We do not dispute the rule, but we deny that Shakspeare has violated it. Hamlet is adduced by the opponent: let Hamlet be the ground of defence. Of this noblest tragedy Chateaubriand in his Sketches of European Literature writes: "That tragedy of Maniacs, that Royal Bedlam, in which every character is either crazy or criminal, in which feigned madness is added to real madness, and in which the grave itself furnishes the stage with the skull of a fool; in that Odeon of shadows and spectres, where we hear of nothing but reveries, the challenge of sentinels, the screeching of the night-bird, and the roaring of the sea." We may despise such trash as this. And if the drama be complained of for anachronism with its salvoes of ordnance, and its University of Wittenberg; we can only reply that genius might surely forget the date of the discovery of gunpowder, when it needed the roar of artillery to mark the carousal of the guilty murderer "drinking deep" to drown remorse, and to contrast the fearful silence of the battlements on which the vigil is kept, and the ghost is awaited; that surely a reference by a contemporary mind may be forgiven to the chair of Luther, and the cradle of the Reformation! He is the prince,— "The courtier, soldier, scholar." "The expectancy and rose of the fair state, His is the "Unmatched form and feature of blown youth." The Queen asks Guilderstern how her son received him? "Most like a gentleman." He is naturally timid, "Yea, and perhaps, Out of my weakness, and my melancholy, (As he is very potent with such spirits) Abuses me to damn me." "That undiscovered country from whose bourne No traveller returns," is a part of that reasoning which betrays the secret wish that this spectral appearance may prove false. He, from the moment of witnessing his father's ghost, feels this naturally increase upon him: "I have of late lost all my mirth." Withal he is constitutionally undecided: "I lack gall, To make oppression bitter." The ghost returns to "Whet his almost blunted purpose." He is placed in circumstances of awful interest, amidst the most contending influences. His father has been slain by a brother's hand, his mother he dare not think of, "Frailty, thy name is woman:" the treacherous king has interposed between "The election and his hopes," -the spirit of his sire still calls for vengeance,-whither shall he fly?-how shall he execute a task which shall lay open his uncle's fratricide, and his mother's disgrace? "And-would it were not so!-you are my mother." He seizes every excuse for delay. Seeing his uncle praying upon bended knees, he will not kill him then, when "Fit and seasoned for his passage:" not that by this refinement upon revenge is the execution stayed, as some have literally understood. It is a mind bent upon delay, and eagerly finding in every thing a justification. Quite assured as he is, he is always inventing to himself the necessity of some new proof, with none other view than to postpone the avenging deed. Goethe says, "that Hamlet's naturally gentle and tender spirit, overwhelmed with its mighty tasks and solemn responsibilities, is like a Chinese vase, fit only for the growth of delicate flowers, but in which an oak tree has been planted, the roots of the strong tree expand, and the fair vase is shivered." He, it is imagined by the majority of persons, is both really mad and affects madness: a sort of dupe to his own device. Convinced that this is an essentially erroneous view, I will venture to affirm that the Poet never intended any thing but that he wore his madness as a mask, perfectly himself, though always sensitive and irritable. The commandment" of his murdered 66 father for a while "Lives all alone Within the book and volume of his brain, Unmixed with baser matter." Soon he complains: "The time is out of joint, O cursed spite That ever I was born to set it right." He holds his life valueless under such a condition : 66 Except my life, except my life, except my life." A suicide's ingenious, but dreadful, reasoning has found its passage through his mind: "Oh! that the Everlasting had not fixed His canon 'gainst Self-slaughter." The guilt of self-destruction only arrests this "quietus." The assumption of a disordered mind is therefore the easiest expedient he can pursue, and he pursues it from the very first. Mark his levity in speaking to his companions, after his solitary encounter with the spectre, and his ribald strain in addressing it when calling from beneath. He shuffles with their curiosity. He then swears them on his sword to a solemn secresy, never to be violated, "How strange or odd so e'er I bear myself, As I perchance hereafter shall think meet A madman would rarely say, "My wit 's diseased." But after he has parried with these creatures of the king sent to play upon him, he says to himself, in high satisfaction: They fool me to the top of my bent," that is, indulge in the belief that all these pretences are real, think me as insane as I desire to be thought. ther. He drops the disguise when he expostulates with his mo Ecstacy? My pulse, as your's, doth temperately keep time, And makes as healthful music: It is not madness, That I have uttered: bring me to the test, And I the matter will reword; which madness Let not the king Make you to ravel all this matter out That I essentially am not in madness, But mad in craft." His careless manner at the sight of the slain Polonius, can only be explained by his unvarying contempt of that courtier, and still more by the sudden relief of his intense excitement, from the thought that he had killed the king. When he struck at the arras, that was his design veiled in the light exclamation, "A rat, a rat!" He feels this to be an irresponsible accident, and is glad that thus the act of vengeance yet is spared. In Horatio he found his confidential friend: 66 He "Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice, And could of men distinguish her election, She hath sealed thee for herself." "Wore him in his heart of hearts." After adjuring him to silence concerning the ghost, he never presents to him an idle extravagant word. He practises not on him. This is observable in his letter, after being taken by the pirate. They speak on equal terms in the grave-yard. And in seeking pardon of Laertes for his violence, Hamlet avows his madness, a proof how he acted still his part: "This presence knows, and you must needs have heard, What I have done, I here, proclaim was madness." "His madness is poor Hamlet's enemy." It is no criticism to say that the maniac sometimes knows his disease, and will even talk of it: the question is, what are these declarations connected with Hamlet's history and fate? It is to Horatio still he entrusts the vindication of his memory. Feeling "the potent poison" he exclaims: 66 Report me and my cause aright." "What a wounded name, Things standing thus unknown, shall live behind me ? If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart, Absent thee from felicity awhile, And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain, Are these the maniac's dying thoughts? But it will be said, Was not his bombast in the grave of Ophelia an outbreak of madness? It is explained by Hamlet to his friend. He was thrown off his guard: it was too real. "But I am very sorry, good Horatio, That to Laertes I forgot myself: But, sure, the bravery of his grief did put me Into a towering passion." Additionally it may be asked, Was not his remonstrance with Ophelia, in an earlier scene, so rude and cruel, though he fondly loved her, an evidence of distraught fancy? He was devoted to a work of vengeance, incompatible with a continuation of this troth: he breaks it under this deception. His desolateness of heart who can conceive when he says, "To a nunnery, go" ! If any stronger proof were needed, than those which have been adduced, to show that his madness was altogether assumed, it is to be found in his language and action when alone. When does he burst into incoherence, or start into freak, when there is no observer or interlocutor? Clear but the stage, reflect but his consciousness, and how calm and self-controlled is even passion! How distinct and intelligent his reflection! How does he relapse into a cold sobriety! How has he thrown away all affected phrase and constrained manner! Then nature speaks. The reality is confessed. He thinks aloud. His heart plays |