pressed into one, Goethe replies:] What these two persons are and do, it is impossible to represent by one. In such small matters we discover Shakespeare's greatness. This lightly stepping approach, this smirking and bowing, this assenting, wheedling, flattering, this whisking agility, this wagging of the tail, this allness and emptiness, this legal knavery, this ineptitude and insipidity,-how can they be expressed by a single man ? There ought to be a dozen of these people, if they could be had; for it is only in society that they are anything: they are society itself; and Shakespeare showed no little wisdom and discernment in bringing in a pair of them. Besides, they are needed as a couple that may be contrasted with the single, noble, excellent Horatio.

[Page 361.] Shakespeare introduced the travelling players with a double purpose. The player who recites the death of Priam with such feeling, in the first place, makes a deep impression on the prince himself; he sharpens the conscience of the wavering youth; and accordingly the scene becomes a prelude to that other, where, in the second place, the little play produces such effect upon the king. Hamlet sees himself reproved and put to shame by the player, who feels so deep a sympathy in foreign and fictitious woes; and the thought of making an experiment upon the conscience of his stepfather is in consequence suggested to him. What a royal monologue is that which ends the second act: 'O what a rogue and peasant

slave am I' &c.

[Page 364.] The repose and security of this old gentleman [Polonius], his emptiness and his significance, his exterior agreeableness and his essential tastelessness, his freedom and his sycophancy, his sincere roguery and pretended truth, should be represented in due elegance and proportions. This genuine, gray-haired, enduring, time-serving half knave should be shown in the most courtly style, which will be greatly helped by our author's somewhat coarse and rough strokes. He should speak like a book when prepared beforehand, and like a fool when in good humor,— insipid in order to chime in with every one, and always so conceited as not to observe when people are laughing at him.

[Page 365.] Although it is not especially expressed, but by comparison of passages I think it incontestable that Hamlet, as a Dane, as a Northman, is fair-haired and blue-eyed. The fencing tires him; the sweat is running from his brow; and the Queen remarks: 'He's fat and scant of breath.' Can you conceive him to be otherwise than plump and fair-haired? Brown-complexioned people, in their youth, are seldom plump. And does not his wavering melancholy, his soft lamenting, his irresolute activity, accord with such a figure? From a dark-haired young man one would look for more decision and impetuosity.

[Page 367.] Hamlet is endowed more properly with sentiment than with a character; it is events alone that push him on; and accordingly the piece has somewhat the amplification of a novel. But as it is Fate that draws the plan, as the piece proceeds from a deed of terror, and the hero is steadily driven on to a deed of terror, the work is tragic in the highest sense, and admits of no other than a tragic end.

CHRISTIAN GARVE (1796)

(Ueber die Rollen der Wahnwitzigen in Shakespeares Schauspielen, &c., in Versuche, &c. Breslau, 1796, vol. ii, p. 433.)—In this thoughtful essay the author discusses the reason why Shakespeare is so fond of introducing in his dramas characters who

are either mad or touched in their wits. This he finds arises from two causes; first: Shakespeare liked to deal, like Michael Angelo, in grand effects that verge on the monstrous; the passions he depicts are always in extreme: Lear's rage, Othello's jealousy, Macbeth's ambition, Hamlet's thirst for revenge, &c.; thus the way is prepared for a very gradual, almost imperceptible, lapse from sanity to insanity, and expressions that would be deemed exaggerated and unnatural become eminently befitting when uttered under such conditions. Secondly: Shakespeare gained, in depicting madmen and fools, this great advantage, that he could put into their mouths his own philosophy, clad in an elevated and poetic garb. A man of sound understanding keeps back much of what he thinks, and utters no more than will serve the occasion, moderating his fancy and eschewing poetic flights. The insane man, on the contrary, loses himself in his ideas; he is always as though he were alone and talking with himself. His fancy is always on the alert, and he speaks in pictures. His speeches are a series of riddles, from which we can decipher more of the circumstances of his life than the mere words alone would give. Hence it is that when we discern the signs of truth or observation in such a character, it makes a deeper impression. The wise remarks of a fool are like lightning in the collied night. Thus it is that Shakespeare, the greatest philosophical poet that ever lived, and in whose philosophy is found the greatest originality, delights in portraying characters that hover betwixt sanity and insanity.

Too much use, however, must not be made, in a single play, of this effect, produced by insanity. Two insane characters, like Hamlet and Ophelia, would be inadmissible where the circle of dramatis personæ is so small. Now we know that Ophelia was certainly insane; Hamlet therefore was not. Moreover, when insanity is introduced in a tragedy, there must always be given a sufficient cause therefor, either in the past or the present. In Hamlet's case no sufficient cause is given.

There can be no question that the source from which Shakespeare drew his plot represented Hamlet as feigning insanity; and there can be no doubt that Hamlet feigns insanity in the present play. At the same time it is equally undoubted that he speaks and conducts himself on several occasions as he alone would, whose mind was already more or less shattered: for instance, in the first monologue, where he dwells on suicide; again, in his behavior to Ophelia, in III, i, &c.

