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The Meaning of Hamlet's Soliloquy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Irving T. Richards
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Extract

Many scholars have found in Hamlet's soliloquy beginning “To be, or not to be” the crux of the drama. Those who, like the Romantic critics, have interpreted the play as a struggle between Hamlet's determination to avenge his father and his inhibiting propensity to over-subtle philosophizing have felt that here, more clearly than anywhere else, he is exposing his malady: over-delicate sensibility and a love of intellectual hair-splitting which absorb energy that should have gone into decisive action. Such critics point for further confirmation to the soliloquy at the end of Act ii, in which Hamlet contrasts his own lethargy (in language far from lethargic) with the deep histrionic passion of the player who has just recited for him, and to the later soliloquy (iv. iv), in which he certainly does quite roundly chide himself for procrastination, while he confesses to have had “cause, and will, and strength, and means, / To do't.”

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 48 , Issue 3 , September 1933 , pp. 741 - 762
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1933

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References

1 Cf. E. E. Stoll, Research Publications of the University of Minnesota, viii, No. 5 (Studies in Language and Literature, No. 7), Sept., 1919, pp. 20–25.

2 Cf. G. L. Kittredge, Shakespere (Harvard University Press, 1916), pp. 35–10.

3 A part of Kalander's advice to the melancholy Diaphantus, Baker ed. (London and New York, 1907), pp. 44–45.—For a medical statement paralleling this, see Mary I. O'Sullivan, “Hamlet and Dr. Timothy Bright,” PMLA, xxi (Sept., 1926), 667–679.

4 Julius Caesar, ii. i. 61–69.—The significance of this passage in an interpretation of Hamlet was pointed out by Lewis Campbell in Tragic Drama in Æschylus, Sophocles, and Shakespeare (London, 1904), p. 215.

5 It may be objected, as it has been objected by a kindly critic to whom this paper was shown in manuscript, that since the ghost is a spirit, it cannot be identical with the actual corporeal presence of the former king, and hence that the great stress laid upon its likeness to that presence is only a natural expression of its spiritual character. This objection would have weight, though it would hardly account for such emphasis as is laid on the likeness, if certain lines in the play did not make clear, at least in the judgment of the present writer, Shakespeare's insistence upon Hamlet's perplexity about the character of the ghost as a prime determinant of his action. See especially i. iv. 39–45; i. iv. 72; i. v. 137–138; and ii. ii. 574–581—all quoted below; and cf. iii. ii. 75–79 and 274–275.—The italics are of course mine throughout these selections from the play. The readings and the line references are taken from the Furness Variorum.

6 “Hell,” of course, because of his fear that the ghost may be the devil in disguise.

7 This word probably offers an instance of the common Elizabethan double-entendre. Theobald's note was, “That is, to be conversed with, inviting question, as in Macb., i, iii, 43”; and Caldecott's, “So doubtful, that I will at least make inquiry to obtain a solution.” The word presumably has both meanings.

8 Works (London, 1870), iii, 88.

9 John Middleton Murry, Things to Come (Macmillan, 1928), p. 230.

10 Theobald remarked in Shakespeare Restored (London, 1726), p. 82: “A late Eminent author, I think, took the beginning of this noble Speech to Task, for employing too great a Diversity of Metaphors, that have no Agreement with one another, nor any Propriety and Connexion in the Ideas.” Just such complaint was also made of the whole speech in an essay published in the British Magazine for 1762 (iii), and commonly if erroneously (cf. Caroline F. Tupper, PMLA, xxxix (1924), 325–342) attributed to Goldsmith and published among his works (Cunningham ed., Boston, 1854, iii, 316 ff.; Gibbs ed., London, 1908, i, 364 ff.). William Farren obviously made use of this essay in an article, “On Hamlet's Soliloquy ‘To be or not to be,‘” published in the London Magazine, ix (Jan.–June, 1824), 647–652, to prove that Shakespeare “has designedly given an unconnected train of reasoning to Hamlet, in the … soliloquy, on purpose to display the unsoundness of his intellect.” Extracts from Farren's articles—the above being but one of a series—were in turn published as his own by George Farren (Observations on the Importance … of Ascertaining the Rales or Laws of Mortality, London, 1826, pp. 37–51; and Observations on the Laws of Mortality and Disease, London, 1829, pp. 109–123), to whom Furness attributed them (iv, 199–201).

