JOSÉ M. BLANCO WHITE
«The Pictorial Shakspere. Notes on Hamlet.»1,
The Christian Teacher, I, 1839, pp. 573-580.
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.»
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,
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,––
“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. 117.
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
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
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
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
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 Weakness2 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.
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.
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
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
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.”