The Shakespeare Story-Book

“If he love her not, and be not fallen from his reason because of it, let me be no assistant for a State, but keep a farm and carters,” concluded Polonius complacently.

“We will try it,” said the King.

“But look where sadly the poor wretch comes reading,” said the Queen, as Hamlet himself entered the lobby at that moment, his eyes fixed on the open book he held in his hand.

“Away, I do beseech you – both away!” cried Polonius eagerly. “I will speak to him. – How does my good Lord Hamlet?” he added suavely, as Hamlet approached.

“Well, God have mercy!” said Hamlet, in a voice of vacant indifference.

“Do you know me, my lord?” said Polonius, still in the same coaxing tone.

The young Prince lifted his listless eyes from his book and surveyed the old man.

“Excellent well; you are a fishmonger.”

“Not I, my lord,” said Polonius, rather taken aback.

“Then I would you were so honest a man.”

“Honest, my lord?”

“Ay, sir! To be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.”

“That’s very true, my lord,” Polonius was forced to agree. He had not come off very well in this first encounter of wits, but he resolved to make a further attempt. Hamlet had now returned to his book. “What do you read, my lord?”

“Words – words – words,” said the young Prince wearily.

“What is the matter, my lord?”

“Between who?”

“I mean, the matter that you read, my lord?”

“Slanders, sir,” said Hamlet, looking full at him, and pretending to point to a passage in the book, “for the satirical rogue says here that old men have gray beards, that their faces are wrinkled, and that they have a plentiful lack of wit, together with most weak limbs; all which, sir, though I most powerfully and potently believe, yet I hold it not honesty to have it thus set down; for yourself, sir, should be as old as I am – if like a crab you could go backward.”

“Though this be madness, yet there is method in it,” said Polonius aside. “Will you walk out of the air, my lord?”

“Into my grave.”

“Indeed, that is out of the air,” remarked Polonius struck by the wisdom of Hamlet’s replies. “Well, I will leave him, and suddenly contrive the means of meeting between him and my daughter. My honourable lord, I will most humbly take my leave of you.”

“You cannot, sir, take from me anything that I will more willingly part withal,” said Hamlet, bowing low with exaggerated courtesy; then, as he turned away, the satire in his voice changed to a note of hopeless despair – “except my life – except my life – except my life,” he ended, with almost a groan.

“Fare you well, my lord,” said Polonius; and as he fussily took himself off, Hamlet muttered under his breath, “Those tedious old fools!”

Hamlet, for his own purpose, had chosen to amuse himself at the expense of the pompous old Chamberlain, but directly Rosencrantz and Guildenstern appeared he was again himself, and the warm-hearted friend of old days. He greeted them with the utmost cordiality, and nothing could have exceeded the gracious charm of his manner. If only they had met him with the same frank candour, all would have been well; but his quick penetration soon discovered from their expression that there was something in the background, and he presently made them confess that their visit to Elsinore had not been prompted solely by the desire to see Hamlet, but that they had been sent for by the King and Queen. When Hamlet won from them reluctantly this admission, his trust in them fled, and he determined to be on his guard with them. He told them he could tell why they had been sent for, and thus they need not fear betraying any secret of the King and Queen.

“I have of late – but wherefore I know not – lost all my mirth, foregone all custom of exercises,” he said, “and, indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave, o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire – why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel! In apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me – no, nor woman either, though by your smiling you seem to say so.”

“My lord, there was no such stuff in my thoughts,” said Rosencrantz.

“Why did you laugh, then, when I said ‘Man delights not me’?”

Rosencrantz answered that he was only thinking, if Hamlet delighted not in man, what sorry entertainment the band of players would receive, whom they had overtaken on the way to Elsinore.

Hamlet replied that they would all be welcome, and asked what players they were.

“Even those you were wont to take such delight in, the tragedians of the city,” answered Rosencrantz.

Hamlet’s interest was at once aroused, and he was discussing the subject of the players, and the reason why they were forced to travel, instead of keeping to their old position in the city, when a flourish of trumpets announced they had arrived. Before Rosencrantz and Guildenstern left him, Hamlet spoke a parting word to them.

