JOSÉ M. BLANCO WHITE. «The Pictorial Shakspere. Notes on Hamlet.» 1, The Christian Teacher, I, 1839, pp NOTE 1.

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1 JOSÉ M. BLANCO WHITE «The Pictorial Shakspere. Notes on Hamlet.» 1, The Christian Teacher, I, 1839, pp NOTE 1. Last night, just before going to bed, I opened Hamlet, and reading on for a while, came to one of the most beautifully tender, as well as original illustrations, which can be met with in any poet. It had never struck me in the same degree as it did this time. The genius of Shakspere seems here to have dropped a simile of the greatest beauty almost unconsciously, as the Queen of the Faries would drop a pearl of immense value, without much thinking where, when, or how. It is in the beginning of Laerte s leave-taking speech to Ophelia. For Hamlet, and the trifling of his favour, Hold it a fashion and a toy in blood; A violet in the youth of primy nature, Forward, not permanent; sweet, not lasting, The perfume and suppliance of a minute; No more. The simile is so appropriate, and yet so novel, it is so full of tenderness and life, that I cannot well express all I feel in its presence. But I was offended by the word Suppliance, which the verse, as it is generally printed, requires to have the accent on the i, as coming from the verb to supply. Here a rash ingenuity, to which I confess that I am not a stranger in similar cases, fully 1 «We owe an apology both to our readers and to the author of this article, for the imperfect form in which it appears. The author unable, from indisposition, to reduce the criticisms in contains into one composition, has kindly permitted us to continue the series upon Shakspere, by printing from his Note Book.»

2 possessed my mind, making me rejoice exceedingly in a conjectured reading, which I immediately wrote at the bottom of the page. The pérfume and (the) súppliance of a minute. Súppliance, as derived from Suppliant, and meaning the act of Supplication, is not in the common dictionaries, but what of that? The ineffable Dr. Johnsonhas not even Suppliance, as derived from supply; though either of the two must be recognized in the passage before us. And how irresistibly beautiful does the simile become, when Súppliance is understood as supplication, the Prayer of a lover, accompanied by the Perfume, the incense attendant on worship! You see the tender violet, the representative of the youthful Lover, courting a look from its humble bed, and enveloping its petition for favour in an invisible cloud of her delicious Incense. But alas! The Spirit of Soberness came upon me this morning, and dispelled the charming delusion. Súppliance (that Spirit suggested to me) expresses the same, and through a similar material notion, as satis-faction, and grati-fication. The act of affording, or supplying, is naturally associated with the idea of pleasure. Chaucer, by a similar analogy, uses suffiance for Satisfaction and pleasure. So farewell, my pretty suppliant Violet! I lose you with much regret! Will nobody help me to recover you? NOTE 2. Here is another conjectural reading, which the commenting spirit puts into my head the dram of eale Doth all the noble substance of a doubt,

3 To his own scandal. Valpy s Shakspeare. Hamlet, Act I, Scene IV. To these words there is a note: Commentators have hitherto failed to discover any satisfactory elucidation of this corrupt passage. Now it appears to me that the image or leading thought, in Shakspere s mind was, a little leaven leaveneth the whole mass. Of this there can be hardly any doubt. We must therefore endevour to find what is the slightest alteration of the text that will render this thought. Eale, is the Saxon spelling of Ale. The original meaning of this name must have been synonymous with Ferment. I wish I could trace the primitive signification of Rennet, and the Saxon name (if the Saxons knew it,) of the curding thistle which is used in Spain. I am pretty sure that all these words would be found to agree in expressing the idea of clouding and disturbing a liquid, as in the case of fermentation. Suppose, then, that Eale is anything that turns a liquid, takes away its fluidity, and its brightness: this will be enough to restore the text. The dram of Eale (Leaven) Doth all the noble substance often clout, To his own scandal. The word clout, which I propose, is now most appropriate to milk; but clout, and cloud, must have originally been the same; they both signify darkening, by thickening. We must also remember the collateral significations expressed by a clout (a coarse cloth,) and clouting (covering with a ragged, coarse cloth,) which make the verb clout, a most fit word to express the darkening reputation the tainting which makes it lose its purity a notion intimately connected with fluid transparency. The c and l in clout would be easily joined into a cl, i. e. d, by a copist to whom the word might appear strange,

4 Si quid novisti rectius istis, Candidus imperti; si non, his utere mecum. I have this moment found the following passage in Bentley s Criticism on the Ep. Of Phalaris: Two MS. Copies have it Theridia, and another heridia, which a man with the smallest acquaintance with books will easily know to be Thericlia, d being put in infinite places. p NOTE 3 Great must be the power of habit, especially in regard to language, when, by dint of repeating But this eternal blazon must not br To ears of flesh and blood. (Hamlet, Act I. Scene V.), people are satisfied that the sentence contains the original words of Shakspere. I think, on the contrary, that, but for such effects of habit, a slight reflection would be enough to convince any one that the reading is corrupt. The Ghost might describe the horrible sufferings occasioned by the infernal flames; but stops himself by the consideration, that this eternal blazon must not be to ears of flesh and blood. Blazon (Dr. Johnson tells us,) means display; and since he says so, it would be, at least, a Misdemeanour not to believe him. Well, then; let us substitute Display, as Mathematicians do in