11 William Shakespeare (London, 1898), ii, 28.

12 Hamlet, traducida é ilustrada por Inarco Celenio—i.e., Moratin (Madrid, 1798), pp. 351–352.

13 New Illustrations of the Life, Studies, and Writings of Shakespeare (London, 1845), ii, 237.

14 Op. cit., p. 30.

15 Carl L. W. Francke in his edition of the play (Leipzig, 1849), pp. 66–67, provided with apparent approval an admirable paraphrase of Hamlet's thought in the soliloquy based on Tieck's interpretation.

16 A Study of Hamlet (London, 1863), p. 108. So common has this opinion been that Richard Loening, maintaining the opposite in Die Hamlet-Tragödie Shakespeares (Stuttgart, 1893), p. 175, remarked, “Allein ich halte dies nicht für richtig.”

17 Such critics have commented on the closing lines of the soliloquy as follows:—F. W. Ziegler in Hamlets Charakter nach Psychologischen und Physiologischen Grundsätzen (Wien, 1803), p. 80: “… seine Angst über das Schauspiel verbreitet sich wieder über sein ganzes Wesen …”—Ludwig Tieck in Kritische Schriften (Leipzig, 1852), iii, 288–89: “Ist denn jeder Selbstmord eine Handlung, ein Unternehmen voll Mark und Nachdruck? Und könnte Hamlet sich wol selbst so ungeheuer belügen, die gemeine Feigheit, sich jetzt, unter diesen Umständen, selber umzubringen, um nur seiner ihm lästigen Aufgabe zu entfliehen, so vornehm zu benamen? … Unternehmungen voll Mark und Nachdruck, z. B. einem Usurpator das Reich entreissen, einen ermordeten Vater rächen … ”—Hermann Ulrici in Ueber Shakspeare's Dramatische Kunst (Halle, 1839), pp. 233–34: “Die Rücksicht auf das ewige Heil seiner Seele (welche er schon bei der Erscheinung des Geistes bedeutungsvoll geltend macht) zwingt ihn, still zu stehen und zu bedenken; die Erinnerung an die vom Vater ihm auferlegte Pflicht der Rache treibt ihn vorwärts … ”—Hüser in Herrig's Archiv for 1848 (iv, 336): “… so kann ihm jetzt nicht mehr blos der Selbstmord, and zwar, wenn wir auf die besondere Bedeutung der Schlussworte sehen, dieser grade am wenigsten, vorschweben, sondern namentlich dasjenige Positive, was er, um seinen Vater zu rächen … sich vorgenommen hatte.”—Sievers in Herrig's Archiv for 1849 (vi, 4): “Stimme ich Tieck vollkommen bei, wenn er sich sträubt, die Schlussverse … durch den Gedanken an Selbstmord motivirt zu halten.”—A. Gerth in Der Hamlet von Shakspeare (Leipzig, 1861), p. 98: “Wenn nicht der ganze Monolog Inhalt jenes inneren Kampfes wäre: das was ihn bindet und zurückhält, steht neben dem was aüsserlich ihn treibt, ausdrücklich hier.”—Hermann Freiherr von Friesen in Briefe über Shakspere's Hamlet (Leipzig, 1864), p. 236: “Nicht also der Selbstmord und die Prüfung der Frage, ob er zu begehen sei oder nicht, war der Gegenstand dieser Betrachtungen—denn wer könnte ihn ein Unternehmen voll Mark und Bein, ja wer könnte ihn nur ein grosses Unternehmen nennen—sondern es lag Hamlet die Ausführung eines Planes in der Seele, wobei es sich für ihn um Leben und Tod handelte. Wir brauchen uns diesen Plan nicht genau zu formuliren, wie es unter Anderem Ziegler versucht, indem er meint, Hamlet müsse die Absicht gehabt haben, den König, wenn er durch die dramatische Aufführung seiner Schuld überführt werde, sofort niederzustossen.”—Thomas Tyler in The Philosophy of “Hamlet” (London, 1874), p. 28: “… Hamlet speaks of executing the task imposed upon him, that is, putting his uncle to death …”—Edward P. Vining in The Mystery of Hamlet (Philadelphia, 1881), p. 51: “The enterprise of great pith and moment which Hamlet had in view was the revenge of the foul murder done to his father …”—Joseph Kohler in Shakespeare vor dem Forum der Jurisprudenz (Würzburg, 1883), p. 196: “Dies ist der Kern des Monologs; … rechtliche und sittliche Bedenken sind es, nicht thatenloses Phlegma, welche ihm den letzten furchtbaren Schritt, die Ermordung des Mörders Claudius verwehren …”—George MacDonald in The Tragedie of Hamlet (London, 1885), p. 123: “How could suicide be styled an enterprise of great pith?”—Fredericka B. Gilchrist in The True Story of Hamlet and Ophelia (Boston, 1889), p. 147: “He could not speak of self-murder as an enterprise of great pith and moment.”—Edward Dowden, who in part follows MacDonald, in his edition of the play (Indianapolis, 1899), p. 101: “… thus it is that, perplexed by calculating consequences, we drop away from heroic action.”—Charlton M. Lewis, who professes himself here a follower of Dr. Johnson, in The Genesis of Hamlet (New York, 1907), p. 101: Hamlet “seems to say, in effect: 'The uncertainty that unnerves the would-be suicide is the same thing that partly daunts me, the would-be avenger.' ”—Simon A. Blackmore in The Riddles of Hamlet and the Newest Answers (Boston, 1917), p. 252: “Hamlet's 'resolution' necessarily implies … his sworn purpose to avenge the murder of his father …”—Gustav Mai-Rodegg in Hamlet-Entdeckungen Eines Schauspielers (Berlin, 1917), p. 64: “Sollen diese Wendungen irgend einen Sinn haben, so dürfen sie abermals nicht auf Selbstmordabsichten, sondern immer and immer wieder nur auf den Angriff gegen den König bezogen werden.”—John Middleton Murry (op. cit., p. 233): “Not even Hamlet regards suicide as ‘an enterprise of great pitch and moment.‘ The theme of the soliloquy from first to last is: action or inactivity? The specific act which Hamlet has to undertake … [is] the killing of the king …”