“Gentlemen, you are welcome,” he said courteously. “Your hands, come then” – for they would merely have bowed respectfully. “You are welcome; but my uncle-father and aunt-mother are deceived.”

“In what, my dear lord?” asked Guildenstern.

“I am but mad north-north-west,” said Hamlet gravely: “when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw.”

Hamlet’s speech may or may not have puzzled the young men to whom it was addressed, but, all the same, it was excellent good sense, and meant that he was in full possession of his faculties. His metaphor was taken from the old sport of hawking; the word “handsaw” is a local corruption for “heron.” The heron, when pursued, flew with the wind; therefore when the wind was from the north it flew towards the south; as the sun is in this quarter during the morning (when the sport generally took place), it would be difficult to distinguish the two birds when looking towards this dazzling light. On the other hand, when the wind was southerly, the heron flew towards the north, and, with his back to the sun, the spectator could easily tell which was the hawk and which was the heron.

By his speech, therefore, Hamlet meant to imply that his intelligence was just as keen as that of other people.

Old Polonius now entered in a state of great excitement to announce the arrival of the players. “The best actors in the world,” as he expressed it, “either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or poem unlimited; Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus too light. For the law of writ and the liberty, these are the only men.”

“You are welcome, masters – welcome all,” said the young Prince, with his ready courtesy. “I am glad to see you well. Welcome, good friends.”

And for each one he had some kindly word of greeting and remembrance. Then he bade them give at once a specimen of their powers; and as a proof of the breadth of Hamlet’s nature, and the wideness of his sympathies, may be noted the fact that he was as much at home in discussing stage matters with the players as in musing over deep philosophies of life by himself. He recalled to their memory a play which had formerly struck his fancy, though it had never been acted, or, if it were, not above once, for it was too refined for the taste of the million – “caviare to the general,” as Hamlet expressed it. Hamlet himself recited a speech from this play with excellent taste and elocution, and the chief player continued the touching passage with much pathos.

Noting the effect that the player’s mimic passion had on the spectators, a sudden idea came to Hamlet, and when the other actors were dismissed, in the charge of the fussy Polonius, he kept back the first player to speak a few words to him.

“We’ll have a play to-morrow,” he said. “Dost thou hear me, old friend: can you play the Murder of Gonzago?”

“Ay, my lord.”

“We’ll have it to-morrow night. You could, for a need, study a speech of some dozen or sixteen lines, which I would set down and insert in it, could you not?”

“Ay, my lord.”

“Very well. Follow that lord, and, look you, mock him not,” said Hamlet, sending him to rejoin his companions.

Left alone, a bitter feeling of disgust at his own weakness and irresolution seized Hamlet. The sight of this actor’s passion and despair over the fate of an entirely imaginary person made him realise his own lack of duty with regard to his father. Here was a King who had been most cruelly murdered, and his son did nothing to avenge his loss, but, like John-a-dreams, idle of his cause – a dull, spiritless rascal – he simply wasted his time in brooding, and said nothing. His wrath against his uncle blazed up again with sudden fury, and all his thoughts turned to vengeance. But he checked his exclamations to plan practical measures.

“About, my brain! Hum! – I have heard that guilty creatures, sitting at a play, have by the very cunning of the scene been struck so to the soul that presently they have proclaimed their ill deeds; for murder, though it have no tongue, will speak in most miraculous fashion. I’ll have these players play something like the murder of my father before mine uncle; I’ll observe his looks; I’ll tent him to the quick; if he but blench, I know my course. The spirit that I have seen may be the devil; and the devil hath power to assume a pleasing shape. I’ll have grounds more relative than this,” concluded Hamlet, touching the tablets on which he had inscribed the message from the Ghost. “The play’s the thing wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King.”

“The Mouse-trap”

Next day, in accordance with their scheme, the King and Polonius hid themselves behind the arras, to listen to the interview between Hamlet and Ophelia. Hamlet, as usual, was meditating deeply on the problems of life, when Ophelia approached, and offered to restore to him some gifts which he had given her in happier days.

