[6]. John 16:13.
[7]. Wordsworth's Poems, "Intimations of Immortality," first published in 1807.
[8]. John 17:5.
[9]. Ib. 1:1-14.
[10]. Eliza R. Snow's "Invocation," L. D. S. Hymn Book.
ARTICLE THIRTY-NINE.
Do the Dead Return?
Hamlet and the Ghost.—I had always thought it strange that a great Christian poet like Shakespeare, after portraying, as he does in "Hamlet," an interview between the Prince of Denmark and his father's ghost, should refer to the spirit world as "that undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns." Had not the ghost returned from that very "country," for the special purpose of this interview?
While deeming it contradictory, my admiration and reverence for the immortal bard induced me to minimize and even excuse the apparent inconsistency. In his behalf I argued that it was Hamlet, not Shakespeare, who interviewed the Ghost at Castle Elsinore; that it was the prince and not the poet who soliloquized relative to the non-returning "traveler." I took the ground that Shakespeare, in writing the play of "Hamlet," was not presenting the author's autobiography, and should not, therefore, be held responsible for the idiosyncrasies of "the melancholy Dane;" he being mad, and mad people having the right to say what they please, no matter how much they contradict themselves or speak and act inconsistently.
A Better Defense.—But all the while there was a better defense for both Shakespeare and Hamlet—it a certain hypothesis be well founded, the supporters of which would have us believe that the famed soliloquy, "To be or not be," wherein the allusion to the spirit "traveler" occurs, originally had place nearer the beginning of the play and before Hamlet had seen the Ghost. Not Shakespeare, therefore, nor Hamlet, but some one who tampered with the poet's masterpiece after his death—"a custom more honored in the breach than the observance"—is to be held responsible for the incongruity. Such is the suggestion put forth by one or more literary savants. Allowing it to be true, Shakespeare and the Bible are thus reconciled, and Hamlet is no longer in the attitude of disputing the sacred account of the risen Savior's personal appearing to his disciples, after his return from the spirit world.[[1]]