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The Shakespeare Story-Book
“O day and night, but this is wondrous strange!” marvelled Horatio.
“And therefore as a stranger give it welcome,” said Hamlet. “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in our philosophy.”
Then he made them swear that never, however strange or odd he bore himself, as he perchance hereafter should think meet to put on an antic disposition – that never at such times, seeing him, were they by word or sign to show that they knew anything, or with meaning nods and smiles pretend they could explain his strange behaviour if they chose.
“Swear!” said the Ghost beneath.
“Rest, rest, perturbed spirit!” said Hamlet, and his companions took the oath demanded of them. “So, gentlemen, with all my love I do commend me to you; and what so poor a man as Hamlet is, may do to express his love and friending to you, God willing, shall not lack. Let us go in together; and still your fingers on your lips, I pray. The time is out of joint; O cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it right! – Nay, come, let us go together.”
Ophelia
The Lord Chamberlain to the Court of Denmark was an old man called Polonius, an ancient gray-bearded councillor, whose brain was stuffed with saws and proverbial sayings, and who had a very high opinion of his own sagacity. Polonius was ready to lay down the law on every occasion, and could always explain everything completely to his own satisfaction; the worldly wisdom of what he said was sometimes excellent, but his prosy moralising was often a severe tax on the patience of his hearers; in fact, he was not unfrequently what might be called “a tedious old bore.”
Polonius had two children – a handsome, fiery-natured son called Laertes, and a gentle, beautiful young daughter called Ophelia.
Like most young gallants in days of old, Laertes wished to see something of the world abroad, and directly the coronation was over, he begged permission to return to France, whence he had come to Denmark to show his duty to the new King. Hearing that Polonius had granted leave, though unwillingly, Claudius graciously gave his own consent, and Laertes prepared to depart at once.
Between Ophelia and the young Prince Hamlet a tender affection had grown up. As children, no doubt, they had been companions, for the boy Prince had no brothers or sisters of his own, though at school he had two friends of whom he was very fond, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. As Hamlet and Ophelia grew older this feeling became stronger. Their intimacy was watched with favour by Queen Gertrude, who dearly loved the gentle maiden, and wished nothing better than that she should become the wife of her son. So far, no definite engagement of marriage had taken place, but Hamlet was deeply attached to the young girl, and showed his affection by many gifts and words of love. As for Ophelia, her whole being was wrapt up in Hamlet. And small wonder, for peerless in grace and beauty, gallant in bearing as noble in nature, the young Prince shone forth far beyond any of his companions. As soldier, courtier, scholar, he was alike distinguished – ready in wit, skilled in manly exercises, highly accomplished, deeply thoughtful, studious in learning, a prince of courtesy, and an affectionate comrade. What marvel, then, that he had won for himself the absorbing love of a simple maiden like Ophelia, and the whole-hearted devotion of a loyal friend like Horatio?
Ophelia, in the quiet simplicity of her nature, accepted Hamlet’s love without question; but Laertes, with his larger experience of the world, was by no means confident that Hamlet intended anything serious, and on the eve of his departure for France he warned his sister not to place too much reliance on the young Prince’s favour. He bade her think of it as a fashion and a toy to amuse the passing hour – something sweet, but not lasting.
“No more but so?” said Ophelia wistfully.
“Think it no more,” counselled Laertes firmly. “Perhaps he loves you now, sincerely enough, but you must fear, weighing his greatness, his will is not his own; for he himself is subject to his birth. He may not, as unvalued persons do, choose for himself, for on his choice depends the safety and health of this whole State.”
Then, sensibly enough, Laertes pointed out that even if Hamlet truly loved her, reasons of state might prevent his ever marrying her, and therefore he begged his sister to be careful about bestowing her love too unguardedly on the Prince.
Poor Ophelia’s heart sank lower and lower at her brother’s words, but she meekly promised to remember his counsel. Then Polonius came in and gave some excellent parting words of advice to his son.
“Farewell, Ophelia, and remember well what I have said to you,” said Laertes, as he took his leave.
“What is it, Ophelia, he hath said to you?” asked Polonius.
“So please you, something touching the lord Hamlet.”
