EDWARD A. FREEMAN.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] That is, to all members of Convocation who are either resident or hold University office. This, besides the Chancellor and a few other great personages, lets in a few professors and examiners who are non-resident.

[2] I use Oxford language, as that which I myself best understand; but I believe that, all that I say applies equally to Cambridge also. For "Convocation" one must of course, in Cambridge language, read "Senate."



HAMLET: A NEW READING.

There is a sense in which the stage alone can give the full significance to a dramatic poem, just as a lyric finds its full interpretation in music; but we prefer that a song of Goethe or Shelley should wait for its music, and in the meantime suggest its own aerial accompaniment, rather than be vulgarized in the setting. And even when set for the voice by a master, although there is a gain in as far as the charm is brought home to the senses, yet there is a loss in proportion to the beauty of the song; for if it is delicate the finer spiritual grace departs, and if it is ardent the passion is liable to scream, and, above all, there is a vague but appreciable loss of identity; so that on the whole we please ourselves best with the literary form. There is the same balance of gain and loss in the relation of the drama to the stage. The gain is in proportion to the excellence of the acting, and the loss in proportion to the beauty oL the play. It is well then that, as the lyric poem no longer demands the lyre, the poetical drama has become, though more recently, independent of the stage. Each has its own perspective of life, its own idea of Nature, its own brilliancy, its own dulness, and finally its own public; and notwithstanding the objections of some critics, it will soon be admitted that a work may be strictly and intrinsically dramatic, and yet only fit for the study—that is, for ideal representation. For there is a theatre in every imagination, where we produce the old masterpiece in its simplicity and dignity, and where the new work appears and is followed in plot and action, and conflict of feeling, and play of character, and rhythm of part with part, if not with as keen an excitement, at least with as fair a judgment, as if we were criticizing the actors, not the piece. And were all theatres closed, the drama—whether as the free and spontaneous outflow of observation, fancy, and humour, or as the intense reflection of the movement of life in its animation of joy and pain—would remain one of the most natural and captivating forms in which the creative impulse of the poet can work. When we look at its variety and flexibility of structure—from the lyrical tragedy of AEschylus to a "Proverbe" of De Musset; at its diversity of spirit—from the exuberance of a comedy of Aristophanes and the caprice of an Elizabethan mask to the serenity of "Comus" and Tasso, and the terror of "Agamemnon" and "Macbeth;" at its range of expression—from, the full-toned Greek and English Iambic to the plain but sparkling prose of Moliere, and from that again to the intricate harmonies of Calderon, Goethe, and Shelley; with its use of all voices, from vociferous mob to melodious daughters of Ocean, and its command of all colour, from the gloom of Medea to the splendour of Marlowe's Helen,—it is a small matter to remember the connection of work or author with the stage—how long they held it, how soon they were dispossessed, how and at what intervals and with what uncertain footing they returned. We do not accept them because they were popular in their day, and we do not reject them because they are not suitable to ours. They have lost no vivacity or strength or grace by their exclusion from the stage and their exile to literature—to that permanent theatre for which the poet, freely using any and every form of dramatic expression, should now work.

"There is the playhouse now, there you must sit.... For 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our king."

The relevancy of these remarks, as an introduction to a study of one of Shakespeare's plays, will presently appear.

I.

Shakespeare, although a master of theatrical effect, is often found working rather away from it than toward it, and at a meaning and beauty beyond the limits of stage expression. This is because he is more dramatist than playwright, and will always produce and complete his work in its ideal integrity, even if, in so doing, he outruns the sympathy of his audience. This disposition may be traced not only in the plays it has banished from the stage, including such a masterpiece as "Antony and Cleopatra," but in those that are universally popular, such as "The Merchant of Venice," where the fifth Act, although it closes and harmonizes the drama as a work of art with perfect grace, is but a tame conclusion to the theatrical piece; and in the scenes that furnish us with the delicate and finished study of Antonio, we find the audience intent on the situation and the poet on the character; for we no more expect to see the true Antonio on the stage than to see the true moonlight shimmering on the trees in Belmont Park. But sometimes the play will transcend the limits of stage expression by being too purely and perfectly dramatic, as in "Lear." For not only is it, as Lamb points out,[3] impossible for the actor to give the convulsions of the father's grief, and yet preserve the dignity of the king, but the sustained intensity of passion fatigues both voice and ear when they should be most impressive and impressed. Had Shakespeare written with a view to stage effect, he would not in the first two acts have stretched the voice through all the tones and intervals of passion, and then demand more thrilling intonations and louder outcries to meet and match the tumult of the storm. This greatest of all tragedies is written beyond the compass of the human voice, and can only be fully represented on that ideal stage, where, instead of hoarse lament and husky indignation, we hear each of us the tones that most impress and affect us, and can command the true degrees of feeling in their illimitable scale.

But in "Hamlet" the inadequacy of the stage is of another kind. It leads to a general displacement of motive, and change of focus, the hero's character being obscured in the attempt to make it effective. And for this to some extent the stage itself, as a place of popular entertainment, and not the actor, is at fault. Some such ambiguity as this seems, indeed, only natural, when we recall the circumstances attending the composition of the play.

By common consent of the best authorities, "Hamlet" represents the work of many years. I make no conjectures, but content myself with Mr. Dowden's statement of the case:—"Over 'Hamlet,' as over 'Romeo and Juliet,' it is supposed that Shakespeare laboured long and carefully. Like 'Romeo and Juliet,' the play exists in two forms, and there is reason to believe that in the earlier form, in each instance, we possess an imperfect report of Shakespeare's first treatment of his theme,"[4] We know also that Shakespeare had before him, at least as early as 1589, an old play in which "a ghost cried dismally like an oyster wife, 'Hamlet! Revenge!'" and Shakespeare worked upon this until from what was probably a rather sorry melodrama he produced the most intellectual play that keeps the stage. And the very sensational character of the piece enabled him to steal into it the results of long and deep meditation without hazard to its popularity. He seems to have withdrawn Hamlet from time to time for a special study, and then to have restored and readjusted the hero to the play, touching and modulating, here and there, character and incident in harmony with the new expression. In this way a new direction and significance would be given to the plot, but in a latent and unobtrusive way, so as not to weaken the popular interest. This leads to the ambiguity of which I have spoken. The new thought is often not earnestly but ironically related to the old material, and the spiritual hero seems almost to stand apart from the rude framework of the still highly sensational theatrical piece. This has given rise to a rather favourite saying with the Germans, that Hamlet is a modern. Hamlet seems to step forth from an antiquated time,—with its priestly bigotry, its duels for a province, its heavy-headed revels, its barbarous code of revenge, and its ghostly visitations to enforce it,—to meet and converse with a riper age. But this is because Hamlet belongs wholly and intimately to the poet, while the other characters, though informed with new and original expression, are left in close relation, to the old plot.

Such being the ambiguity resulting from this continued spiritualization of the play, the actor would instinctively endeavour to remove it, and to bring the hero in closer relation with the main action of the stage piece. Hamlet must not be too disengaged; he must not be too ironical. A few omissions, a fit of misplaced fury, a too emphatic accent, a too effective attitude, with what is called a bold grasp of character, and Shakespeare's latest and finest work on the hero is obliterated.

Now, the great actors who have personated Hamlet have done much, and the thrilling treatment of the ghost-story has done more, to stamp upon the minds of learned and unlearned alike the impression that the great event of Hamlet's life is the command to kill his uncle. As he does not do this, and as he is given to much meditation and much discussion, it is assumed that he thinks and talks in order to avoid acting. And then the word "irresolution" leaps forth, and all is explained. This curious assumption, that all the pains taken by Shakespeare on the work and its hero has no other object but to illustrate this theme—a command to kill and a delayed obedience—pervades the criticism even of those who consider the intellectual element the great attraction of the play. And yet, when you ask what is the dramatic situation out of which this speculative matter arises, the German and English critics alike reply in chorus, "Irresolution." Each one has his particular shade of it, and finds something not quite satisfactory in the interpretations of others. Goethe's finished portrait of Hamlet as the amiable and accomplished young prince, too weak to support the burden of a great action, did not recommend itself either to Schlegel or Coleridge, who take the mental rather than the moral disposition to task. Schlegel, with some asperity, speaks of "a calculating consideration that cripples the power of action;" and Coleridge, with more subtlety, applies Hamlet's antithesis of thought and resolution to the elucidation of his own character, concluding that Hamlet "procrastinates from thought." Gervinus, while following Schlegel as to "the bent of Hamlet's mind to reflect upon the nature and consequences of his deed, and by this means to paralyze his active powers," adds to this defect a deplorable conscientiousness, which unfits Hamlet for the great duty of revenge. And Mr. Dowden, while most ably collating these various kinds and degrees of irresolution, concludes that Hamlet is "disqualified for action by his excess of the reflective faculty." Mr. Swinburne alone resolutely protests against this doctrine. He speaks of "the indomitable and ineradicable fallacy of criticism which would find the key-note of Hamlet's character in the quality of irresolution."[5] And he considers that Shakespeare purposely introduces the episode of the expedition to England to exhibit "the instant and almost unscrupulous resolution of Hamlet's character in time of practical need." I gladly welcome this instructive remark, which, although Mr. Swinburne calls it "the voice of one crying in the wilderness," is more likely to gain me a patient hearing than any arguments I can use. But before I propose my own reading, I will, as I have given the genesis or natural history of this theory of irresolution, compare it with the general features of Hamlet's mental condition throughout the play.