18 A rather remarkable feature of this interpretation is the number of times it has been discovered. It has been proclaimed over and over, doubtless with perfect honesty, without acknowledgment of source or as newly observed but obvious.

19 The Plays and Poems of William Shakespeare (London, 1790), ix, 286—the 1821 ed., vii, 321. Most commentators, indeed, have assumed such a relation of the lines, whether or not they have expressed it, and whatever diverse meanings they may have drawn from it.

20 This elucidation of the “question” by following lines does not occur in the first quarto, and though the speech is there the same in its general import, it differs in many other details, notably in the emphasis of “hope” rather than “dread” of something after death and in the absence of the thought of the last five lines of the standard text. The reading of the first quarto, rough and crude, and even ungrammatical, as it is, can hardly be the full and untrammeled expression of the gifted Shakespeare. If, however, one be so bold as to think it so, he must at least admit an improvement in the later and generally accepted text. In either event, Shakespeare's full and exact meaning should be reasonably sought in the standard text.

21 Ziegler (op. cit., p. 78): “Die erste Frage des Duldens und die zweite des Rüstens und widerstrebend endigen, beweisen deutlich meine vorige Meinung.”—Tieck (op. cit., p. 283): “—diese Plagen nämlich: aber wie? durch Selbstmord? Wäre dann dies opposing?—ein wirklicher Widerstand? Würde dann take arms, die Waffen ergreifen, wol richtig und passend sein, wenn diese Waffen sich nur gegen den richten sollten, der sie ergriffen? Nein, dadurch geschiehtes, dass ich diese Plagen selbst vernichte, dass ich meinem Gegner den Garaus mache.”—Hüser (op. cit., p. 334): “Darum handelte es sich also für ihn, ob er Alles das, was jetzt auf ihm lag, geduldig ertragen solle oder es gewaltsam abschütteln, was allerdings die Ermordung des Königs verlangt hätte.”—'Sievers (op. cit., p. 3): “… behaupte ich nun … mit Tieck, dass der 4te und 5te Vers sinnlos sind, wenn man sie auf den Selbstmord beziehen will; denn dieser ist so weit davon entfernt, ein Kampf, ein Widerstand zu sein, dass er vielmehr nur ein Entlaufen aus dem Kampfe, ein Aufgeben des Widerstandes genannt werden kann.”—Von Friesen (op. cit., p. 233): “Ich wüsste daher nicht, was noch zu sagen wäre, um die Ueberzeugung zu begründen, dass hier von nichts Anderem die Rede sein kann, als von dem Gedanken, ob es edler sei, Alles geduldig zu ertragen, oder die zahllosen Qualen und Uebel durch einen tapfern Widerstand zu enden, nicht aber denselben durch den Selbstmord feige aus dem Wege zu gehen.”—Eujenio M. Hostos in Hamlet Ensayo Crítico (Santiago, 1872), p. 65, remarked of the problem of the soliloquy, “De eso se trata para él i para Claudio; para Claudio, si él lo mata; para él mismo, si no se decide a perdonarlo ni a matarlo,” and again asked, “I ¿qué es mas digno del alma …: sucumbir al dolor o rebelarse contra él; matar o morir?”