Chapter VI: Act V (2)

"The craven with desires expecting to be blest is a zealot of the faith which ascribes the direction of events to the outer world."

Of Alvan's death, Meredith says some very characteristic words. Let me quote once again:

"He perished of his weakness, but it was a strong man that fell."

"He was 'a tragic comedian,' one of the lividly ludicious, whom we cannot laugh at, but must contemplate, to distinguish where their character strikes the note of discord with life; for otherwise, in the reflection of their history, life will seem a thing demoniacally inclined by fits to antic and dive into gulfs."

This, then, is George Meredith's message. We have eaten of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and the power to choose between the two has entered into our souls. We are under the rule of a great overhanging law. Destiny's wheels we cannot stop, but through our capacity for moral choice, our hands lie on the button that moves the whole machine in its relation to our own individual lives.

This is a great lesson. How strong in its likeness to the teachings of our great masters of the past! How needful in its new scientific form to-day! How suggestive as to the universe! Does it not follow that as our lives are planned so is this universe planned in which we live! Does it not follow that the spiritual is the central life upon which all else depends? It is the teaching of the childhood of the race, broadened through knowledge of life's passion, humbled and heightened through sight of God's hand, strengthened and widened through the opening of our eyes in modern science to a fuller and clearer knowledge, not only of the machinery of the universe, but also of its motive power.

_Emily G. Hooker_.

THE TRAGEDY OF OPHELIA.

RENUNCIATION.

The "Tragedy of Hamlet" has its origin in the murder of Hamlet's father, its development in Hamlet's preparation for revenge, and its consummation in the murderer's death. It is well summed up in the Anglicized title of the old German play, 'Fratricide Punished,' ('Hamlet,' Variorum Edition, Furness, Vol. II., p. 121). In the progress of this tragedy Ophelia's own sad story has no part or lot. She is in it, but not of it, and her relationship to it is an episode. Like 'The Murder of Gonzago,' however, it is a tragedy within the tragedy, but it turns wholly upon the loves of Hamlet and Ophelia, their interruption, and its result. For this reason it is greatly shorn of detail, and therefore doubtless it has always been regarded as a mystery.

"The Tragedy of Ophelia" opens with a narrative of Hamlet's ardent pursuit of Ophelia with vows of love, the surrender of her maiden heart to him, and their free and bounteous interviews thereafter. Here the action of the drama begins, and her father, doubting the integrity of Hamlet's purpose, forbids her further reception of his attentions, and, apparently without explanation made to Hamlet, she obeys him. Of what Hamlet thinks or says of this we are not in terms informed, and can only infer it from his conduct towards her afterwards. But that conduct was of a most extraordinary character, seeming to many students of the play to be inexplicable. The explanations of others may be resolved into three theories, each of which deserves a passing notice. It has been claimed that insanity will account for it, and indeed Hamlet's treatment of Ophelia has been the chief argument advanced in proof of his insanity; but it is incredible that Shakespeare should have devoted the only two interviews which he had with her, and which had so important an influence upon her life, to the mere vaporings of a madman. It has been suggested that he is putting on "an antic disposition," as he had foretold he would, with a view to deceiving the King concerning his intentions, and such conduct would have been fitting with the temptress in Belleforest's 'Hystorie,' (_Ibid_., 91); but Shakespeare has transformed the creature of that story into Hamlet's gentle sweetheart, and so to lacerate her soul by way of subterfuge would have been an act of unjustifiable brutality, of which he could by no means have been guilty. It has been urged that his mind's eye is jaundiced by his mother's gross behavior, and that thereupon he turns distrustfully from womankind; but long after his mother's wicked marriage, perhaps a month afterwards, he is reveling in Ophelia's love,--a balm that gracious Nature often pours on bleeding hearts. And further, from either of these points of view, the sudden and extravagant change in Hamlet's feelings towards Ophelia, the cruel harshness of his speech to her soon after, and his subsequent complete indifference to her, are beyond the requirements of the situation, and the theories therefore seem rather to perplex than to explain.

Undoubtedly the cause of this is that they seek the solution of the riddle in the effect on Hamlet's relations to Ophelia of prior incidents in the play, his father's murder, his mother's marriage to the murderer, and the ghostly mission of revenge. But there are in the situation at the end of Act I of 'Hamlet' and wholly unconnected with these incidents, all the elements of a tragedy, few and simple, but profoundly significant. Thus, we have a prince who is an ardent lover, a court lady who has as ardently returned his love, the lady's sudden and unexplained refusal to see or hear from him, her ambitious and time-serving courtier father, and for a King a "remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain." Let but a spark of jealous suspicion reach such a mixture, and there must be an explosion; with a war-hardened Othello-like titanic rage and murder, but with the softer Hamlet renunciation and reproach, and with poor Ophelia, who represses her feelings always, heart-break, insanity, and death.

