THE SUPERNATURAL. "HAMLET."
"The time is out of joint; O cursed spite,
That ever I was born to set it right."
"Had all his hairs been lives, my great revenge
Had stomach for them all."
Shakspere, in January, 1600, was at the height of his dramatic renown, and at the age of thirty-six was the ripest philosopher in the world, knowing more about the secret impulses of the human heart than any other man.
I could see a great change in his life and thought; for a shade of settled melancholy characterized his action, since the death and burial of Spenser, and the downfall of Essex and Southampton, through the vengeance of Cecil and Bacon, jealous courtiers, who poisoned Queen Elizabeth against the most noted Lords of her court.
Shakspere's theatrical company became involved in the conspiracy of Essex, and an edict was issued against the Blackfriars and Globe playhouses performing their dramatic satires. Children players took their places.
Through the particular vengeance of Lord Bacon, charges of treason were trumped up against Essex, the former benefactor of Bacon, and in due course the head of Essex went to the block in February, 1601.
Thus perished one of the brightest, bravest and loftiest peers of England, a victim to the spleen, hate and tyranny of the ugly Elizabeth, a woman without conscience or morality, when her personal interest was involved. She shines out as one of the greatest and most infamous queens of history, and so long as lofty crime is remembered she will remain on the top pedestal of royal iniquity.
In the course of our classical and historical readings, William had become very much interested in the tragic story of Amleth or Hamlet as told by the Danish writer, Saxo—and Seneca, the great Roman, in his story of Cornelia gives the same tragic tale, while Garnier, the French dramatist, as well as Kyd, the friend of Shakspere, made plays out of the tragic history of the Prince of Denmark.
But it was left for my friend William to gather up the historical bones of the ancient story, and articulate them into a breathing, living, passionate, divine being, whose lofty words and phrases should go sounding down the centuries, thrilling and reverberating in the soul-lit memory of mankind.
The supernatural or spiritual part of creation had ever a fascinating influence upon the Bard of Avon, and all the outward manifestations of nature were infallible hints to him of the inward sources of the Divine, and an absolute belief in the immortality of the soul! His own mind was the best evidence of divinity!
Night after night in the winter of 1600, William would read over, and ponder upon "scraps of thought," that he had at various times put into the mouth of Hamlet, and in our new quarters, near Temple Bar, I assisted him in composing the dramatic story of the melancholy Dane.
That is, I blew the bellows, and when his thought was heated to a red rose hue he hammered out the play on the anvil of his genius, and made the sparks fly in a shower of pristine glory.
His literary blacksmith shop was richly furnished with all the rough iron bars and crude ingots of vanished centuries; and all the best dramatic writers of London filled his thought factory with contributions of their inventions. He worked many of their rough pieces of thought into his dramatic plots; but when the phrase, scene and act were finished and placed before the footlights for rendition, it sailed away, a full rigged ship of dramatic grandeur, showing nothing but the royal workmanship of a master builder, the Homer, Phidias and Angelo of artistic perfection.
Mankind cares but little for the various kinds of wheat that compose the loaf, the wool or cotton that's in the garment, the timber or stone in the house, or the kind of steel in the battleship or guns; all they look for is the perfect structure, as they may see to-day in Shakspere's greatest play—"Hamlet."
While Hamlet is the central figure of the play, old Polonius, the diplomatic double dealer, Laertes, his son, and Ophelia, his daughter, act prominently, while Horatio and the ghost of Hamlet's father express words of lasting remembrance.
Cruel Claudius, the king who murdered Hamlet's father, stole his throne and seduced his wife, is shown up as a first-class criminal villain, while Gertrude, the mother of the young prince, is one of the most sneaking, mild, incestuous queens in history. Such she devils, with heaven in their eyes and face, honeyed words on their lips, and gall and hell in their hearts, are the real seducers of infatuated, willing, ambitious man; and each should dangle at the end of the same rope or hemlock together!
Contrast Gertrude with Ophelia, and you have a fiend of chicanery and crime, with a sweet angel of innocence: "Too good, too fair to be cast among the briers of this working day world and fall and bleed upon the thorns of life. Like a strain of sad, sweet music which comes floating by us on the wings of night and silence, like the exhalation of the violet dying even upon the sense it charms, like the snowflake dissolved in air before it has caught a stain of earth; like the light surf, severed from the billow, which a breath disperses, such is the character of the delicate and sanctified Ophelia."