—Tyler (op. cit., p. 27): “During the interval before the soliloquy … we may suppose that Hamlet has reflected that… it will be for him to execute the command of the Ghost, and to put his uncle to death. … If he takes arms against the 'sea of troubles,' opposes them, and, by opposing, ends them, he must die …”—Vining (op. cit., p. 51): “The question in Hamlet's mind is whether he shall take a course which will insure his own safety and enable him to continue to live, and so 'to be,' or whether he shall, by assaulting the king, invite his own death, and so extinguish his own earthly being.”—MacDonald (op. cit., p. 124): “Which is nobler—to endure evil fortune, or to oppose it à outrance; to bear in passivity, or to resist where resistance is hopeless—resist to the last—to the death which is its unavoidable end?”—Gilchrist (op. cit., p. 147): “If we infer that the opposing which is to end the troubles is suicide, we must perceive that this is not opposition. … a different nature from Hamlet's might contemplate seeking death as a relief from the task he had vowed to perform; but this would really be submitting to be overwhelmed by the sea of troubles, and not ending them by opposing them—which is the alternative Hamlet expresses.”—Dowden (op. cit., p. 101): “With the thought of action this soliloquy opens and closes. The train of ideas is as follows:—Active resistance to evil or passive fortitude—which is more worthy of me?”—Lewis (op. cit., p. 100): “Hamlet is thinking not of committing suicide but of actively pursuing his revenge. The latter course, he knows, is a dangerous one; and hence he queries whether it is better patiently to endure outrage or valiantly to throw away life in the effort to right it …”—Mai-Rodegg (op. cit., p. 61): “Soll ich, beweislos, wie ich bin und vielleicht auch bleiben werde, weiter dulden, was der König mir antut? Oder soll ich ihm ohne Rücksicht auf die auch mich vernichtenden Folgen mit der Waffe in der Hand zu Leibe gehen?”—Elisabeth Gerkrath in Das Dramatische Meisterwerk des Protestantismus (Berlin, written in 1917), p. 38: “Das heisst: Soll ich meine Rachepläne aufgeben oder an ihnen festhalten?”—Blackmore (op. cit., p. 239): “This latter and nobler alternative of the dilemma, which he implicitly accepts, clearly precludes all idea of self-destruction. The suicide, or self-murderer, does not take up arms against a sea of troubles …”—Murry (op. cit., p. 231): “What is 'to be or not to be' is not Hamlet, but Hamlet's attempt upon the King's life. Which is nobler? To suffer in patient silence his evil fortunes, or to take arms and act against them? To endure his troubles, or to make an end of them, not by suicide, but by opposing them.”

22 The Plays of William Shakespeare (London, 1765), viii, 207. The italics are of course Johnson's.—Johnson's Italian friend Joseph Baretti, translating these remarks into French in his Discours sur Shakespeare et sur Monsieur de Voltaire (London, 1777), pp. 10–11, for the sake of comparison with Voltaire's alleged misrepresentation of Shakespeare, rendered the latter part of the above quotation in an even less equivocal form: “… s'il convient mieux à mon noble caractère d'homme d'endurer patiemment les sanglans outrages que le sort me fait, ou bien s'il faut que je coure m'en vanger hautement au péril de ma vie.”