Now, Hamlet is pictured as one of the most suspicious of men, and in particular at this juncture about his mortal enemy the King. In addition, he is very proud and very revengeful, as he admits, and there is every indication that he has been passionately fond of Ophelia. When therefore she persistently denies herself to him in private, though doubtless a regular attendant at the functions of the court, his suspicions are excited, his pride wounded, his anger aroused; and, with "the pangs of despis'd love" in his heart, and in his mind a tumult of conflicting thoughts, he suddenly presents himself before her, resolved to know the truth. "What damned moments counts he o'er Who dotes, yet doubts,--suspects, yet fondly loves." In Quarto I she says: "He found me walking in the gallery, all alone"; that is, in the gallery of the King's palace,--(compare lines 673 and 803),--and of course within reach of the King; and, though Shakespeare afterwards transferred this scene to her chamber in her father's house, it may not be overlooked that the remarkable interview of which Ophelia tells was conceived originally as occurring on the impulse of the moment and under stress of feeling caused apparently, by Hamlet's unexpected and dumbfoundering discovery:

"He took me by the wrist and held me hard.
Then goes he to the length of all his arm,
And, with his other hand thus o'er his brow,
He falls to such perusal of my face
As he would draw it. Long time stayed he so.
At last--a little shaking of my arm,
And thrice his head thus waving up and down--
He raised a sigh so piteous and profound
As it did seem to shatter all his bulk
And end his being. That done, he lets me go,
And with his head over his shoulder turned
He seemed to find his way without his eyes;
For out o' doors he went without their help,
And to the last bended their light on me."

In that harsh grip is anger, in that long study of her face the search for truth, in his silence the wounded pride that cannot utter his suspicions, in the triple nod the confirmation of their verity, in the sigh the efflux of his love, in the hand-shaking a farewell, and in the retroverted face a hope yet lingering but doomed to disappointment. For Ophelia still utters no word of explanation, and Hamlet the lover leaves her forever.

The renunciation of Ophelia at this interview is generally conceded, but the reason assigned for it is the incompatibility of Hamlet's passion for her with his mission of revenge;--a most unsatisfactory explanation, because after the Ghost's command was laid on him he still pursued her, for it was after that that she says: "I did refuse his letters and denied his access to me." There is apparently an interval of two months between Acts I and II of Hamlet, and during this period Hamlet has evidently been brooding over his father's murder and considering the means of executing his dread command, and he has doubtless been vexing his soul over the conduct of Ophelia until he can stand the strain no longer. In immediate sequence in the play his silent interview with her follows upon her denial of herself to him, and an echo of the bitter feeling then aroused in him is subsequently heard, when he tells her that the prologue to the players' scene is brief "as woman's love";--sometimes mistakenly supposed to refer to the Queen, whose defection did not occur for more than thirty years after her marriage. If Hamlet's belief in an intrigue between her and the King be assumed, it fully explains his conduct before, at, and after his renunciation of Ophelia, and it would seem that no other theory can explain it adequately.

When Othello is brooding over the supposed delinquencies of Desdemona, tortured by commingled love and hate, in his wrath he strikes her. Afterwards he demands: "Let me see your eyes; look in my face"; and as she does so, and he searches there for her innocence and finds it not, he bitterly adjures her: "Swear thou art honest," though all the while assured that she is "false as hell." And he weeps and laments over her at the very moment that he determines upon an eternal separation. Othello's interview with Desdemona and this interview of Hamlet's with Ophelia are identical in outline, and they differ in detail only as the character of the two men differ. Shakespeare has told us in words that Othello is jealously suspicious of Desdemona, and with equal faithfulness he has depicted jealous suspicion in the acts of Hamlet.

This mute interview between Hamlet and Ophelia reminds one of the "Dumb Shew," which precedes the scene from the drama of 'Gonzago's Murder'; and as in the latter instance the Duke and Duchess afterwards put into words the thoughts which the pantomime foreshadows, so on examination will this be found to be the case in the second interview between Hamlet and Ophelia, which immediately follows upon his great soliloquy.

This second interview concludes Scene i of Act III in Quarto II and in the Folios, but in Quarto I it is in Act II, and logically it belongs there. Act I of 'Hamlet' was designed to disclose the relation of the several characters to each other, and the command imposed on Hamlet to avenge his Father's death upon the King; and Act II was originally intended to exhibit Hamlet erratically making ready to obey the Ghost's command, and the various artifices which the King employs to detect his hidden purpose. When Ophelia tells her father of Hamlet's wordless interview with her, Polonius promptly goes to the King with the story of their amours and his termination of them, and with the announcement that Hamlet is mad for his daughter's love; and, after hearing his reasons for this opinion, being impressed by them, naturally the first thought of the King is: "How may we try it further?" To this Polonius replies: "I'll loose my daughter to him" during one of his walks in the gallery here, whilst you and I, unseen but seeing, will witness their encounter. In Quarto I the meeting between Hamlet and Ophelia follows at once, and when it fails Polonius undertakes to board him, and when that fails Rosencrantz and Guildenstern assay him. Afterwards Shakespeare saw fit to change the order of these scenes, but this particular scene may properly be considered now, and before others which it logically precedes.

