The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark Part 82

[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.]

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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 pa.s.sage,[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 pa.s.sage 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 world--maniac, spy, and traitor.

Instead of according him such 'poetic justice,' the Poet gives Hamlet the only true success of doing his duty to the end--for it was as much his duty not to act before, as it was his duty to act at last--then sends him after his Ophelia--into a world where true heart will find true way of setting right what is wrong, and of atoning for every ill, wittingly or unwittingly done or occasioned in this.

It seems to me most admirable that Hamlet, being so great, is yet outwardly so like other people: the Poet never obtrudes his greatness.

And just because he is modest, confessing weakness and perplexity, small people take him for yet smaller than themselves who never confess anything, and seldom feel anything amiss with them. Such will adduce even Hamlet's disparagement of himself to Ophelia when overwhelmed with a sense of human worthlessness (126), as proof that he was no hero!

They call it weakness that he would not, foolishly and selfishly, make good his succession against the king, regardless of the law of election, and careless of the weal of the kingdom for which he shows himself so anxious even in the throes of death! To my mind he is the grandest hero in fiction--absolutely human--so troubled, yet so true!]