[Page 119.] Hamlet, I have said, chooses the best means to his end. Ay, indeed! For the court-play, by the vividness and transparency with which it represents the deed,-this, rather than any other conceivable thing, this surprise at finding himself confronted with his secret in the full light of the lamps of the theatre,this, if he committed the crime, must bring the King to confession, although at first only to Hamlet's eye and satisfaction. How much is thus hereby gained! The first indispensable step towards the solution of his task is actually taken; now, indeed, he first knows his way. And that Hamlet knows without doubt that confession is the point upon which all depends is seen here,-here at the close of this soliloquy he speaks out the word, That guilty creatures sitting at a play, . . . . have proclaimed their malefactions!' Confessed,—and on the spot: herein is the effectiveness of this mode of proceeding.

[Page 121.] II, ii, 576–598, is said to mean, forsooth, that thus far Hamlet has mistaken and blundered about the whole thing. Pray, have people no ears for the agony of a human being, which is so intolerable that it drives him to the extremity of falling out with himself, no appreciation of a situation in which righteous indignation, because it cannot reach its object, turns against itself, in order to give itself vent and to cool the heated sense of the impossibility of acting by self-reproach and all manner of self-depreciation? Is it his will then to be a dull and muddy-mettled rascal, and peak like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of his cause? Does he condemn himself thereto out of cowardice, incapacity, morbid scrupulousness, weakness of will, and all such-like fine motives? Is he not rather forced to be so? Is he not doomed thereto? I thought I had shown plainly enough the iron grasp in which he is held. That he can say nothing for a king upon whose property and most dear life a damned defeat has been made: that is the very horror of his position,-to be forced to speak not a syllable directly and to the point; if he had chosen to do only that, most assuredly and instantly he would have lost the game. And the critics insist upon condemning him, because he knows that and declares it, and does nothing! The actor, he can talk of Priam's death and Hecuba's grief —talk of them so movingly! Had he his (Hamlet's) motive, his cue for passion, he would drown the stage with tears, and make mad the guilty, &c., because he, in the freedom of the actor, of the objective, can act! But Hamlet cannot do that, he can act no play, but a real thing, directly, out of his own consciousness, and must suffer wreck, because he can adduce no proof of its reality! He must be silent, he can operate only indirectly, by means of a reflected image, must let play-actors speak and act for him, and can himself only look on and observe! . . . .

And when he says further, it cannot be But I am pigeon-livered, and lack gall To make oppression bitter,' &c.; this also is an outbreak of his wrath at not being permitted to follow the first impulse, the immediate prompting of the thirst for revenge. He is thus enraged, because his reason is so strong as to restrain him, and, because he restrains himself, he has to suffer such pain. To smite down the King, to sacrifice his own life by the blow, in order to be quit of his task at once, instead of fulfilling it, that were the first, the easiest, the happiest thing for him; but he wills to fulfil it, wills to fulfil it faithfully, and not shamefully avoid it. His gall does not affect his head, his will tames his heart, the gnashing hunger for revenge, the storm of the blood; and that is the agony that makes the blood boil, from that nature revolts, every fibre quivers in rebellion and anguish: so strong is the will in him, whom people would make out to be a weakling, that he endures this torture in the fear and virtue of his duty. What he rails at. as 'pigeon-livered,' when the

mortal nature, impatient of pain, weary of suffering, cries out in him,-all this is enduring courage, the courage of reason, springing from reverence for a holy duty and from devotion thereto.

[Page 154.] On his way to his mother, Hamlet finds the King at prayer,—the King, who here for the first time makes verbal confession before us that he is the murderer, while confessing the crime to himself in soliloquy. So far have Hamlet and the poet brought him, by means of the play. Here is progress in the rôle of the King, and, from the negative side, in the piece!! There is a depth or power of invention here which has not its like! The wisdom in the rhythm of the development, this it is which, if I may speak for myself, moves me the most deeply! the tempo of the onward movement in the piece, how measured is its step,-the course it takes, appearing to drag, and yet chased by the storm of God, Heaven, and Hell thundering together!