In the interpretation of this interview, as of the former, commentators have been misled by the assumption that it is in some way connected with Hamlet's mission of revenge, and consequently they have found it, as has been suggested, a veritable _pons asinorum_. Apart from the three theories above referred to, there is an attempt to explain it on the hypothesis that when Hamlet meets Ophelia in the palace, whither he has been sent for by the King for the express purpose of meeting her, but "as 'twere by accident," he at once suspects the ruse, and therefore talks in the extraordinary manner recorded of him; that is, that he is rude and brutal, and refuses to yield to his feelings of affection, in order to deceive the King, who he well knows is within hearing, or to punish Ophelia, who he is assured is spying on him. But this theory seems to be wholly without support in the text. In the first place, there is not a word which indicates that he suspects the King's presence, and, on the contrary, the delivery of the soliloquy, the admission that he is revengeful and ambitious, and the covert threat to kill the King, all tend to prove that he does not suspect it. Further, such a suspicion could reasonably originate only in the fact that the King had sent for him, and that instead of the King he found Ophelia, but it is to be remembered that in Quarto I the King does not send for him, and that the meeting is in fact accidental. Conceding the suspicion, however, for argument's sake, whilst it might induce Hamlet to be reticent or cautious in his speech, it does not explain why Shakespeare put into his mouth the denunciatory language he employs, and this is after all the vital question. It cannot have been in order to deceive the King by concealing his love for Ophelia, for such concealment must necessarily undeceive him; the King, Queen, and Polonius are all deluded into believing him mad for Ophelia's love, and this test is expected to confirm them in it; but we know that in fact the King is undeceived, for his comment is: "Love! His affections do not that way tend; Nor what he spake, though it lack'd form a little, Was not like madness." Were he profuse in his protestations of love, the King might indeed be deceived into believing that it is not his conduct, but Ophelia's, which troubles Hamlet; for herein the situation differs from that narrated by Belleforest, the lady there being a mere vulgar temptress, whose preconcerted blandishments Hamlet shrewdly refuses to yield to. As for Ophelia's spying on him, it is untenable; for she also expects that Hamlet will exhibit affection for her, and, were he to do so, instead of betraying his secret, she would aid him in concealing it. It seems plain from his inquiry that Hamlet sees Polonius during the interview, but it is not probable that he believes Ophelia to be cognizant of his presence; her answer is a denial of such knowledge, and Hamlet's succeeding sarcastic speech is meant for the conscience of Polonius, not for hers. The worst that he could say to her is said before the discovery of her father, and before her falsehood, and hence the discovery and the falsehood do not serve to explain it. Nothing can explain it satisfactorily, but Hamlet's conviction that she has transferred her affections to the King.

After Hamlet has for some time been in the King's chamber, whether it is with or without the King's request, he meets Ophelia there, and he finds her apparently waiting for some one, and whiling away the time by reading. So it has been pre-arranged, and so it seems to him. Plainly she has not been waiting for him, for, though he himself has been waiting, she has not addressed him, and in the end he first accosts her. Indeed, it has been planned that their meeting shall seem to him to be "by accident," and, so seeming, the idea of her waiting for him is precluded. Hence to him, already suspicious of her integrity, she must have come to meet the King. But he has before this been convinced of such an intrigue, as above shown, and because of it has renounced her; and accordingly he petitions her lightly, if not ironically: "Nymph, in thy orisons Be all my sins remember'd." Their meeting is on the same day as, or certainly not more than one day later than, the speechless interview; but Ophelia ignores that, and ignores his petition also, and inquires into the state of his health "for this many a day,"--that is, since Polonius has separated them,--to which he responds gravely, and without show of affection. Thereupon ensues the following conversation:

"_Oph_. My lord, I have remembrances of yours
That I have longed long to redeliver;
I pray you now receive them.

"_Ham_. No, not I;
I never gave you aught.

"_Oph_. My honor'd lord, you know right well you did,
And with them words of so sweet breath compos'd
As made the things more rich. Their perfume lost,
Take them again; for to the noble mind
Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind."

It seems clear that Ophelia returns these remembrances in pursuance of her father's orders, express or implied; that Hamlet repudiates them because, proud and sensitive, he would blot their old associations from his memory; and that Ophelia insists on their return with a sad and tender recollection of those music-vows of love that he has made so often. But why she should accuse him of unkindness towards her is not so clear, since it is she who has broken off their intimacy. Her meaning is not doubtful in Quarto I, where this reference to Hamlet's unkindness follows upon his comments on her honesty, and evidently refers to them. But in Quarto II Shakespeare changes the order of the conversation, and so apparently intends to make Ophelia's suggestion of unkindness refer to Hamlet's visit to her closet. Hence he had not only frightened her at that interview, as she informed her father, but he had hurt her, she realizes that he had renounced her, and in this gentle way she now upbraids him. But Hamlet, wrought to sudden fury by the reminiscence, like Othello, can see nothing but the supposed wrong which she has done him, and, like Othello, charges her with unchastity, without indicating the suspected man:

"_Ham_. Ha, ha! are you honest?

"_Oph_. My lord?

"_Ham_. Are you fair?

"_Oph_. What means your lordship!

"_Ham_. That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should admit
of no discourse to your beauty.

"_Oph_. Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with
honesty?

"_Ham_. Ay, truly; for the power of beauty will sooner transform honesty from what it is to a bawd, than the force of honesty can translate beauty into his likeness. This was sometime a paradox, but now the time gives it proof."

Though expressed figuratively, there can be no doubt of Hamlet's intention in this passage to warn Ophelia against some temptation then assailing her, which is attacking her virtue through the medium of her beauty, and which will probably prevail over it. It concerns her "honesty,"--a virtuous woman being honest in respect of others who have claims on her, and chaste in respect of herself,--and undoubtedly it refers to the temptation which assails all women who win unscrupulous admirers by their charms, and to which they sometimes succumb. In Ophelia's case it has been to Hamlet an impossible possibility that she could prove unfaithful to him, but here and now, since he has discovered her secret visit to the King, it has become reality.

Then, as the scene proceeds, Hamlet in a breath admits and denies his former love for her, thus plainly repudiating any present affection. (This conclusion is entirely consistent with his declaration "I lov'd Ophelia" in the grave-yard scene). Here he renounces her in words, as formerly he had renounced her by signs. Then he denounces himself and his "old stock" as being without virtue, and concludes the subject by declaring: "We are arrant knaves, all; believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery." Here he unmistakeably warns her against the King, for of that old stock only they two are left. To the blandishments of both she has yielded, as he supposes, and since Hamlet no longer loves her, and the King but lusts after her, her only safe retreat is in a nunnery. In those old days a nunnery was often the only refuge for a woman who was fancied by a king, if she would retain her purity.

