temporizer, who applies the whole fulness of his power to the killing of a fly, that he might just as well have brushed away with his handkerchief.

[Page 62.] That with the fourth act the piece begins to drag has, I believe, often been remarked; but it has not been observed that it could not be otherwise. The hero has not merely let slip the moment for putting forth the highest power of which he was capable, in that very moment he has done a pitiable and criminal act; and although he tries again and again to deceive himself, and in a harsh fashion to be witty about it, such a mood cannot suffice. He gradually comes to see what he has done; after this moment he withdraws so deeply into himself as almost to give up the possibility of ever acting at all. Hence the fourth and fifth acts proceed almost wholly after the manner of an epic or a romance; we see hardly anything else but incidents, situations, glimpses of character, profound observation, and things done without or even against the will; and in this awful work, in which nearly all the persons are sick, there appears the Gravedigger, as a Choragus, sound, healthy, and odd, with very delightful witticisms upon kings' crowns and graves, making jests of the gallows and of madness, of genteel and not gentle suicides, of dead court-jesters, and living, unhappy princes.

[Page 63.] The first thing which we cannot but a little wonder at in the beginning of the fourth act is the almost wholly unchanged relation of Gertrude to the King; but on further consideration all wonder vanishes. Only in thorough repentance can a change of character, or new birth, be possible; half-repentance renders men only worse,-it disables them; and the horrible tedium which Gertrude carries with her causes her at last to give up all repentance. This, Shakespeare, who one might say knew everything, well knew. We think of the great scene, so fully presented, in which Hamlet, summoning all his power, crushes the heart of his guilty mother, and how she, overwhelmed and agonized, promises amendment. What impression does Hamlet's eloquence and his mother's half-repentance leave? When we see her again she is on as good terms as ever with the King; yes, even on better. She is only more firmly fixed in the delusion that she no longer has the power to amend; the great difficulties in the way of a thorough amendment terrify and deter her; she pursues her course as before,-indeed, she is worse than before, for she has coquetted with the thought of amendment, and then thrown it aside as not the proper thing. From now on there is only one step to the conclusion (in the silence of her own mind, at least), that all amendment would be a preposterous extravagance, and we do not err in believing that this step she would have taken had not an unlooked-for death suddenly come in her way.

[Page 67.] But it is time for another and a higher person to appear, for without him the piece were surely at an end. To quiet us, there comes forward a blooming young hero, beautiful and sound to the core-Fortinbras, Prince of Norway. We see him now upon his march against the Poles, availing himself of the permission to pass through Denmark. Superficial readers may say, 'Does he come in here merely as a deus ex machinâ? To which the only answer is, that every intelligent reader must have recognized him as such long before. The wise poet lets him pass before our imagination in the first scene, and indeed in the story of Horatio, imme. diately after the first appearance of the Ghost. He comes still nearer to us in the audience-scene with the King, in the going to and fro of Voltimand and Cornelius, until in IV, iv, he actually appears in person, and in a few words announces himself, and his captain adds all that is necessary. Indeed, should we omit all these historic references, and let the prince appear only at the conclusion, he would be

nothing more than a puppet, who can neither bury the dead nor pretend to live. But why is this young hero represented so sparing of words, almost monosyllabic? I think there was a most excellent reason for it. Upon a closer study of this inexhaustible drama, almost all the persons in it appear to suffer from a plethora of words, and for this reason the spoken word loses for them its healing efficacy. If the State is to be saved and a new life begun, all this must be changed, and the simple word, accompanied by fit action, must regain its power. We are to be made aware that such a time will soon appear; all in the last scene that we see of Fortinbras points to it.

[Page 79.] The gravedigging scene has always highly delighted thousands upon thousands. Who can fail to be diverted by this philosophical thinker, laughing at philosophy, this witty fellow, throwing out his wit as his shovel throws out the earth. Only one must not merely enjoy his wit; there is underneath it all a deeply tragical idea. To my thinking, it is as if at the close of the fourth act the whole soil, upon which this great drama is acted, were about to yawn and crumble; it quakes at every step, and naphtha-flames already burst out, the instant a heavy foot steps on it. Hence it is that Hamlet's words, The time is out of joint,' become realized, and there is no one there who is able to set the time right, Fortinbras excepted, who, however, is on his expedition against the Poles. The miserable usurper is in partnership with the no less miserable Laertes in a new poison-mixing; they have both shown very special talents in the practice, on a large scale, of this horrible art. A country in which such things can be is most assuredly without a king and without a government, and is stiff and stark for decay. What now can follow? It seems to me one can look for nothing else or other than a churchyard, and the appearance among all these persons, diseased through and through, of a man thoroughly sound and healthy, at whose hyper-originality we take no offence, and all whose fantastic impertinences we forgive in the lump, because he is so genuine and harmless, and has the courage to jest over the grave and all the world as well. In the scene with his underling, and afterwards with Hamlet and Horatio, this vigorous old Gravedigger seems like one who is bold enough to incline to be king himself. In fact, he tries at least to bear himself like one. He settles things for all time, upon what principles self-murder is to be judged, pronounces himself and his office the noblest things in the world, treats his man as if he were his body-servant with a jest, expresses himself very freely as to Hamlet's madness, and still more freely about the people living in England, which in his arrogant view lies, as it were, at his feet; all which the merry, insolent fellow presumes to do, because, among so many sick, he is the only sound one. He has, indeed, to retreat when the bedizened King appears in the funeral train; but through three scenes he is very king, and, although with no right, yet with better right than Claudius, who stole the crown from the shelf and put it in his pocket.

