PRACTICAL LESSON OF THE PLAY.

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our attention to the objects of our senses, and our meditation on the workings of our minds,' by exhibiting the fate of a victim' to the want of that balance; but the far higher, more moral, more practical, more English, purpose, of teaching how a good man might triumph, though through death, over this worst of all enemies, this disease of the inner life traitorously conspiring with outward circumstances to betray him. I have heard it asserted by persons taking this commonly received view, that the Play of Hamlet has rather an immoral tendency, encouraging a despondent and despairing submission to fate and circumstances: and, admitting the premises, I do not see that it is easy to escape the conclusion. But I persuade myself that both Hamlet and Shakspeare can be successfully vindicated, if only we trace the whole course of the Play, the whole method of the Poet, from scene to scene, and act to act. Let us take Shakspeare himself for our guide, and then we may boldly go on, yet, at the same time, availing ourselves of the learning and wisdom of the different critics, and especially of Coleridge, knowing that dwarfs on the shoulders of giants see farther than the giants themselves.

Coleridge suggests to us at the outset, to consider the great significancy of the names of Shakspeare's Plays. Not only have such names as Tempest, Midsummer Night's Dream,* and Twelfth Night, a peculiar and characteristic fitness as the titles of the plays to which they severally belong, but they distinguish that class of plays in which "the total effect is produced by a co-ordination

*The name of Midsummer Night's Dream is the clue to every part of the Play. Each scene, each character, each intricacy of the plot will, I am bold to say, open to this master-key, if only in the hands of a tolerably thoughtful student.

C

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NOTICES OF HAMLET'S PREVIOUS LIFE.

of the characters, as in a wreath of flowers," from those like Coriolanus, Hamlet, or Othello, in which "the effect arises from the subordination of all to one, either as the prominent person, or the principal object." The old joke of the play of Hamlet, with the part of Hamlet omitted, is a good, though ludicrous, illustration of the truth and force of this observation, and especially with reference to this very play which has been thus selected as that which would give most point to the joke. In the study then of the character of Hamlet himself must we look to find the key to all the other characters, and to the whole scope and action of the piece. Hamlet is the centre round which the whole system revolves, and the minor orbs only become visible in the light of this sun. Goethe observes, that the first step towards an acquaintance with our hero's character is, to gather together from the different parts of the play in which they are scattered, all the notices of Hamlet's life before and up to the time at which the play opens. These are, in fact, more numerous and important than may at first appear: and if they be rightly used, we shall succeed in embodying such a distinct and lively image of Hamlet, as, in showing us what he is, will enable us to understand what he says and does after he comes before us. Only we must, in the investigation, look on Hamlet as a real flesh and blood man, and not as a Frankenstein, invented by Shakspeare in accordance with some mere theory of the moral and intellectual nature of man: and consequently we must look for, and discuss the hidden motives of his conduct, just as we should those of an actual man.

Hamlet then is the only son of the King of Denmark, at a period when Denmark is a powerful military state, showing its strength against England by sea, Poland by land, and Norway doubtless by both; and when the kings, though usually chosen according to their claim by birth, are yet elected; and when therefore the presump

SCENE OF THE ACTION.

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tive heir has special need and spur to distinguish himself, and prove his qualifications in the eyes of the nation. And these qualifications are not merely military, for the nation is not a horde of barbarian warriors, but a State which maintains its superiority as much by its policy as its arms. Indeed, so advanced is it in civilization, that though it has a powerful national Christian Church, the priests of which, though half yielding, half maintain their canons against the will of the crown, still the councillors of state and ambassadors are laymen, though not soldiers, as far as appears. In a word—the wars and treaties, the state councils and embassies, the players, the coroner's inquests and christian burials, the awakened wits of the peasants, the refinements of the courtiers, and the education of the young nobles finished at the German university or the French capital, all mark a state of advanced and vigorous national life, much like that which existed in Shakspeare's own day in England. Whether such a state of society has ever been actually found in Denmark is not the question; for it is one of the most undoubted rights of the Romantic Drama, that it shall be free from the laws of time and place, though subject ever to the no less real and binding, though very different, laws of the imagination. For the poetry of an imagination such as Shakspeare's is no less strictly obedient, than are history and geography, to the laws which reason prescribes to each. And the advantage for the purposes of the poet in thus creating an imaginary scene for the action of his drama is obvious: the actual civilization and social life of his own times have an ideal character given them, by being thrown back into, and attributed to another country in a bygone age. The distant and long past is always the ideal, and the golden age, whether our individual life, or that of the human race be in question : everything in it is softened, mellowed, glorified-in a word, poetical. And at the same time the poet is free to

arrange and modify all the circumstances of his scene, as may best suit the full development and exhibition of his characters, without interference from any well-known facts, which, because well-known, could not be omitted. from a picture of his own times without jarring with our sense of probability, although they only marred the completeness and effect of the poetic picture. The poet, like the chemist, studies nature not merely or chiefly in her own creations, but in those combinations which he himself frames by art, for the express purpose of experiment and illustration. Thus, to return to our play, it is one of its important features, full of consequence to the action, that the crown is elective. I have already pointed out that it gives importance to the personal character of the king and of his son. The former-I mean Hamlet's father-we become acquainted with in the Ghost, and in Hamlet's descriptions of him, as well as in various incidental circumstances; and we gather that he was a king, who, by his arms and his policy had maintained, if he did not create, the internal and external greatness of his kingdom. We see, from the gleams of ability which Polonius shows in his dotage, that he was once an astute and able counsellor, and consequently that the king ruled much by policy: we have mention of his personal prowess in his Polish wars, and his success in those with Norway: the utter contempt with which Hamlet speaks of his uncle in comparison with his father, contrasted with our knowledge of how able, though unprincipled, a man the uncle is, leads us to infer (after all allowance for Hamlet's prejudices) that the father was much more able: while we see from the language of the Ghost and of Hamlet, that he was a faithful and affectionate husband and father, fulfilling the least duties of domestic life with the dignity of a king and the delicacy of a gentleman, while his personal appearance was worthy of his whole character and demeanour. At the same time it is intimated that he was

not free from vices which, though we are not told what they were, were not concealed from the observation of his son: we might guess he had his brother's and his nation's love of drinking, and his son's passionate temper. Of Hamlet's mother we shall have more to say hereafter, but at present would observe, that up to the death of her first husband she had shown no disposition but that of devoted affection to him and to her son.

Fortes creantur fortibus et bonis, is the language of the modern physiologist as well as of the old poet; and we have dwelt thus at length on the character of Hamlet's father, and touched on that of his mother, that we may the better understand that of their son. There is no inheritance so precious, and none so secure, to the son who is worthy of it, as the character of a noble father. Nature and blood give him a natural aptitude to reflect his father's image; this is insensibly developed by the daily and hourly influence of his father's love and authority during childhood, during boyhood by the conscious imitation of habits and actions which impress him with constant respect for their dignity and greatness, and finally, in manhood by the deliberate study of the father's whole character, and the deliberate undertaking to re-produce it in himself; an undertaking which, by the death of his father, becomes a solemn duty not only to himself but to the world. Such a son of such a father is Hamlet, as he comes before us, at the age of thirty, when the Play opens. Birth and the court have given him the feeling and the manners, the quick sensibilities, and the quiet self-possession of a gentleman; the camp has called forth in him not only personal courage, but that soldier's intuitive sagacity which, on any sudden emergency, at once takes in the whole field of circumstances, and decides on the right thing to be done; and in the philosophic school of Wittenberg he has not only acquired the best intel