[Page 156.] Now, after the court-play, Hamlet knows, indeed, that he is discovered. As he knows his enemy, so after this attack his enemy knows him, and will strain every nerve to destroy him, to get clear of the pursuer, the avenger. This Hamlet knows, and must be prepared for, must expect, and,—trust to his righteous cause. Just this it is which is his motive, his absolute motive! his only support! And if, to the result just arrived at, nothing further should come to advance his aim, nay, even if the remoter consequence should prove injurious and outweigh the present advantage, and cause all to come to nothing, it must not be he himself through whose action it comes to naught. That would be the case should he now stab the King. He can never, by his own testimony alone, complete his work if he silences the guilty one forever.

Hamlet, it is true, does not himself say this,-no! But the state of the case says it instead. Perhaps Shakespeare meant not to take from us entirely the idea of the possibility of his yet saying something himself; has meant,-and not perhaps, but certainly, meant.—that we shall learn it from the piece itself, that our judgment should give heed to his plot, as well as our ear to the words of his characters! How if the poet should reserve the explanation of his plot for some other one of his dramatis personæ, who is to come forward at the end of the piece? How if his prince is not to be our interpreter of the plot beforehand, but rather is himself to be included in it?-the general idea, hidden in him, in the individual and the concrete, in the movement and the passion, in the disjecta membra, which do not yet recognize their master?

[Page 157.] Is it thought to be a mere subterfuge of Hamlet's irresolution, that he considers the moment when the King is praying as not the favorable moment for him to die? a refinement of Hamlet's subtle theorizing about revenge, by which he imposes on himself; that the avenging sword must know a more horrid hent? Are the critics struck with blindness? It is, I insist, the purpose of the poet, his determination the whole piece through, his decree, his judgment,—the object in view, to show how he himself understands it, and wishes it understood! instead of a lie, it is the truth which he wishes to make manifest,-it is his wisdom, his understanding, his idea of justice, that we are to receive! With this design upon us, he builds up his piece. [See, When he is drunk asleep, or in his rage,' &c., III, iii, 89-95.] Well,-and how then does the King fall at last? He so falls that we see that every other way would be more lenient, would be hire and salary, not vengeance! not the vengeance to which he is doomed. Not in a sudden fit does he fall, not while drunk asleep, not while gaming, or swearing, &c.; then his fate would

have been all too easy; but, in fact, at a moment, and when in the very act of doing what puts him so utterly beyond all hope of salvation, that even from the threatening words of Hamlet, terrible as they are, we neither can nor should, when he utters them, anticipate the catastrophe! we, even as little as Hamlet himself, have no premonition of the result! The King falls in perpetrating a crime, even greater than his first, at the moment when he is committing a threefold murder,—rather than be betrayed he suffers even his own wife to drink the poison which he had prepared for Hamlet,-in this moment, utterly hopeless of salvation, he falls: so 'that his soul may be as damned and black As hell, whereto it goes.'

Thus the poet fulfils the words of Hamlet! Thus do they express his idea, Shakespeare's idea to the letter, of vengeance, of punishment, of judgment, in such a case as this, his way of dealing justice to this transgressor.

And it must not be forgotten that Hamlet it is who brings the King to this end. He alone does it, by his hits and by his misses, by the play and by the killing of Polonius.