In December, 1601, the ban of disgrace was taken from the Globe Theatre, and Burbage and William were permitted to continue their dramatic exhibitions.
"Hamlet" was played the night before Christmas. The house was packed closer than grass on an English lawn, and the applause was almost continuous, like the moan or roar of a distant sea.
Shakspere played the Ghost, Burbage acted Hamlet, Jo Taylor played Horatio, Heminge played Ophelia, Peele played Polonius, Condell acted Claudius, Kempt played Gertrude, Cooke acted Laertes, and the other parts were taken by the best stock actors.
The play opens up on a platform before the castle at "Elsinore," Copenhagen, Denmark.
Bernardo and Francisco are soldiers on night duty. Bernardo says: "Who's there?" Francisco says: "Nay, answer me; stand and unfold yourself."
The ghost of Hamlet's father appears to the night officers, and also to Horatio and Marcellus, but will not speak. They reveal the wonderful story to Hamlet, who makes ready to see and talk to the Ghost the next night at twelve o'clock.
In the meantime, the king, queen and courtiers gather at the grand throne of the castle and talk of the late king.
Hamlet is moody and sad, and will not be comforted, although persuaded by King Claudius and his mother.
Claudius addressing Hamlet, says:
"But, now my nephew Hamlet, and my son
How is it that the clouds still hang on you?"
Hamlet says (aside):
"A little more than kin and less than kind.
Not so, my lord; I am too much in the sun."
Hamlet's mother rebukes him about grieving for his father, and says:
"Do not forever with thy veiled lids
Seek for thy noble father in the dust;
Thou knowest 'tis common, all that live must die,
Passing through nature to eternity!"
Hamlet says:
"Ay, madam, it is common."
Queen says:
"If it be,
Why seems it so particular with thee?"
And then surcharged with suspicion of her secret villainy Hamlet exclaims:
"Seems, madam! Nay it is; I know not 'seems;'
'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,
Nor customary suits of solemn black,
Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
Nor the dejected haviour of the visage,
Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief
That can denote me truly; these indeed seem,
For they are actions that a man might play;
But I have that within which passeth show,
These but the trappings and the suits of woe."
Then, after the exit of the old murder-king and his particeps criminis queen—Hamlet ponders to himself on life and death in these lofty lines:
"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 against self slaughter! O God! O God!
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fye on't! O Fye! 'tis an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely. That it should come to this!
But two months dead! nay, not so much, not two;
So excellent a King, that was, to this
Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother,
That he might not beteem the wind of heaven
Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth!
Must I remember? Why, she would hang on him,
As if increase of appetite had grown
By what it fed on; and yet, within a month—
Let me not think on it—frailty, thy name is woman!
A little month, or ere those shoes were old
With which she followed my poor father's body,
Like Niobe all tears; why, she, even she—
O God! a beast that wants discourse of reason
Would have mourned longer,—married with my uncle,
My father's brother, but no more like my father
Than I to Hercules; within a month;
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing of her galled eyes,
She married. O, most wicked speed to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
It is not, nor can it come to good;
But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue!"
Laertes before his departure for France gives his sister Ophelia some advice and warns her against the blandishments of Hamlet. He says:
"Fear it, Ophelia, fear it, my dear sister,
And keep you in the rear of your affection,
Out of the shot and danger of desire;
Be wary then; best safety lies in fear,
Youth to itself rebels, though none else near."
This innocent, beautiful girl gave this wise reply to her brother:
"I shall the effect of this good lesson keep,
As watchman to my heart. But, good my brother
Do not as some ungracious pastors do,
Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven,
Whilst, like a puffed and wreckless libertine,
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads
And recks not his own read!"
Then Polonius, the wise old father, comes in to hasten Laertes off to France, with this great advice:
"There, my blessing with thee!
And these few precepts in thy memory
Look thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue.
Nor any unproportioned thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
Those friends thou hast and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel.
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new hatched, unfledged comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel; but being in,
Bear it that the opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not expressed in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man.
And they in France of the best rank and station
Are of a most select and generous chief in that.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all; to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man!"
Good advice is very fine,
From those who think and make it;
Only one in ninety-nine
Will ever stop to take it!
