Of thinking too precisely on the event,——— And ever, three parts coward),-I do not know To do 't." "indiscretion," proceeding from sudden and "Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting It was not "bestial oblivion."-Oh, no. The "It will be short: the interim is mine; And a man's life's no more than to say-onc." This looks like decision, growing out of the narrative of the events in which Hamlet had exhibited his decision. But, even in his own account, the beginning of this action was his We are certain that it was no "trifling of his favour" that broke her heart. We are assured that his seeming harshness did not sink deep into her spirit. We believe that he loved her more than "forty thousand brothers"-though a very ingenious question has been raised upon that point. And yet she certainly perished through Hamlet and his actions. But we blame him not; for her destiny was involved in his. We cannot avoid transcribing a passage from the article in 'Blackwood's Magazine,' which we have already mentioned: “Soon as we connect her destiny with Hamlet, we know that darkness is to overshadow her, and that sadness and sorrow will step in between her and the ghost-haunted avenger of his father's murder. Soon as our pity is excited for her, it continues gradually to deepen; and, when she appears in her madness, we are not more prepared to weep over all its most pathetic movements than we afterwards are to hear of her death. Perhaps the description of that catastrophe by the Queen is poetical rather than dramatic; but its exquisite beauty prevails, and Ophelia, dying and dead, is still the same Ophelia that first won our love. Perhaps the very forgetfulness of her, throughout the remainder of the play, leaves the soul at full liberty to dream of the departed. She has passed away from the earth like a beautiful air—a delightful dream. There would have been no place for her in the agitation and tempest of the final catastrophe." Garrick omitted the grave-diggers. He had the terror of Voltaire before his eyes. The English audience compelled their restoration. Was it that "the groundlings" could not endure the loss of the ten waistcoats which the clown had divested himself of, time out of mind?-or, was there in this scene something that brought Hamlet home to the humblest, in the large reach of his universal philosophy? M. Villemain, in his Essay on Shakspere, appears to us utterly to have mistaken this scene: "Strike not out from the tragedy of 'Hamlet,' as Garrick had attempted to do, the labours and the pleasantries of the grave-diggers. Be present at this terrible buffoonery; and you will behold terror and gaiety rapidly moving an immense audience. Youth and beauty contemplate with insatiable curiosity images of decay, and minute details of death; and then the uncouth pleasantries which are blended with the action of the chief personages seem from time to time to relieve the spectators from the weight which oppresses them, and shouts of laughter burst from every seat. Attentive to this spectacle, the coldest countenances alternately manifest their gloom or their gaiety; and even the statesman * We translate from the last edition of his Essay. Paris, 1839. smiles at the sarcasm of the grave-digger who can distinguish between the skull of a courtier and a buffoon." This may be the Hamlet of the theatre; but M. Villemain should have looked at the Hamlet of the closet. The conversation of the clowns before Hamlet comes upon the scene is indeed pleasantry intermixed with sarcasm; but, the moment that Hamlet opens his lips, the meditative richness of his mind is poured out upon us, and he grapples with the most familiar and yet the deepest thoughts of human nature, in a style that is sublime from its very obviousness and simplicity. Where is the terror, unless it be terrible to think of "the house appointed for all living;" and what is to provoke the long peals of laughter, where the grotesque is altogether subordinate to the solemn and the philosophical? It is the entire absorption of the fellow who "has no feeling of his business," by him of "daintier sense who considers it "too curiously," that makes this scene so impressive to the reader. Of Hamlet's violence at the grave of Ophelia we think with the critic on Sir Henry Halford's Essay, that it was a real aberration, and not a simulated frenzy. His apparently cold expression, "What, the fair Ophelia !" appears to us to have been an effort of restraint, which for the moment overmastered his reason. In the interval between this "towering passion" and the final catastrophe, Hamlet is thoroughly himself-meditative to excess with Horatio-most acute, playful, but altogether gentlemanly, in the scene with the frivolous courtier. But observe that he forms no plans. He knows the danger which surrounds him; and he still feels with regard to the usurper as he always felt : "Is 't not perfect conscience, To quit him with this arm?" But his will is still essentially powerless; and now he yields to the sense of predestination: "If it be now, 't is not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all." The catastrophe is perfectly in accordance with this prostration of Hamlet's mind. It is the result of an accident, produced we know not how. Some one has suggested a polite| Have we lost anything? Then we should ceremonial on the part of Hamlet, by which not have had the Hamlet who is "the darling the foils might be exchanged with perfect of every country in which the literature of consistency. We would rather not know how England has been fostered;"" then we they were exchanged. "The catastrophe," should not have had the Hamlet who is "a says Johnson, "is not very happily