As for the eruption in the state, the reader will bear in mind the jump of the ghost, and coupling it with the aforesaid eruption, will no longer wonder that a modern writer couples the word jump with the Norman invasion:
Hop, step, and jump,
Here they came plump,
And they kick'd up a dust in the island.
O'Keefe has a character in his farce of The Farmer, called Jemmy Jumps, but I cannot with all my diligence, discover that he takes his name from a love of jumping. Molly Maybush, indeed, gives us a hint of his fondness for that recreation in the following distich:
Go hop my pretty pet along,
And down the dance lead Bet along.
But if his own evidence is to be believed, (and according to some recent suggestions, that is the only evidence which ought to be received) he has no penchant for it. The farmer asks him to join the village dance, whereupon he indignantly exclaims, "What! I sport a toe among such a set of rustics!" Upon the whole I am inclined to believe that as a manufacturer of stays he takes his name from a part of those modish ligatures called jumps.
A figure of the very first water and magnitude, now makes his entré—the ghost of the late king! and here I must digress awhile, and like a raw notary's clerk, enter my feeble protest against the tame and unimpressive manner in which that supernatural personage is permitted to make his appearance. It should seem that our managers reserve all their decorations for the inexplicable dumb show of the Wood Dæmon (that diphthong is my delight), the Castle Spectre, &c. &c. The Bleeding Nun in Raymond and Agnes is ushered in with a pre-scent-iment of blue flame and brimstone. Angela's mother advances in a minuet step, to soft music, like Goldsmith's bear, and is absolutely enveloped in flames—none but a salamander, or Messrs. Shadrach and company can enact the part with safety. But when we are presented with a dead Hamlet, Banquo, or lady Anne, those impressive non-naturals of the poet of Nature, they walk in as quiet and unadorned as at a morning rehearsal; marching like a vender of clumsy Italian images, "with all their imperfections on their head," and an additional load attributable to the imperfect head of the manager. Remember the lines of the poet:
Another Eschylus appears—prepare
For new abortions, all ye pregnant fair,
In flame like Semelé be brought to bed,
Whilst opening hell spouts wildfire at your head.
And let us in future see Shakspeare's ghosts adorned with the proper paraphernalia and (impernalia) of thunder, hautboys, and brimstone. But to return—For "eruption to our state;" some people prefer reading corruption, alleging that most states are corrupt (England, as one of the present company, of course excepted) but that eruptions are confined to the towns that border on Mount Vesuvius. But surely, allowing the observation its full swing, eruption is here the right reading. The ghost, in a subsequent scene, expressly informs us that he is "confined to fast in fires," and from his underground repetition of the word "swear," it is clear that those fires were immediately under Hamlet's feet. Yes, sir, this identical ghost was the Guy Faukes of Denmark, and but for the vent he discovered in a cranny near Elsinore enabling him to take a peep at the "glimpses of the moon," would doubtless have blown the crown prince, and all his court into the air, and thus have rendered unnecessary our late expedition for that purpose.
I find nothing upon which to animadvert till the re-entry of the ghost. He has evidently something upon his mind, which he wishes to communicate; but with the heart of a lion shows that he also possesses the fears of that royal beast, for upon the crowing of the cock (a sound most injudiciously omitted, since the death of the bantam Roscius) the spirit evaporates as quickly as from a glass of champagne, in the drinking of a health.
Mar. Shall I strike at it with my partisan?