Garve asserts that a man really insane cannot feign insanity; to assume insanity as a mask demands complete presence of mind and a high degree of mastery over one's self. When, therefore, sanity and insanity are mingled in Hamlet's case, I cannot avoid the conclusion that there is a departure from nature and truth.'

HERDER (1800)

(Literatur und Kunst, 12.*)—After learning the cause of his father's death, why does not Hamlet instantly go and murder the murderer? He is not wanting in will, and certainly not in strength, as his thrust at Polonius, his fight with Laertes, and his soliloquies show. But his killing the king would have served neither the poet nor his tragedy, which is to lead us into the very soul of Hamlet; for from the moral nature and the opinions of a man springs his character.

Hamlet is as tender as he is reflective: from Wittenberg he comes home a scholar.

* For this extract from HERDER I am indebted to HACKн, page xxiv of the Preface to his translation of Hamlet. ED.

The death of his father, the marriage of his mother, have sickened him with the world, with man and woman; then comes the apparition of his father, and lifts the gates of his soul, as it were, quite off their hinges; so that the young metaphysician now hovers between two worlds. Do we not know, from many instances, how some strange, extraordinary incident, either happy or unhappy, bereaves sensitive souls of calm self-possession, so that they recover it again late or never? Hamlet now looks, as from another world, at everything in this, even at his Ophelia. The future, and indeed the whole spectacle of humanity, hangs confused and mournful before him. Hence is it that, besides being given to study, he now feels himself only a guest in his orphaned paternal home. What an influence the academic enthusiasm for metaphysics has upon young men of Hamlet's character is well known. The Queen thinks he has become melancholy in Wittenberg, and entreats him not to return thither. In this mood he belongs now most assuredly more to the speculative than the active portion of mankind,-happy idea which the poet takes from our Wittenberg, from the German fondness for metaphysics! To it we owe the metaphysical strain running through the whole piece, and also the celebrated soliloquy, To be or not to be.' From France, Hamlet's friend, Laertes, brings a livelier character. In this metaphysical mood even the apparition of his father becomes, as Hamlet reflects, a matter of suspicion: The spirit that I have seen may be a devil.' The testing piece is played; Hamlet, with due caution, calls an observing friend to his assistance. It was not base cowardice, then, which delayed his revenge, but, as Hamlet himself often says, a metaphysical and conscientious scruple. This the thoughtful Orestes [in the Introd. to this Essay, Herder styles Hamlet, Shakespeare's Orestes] resolves to dispose of before the deed, that it may not torment him after it. The plot succeeds; the black conscience of the King rises to the light at the theatrical representation of his crime; the mouse-trap falls; and now may Hamlet sing, Why, let the stricken deer go weep,' &c. Relieved of his doubts, he finds the King,-but at prayer. To send the criminal praying out of the world, the intellectual feeling of Hamlet does not permit, still less the tender feeling of the poet, who watches over this darling of his, this noble spirit, the courtier's eye, the soldier's sword, the scholar's tongue, the expectancy and the rose of a fair state. He goes quickly to his mother, burning with the fire of his just wrath; even from purgatory must his father's ghost come and seek the chamber of his false wife, and step between mother and son. Wound her, but only with words; leave her to the thorns that in her bosom lodge.' How stand ye in this scene, Orestes, Electra, Clytemnestra! The criminal anticipates Hamlet, and politely banishes him,-politely sends him to death in a foreign land. Fate steps in the way. It rescues him and drives him back to expiate a deed, vengeance for which had fallen, in Polonius, on an innocent head. This guiltless act he must himself first atone for with the bitterest pain: his Ophelia is dead. After delivering a lecture (Collegium) in the churchyard upon a skull, he finds himself in the grave over her coffin, with her brother, his friend, in a rivalry of love, which the cunning of the criminal, Claudius, changes into a duel that shall prove fatal to Hamlet. Then Fate decides. Weapons and cups are exchanged; Hamlet's mother drinks of the poison; the criminal must drink the rest. Thus is his father's murder guiltlessly avenged by this Orestes.

But all, criminal, wife, and son,—all are dragged down together. Destiny has done the work of vengeance by the unstained hands of him to whom the work was committed. The criminal himself fills the measure of his crime, according to his

character, and becomes the instrument of vengeance. Even the ghost of his father, notwithstanding all that had gone before, could not drive the good Hamlet from being true to his character.

Hamlet was at first written by Shakespeare as a brief sketch; slowly, by degrees, it was amplified. With what love the poet did this, the work itself shows: it contains reflections upon life, the dreams of youth, partly philosophical, partly melancholy, such as Shakespeare himself (rank and situation put out of view) may have had. Every still soul loves to look into this calm sea in which is mirrored the universe of humanity, of time and eternity. The only piece, perhaps, which the pure sensus humanitatis has written, and yet a tragedy of Destiny, of dark, awful Fate.

