Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB
[merged small][merged small][graphic][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][merged small][merged small][merged small]

unusual learning. He was the earliest Danish writer of importance, and his Latin style evoked the admiration of so competent an authority as Erasmus, who expressed his surprise that a Dane of that age should be able to command such a "force of eloquence." The great work of this brilliant Latinist was the "Historia Danica," or "History of the Danes;" written, there is reason to believe, with Livy as a model. This history, like all other histories of that age, was largely made up of mythical and legendary tales chiefly illustrative of heroic persons and incidents. One of the most striking of these hero stories is that which relates the tragical experiences of Hamlet-in his origin probably one of those mythical figures who typified the forces of nature in the Norse mythology. The roots of great works of art are sunk deep in the soil of human life; and a creation of the magnitude of the Hamlet of Shakespeare always rests on a broad, solid foundation of prehistoric myth or legend, or semi-historic tradition. Characters of such worldwide significance and such typical experience as Hamlet and Faust are, in a sense, the children of the race, and are born in those fertile ages when the imagination plays freely and creatively upon the external world and upon the facts of human experience. In the pages of Saxo Grammaticus, Hamlet is a veritable man, caught in a network of tragical circumstances, feigning madness to protect himself from an uncle who has killed his father, seized the throne, and married Hamlet's mother, and who seeks to entrap Hamlet by many ingenious devices. crafty old courtier plays the eavesdropper; a young girl is put forward as part of the plot against Hamlet; he is sent to England, and secret orders to put him to death are sent with him. In the end Hamlet's feigning saves him; he kills the usurper, explains his deed in an address to the people, and is made king.

A

This group of incidents constitute the story of Hamlet in its earliest recorded form, which was probably the survival of earlier and mythical forms. In the fifteenth century the story was widely known throughout northern Europe, where it had the currency of a popular folk-tale. About 1570 it was told in French in Belleforest's "Histoires Tragique." That

there was an English play dealing with Hamlet as early as 1589 is now generally believed. In that year Greene made an unmistakable reference to such a play; and seven years later Lodge wrote of "the wisard of the ghost, which cried so miserably at the theatre, like an oysterwife, Hamlet revenge." That startling cry of the ghost appears to have made a deep impression on the imagination of the time, and was heard on the stage again and again in later plays.

This earlier English version of Hamlet has disappeared, but the probabilities point to Thomas Kyd, whose "Spanish Tragedy" was one of the most popular plays of the age, as its author; there are obvious similarities between the plays. The introduction of the ghost was in keeping with the traditions of the English stage and the temper of the time. This earlier version of the tragedy was probably a very rough study, so far as action was concerned, of Shakespeare's work; some fragments of it may have been used by the dramatist in the earlier sketches of his own version; and some remnants of it are to be found, perhaps, in a German version, which is probably a copy of a translation used in that country by English actors not much later than Shakespeare's time. It is probable that both the author of the lost version and Shakespeare read the story in Belleforest's French version.

There are very perplexing questions connected with the text of "Hamlet" as it is found in different editions; the probability is that Shakespeare worked his material over more than once, revising and, in part, recasting it. There is reason to believe also that the story found a lodgment in his imagination at an early day, and that it slowly took shape, widening in its significance with his experience, and striking deeper root in the psychology of the human spirit as his insight into life deepened. This was the history of the growth of the Faust idea in Goethe's mind. The play probably appeared in 1602. In that year the edition known as the First Quarto was published, with the announcement on the title-page that the piece had been "acted divers times in the city of London, as also in the two Universities of Cambridge, Oxford, and elsewhere." though the longest, with the single exception of "Antony and Cleopatra," of the

[graphic][merged small]

Shakespearean plays, and farthest removed from the ordinary interests of theater-goers, "Hamlet" has not only been critically studied and widely commented upon, but has been put upon the stage of every civilized country and has awakened an unfailing popular interest. The dramatic movement is much slower than in most of the dramas; the plot unfolds very gradually; there are a number of scenes in which the interest is almost wholly psychological; but the spell of the play has been felt as keenly by the unlearned as by the cultivated, and the story has appealed as directly to the crowds before the footlights as to students and critics. There is no higher evidence of Shakespeare's genius than this presentation of a great spiritual problem in a form so concrete and with such marvelous dis

tinctness of characterization that "Hamlet" as a great world-drama and "Hamlet" as an engrossing stage play may be seen on the same stage on the same night.