Hamlet and his friends, Horatio and Marcellus, go to the passing place of the Ghost at midnight, and there, to the amazement of Hamlet, he sees the apparition of his father, and exclaims:
"Angels and ministers of grace defend us!
Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damned,
Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell,
Be thy intents wicked or charitable,
Thou comest in such a questionable shape
That I will speak to thee. I'll call thee Hamlet,
King, father, royal Dane; O, answer me!
Let me not burst in ignorance; but tell
Why thy canonized bones, hearsed in death,
Have burst their cerements; why thy sepulchre,
Wherein we saw thee quietly inurned
Hath opened his ponderous and marble jaws,
To cast thee up again. What may this mean,
That thou, dead corse, again, in complete steel,
Revisit thus the glimpses of the moon,
Making night hideous; and we fools of nature
So horridly to shake our disposition
With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls?
Say, why is this? Wherefore? What should we do?"
The Ghost passes across the stage and beckons Hamlet to follow, who frantically rushes after the apparition and says:
"Whither wilt thou lead me? Speak, I'll go no farther."
Ghost utters in sepulchral voice:
"Mark me!
I am thy father's spirit;
Doomed for a certain term to walk the night,
And for the day confined to fast in fires
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid
To tell the secrets of my prison house,
I could a tale unfold whose lightest words
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,
Thy knotted and confined locks to part
And each particular hair to stand on end
Like quills upon the fretful porcupine.
But this eternal blazon must not be
To ears of flesh and blood. List! list, O list!
If thou did'st ever thy dear father love,—
'Tis given out that sleeping in my orchard
A serpent stung me. So the whole ear of Denmark
Is by a forged process of my death
Rankly abused; but know thou, noble youth,
The serpent that did sting thy father's life
Now wears his crown!"
Hamlet exclaims:
"O my prophetic soul! My uncle!"
The Ghost then makes this remarkable speech:
"Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast,
With witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts,
O wicked wit and gifts, that have the power
So to seduce! won to his shameful lust
The will of my most seeming-virtuous queen;
O, Hamlet, what a falling off was there!
From me, whose love was of that dignity
That it went hand in hand even with the vow
I made to her in marriage; and to decline
Upon a wretch, whose natural gifts were poor
To those of mine!
But virtue, as it never will be moved,
Though lewdness court it in a shape of heaven,
So lust, though to a radiant angel linked
Will sate itself in a celestial bed
And prey on garbage.
But, soft! methinks I scent the morning air;
Brief let me be. Sleeping within my orchard,
My custom always of the afternoon,
Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole,
With juice of cursed hebenon in a vial,
And in the porches on my ears did pour
The leperous distilment; whose effect
Holds such an enmity with blood of man,
That quick as quicksilver it courses through
The natural gates and alleys of the body;
And with a sudden vigour, it doth posset
And curd, like eager droppings into milk,
The thin and wholesome blood: So did it mine;
And a most instant tetter barked about,
Most lazar-like, with vile and loathsome crust,
All my smooth body.
Thus was I sleeping, by a brother's hand,
Of life, of crown, of queen, at once dispatched;
Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin,
Unhoused, disappointed, unaneled;
No reckoning made, but sent to my account
With all my imperfections on my head;
O, horrible! most horrible!
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,
And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge,
To prick and sting her. Fare thee well at once!
The glow-worm shows the matin to be near,
And begins to pale his ineffectual fire!
Adieu! adieu! adieu! remember me!"
As the Ghost ceased and passed off the stage a peculiar shivering cheer passed over the great audience, and revealed for the first time in London dramatic art, a supernatural being seemingly clothed in the habiliments of flesh, blood and bones, resurrected from the tomb.
Do spirits revisit this world again
When they're released from this body of pain,
And do they inhabit a realm afar
Beyond the bright sun and sparkling star?
King Claudius, his queen and Polonius were anxious to get at the real cause of Hamlet's lunacy, and send him away from the castle to prevent future trouble. The guilty conscience of the king daily feared detection.
Hamlet brooded so intently upon the cruel murder of his father that he was constantly on the verge of insanity, devising plans to either slaughter himself or wreak a terrible vengeance upon his uncle and mother.
