Read the witty repartees of Hamlet to Polonius (ii. 2), beginning with, "What do you read, my lord?" "Words, words, words." In reality there is no trace of madness in all these keenedged sayings, till Hamlet at last, in order to annul their effect, concludes with the words, "For yourself, sir, should be old as I am, if, like a crab, you could go backward."
Or take the long conversation (iii. 2) between Hamlet and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern about the pipe he has sent for, and asks them to play on. The whole is a parable as simple and direct as any in the New Testament. And he points the moral with triumphant logic in poetic form—
"Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you would make of me! You would play upon me; you would seem to know my stops; you would pluck out the heart of my mystery; you would sound me from my lowest notes to the top of my compass: and there is much music, excellent music in this little organ; yet cannot you make it speak. 'Sblood, do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, yet you cannot play upon me."
It is in order to account for such contemptuous and witty outbursts that Hamlet says: "I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw."
To outward difficulties are added inward hindrances, which he cannot overcome. He reproaches himself passionately for this, as we have seen. But these self-reproaches of Hamlet's do not represent Shakespeare's view of his character or judgment of his action. They express the impatience of his nature, his longing for reparation, his eagerness for the triumph of the right; they do not imply his guilt.
The old doctrine of tragic guilt and punishment, which assumes that the death at the end of a tragedy must always be in some way deserved, is nothing but antiquated scholasticism, theology masking as æsthetics; and it may be regarded as an instance of scientific progress that this view of the matter, which was heretical only a generation since, is now very generally accepted. Very different was the case when the author of these lines, in his earliest published work, entered a protest against such an intrusion of traditional morality into a sphere from which it ought simply to be banished.[2]
Some critics have summarily disposed of the question of Hamlet's possible guilt by the assertion that his madness was not only assumed, but real. Brinsley Nicholson, for instance, in his essay "Was Hamlet Mad?" (New Shakspere Society's Transactions, 1880-86), insists on his morbid melancholy; his strange and incoherent talk after the apparition of the Ghost; his lack of any sense of responsibility for the deaths of Polonius, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern, of which he was either the direct or indirect cause; his fear of sending King Claudius to heaven by killing him while he is praying; his brutality towards Ophelia; his constant suspiciousness, &c., &c. But to see symptoms of real insanity in all this is not only a crudity of interpretation, but a misconception of Shakespeare's evident meaning. It is true that Hamlet does not dissemble as systematically and coldly as Edgar in the subsequent King Lear; but that is no reason why his state of mental exaltation should be mistaken for derangement. He makes use of insanity; he is not in its power.
Not that it proves really serviceable to him or facilitates his task of vengeance; on the contrary, it impedes his action by tempting him from the straight path into witty digressions and deviations. It is meant to hide his secret; but after the performance of the play the King knows it, and, though he keeps it up, the feigned madness is useless. It is because his secret is betrayed that Hamlet now, in obedience to the Ghost's command, endeavours to awaken his mother's sense of shame and to detach her from the King. But having run Polonius through the body, in the belief that he is killing his stepfather, he is put under guards and sent away, and has still farther to postpone his revenge.
While many critics of this century, especially Germans, such as Kreyssig, have contemned Hamlet as a "witty weakling", one German writer has passionately denied that Shakespeare intended to represent him as morbidly reflective. This critic, with much enthusiasm, with fierce onslaughts upon many of his countrymen, but with a conception of the play which debases its whole idea and belittles its significance, has tried to prove that the hindrances Hamlet had to contend with were purely external. I refer to the lectures on Hamlet delivered by the old Hegelian, Karl Werder, in the University of Berlin between 1859 and 1872.[3] Their train of thought, in itself not unreasonable, may be rendered thus:—
What is demanded of Hamlet? That he should kill the King immediately after the Ghost has revealed his father's fate? Good. But how, after this assassination, is he to justify his deed to the court and the people, and ascend the throne? He can produce no proof whatever of the truth of his accusation. A ghost has told him; that is all his evidence. He himself is not the hereditary supreme judge of the land, deprived of his throne by a usurper. The Queen is "jointress to this warlike state." Denmark is an elective monarchy—and it is not till the very end of the play that Hamlet speaks of the King as having "popp'd in between the election and my hopes." In the eyes of all the characters in the play, the existing state of the government is quite normal. And is he to overturn it with a dagger-thrust? Will the Danish people believe his tale of the apparition and the murder? And suppose that, instead of having recourse to the dagger, he comes forward with a public accusation, can there be any doubt that such a king and such a court will speedily make away with him? For where in this court are the elder Hamlet's adherents? We see none of them. It seems as though the old hero-king had taken them all with him to the grave. What has become of his generals and of his council? Did they die before him? Or was he solitary in his greatness? Certain it is that Hamlet has no friend but Horatio, and finds no supporters at the court.