It may well be asked, what does Hamlet want in the churchyard? And how comes he there,—that the funeral of his beloved is to take place he is ignorant,— he who appears to trouble himself no longer about what is going on? But such questions embarrass neither the poet nor the critics. Hamlet is intent upon only one thing, the punishment of the King; but, fully conscious of his own weakness, he appears to give over the execution of vengeance entirely to fate, or rather to accident, he, who has never really been alive, is now more than half dead, and so he finds himself best among graves and in the midst of the dead. With a true pleasure he riots in thoughts of death and dissolution, yet even here his particular individual

interest is never forgotten in his meditations, as is seen by his allusion to the jawbone of Cain, the first fratricide.

[Page 85.] This courtier, who is never otherwise named than as the 'young' Osric, as if this pleasant word were his nickname, is painted by the poet with special love and truth. Consider the situation: ruin is striding triumphantly on; the ground under our feet does not merely tremble, it is already sinking; one fancies he hears the subterranean muttering that precedes the earthquake: it is as if we heard the rushing wings of Fate. The King and the Queen, Hamlet and Laertes, already, like the doomed, wear the mark of near death upon their foreheads; but the young Osric, naturally enough, perceives nothing of all this, and cannot therefore share in the tragical mood of the reader or spectator; he knows nothing of any overruling Fate, lives in the common order of the day, rejoices in the honor of serving the King, appears before the prince jaunty and dainty and fulsome. This young Osric, whose fatality it is never to be simple in his speech, never to be able to stick to the unvarnished truth, serves to give the spectator great comfort; for we see with joy how this strange stripling succeeds in drawing from the gloomy prince the last spasm of wit, humor, and scorn.

TIECK (1824)

(Dramaturgische Blätter, 1824. Kritische Schriften, iii, 248. Leipzig, 1852.)— Claudius, descended from an heroic line, has many great and excellent qualities, heavily overbalanced, however, by as many bad and degrading traits. In one respect he is through and through regal; his bearing is always dignified; evil and depraved he may be, but never little. Treachery is his nature; duplicity and faithlessness his very being; but a lofty, winning deportment clothes all these detestable vices. He is a strong, large, and handsome man; the Ghost, even in his vehement denunciation of him, styles him seductive; Hamlet, behind his back, depicts him as altogether hateful and base, but, in his presence, is always constrained and embarrassed, quite unable to make good a word of the contempt which he pours upon him in his soliloquies. The usurper is not altogether as bad, nor the murdered king quite as excellent, as the son, in his excitement, in that extraordinary scene with his mother, describes them.

[Page 251.] While waiting for the play to commence, the King is friendly towards Hamlet; he jests with the Queen or with other ladies and persons of the court; he is so absorbed in merry talk that he does not observe the dumb show by which, after the fashion of the old English theatre, the plot is foretold; Hamlet's repeated hints and the accents of Hamlet's voice at last arrest the King's notice. As Hamlet is no longer able to control himself, the King must needs become aware that something peculiar, something concerning himself, is going on. Then when the poisoner appears and murders the sleeper, as Claudius had murdered his brother, the King observes it, and is forced at last to perceive that his sin is no longer a secret; his conscience breaks through all his hypocrisy; he retreats, horror-struck, as before a ghost. The development, the preparation for this event, its suddenness, all truly represented, must needs be of the greatest interest, and make the King unquestionably the chief figure in this scene. In order to give the scene its fullest effect, it were well if the scenery could be arranged as it was in Shakespeare's theatre.

[Page 255.] Although (as neither Shakespeare nor his contemporaries paid any attention to the elucidation of their dramas, which were simply acted, and not easily to be read by any one who had seen them played only once)—although, as has already been remarked, these stage-directions have no weight, yet this oldest one (Laertes wounds Hamlet, then in scuffling they change weapons, and Hamlet wounds Laertes), which the actors found it necessary to write down, deserves some consideration. According to the present mode of speech, to scuffle is to tussle. Even Shakespeare himself uses it thus; but its primitive derivation is from to shuffle: it is one with this word. In scuffling or shuffling then, in tussling one with the other, in the clash, they exchange rapiers. Why must the they refer to Hamlet and Laertes? Is it not much more intelligible that one of the judges of the combat, at the bidding of the King, changes the weapons? or the King himself? or a page at a hint from the King? It must be had in mind that after each essay at arms there came a pause, when the combatants walked up and down to rest, their weapons being laid aside together in one place, and at the last pause the weapons were thus changed by the direction of the King, that Hamlet might kill Laertes. [This shrewd but erroneous explanation of the exchange of rapiers was probably devised before the discovery of Q,, but it was not printed until just after. In a footnote, TIECK refers to the stage direction in Q,, 'They catch one another's rapiers, and both are wounded,' and adds that the word 'catch' does not in the least disturb his explanation. By stretching a point this might be granted, but no stretching will force 'one another's' to bear out this theory; which I have inserted because it has been, not infrequently, accepted by German commentators. ED.]

