The body's harmony, the beaming soul,
Are things which Kuster, Burmann, Wasse shall see,
When man's whole frame is obvious to a Flea."
We need scarcely say that we have far too much respect for Dr. Aldis Wright and for his distinguished coadjutor to apply such a description as this to them as individuals, for no one can appreciate more heartily than we do their monumental contribution to the textual criticism of Shakespeare, but we can make no such reserve in speaking of this edition of Hamlet. A more deplorable illustration, we do not say of the subjection of Literature to Philology, for that would very imperfectly represent the fact, but of the absolute substitution of Philology, and of Philology in the lowest sense of the term, for Literature it would be impossible to imagine. Had it been expressly designed to prove that its editors were wholly unconscious of the artistic, literary, and philosophical significance of Shakespeare's masterpiece, it could scarcely have taken a more appropriate form.
The volume contains 117 pages of Shakespeare's text, printed in large type; the text is preceded by a preface of twelve pages, and followed by notes occupying no less than 121 pages in very small type; so that the work of the poet stands in pretty much the same relation to that of his commentators as Falstaff's bread stood to his sack. In the case of a play like Hamlet, so subtle, so suggestive, so pregnant with critical and philosophical problems of all kinds, commentary on a scale like this might have been quite appropriate. But in this stupendous mass of exegesis and illustration there is, with the exception of one short passage, literally not a line about the play as a work of art, not a line about its structure and architecture, about its style, about its relations to æsthetic, about its metaphysic, its ethic, about the character of Hamlet, or about the character of any other person who figures in the drama. The only indication that it is regarded in any other light than as affording material for philological and antiquarian discussion is a short quotation, huddled in at the conclusion of the preface, from Goethe's Wilhelm Meister, and an intimation that "Hamlet's madness has formed the subject of special investigation by several writers, among others by Dr. Conolly and Sir Edward Strachey."
A more comprehensive illustration of the truth of the indictment brought against philologists by Voltaire, Pope, Lessing, and Sainte-Beuve than is supplied by the notes in this volume it would be difficult to find. Dulness, of course, may be assumed, and of mere dulness we do not complain; but a combination of prolixity, irrelevance, and absolute incapacity to distinguish between what to ninety-nine persons in every hundred must be purely useless and what to ninety-nine persons in every hundred is the information which they expect from a commentator, is intolerable. We will give a few illustrations. A plain man or a student for examination comes to these lines:—
"'Tis the sport to have the enginer
Hoist with his own petar;"
and, though he knows what the general sense is wishes to know exactly what Shakespeare means. He turns to the note for enlightenment, and the enlightenment he gets is this:—
"Enginer. Changed in the quarto of 1676 to the more modern form of engineer. Compare Troilus and Cressida ii. 3. 8, "Then there's Achilles a rare enginer." For a cognate form mutiner see note on iii. 4. 83. So we have pioner for pioneer Othello iii. 3. 346. Hoist may be the participle either of the verb 'hoise' or 'hoist.' In the latter case it would be the common abbreviated form for the participles of verbs ending in a dental. Petar. So spelt in the quartos, and by all editors to Johnson, who writes 'petards.' In Cotgrave we have 'Petart: a Petard or Petarre; an Engine (made like a bell or morter) wherewith strong gates,' etc."—