At this juncture Hamlet discovers Polonius, as is evident by his suggestion that he had better remain at home when he desires to play the fool; if the remark were not intended for his ear, it would be absurd. Of course he realizes that Polonius has been listening to their conversation, but he does not betray his knowledge, though the rest of his comments are perhaps more particularly intended for Polonius's ear. His words turn "wild and whirling," Ophelia notes the change, and her responses change in tone accordingly. He protests that though she marries she must lose that immediate jewel of her soul of which Iago prates, or that she will transform her husband into the horned monster of Othello's fears. And then he inveighs against wanton womankind in general, but in such terms as might befit the woman he supposes that she has become. He puts on "an antic disposition" for the benefit of Polonius, but under it all is the pointed notice to Ophelia that their past relationship can never be renewed, and the masked charge that it is her adoption of the ways of her frail sisters that has made him mad,--as her words indicate that she supposes him to be,--and that has wrecked the future happiness of both of them.

When Hero is charged by Claudio with unchastity, she fancies that something must be wrong with him, and says: "Is my lord well, that he doth speak so wild?" Of Othello's accusation Desdemona thinks that "something, sure, of state ... Hath puddled his clear spirit." In a similar frame of mind Ophelia entreats: "Ye heavenly powers restore him," and bewails the overthrow of Hamlet's reason. These three tender hearted women are singularly alike in their mental attitudes under the accusation, and but too willing to extenuate the cruel blow and to forgive it. But both Hero and Desdemona defend themselves against the charge, whilst Ophelia, maintaining her habitual reticence, neither admits nor denies anything, and Hamlet's conviction of her wrongdoing with the King remains unchanged.

Thus far Hamlet has made no direct charge of the transfer of Ophelia's affections from him to another, but he seems to do this at their next interview, which takes place at the time of the play of 'Gonzago's Murder.' There is a bitterness towards her in his speech, a brutality in his obscene allusions, and a degree of heartlessness in it all, which can be excused--if indeed it be deemed excusable--only on the theory that he believes her to have herself become a heartless, wicked woman. When he is commenting on the facts of the play, and Ophelia suggests that he is "as good as a chorus," he snarlingly replies: "I could interpret between you and your love if I could see the puppets dallying." Everything which Hamlet says is pregnant with meaning, and Ophelia evidently regards this as a keen thrust at her, which it plainly is. Both of them know that they two are no longer lovers, and each of them therefore understands that the allusion is to some other man with whom she treads "the primrose path of dalliance." As usual Ophelia does not deny the charge, and it would not be singular if Hamlet were to accept her silence as an admission of its truth. To whom she thinks that he refers does not appear, but there can be no doubt that his conviction is that her new lover is the King.

The next incident indicating this conviction is the interview in which Polonius undertakes with much complacency to "board" the Prince:

"_Pol_. Do you know me, my lord?

"_Ham_. Excellent well; you are a fishmonger.

"_Pol_. Not I, my lord.

"_Ham_. Then I would you were so honest a man.

"_Pol_. Honest, my lord?

"_Ham_. Ay, sir; to be honest, as this world goes, is to be one
man picked out of ten thousand.

"_Pol_. That's very true, my lord.

"_Ham_. For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a god
kissing carrion--Have you a daughter?

"_Pol_. I have, my lord.

"_Ham_. Let her not walk i' the sun. Conception is a blessing,
but not as your daughter may conceive. Friend, look to it.

"_Pol_. How say you by that? Still harping on my daughter. Yet he knew me not at first; he said I was a fishmonger. He is far gone, far gone." [_aside_].

There has been much discussion of this passage, but no satisfactory solution of it. It is a good sample of the enigmatic style of speech characteristic of Hamlet, which presumably the audiences of Shakespeare's day comprehended, which of course the astute Polonius did not understand, and which puzzles later generations because they have lost the ancient significance of certain words. Polonius is so prejudiced in favor of his theory that it was "the very ecstacy of love" that troubled Hamlet, that he does not even attempt to fathom his allusions. And yet Hamlet's last remark, warning him about his daughter, rivets his attention, and he demands to know what is meant by it; but it is only for an instant, his illusion again diverts him from the matter, and the chance of explanation thus escapes.

