The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - George MacDonald (best ereader for pc .txt) 📗

Dyes [12]

Hora . Now cracke a Noble heart: [Sidenote: cracks a] Goodnight sweet Prince, And flights of Angels sing thee to thy rest, Why do's the Drumme come hither?

[Footnote 1: His care over his reputation with the people is princely, and casts a true light on his delay. No good man can be willing to seem bad, except the being good necessitates it. A man must be willing to appear a villain if that is the consequence of being a true man, but he cannot be indifferent to that appearance. He cannot be indifferent to wearing the look of the thing he hates. Hamlet, that he may be understood by the nation, makes, with noble confidence in his friendship, the large demand on Horatio, to live and suffer for his sake.]

[Footnote 2: Here first we see plainly the love of Horatio for Hamlet: here first is Hamlet's judgment of Horatio (134) justified.]

[Footnote 3: -for having killed his uncle:-what, then, if he had slain him at once?]

[Footnote 4: Horatio must be represented as here giving sign of assent.

1st Q.

Ham . Vpon my loue I charge thee let it goe,
O fie Horatio , and if thou shouldst die,
What a scandale wouldst thou leaue behinde?
What tongue should tell the story of our deaths,
If not from thee?]

[Footnote 5: Not in Q. ]

[Footnote 6: The frame is closing round the picture. 9.]

[Footnote 7: Shakspere more than once or twice makes the dying prophesy.]

[Footnote 8: His last thought is for his country; his last effort at utterance goes to prevent a disputed succession.]

[Footnote 9: 'greater and less'-as in the psalm,

'The Lord preserves all, more and less,
That bear to him a loving heart.']

[Footnote 10: led to the necessity.]

[Footnote 11: These interjections are not in the Quarto. ]

[Footnote 12: Not in Q.

All Shakspere's tragedies suggest that no action ever ends, only goes off the stage of the world on to another.]

[Page 274]

[Sidenote: 190] Enter Fortinbras and English Ambassador, with
[Sidenote: Enter Fortenbrasse, with the Embassadors. ]
Drumme, Colours, and Attendants.

Fortin . Where is this sight?

Hor . What is it ye would see; [Sidenote: you] If ought of woe, or wonder, cease your search.[1]

For . His quarry[2] cries on hauocke.[3] Oh proud death,
[Sidenote: This quarry] What feast is toward[4] in thine eternall Cell. That thou so many Princes, at a shoote, [Sidenote: shot] So bloodily hast strooke.[5]

Amb . The sight is dismall, And our affaires from England come too late, The eares are senselesse that should giue vs hearing,[6] To tell him his command'ment is fulfill'd, That Rosincrance and Guildensterne are dead: Where should we haue our thankes?[7]

Hor . Not from his mouth,[8] Had it[9] th'abilitie of life to thanke you: He neuer gaue command'ment for their death. [Sidenote: 6] But since so iumpe[10] vpon this bloodie question,[11] You from the Polake warres, and you from England Are heere arriued. Giue order[12] that these bodies High on a stage be placed to the view, And let me speake to th'yet vnknowing world, [Sidenote: , to yet] How these things came about. So shall you heare Of carnall, bloudie, and vnnaturall acts,[13] Of accidentall Judgements,[14] casuall slaughters[15] Of death's put on by cunning[16] and forc'd cause,[17]
[Sidenote: deaths | and for no cause] And in this vpshot, purposes mistooke,[18] Falne on the Inuentors heads. All this can I [Sidenote: th'] Truly deliuer.

For . Let vs hast to heare it, And call the Noblest to the Audience. For me, with sorrow, I embrace my Fortune, I haue some Rites of memory[19] in this Kingdome,
[Sidenote: rights of[19]]

[Footnote 1: -for here it is.]

[Footnote 2: the heap of game after a hunt.]

[Footnote 3: 'Havoc's victims cry out against him.']

[Footnote 4: in preparation.]

[Footnote 5: All the real actors in the tragedy, except Horatio, are dead.]

[Footnote 6: This line may be taken as a parenthesis; then-'come too late' joins itself with 'to tell him.' Or we may connect 'hearing' with 'to tell him':-'the ears that should give us hearing in order that we might tell him' etc.]

[Footnote 7: They thus inquire after the successor of Claudius.]

[Footnote 8: -the mouth of Claudius.]