23 Ziegler (op. cit., p. 78): “In dieser gefährlichen Lage [Hamlet's plans for testing the king's guilt] fängt er das Verzweifelte Grübeln über Leben und Tod an; nicht um sich selbst das Leben zu nehmen, sondern den Tod von andern zu empfangen, im Fall er selbst eine tödtende Hand an den König legte.”—Tieck (op. cit., p. 282): “Was hält mich denn also ab, als Rächer aufzutreten? … es handelt sich einzig darum, ob der Mensch lebt, oder nicht lebt, d. h. mehr, als das Leben kann ich nicht wagen und verlieren, also einzig um das Leben handelt es sich, ob ich dies daran setzen will.”—Julius L. Klein in the Berliner Modenspiegel for 1846 (xv, No. 24), reprinted in the Shakespeare Jahrbuch for 1895 (xxxi, 51–52): “Sollte die innere, die subjektive, die moralische Ueberzeugung, die für den Volkssinn der Dichter als ‘Geist’ nach aussen reflektiert, sollte die nicht Motivs genug für den Sohn zu beflügelter Rache sein? … Nein! wenn er anders nicht von ganz Dänemark, Stände und Staatsrath an der Spitze, für einen wahnsinnigen Todtschläger, nicht,—und berief er sich zehnmal auf den 'Geist,' der ihm erschienen—-nicht selber für das gehalten werden wollte, was er zu strafen unternähme, für einen Vatermörder.”—Sievers (op. cit., p. 3): “… man müsste annehmen, dass das Unternehmen, das ihm vorschwebt, ihm plötzlich den Gedanken an die Möglichkeit des Unterliegens und des Todes nahe legte.”—Von Friesen (op. cit., 233): “Dass er dabei daran denkt, er könne in diesem Widerstande sein Leben verlieren … ist weder feige noch unnatürlich, giebt aber auch nicht den mindesten Anhalt, um zu glauben: er wolle durch seine eigene Hand sterben.”—George H. Miles in A Review of Hamlet (Baltimore, copyright 1870), p. 41: “From the first, Hamlet neither cared for (sic) nor expected to survive his revenge. 'To be or not to be,' is not a question of suicide, but of sacrifice. He must perish with his victim; there is no escape. He is ready!”—Gustav Rümelin in Shakespearestudien (Stuttgart, 1874), pp. 100–101: “Wenn er den König getödtet hat, wie soll es dann weiter gehen? wie will er die That rechtfertigen vor dem Volk? Kann er sich auf die Mittheilungen durch eine Geistererscheinung berufen? oder auf die Mienen und Geberden des Königs bei der Aufführung eines Schauspiels?”—Tyler (op. cit., p. 27): “At this juncture, as would appear probable, there arises in Hamlet's 'prophetic soul' a mysterious presentiment that the act of vengeance will be closely followed by his own death.”—Karl Werder in Vorlesungen über Shakespeare's “Hamlet” (Berlin, 1875), pp. 38–39: “Und nun vollends die Uebrigen: der Adel, der Hof, die sämmtlichen Würdenträger des Reichs! Müssten sie nicht herfallen über Hamlet, als über den schändlichsten, frechsten, unverschämtesten Lügner und Verbrecher, der, um seiner eignen Ehrsucht zu genügen, einen Andren, den König, völlig beweislos des ärgsten Frevels bezüchtigt, um diesen Frevel an ihm begehn zu können?”—Vining (op. cit., pp. 50–51): “It was not so difficult to find an opportunity as it was certain that the king's death would immediately be revenged by the destruction of his slayer.”—MacDonald (op. cit., p. 124): Hamlet, in the early part of the soliloquy, is “taking his account with consequences: the result appears in the uttered conviction that the extreme possible consequence [is] death …”—Dowden (op. cit., p. 99): “Hamlet anticipates his own death as a probable consequence [of ”active resistance against wrong“].”—Lewis (cf. Note 21 above).—Mai-Rodegg (op. cit., p. 61): “Denn dieses ‘Sterben’ steht in allerinnigstem Zusammenhange mit dem eben von Hamlet erwogenen Widerstand gegen den König.”—Blackmore (op. cit., p. 237): “He has come to realize vividly that there can be no escape for the slayer of the King.”—Murry (op. cit., p. 231): “Then comes the thought that, by killing the King, he will himself be killed; and he muses on death.”