[Page 161.] Enraged, frantic, he rushes in wildly to his mother, and here, hearing the voice behind the tapestry, here, now supposing the King to be hidden there, he allows himself to be carried away by his hot blood, by rage; here, in this place and in this still hour, close by the bed where he himself was begotten, and which shall by his will be no couch for luxury and damned incest; here, where the worst personal dishonor which has been inflicted upon him, the living son, by the seducer of his mother, comes so near to him; here, where the whole air is full of it; here, the voice of the wretch (he is thinking only of the King, and therefore believes that it is the King whom he has heard), the voice of the wretch calls up all his shame, and, forgetting the strict obligation of his task, he gives full course to his thirst for vengeance (after the proof he has had by means of the play, he is, of course, morally free to kill the King), he is carried away into the grave error of plunging his sword through the tapestry. A grave error, indeed! For here his moral right and power are not at all concerned.

This is the turning-point of the piece, which includes in itself the second cardinal moment for the understanding of the whole. The first, that which I call the fundamental point, is the conditio sine quâ non, that guards the treasure, which can be exhumed only with the help and by the power of the second. . . . .

Only with this second point do we get an insight into the tragic depth of the piece, into the plot. To understand this turning-point is to understand Hamlet.

Something new is here before us, something surprising, for which we were not prepared. Hamlet commits an error! And this error is Hamlet!

But from now on, all hinges on this error, and only of this error shall we have to speak.

That Hamlet stabs at the tapestry is no proof forsooth that he was a coward, and would not have ventured the act face to face with the enemy (even this silliness has been suggested!); but it is the expression and the act of his blind passion. Without stopping to consider whether he hit or miss, he stabs, like lightning, blindly into the dark (the tapestry corresponding to the veil within, in which the storm of his blood wraps his reason for the moment); he looks neither to the right nor left,— only hears, and falsely! the foe without, and hears wrongly his own thirst for vengeance within, and is deaf to his duty.

He has made the thrust at last,-and what is the consequence? What has he accomplished? He has committed a murder! Instead of being freed from the old

burthen, he has brought upon his soul a new one; instead of accomplishing what he

is bound to do, he has become guilty. Thus the error punishes itself.

6

But,' say the critics, if he had only slain the King before, which would have been no crime, he would have saved himself from this real crime now. That was his error, and for that error he commits this,—for that he is punished by this! By no means! For then he would have committed a far greater error. Now there lies upon his soul a crime, a death-blow, but an undesigned blow, more an unfortunate than a guilty act,-but, in the other case, had he killed the King, he would, indeed, have kept himself pure, morally pure, but his duty, the one great object or aim of his being, he would have ruined, shattered into atoms, and his father would have remained forever unavenged. It is for this, for this, his cause, he becomes a criminal; so wild, so narrow and precipitous, so fatal is the path in which his destined task urges him, that he has become a murderer in its service, because for once he has not kept in the course which it prescribed, because for once he has forgotten his true work. But he has not rendered himself wholly incapable of fulfilling its behests. He is still able to serve his cause, and is held in reserve.

Therefore is the opinion which GERVINUS expresses so false: This failure of vengeance must now compel him most powerfully to act at last in earnest.' Just the reverse is true. If anything could occur to bring him to his senses, to impress upon him the necessity of checking the pace of his task, it is this failure, this misthrust, precisely this! Instead of Polonius, had it been the King whom he had stabbed, what would he not have brought upon himself! What a disgraceful, wretched, irretrievable blow would he have struck! Fearfully near has he come, out of blind rage, to ruining his whole cause, ruining it in the most shameful and blundering manner. Accident alone, so to speak, has saved him. This consideration above all things must be brought home to him by the serious mistake which he has made, with overpowering and humiliating irony, warning him and bidding him beware how he comes any nearer to so fatal an end; more pressingly and emphatically than ever must he feel himself obliged to proceed gently, with redoubled foresight, with still more marked 'procrastination'; he must, in fact, proceed so carefully that he must feel himself, with a shudder, driven to a stand-still, since he has suffered himself by a senseless burst of passion to stumble over the abyss to which he had rolled down, driven to a full pause from the shock in his own mind, even though he perceives no circumstances forcing him thereto.

And yet forward all goes with him, rapidly forward! And therefore is the idea, that the error, which he has committed, must alone move him to fall at once upon the King, doubly wrong and false.