In the sudden tragedy which had overwhelmed Hamlet’s whole being, his love for Ophelia seemed something very far away, but the old tenderness was always struggling to assert itself. He tried, however, to force it down, and even assumed an air of harsh indifference which almost broke Ophelia’s heart. In apparently wild and rambling words, but really deeply penetrated with pity, he gave her to understand that all thoughts of marriage between them must now be over, and bade the young girl get to a nunnery, and that quickly, too. The hollowness and hypocrisy that he saw all around him goaded his spirit almost beyond endurance, and now another blow to his belief in human nature was to be struck.

When Polonius hid himself behind the arras it is doubtful whether Ophelia knew he was there, or, in the excitement of the moment, she may possibly have forgotten the fact. Anyhow, when Hamlet suddenly asked her, “Where’s your father?” she answered, “At home, my lord.” But her reply filled Hamlet with fresh scorn for the apparent insincerity of this innocent young girl. He had seen the arras stir, and Polonius’s old gray head peep out; he naturally thought that Ophelia was in league with the rest of the world to spy upon him and deceive him.

“Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the fool nowhere but in his own house,” he said, in clear, cutting accents, when he heard Ophelia’s response. “Farewell!”

“Oh, help him, you sweet heavens!” murmured Ophelia.

It seemed quite evident to her that the unfortunate young Prince had lost his reason.

“If thou dost marry, I’ll give thee this plague for thy dowry,” cried Hamlet wildly: “be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a nunnery. Go; farewell!”

“O heavenly powers, restore him!” prayed Ophelia again.

“I have heard of your paintings, too, well enough,” continued Hamlet, with increasing violence. “God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another; you jig, you amble, and you lisp, and nickname God’s creatures. Go to, I’ll no more on it; it hath made me mad. I say, we will have no more marriages; those that are married already – all but one” – here he looked darkly towards the arras, where he knew the King was concealed with Polonius – “shall live; the rest shall keep as they are. To a nunnery, go!”

And with a furious gesture of dismissal Hamlet hurried from the room.

“Oh, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown!” sighed Ophelia piteously. ”The courtier’s, soldier’s, scholar’s eye, tongue, sword; the expectancy and rose of the fair state, the glass of fashion, and the mould of form, the observed of all observers quite, quite down! And I, of ladies most deject and wretched, that sucked the honey of his music vows, now see that noble and most sovereign reason, like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh! Oh, woe is me, to have seen what I have seen, see what I see!”

While Ophelia was musing thus sadly, the King and Polonius stepped from their hiding-place. The King was not at all satisfied that Polonius was right in his surmise that Hamlet had lost his reason because of Ophelia’s rejected love.

“Love! His affections do not tend that way,” he said decidedly. “Nor was what he spoke, though it lacked form a little, like madness. There is something in his soul over which his melancholy sits brooding, and I fear the result will be some danger. To prevent this, I have determined that he shall depart with speed for England, to demand there our neglected tribute. Haply the sea and the sight of foreign countries will expel this settled matter in his heart, about which his brains, always beating, makes him thus unlike himself.”

Polonius agreed that it would be a good plan to send Hamlet to England, though he would not give up his idea that the origin and commencement of Hamlet’s grief sprang from neglected love. He further suggested that after the play the Queen should have an interview alone with Hamlet, and try to get from him the cause of his grief, and that Polonius himself should be placed where he could hear their conference.

“If the Queen cannot discover the cause, send him to England, or confine him where your wisdom shall think best,” he concluded.

“It shall be so,” declared the King. “Madness in great ones must not go unwatched.”

The play on which so much depended was now to be performed. Hamlet had inserted some speeches of his own, and before the performance began he gave some excellent advice to the players on the art of acting. While they were making ready, Hamlet had a few private words with Horatio. In the midst of the trouble and turmoil of his own soul, his fretted spirit turned with deep affection to the quiet strength of this faithful friend.