“Marry, well bethought,” said the old man; and then in his turn he proceeded to lecture his daughter on somewhat the same lines as Laertes had done.
In reply to his questions, Ophelia told him that Hamlet had lately made her many offerings of affection, and spoken many words of love. But, like Laertes, Polonius would not believe that Hamlet intended them seriously, or, at any rate, he pretended to think it only a passing fancy of the Prince’s. He ordered his daughter, therefore, to be more chary in seeing Hamlet – in fact, to avoid him as much as possible.
“I shall obey, my lord,” answered Ophelia dutifully.
It never seemed to occur to her to question her father’s will. She could love faithfully, but she could not struggle against opposition. So when the tempest came, she bent her head before it, like a frail reed, and was swept resistlessly away.
“Sweet Bells jangled, out of Tune and Harsh”
In accordance with her father’s injunctions, Ophelia now began to keep aloof from Hamlet; she sent no answers to his letters, and refused to see him. In the deeply-absorbing subject which had occupied Hamlet’s brain since the visit of the Ghost, it may be doubted whether he felt to the full this altered behaviour; but when all joy on earth seemed failing him, and nothing true or steadfast seemed left, it was perhaps an added pang that even the woman he loved should choose this moment to withdraw her sympathy and companionship. Hamlet had sworn to his father’s spirit henceforth to banish from his mind the remembrance of everything but revenge. His love for Ophelia, therefore, must take a secondary place; but he could not give it up so easily, though he made an attempt to do so. There was a constant struggle going on in his mind; his was the misery of one who has a harder task imposed on him than he has strength to carry out. He knew his duty, but he could not do it. He pondered and pondered over the matter, he reflected deeply over the problems and difficulties of life; he could think, and suffer, and plan, but he could not act. Time passed on, and still he had taken no decisive step. Day after day he saw the false, fawning smile of the traitor who had stolen his father’s crown. He knew himself to be thrust out of his own lawful place, a poor dependent on the will of the usurper, instead of enjoying his lawful rights as his father’s successor. But there was something in the sweet nobility of Hamlet which wrought its own downfall. A coarser, blunter nature that went straight to its mark, and either did not see, or did not trouble itself, about any side-issues, would have won its object; but Hamlet’s delicate, highly-strung spirit was not of the kind to command worldly success.
The perpetual trouble and perplexity in which he was plunged, and the bitter sense of his own irresolution, wrought a great change in the young Prince. Utterly out of sympathy with the whole Court of Denmark, and the better to conceal the workings of his mind, he adopted a strange mode of behaviour. He enjoyed the freedom this gave him of dispensing with the hypocrisy which was so prevalent at Court, and he took a half-bitter amusement in playing the part of one whose wits are wandering, and who is therefore privileged to indulge in wild and random speech. But at any instant he could lay aside this garb of eccentricity. With his old friends he was still the warm-hearted comrade, and to those in a lower position he was invariably a Prince of royal courtesy and kindness.
The King and Queen were much concerned at this change in Hamlet, and could not imagine what caused it, unless it were his father’s death. They sent in haste for two favourite friends of his boyhood to see if they could cheer him up with their company, and privately glean if there were anything afflicting him unknown to them. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern promised to do their best, and the Queen ordered them to be at once conducted to Hamlet.
In the meanwhile, old Polonius had solved the problem of Hamlet’s madness entirely to his own satisfaction, and he now came in triumph to impart his discovery to the King and Queen. It was, of course, quite impossible for him to tell his tale in a few words, but after an immense deal of beating round the bush, at last he came to the point. Briefly, it amounted to this: Hamlet had become mad because Ophelia had rejected his love. Oh, Polonius was quite certain about it, there was no doubt of the fact; and he carefully traced in detail all the various stages of Hamlet’s malady, which, it need scarcely be said, only existed in the old Chamberlain’s imagination. Polonius further produced as evidence a wild sort of letter that Hamlet had written to Ophelia, and was quite offended when the King and Queen seemed to hesitate a little in accepting his explanation of the problem.
“Hath there been such a time, I would fain know that, that I have positively said ‘’Tis so’ when it proved otherwise?”