If Hamlet "procrastinates from thought," if "the burden of the action is too heavy for him to bear," if "by a calculating consideration he exhausts all possible issues of the action," it should at least be continually present to his mind. We should look for the delineation of a soul harassed and haunted by one idea; torn by the conflict between conscience and filial obedience; or balancing advantage and peril in an agony of suspense and vacillation; forecasting consequence and result to himself and others; and so absorbed in this terrible secret as to exclude all other interests. We have two studies of such a state of irresolution, in Macbeth and Brutus. Of Macbeth it may truly be said that he has an action upon his mind the burden of which is too heavy for him to bear. It is constantly before him; he is shaken with it, possessed by it, to such a degree that

"function Is smother'd in surmise; and nothing is But what is not."

Now "he will proceed no further in this business," and now "he is settled and bound up to it," and in one long perturbed soliloquy stands before us the very picture of that irresolution which "procrastinates from thought." Brutus thus describes his own suspense:—

"Between the action of a dreadful thing And the first motion, all the interim is Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream: The genius, and the mortal instruments, Are then in council: and the state of man, Like to a little kingdom, suffers then The nature of an insurrection."

But what is the general course and scope of Hamlet's utterance, whether to himself or others? We find musings and broodings on the possibility of escape from so vile a world alternating with cool and keen analysis, polished criticism, and petulant wit; we find a pervading ironical bitterness, rising at times to fierce invective, and even to the frenzy of passion when his mother is the theme, relapsing again to trance-like meditations on the depravity of the world, the littleness of man and the nullity of appearance; and when his mind does revert to this "great action," this "dread command," which is supposed to haunt it, and to keep it in a whirl of doubt and irresolution, it is because it is forcibly recalled to it, because some incident startles him to recollection, proves to him that he has forgotten it, and he turns upon himself with surprise and indignation: Why is it this thing remains to do? Am I a coward! Do I lack gall? Is it "bestial oblivion?" or is it

"some craven scruple Of thinking too precisely on the event?"

On this text, so often quoted in support of the orthodox "irresolution" theory, I will content myself at present with the remark, thats surely no one before or after Hamlet ever accounted for his non-performance of a duty by the double explanation that he had either entirely forgotten it or had been thinking too much about it.

Looking then at the general features of Hamlet's talk, it is plain that to make this command to revenge the clue to his mental condition, is to make him utter a great deal of desultory talk without dramatic point or pertinence; for if, except when surprised by the actors' tears or by the gallant bearing of the troops of Fortinbras, he wholly forgets it, what does he remember? What is the secret motive of this prolonged criticism of the world which "charms all within its magic circle?"

The true centre will be found, I think, by substituting the word "preoccupation" for the word "irresolution." And the "preoccupation" is found by antedating the crisis of Hamlet's career from the revelation of the ghost to the marriage of his mother, and the persistent mental and moral condition thus induced. Start from this, as a fixed point, and a dramatic situation is gained in which every stroke of satire, every curiosity of logic, every strain of melancholy; is appropriate and pertinent to the action.

In order to measure the full effect of this strange event, we must bring before us the Hamlet of the earlier time, before his father's death, and for this we have abundant material in the play.

II.

Hamlet was an enthusiast. His love for his father was not an ordinary filial affection, it was a hero-worship. He was to him the type of sovereignty—

"The front of Jove himself; An eye like Mars, to threaten and command;"

a link between earth and heaven—

"A combination, and a form, indeed, Where every god did seem to set his seal, To give the world assurance of a man."

To Hamlet, this "assurance of a man" was the great reality which made other things real, which gave meaning to life, and substance to the world. That his love for his mother was equally intense, is clearly discernible in the inverted characters of his rage and grief. In her he reverenced wifehood and womanhood. He sees the rose on

"the fair forehead of an innocent love."

And of his mother we are told—

"The queen his mother Lives almost by his looks."

But this enthusiasm was connected with a habit of thought that was rather critical than sentimental. Hamlet had a shrewd judgment, a lively and caustic wit, an exacting standard, and a turn for satire. He was fond of question and debate, an enemy to all illusion, impatient of dulness,[typo for dullness?] and not indisposed to alarm and bewilder it; and he had brought with him from Wittenberg a philosophy half stoical and half transcendental, with whose eccentricities he would torment the wisdom of the Court. He looked upon the machinery of power as part of the comedy of life, and would be more amused than impressed by the equipage of office, its chains and titles, the frowns of authority, and the smiles of imaginary greatness. He therefore of all men needed a personal centre in which faith and affection could unite to give seriousness and dignity to life; and this he had found from his childhood in the sovereign virtues of the King and Queen. So that his criticism in these earlier days was but the fastidiousness of love, that disparages all other excellence in comparison with its own ideal; his philosophy was a disallowance of all other reality; and his negations only defined and brightened his faith. Doubt, question and speculation, mystery and anomaly, the illusions of sense, the instability of natures, all that was irrational in life, with its certainties of logic and hazards of chance, all that was unproven in religion, dubious in received opinion, obscure in the destiny of man, were but glimpses of a larger unity, vistas of truth unexplored.

Hamlet's thinking is always marked by that quality of penetration into and through the thoughts of others, that is called free-thinking. The discovery, as he moved in the spiritual world of established ideas and settled doctrines, apparently immovable, that they were of the same stuff as his own thoughts—were pliant and yielding, and could be readily unwoven by the logic that wove them, would tempt him to move and displace, and build and construct, until he might have a collection of opinions large enough to be termed a philosophy. But it would be gathered rather in the joy of intellectual activity, realizing its own energy, and ravelling up to its own form the woof of other minds, than with any practical bearing on life. All this was a work in another sphere—

"of no allowance to his bosom's truth."

The light of a sovereign manhood and womanhood was reflected on the world around him, and afar on the world of thought—-their greatness reconciled all the contradictions of life. And in pure submission to their control all the various activities of his versatile nature, its irony and its earnestness, its shrewdness and its fancy, its piety and its free-thinking, harmonized like sweet bells not yet jangled or untuned. He lived at peace with all, in fellowship with all; he could rally Polonius without malice, and mimic Osric without contempt.

It is plain that Hamlet looked forward to a life of activity under his father's guidance. He was no dreamer—we hear of "the great love the general gender bear him," and the people are not fond of dreamers. In truth, the Germans have had too much their own way with Hamlet, and have read into him something of their own laboriousness and phlegm. But Hamlet was more of a poet than a professor. He had the temperament of a man of genius—impatient, animated, eager, swift to feel, to like or dislike, praise or resent—with a character of rapidity in all his actions, and even in his meditation, of which he is conscious when he says, "as swift as meditation." He did not live apart as a student, but in public as a prince—

"the observed of all observers;"

he was of a free, open, unsuspicious temper—

"remiss, Most generous and free from all contriving."

He was fond of all martial exercises and expert in the use of the sword. He was a soldier first, a scholar afterwards; a soldier in his alacrity to fight

"Until his eyelids would no longer wag;"

a soldier even to

"The glass of fashion, and the mould of form;"

and, above all, a soldier in his sensibility on the point of honour, one who would think it well

"Greatly to find quarrel in a straw, When honour is at stake."

And Fortinbras, type of the man of action, recognized in him a kindred spirit—

"Bear Hamlet, like a soldier, to the stage; For he was likely, had he been put on, To have proved most royally;"

while Hamlet eyed Fortinbras with the envious longing of one who had missed his career. What must have been the felicity of life to such a man, whose vivacity no stress of calamity, no accumulation of sorrow could tame, whose enthusiasm embraced Nature, art, and literature, and whose delight was always fresh and new, "in this excellent canopy the air, in this brave o'erhanging firmament,"' and in the spectacle of man "so excellent in faculty, in form and moving so express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god?"

Without a warning the blow fell. His father was suddenly struck down; and while he was indulging a grief, poignant and profound indeed, but natural, wholesome, manly, his uncle usurped the crown. This second blow would be acutely felt, but it would rather rouse than prostrate his energies. There is no passion in Hamlet when there has been no love. And he had always held his uncle in slight esteem—foreboded something from his smiling insincerity. He never mentions him without an expression of contempt, hardly acknowledges him as king; he is a thing—of nothing—a farcical monarch—"a peacock"—and, in this particular act, no dread usurper, but a "cut-purse of the realm." Whether he designed to wait or was prepared to strike, his future was still intact, his energy unimpaired. His mother remained to him, now doubly dear and doubly great, and with her the tradition of the past. She was, as he gathered from her silence, like himself, retired from the world, absorbed in grief; but he was assured of her constancy and truth. Even the kind of distance between them in age and sex, in mind and character, was no barrier to this sympathetic relation. She was there with the expectation that makes heroism possible; she was there to watch, if not to further his enterprise, and to give it lustre with her praise. We are often quite unconscious of the commanding influence exerted on our life by those who are least in contact with it. To be cognizant of one steadfast and stainless soul is to have encouragement in difficulty and support in pain. The mere knowledge of its existence is a light within the mind, and a secret incentive to the best action. Though silent and apart, it is the witness of what is great, and our life is always seeking to rise within its sphere; while, by a secret transference—for souls are not retentive of their own goodness—our standards of living and thinking are maintained at their highest level, like water fed by a distant spring. All this and infinitely more than this was the Queen his mother to Hamlet. It is impossible, therefore, to measure the effect upon him of her marriage with his uncle. The shock of it is ever fresh throughout the play. In the third Act the whole frame of nature is still aghast at it:—

"Heaven's face doth glow; Yea, this solidity and compound mass, With tristful visage, as against the doom, Is thought-sick at the act."