“Give me that man that is not passion’s slave, and I will wear him in my heart’s core – ay, in my heart of heart, as I do thee,” he said tenderly to Horatio.

He had already confided to him what the Ghost had related, and now he told him that he had laid a trap to discover if what it said were true; one scene in the play was to represent closely the circumstances of his father’s death, and he begged Horatio, when that act came, to observe the King with all the power of his soul. If his guilt did not reveal itself at one speech, then the Ghost must have spoken falsely, and Hamlet’s own imagination was black and wicked.

“Give him heedful note,” he said, “for I will rivet my eyes to his face, and afterwards we will compare our impressions in judging his appearance.”

“Well, my lord, if he steal anything whilst this play is playing, and escape detection, I will pay the theft,” said Horatio, meaning by this that his watch would never waver.

“They are coming to the play; I must be idle. Get you a place,” said Hamlet.

The music of the Danish royal march was heard, there was a flourish of trumpets, and, attended by the full Court, the King and Queen entered the great hall of the castle. Old Polonius marshalled them, bowing backwards before them; Ophelia followed in the train of the Queen; Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, with other attendant lords, were there, and guards carried torches to light up the scene. The King and Queen took their seats on thrones provided for them at one side of the stage; Ophelia sat in a chair opposite; Horatio took up his stand at the back of Ophelia’s chair, where, unnoticed himself, he could watch the King’s face; and Hamlet, who on their entrance had immediately assumed his air of madness, flung himself on the ground at Ophelia’s feet.

The play began. First the scene was given in dumb show. It represented a King and Queen who were apparently very affectionate together. Presently the King lay down on a bank of flowers, and the Queen, seeing him asleep, left him. Soon another man came in, who took off the King’s crown, kissed it, poured poison into the sleeper’s ear, and went off. The Queen returned, found the King dead, and showed passionate signs of grief. The poisoner came back, seemed to lament with her; the body of the dead King was carried away. Then the poisoner wooed the Queen with gifts. She seemed for a while loath and unwilling, but in the end accepted his love.

Claudius at the sight of this scene betrayed many signs of secret uneasiness, but he made no open remark, and the other spectators were too intent on the play to notice him. Only Horatio, from his place opposite, kept careful watch, and Hamlet, lying on the ground, quivering with excitement, never took his eyes from the guilty man’s face. The Queen and Ophelia looked on with rather languid interest.

“What means this, my lord?” asked Ophelia, when the dumb show had come to an end.

“Marry, this is miching mallecho; it means mischief,” said Hamlet.

“Belike this show imports the argument of the play,” said Ophelia, which indeed proved to be the case.

Now the real players came on, who had to speak, and the action followed the same lines as the dumb show, the player Queen pouring forth boundless expressions of devotion to her husband.

“Madam, how like you this play?” asked Hamlet presently, when a pause occurred.

“The lady doth protest too much, methinks,” said the Queen.

“Oh, but she’ll keep her word,” said Hamlet, with biting sarcasm.

“Have you heard the argument? Is there no offence in it?” asked the King uneasily.

“No, no; they do but jest —poison in jest; no offence in the world,” returned Hamlet, looking at him with strange malice in his eyes.

The King winced, but tried to appear unconcerned.

“What do you call the play?”

“‘The Mouse-trap.’ Marry, how? Tropically,” continued Hamlet, still in the same wild manner. “This play is the image of a murder done in Vienna; Gonzago is the Duke’s name, his wife Baptista. You shall see anon. ’Tis a knavish piece of work; but what of that? Your Majesty and we that have free souls, it touches us not; let the galled jade wince, our withers are unwrung.”

The King grew more and more disturbed; he cast uneasy glances at the play, made a half-movement to rise, and checked himself. As the play went on, Hamlet could scarcely control his excitement. The players were now reciting the speeches he had written; the young Prince muttered the words with them in a rapid undertone. When one of the characters poured the poison into the player King’s ear, Hamlet burst out again into fierce speech, his voice rising shriller and higher.