Treading the halls of his ancestral palace he uttered this transcendent soliloquy that has puzzled the ages:
"To be or not to be; that is the question;
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. To die, to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep;
To sleep, perchance to dream; ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause; there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns—
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But the dread of something after death
The undiscovered country from whose bourn
No traveler returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
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 pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turns awry
And lose the name of action!"
Ophelia at the suggestion of her father and the other conspirators, comes in at this juncture and sounds Hamlet as to plighted love and gives back the gifts he gave her.
Hamlet pretending to madness still talks double and asks Ophelia if she be honest, fair and beautiful.
She says: "Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty?"
Hamlet replies: "Ay, truly, for the power of beauty will sooner transform honesty from what it is to a bawd, than the force of honesty can translate beauty into his likeness; this was sometime a paradox, but now the time gives it proof. I did love you once."
Ophelia says: "Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so."
And then the fickle Hamlet says: "I loved you not," and with supercilious advice, exclaims:
"Get thee to a nunnery!
Why would'st thou be a breeder of sinners?
I am myself indifferent honest;
But yet I could accuse me of such things
That it were better my mother had not borne me.
I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious;
With more offenses at my back
Than I have thoughts to put them in;
Imagination to give them shape,
Or time to act them in.
What should such fellows as I do
Crawling between heaven and earth?
We are arrant knaves all, believe none of us—
Go thy ways to a nunnery!
If thou dost marry, I'll give thee this plague for thy dowry.—
Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow!
Thou shall not escape calumny!
If thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool;
For wise men know well enough what monsters women make of them!
Go! get thee to a nunnery!"
Hamlet thus plays the madman to the eye and mind of Ophelia, that she may report his lunacy; and believing her former lover deranged, after his exit utters this wail of grief:
"O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!
The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's eye, tongue, sword;
The expectancy and rose of the fair state,
The glass of fashion and the mould of form,
The observed of all observers, quite, quite down!
And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,
That sucked the honey of his music vows,
Now see that noble and most sovereign reason,
Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh;
That unmatched form and feature of blown youth,
Blasted with ecstacy: O, woe is me,
To have seen what I have seen, see what I see."
The instruction of Hamlet to the players is the most conclusive evidence that William Shakspere was not only the greatest dramatic author, but an actor and orator of matchless mould.
There was no character that his soul conceived in any of his plays, fool or philosopher, that he could not act better than any man in his company.
In the first rehearsal of his plays he usually read the lines to his men and gave them the cue and philosophy of the character to be enacted.
A few days before the play of Hamlet I heard him deliver this speech for the edification of the whole troupe, that they might know how to render their lines in an effective and oratorical manner:
"Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced
It to you, trippingly on the tongue;
But if you mouth it, as many of your
Players do, I had as lief the town-crier,
Spoke my lines. Now do not saw the air too
Much with your hand, thus; but use all gently;
For in the very torrent, tempest, and,
As I may say, whirlwind of your passion,
You must acquire and beget a temperance,
That may give it smoothness. O, it offends
Me to the soul to hear a robustious
Periwig-pated fellow, tear a passion
To tatters, to very rags, to split the
Ears of the groundlings, who for the most part
Are capable of nothing, but inexplicable
Dumb-shows and noise, I would have such a fellow
Whipped for overdoing Termagant;
It out-herods Herod; pray you avoid it.
Be not too tame neither, but let your own
Discretion be your tutor: suit the action
To the word, the word to the action;
With this special observance, that you o'erstep
Not the modesty of nature; for anything
So overdone is from the purpose of playing,
Whose end, both at the first and now, was and is,
To hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature;
To show virtue her own feature, scorn her
Own image, and the very age and body
Of the time his form and pressure.
Now this, overdone, or come tardy off,
Though it make the unskilled laugh, cannot but
Make the judicious grieve; the censure of
The which one must in your allowance
Overweigh a whole theatre of others.
O, there be players that I have seen play,
And heard others praise, and that highly,
Not to speak it profanely, that neither
Having the accent of Christians nor the
Gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so
Strutted and bellowed, that I have thought
Some of nature's journeymen had made men,
And not made them well, they imitated
Humanity so abominably!"