Malone says that "fishmonger" was a cant term for a "wencher"; and in Barnabe Rich's 'Irish Hubbub' is the expression "senex fornicator, an old fishmonger." Possibly this is its primary significance in Hamlet's mind, for shortly afterwards he satirically says of Polonius to the players: "He's for a jig, or a tale of bawdry, or he sleeps." In several instances Shakespeare similarly alludes to "fishing"; as in 'Measure for Measure,' i, 2, 91: "Groping for trouts in a peculiar river"; 'Winter's Tale,' i, 2, 195: "And his pond fish'd by his next neighbor"; and possibly in 'Antony and Cleopatra,' i, 4, 4: "He fishes, drinks, and wastes the lamps of night in revels." The word "monger" in compound words, as used by Shakespeare, does not always mean a trader in the article, but sometimes one who merely indulges in the act; as in 'Love's Labour's Lost,' ii, 1, 253: "Thou art an old love-monger"; in 'Romeo and Juliet,' ii, 4, 30: "These strange flies, these fashion-mongers"; and in 'Measure for Measure,' v, 1, 337: "Was the Duke a fleshmonger?" In common usage the word has this double significance, indeed, dependent upon whether its adjunct refers to a thing or to an act; as, for example, cheesemonger and scandalmonger, and other similar compounds which will readily suggest themselves. Hence "fishmonger" means both one given to "fishing" and a trader in fish. And doubtless the latter is its most important significance in Hamlet's mind, when Polonius denies that he is a fishmonger, namely that he is a trader in a food which from time immemorial has been supposed to be an aphrodisiac. Wherefore we are to understand Hamlet as meaning that Polonius is not so honest a man as the fishmonger that Polonius has in mind, or the senex fornicator that he originally had in mind, but that he is a fleshmonger,--a pander, as Tieck puts it;--"traders in flesh" such persons are termed in 'Troilus and Cressida,' v, 11, 46. It is supposed by Tieck that the allusion is to the way in which Polonius threw Hamlet and Ophelia together, by Friesen that it refers to his pandering to the desires of Claudius and the Queen before the old King's death, and by Doering that it points to his promotion of the o'er-hasty marriage of the King and Queen. But the foregoing discussion shows that the secondary thought in Hamlet's mind is that for some personal end Polonius permits Ophelia to accept the King's attentions, knowing the necessary effect of her youth and beauty on his licentious nature; for at his last interview with her he saw her father also, though apparently hiding from both of them, and therefore believes that he was cognizant of the fact that she had gone to the palace privately to meet the King. It is evidently this belief which inspires him with the contempt which he afterwards exhibits towards Polonius.

His next speech manifests this contempt in a notable degree, but it has been unappreciated because of the failure to perceive the significance of the word "sun." It is an argument intended to enforce what he had already said, and, supplying the omitted portion, the whole runs thus: You are not honest, and you cannot be honest; "for if the sun (in the sky) breed maggots in a dead dog, being a (heavenly) god kissing carrion," even so will the sun of this realm (the King) engender misdeeds in you, a corrupt man caressed by an earthly god. In characteristic fashion Shakespeare uses "sun" in a double sense, as he has just used "fishmonger," and again the occult reference is to Polonius as a procurer for the King.

And Hamlet follows this up by the warning concerning Ophelia; "Let her not walk i' the sun (shine of the King's favor); conception is a blessing, but not as your daughter may conceive (if she does so)." "Sun" in this passage means "sunshine" or "sunlight," as in ordinary usage it often does, but it is the light of the sun of royalty that he has just mentioned.

Hamlet's meaning is made so plain by this construction, that it scarcely needs argument to enforce it. It may however be remarked that, assuming its correctness in respect of the declaration that Polonius is not so honest as a fishmonger, its correctness as to the sun's breeding maggots in carrion and causing conception in Ophelia necessarily follows. The three enigmatical statements, thus interpreted, complement and explain each other, and therefore tend to prove each other; and the proof is strengthened by the fact that they are the sequelae of a single thought, namely, his belief in an intrigue between Ophelia and the King. On the other hand, conceding such a belief, a man of Hamlet's character would most naturally think these thoughts, and utter them in characteristic style to Ophelia's father:--The King breeds corruption in you as does the sun in a carrion dog, you are risking your daughter's honor to win his favor, and the experiment will probably end in her dishonor. Hence Hamlet's alleged belief, deduced from his three interviews with Ophelia, and these three resulting comments tend to prove each other's correctness.

Again, the sun is plainly credited by Hamlet with a double function, namely, corruptly breeding life in a dead dog and in a living woman, and the only possible means of harmonizing the two' statements, and of making sense out of the latter, is to assume that some man is typified by the second sun. It is generally admitted that an uncompleted argument is introduced by the particle "for," and, such being the case, it is a fair assumption that that also shall contain a reference to "the sun" as doing something which a man may do. On such an assumption, the argument is readily followed up: "For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog," so must "the sun" breed dishonesty in you, and so may "the sun" cause your daughter to conceive. These three propositions are consistent, the logical connection between them is perfect, and their reason and purpose is clear, if the term "sun" may figuratively indicate "the King."

Now, it is to be observed that Shakespeare not infrequently refers to kings as suns, and likens them to gods. When the King has pardoned her son, the Duchess of York exclaims: "A god on earth thou art"; 'Richard II,' v, 3, 136. "Kings are earth's gods," says Pericles; 'Pericles,' i, 1, 103. And again he says of the King, his father, that he "Had princes sit like stars about his throne, And he the sun, for them to reverence," _Ibid_., II, iii, 40, In 'Henry VIII,' i, 1, 6, Buckingham, referring to the meeting of the Kings of England and France on the Field of the Cloth of Gold, styles them "Those suns of glory, those two lights of men." And Norfolk tells of the wondrous deeds done there, "when these suns (For so they phrase them) by their heralds challenged The noble spirits to arms"; _Ibid_., i, 1, 33. Again, adverting to the manner in which Cardinal Woolsey overshadows all other men in the King's favor, Buckingham says: "I wonder That such a keech can with his very bulk Take up the rays o' th' beneficial sun, And keep it from the earth"; _Ibid_., i, 1, 56. When the Cardinal has procured the King to arrest him, Buckingham foresees his speedy death, and again uses this metaphor in a passage which has been much misunderstood, _Ibid_., i. 1, 236: "I am the shadow of poor Buckingham, Whose figure even this instant cloud puts on By dark'ning my clear sun"; that is, whose body was even that moment entombed by the darkening of the King's countenance against him; he was already a dead man. (Compare the thought: "Darkness does the face of earth entomb When living light should kiss it"; 'Macbeth,' ii, 4, 10).[1] In like manner, in 'King John,' ii, i, 500, the Dauphin of France refers to himself as King, when he says to his father that his shadow, visible in the eye of the Princess, "Becomes a sun and makes your son a shadow." In Richard II,' iii, 2, 50, the King, likening himself to the sun, says that, as the "eye of heaven" reveals the dark deeds of night when he fires the proud tops of the eastern pines, "So when this thief, this traitor, Bolingbroke ... Shall see us rising on our throne, the east, His treasons will sit blushing in his face." And again, _Ibid_., iv, 1, 260, transferring the metaphor to Bolingbroke, he wails: "O, that I were a mockery King of snow Standing before the sun of Bolingbroke, To melt myself away in waterdrops." In '1 Henry IV,' iii, 2, 79, the King speaks of "sunlike majesty, When it shines seldom in admiring eyes." In 'Richard III.' i, 1, 1, Gloster says, referring to the King: "Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this sun of York." In 'Hamlet,' i, 2, 67, the King asks Hamlet: "How is it that the clouds still hang on you?" and he ironically replies: "Not so, my lord, I am too much i' the sun." Here again "sun" means "sunshine," and Hamlet, choosing to understand the King literally, and referring to the fact that clouds are dissipated by a genial sun, sneeringly protests that he is too much in the sunshine of royalty to have clouds hanging about him. Referring to a different effect of the sun's warmth, Prince John speaks of "The man that sits within a monarch's heart And ripens in the sunshine of his favor"; '2 Henry IV,' iv, 2, 12. There are other similar uses of the word "sun," which need not now be cited.