And this was not only after the revelation of the Ghost, but after the confirmation of its truth by the test Hamlet had himself applied. Even then the first paroxysm has hardly subsided. You see the whole being measured by it, the mind stretched to give it utterance, the world called as a witness to its enormity:—

III.

But it is at an earlier stage of this impression, when the thought of this profanation of the sacredness of life and the sanctity of love chills the life-blood of his heart, and then rushes burning through it like the shame of a personal insult, that he first stands before us in the palace of the King. In appearance nothing is changed. He sees the same crowd, the same obsequious attitudes, the same decorous forms; the trumpets with their usual flourish announce the arrival of the King and Queen; the Ministers of State precede them, and the Court ladies; the pretentious gravity of Polonius' brow; the dreamy innocence of Ophelia. The sovereigns seat themselves, the Queen looks smilingly around her as of old. All is easy, bright, and festive. All goes on as if this horrible revolution were the most natural thing in the world. Oh, that he could avoid the sight of it! Oh, that he could be quit of it all!

"Oh! that this too too solid flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew; Or that the Everlasting had not fixed His canon 'gainst self-slaughter!"

Although the nervous horror of his address to the Ghost is greater, there is no speech in which Hamlet betrays so deep an agitation as in this. He struggles for utterance, repeats himself, mingles oaths and axioms, confuses and then annihilates time in the breathless tumult of his soul. "Why, she, even she. O Heaven!" What can he say? what is vile enough? "A beast

"that wants discourse of reason, Would have mourned longer—married with my uncle."

In this opening speech we see at once the immediate relation of the feeling of life-weariness so prevalent throughout the play to this supreme emotion; we see also his comprehensive criticism of the world branching from the same root—

"How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable Seems to me all the uses of this world! Fie, on't! O fie! 'tis an unweeded garden;"

and

"Frailty, thy name is woman."

These themes are developed Act by Act, we can follow them to the graveyard scene, and to the moment before death.

And it is not unnatural that Hamlet's grief should assume a comprehensive form. The Queen had drawn the world in her train. Nobles and people, councillors and courtiers, the honoured statesman, the artless maiden, had joined her, had connived, were her accomplices. They had, parted among them, all the vices appropriate to her Court, her people. The world was betrayed to Hamlet in all its meanness and littleness: and he looked at it to see if he could discover the secret of his mother's treason, as Lear would anatomize the heart of Regan to account for her ingratitude. In attacking it he is attacking her guilt, in its inferior forms and obscure disguises. It is the nest of her depravity, and the small vices are but hers in the shell, and the whole is a vast confederacy of evil. Here are no "superfluous activities," no desultory talk; Hamlet's preoccupation is one throughout. He alternates between the desire to escape from so vile a world, and the pleasure of exposing its vice and fraud. The one gives us soliloquies, the other dialogues. Now he looks out at an obscure eternity from a time that was more obscure, and now the tension of the mind relieves the tension of the heart. On the one side we have all passages of life-weariness, whether as the issue of long meditation, or as the outcome of familiar talk; and on the other we have the brilliant and discursive criticism of man and Nature continued throughout the play. All this is so closely connected with the treason of his mother, that we see the very attachment of the feeling to the thought.

This explains the particular bitterness with which he attacks the Ministers and parasites of the Court. As soon as he sees them he crosses the current of their talk, commits them to an argument, confuses them with the evolutions of a logic too rapid for their senses to follow, and makes their bewilderment a sport. How small their world appears in the mirror of his ironical mind! The state-craft, the love-making, the "absurd pomp," the "heavy-headed revels," the women that "jig and amble and lisp," the nobles that are "spacious in the possession of dirt," the sovereign that is a "king of shreds and patches;" as for their opinions, "do but blow; them to their trials, and the bubbles are out;" as for their ideas of prosperity, it is to act as "sponges and soak up the king's countenance, his rewards and authorities;" as for their standard of worth, "let a beast be a lord of beasts, and his crib shall stand at the king's table." It is a disgrace to live in such a world, and contemptible to share its pleasures and prizes.

But his quarrel with it does not end here. The flaw runs through the whole constitution of things; there is no possible equation between the anomalies and dislocations on which he turns the dry light of that sceptical philosophy which has usurped the place of faith. Thought is good and action is good, but they will not work together. Our reason is our glory, but our indiscretions serve us best—we must either be cowards or fools. We have a perception of infinite goodness, just sufficient to make us conclude that we are "arrant knaves, all of us," and just enough belief in immortality "to perplex our wills." There is nothing but disagreement and disproportion—a constant missing of the mark, a stretching of the hand for that which is not. How is it possible to take seriously such a life if you pause to think?

It is not only irrational but visionary. The evanescence and fluency of Nature would matter little, but man himself, with his ingenuities of wit and triumphs of ambition, is whirled from form to form in "a fine revolution if we had the trick to see it." This is a favourite idea, it lends itself so easily to the contempt of the world—

"Imperious Caesar, dead, and turn'd to clay, Might stop a hole to keep the wind away,"

is only a variation of "a man may fish with the worm that has eat of a king, and eat of the fish that has fed on the worm."

In this collision with the world, alone and unsupported, Hamlet's natural buoyancy returns. It is the moment of isolation, but it is the moment also of intellectual freedom. It is desertion, but it is also independence. Every incongruity feeds his fanciful and inventive humour. He follows vanity and affectation with irony and mimicry, removes a mask with the point of his dexterous wit, and exposes the pretence of virtue or conceit of knowledge with sarcastic glee, while there is a savour of retribution in his chastisement of vice. The vivacity of this running comment, critical and satirical, on the ways and works of men adds much to the charm of the play, but it is a charm that properly belongs to the best comedy. And Shakespeare has marked this disengagement of his hero from the sanguinary plot by reserving the exaltation of verse to the expression of personal feeling, while the lithe and nimble movement of his prose follows with its undulating rhythm every turn of Hamlet's wayward mind, in subtlety of argument or caprice of fancy.

Such is the "preoccupation" of Hamlet, emotional and intellectual. I have purposely made it seem a separate study, as thus alone could this fatal "thought-sickness," in which Heaven and Earth seemed to partake, be treated with the requisite clearness and fulness.

We can see at once that no other claim to the command of his spirit is likely to succeed. His mind is already haunted. No Ghost can be more spiritual than his own thoughts, or more spectral than the world around him. No revelation of a particular crime can rival the revelation lately made to him of sin in the most holy place—the seat of virtue itself and heavenly purity. He may acknowledge the ties of filial obedience and the duty of revenge, but there is no place, nor obligation to hold, no world to which it may be attached, no faith or interest strong enough within him to give it vitality, no fruit of good result to be looked for without. The place is occupied:

"For where the greater malady is fixed The lesser scarce is felt."

When Hamlet says, "There is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so," he confesses himself an idealist—that is, one to whom ideas are not images or opinions, but the avenues of life. They garner up happiness and they store the harvest of pain; they make the "majestical roof fretted with golden fire" and the "pestilential cloud." The basis on which Hamlet's happiness had rested had been suddenly removed, and with the sanctity of the past the promise of the future had disappeared; the sky and the earth. He could say to his mother:

"Du hast sie zerstoert Die schoene Welt;"

but the new world is built of the same materials—that is, absorbing ideas. The shadow descends till it measures the former brightness; the revulsion is as great as the enthusiasm.

IV.

Why, then, does he accept the mission of the Ghost? To answer this fully we must accompany him to the platform.

In this scene Hamlet exhibits in perfection all the elements of courage—coolness, determination, daring. He is singularly free from excitement; and this is not because he is absorbed in his own thoughts, for he easily falls into conversation, and treats the first subject that comes to hand with his usual felicity and fulness, rising from the private instance to a public law, and applying it to large and larger groups of facts till his father's spirit stands before him. Thrilled and startled he pauses not, "harrowed with fear and wonder like Horatio on the previous night, but at once addresses it, as he said he would, though hell itself should gape." No more dignified rebuke ever shamed terror from the soul than Hamlet administers to his panic-stricken friends, and when they would forcibly withhold him from following the Ghost, the steady determination with which he draws his sword is marked by the play upon words:

"By Heav'n, I'll make a ghost of him that lets me."

In the presence of his father the old life is rekindled within his filial awe and affection, unquestioned obedience, daring resolve. He will "sweep to his revenge,"

"And thy commandment all alone shall live Within the book and volume of my brain, Unmixed with baser matter."

And this commandment had forbidden him to taint his mind against his mother.

But what is his first exclamation when he is released from physical horror, and his thoughts regain the living world? It is

"O! most pernicious woman!"

This singular phrase is one of Shakespeare's final touches, as does not appear in the quarto of 1603; and it marks, therefore, his deliberate intention, and is of the highest significance. He who will hereafter be so often amazed at his own forgetfulness has already forgotten.

When his friends reappear, Hamlet is in a half-ironical humourous and assuming an astonishing superiority over ghost and mortal alike informs them—

"It is an honest ghost, that let me tell you."