produced; concentration of all the interests that belong the exchange of weapons is rather an ex- to humanity; in whom there is a more intense pedient of necessity than a stroke of art. conception of individual human life than A scheme might easily be formed to kill perhaps in any other human composition: Hamlet with the dagger, and Laertes with that is, a being with springs of thought, and the bowl." No doubt. A tragedy terminated feeling, and action, deeper than we can by chance appears to be a capital thing for search;"+ then we should not have had the the rule-and-line men to lay hold of. But Hamlet, of whom it has been said, "Hamlet they forget the poet's purpose. Had Hamlet is a name; his speeches and sayings but the been otherwise, his will would have been the idle coinage of the poet's brain. What, then, predominant agent in the catastrophe. The are they not real? They are as real as our empire of chance would have been over-ruled; own thoughts. Their reality is in the reader's the guilty would have been punished; the mind. It is we who are Hamlet."‡ innocent perhaps would have been spared. * Coleridge. † Blackwood, vol. ii. + Hazlitt. CHAPTER V. OTHELLO. On the 6th of October, 1621, Thomas Walk- | it to the general censure. Yours, Thomas ley entered at Stationers' Hall 'The Tragedie Walkley." of Othello, the Moore of Venice.' In 1622, Walkley published the edition for which he had thus claimed the copy. It is, as was usual with the separate plays, a small quarto, and it bears the following title: The Tragoedy of Othello, the Moore of Venice. As it hath beene diverse times acted at the Globe, and at the Black-Friars, by his Majesties Servants. Written by William Shakespeare.' It contains, also, a prefatory address, which is curious :-"The Stationer to the Reader. To set forth a book without an Epistle were like to the old English proverb, a blue coat without a badge; and the author being dead, I thought good to take that piece of work upon me: to commend it I will not for that which is good, I hope every man will commend, without entreaty: and I am the bolder, because the author's name is sufficient to vent his work. Thus leaving every one to the liberty of judgment, I have ventured to print this play, and leave 'The Tragedie of Othello, the Moore of Venice,' commences on page 310 of the Tragedies in the first folio collection. It extends to page 339; and after it follow, 'Antony and Cleopatra,' and 'Cymbeline.' It is not entered at Stationers' Hall by the proprietors of the folio edition, which affords some presumption that Walkley was legally entitled to his copy. But it is by no means certain to our minds that Walkley's edition was published before the folio. The usual date of that edition is, as our readers know, 1623; but there is a copy in existence bearing the date of 1622. We have, however, no doubt, that the copy of 'Othello' in the folio was printed from a manuscript copy, without reference to the quarto; for there are typographical errors in the folio, arising, no doubt, from illegibility in the manuscript, which would certainly have been avoided had the copy been compared with an edition printed from another manuscript. The fair inference, therefore, is, that the 'Othello' of the folio was printed off before the quarto of 1622 appeared. Had it been the last play in the book, we should have retained the same opinion, from internal evidence. As two plays succeed it in the volume, we are strengthened in the belief that the original quarto and folio editions were printing at one and the same time. The folio edition is regularly divided into acts and scenes; the quarto edition has not a single indication of any subdivision in the acts, and omits the division between Acts II. and III. The folio edition contains 163 lines which are not found in the quarto, and these some of the most striking in the play: the number of lines found in the quarto which are not in the folio do not amount to 10. presume that the dramas represented on these joyous occasions for the amusement of Elizabeth were usually new and popular performances. 'Othello' was unquestionably popular, and most likely new, in 1602.”* When Shakspere first became acquainted with the 'Moor of Venice' of Giraldi Cinthi (whether in the original Italian, or the French translation, or in one of the little story-books that familiarized the people with the romance and the poetry of the south), he saw in that novel the scaffolding of 'Othello.' There was formerly in Venice a valiant Moor, says the story. It came to pass that a virtuous lady of wonderful beauty, named Desdemona, became enamoured of his great qualities and noble virtues. The Moor loved her in return, and they were married in spite of the opposition of the lady's friends. It happened too (says the story) that the senate of Venice appointed the Moor to the command of Cyprus, and that his lady determined to accompany him thither. Amongst the officers who attended upon the General was an ensign, of the most agreeable person, but of the most depraved nature. The wife of this man was the friend of Desdemona, and they spent much of their time together. The wicked ensign became violently enamoured of Desdemona; but she, whose thoughts were wholly engrossed by the Moor, was utterly regardless of the ensign's attentions. His love then became terrible hate, and he resolved to accuse Desdemona to her husband of infidelity, and to connect with the accusation a captain of Cyprus. That officer, having struck a sentinel, was discharged from his command by the Moor; and Desdemona, interested in his favour, endeavoured to reinstate him in her husband's good opinion. The Moor said one day to the ensign, that