The last reference to Ophelia's supposed relation to the King occurs when Polonius comes to announce the presence of the players:

"_Ham_. 'O Jephthah, judge of Israel,' what a treasure hadst
thou!

"_Pol_. What treasure had he, my lord?

"_Ham_. Why 'One fair daughter, and no more, the which he loved
passing well.'

"_Pol_. Still on my daughter [_aside_].

"_Ham_. Am I not i' the right, old Jephthah?

"_Pol_. If you call me Jephthah, my lord, I have a daughter that
I love passing well.

"_Ham_. Nay, that follows not.

"_Pol_. What follows then, my lord?

"_Ham_. Why, 'As by lot, God wot.'"

Here Hamlet again mystifies Polonius about his daughter, quoting from an old English ballad. Jephthah is pilloried in history as the man who sacrificed his daughter in payment for his worldly success. Shakespeare also refers to him in '3 Henry VI,' v, 1, 91: "To keep that oath were more impiety than Jephthah's when he sacrificed his daughter." Hamlet dubs Polonius "Jephthah," because he believes that he has paid for political preferment by yielding his daughter to the King. And when Polonius says that, if he is to be called Jephthah, he admits that like Jephthah he loves his daughter, Hamlet replies in characteristic vein, "Nay, that follows not"; meaning that it follows instead that like Jephthah he has sacrificed her. But when Polonius presses him to say what does follow, he conceals his real meaning, as his custom is, and diverts the old man's mind by answering the line from the ballad. As was the case with regard to Ophelia, Hamlet is reluctant to make the open charge against her father.

Thus in every instance in which Hamlet comes in contact with Ophelia, or refers to her, his actions and his words consistently point to the fact that he renounces her because he believes her to have thrust him aside while engaging in an intrigue with the King. And the fact that from this point of view there is a connected story of their relations told by the several interviews above discussed, that Hamlet's conduct and language in them all are adequately explained, and that a single belief of his accounts for each of them, is strong confirmation of the theory's correctness. It is in harmony with the general scheme of the drama also, all of whose important movements hinge on "purposes mistook"; and it furnishes Hamlet with an adequate motive for his treatment of Ophelia, and removes from him the stigma of mere brutishness or insanity. Coleridge well says that there must have been "some profound heart truth" under the story, and the theory herein advanced seems to disclose it. _David A. McKnight_.

Washington, D. C., February 26, 1898.

* * * * *

CLEWS TO EMERSON'S MYSTIC VERSE.

(Third Paper.)

"When a man's verses cannot be understood, nor a man's good wit seconded with the forward child understanding, it strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a little room."--_Touchstone_.

The phantasmal lords of life of the poem 'Experience,' which we considered at the close of the last paper, were presumably suggested to Emerson by the following lines from Tennyson's 'Mystic,' published in 1830 (Emerson imported these early volumets of young Tennyson, and never tired of praising them to his friends):--

"Always there stood before him, night and day,
Of wayward vary-colored circumstance
The imperishable presences serene,
Colossal, without form, or sense, or sound,
Dim shadows but unwaning presences
Four-faced to four corners of the sky."

The "silent congregated hours," "daughters of time, divinely tall," with "severe and youthful brows," in this same poem of Tennyson gave Emerson his "daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days," congregated in procession. Tennyson's mystic, who hears "time flowing in the middle of the night" recalls Emerson's 'Two Rivers,' in which the living All, the Infinite Soul, is figured as a stream flowing through eternity:--

"I hear the spending of the stream,
Through years, through men, through nature fleet,
Through love and thought, through power and dream."

At the close of the poem 'Wealth' there is a bit of scientific nature-ethics which is a little obscure. The greater part of the poem is a series of graphic pictures, detailing the process of world-development through the geologic ages down to the advent of man. Suddenly, at the end,--just as at the end of the prose essay on the same subject,--he remembers his manners and makes his bow to the august Soul, kindles a light in the Geissler tube of nature, sets it aglow interiorly with spiritual law:--

"But, though light-headed man forget,
Remembering Matter pays her debt:
Still, through her motes and masses, draw
Electric thrills and ties of Law,
Which bind the strength of Nature wild
To the conscience of a child."