In all the troubles and vicissitudes of Hamlet's life, young Lord Horatio remained his unfaltering friend; and this tribute to friendship is one of the best in Shakspere. Hamlet says:
"Horatio, thou art even as just a man
As e'er my conversation coped withal,
Nay, do not think I flatter;
For what advancement may I hope from thee,
That no revenue hast but thy good spirits,
To feed and clothe thee? Why should the poor be flattered?
No, let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp,
And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee
Where thrift may follow fawning. Dost thou hear?
Since my dear soul was mistress of its choice
And could of men distinguish, her election
Hath sealed thee for herself; for thou hast been
As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing;
A man that fortune's buffets and rewards
Hast taken with equal composure; and blest are those
Whose blood and judgment are so well commingled
That they are not a pipe for fortune's finger
To sound what stop she pleases. Give me that man
That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him
In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart
As I do thee!"
In the dumb show murder play, before the King and Queen Shakspere puts these phrases in the mouths of the players and Hamlet:
"The great man down, you mark his favorite flies;
The poor advanced makes friends of enemies;
And hitherto doth love on fortune tend;
For who not needs, shall never lack a friend."
"But what's that, your Majesty;
And we that have free souls, it touches us not;
Let the galled jade wince, our withers are unwrung!"
King Claudius frightened at the mock play runs away, and Hamlet says to Horatio:
"Why let the stricken deer go weep,
The hart ungalled play;
For some must watch, while some must sleep
Thus runs the world away."
"'Tis now the very witching time of night,
When churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out
Contagion to this world; now could I drink hot blood,
And do such bitter business as the day
Would quake to look on. Soft, now to my mother;
I will speak daggers to her, but use none!"
King Claudius the night before his death, after conspiring with Polonius for the exile of Hamlet utters this self-accusing, remorseful soliloquy:
"O, my offense is rank, it smells to heaven;
It hath the primal, eldest curse upon it—
A brother's murder. Pray can I not,
Though inclination be as sharp as will;
My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent,
And like a man to double business bound,
I stand in pause where I shall first begin,
And both neglect. What if this cursed hand
Were thicker than itself with brother's blood?
Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens
To wash it white as snow? Whereto serves mercy
But to confront the visage of offense?
And what's in prayer but this twofold force,
To be forestalled ere we come to fall,
Or pardoned being down? Then I'll look up;
My fault is past. But O, what form of prayer
Can serve my turn? Forgive me my foul murder?
That cannot be, since I am still possessed
Of those effects for which I did the murder,
My crown, mine own ambition and my queen,
May one be pardoned and retain the offense?
In the corrupted currents of this world
Offense's gilded hand may shove by justice,
And oft 'tis seen the wicked prize itself
Buys out the law; but 'tis not so above;
There, is no shuffling, there, the action lies
In his true nature, and we ourselves compelled
Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults
To give in evidence!"
In the midnight interview of Hamlet with his mother, Polonius hides behind a curtain to spy upon the words of the "melancholy Dane," and is killed by a sword thrust of Hamlet, who exclaims:
"How now! a rat, dead for a ducat."
Then Hamlet holds his mother to the talk and pours these lines of liquid gall into her trembling ear and frightened heart:
"Look here, upon this picture, and on this,
The counterfeit presentment of two brothers.
See what a grace was seated on this brow;
Hyperion's curls, the front of Jove himself,
An eye like Mars, to threaten and command;
A station like the herald Mercury
New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill;
A combination and a form indeed,
Where every god did seem to set his seal
To give the world assurance of a man;
This was your husband. Look you now,
What follows:
Here is your husband: like a mildewed ear,
Blasting his wholesome brother. Have you eyes?
Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed,
And batten on this foul moor?
Your husband; a murderer and a villain;
A slave that is not twentieth part the tithe
Of your precedent lord; a vice of kings;
A cutpurse of the empire and the rule,
That from a shelf the precious diadem stole
And put it in his pocket!
A king of shreds and patches!"
King Claudius, alarmed at the death of Polonius and his own guilty state, conspires with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to take Hamlet to England and get rid of him, saying:
"Follow him at foot; tempt him with speed abroad,
Delay it not; I'll have him hence to-night;
Away! for everything is sealed and done
That else leans on the affair; pray you, make haste!"
Hamlet before retiring thus bemoans his slowness in wreaking a just vengeance upon his murderer uncle:
"How all occasions do inform against me,
And spur my dull revenge! What is a man,
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more.