5 equations; and we have, But this eternal display must not be to ears of fleash and blood. Did the Ghost think of giving an eternal account of the infernal sufferings? Or can we suppose Shakspere so absurd as to apply the adjective eternal to a description of things eternal? I know I shall be laughed at by those who have superstitiously accustomed themselves to find the usual reading most mystical and sublime: but I cannot help believing that the poet expressed his simple meaning in the natural words which it suggested, and did not go out of his way to dislocate and distort them. The words of the emendation are, with the exception of three letters, already in the Lines. But things eternal blazon d must not be To ears of flesh and blood. I am glad that Dr. Johnson is already in Hades; else I should be in danger of having my head broken. I am not in the habit of reading commentators: is it possible that this correction has not occurred to any of them? I can hardly believe it. NOTE 4. O all you host of heaven! O earth! what else? And shall I couple hell? O fie! Hold, hold; my heart; And you my sinews, grow not instant old, But bear me stifly up! Remember thee? Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat In this distracted globe. Remember thee? Yea, from the table of my memory

6 I ll wipe away all trivial, fond, records, All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past, That youth and observation copied there; And thy commandment all alone shall live Within the book and volume of my brain, Unmix d with baser matter: yes, by heaven. O most pernicious woman! O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain! My tables, meet it is, I set it down, That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain; At least, I am sure, it may be so in Denmark. (Writing) So uncle, there you are. Act I. Scene V. This is the first, but perhaps the most striking intimation of the Character which Shakspere had conceived. A man who is supposed to have had a most horrible disclosure made to him by his Father s Ghost, and who, having vented the most violent Expressions of Horror, can think of writing a Satirical Observation on his Tablets, and close the scene with an Air of exquisite Self-satisfaction, because he has made a Memorandum that «villain may smile, and smile» s a wonderfully sly Allusion to his Uncle, the Murderer of his Father such a Man, if he is not a contemptible Fool, if, as Hamlet has already shown himself, he is an individual of deep Sensibility, of an acute and deeply thinking Mind, and most of decided personal Courage, presents the most difficult Character which a Poet ever had to develope. To me, this passage is an unquestionable Proof that Shakspere did not bring out the Character of Hamlet gradually; but that he conceived it perfectly and distinctly from the Beginning. And it is indeed one of the boldest Creations of Genius as forming the Ground of a very high tragical Effect Aristotle has

7 observed, that the Hero of Tragedy should not be quite perfect, in order that the calamities which fall upon him may not be revolting to our Sense of Justice. This is one of the many Observations which that Great Philosopher and Critic drew, not from the vastness of Nature, but from the Works (or rather, one Work, the Œdipus of Sophocles) which were justly considered as Models upon the Greek Stage. The Observation is nevertheless perfectly true when the tragic Interest arises chiefly from a kind of Fatality, as was eminently the case in the favourite Subjects of the Greek Tragic Muse. Now the Story of Hamlet is peculiarly one of Fatality. The Danish Prince is born and brought up in such a state of things as, combined with his individual Character, must inevitably make him live and die miserably. In Hamlet s circumstances there was no escaping from misery and ruin except through perfect wisdom combined with resoluteness of the highest kind, or through the most perfect self-possession of a consummate hypocrite. But on either supposition, the tragical Interest would be at an end; for with prudence and resoluteness he must have been successful; whilst, on the other Hand, the success of a mean hypocrite, against greater villains than himself, can give no elevated Satisfaction; and the triumph of his vile enemies must be disgusting. All this was felt by Shakspere, whilst his Genius showed him the only path which a great Poet could choose: but a more arduous one can hardly be conceived: any but Shakspere must have been lost upon it. The time is out of joint: O cursed spite! That ever I was born to set it right. In this penetrating Glance of Hamlet, in this momentary but inspired View of his own inevitable destiny, the Poet has concentrated whatever the Spirit of Tragedy has most sublime and heart-rending. A task is laid upon an exquisitely sensitive, kind and affectionate soul, which must not only