And thus he quietly submits,-as, indeed, he must,-to be sent off to England; still more passively than ever does he bear himself; ay, verily, he has become timid. He has, by a blunder, almost lost the game; has played into the hands of his opponent! He must begin anew, and from a worse position than before. The guilt of bloodshed lies upon him, which his madness, now become so transparent, does not conceal. In the eye of the world he is a dangerous character, to be confined, and watched, and kept from doing harm. In the power of the King is he! But the enemy, this he sees, will not aim directly at his life. He is to be got rid of by cunning. Hide fox, and all after,'-this is the game which is now offered him. His head may well be trusted to accept the game, against the heads of his opponents. The enemy means to attack him with snares and pitfalls, and he must try for his part to delve a yard below their mines.

[Page 172. 'How all occasions do inform against me,' &c., IV, iv, 32.] Weary is Hamlet, weary under his burden. Now, when he is shipped off to England, the charge of murder resting on him through his own fault,-comparing his lot, chained as he is to his task, with that of Fortinbras, who is so free in all his movements,-now comes the fear,-now at this passing moment, which puts him at a distance, and separates him from his foe and from the object and aim of his revenge, through his own fault,—now comes nearer to him than ever the fearful apprehension that, notwithstanding all his trouble, all his patient endurance, his task has at last become impossible. This horrible dread penetrates him to the quick, and weighs down his soul. Would it not be better to strike the blow at once, and ruin his cause, sacrifice it, become a traitor to it, than still to go on hoping and waiting, and yet not succeed after all, not be able to succeed, because success is impossible, because he himself, to all appearances, has already in part rendered it so by his bungling, and because no help comes to him from above? How,-considering the character of his task, which is unapproachable, not to be got at,-how he is to satisfy the reason of the thing, he cannot conceive, but he can at least content his blood, should he strike the decisive blow. And how it shrieks in his ear, how it surges over his soul! This horrible doubt, which is a very different thing from the cowardly complaining temper which is ascribed to him,--this horrible doubt, which has for its background the remorse which he feels for the error he has made, and which turns doubt into despair, the doubt whether he shall throw all the dictates of reason to the winds,— this is the demon that rules this soliloquy, and runs wild therein; and therefore I have said it is the shriek of Hamlet's agony which here relieves itself. And while he raves with this demon, and endures tortures, his cause is already ripening towards its accomplishment! ay, already is it as good as fulfilled, without any suspicion on his part or on ours, through his error!

[Page 176.] I should only like to know what they who criticise Hamlet would have done in his place? All intolerable torture does he endure for his cause, in order to accomplish it thoroughly and worthily. On his life depends the possibility of its success, the revelation of divine justice upon earth in this capital case. And now he is led to death! As surely as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern deliver their letter, his head falls. That letter, then, they must not be allowed to deliver, they must deliver a different one. That is clear, absolutely clear. If Hamlet suffers them to deliver that, he may well, with the strictest truth, say of himself, 'O what an ass am I' But, do you say, he could have spared them? He could have written something that would endanger neither him nor them? Does he know, or can he discover from them so that he may depend upon their word, how far they are cognizant of the purport of their errand? whether they are not charged with some oral message? What if they should contradict what he might write of a harmless character? What if the king of England, being in doubt, should send back to Denmark for further directions, detain all three, and then, as surely was to be expected. put Hamlet to death? No, there is no expedient possible, no evasion, no choice between thus or otherwise, no, not here, nor at any point in the whole destined course of Hamlet! Just this is again the point upon which a right understanding of the piece depends! Rosencrantz and Guildenstern,—or he! Those two,-or that which weighs more with him than he himself, that which is most sacred to him, for which he endures a life full of torture; not for a moment does any but the one possible course lie between. He must sacrifice them, and even without allowing them time to confess, must do this even! For if only they are allowed time for confession, after