Volume Ii Part 23 (1/2)

'Ib.' Horatio's speech:--

I have heard, The c.o.c.k, that is the trumpet to the morn, Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat Awake the G.o.d of day, &c.

No Addison could be more careful to be poetical in diction than Shakspeare in providing the grounds and sources of its propriety. But how to elevate a thing almost mean by its familiarity, young poets may learn in this treatment of the c.o.c.k-crow.

'Ib.' Horatio's speech:--

And, by my advice, Let us impart what we have seen to-night Unto young Hamlet; for, upon my life, The spirit, dumb to us, will speak to him.

Note the in.o.btrusive and yet fully adequate mode of introducing the main character, 'young Hamlet,' upon whom is transferred all the interest excited for the acts and concerns of the king his father.

'Ib.' sc. 2. The audience are now relieved by a change of scene to the royal court, in order that Hamlet may not have to take up the leavings of exhaustion. In the king's speech, observe the set and pedantically ant.i.thetic form of the sentences when touching that which galled the heels of conscience,--the strain of undignified rhetoric,--and yet in what follows concerning the public weal, a certain appropriate majesty.

Indeed was he not a royal brother?--

'Ib.' King's speech:--

And now, Laertes, what's the news with you? &c.

Thus with great art Shakspeare introduces a most important, but still subordinate character first, Laertes, who is yet thus graciously treated in consequence of the a.s.sistance given to the election of the late king's brother instead of his son by Polonius.

Ib.

'Ham'. A little more than kin, and less than kind.

'King'. How is it that the clouds still hang on you?

'Ham'. Not so, my lord, I am too much i' the sun.

Hamlet opens his mouth with a playing on words, the complete absence of which throughout characterizes Macbeth. This playing on words may be attributed to many causes or motives, as either to an exuberant activity of mind, as in the higher comedy of Shakspeare generally;--or to an imitation of it as a mere fas.h.i.+on, as if it were said--'Is not this better than groaning?'--or to a contemptuous exultation in minds vulgarized and overset by their success, as in the poetic instance of Milton's Devils in the battle;--or it is the language of resentment, as is familiar to every one who has witnessed the quarrels of the lower orders, where there is invariably a profusion of punning invective, whence, perhaps, nicknames have in a considerable degree sprung up;--or it is the language of suppressed pa.s.sion, and especially of a hardly smothered personal dislike. The first, and last of these combine in Hamlet's case; and I have little doubt that Farmer is right in supposing the equivocation carried on in the expression 'too much i' the sun,' or son.

Ib.

'Ham'. Ay, madam, it is common.

Here observe Hamlet's delicacy to his mother, and how the suppression prepares him for the overflow in the next speech, in which his character is more developed by bringing forward his aversion to externals, and which betrays his habit of brooding over the world within him, coupled with a prodigality of beautiful words, which are the half embodyings of thought, and are more than thought, and have an outness, a reality 'sui generis', and yet retain their correspondence and shadowy affinity to the images and movements within. Note also Hamlet's silence to the long speech of the king which follows, and his respectful, but general, answer to his mother.

'Ib.' Hamlet's first soliloquy:--