“Not that I know,” said the King.
“Take this from this,” said Polonius, pointing to his head and shoulders, “if this be otherwise. If circumstances lead me, I will find where truth is hid, though it were hid indeed within the centre.”
“How may we try it further?” asked the King.
Polonius replied that Hamlet often walked for hours together in the lobby where they then were, and suggested that at such a time Ophelia should be sent to speak to him; he and the King, secretly hidden behind the arras, would watch the interview.
“If he love her not, and be not fallen from his reason because of it, let me be no assistant for a State, but keep a farm and carters,” concluded Polonius complacently.
“We will try it,” said the King.
“But look where sadly the poor wretch comes reading,” said the Queen, as Hamlet himself entered the lobby at that moment, his eyes fixed on the open book he held in his hand.
“Away, I do beseech you – both away!” cried Polonius eagerly. “I will speak to him. – How does my good Lord Hamlet?” he added suavely, as Hamlet approached.
“Well, God have mercy!” said Hamlet, in a voice of vacant indifference.
“Do you know me, my lord?” said Polonius, still in the same coaxing tone.
The young Prince lifted his listless eyes from his book and surveyed the old man.
“Excellent well; you are a fishmonger.”
“Not I, my lord,” said Polonius, rather taken aback.
“Then I would you were so honest a man.”
“Honest, my lord?”
“Ay, sir! To be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.”
“That’s very true, my lord,” Polonius was forced to agree. He had not come off very well in this first encounter of wits, but he resolved to make a further attempt. Hamlet had now returned to his book. “What do you read, my lord?”
“Words – words – words,” said the young Prince wearily.
“What is the matter, my lord?”
“Between who?”
“I mean, the matter that you read, my lord?”
“Slanders, sir,” said Hamlet, looking full at him, and pretending to point to a passage in the book, “for the satirical rogue says here that old men have gray beards, that their faces are wrinkled, and that they have a plentiful lack of wit, together with most weak limbs; all which, sir, though I most powerfully and potently believe, yet I hold it not honesty to have it thus set down; for yourself, sir, should be as old as I am – if like a crab you could go backward.”
“Though this be madness, yet there is method in it,” said Polonius aside. “Will you walk out of the air, my lord?”
“Into my grave.”
“Indeed, that is out of the air,” remarked Polonius struck by the wisdom of Hamlet’s replies. “Well, I will leave him, and suddenly contrive the means of meeting between him and my daughter. My honourable lord, I will most humbly take my leave of you.”
“You cannot, sir, take from me anything that I will more willingly part withal,” said Hamlet, bowing low with exaggerated courtesy; then, as he turned away, the satire in his voice changed to a note of hopeless despair – “except my life – except my life – except my life,” he ended, with almost a groan.
“Fare you well, my lord,” said Polonius; and as he fussily took himself off, Hamlet muttered under his breath, “Those tedious old fools!”
Hamlet, for his own purpose, had chosen to amuse himself at the expense of the pompous old Chamberlain, but directly Rosencrantz and Guildenstern appeared he was again himself, and the warm-hearted friend of old days. He greeted them with the utmost cordiality, and nothing could have exceeded the gracious charm of his manner. If only they had met him with the same frank candour, all would have been well; but his quick penetration soon discovered from their expression that there was something in the background, and he presently made them confess that their visit to Elsinore had not been prompted solely by the desire to see Hamlet, but that they had been sent for by the King and Queen. When Hamlet won from them reluctantly this admission, his trust in them fled, and he determined to be on his guard with them. He told them he could tell why they had been sent for, and thus they need not fear betraying any secret of the King and Queen.
“I have of late – but wherefore I know not – lost all my mirth, foregone all custom of exercises,” he said, “and, indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave, o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire – why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel! In apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me – no, nor woman either, though by your smiling you seem to say so.”
“My lord, there was no such stuff in my thoughts,” said Rosencrantz.
“Why did you laugh, then, when I said ‘Man delights not me’?”
Rosencrantz answered that he was only thinking, if Hamlet delighted not in man, what sorry entertainment the band of players would receive, whom they had overtaken on the way to Elsinore.