8 inevitable sink it, but mix also in its cup of bitterness a large portion of Selfcondemnation. Hamlet has all the best qualities which can make him an Object of Attachment and Love; but he is both vehement and undecided. This fatal combination must occasion the Ruin of himself and of the Object of his Love. He shrinks from the execution of a Charge which required a quick Hand, and a resolute Judgment. But he has a conscience which might well be called pedantic; and this conscience affords him the means of delay, in a most complicated plan of Operations, through which he intends to place himself out of all possible risk of punishing those who might, by the remotest Chance, be innocent. Under a mistake proceeding from his own sensitiveness and rashness, he torments most cruelly the innocent and tender Ophelia; acts the madman to no purpose whatever; and when through a ponderous series of Operations, he has placed the Guilt of the King and Queen beyond all Doubt, he wants Resolution to destroy the cowardly tyrant openly, and make him, as he declares it his due, fatten all the regions kites; yet is led by his Rashness to the Murder of a Person concealed behind the Tapestry, on the Chance of its being the guilty King. Short sighted indeed must be the Critic who should put all this, and many more instances of the same kind, to the charge of the Poet. I believe that such objections have been made. Shakspere has, nevertheless, in various Parts of the Play, shown most clearly the intimate connection of these details with the original character of Hamlet; and that those who have Eyes to see, and Ears to hear, might posses the Key to his whole Composition, he exhibited the tragic Weakness 2 of his Hero s mind at the beginning of the Play, 2 See that most striking passage, Act II. Scene II., beginning «O what a rogue and peasant slave am I. Where Hamlet expresses the whole bitter consciousness of his irresolution. «Yet I / A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak, / Like John o dreams, unpregnant of my cause, / And can say nothing; no, not for a king, / Upon whose property and most dear life / A damn d defeat was made, &c. &c.

9 in the masterly stoke quoted at the beginning of this Note. The consistency of every Part of the Play with that single View will be discovered more and more in Proportion to the attentive discrimination we may bestow on that admirable production. NOTE 5. I was once under the impression that Hamlet s conduct to Ophelia was intended by Shakspere as one of the means of affecting madness. But I see clearly that whatever the Poet may, in his conception, have made the ground of the distracted appearance before Ophelia, of which she gives an account to her father (Act II. Sc. I), he decidedly derives Hamlet s behaviour, beginning at his meeting her in the gallery, from a real suspicion of what was really true, yet without any degree of blame on the part of Ophelia that she was acting as an instrument on the hands of Polonius and the King. The thought strikes suddenly when she wishes to return his letters or love-pledges. Ha, ha! Are you honest, &c..... 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 some time a paradox, but now the time gives proof. I did love you once, &c. The observation applies perfectly on the supposition that Ophelia was a willing instrument against Hamlet, in the hands of her father. Every thought Now, whether it be / Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple / Of thinking too precisely on the event / A thought which, quarter d, hath but one part wisdom. / And ever three parts coward I do not know / Why yet I live to say This thing s to do / Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and means / To do t, &c.... O from this time forth / My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth.» Act IV. Scene 4.

10 which, in connection with his difficulties, passes through the mind of the perplexed young man, assumes, of course, a tone of rashness and exaggeration. The slightest suspicion is a full proof to him. Incoherence of language and wildness of thought is, of course, affected through the rest of the scene; and this takes place in consequence of Hamlet's first design. But his affection for Ophelia had begun to take ascendancy when he first addressed her as she was reading in her prayer book. This feeling however vanishes, as soon as he suspects that she had been set upon him, and that she was acting a part. How could this suspicion not arise in a mind so harassed and sensitive; a mind which, at the first approach of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two intimate friends of early days, immediately perceived the whole plot connected with their coming. The unwarrantable freedom with which he treats Ophelia, during the play, becomes to a degree, excusable, on this supposition: he could not respect her. But, as he really had loved her, his passion revives with increased violence as soon as her death clears her in his eyes. NOTE 6. «The pretended madness of Hamlet causes much mirth.» Johnson. One could hardly expect to find these words in an English edition of Shakspere; but they are in all editions as part of the oracular judgment of a supposed giant of literature! What a total want of feeling and taste is betrayed in that single sentence! Surely whoever can for a moment think of amusement on reading or hearing the wildness of Hamlet, or believe that the whole of his madness is assumed, must have read that striking and sublime composition in the spirit of a school-boy. It is not at random that Hamlet s character was cast

11 together; it has a wonderful consistency throughout as a poetical conception. That most tragical personage himself is made to declare, at different periods of the Play, a consciousness of derangement, a perception of the distracting fever which devoured his heart. Can it be believed that Shakspere would make his kind-hearted, his generous Hamlet, tell a lie when he apologizes to Laertes Hamlet is of the faction that is wronged; his madness is poor Hamlet s enemy. Our great poet intended, unquestionably, that these words should be understood to proceed from the heart; it is impossible that the writer who, of all whom we know, was best acquainted with the mysteries of the human character, should have given such words to deceit and fiction. The ideal being so exquisitely delineated in the words of a mother, Anon, as patient as the female dove, When that her golden couplets are disclosed. could not be degraded in Shakspere s conception to the utterance of such deliberate falsehoods. It appears to me that Shakspere would not have attributed the design of feigning madness to any elevated and really heroic character, except under a kind of physiological perception that the malady itself suggested the fiction. Base indeed must be the spirit of that man who can have recourse to feigned madness for any purpose whatever; except a morbid tendency to that disease disturb his judgment. Shakspere was evidently aware of this; and hence the repeated fits of real madness madness not to be mistaken for fiction, which he makes Hamlet fall into. His behaviour at the grave of Ophelia is the result

12 not of design but of morbid passion. The conclusion of the dialogue with his mother is the same: in a word, the wisest speeches and observations of the unfortunate Prince, have a tinge of insanity which it is impossible to miss. We do not envy Dr. Johnson s mirth.