But when this honest ghost plays sepulchral tricks, Hamlet shows small respect to it, and at last, in a tone of almost command, cries—

"Rest! rest! perturbed spirit!"

Does Hamlet slight the command of the Ghost? By no means. He never repudiates it or even calls it in question. There is no hesitation, cavil, or debate in the acceptance of it as a duty. But the purpose cools. It cools even on the platform. What passes within him is hardly a process of thought, otherwise some intimation of it would be given in his numerous self-communings. But there is a process prior to thought in which the relations of things are felt before they are defined, and a conclusion is reached, and a disposition decided, without the mediation of the reason. There is a vague attraction this way or that, a blind forecast and correlation of issues, and the whole being is so influenced that, while there is no register of result in the memory, there is a direction of the will and a determination of conduct. From the shadow of the future that passes thus before his spirit he shrinks averse. To scramble for a throne—to lord it over such a crew—to be linked to them as by chains—to return to that polluted Court—to be the centre of intrigues and hatreds—and for what? To leave the darker deeper evil untouched. Some process such as this may account for the change from "sweeping to his revenge" to

"The time is out of joint;—O cursed spite! That ever I was born to set it right!"

In the meantime, in the well-lit chambers of consciousness, no note is taken of this shadowy logic. This may appear paradoxical: but the last of the changes from love to indifference, from faith to doubt, is the avowal of change. When the ties of habit and tradition are inwardly outgrown, we bend and intend with our whole being in a new direction without the purpose or even the desire to move. So Hamlet silently evades the obligation he so readily undertakes, and sinks back into that more powerful interest that almost at once regains possession of his mind. Still, before he quits the scene of this ghastly disclosure, he resolves to counterfeit madness—and this for two reasons: he will seem (to himself) to be conspiring, and he will gain a license to speak his mind without offence. This is the only use to which he puts this mask of madness, as Coleridge has remarked. But why should he instinctively seek to gain more latitude of speech? Because since the marriage of his mother he had suffered from an enforced silence with regard to the proceedings of the Court, as he distinctly tells us in the first soliloquy—

"But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue!"

From his first utterances after he had left the platform, we at once infer that the mission of the Ghost had failed. There is nothing that Hamlet would sooner part with "than his life." There is, therefore, no prospect before his mind, no awakening energy, no latent enterprise. With what relief, on the contrary, does he turn from the real to the ideal world! How cordially does he welcome the players, and how gracefully, so that we seem for the first time to make acquaintance with his natural tone and manner. Here at least is man's world, whose reality can never be undermined. He plies them with questions, indulges in literary criticism, and asks for a recitation. Suddenly he sees tears in the actors' eyes. He hurries them away, and when he is alone breaks out—

"Oh, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!"

He is jealous of the players' tears. Here again is no debate, but simply surprise at his own apathy. He tries to lash himself to fury but fails, and falls back on the practical test he is about to apply to the guilt of the king which he must appear to doubt, or this pseudo-activity would be too obviously superfluous.

In the interval between the instruction to the players and the play, Hamlet's mind, unless absorbed by some strong preoccupation, would naturally turn to the issue of the plot; and he would reveal, if he admitted us to the secret workings of his mind, if not resolution, at least irresolution, something to mark the vacillation of which we hear so much. But we find that the whole matter has dropped from his mind, and that he has drifted back to the theme of—

"Oh! that this too too solid flesh would melt!"

It is now recast more in the tone of deliberate thought than of excited feeling: he asks not which is best for him, but which is "nobler in the mind,"—an impersonal, a profoundly human question, which so fascinates our attention that we forget its irrelevance to the matter in hand or what we assume to be the matter in hand. It is as if he had never seen the Ghost. In his profound preoccupation he speaks of the "bourne from which no traveller returns," and of "evils that we know not of," although the Ghost had told him "of sulphurous and tormenting flames." Hamlet muses, "To sleep! perchance to dream,—ay, there's the rub," but the Ghost had said—

"I am thy father's spirit, Doomed for a certain term to walk the night, And, for the day, confined to fast in fires."

It is plain that the "traveller" that had returned was not present at all to his mental vision nor his tale remembered. In his former meditation he had accepted the doctrine of the church; here he interrogates the human spirit in its still place of judgment; and he gives its verdict with a sigh of reluctance—

"Thus conscience does make cowards of us all."

Considering that this and the succeeding lines occur at the end of a soliloquy on suicide,—that there is not only the absence of any reference to the ghostly action, but positive proof that the subject was not present to his thoughts, it is nothing less than astonishing that this passage should be quoted as Hamlet's witness to his own "irresolution." He would willingly take his own life; conscience forbids it; therefore conscience makes us cowards: and then with a still further generalization he announces the opposition of thought and resolution, causing the failure of

"enterprises of great pith and moment."

Now the only enterprise on which lie was engaged—the testing of the king's conscience—was in a fair way of success, and did, in fact, ultimately succeed.

The scene with Ophelia that immediately follows is the development of another theme in the first soliloquy, "Frailty! thy name is woman." Ophelia is inseparably connected with the queen in Hamlet's mind. She is a Court maiden, sheltered, guarded, cautioned, and, as we see in the warnings of Polonius and Laertes, cautioned in a tone that is suggestive of evil. What scenes she must have witnessed—the confusion on the death of the king, the exclusion of Hamlet from the throne, the marriage of the queen to the usurper! Yet she takes it all quite sweetly and subserviently. She is as docile to events as she is to parental advice. To such a one every circumstance is a fate, and she bows to it, as she bows to her father: "Yes, my lord, I will obey my lord." She denies Hamlet's access to her though he is in sorrow; though he has lost all, she will "come in for an after loss." One would rather leave her blameless in the sweetness of her maiden prime and the pathos of her end, but to place her, as some do, high on the list of Shakespeare's peerless women fastens upon Hamlet unmerited reproach. There is a love that includes friendship, as religion includes morality, and such was Portia's for Bassanio. There is a love whose first instinctive movement is to share the burden of the loved one, and such was Miranda's love for Ferdinand. And there is a love that reserves the light of its light and the perfume of its sweetness for the shadowed heart and the sunless mind. How would Cordelia have addressed this king and queen—how would she have aroused the energy of Hamlet and rehabilitated his trust, with that voice, soft and low indeed, but firmer than the voice of Cato's daughter claiming to know her husband's cause of grief! As Hamlet talks to Ophelia, you perceive that the marriage of his mother is more present to him than the murder of his father. He discourses on the frailty of woman and the corruption of the world; "Go to, it hath made me mad. We will have no more marriages."

The play is acted. The king is "frighted with false fire," and Hamlet is left with the feeling of a dramatic success and the proof of his uncle's guilt. He sings snatches of song. Horatio falls in with his mood. "You might have rhymed," he says. The only effect of the confirmation of the ghost's story, as at its first hearing, is a fresh blaze of indignation against his mother. When Polonius has delivered his message that the queen would speak with him, Hamlet presently says, "Leave me, friend;" and then his mind clouds like the mind of Macbeth before he enters the chamber of Duncan—

"'Tis now the very witching time of night, When churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out Contagion to this world: now could I drink hot blood, And do such bitter business as the day Would quake to look on."

As he passes to the Queen's closet in this tense and dangerous mood, he sees the king on his knees. His brow relaxes in a moment; he stops, looks curiously at him, and says, familiarly—

"Now might I do it, pat, now he is praying."

He did not mean to do it, because he was on his way to his mother's closet, but some reason must be found. The word "praying" suggests it. "This would be scanned;" and he scans it, and decides to leave him for another day. As he enters the closet to speak the words "like daggers," his quick decisive gesture and shrill peremptory tones alarm the queen. She rises to call for help; he seizes her roughly: "Come, come, and sit you down." Nothing can mark Hamlet's awful resentment more than his persistence through two interruptions that would have unnerved the bravest, and checked the most relentless spirit. As he looks at his mother there is that in his countenance bids her cry aloud for assistance. There is a movement behind the arras. Hamlet lunges at once. Is it the king? No; it is but Polonius. Had it been the king, it would not have diverted him from his purpose. He is no more afraid of killing than he is afraid of death, and is as hard to arrest in his reproof of his mother as in his talk with his father:

"Leave wringing of your hands; peace, sit you down."

His mother confesses her guilt. Hamlet is not appeased. He vilifies her husband with increasing vehemence; the Ghost rises as if to protect the queen. "Do not forget," he cries, although the king's name was at that moment on Hamlet's lips in terms of bitterest contempt. But it was understood between the two spirits that it was the queen's husband and not his father's murderer that he was thus denouncing. After the disappearance of the ghost, he turns again to his mother; and on leaving her almost reluctantly, without further punishment, asks pardon of his own genius—"Forgive me this my virtue," more authoritative to Hamlet than a legion of spirits.

This scene is the spiritual climax of the play, and from it the whole tragedy directly proceeds. The death of Polonius leads on the one side to the madness of Ophelia, on the other to the revenge of Laertes and the final catastrophe. Hamlet's apathy at the death of Polonius is of the same character as his oblivion of the ghost's command, and has the same origin. For there is no apathy like that of an over-mastering passion, whether it be love or jealousy, or a new faith, or a terrible doubt. It draws away the life from other duties and interests, and leaves them pale and semi-vital. Men thus possessed acknowledge the duties they evade, let slip occasion, are "lapsed in time and passion," and are surprised at their own oblivion.