24 Professor Stoll (op. cit., pp. 5–6) notes with approval the statement of the author (perhaps Sir Thomas Hanmer) of Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet (London, 1736), p. 34: “Had Hamlet gone naturally to work … there would have been an End of our Play. The Poet therefore was obliged to delay his Hero's Revenge …” An argument may, indeed, be here advanced from dramatic structure. Elizabethan tragic technique required that Hamlet meet his death in conflict with the principal antagonist, the force he had from the first opposed. Claudius must thus perforce, by the very tradition of the art form, be ruinous to Hamlet; and since the hero was required to die at the close, must carry in his opposition the very seeds of Hamlet's death. The sense of this tradition may well, at the same time that it explains from one standpoint Claudius's survival till the end of the play, in large part account for a settled conviction that Claudius, dead or alive, is a menace to Hamlet.

25 Cf. especially Werder, op. cit., pp. 34 ff.

26 It is to be noted that the evils enumerated are more applicable to Hamlet's own situation in the standard text than in the first quarto. Thus, though Hamlet generalizes, and is hence not by any means confining attention to his own troubles, the speech gains a closer unity.

27 Malone (loc. cit.), in correcting Johnson's misinterpretation of the first line, remarked that Hamlet is deliberating “whether he should continue to live, or put an end to his life …”

28 Concerning the middle of the speech a division of opinion occurs among the authorities above cited who have expressed definite views on this point. Gilchrist, Dowden, Lewis, Blackmore, and Murry, are all of the opinion that suicide here enters the speech as a means of release for mankind in general, though Hamlet does not in the entire course of his thought intend giving it a personal application—that, in the words of Dowden (op. cit., p. 101), “Suicide, indeed, is not the theme of the soliloquy, but it incidentally enters into it.” Hüser, Sievers, and Hostos, though they agree that Hamlet begins his speech with thoughts of his revenge in the first five lines, had earlier found evidence of suicide entering Hamlet's thought as a third possibility for himself even with the words “To die,—to sleep …”

Others, however, with more logical consistency, take the point of view set forth in the present text:—Tieck (op. cit., pp. 286–287): “Der Sinn unserer Stelle ist nun also der: Wer ertrüge wol alle jene eben erzählte Drangsale, wenn er mit einem kleinen, blossen Dolch sein quietus, seinen völligen Rechnungsabschluss, zu Stande bringen könnte, d. h. wenn er den Gegner zum Schweigen brächte, die See von Leiden durch einen einzigen Dolchstoss

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32 Also italicized in Q4 and Q5, but without the capital.

33 Sonnet cxxvi.—Cf. also the words of the king to Laertes:“Now must your conscience my acquittance seal …” (iv. vii. 1.)

34 The Latin participial adjective might well have been italicized, but could hardly of itself make a direct appearance in the sense and function of the English noun, which has been traced to but the one source: the abbreviated quietus est (NED).

35 Doubtless meaning both “naked” and “mere” in double-entendre.

36 This word has roused much comment, but as the lines are interpreted, why may not it here have approximately its usual modern meaning, as in the passage quoted from the end of Act ii? The NED takes it so.

37 Loc. cit.—Baretti (loc. cit.) translated these words, as usual, in more explicit form: “ C'est cette crainte qui donne de l'efficace à nôtre conscience; qui amortit l'ardeur de nôtre courage, et l'empéche d'agir vigoureusement; qui force nos plus bouillans désirs à se tenir dans une lache inactivité!”

38 Cf. Murry, op. cit., p. 234.

39 Fear is certainly the attribute of conscience emphasized throughout the speech.

40 Placed as they were in the first quarto, within Act ii, these famous lines, there in either embryonic or garbled feebleness, aimed at virtually the same accomplishment; but there, occurring as they did before Hamlet had conceived his method of determining the king's guilt, they served to reveal his returning qualms after the confident assurance inspired by the interview with the ghost at the end of Act i. With apparently the same import, though not there so clearly expressed, they had the function of making less violent the change of heart that in our text takes place without a single direct allusion between the end of Act i and that of Act ii. They were there a revelation of the doubtful state of mind that was to feel the need of, and later evolve, a method of testing the king, rather than, as in our text, an additional explanation of the motives that had already shaped that resolution. Joseph Hunter (loc. cit.), who may have seen more in the speech than mere contemplation of suicide, in advocating the first-quarto position of it, remarked of its function in that position: “We have seen at the close of the first act the state of Hamlet's mind immediately on having received the dread information and the solemn command of the Ghost; we are next presented with what was the state of his mind after a few days' reflection.”—For discussion of Shakespeare's probable reasons for changing the position of the soliloquy, see Stoll, op. cit., pp. 30–36.