Sure, he that made us with such large discourse
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and god-like reason
To rot in us unused.
Rightly to be great
Is not to stir without great argument;
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw
When honor's at the stake. How stand I then,
That have a father killed, a mother stained,
Excitements of my reason and my blood,
And let all sleep, while to my shame I see
The imminent death of twenty thousand men,
That for a fantasy and trick of fame
Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot
Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,
Which is not tomb enough and continent
To hide the slain? O, from this time forth,
My thoughts be bloody or nothing worth!"
The beautiful Ophelia becomes insane after her father's death, and wanders about the castle singing disjointed love songs and uttering musings.
Queen Gertrude says:
"How now, Ophelia?"
She sings:
"How should I your true love know
From another one?
By his cockle hat and staff
And his sandal shoon."
The king asks:
"How do you do, pretty lady?"
She replies:
"They say the owl was a banker's daughter;
Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be."
Laertes returns from France and finds his sister insane from grief over the loss of her father, and viewing this innocent wreck parading palace halls, exclaims:
"Dear maid, kind sister, sweet Ophelia!
O heavens! is it possible a young maid's wits
Should be as mortal as an old man's life?"
Ophelia unconsciously sings:
"They bore him barefaced on the bier;
Hey no nonny, nonny hey nonny;
And in his grave rained many a tear—
Fare you well, my dove!"
Holding a spray of flowers in her hands she fitfully plucks them and murmurs:
"There's rosemary, that's for remembrance;
Pray you, love, remember;
And there is pansies, that's for thoughts;
There's fennel for you, and columbines;
There's rue for you, and here's some for me;
We may call it herb of grace on Sunday;
O, you must wear your rue with a difference.
There's a daisy; I would give you some violets—
But they withered all when my father died!"
Hamlet and his party in sailing for England encounter a war-like pirate ship, and in the fight and grapple Hamlet alone is taken prisoner and his keepers go to destruction.
He suddenly appears at Elsinore, and goes to the churchyard, where a grave is being prepared for Ophelia, who was drowned in a garden stream in her mad ramblings.
Hamlet converses philosophically with the grave diggers about the bones, skulls and greatness of a politician, courtier, lady, lawyer, tanner; and when the skull of the old king's jester is thrown out of the grave after a sleep of twenty-three years, Hamlet, speaking to Horatio, says:
"Alas, poor Yorick, I knew him, Horatio;
A fellow of infinite jest, of most
Excellent fancy, he hath borne me
On his back a thousand times, and now
How abhorred in my imagination
It is! my gorge rises at it. Here hung
Those lips that I have kissed, I know not
How oft. Where be your gibes now, your gambols?
Your songs? Your flashes of merriment,
That were wont to set the table in a roar?
Not one now, to mock your own grinning!
Quite chop-fallen? Now get you to my lady's chamber,
And tell her, let her paint an inch thick,
To this favor she must come;
Make her laugh at that!"
The funeral procession with the corpse of Ophelia now appears, Laertes, King, Queen, train, and priests attending.
The priests tell Laertes that were it not for "great command" his sister's body "should in ground unsanctified have lodged till the last trumpet," because of alleged suicide.
Laertes peremptorily says:
"Lay her in the earth
And from her fair and unpolluted flesh
May violets spring! I tell thee, churlish priest,
A ministering angel shall my sister be
When thou liest howling in perdition."
Laertes and Hamlet, both overpowered with frantic grief, leap into the new-made grave and struggle for precedence of affection, the former exclaiming:
"Now pile your dust upon the quick and dead,
Till of this flat a mountain you have made
To o'ertop old Pelion or the skyish head
Of blue Olympus!"
Hamlet, replying to the King, Queen and Laertes, says:
"I loved Ophelia; forty thousand brothers,
Could not, with all their quantity of love
Make up my sum:
And, if thou prate of mountains, let them throw
Millions of acres on us, till our ground
Singeing his pate against the burning zone
Make Ossa like a wart!"
Hamlet tells his friend, Horatio, how on his voyage to England he discovered that King Claudius gave commission to his enemies to send his head to the block. Hamlet says:
"Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well,
When our deep plots do pall; and that should teach us
There's a Divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will."