Hamlet replied that they would all be welcome, and asked what players they were.
“Even those you were wont to take such delight in, the tragedians of the city,” answered Rosencrantz.
Hamlet’s interest was at once aroused, and he was discussing the subject of the players, and the reason why they were forced to travel, instead of keeping to their old position in the city, when a flourish of trumpets announced they had arrived. Before Rosencrantz and Guildenstern left him, Hamlet spoke a parting word to them.
“Gentlemen, you are welcome,” he said courteously. “Your hands, come then” – for they would merely have bowed respectfully. “You are welcome; but my uncle-father and aunt-mother are deceived.”
“In what, my dear lord?” asked Guildenstern.
“I am but mad north-north-west,” said Hamlet gravely: “when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw.”
Hamlet’s speech may or may not have puzzled the young men to whom it was addressed, but, all the same, it was excellent good sense, and meant that he was in full possession of his faculties. His metaphor was taken from the old sport of hawking; the word “handsaw” is a local corruption for “heron.” The heron, when pursued, flew with the wind; therefore when the wind was from the north it flew towards the south; as the sun is in this quarter during the morning (when the sport generally took place), it would be difficult to distinguish the two birds when looking towards this dazzling light. On the other hand, when the wind was southerly, the heron flew towards the north, and, with his back to the sun, the spectator could easily tell which was the hawk and which was the heron.
By his speech, therefore, Hamlet meant to imply that his intelligence was just as keen as that of other people.
Old Polonius now entered in a state of great excitement to announce the arrival of the players. “The best actors in the world,” as he expressed it, “either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or poem unlimited; Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus too light. For the law of writ and the liberty, these are the only men.”
“You are welcome, masters – welcome all,” said the young Prince, with his ready courtesy. “I am glad to see you well. Welcome, good friends.”
And for each one he had some kindly word of greeting and remembrance. Then he bade them give at once a specimen of their powers; and as a proof of the breadth of Hamlet’s nature, and the wideness of his sympathies, may be noted the fact that he was as much at home in discussing stage matters with the players as in musing over deep philosophies of life by himself. He recalled to their memory a play which had formerly struck his fancy, though it had never been acted, or, if it were, not above once, for it was too refined for the taste of the million – “caviare to the general,” as Hamlet expressed it. Hamlet himself recited a speech from this play with excellent taste and elocution, and the chief player continued the touching passage with much pathos.
Noting the effect that the player’s mimic passion had on the spectators, a sudden idea came to Hamlet, and when the other actors were dismissed, in the charge of the fussy Polonius, he kept back the first player to speak a few words to him.
“We’ll have a play to-morrow,” he said. “Dost thou hear me, old friend: can you play the Murder of Gonzago?”
“Ay, my lord.”
“We’ll have it to-morrow night. You could, for a need, study a speech of some dozen or sixteen lines, which I would set down and insert in it, could you not?”
“Ay, my lord.”
“Very well. Follow that lord, and, look you, mock him not,” said Hamlet, sending him to rejoin his companions.
Left alone, a bitter feeling of disgust at his own weakness and irresolution seized Hamlet. The sight of this actor’s passion and despair over the fate of an entirely imaginary person made him realise his own lack of duty with regard to his father. Here was a King who had been most cruelly murdered, and his son did nothing to avenge his loss, but, like John-a-dreams, idle of his cause – a dull, spiritless rascal – he simply wasted his time in brooding, and said nothing. His wrath against his uncle blazed up again with sudden fury, and all his thoughts turned to vengeance. But he checked his exclamations to plan practical measures.
“About, my brain! Hum! – I have heard that guilty creatures, sitting at a play, have by the very cunning of the scene been struck so to the soul that presently they have proclaimed their ill deeds; for murder, though it have no tongue, will speak in most miraculous fashion. I’ll have these players play something like the murder of my father before mine uncle; I’ll observe his looks; I’ll tent him to the quick; if he but blench, I know my course. The spirit that I have seen may be the devil; and the devil hath power to assume a pleasing shape. I’ll have grounds more relative than this,” concluded Hamlet, touching the tablets on which he had inscribed the message from the Ghost. “The play’s the thing wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King.”