41 In the words of George MacDonald (op. cit., p. 125): “To run, not the risk of death, but the risks that attend upon and follow death, Hamlet must be certain of what he is about; he must be sure it is a right thing he does, or he will leave it undone.”

42 It may be objected by those who are in the habit of thinking differently of the soliloquy that if these are Hamlet's thoughts, he does not express them with extreme clarity; but any such objection, even while it seems less applicable to the present interpretation than to the conventional one, can be easily answered from the drama itself. It should be remembered that he is overheard by the king and Polonius, and of course the playwright could not permit him to reveal his secret to his enemies thus early (cf. Stoll, op. cit., pp. 34–35). Hence he expresses his personal feeling in general terms, sufficiently perspicuous to an audience unprejudiced by traditional misconceptions and properly mindful of his last appearance on the stage at the end of Act ii, and of his triumphant conclusion there.

It is probably true, as Johnson pointed out (loc. cit.), that Shakespeare expected us to believe that Ophelia's entrance cut off a more explicit adaptation of Hamlet's general remarks to his own situation. The irony of this fact calls for comment: Polonius and the king have concealed themselves in order that they may overhear Hamlet reveal his secret to Ophelia; but it is the entrance of Ophelia, whom he announces with “ Soft you now!/The fair Ophelia?” that prevents their learning his secret gratis!

43 Tieck and others have of course associated it with bizarre conceptions of Hamlet.

44 It is a nice question to what degree this conception of Hamlet, which Professor Stoll (op. cit., pp. 7–13) has shown to be of relatively late origin, may in reality be the product of an earlier misreading of suicide into the soliloquy (cf. Note 29 above), for these lines are made much of by such commentators.

45 Before his interview with the ghost and his assumption of the mission of vengeance Hamlet does express, it is true, a wish “that the Everlasting had not fix'd/His canon 'gainst self-slaughter” (i. ii. 131–132); but even here he speaks more in passionate discontent than like one who has actually deliberated the subject, and the very words imply that for his morally scrupulous nature such a refuge, even when he has no information of a wrong that is to be righted only by his personal effort, is quite out of the question. The subject of suicide for Hamlet is definitely disposed of in this single brief allusion.

43 Many critics have agreed in finding Hamlet's character grounded in conscientiousness, in moral scruple. Thus William Richardson, summing up in 1774 his “ On the Character of Hamlet” in his Essays on Some of Shakespeare's Dramatic Characters (London, 1798), pp. 117–118, remarked, “… a sense of virtue … seems to be the ruling principle in the character of Hamlet. It disposes him to be cautious in admitting evidence to the prejudice of another: it renders him distrustful of his own judgment, during the ardour and the reign of passion … but, the acquisitions that Hamlet values, and the happiness he would confer, are a conscience void of offence, the peace and the honour of virtue.” Again in his “Additional Observations” (ibid., p. 122) he reaffirmed, “The strongest feature in the mind of Hamlet, as exhibited in the tragedy, is an exquisite sense of moral conduct.” Henry Reed in Lectures on English History and Tragic Poetry (Philadelphia, 1856), p. 432, remarked of Hamlet, “… it seems to me that another and, perhaps, chief cause of his inaction, for which sufficient allowance has not been made, was the tenderness of his conscience—the agitation of the moral sense even more than of the intellect …” Henry N. Hudson in Shakespeare (Boston, 1872), ii, 271, asserted, “We have divers intimations that deep moral scruples are at the bottom of Hamlet's irresolution …” J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps in Memoranda on the Tragedy of Hamlet (London, 1879), p. 10, noted that Hamlet's “delay arises from an excessive reflection over all the possible combinations that might result from action” and further urged, “Take note of Hamlet's desire to respect his perfect conscience …” (italics sic). Besides Ulrici, Klein, Miles, Werder, Kohler, MacDonald, Gilchrist, Lewis, Mai-Rodegg, Blackmore, and Stoll (op. cit.), well worth consultation on this point are Jones Very in his “Hamlet” in Essays and Poems (Boston, 1839), Ludwig Eckardt in Herrig's Archiv for 1862 (xxxi, 93–112), F. T. Vischer in the Shakespeare Jahrbuch for 1867 (ii, 132–154), W. Rossmann (ibid., pp. 305–334), Harold Ford in Shakespeare's Hamlet: A New Theory (London, 1900), J. Schick in the Shakespeare Jahrbuch for 1902 (xxxviii, pp. xiii–xlviii), Alexander W. Crawford in Hamlet, an Ideal Prince (Boston and Toronto, copyright 1916), and Josef Wihan in “Die Hamletfrage,” Leipziger Beiträge zur Englischen Philologie, iii (Leipzig, 1921). It is perhaps not without significance in this connection that all versions of the Hamlet saga are at great pains to establish the essential virtue of the hero.