King Claudius seeing no other way to get rid of Hamlet, consults his secret courtiers and brews up the passion existing between Laertes and himself, proposing that they fence with rapiers for a great prize, the King betting that in twelve passes of swords Laertes makes not three hits on Hamlet.
The grand contest for excellence in sword-play comes off in the main hall of the palace, while the King, Queen, lords and courtiers await the entrance of Hamlet.
The rapier point handed by the King to Laertes, was dipped in deadly poison, so that it but touch the flesh of Hamlet certain death prevailed, and even of the wine cups set on the table to quench the thirst of the artistic fencers, one was poisoned and intended for Hamlet's dissolution.
Laertes was in the poison plot, and Hamlet felt in his soul that foul play was intended, but in the general scramble and conclusion he hoped to wipe off the score of his vengeance from the slate of royal iniquity and slaughter.
Trumpet and cannon sound for beginning the sword contest.
First passes favored Hamlet, and the King, grasping the poison wine cup, says:
"Hamlet, this pearl is thine;
Here's to thy health!" (Offering him the cup.)
Hamlet replies:
"Give Laertes the cup,
I'll play this bout first; set it by a while."
Hamlet makes another pass and touches Laertes, and the Queen grasps the poison cup in her excitement and drinks to her son.
The King impulsively says:
"Gertrude, do not drink!" (Aside) "It is the
poisoned cup!"
The Queen, as God and Fate would have it, says stubbornly:
"I will, my lord, I pray you pardon me!"
In the third round Laertes wounds Hamlet with the poisoned-pointed rapier, and in the struggle Hamlet grasps Laertes' rapier and in turn wounds his antagonist.
At this moment the Queen falls off her throne, and dying, says to Hamlet:
"O, my dear Hamlet; the drink, the drink; I
am poisoned!"
Laertes then falls, and Hamlet, seeing through the plot, exclaims:
"O, villainy! Ho! let the door be locked;
Treachery! seek it out!"
Laertes makes the dying confession of his treachery:
"It is here, Hamlet; Hamlet, thou art slain;
No medicine in the world can do thee good,
In thee there is not half an hour of life;
The treacherous instrument is in thy hand,
Unbated and envenomed; the foul practice
Hath turned itself on me, lo, here I lie,
Never to rise again; thy mother's poisoned;
I can no more; the King, the King is to blame!"
Then Hamlet, as a lion rushing on his prey, exclaims:
"The point envenomed too,
Then, venom, to thy work."
(Stabs the King.)
The King falls and says: "I am but hurt"; while Hamlet grasps the poisoned cup of wine and dashes it down the throat of the guilty monster, exclaiming:
"Here, thou incestuous, murderous, damned Dane,
Drink off this potion: is thy union here?—
Follow my mother!" (King dies.)
Laertes' last words:
"The King is justly served;
Exchange forgiveness with me, noble Hamlet."
Hamlet replies:
"Heaven make thee free of it! I follow thee.
I am dead, Horatio. Wretched Queen, adieu!
You that look pale and tremble at this chance,
That are but mutes or audience to this act,
Had I but time,—as this fell sergeant—Death,
Is strict in his arrest—O, I could tell you—
But let it be. Horatio, I am dead!
Thou livest; report me and my cause aright
To the unsatisfied.
O, I die, Horatio;
The potent poison quite o'ercrows my spirit,
I cannot live to hear the news from England;
But I do prophesy the election lights
On Fortinbras; he has my dying voice;
So tell him, with the occurrents, more and less,
Which have solicited. The rest is silence!" (Dies.)
And then to close the scene of slaughter, the noble and faithful Horatio, bending over the body of his princely friend, exclaims:
"Now cracks a noble heart; Good night, sweet prince,
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!"
Such tumultuous applause I never heard in a theatre, and shouts for "The Ghost" and "Hamlet" prevailed until William and Burbage came from behind the curtain and made a triple bow to the audience as the clock in the tower of Saint Paul struck the midnight hour.
The lesson in great Hamlet taught,
Is that a throne is dearly bought
By lawless love and bloody deeds,
Which fester like corrupted weeds,
And smell to heaven with poison breath
Involving all in certain death.
For fraud and murder can't be hid
Since Eve and Cain did what they did
And left us naked through the world,
Like meteors in midnight hurled,
To darkle in this trackless sphere,
Not knowing what we're doing here!