[Page 257.] I see in Polonius a real statesman. Discreet, politic, keen-sighted, ready at the council board, cunning upon occasions, he had been valued by the deceased King, and is now indispensable to his successor. How much he suspected as to the death of the former king, or how sincerely he accepted that event, the poet does not tell us.

When Polonius speaks to Ophelia of her relations to Hamlet, he pretends igno. rance; he has only heard through others that his daughter talks with the prince, and often and confidentially. Here the cunning courtier shows himself, for the visits of the prince to his house could not have been unknown to him. But these visits were made in the time of the late king, and afterwards in the interregnum before the new ruler ascended the throne. The election was doubtful; Hamlet, as we know, had the first right, and the prospect of becoming father-in-law to the king was tempting. But Hamlet, who had no faculty for availing himself of circumstances, or even for maintaining his rights, allowed himself to be set aside, and Polonius saw, even when the great assembly was held, that Hamlet's position at court was Hamlet's own fault. Consequently, for double reasons, Polonius forbids his daughter to have any intercourse with the prince; first, because the prince was a cypher, and then again, because the King might become suspicious if he learned that such intercourse existed.

Ophelia calms her father with the report of the madness of the prince, who was cruel enough to begin the rôle with her, but she innocently imagines that it is her withdrawing herself from him which is the cause of his unhappy disease. Polonius is beside himself: 'Come, go with me; I will go seek the King,' he cries; for he fears that Hamlet in his insanity will betray his passion, and that thus the matter can no longer be kept secret. He explains for us his real opinion: I am sorry that with better heed and judgement I had not quoted him,' &c., II, i, 111. Hamlet is

nothing it is a matter of indifference should the prince be offended; but he dares not keep silence to the King; it might have serious consequences.

In this state of mind he goes to his majesty; on the way, however, the difficulty of the affair which he is to manage becomes more apparent. The cause of Hamlet's madness is his love for the daughter of the minister, of the King's confidential servant. The father then must have permitted, nay, encouraged, the prince's addresses, which have been kept from the knowledge of the King until they can no longer be concealed. What appearance would the old courtier make in the affair? Since a shadow of suspicion must fall upon the father of Ophelia, the disclosure must be made to the King when his majesty is in a good humor. Fortunately, the ambassadors have returned with good tidings from Norway; this is the feast which Polonius prepares for the King,-the explanation is to be the dessert. As he cares little for the Queen, he ventures to represent the prince in a ridiculous light,the prince's jesting allusions exposing his weakness, while Polonius himself acts the part of a true-hearted, unsuspecting character, so that, after all these preliminaries, the King shall be put in the happy humor in which he may be told how the case stands. But how hath she received his love?' is the first question which the King gravely asks. The King wants instant satisfaction upon the point which alone is of interest to him. And then out of half truth and prevarication the old man is to spin a lie, that shall set himself in the most blameless light, but which, however, does not satisfy the King. Conscious that he has not been innocent of ambitious designs, and anxious to set himself fully right, Polonius, all too eagerly, proposes that his daughter and the prince be brought together, while he himself and the King listen, concealed, to what passes between the two.

How much of fine observation is there in what is said of Ophelia in Goethe's Wilhelm Meister! But if I do not entirely misunderstand Shakespeare, the poet has meant to intimate throughout the piece that the poor girl, in the ardor of her passion for the fair prince, has yielded all to him. The hints and warnings of Laertes come too late. It is tender and worthy of the great poet to leave the relation of Hamlet and Ophelia, like much else in the piece, a riddle; but it is from this point of view alone that Hamlet's behavior, his bitterness, and Ophelia's suffering and madness, find connection and consistency; and we perceive why it is that all in this young creature, hell itself, as Laertes says, is turned to favor and to prettiness. While the riddle is thus solved, the representation of this character on the stage is rendered all the more difficult.

When she first appears with Laertes, who tells her that Hamlet's love-making is only a violet in the youth of primy nature, conscious that it was a great deal more, she naïvely and smilingly asks, No more but so?' After the speech of her brother, she answers: But, good my brother, Do not as some ungracious pastors do,' &c., I, iii, 46-51. I do not understand how an innocent girl could thus answer,—an answer wide of that warning. But she believed she knew her brother; she felt deeply how contemptible it was that these lessons should never have been addressed to her until after her acquaintance with the prince had been permitted or ignored. Towards her father she has already been reserved; she takes care not to say too much; she contents herself with a few general expressions, and is painfully aware that, all of a sudden, as a stern parent, he treats the prince with contempt.

Terrified, deeply moved, well nigh distraught, she mentions the visit of the prince. Here we are made prophetically to see upon what a dizzy height her whole being totters. This scene is always represented too coldly and thoughtfully.