“He poisons him in the garden for his estate. His name’s Gonzago. The story is extant, and written in very choice Italian. You shall see anon how the murderer gets the love of Gonzago’s wife.”

Hamlet, in his excitement, had dragged himself across the floor till he was at the foot of the throne. The King, seeing the mimic representation of his own crime, started up in guilty terror.

“The King rises!” exclaimed Ophelia.

“What! Frighted with false fire!” shouted Hamlet in bitter derision, and with a harsh cry of triumph he sprang to his feet, and flung himself into the throne which the King had left vacant.

All was now confusion; the King and Queen hurriedly retired; their courtiers thronged after them, and Hamlet and Horatio were left alone in the deserted hall. Hamlet broke into a wild snatch of song:

“Why, let the stricken deer go weep,The hart ungallèd play;For some must watch, while some must sleep,So runs the world away.”

“O good Horatio, I’ll take the Ghost’s word for a thousand pounds. Didst perceive?”

“Very well, my lord.”

“Upon the talk of the poisoning?”

“I did very well note him.”

It was not likely that Hamlet’s behaviour would be let pass without remark, and presently the two obsequious courtiers, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, came to summon him to the presence of the Queen. They brought word that the King was in his own room, marvellously upset with rage, and that the Queen, in great affliction of spirit, had sent them to say to Hamlet that his behaviour had struck her into amazement and astonishment, and that she desired to speak with him in her room before he went to bed.

Hamlet replied he would obey, but on Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’s further attempting to discover from him the cause of his strange behaviour, he retorted by asking the two young men what they meant by treating him in the way they did, which was as if they were trying to drive him into some snare.

“O my lord, if my duty be too bold, my love is too unmannerly,” answered Guildenstern.

“I do not well understand that,” said Hamlet; and it may be doubted if the speaker himself knew what he meant by his silly words.

But the young Prince determined to give the couple a lesson, and show them he was not quite the witless creature they seemed to imagine. A few minutes before he had called for music, and ordered some recorders to be brought. The recorder was a small musical instrument something like a flute. On the attendant’s bringing them, Hamlet took one and held it out to Guildenstern.

“Will you play upon this pipe?” he asked him courteously.

“My lord, I cannot.”

“I pray you,” he begged.

“Believe me, I cannot.”

“I do beseech you.”

“I know no touch of it, my lord.”

“’Tis as easy as lying,” said Hamlet. “Govern these holes with your finger and thumb, give it breath with your mouth, and it will discourse most eloquent music. Look you, these are the stops.”

“But these cannot I command to any utterance of harmony; I have not the skill,” declared Guildenstern.

“Why, look you, how unworthy a thing you would make of me!” said Hamlet, his persuasive voice changing to sudden sternness. “You would play upon me; you would seem to know my stops; you would pluck out the heart of my mystery; you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass; and there is much music, excellent voice in this little organ, yet you cannot make it speak. Do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe? – Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, yet you cannot play upon me.”

The pipe snapped in his slender fingers, as he tossed it contemptuously away, and the two young men stood crestfallen and abashed before his noble scorn.

It was no repentant and shamefaced son that entered the Queen’s room that night. Hamlet had steeled his heart to do what he considered his duty, and tell his mother the truth. He would speak daggers, though he used none; he would reveal to her the true character of the man she had taken for her second husband. When, therefore, the Queen, in accordance with Polonius’s advice, began to take him roundly to task for his strange behaviour, he retorted in such a strange, and even menacing, manner that she was quite alarmed, and shouted for help. Polonius, hidden behind the arras, echoed her cry. Hamlet, thinking it was the King, and that the hour for vengeance had come, drew his sword.

“How now! A rat? Dead, for a ducat, dead!” he exclaimed, and made a pass through the arras.

There was a cry from behind, “O, I am slain!” and the fall of a heavy body.

“O me, what hast thou done?” exclaimed the Queen.

“Nay, I know not. Is it – the King?” said Hamlet, in a harsh whisper.

“Oh, what a rash and bloody deed is this!” moaned the Queen, wringing her hands in dismay.