This happens again to Hamlet as he is leaving Denmark. His own inaction is flashed back upon him by the sight of the gallant array of Fortinbras, and his first words—

"How all occasions do inform against me,"

disclose that the duty of revenge has its obligations and sanctions, not in the inward but the outward world; not in the genius of the man—secret, individual, detached—but in the outward mind of inherited opinion and ancestral creed, that we share with others in unreflecting fellowship. The world has charge of it, and reflects it back upon him new in the actor's tears, and now—

"In this army of such mass and charge, Led by a delicate and tender prince."

This speech must be read, like a Spartan despatch, on the [Greek: skutale] or counterpart of Hamlet's personality. He begins, as after the player's recitation, with a confession, and ends with an excuse. He is startled into an avowal, which he qualifies by a subtle after-thought—"What is a man," he cries, who acts as I have acted, who allows

"That capability and god-like reason, To fust in him unused?"

"A beast, no more." But as he looks at Fortinbras and his soldiers, another thought strikes him. These men act because they do not pause to think. I must have been thinking, not too little, but too much; and with that he turns short round upon his first confession, escapes from the charge of "bestial oblivion," and takes refuge in an imaginary "thinking too precisely on the event;" which indeed, as he remembers, had more than once prevented him taking his own life. But he condemns himself without cause; he cannot now return to that earlier stage of unreasoning activity in appointed paths, and the joy and grace of unconscious obedience.

When Hamlet returns from England, he takes Horatio apart to recount his adventures and unfold the plot of the king; but before he utters a word of this his settled mood is revealed to us in the graveyard scene. Hamlet, ever prone to belittle the world, is not loth to watch the making of a grave. There is the limit and boundary of what can be done or suffered; there the triumph is ended, and there the enmity is stayed. He advances step by step to look closely at the ruins of mortality; to slight the great names of kings and follow heroes to the dust. As he sees the skull tossed out of the grave, the king is already dead to him. "How the knave jowls it to the ground, as if it were Cain's jawbone, that did the first murder. This might be the pate of a politician, which this ass now o'erreaches; one that would circumvent God, might it not?" He is not satisfied till he takes the skull in his hand, and is sarcastic on beauty and festive wit, and the base uses to which we may come; when, from the other side, the procession of Ophelia advances. The grace and allurement of Ophelia had awakened in the imaginative Hamlet a feeling stronger and warmer indeed, but of the same relation to his capacity of loving as that of Romeo for Rosaline, and as easily lost in the glow or shadow of a deeper passion. That it was without depth and sacredness is plain from his delighting to ridicule and torment her father, and from his careless and equivocal jesting with her at the play. But though not a deep experience, it was of a quality different from that of other life. And the death of Ophelia had gathered into one the records of the hours of love; the first and the last; the meetings and the partings; the gifts, and flowers, and snatches of song. On these tender memories the hollow clamour of Laertes breaks with a discord so intolerable that Hamlet, who had with his usual reserve received the news of her death with the cold exclamation, "What! the fair Ophelia!" suddenly breaks into a fury and leaps into her grave.

* * * * *

In this study of Hamlet in relation to the ghost-story, we have seen that the effect, both of the first recital and of its subsequent confirmation, was to whet his mind against his mother; and that the passages in which this is expressed are among the final touches of the master; that the deed of revenge is only flashed upon him from without; and that, in the intervals between such awakenings of memory, he relapses to the thought-sickness of the first soliloquy; that on the only occasion when the bitterness of his sorrow leads him to meditate self-destruction, there is no question of the ghost, the murder, or the king; that the only ungovernable bit of fury is in the presence of his mother; and that from this scene the drama is developed, and the final catastrophe ensues.

V.

Supposing this "preoccupation" proved, what is the particular value and significance of the fact? Before we can answer this we must set the character of Hamlet in this new light clearly before us.

Shakespeare gives to him the rare nobility of feeling with the keenness of personal pleasure and pain, the presence or absence of moral beauty. He is one to whom public falsehood is private affliction, to whom goodness in its purity, truth in its severity, honour in its brightness, are the only goods worth a man's possessing, and the rest but a dream and the shadow of a dream. Hamlet bears his private griefs with proud composure. We have no lamentation on the death of his father, on the defection of Ophelia, on his exclusion from the throne. Among the images of horror and distress that crowd upon his mind in his mother's closet there is one on which he is silent then, and throughout the play, and that is her heartless desertion of his cause, as natural successor to the crown. To make it entirely clear that we have here no type of morbid weakness and excess, but the portrait of a representative man, we have only to look at the careful way in which all the other characters are touched and modelled so as to allow and enhance Hamlet's superiority, This is true even of Horatio. We have already remarked that in their scenes with the ghost the manhood of Hamlet is of a higher strain and dignity. And not only in resolution, but in that other manly virtue of self-reliance, his superiority is incontestable. Horatio follows Hamlet at a distance as Lucilius follows Brutus, content if from time to time he may stand at his side. Whatever is Hamlet's mood he reflects it, for to him Hamlet is always great. Horatio never questions, presumes not to give advice, echoes the scorn or laughter of his friend, is equally contemptuous of the king, and, as he never urges to action, is, if his friend is supposed to procrastinate, accomplice in his delay. Hamlet detaches himself from the world and follows his own bent; he will admit no guidance, and be subject to no dictation. He is not the man to be hag-ridden like Macbeth, or humoured into remorseful deeds like Brutus. The strong dramatic feature of his character, the secret of his attraction on the stage, is his pure and independent personality. Who has a word of solace from him, but when does he claim it? Who leaves any mark or dint of intellectual impact on that firm and self-determined mind? And if he is superior to Horatio, how much more to Laertes? Had Shakespeare wished to exalt the quality of resolution at Hamlet's expense, he would not have chosen so ignoble a representative of it as this man. A true son of Polonius, a prater of moral maxims, while he is all for Paris and its pleasures; violent, but weak; who, when he is told of the tragic and untimely death of his sister, can find nothing better to say than—

"Too much of water, hast thou, dear Ophelia?"

who, like Aufidius, has the outward habit and encounter of honour, but is a facile tool of treacherous murder in the hands of the king. Compare the conduct of the two when they are brought into collision, and the final impression they leave. The readiness with which Hamlet undertakes to fence for his uncle's wager is one of the most surprising strokes in the play. What! with the foil in his hand, no plot, no project, not even a word, not a look between him and Horatio that the occasion might be improved! What absolute freedom from the malice which in another mind is preparing his death. The treachery of Laertes is the more odious in this, that the success of his plot depends on the generous confidence of his victim. Polonius is handled in the same way with special reference to Hamlet. His thinking is marked by slowness and insincerity, and when he comes in contact with the rapid current of Hamlet's mind he is benumbed; he can only mutter, "If this is madness, there is method in it." What little portable wisdom was given to him in the first Act is soon withdrawn—he stammers in his deceit, and the old indirectness having no material of thought to work upon becomes a circumlocution of truisms. As the play proceeds he is made, as if with a second intention, more and more the antithesis, as he is the antipathy, of the prince. It is the careful portrait of what Hamlet would hate—a remnant of senile craft in the method with folly in the matter—a shy look in the dull and glazing eye, that insults the honesty of Hamlet as much as the shrivelled meaning with its pompous phrase insults his intelligence. So with the other characters; they are all made to justify his demeanour towards them. The queen is heard to confess her guilt, Ophelia is seen to act as a decoy; his college friends attempt his death.

In as far then as Hamlet is right in his verdicts, blameless in his aims, lofty in his ideal, and just in his resentment, he is a representative man; and we have not the study of a special affliction, but the fundamental drama of the soul and the world. This, whatever we may call it, was the work at which Shakespeare laboured so long, and for which he withdrew Hamlet from time to time for special study, every fresh touch telling in this direction.

VI.

How far is such an interpretation consonant with the genius and method of Shakespeare? Certainly I should hardly have found courage to add another to the many studies of Hamlet had it not been for the hope of bringing out a characteristic of our great national poet that is rather unobtrusive than obscure. I mean a singular unworldliness of thought and feeling; a cherished idealism; an inborn magnanimity. Not the unworldliness of the study and the cloister, or the other-worldliness of such poets as Dante and Milton, but the unworldliness of a man of the world, the idealism that is closely allied with humour. And it is in this union and not elsewhere that the "breadth" of Shakespeare, of which we hear so much, is found. This unworldliness is elusive, ubiquitous, full of disguise. Now it is militant, and now observant; now it is fastidious in its scorn, and now it is piercing in its dissection; now it is satire, and now it is melancholy. He gives the most knightly chivalry of friendship to a merchant, and the most exquisite fidelity of service to a fool, and makes the ingrained worldliness of Cleopatra die before her love. He not only scatters through his pages rebukes of the arrogance of power and the more pitiable pride of wealth, but makes his kings deride their own ceremonies and mock their own state. Who has not observed the easy and effortless way in which his heroes and heroines move from one station to the other, from authority to service like Kent, from obscurity to splendour like Perdita, or to the greenwood from the palace like Rosalind. The change affects their happiness no more than the change of their position in the sky affects the brightness of the stars. It is all so truthful and clear that we grow more simple as we read. Lear utters but one cry of joy, and that is when he is entering a prison with Cordelia:

"Come, let's away to prison! We two alone will sing like birds in a cage;"

while the Queen of France has just said:

"For thee, oppressed king, am I cast down, Myself could else outfrown false fortune's frown."

