must be either saint or cynic; must belong either to God or to doubt forevermore. A blighted gentleness is as savage in the expression of its scorn as your born misanthropist or your natural villain; save that the hatred of the one is for vice, and cant, and cunning, of the other for credulity and virtue; save that the last is cruel in word and deed, the first in word alone. Yet Hamlet is less a cynic than a satirist, and less a satirist than a Nemesis. Though merciless in plucking the mask from a knave, a villain, or a fool, yet the dormant tenderness which underlies his character, flashes fitfully out through his interviews with his mother, Laertes and Polonius, as well as being steadily manifest in his unquestioning trust in Horatio after their reunion. For such a thorough political change has overshadowed Denmark, that their meeting is rather a spiritual reunion than an interview. By the inexorable logic of events, Hamlet is ranged against the throne, the conspicuous head and front of a moral opposition, an inevitable, though passive, rebel. If Horatio is loyal, no matter what their previous friendship, they are thenceforth foes. One must have lived through civil war to appreciate the dexterous nicety with which Hamlet feels his former friend. And yet this early association of excessive mistrust with excessive morbidity, inclines us to suspect that the subsequent shock of the Ghost was rather an arrest of the slow degeneration of fixed melancholy into madness, than an aggravation of antecedent lunacy. (Enter HORATIO, MARCELLUS, and BERNARDO.) Hor. Hail to your lordship. Ham. Hor. I am glad to see you: Horatio, or I do forget myself. The same, my lord, and your poor servant ever. Ham. Sir, my good friend, I'll change that name with you: And what make you from Wittenberg, Horatio? Marcellus ? Mar. My good lord – Ham. I am very glad to see you. Good But what, in faith, make you from Hor. A truant disposition good my lord. truant. But what is your affair in Elsinore? For the third time. And see the dark. hinting in the next line at the royal 'rouse and 'wassail;' at the orgies of the scandalous wedding - as if Horatio might possibly have come to share them. We'll teach you to drink deep ere you depart. Horatio instantly detects and answers the inuendo. My lord, I came to see your father's funeral. Ham. I pray thee, do not mock me, fellow Hor. student; I think it wedding. was to see my mother's Indeed, my lord, it follow'd hard upon. Even this little, from a man like Horatio, is enough; they are on the same side, rebels both. Quick as lightning the glance is given and returned; he can trust Marcellus and Bernardo too, and bares his heart to them with a fierce sigh of relief. Thrift, thrift, Horatio! the funeral baked meats Did coldly furnish forth the marriage Would I had met my dearest foe in Ere ever I had seen that day, Horatio. My father, methinks I see my father. Hor. O where, my lord? Ham. In my mind's eye, Horatio. Hor. I saw him once; he was a goodly King. Ham. He was a man, take him for all in all, This brief introduction to the main theme is inimitable. How exquisitely the ear is made to long for Horatio's blunt transition: My lord, I think I saw him yesternight. Ham. Saw! who? Hor. My lord, the King, your father. Ham. The King, my father! Hor. Season your admiration for awhile may deliver, Upon the witness of these gentlemen, This marvel to you. Instead of being unnerved by the story, the Prince is calm, collected, determined; cautious, reticent, and longing for night. He dismisses them with the stately courtesy which distinguishes him throughout the play; enjoining silence and promising to share their watch betwixt eleven and twelve. Once more on the Platform before the Castle, the poet's verse resumes the awful minor in which his tragic preludes are so often conceived. |