47 In the latter half of the play, with which it has not been thought necessary to deal here in any detail, Hamlet conspicuously refrains from action only once, when he comes upon the king praying (iii. iii). Here, if we are again to trust his own explanation (cf. Stoll, op. cit., pp. 51–62, and Levin L. Schücking, Character Problems in Shakespeare's Plays, New York, 1922, pp. 213–217), he refrains for a reason entirely consistent with his conscientious earlier behavior. Now sure of his duty, he has determined to perform it with scrupulous thoroughness and is dissatisfied with any mere approximation of accomplishment. Just as he was at first doubtful of the justification for acting at all, having now determined that revenge is his duty, he purposes to perform that duty thoroughly and completely.—Joseph Kohler (op. cit., p. 197) points to the lines in which Hamlet, having announced that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern “are not near my conscience” (v. ii. 58), and being about finally to consummate his revenge, summarizes Claudius's offenses and concludes with the questions,

… is't not perfect conscience

To quit him with this arm? and is't not to be damn'd,

To let this canker of our nature come

In further evil? (v. ii. 67–70.)

“Aber auch hier,” as Kohler remarks, “ist das wahre Gewissen mächtig genug, um dem furchtbaren Schritt, zu dem Prinz sich wappnen will, entgegenzutreten.”

48 Malone (op. cit., 1821 ed., vii, 328) attributed to Blakeway a recognition of likeness to Hamlet here in linkings of cowardice and conscience.

49 All the evidence of a date for Richard III earlier than the entry in the Stationers' Register and the first quarto of 1597, though plausible enough, is inferential; and the unmistakable reference to Shakespeare's Hamlet in Gabriel Harvey's copy of the Speght Chaucer may well belong, as a priori it appears to belong, to the year 1598. Indeed, it is possible that the reference in Henslowe's Diary to a performance of Hamlet on June 9, 1594, or other references elsewhere soon after, may concern Shakespeare's play.

50 Italics are of course, with one exception noted below, mine throughout these selections, in which, as in those from Hamlet, I have followed the readings and line references of the Furness Variorum, except that I have modernized the form of the letters.

51 Furnace misprinted this word Dkue after the first folio.

52 Whatever may be the antecedent of him, and hence the exact relation intended between the devil and conscience, a subject that has troubled the commentators (see the Furness Variorum), it is certain that both are involved, as in Hamlet's and all other moral problems, including that of Launcelot Gobbo (Merchant of Venice, ii. ii).

53 The quartos, with some variation in spelling, read:

I charge you as you hope to have redemption,

By Christs deare bloud shed for our grievous sinnes,

That you depart …

56 Buckingham, acting his sycophant's part in the delusive subterfuge before the London citizenry, remarks hypocritically to Richard,

My Lord, this argues Conscience in your Grace,

But the respects thereof are nice, and triviall …

(iii. vii. 183–184)

The word conscience here, however, may have considerable coloring from such earlier use as in Chaucer's “And al was conscience and tendre herte.”

56 Mai-Rodegg (op. cit., pp. 63–64) points out that Laertes evidences a similar rash impiety: “Conscience and grace, to the profoundest pit!/I dare damnation” (iv. v. 128–129).