Time in the Play of Hamlet

by Edward Payson Vining

The glow-worm shows the matin to be near,

And 'gins to pale his uneffectual fire.

These I can only account for by the theory that they formed part of the drama in an earlier state, before the time of the play had been fully developed, and that their beauty saved them in the later forms that we now have, notwithstanding their inconsistency with the “bitter cold” of a winter's night.

It cannot escape attention that the first days of November would be very late for the elder Hamlet to be able to continue his afternoon custom of sleeping within his orchard. Still, it is not impossible that pleasant autumn weather might continue until that season of the year.

It may be worthy of notice that the action in the original “Hystorie of Hamblet,” on which the drama is founded, covers a period of “many years,” and that in the German play, “Fratricide Punished,” which by some is thought to be an adaptation of an early form of the drama which has not otherwise reached us, there is not a single indication of any definite lapse of time or of the season of the year.

In the tragedy, as we now possess it, there are, as shown above, two or three passages in which there is some apparent conflict with the remainder of the play, as to the season of the year in which the action took place; but for any evidence of uncertainty as to the lapse of time; for any legerdemain or glamour, the student will look in vain. On the contrary, there are but few creations of the intellect in which the passage of time is as clearly and unmistakably indicated.

As for the various points that have been thought to show some confusion in the mind of our poet, there are none which upon careful examination will not be found to have melted into air—thin air—leaving not a rack behind.

When Hamlet learned the truth of his suspicions, and resolved to obey his father's entreaties for revenge, he needed the aid of a stronger mind, and felt the want of sympathy and counsel; but it is not remarkable that Horatio should have remained unnoticed about the court for some two months after his arrival, during the time that Hamlet was first occupied in brooding over his father's death and his mother's shame; for then his melancholy filled his mind to the exclusion of all other thoughts, and he had not felt it necessary to take any immediate action. Polonius was surprised at Ophelia's account of the outbreak of Hamlet, for it had but just occurred, and no such indication of violent madness had preceded it; Hamlet's former state having been that of a gradual passage from sadness to fasting, sleeplessness, weakness and lightness, and his feigned insanity had but just reached a state which frightened the king into sending for the former companions of the prince to keep him company.

Ophelia had longed for a considerable period to re-deliver Hamlet's remembrances, for, in accordance with her father's instructions, she had denied him all access to her for some two months, and on the occasion (the day before she returned his gifts) when Hamlet, in fantastic attire, came suddenly before her, no word was spoken, and her surprise and agitation would naturally have prevented all thought of his remembrances.

When Hamlet tells Rosencrantz and Guildenstern that he has “of late foregone all custom of exercises,” it is merely as an excuse for his loss of mirth, in order that they may not learn its true cause; but the fact was, as Hamlet confessed to Horatio, that since the time when Laertes went into France (that is to say, since the time when the ghost first appeared to him) he had been in continual practice with the foils.