In these two lines the magnanimity of Shakespeare is pure, unveiled, as he gives us the last words of his favourite heroine: we must read them backwards and forwards to catch the portrait they enclose. We see the unconscious elevation of Cordelia's mind, not so much superior as invulnerable to mortal ills; we see this dignity and lovely pride cast down by pity and love, and then in answer to Lear's troubled and anxious look we hear in measured and steadfast tones the reassurance of perfect peace.

Remark too Shakespeare's habit of looking upon the world as a masque or pageant, not to be treated with too much respectful anxiety as if it were as real as ourselves. He who can give so perfectly the texture of common life, the solidities of common sense, likes to wave his wand over the domain of sturdy prose and incontrovertible custom, and to show how plastic it is, and how easily pierced, and how readily transformed. He has a malicious pleasure in confusing the boundaries of nature and fancy, and mocking the purblind understanding. In the "Midsummer Night's Dream" we have an ambiguous and bewildering light, with the horizon always shifting, and the boundaries of fact and fable confused with an inseparable mingling of forms; both outwardly, as when Theseus enters the forest on the skirts of the fairy crew; and inwardly in the memories of the lovers. And we are expressly told after the enchantment of the "Tempest" that this summary dealing with the solid world was not merely by way of entertainment but was a presentation of truth. And Macbeth, after grasping all that life could offer of tangible reward or palpable power, pronounces it

"such stuff as dreams are made of."

No doubt something will be said on the other side, of Shakespeare's broad and indulgent humanity, and of his toleration even of vice itself when it is convivial and amusing. It should be remembered, however, that his comedies while more realistic are not so real as his tragedies. They are, as he himself insists, entertainments; to which jovial sensuality, witty falsehood, and even hypocrisy when it is not morose are admitted, as diverting in their very aberration from the mean rule of life. So that a touch of rascality is a genuine element in comedy, as a touch of danger in sport, and the provocation of the moral sense is part of the fun. But they are all under guard. The moment they pass a certain boundary and break into reality, the moment that intemperance leads to disorder, and vice to suffering, as in real life, then suddenly Harry turns upon Falstaff, or Olivia on Sir Toby, and vice is called by its right name.

And as life awakens and reality enters, either the grace or the sentiment or the passion of unworldliness is more and more distinctly present. And in the tragedies even the pleasant vices are seen as part of a world-wide corruption that wrongs, debases, and betrays. Shakespeare has painted every phase of antagonism to the world, from the pensive aloofness of Antonio to the impassioned misanthropy of Timon. Every excited feeling emits light into the dark places of the earth, and every suffering is a revelation of more than its own injury. It is as if the soul, fully aroused, became aware by its own light of the oppression and injustice abroad upon the earth.

But there is a more vague and general disaffection to the world than is the outcome of any particular experience. It may be called a spiritual discontent which few have felt as a passion, but many have known as a mood: when that average goodness of human nature which we have found so companionable, and to which we have so pleasantly adapted ourselves, becomes "very tolerable and not to be endured;" when the world seems to be made of our vices, and our virtues seem to be looking on, or if they enter into the fray are too tame and conventional for the selfish fire and unscrupulous industry of their rivals; and when to our excited sensibility there is a taint in the moral atmosphere, and we long to escape if only to breathe more freely. This is more than a mood with Shakespeare, and is present in those slight but distinctive touches that mark the unconscious intrusion of character in an artist's work; and is frankly confessed in one of his Sonnets:—-

"Tired with all these; for restful death I cry; As to behold desert a beggar born, And needy nothing drest in jollity, And purest faith unhappily forsworn..... Tired with all these, from, these would I be gone."

We find, then, scattered through the dramas of Shakespeare a disaffection to the world as deep-grained as it is comprehensive; and we find the various elements of it—the contempt of fortune, the ideal virtue, the disinterested passion, the mysticism, the fellowship with the oppressed, the distaste of the world's enjoyment and the weariness of its burden—concentrated in Hamlet for full and exhaustive study; thus presenting what I have called the interior or fundamental drama of the soul and the world.

But the tragedy of "Hamlet" includes more than this. It is not merely the doom of suffering on a soul above a certain strain, still less is it the accidental death of a sluggard in revenge; it is the implication of a noble mind in the intrigues and malignities of a world it has renounced. In vain Hamlet contracts his ambition till it is bounded by a nutshell; he is ordered to strike for a throne. No abnegation clears him from entanglement. The world permits not his escape, but drags him back with those crooked hands of which Dante speaks, which pierce while they hold. This is the tragedy in all its fulness, the involution of the inward and outward drama to the immense advantage of both. For while the spiritual agony of Hamlet gives an incomparable dignity to the ghost-story, yet by the very interruptions and checkings and crossings of it through the accidents and oppositions of the plot, its physiognomy is more distinctly and delicately revealed. Instead of the majestic but monotonous declamation of Timon, we have every variety of that ironical humour (indicating some yet unconquered province of the soul) that guards and embalms the purer strength of feeling, keeps it airy and spiritual, and frees it from moan and heaviness. Here we have no insistance on suffering, no literary heart-breaks, no dilettante pessimism; but those indefinable harmonies of freedom and law, of the ascendency of the soul and the sovereignty of fate, of Nature and the spaces of the mind, that in the works of the great masters represent, if they do not explain, the mystery of life.

The religion of Hamlet is that faith in God which survives after the extinction of the faith in man. Losing the light of human worth and dignity through which, alone the soul can reach to the idea of what is truly divine, and with it the link between earth and heaven, Hamlet's religion is reduced to its elements again; to the vague and fragmentary hints of Nature, and instincts of the spirit; to intimations of limitless power, of mysterious destiny, of a "something after death," of a "divinity that shapes our ends;" and with these, gleams of a transcendent religion of humanity, for devotion to which he was suffering; and on the other side, binding him to the stage-plot, relics of childish superstition, half-beliefs, inherited opinions, "our circumstance and course of thought," which he adopted when he pleased,—as, for instance, when he feared lest he should dismiss the murderer to heaven, or half-believed that his blameless father was tormented in sulphurous flames for having endured a horrible death. But however obscure and indefinite the religion of Hamlet may be, and partly because it is so, and hence of universal experience, it adds reach and depth to his struggle with the world. His soul flies out of bounds and away in airy liberty on these excursions to the vast unknown, and escapes at last victorious with the light through the darkness of conscious immortality, and the lamp in his hand of "the readiness is all." There is always a certain vacuity in the positive or realistic treatment of passion, in which it is confined to the area of mortality, and after a sultry strife delivered over to the mercy of its enemies. But the world cannot so beset and beleaguer the soul as to block up the access and passage of invisible allies, or intercept the communications of infinite strength and infinite charity, or follow to its distant haunts and inaccessible refuges the migrations of thought—

"In the hoar deep to colonize."

FRANKLIN LEIFCHILD.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] "To see Lear acted, to see an old man tottering about the stage with a walking-stick, turned out of doors by his daughters in a rainy night, has nothing in it but what is painful and disgusting."—Lamb's Essays.

[4] "Shakspere: His Mind and Art," p. 96.

[5] "A Study of Shakespeare," p. 166.



PANISLAMISM AND THE CALIPHATE.[6]

I use the word "Panislamism," simply because it is one of the political catchwords of the day. The prefix Pan is supposed to have some great and terrible significance. It is not long since Europe exerted all her power to save Islam from the jaws of Panslavism, but now that a Pan has been added to Islam, it has become in its turn the bugbear of Europe. It is even supposed that England was fighting with this new monster, when she put down the revolution in Egypt. England could never have so far forgotten her liberality as to take up arms against Islam, but Panislam must be crushed by a new crusade. Such is the wondrous power of a prefix. So far as I can understand the mysterious force of this word, it is designed to express the idea that the scattered fragments of the Mohammedan world have all rallied around the Caliph to join in a new attack upon Christendom, or that they are about to do so. There is just enough of truth in this idea to give it currency, and to make it desirable that the whole truth should be known. Most of the mistakes of Europe in dealing with the Ottoman empire, during the present century, have come from a misapprehension of the forces of Islam, and the position, and influence of the Sultan of Turkey. There is danger now of such a misapprehension as may lead to the most unfortunate complications.

The first essential point, which must always be kept in mind by those who would understand the movements of the Mohammedan world, is the exact relation of the Ottoman Sultans to the Caliphate. The word Caliph means the vicar or the successor of the Prophet. The origin and history of the Caliphate is well known, but it may be well to give a brief resume of it here. During the life of the Prophet it was his custom to name a Caliph to act for him when he was absent from Medina. During his last illness he named his father-in-law, Abou-Bekir, and after his death this appointment was confirmed by election. Omar, Osman, and Ali were successively chosen to this office, and these four are recognized by all orthodox Mohammedans as perfect Caliphs. The Persians and other Shiites recognize only Ali. It is said that the Prophet predicted that the true Caliphate would continue only thirty years. His words are quoted: "The Caliphate after me will be for thirty years. After this there will be only powers established by force, usurpation, and tyranny." The death of Ali and the usurpation of Mouawiye came just thirty years after the death of the Prophet, and this was the end of the true and perfect Caliphate. The sixty-eight imperfect Caliphs who followed were all of the family of the Prophet, although of different branches, but they fulfilled the demand of the sacred law, that the Caliph must be of the family of Koreish, who was a direct descendant from Abraham. Mouawiye and the Ommiades, fourteen in all, were of the same branch as Osman, the third Caliph. The Abassides of Kufa, Bagdad, and Cairo, fifty-four in all, descended from Abas, the great-uncle of the Prophet. There were many others who at different times usurped the name of Caliph, but these seventy-two are all who are recognized as universal Caliphs. Mohammed XII., the last of these died in obscurity in Egypt in 1538. The power of the Caliphs gradually decayed, until for hundreds of years it was little more than nominal, and exclusively religious.