F. W. ZIEGLER (1803)

ACTOR TO THE ROYAL AND IMPERIAL COURT

(Hamlet's Character, &c., Wien, 1803.)—Physically speaking, Hamlet's temperament is melancholic. Oldenholm [Polonius] in Hamlet's eyes had committed, first, a crime, in that he helped Claudius to the throne, and, second, a folly, in that he attempted to be a chop-logic; but he had one merit, he was Ophelia's father. . . . The mere announcement to Hamlet in Wittenberg that his father had died suddenly implied that he had been murdered; such a phrase applied to a king's death in those days always meant murder. . . . . After the Ghost had vanished, having told Hamlet that Claudius was the murderer, Hamlet was athirst for revenge; which at that instant was impossible. The King was surrounded by his guards. But as this thirst for revenge must be gratified in some way, Hamlet relieves his feelings by hanging his uncle in his tables in effigie. This touch is true to nature and beautiful, although it is highly improbable that one could write at night in his tables. . . . If Hamlet were only at the head of an army in the field, he would go to work quickly enough and with no delay.

[Page 75.] Hamlet's soliloquy, 'To be or not to be,' follows just after he has instructed the player how to speak his dozen or sixteen lines [ZIEGLER adopts Schroeder's arrangement of scenes. ED.], and he is reflecting on the effect these lines will have on the King, and on the consequences to himself that may, nay, must follow. If the King's occulted guilt unkennel itself, Hamlet's sword must be plunged in the murderer's heart. If the royal bodyguards do not instantly cut him down, which is to be expected, he will certainly have to justify the assassination of the King before a legally constituted court; and even though Gustav [Horatio] and Barnfield [Marcellus] can testify that they had seen the Ghost, and heard the 'Swear!' from under their feet, yet this would constitute no legal ground for Hamlet's acquittal. He puts his mother, whom his father had commanded him to spare, in a frightful position,-she must accuse herself if she wishes to acquit her son, and he has everything to fear should she attempt to screen herself. . . . . The issue of the court play in all its frightful proportions is before his soul, he sees the quick glittering swords of the bodyguard, or else the cold array of judges condemning the slayer of the King. ... Thus surrounded by peril, he utters his despairing reflections on life and death,- -not on taking his own life, but on meeting death in the attempt on the King. [This extract is remarkable in that it anticipates TIECK, and KLEIN, and WERDER. In the interview between Hamlet and Ophelia, in III, i,

ZIEGLER finds a sufficing cause for Hamlet's contemptuous treatment of the poor maiden, in her privately visiting him unattended by a chaperone. Hamlet's exclamation of 'A mouse!' [sic] when he kills Oldenholm [Polonius] is, according to this author, an instance of great presence of mind. On the trial for the murder the Queen could testify that her son had no intention of killing a human being. ED.]

A. W. SCHLEGEL (1809)

(Lectures on Art and Dramatic Literature, trans. by John Black. London, 1815, vol. ii, p. 192.)—Hamlet is single in its kind: a tragedy of thought inspired by continual and never-satisfied meditation on human destiny and the dark perplexity of the events of this world, and calculated to call forth the very same meditation in the minds of the spectators. This enigmatical work resembles those irrational equations, in which a fraction of unknown magnitude always remains, that will in no manner admit of solution.

[Page 193.] The only circumstance in which this piece might be found less fitted for representation than other tragedies of Shakespeare is, that in the last scenes the main action either stands still or appears to retrograde. This, however, was inevitable, and lies in the nature of the thing. The whole is intended to show that a consideration, which would exhaust all the relations and possible consequences of a deed to the very limits of human foresight, cripples the power of acting; as Hamlet expresses it: And thus the native hue of resolution,' &c.

Respecting Hamlet's character, I cannot, according to the views of the poet as I understand them, pronounce altogether so favorable a sentence as Goethe's. He is, it is true, a mind of high cultivation, a prince of royal manners, endowed with the finest sense of propriety, susceptible of noble ambition, and open in the highest degree to enthusiasm for the foreign excellence in which he is deficient. He acts the part of madness with inimitable superiority; while he convinces the persons who are sent to examine him of his loss of reason, merely because he tells them unwelcome truths, and rallies them with the most caustic wit. But in the resolutions which he so often embraces and always leaves unexecuted, the weakness of his volition is evident: he does himself only justice when he says there is no greater dissimilarity than between himself and Hercules. He is not solely impelled by necessity to artifice and dissimulation; he has a natural inclination to go crooked ways; he is a hypocrite towards himself; his far-fetched scruples are often mere pretexts to cover his want of resolution: thoughts, as he says on a different occasion, which have but one part wisdom and ever three parts coward. He has been chiefly condemned for his harshness in repulsing the love of Ophelia, to which he himself gave rise, and for his unfeelingness at her death. But he is too much overwhelmed with his own sorrow to have any compassion to spare for others: his indifference gives us by no means the measure of his internal perturbation. On the other hand, we evidently perceive in him a malicious joy when he has succeeded in getting rid of his enemies more through necessity and accident, which are alone able to impel him to quick and decisive measures, than from the merit of his courage; for so he expresses himself after the murder of Polonius, and respecting Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Hamlet has no firm belief either in himself or in anything else: from expressions of religious confidence he passes over to skeptical doubts; he believes in the ghost of his father when he sees it, and as soon as it has