone, but they would cer- 
 tainly seem so to Shakespeare in his present 
 mood. 
 
 My conclusions may be briefly summed up. 
 If for the moment we designate by the name 
 Hamlet not Shakespeare's hero but the com- 
 posite hero of all the versions, we can properly 
 say that this ideal and conceptual Hamlet truly 
 loved Ophelia, and that he renounced her for 
 reasons which hardly admit clear statement, 
 since they belong as much to the laws of the 
 Elizabethan stage as to the laws of human 
 nature. Shakespeare, however, was indifferent 
 
Ophelia 127 
 
 to this part of the story, and wherever he was 
 working with a free hand he ignored it. He 
 did not omit the love theme, for it was in the 
 play already and he had no leisure for com- 
 plete reconstruction ; but he grievously scanted 
 it because he found it troublesome and unman- 
 ageable. Thus it comes about that Hamlet 
 sometimes protests that he loves Ophelia pas- 
 sionately, but most of the time acts as if she 
 were a matter of indifference to him. Perhaps 
 we can most comfortably reconcile ourselves 
 to Hamlet's behavior by saying that the indif- 
 ference is not his but Shakespeare's, while the 
 passion and the cruelty are not Shakespeare's 
 but Kyd's. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 Summary 
 
 The tragedy that has come down to us as 
 Shakespeare's is not wholly his. It is like a 
 late reconstruction of an early medieval cathe- 
 dral, wherein the aspiring design of a great 
 Gothic architect is but half distinguishable 
 among the uncouth piers and arches of his 
 Saxon and Norman predecessors. My plan of 
 research has been by analysis of the con- 
 glomerate mass to distinguish its successive 
 accretions in chronological order, and then to 
 appraise the purposes of the latest artist by 
 themselves. 
 
 In the existing tragedy we find two distinct 
 heroes imperfectly melted into one. Kyd's 
 Hamlet and Shakespeare's Hamlet, taken sep- 
 arately, are comparatively simple and intel- 
 ligible persons; but the Kyd-Shakespeare com- 
 pound is a "monstr'-horrend'-inform'-ingen- 
 128 
 
Summary 129 
 
 dous" mystery, cut lumen ademption. Kyd's 
 Hamlet does most of the deeds of the play, and 
 Shakespeare's Hamlet thinks most of the 
 thoughts. Kyd is responsible for most of the 
 plot, and Shakespeare for most of the charac- 
 terization ; Kyd for the hero's actual environ- 
 ment, Shakespeare for the imperfect descrip- 
 tion of his environment that has come down to 
 us. Thus the Kyd-Shakespeare composite hero 
 follows up one man's thoughts with another 
 man's deeds, and confronts with Shakespeare's 
 soul a situation of Kyd's devising. 
 
 The complexity of this compound is further 
 confused by the complexity of one of the com- 
 ponents ; for Kyd's Hamlet himself was an ill- 
 assorted blend of Kyd and Belleforest. This 
 fact, indeed, is the first cause of the greatness 
 of the existing tragedy, as well as of its de- 
 fects ; for it was the irrational behavior of 
 Kyd's hero that piqued Shakespeare's curiosity 
 and drove him to depart as far from Kyd as 
 Kyd had departed from Belleforest. But if 
 we want a clear conception of Shakespeare's 
 own Hamlet, we must put out of our minds 
 
1 30 Summary 
 
 those parts of the play which belong to the 
 Hamlets of Belleforest and Kyd. Those parts 
 are important as clues to guide us in running 
 down Shakespeare's meaning, but we must not 
 treat them as direct evidence by which his 
 meaning may be proved. They are direct 
 evidence only of the meaning of the Belief orest- 
 Kyd-Shakespeare compound; and that com- 
 pound is meaningless. It is because this 
 condition has been so long overlooked that 
 the Hamlet mystery has remained unsolved. 
 
 Shakespeare's purpose was to tell the story 
 of Hamlet, and to explain it as he went along; 
 and the reason why he failed in the latter part 
 of his purpose was that the story was inex- 
 plicable. Like many other inexplicable stories, 
 however, it was an exceedingly good one; and 
 Shakespeare has told a considerable part of it 
 supremely well. 
 
 The story included the revelation by the 
 Ghost, the feigned madness (with an elaborate 
 scene ready-made in which it was planned), the 
 doubt of the Ghost's veracity, and the stirring 
 demonstration thereof by The Mouse-Trap. 
 
Summary 131 
 
 It included also the dramatic scene with the 
 hero's mother, the killing of Polonius, the 
 thwarting of the embassy to England, and the 
 final riot at the fencing-bout. Into the thick 
 of these adventures Shakespeare projected his 
 own hero, a young man of ideal excellence in 
 general, but with such specific refinements of 
 temper as might most nearly explain his pre- 
 tence of madness. The very intensity of Shake- 
 speare's interest in this hero's inner experiences 
 made some essential features of the plot seem 
 irrelevant ; and other features were not merely 
 irrelevant but actually incongruous. Such 
 things Shakespeare slighted; and thus the dif- 
 ficulty of Hamlet's task is left out altogether 
 save as an occasionally implied assumption, 
 while Hamlet's love of Ophelia hovers mistily in 
 the background. 
 
 In Timon of Athens (written a few years 
 after the final revision of Hamlet) Alcibiades 
 pleads at the bar of the Senate for the life of 
 a friend who has committed a murder. His 
 plea is that the murder was a justifiable act 
 of vengeance ; but a wise Senator overrules him. 
 
132 Summary 
 
 You undergo too strict a paradox, 
 
 Striving to make an ugly deed look fair. 
 
 Your words have took such pains as if they laboured 
 
 To bring manslaughter into form, and set quarreling 
 
 Upon the head of valour; which indeed 
 
 Is valour misbegot and came into the world 
 
 When sects and factions were newly born. 
 
 He's truly valiant that can wisely suffer 
 
 The worst that man can breathe, and make his wrongs 
 
 His outsides, to wear them like his raiment, carelessly, 
 
 And ne'er prefer his injuries to his heart, 
 
 To bring it into danger. 
 
 Shakespeare's Hamlet is by nature the "truly 
 valiant" man of this Senator's philosophy. He 
 would never willingly prefer his injuries to his 
 heart, nor bring his heart into danger by 
 cherishing an alien passion; but the injuries 
 are preferred for him by his father's spirit, 
 and the passion is commended to him by filial 
 love. He therefore accepts his mission, and 
 achieves it, in spite of its repugnancy. It is 
 this that makes him a tragic hero. 
 
 The theories of Coleridge and Werder are 
 attempts to explain the Hamlet of Belleforest, 
 Kyd, and Shakespeare. Coleridge finds that 
 this Hamlet's delays are due to internal diffi- 
 culties, for which he is to blame. Werder finds 
 
Summary 133 
 
 that they are due to external difficulties, for 
 which he is not to blame. If we are asked to 
 decide between these theories we must first 
 demur on the ground that the composite Ham- 
 let is not an entity at all, and therefore not 
 a subject for psychological analysis. But if 
 this ground of demurrer be waived, we may 
 suggest a compromise between the opposing 
 theories. We will say with Coleridge that 
 Hamlet's difficulties are internal, and with 
 Werder that he is not to blame for them; but 
 we must add, in disagreement with both dis- 
 putants, that these difficulties are not the causes 
 of the delay. The causes of the delay are 
 those external difficulties which have vanished 
 into the fourth dimension. 
 


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