The claim of the Ottoman Sultans to the Caliphate dates back to the time of Sultan Selim I. This Sultan conquered Egypt and over-threw the dynasty of the Mamelukes. He found at Cairo the Caliph Mohammed XII., and brought him as a prisoner to Constantinople. He was kept at the fortress of the Seven Towers for several years, and then sent back to Egypt with a small pension. While Selim was in Cairo, the Shereeff of Mecca presented to him the keys of the holy cities, and accepted him as their protector. In 1517 Mohammed XII. also made over to him all his right and title to the Caliphate. This involuntary cession, and the voluntary homage of the Shereeff of Mecca are the only titles possessed by the Ottoman Sultans to the Caliphate, which, according to the word of the Prophet himself, must always remain in his own family. If the Ommiades and the Abassides were imperfect Caliphs, it is plain that the Ottoman Sultans must be doubly imperfect. It was easy, however, for an all-powerful Sultan to obtain an opinion from the Ulema that his claim was well-founded; and it has been very generally recognized by orthodox Mohammedans, in spite of its essential weakness. When the time comes, however, that the Ottoman Sultans are no longer powerful, it will be still more easy to obtain an opinion that the Shereeff of Mecca, who is of the family of the Prophet, is the true Caliph.

The Ottoman Sultans have also assumed the other and more generally used title of Imam-ul-Mussilmin, which may be roughly translated Grand Pontiff of all the Moslems, although, strictly speaking, the functions of an Imam are not priestly. This title is based upon an article of the Mohammedan faith which says—"The Mussulmans ought to be governed by an Imam, who has the right and authority to secure obedience to the law, to defend the frontiers, to raise armies, to collect tithes, to put down rebels, to celebrate public prayers on Fridays, and at Beiram," &c. This article of faith is based upon the words of the Prophet—"He who dies without recognizing the authority of the Imam of his time, is judged to have died in ignorance and infidelity."

The law goes on to say—"All Moslems ought to be governed by one Imam. His authority is absolute, and embraces everything. All are bound to submit to him. No country can render submission to any other."

Under this law the Ottoman Sultans claim absolute and unquestioning obedience from all Moslems throughout the world; but their right to this title rests upon the same foundation as that upon which is based the title of Caliph. The Prophet himself said, and the accepted law repeats, that the Imam-ul-Mussilmin must be of the family of Koreish. The Ottoman Sultans belong not only to a different family, but to a different race.

With this evident weakness in their title to the Caliphate, and the accompanying rank of universal Imam, it is a question of interest on what grounds the doctors of Mohammedan law have justified their claims, and how far these have been recognized.

In addition to the rights said to have been conferred by the Caliph Mohammed XII. and by the Shereef of Mecca upon Sultan Selim I., and by him transmitted to his posterity, the Mohammedan doctors make use of a very different argument. They say—

"The rights of the house of Othman are based upon its power and success, for one of the most ancient canonical books declares that the authority of a prince who has usurped the Caliphate by force and violence, ought not the less to be considered legitimate, because, since the end of the perfect Caliphate, the sovereign power is held to reside in the person of him who is the strongest, who is the actual ruler, and whose right to command rests upon the power of his armies."

This statement presents the real basis of the claims of the Sultans to the Caliphate. It is the right of the strongest. Any man who disputes it, does so at his peril; and, since 1517, the Ottoman Sultans have been able to command the submission of the Mohammedan world. Their title has not been seriously disputed.

But the title has this weak point in it. It is good only so long as the Sultan is strong enough to maintain it. It has not destroyed the rights of the family of Koreish. It only holds them in abeyance, until some one of that family is strong enough to put an end to the Turkish usurpation. The power of the Sultan does not depend upon the title, but the title depends upon his power. This is a point the political importance of which should never be overlooked.

We come now to our second question. How far is the claim of the Ottoman Sultans to the Caliphate now recognized in the Mohammedan world? Except with the Shiites, who have never acknowledged it, there is no open rebellion against it. But the decay of the Ottoman Empire during the last hundred years has been obvious to all the world. Not only has it been gradually dismembered, not only have many of its Mohammedan subjects been brought under the dominion of Christian Powers, and many of its Christian subjects set free, not only have its African possessions become practically independent, except Tripoli, but the house of Othman exists to-day, only because Christian Europe interfered to defend it against its own Mohammedan subjects. The house of Mohammed Ali would otherwise have taken its place. Again and again have the Sultans shown their inability to defend the frontiers of Islam. Since the advent of the present Sultan, the process of dismemberment has gone on more rapidly than ever.

The influence of these facts upon the Mohammedan world has been very marked. I cannot speak from personal knowledge of the people of India and Central Asia, but from the best information that I can obtain, I conclude that while they have lost none of their interest in Islam, while they are still interested in the fate of their Turkish brethren, they would not lift a finger to maintain the right of the Sultan to the Caliphate against any claimant of the family of the Prophet. The feeling of the Arabic-speaking Mohammedans is well known. Islam is an Arab religion; the Prophet was an Arab; the Caliph should be an Arab. The Ottoman Sultans are barbarian usurpers, who have taken and hold the Caliphate by force. The Arabs have been ready for open revolt for years, and have only waited for a leader of the house of the Prophet. Their natural leader would be the Shereef of Mecca; and it is understood that the Shereef who has just been deposed by the Sultan, as well as his predecessor who was mysteriously assassinated, was on the point of declaring himself Caliph. The new Shereef is a young man of the same family.

So far as the Turkish, Circassian, and Slavic Mohammedans are concerned, their interests are bound up with those of the Sultan. They do not distinguish between the Caliphate and the Sultanat. Their ruler is the Imam-ul-Mussilmin, their law is the Sheraat, their country is the Dar-Islam; and when they are fighting for their Sultan they are fighting for their faith. They know nothing of any other possible Caliph. But if a new Caliph should appear at Mecca, and declare the Sultan a usurper and a Kaffir, it is very doubtful whether they would stand by the Sultan. They would not know what to do.

Another element enters just now into the question of the Caliphate, of which so much has been written of late that it is only necessary to mention it here. The Mohammedan world is looking for the coming of the Mehdy. The time appointed by many traditions for his appearance has already come, the year of the Hedjira 1300. Other traditions, however, fix no definite time—they only say "towards the end of the world," and many impostors have already appeared at different times and places claiming to be the Mehdy. According to Shiite tradition, it is the twelfth Imam of the race of Ali who is to appear. At the age of twelve he was lost in a cave, where he still lives, awaiting his time. According to the Sunnis, the Mehdy is to come from Heaven with 360 celestial spirits, to purify Islam and convert the world. He will be a perfect Caliph, and will rule over all nations.

It is impossible for any Christian to speak with absolute certainty of the real feeling of Mohammedans; but it is evident that this expected Mehdy is talked of by Mohammedans everywhere, and that there is more or less faith in his speedy appearance. No one who anticipates his coming, can have any interest in the claims of the Sultan to be the Caliph. Should any one appear to fulfil the demands of the tradition, and meet with success in rousing any part of the Mohammedan world, the excitement would become intense, especially in Africa and Arabia. The claims of the Sultan would be repudiated at once. Still I think it probable that too much has been made of this Mehdy in Europe. I do not think that the Pachas of Constantinople have any more faith in his coming than Mr. Herbert Spencer has in the second coming of Christ. They only fear that some impostor may take advantage of the tradition to create division in the empire. This is the real danger.

It has been evident for many years that the Sultans have felt that their influence in the Mohammedan world was declining. They have seen that beyond their own dominions the Caliph has no real authority; that whatever influence they have depends upon the strength of their own empire. Abd-ul-Medjid and Abd-ul-Aziz seem to have had a pretty clear conception of their weakness, and of the necessity of restoring the vitality of the Ottoman empire, by the introduction of radical reforms. There is no reason to suppose that the Hatt-i-houmayoun and the other innumerable Hatts issued by these Sultans, were all intended simply to blind the eyes of Europe. None knew better than they that the empire must be reformed or lost. But they were Caliphs as well as Sultans, and what they would do as Sultans they could not do as Caliphs. The very nature of their claims to the Caliphate made them more timid. They could not execute the reforms which they promised, without encountering the opposition of the whole body of the Ulema, the most powerful and the best organized force in the empire. If they could have saved their empire by resigning the Caliphate, they might possibly have been willing to do it; but they were made to believe that in surrendering the Caliphate they would lose the support of the only part of the nation upon which they could fully depend. So they hesitated, promising much and doing little, raising hopes on one side which could never be forgotten, and raising fears on the other which they could not allay; seeing clearly the need of reform, but seeing no way in which to accomplish it. They could decide upon nothing, and drifted on until Abd-ul-Aziz was deposed and assassinated by his own ministers, and the empire was on the verge of ruin.