The logical link connecting this part with the rest has dropped out in the poem, but is clear enough in the essay. The lines mean simply this: that, though man may forget to obey the laws of the universe, Nature never forgets her debt of obedience; she bites and stings the transgressor and caresses and soothes him who obeys. In her own submission to law she has that artlessness and quasi-moral sense that affines her to the moral nature of a child. The "awful victors" and "Eternal Rights" of 'Voluntaries' are only "remembering Matter" in another mask: with all their innocent obedience they are themselves terrible executors:--

"They reach no term, they never sleep,
In equal strength through space abide;
Though, feigning dwarfs, they crouch and creep,
The strong they slay, the swift outstride."

In the following high pantheistic strain the seer chants the old rune that God is all:--

"The living Heaven thy prayers respect,
House at once and architect,
Quarrying man's rejected hours,
Builds therewith eternal towers;
Sole and self-commanded works,
Fears not undermining days,
Grows by decays,
And, by the famous might that lurks
In reaction and recoil,
Makes flame to freeze and ice to boil;
Forging, through swart arms of Offence,
The silver seat of Innocence."

--'Spiritual Laws.'

When the Living Universe builds a house, it builds it out of its own soul substance; while man sleeps and loiters, the Unconscious ceaselessly toils. In the phrase "grows by decays," Emerson embodies, I believe, the law of the conservation of energy. The magazine of divine power is exhaustless; does energy sink out of sight here, it is only to reappear yonder; the tree decays, but out of its fertilizing substance new plants may spring up; the coal under the steam boiler of the locomotive is consumed, but the swart goblin has lost no whit of his might: he just slips darkling up into the steam, makes the driving-rods his swift-shuttling arms, and, grasping with his steel fingers the felloes of the wheel, whirls you half a thousand miles over the green bulge of the earth ere set of sun, The mystic Power grows by decays; and also, by "the famous might that lurks in reaction and recoil," reconciles apparent antinomies and opposites, and is the agent that visits evil upon the head of the evil doer and mercy upon the merciful. If a heavy body be rolled up an inclined plane, it acquires potential and kinetic energy just equal to the force expended in getting it there, and in reaction develops such a famous might that, if massive enough, it will knock you down if you stand in its way. If you lift the big pendulum of the clock in the corner, you also confer latent, or reactionary, energy upon it. Only it is of course hyperbolical for the poet to say that reaction is potent enough to actually freeze flame and make ice boil your kettle. That is only one of Emerson's rhetorical Chinese crackers, his startling thaumaturgic way of illustrating his thesis.

The key-thought of the essay 'Spiritual Laws,' to which the occult lines we are considering were prefixed, is, Be noble; for, if you are not, your face and life will, by the law of reaction and return, publish your lapse. Punishment and reward are fruits that ripen unsuspected in the deeds of men.

The pertinency and application of many of Emerson's titles are not at once apparent.

In 'Merops' the bard affirms that in his high philosophical soarings he cares not whether he can at once ticket his intuitions and perceptions with names or not. Merops was changed into an eagle, says Ovid, and placed among the constellations,--hence, I suppose, is selected by Emerson as a good type of the kind of soaring thinker he is describing. That he also has in mind that Merops was the putative father of Phaethon is shown perhaps by the allusion (in the last stanza) to Phaethon's mishap:--

"Space grants beyond his fated road
No inch to the god of day,
And copious language still bestowed
One word, no more, to say."

'Alphonso of Castile' is a dramatic monologue containing a whimsical suggestion for compounding a Man out of ordinary weak-timbered manikins by killing nine in ten of them and "stuffing nine brains in one hat." It is put into the mouth of Alphonso, King of Castile, born in 1221, called _El Sabio_, "The Wise." He was a man who suffered much in his life. He wrote a famous code of laws, and first made the Castilian a national language by causing the Bible to be translated into it. Emerson chooses him as the vehicle of his own whimsey about the condensed homunculus chiefly on account of one famous sentence attributed to him: "Had I been present at the creation, I could have given some useful hints for the better ordering of the universe." Emerson, in his rhymed soliloquy, put into Alphonso's mouth, sarcastically twits Nature with her depleted stocks, her run-out strains of lemons, figs, roses, and men. The remedy proposed in the case of man, and outlined above, has the true Emerson-Swift bouquet, is colored and veined with a right Shakespearian scorn of the mob.

'Mithridates' is a monologue put into the mouth of Mithridates the Great, King of Pontus, who is said to have discovered an antidote for poisons which made him poison-proof against his many enemies:--

"I cannot spare water or wine,
Tobacco-leaf, or poppy, or rose;
From the earth-poles to the line,
All between that works or grows,
Everything is kin of mine.

Give me agates for my meat;
Give me cantharids to eat;
From air and ocean bring me foods,
From all zones and altitudes."

As late as 1787 "mithridate" was the name for an antidote against poison included in the London pharmacop[oe]ia. In Jonson's 'Every Man in his Humour,' Kitely, thinking he is poisoned, calls for mithridate and oil. It was composed of many ingredients and given in the form of electuaries. In our modern pharmacopoeias we have plenty of antidotes against virulent poisons; _e. g_., atropine for the deadly amanita mushroom. And counter-poisons are often used, as the tincture of foxglove for aconite, atropine for morphia, or morphia for belladonna. According to the tradition, Mithridates gradually inured his system to counter-poisons, and became poison-proof. At any rate, Emerson uses him for his metaphor, which, in untropical speech, is this: "lam tired of the nambypamby and goody-goody; give me things strong and rank; give me evil for a change and a spur.

