Part 9 (1/2)
The cruel deed he has done, he palliates with the remark that lovingkindness has forced him to it. Love of her G.o.d also forced Catherine of Medicis to the ma.s.sacre of St. Bartholomew.
Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind.
Yes; worse is coming! Hamlet knows that he is to be sent to England; that the letters are sealed; that his two schoolfellows whom he trusts as he will adders, bear the mandate. What does he do to prevent further misfortune?
He rejoices that--
they must sweep my way, And marshall me to knavery. [47]
He enjoys, in advance, the sweet presentiment of revenge which he intends taking upon them. He lets things go without hindrance:--
Let it work!
For 'tis sport to have the engineer Hoist with his own petard.
He enjoys his own crafty policy which shall blow his school-friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (who yet, so far as he knows, have not been guilty in any way towards him!) 'at the moon:'--
O, 'tis most sweet When in one line two crafts directly meet.
Because Hamlet gives utterance to high-sounding thoughts, to sentimental dreams, and melancholy subtleties, it has been a.s.sumed that his character is one nourished with the poet's own heart's blood.
A thousand times the n.o.ble sentiment of duty has been dwelt upon, which it is alleged he is inspired with; and on account of his fine words he has been more taken a fancy to than any other Shaksperian figure. But that was not the poet's object. Great deeds were more to him than the finest words. His contemporaries understood him; for Montaigne--as we shall prove--was given over to the lowest scorn of the age through 'Hamlet,' because the whole reasoning of Hamlet not only was a fruitless, but a pernicious one.
In the fourth scene of the fourth act, the poet describes the frame of mind of the hero before he steps on board s.h.i.+p. 'Excitements of his reason and his blood' once more call him to revenge. This monologue, in which Hamlet gives expression to his feelings and thoughts, is only in the quarto of 1604. The folio of 1623 does not contain it. Shakspere, in later years, may have thought that the soul-struggle of his hero had been ended; and so he may have regarded the pa.s.sage as a superfluous one, in which Hamlet's better self once more asks him to seize the reins of destiny with his own hands.
He sees how young Fortinbras, the delicate and tender prince, 'puff'd with divine ambition, mouthes the invisible event for a piece of land not large enough to hide the slain.' Hamlet philosophises that the man who uses not his G.o.d-like reason is but a beast; for--
--He that made us with such large discourse Looking before and after, gave us not That capability and G.o.d-like reason, To fust in us unused.
We further hear how Hamlet reasons about the question as to how 'to be rightly great.' All the thoughts he produces, seem to flow from the pen of the French philosopher. In Essay III. (13) of Montaigne we read the beautiful words that 'the n.o.blest master-work of man is to live for a purpose (yivre d fropos),' and:--'The greatness of the soul does not consist so much in drawing upwards, and haling forwards, than in knowing how to range and to circ.u.mscribe itself. It holds everything to be great, which is sufficient in itself. It shows its superiority in more loving humble things than eminent ones.'
To the majesty of the human reason also, Montaigne, in spite of his so often condemning it, knows how to render justice. In Essay I. (40) he remarks: 'Shall we then dare to say that this advantage of reason at which we rejoice so very much, and out of respect for which we hold ourselves to be lords and emperors of all other creatures, has been put into us for our torment? Why strive for the knowledge of things if we become more cowardly thereby? if we lose, through it, the rest and the tranquillity in which we should be without it? ... Shall we use the intellect that has been given to us for our greatest good, to effect our ruin; combating the designs of Nature and the general order of things which implies that everyone should use his tools and means for his own convenience?'
n.o.ble thoughts! But it is not enough to play an aesthetic game with them. The energetic English genius wishes that they should regulate our life; that we should act in accordance with them, so that no tragic complication should form itself, which could only be solved by the ruin and death of the innocent together with the guilty. The monologue concludes thus:--
O, from this time forth, My thoughts be b.l.o.o.d.y, or be nothing worth!
Nevertheless, Hamlet continues his voyage.
The reader will remember that Montaigne spoke of an instinctive impulse of the will--a daimon--by which he often, and to his final advantage, had allowed himself to be guided, so much so that such strong impulses might be attributed to divine inspiration. A daimon of this kind, under whose influence Hamlet acts, is described in the second scene of the fifth act. The pa.s.sage is wanting in the first quarto. [48] Hamlet tells Horatio how he lay in the s.h.i.+p, and how in his heart there was a kind of fighting which would not let him sleep. This hara.s.sing condition, the result of his unmanly indecision, he depicts in these words:--
Methought I lay Worse than the mutines in the bilboes.
Then all at once (how could an impulsive manner of action be better described?), before he could 'make a prologue to his brains,' Hamlet lets himself be overcome by such a daimonic influence. He breaks open the grand commission of others, forges a seal with a signet in his possession, becomes a murderer of two innocent men, and draws the evil conclusion therefrom:--
Let us know, Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well, When our deep plots do pall; and that should learn us, There's a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will.
This view we have already quoted from Essay III. (12). In Florio's translation (632):--'Therefore do our dessigns so often miscarry....
The heavens are angry, and I may say envious of the extension and large privilege we ascribe to human wisdome, to the prejudice of theirs: and abridge them so more unto us, by so much more we endeavour to amplifie them.'
Hamlet takes the twofold murder committed against Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as little to heart as the 'indiscreet' deed by which Polonius was killed. Then the consolation was sufficient for him that lovingkindness had forced him to be cruel. This time, his conscience is not touched, because--