The next Sultan was overwhelmed by the burdens which fell upon him, and in a few months was deposed as a lunatic. Sultan Hamid came to the throne under these trying circumstances, and it seemed for a time that he might be the last of the Sultans. He was but little known, as he had been forced to live in retirement, and it was supposed that he would follow meekly in the steps of his predecessors; but it very soon became evident to those about him that he had a mind and a will of his own—more than this, that he had a policy which he was determined to carry out. A Sultan with a fixed policy was a new thing, and to this day Europe is somewhat sceptical about it; but it very soon became apparent to close observers at Constantinople. Sultan Hamid was determined to be first of all the Caliph, the Imam-ul-Mussilmin, and to sacrifice all other interests to this. His education had been exclusively religious, and in his retirement he had lived a serious life, associating much with the Ulema, who, no doubt, pointed out to him the vacillating policy of his predecessors, and the danger that there was that the Caliphate and the empire would be lost together. He determined to strengthen his empire by restoring the influence of the Caliphate, and rallying the Mohammedan world once more around the throne of Othman. Judged from a European standpoint, this policy is at once reactionary and suicidal. It ignores the fact that the Ottoman empire is dependent for its existence upon the good-will of Europe; that it has measured its strength with a single Christian Power, and been utterly crushed in a year. It ignores the principle that a government can never be strong abroad which is weak at home. It ignores the history of the last hundred years. It may be doubted whether it is a policy which can be justified from the standpoint of Islam. Turkey is the last surviving Mohammedan Power of any importance. Its influence depends upon its strength, and its strength upon the prosperity of its people, and this upon a wise and enlightened administration of the government. It would seem that the best thing the Sultan could have done for Islam, would have been not to excite the fears of Europe by the phantom of a Panislamic league, but to have devoted all his energies to the reformation of his government.

But Sultan Hamid chose the path of Faith rather than of Reason, and, however we may think the choice unwise, we are bound to treat it with respect. It is easy to say that it was a mere question of policy, and very bad policy; it certainly was, but I think we have good reason to believe that the Sultan was actuated by religious rather than political motives, that he is a sincere and honest Moslem, and feels that it is better to trust in God than in the Giaour. I have a sincere respect and no little admiration for Sultan Hamid. Had he been less a Caliph and more a Sultan, with his courage, industry, and pertinacity, he might have done for Turkey what he has failed to do for Islam. He might have revived and consolidated the empire. It is possible that he may do it yet, and should he attempt it he will have the sympathy of the world.

But thus far, having transferred the seat of government from the Porte to the Palace, having secured a declaration from the Ulema that his will is the highest law, and that as Caliph he needs no advice, he has sought, first of all, to make his influence felt in every part of the Mohammedan world, to revive the spirit of Islam, and to unite it in opposition to all European and Christian influences. Utterly unable to resist Europe by force of arms, he has sought to outwit her by diplomacy and finesse. I know of nothing more remarkable in the history of Turkey than the skill with which he made a tool of Sir Henry Layard. Sir Henry could not be bought; but he could be flattered and blinded by such attentions as no Ottoman Sultan ever bestowed upon any Ambassador before; and to accomplish this object, the Sultan did not hesitate to ignore all Mohammedan ideas of propriety. His demonstrations of friendship for Germany is another illustration of his diplomatic skill. But while ready to yield any point of etiquette to accomplish his ends, he has resisted to the last every attempt to induce him to do anything to repress or punish any development of Moslem fanaticism. All Europe combined could not force him to punish the murderer of Colonel Coumaroff, the secretary of the Russian Embassy, who was shot down in the street like a dog by a servant of the Palace; nor, so far as I know, has he ever suffered a Moslem to be punished for murdering a Christian.

His agents have done their best to rouse the Mohammedans of India and Central Asia. He has armed the tribes of Northern Africa against France, and encouraged them to resist to the end. He has given new life to Mohammedan fanaticism in Turkey. The change from the days of Abd-ul-Aziz is very marked. The counsellors of the Sultan are no longer the Ministers, but the astrologers, eunuchs, and holy men of the Palace. No Mussulman could now change his faith in Constantinople without losing his life. Firmans can no longer be obtained for Christian churches, and it is extremely difficult to obtain permission to print a Christian book, even in a Christian language. The greatest care is taken to seize books of every description in the Custom House. It is not long since the Life of Mr. Gladstone was seized as a forbidden book. It is a curious fact in this connection that the fanaticism of the Government is far in advance of the fanaticism of the people. There is no fear of the people, except as they are encouraged and pushed forward by those in authority. If left to themselves, Turks and Christians would have no difficulty in living together amicably.

The relation of the Sultan to the rebellion in Egypt is not perfectly clear, and probably never will be. In one sense he was no doubt the cause of it. It was a direct result of the agitation which his policy had roused. But it was not intended by Arabi to strengthen the power of a Turkish Caliph. It was originally anti-Turkish, and looked to the revival of the Arab Caliphate, as well as to the personal advantage of Arabi himself. The Sultan could not oppose it without exciting the enmity of those whom he most wished to conciliate, so he sought to control it and turn it to his own advantage. He gave Arabi all possible aid and support. There is no reason to suppose that Arabi and his friends were deceived by this; but it was for their interest to avoid a conflict with the Sultan as long as possible, and to get what aid from him they could. But for the intervention of England, Arabi would no doubt have won the game against the Turk. He might even have caused the downfall of the Sultan; for it is a well-known fact that so great was the enthusiasm of the Moslems in Syria and Arabia for Arabi, that they were with difficulty restrained by the Turkish authorities from breaking out into open rebellion. This spirit had been fostered by the Sultan; but it naturally turned, not to the Turkish Caliph, but to the successful Arab adventurer. Even in Asia Minor and Constantinople the enthusiasm for Arabi was universal, and had he been allowed to triumph unmolested, it seems probable the Sultan would have been forced either to unite with him in a crusade against Christendom, or to send an army to put him down. Either of these courses would have been fatal; for no Moslem army would have fought against Arabi under such circumstances, and as against Europe the Sultan could have accomplished nothing.

It is no doubt perfectly legitimate for a Caliph, especially for one whose title depends upon the strength of his sword, to stir up the enthusiasm of his people and attract their attention to himself as their leader. He cannot be blamed for improving every occasion to defend their rights and interfere in their behalf. If he is strong enough to do so, it is no doubt in full accord with the example and teaching of the Prophet that he should lead them against the infidels. It is not strange that a man of faith should be so dazzled by the possibility of such a crusade as to forget his own weakness. As he sits in his palace to-night,[7] and hears the roar of the guns announcing the great festival of Courban Beiram, and thinks that more than two hundred millions of the faithful are uniting with him in the sacrifice, and confessing their faith in the Prophet of whom he claims to be the successor and representative, it will be strange if he does not dream of what might be if he could but rally them round his throne; strange if he does not catch something of the inspiration of the Prophet himself, who, with God on his side, dared alone to face all Mecca, and with a few half-naked Arabs to brave the world. There is nothing in the Palace unfavourable to such a dream as this, and there will be nothing in the pomp and ceremony of the homage to be paid to him to-morrow morning to recall him from it. What a contrast it will be to come back from such a dream of universal dominion, and the triumph of the true faith, to the discussion of the sixty-first Article of the Treaty of Berlin and the rights of the Armenians! It is perfectly legitimate for a Caliph to have such dreams, and perfectly natural for him to prefer to try to realize them, rather than to give his attention to the reform of his empire; but without blaming the Caliph we may well doubt whether it is altogether wise for the Sultan of Turkey to indulge in such dreams.

I believe that it would be better not only for Turkey but for Islam also, if the Sultan would give up his doubtful title to the Caliphate, and pass it over to the descendant of the Prophet who is Shereef of Mecca. As for Turkey, this is the only hope of the empire; and the experience of the Pope of Rome has made it clear that the loss of temporal power tends rather to strengthen than to weaken a great religious organization. There is no inclination in any part of the world to persecute Mohammedans, or interfere in any way with their faith. Only a very small minority of them are under the government of the Sultan, and those who are not enjoy as much religious liberty as those who are. This is not from fear of the Sultan, but it is in accord with the spirit of the age, and the manifest interest of other Governments. As a Caliph cannot by any possibility restore the strength of the Ottoman empire, so a Sultan of Turkey cannot be the spiritual leader of millions who are not in any way under his control. I see no reason to suppose that the transfer of the Caliph to Mecca would in any way weaken the faith of Moslems or diminish their zeal. Mohammedans in India and in Russia show no more inclination to abandon their faith than those who reside at Constantinople under the shadow of the Caliph; on the contrary, there is more unbelief in Constantinople than there. What is more, there is every reason to believe that such a transfer would gratify the great majority of Mohammedans, probably a majority of those living in the Turkish Empire, certainly all the Arabic-speaking population. In one way or another this change is sure to come, however it may be resisted by the Sultan; the very effort that he has made to arouse the spirit of Islam has made it more apparent than before that he is really powerless to defend any Mohammedan country against aggression. He could do nothing for Tunis against France. He could do nothing for Arabi against England. The very encouragement that he gave in these cases was an injury to them. The Arabs are all ready to assert their rights to the Caliphate and defend them against the Sultan. If he does not surrender the title voluntarily, sooner or later they will take it by force, and that part of the empire along with it.