The rough sketch upon which Shakespeare worked had all the characteristics of the Elizabethan play; it was sanguinary, noisy, full of movement, action, crime; it was written for the groundlings. Upon this elemental basis, with its primary and immediate elements of human interest, Shakespeare built up a drama of the soul, which never for a moment loses touch with reality, and never for a moment loses its universal significance. In the pathetic figure of Hamlet, with his gifts of genius and personal charm, every generation has recognized the protagonist of humanity. The concentration of interest, the intensity of feeling, the hushed passion, which

[graphic]

A VIEW OF THE AVON SHOWING TRINITY CHURCH AND MEMORIAL THEATER

characterize the play, make us feel that it had some exceptionally close relation to the poet's experience, and that in an unusual degree his personality pervades it. There is nothing to connect it with the happenings of his own life and the development of his own spirit save the fact that it falls within the tragic period and that it immediately precedes two of his most somber dramas. The authenticity of an autograph of Shakespeare on a fly-leaf of a copy of Florio's Montaigne in the British Museum is doubted, but there are passages in "Hamlet" which are reminiscent of Montaigne's speculations and reflections. It was in his own nature, however, that Shakespeare found the questionings, the perplexities, the deep and almost insoluble contradictions, which are presented with such subtle suggestiveness in "Hamlet."

No play has called forth so vast a literature or has been the subject of so much criticism and interpretation. The problem presented by Hamlet is so many-sided that it will evoke the thought and ingenuity of every successive generation of students. Much has been done, however, in removing obscurities, and discussion has cleared the air of some confusing mists. That Hamlet was sane is the conviction of the great majority of the students of the play; an insane Hamlet would rob the drama of its spiritual significance and destroy its authority as a work of art. That in his long feigning Hamlet sometimes lost for the time the clear perception of the difference between reality and his own fancies is probable; but he is at all times a responsible actor in the drama of which he is the central figure. Goethe's exposition of his nature and his fate remains one of the classics of Shakespearean criticism, so clear and definite is its insight into one aspect of Hamlet's character:

The time is out of joint; O cursed spite,
That ever I was born to set it right!

In these words, I imagine, is the key to Hamlet's whole procedure, and to me it is clear that Shakespeare sought to depict a great deed laid upon a soul unequal to the performance of it. In this view I find the piece composed throughout. Here is an oak-tree planted in a costly vase, which should have received into its bosom only lovely flowers; the roots spread out, the vase is shivered to pieces.

A beautiful, pure, and most moral nature, without the strength of nerve which makes the hero, sinks beneath a burden which it can neither bear nor throw off; every duty is holy to him-this too hard. The impossible is re

quired of him-not the impossible in itself, but the impossible to him. How he winds, turns, agonizes, advances, and recoils, ever reminded, ever reminding himself, and at last almost loses his purpose from his thoughts, without ever again recovering his peace of mind. . . .

It pleases, it flatters us greatly, to see a hero who acts of himself, who loves and hates us as his heart prompts, undertaking and executing, thrusting aside all hindrances, and accomplishing a great purpose. Historians and poets would fain persuade us that so In "Hamlet" we proud a lot may fall to man. are taught otherwise; the hero has no plan, but the piece is full of plan.

Hamlet is endowed more properly with sentiment than with a character; it is events piece has somewhat the amplification of a alone that push him on; and accordingly the novel. But as it is Fate that draws the plan, as the piece proceeds from a deed of terror, and the hero is steadily driven on to a deed of terror, the work is tragic in its highest sense, and admits of no other than a tragic end.

This interpretation leaves other aspects of Hamlet unexplained. This subjective condition must be supplemented by taking into account the objective world in which Hamlet found himself. Sensitive alike in intellect and in his moral nature, he was placed in a corrupt society, in which every relation was tainted. The thought of his mother, which ought to have been a spring of sweetness and strength, was unendurable. He was surrounded by false friends and paid spies. Upon him was laid the appalling task of reasserting moral order in a loathsome household and a demoralized kingdom; and the only way open to him was by the perpetration of a deed of vengeance from which his whole nature drew back in revolt. The tragic situation was created by the conflict against the State and the family to which he was committed by the knowledge of his father's death, his uncle's crime, and his mother's lust, and the conflict within himself between the duty of revenge and the horror of blood-shedding. If to these considerations is added the fact that he was an idealist, with a deep and irresistible tendency to the meditation and subtle speculation which feel in advance all the possible results of action so keenly that the responsibility for acting becomes almost unbearable, the character of Hamlet becomes intelligible, if not entirely explicable.

The weight of evidence shows, as has been suggested, that in the "war of the theaters" which raged at the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the

« AnteriorContinuar »