"Too long shut in strait and few,
Thinly dieted on dew,
I will use the world, and sift it,
To a thousand humors shift it,
As you spin a cherry.
O doleful ghosts and goblins merry!
O all you virtues, methods, mights,
Means, appliances, delights,
Reputed wrongs and braggart rights,
Smug routine, and things allowed,
Minorities, things under cloud!
Hither! take me, use me, fill me,
Vein and artery, though ye kill me!"

In brief, "I have run the gauntlet of experience, sounded all the depths of passion, joy, woe, evil. I am dipped in Styx, more invulnerable than Siegfried, and strong now to use the world and be used by it." The mood of the poem is the wild longing that sometimes comes over the good man to break loose and have his fling, come what may, cry, _Vive la bagatelle!_ or run amuck and tilt at all he meets. It is needless to say that the staid Emerson never carried this mood farther than to smoke a cigar now and then, or take an Adirondack outing. His contemporary, the untrammelled Whitman, could both preach and practise (within the bounds of reason) the Mithridatic doctrine; and he was a more many-sided and symmetrical man in consequence.

The last two lines of 'Mithridates,' as printed from the autograph copy, were,--

"God! I will not be an owl,
But sun me in the Capitol."

These lines Emerson wisely dropped.

'Forerunners' ("Long I followed happy guides)" mean one's brave hopes and ideals of good to come, our dreams and aspirations. The lines

"No speed of mine avails
To hunt upon their shining trails"

Thoreau evidently utilized as text for his well-known fable in 'Walden' of the lost hound, bay horse, and turtle-dove.

The portrait of Hermione, the patient-sweet wife of Leontes in 'The Winter's Tale' of Shakespeare, serves Emerson, in his poem 'Hermione,' as the model of a perfect wife, and a more acceptable one to this age than Chaucer's abject Griselda. Such a lady as Shakespeare's Hermione, beautiful in person and of rare self-control and virtue, is an adumbration or epitome of the universal beauty. Looking at nature, the American poet finds the features of his Hermione there: "mountains and the misty plains, Her colossal portraiture." I suppose that this sketch, tender and delicately toned as if with a silver point, is autobiographical, and is a shadowing forth of the character of Emerson's first wife, the ethereal souled Ellen Tucker, who died of consumption after only a year and a half of married life. When her "meteor glances came," he says, he was "hermit vowed to books and gloom," and dwelling alone. In the lines

"The chains of kind
The distant bind;
Deed thou doest she must do,"

he anticipates (does he not?) the telepathy of our days,--kindred minds seeking similar places and thinking like thoughts, although in this case, to be sure, the kindred soul is thought of as merged with the inorganic world,--the winds and waterfalls and twilight nooks.

Search the whole world through, you shall find no predecessor of Emerson the poet. The only verse resembling his in general style is that of the enigmatic 'Phoenix and the Turtle,' attributed to Shakespeare, and much admired by Emerson:--

"Let the bird of loudest lay,
On the sole Arabian tree.
Herald sad and trumpet be,
To whose sound chaste wings obey."

Emerson's verses have also a slight Persian tinge now and then, caught from his studies of Saadi and Hafiz. In his fine lyric cry 'Bacchus,' in which he calls for a wine of life, a cup of divine soma or amrita, that shall sinew his brain and exalt all his powers of thought and action to a godlike pitch,--

"Bring me wine, but wine which never grew
In the belly of the grape,

* * * *

That I intoxicated,
And by the draught assimilated,
May float at pleasure through all natures;

* * * *

Quickened so, will I unlock
Every crypt of every rock,"--

he unconsciously gave his lines, I think, the outward form of some verses by Hafiz, in which that singer intimates that, give him the right kind of wine, and he can perform wonders as if with Solomon's ring or Jemschid's wine-cup mirror. Emerson himself in one of his early editions gives a spirited verse translation of Hafiz's poem. Mr. William R. Alger ('Specimens of Oriental Poetry,' Boston, 1856) translates Hafiz thus:--

"Bring me wine! By my puissant arm
The thick net of deceit and of harm
Which the priests have spread over the world
Shall be rent and in laughter be hurled.
Bring me wine! I the earth will subdue.
Bring me wine! I the heaven will storm through.
Bring me wine, bring it quick, make no halt!
To the throne of both worlds will I vault.
All is in the red streamlet divine.
Bring me wine! O my host, bring me wine!"

'Etienne de la Boece' gets its title (with Emersonian variations) from the name of one of Montaigne's most intimate friends,--Estienne de la Boetie. Montaigne tells us about him in Chapter xxvii of his Essays, affirming that he would have accomplished miracles, had he lived. He died when only thirty-three at Bordeaux (1563). His scholarship was solid, his translations from the Greek excellent. He was so eager to read Greek that he copied whole volumes with his own hand. A French critic says, "Les qualites qui brillaient en lui imprimaient a toute sa personne un cachet distingue et un charme severe." Yet he seems to have been something of an imitator of his great friend; and it is in this aspect of his life that Emerson regards him, using him, perhaps somewhat unjustly to his powers and developing genius, as the type of a too imitative disciple:--

"I serve you not, if you I follow,
Shadowlike, o'er hill and hollow;

* * * *

Vainly valiant, you have missed
The manhood that should yours resist."

Probably most Americans, if asked to explain the relevancy of the title of Emerson's poem 'Guy,' would be unable to answer offhand. The verses celebrate the lucky man:--

"The common waters fell
As costly wine into his well.
The zephyr in his garden rolled
From plum-trees vegetable gold.
Stream could not so perversely wind
But corn of Guy's was there to grind."