his wife was so importunate for the restoration of the officer, that he must take him back. "If you would open your eyes, you would see plainer," said the ensign. The 64 18 10." romance-writer continues to display the perBurbidge's players were those of the Black-fidious intrigues of the ensign against Des The date of the first production of 'Othello' is settled as near as we can desire it to be. The play certainly belongs to the most vigorous period of Shakspere's intellect "at its very point of culmination." Chalmers, upon the very questionable belief that the expression new heraldry refers to the creation by James I. of the order of baronets, gave it to 1614; Malone, in the early editions of his Essay,' to 1611; Drake, to 1612. In the later edition of Malone's 'Essay,' published by Boswell, in 1821, Malone says, without any explanation, we know it was acted in 1604, and I have therefore placed it in that year." Mr. Collier, however, has been able most satisfactorily to place it two years earlier. There are detailed accounts preserved at Bridgewater House, in the handwriting of Sir Arthur Mainwaring, of the expenses incurred by Sir Thomas Egerton, afterwards Lord Ellesmere, in entertaining Queen Elizabeth and her court three days at Harefield. Amongst the entries in these accounts is the following: "6 Aug. 1602. Rewardes to the Vaulters, Players, and friars and Globe-Shakspere's company. Mr. Collier adds, "Perhaps it is not too much to demona. He steals a handkerchief which *New Particulars,' &c. the Moor had given her, employing the | too easily abused, of confederacy with the agency of his own child. He contrives with the Moor to murder the captain of Cyprus, after he has made the credulous husband listen to a conversation to which he gives a false colour and direction; and, finally, the | Moor and the guilty officer destroy Desdemona together, under circumstances of great brutality. The crime is, however, concealed, and the Moor is finally betrayed by his accomplice. Mr. Dunlop, in his 'History of Fiction,' has pointed out the material differences between the novel and the tragedy. He adds, "In all these important variations, Shakspere has improved on his original. In a few other particulars he has deviated from it with less judgment; in most respects he has adhered with close imitation. The characters of Iago, Desdemona, and Cassio are taken from Cinthio with scarcely a shade of difference. The obscure hints and various artifices of the villain to raise suspicion in the Moor are the same in the novel and the drama." M. Guizot, with the eye of real criticism, has seen somewhat further than Mr. Dunlop. "There was wanting in the narrative of Cinthio the poetical genius which furnished the actors-which created the individuals-which imposed upon each a figure and a character-which made us see their actions, and listen to their words which presented their thoughts and penetrated their sentiments:- that vivifying power which summons events to arise, to progress, to expand, to be completed :—that creative breath which, breathing over the past, calls it again into being, and fills it with a present and imperishable life :-this was the power which Shakspere alone possessed, and by which, out of a forgotten novel, he has made 'Othello.' Before we can be said to understand the idea of Shakspere in the composition of 6 'Othello,' we must disabuse ourselves of some of the commonplace principles upon which he has been interpreted. The novel, be it observed, is a very intelligible and consistent story, of wedded happiness, of unlawful and unrequited attachment, of revenge growing out of disappointment, of jealousy abuser, of most brutal and guilty violence, of equally base falsehood and concealment. This is a story in which we see nothing out of the common course of wickedness; nothing which licentious craft might not prompt, and frenzied passion adopt. The Iago of the tragedy, it is said, has not sufficient motives for his crimes. Mr. Skottowe tells us that in the novel, except as a means of vengeance on Desdemona, the infliction of pain upon the Moor forms no part of the treacherous officer's design. But, with regard to the play, he informs us, that it is surely straining the matter beyond the limits of probability to attribute Iago's detestation of Othello to causes so inadequate and vague as the dramatist has assigned *. We have here the two principles upon which the novelist and the dramatist worked thoroughly at issue; and the one is to be called natural, and the other unnatural. The one would have produced such an 'Othello' as is cleverly described in the introduction to a French translation of the play recently publishedt: in which the nature of jealousy and all its cruel effects would have been explained, with great pomp of language, by a confidante in an introductory monologue; and the same subject would have served for a continued theme, until the fatal conclusion, which was long foreseen, of an amiable wife becoming the victim of a cruel oppressor. This is the Zaire of Voltaire. Upon the other principle, we have no explanations, no regular progress of what is most palpable in human action. We have the "motiveless malignity" of Iago,-" a being next to devil, and only not quite devil, and yet a character which Shakspeare has attempted and executed without scandal," as the main spring of all the fearful events which issue out of the unequal contest between the powers of grossness and purity, of falsehood and truth. This is the Othello of Shakspere. If it had been within the compass of *The Life of Shakspeare.' By Augustine Skottowe. Vol. ii. p. 76. + Chefs-d'Œuvre de Shakspeare. Tomeii. Paris, 1839. + Coleridge. |