[Footnote 9: -even if it had.]

[Footnote 10: 'so exactly,' or 'immediately'-perhaps
opportunely-fittingly .]

[Footnote 11: dispute, strife.]

[Footnote 12: -addressed to Fortinbras, I should say. The state is disrupt, the household in disorder; there is no head; Horatio turns therefore to Fortinbras, who, besides having a claim to the crown, and being favoured by Hamlet, alone has power at the moment-for his army is with him.]

[Footnote 13: -those of Claudius.]

[Footnote 14: 'just judgments brought about by accident'-as in the case of all slain except the king, whose judgment was not accidental, and Hamlet, whose death was not a judgment.]

[Footnote 15: -those of the queen, Polonius, and Ophelia.]

[Footnote 16: 'put on,' indued , 'brought on themselves'-those of Rosincrance, Guildensterne, and Laertes.]

[Footnote 17: -those of the king and Polonius.]

[Footnote 18: 'and in this result'- pointing to the bodies -'purposes which have mistaken their way, and fallen on the inventors' heads.' I am mistaken or mistook , means I have mistaken ; 'purposes mistooke'- purposes in themselves mistaken :-that of Laertes, which came back on himself; and that of the king in the matter of the poison, which, by falling on the queen, also came back on the inventor.]

[Footnote 19: The Quarto is correct here, I think: ' rights of the past '-'claims of descent.' Or 'rights of memory' might mean-' rights yet remembered .'

Fortinbras is not one to miss a chance: even in this shadowy 'person,' character is recognizably maintained.]

[Page 276]

Which are to claime,[1] my vantage doth [Sidenote: Which now to clame] Inuite me,

Hor . Of that I shall haue alwayes[2] cause to speake,
[Sidenote: haue also cause[3]] And from his mouth [Sidenote: 272] Whose voyce will draw on more:[3]
[Sidenote: drawe no more,] But let this same be presently perform'd, Euen whiles mens mindes are wilde, [Sidenote: while] Lest more mischance On plots, and errors happen.[4]

For . Let foure Captaines Beare Hamlet like a Soldier to the Stage, For he was likely, had he beene put on[5] To haue prou'd most royally:[6] [Sidenote: royall;] And for his passage,[7] The Souldiours Musicke, and the rites of Warre[8] [Sidenote: right of] Speake[9] lowdly for him. Take vp the body; Such a sight as this [Sidenote: bodies,] Becomes the Field, but heere shewes much amis. Go, bid the Souldiers shoote.[10]

Exeunt Marching: after the which, a Peale [Sidenote: Exeunt. ]
of Ordenance are shot off.


FINIS.

[Footnote 1: 'which must now be claimed'-except the Quarto be right here also.]

[Footnote 2: The Quarto surely is right here.]

[Footnote 3: -Hamlet's mouth. The message he entrusted to Horatio for Fortinbras, giving his voice, or vote, for him, was sure to 'draw on more' voices.]

[Footnote 4: 'lest more mischance happen in like manner, through plots and mistakes.']

[Footnote 5: 'had he been put forward'- had occasion sent him out .]

[Footnote 6: 'to have proved a most royal soldier:'-A soldier gives here his testimony to Hamlet's likelihood in the soldier's calling. Note the kind of regard in which the Poet would show him held.]

[Footnote 7: -the passage of his spirit to its place.]

[Footnote 8: -military mourning or funeral rites.]

[Footnote 9: imperative mood : 'let the soldier's music and the rites of war speak loudly for him.' 'Go, bid the souldiers shoote,' with which the drama closes, is a more definite initiatory order to the same effect.]

[Footnote 10: The end is a half-line after a riming couplet-as if there were more to come-as there must be after every tragedy. Mere poetic justice will not satisfy Shakspere in a tragedy, for tragedy is life ; in a comedy it may do well enough, for that deals but with life-surfaces-and who then more careful of it! but in tragedy something far higher ought to be aimed at. The end of this drama is reached when Hamlet, having attained the possibility of doing so, performs his work
in righteousness . The common critical mind would have him left the fatherless, motherless, loverless, almost friendless king of a justifiably distrusting nation-with an eternal grief for his father weighing him down to the abyss; with his mother's sin blackening for him all womankind, and blasting the face of both heaven and earth; and with the knowledge in his heart that he had sent the woman he loved, with her father and her brother, out of the