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J.A. Giles - "On The Ruin of Britain (De Excidio Britanniae) by Gildas"

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Tales of Shakespeare

C >> Charles and Mary Lamb >> Tales of Shakespeare




And the prince, turning to these old lords, Montague and Capulet,
rebuked them for their brutal and irrational enmities, and showed
them what a scourge Heaven had laid upon such offences, that it had
found means even through the love of their children to punish their
unnatural hate. And these old rivals, no longer enemies, agreed to
bury their long strife in their children's graves; and lord Capulet
requested lord Montague to give him his hand, calling him by the
name of brother, as if in acknowledgment of the union of their
families, by the marriage of the young Capulet and Montague; and
saying that lord Montague's hand (in token of reconcilement) was all
he demanded for his daughter's jointure: but lord Montague said he
would give him more, for he would raise her a statue of pure gold,
that while Verona kept its name, no figure should be so esteemed for
its richness and workmanship as that of the true and faithful Juliet.
And lord Capulet in return said that he would raise another statue to
Romeo. So did these poor old lords, when it was too late, strive to
outgo each other in mutual courtesies: while so deadly had been their
rage and enmity in past times, that nothing but the fearful overthrow
of their children (poor sacrifices to their quarrels and dissensions)
could remove the rooted hates and jealousies of the noble families.





HAMLET, PRINCE OF DENMARK



Gertrude, queen of Denmark, becoming a widow by the sudden death
of King Hamlet, in less than two months after his death married his
brother Claudius, which was noted by all people at the time for a
strange act of indiscretion, or unfeelingness, or worse: for this
Claudius did no ways resemble her late husband in the qualities of his
person or his mind, but was as contemptible in outward appearance,
as he was base and unworthy in disposition; and suspicions did not
fail to arise in the minds of some, that he had privately made away
with his brother, the late king, with the view of marrying his widow,
and ascending the throne of Denmark, to the exclusion of young
Hamlet, the son of the buried king, and lawful successor to the throne.

But upon no one did this unadvised action of the queen make such
impression as upon this young prince, who loved and venerated the
memory of his dead father almost to idolatry, and being of a nice
sense of honour, and a most exquisite practicer of propriety himself,
did sorely take to heart this unworthy conduct of his mother Gertrude:
insomuch that, between grief for his father's death and shame for his
mother's marriage, this young prince was overclouded with a deep
melancholy, and lost all his mirth and all his good looks; all his
customary pleasure in books forsook him, his princely exercises and
sports, proper to his youth, were no longer acceptable; he grew weary
of the world, which seemed to him an unweeded garden, where all the
wholesome flowers were choked up, and nothing but weeds could
thrive. Not that the prospect of exclusion from the throne, his lawful
inheritance, weighed so much upon his spirits, though that to a young
and high-minded prince was a bitter wound and a sore indignity; but
what so galled him, and took away all his cheerful spirits, was, that
his mother had shown herself so forgetful to his father's memory; and
such a father! who had been to her so loving and so gentle a husband!
and then she always Appeared as loving and obedient a wife to him,
and would hang upon him as if her affection grew to him: and now
within two months, or as it seemed to young Hamlet, less than two
months, she had married again, married his uncle, her dear husband's
brother, in itself a highly improper and unlawful marriage, from the
nearness of relationship, but made much more so by the indecent
haste with which it was concluded, and the unkingly character of the
man whom she had chosen to be the partner of her throne and bed.
This it was, which more than the loss of ten kingdoms, dashed the
spirits and brought a cloud over the mind of this honourable young
prince.

In vain was all that his mother Gertrude or the king could do to
contrive to divert him; he still appeared in court in a suit of deep
black, as mourning for the king his father's death, which mode of
dress he had never laid aside, not even in compliment to his mother
upon the day she was married, nor could he be brought to join in any
of the festivities or rejoicings of that (as appeared to him) disgraceful
day.

What mostly troubled him was an uncertainty about the manner of his
father's death. It was given out by Claudius that a serpent had stung
him; but young Hamlet had shrewd suspicions that Claudius himself
was the serpent; in plain English, that he had murdered him for his
crown, and that the serpent who stung his father did now sit on the
throne.

How far he was right in this conjecture, and what he ought to think of
his mother, how far she was privy to this murder, and whether by her
consent or knowledge, or without, it came to pass, were the doubts
which continually harassed and distracted him.

A rumour had reached the ear of young Hamlet, that an apparition,
exactly resembling the dead king his father, had been seen by the
soldiers upon watch, on the platform before the palace at midnight,
for two or three nights successively. The figure came constantly clad
in the same suit of armour, from head to foot, which the dead king
was known to have worn: and they who saw it (Hamlet's bosom friend
Horatio was one) agreed in their testimony as to the time and manner
of its appearance: that it came just as the clock struck twelve; that it
looked pale, with a face more of sorrow than of anger; that its beard
was grisly, and the colour a sable silvered, as they had seen it in his
lifetime: that it made no answer when they spoke to it; yet once they
thought it lifted up its head, and addressed itself to motion, as if it
were about to speak; but in that moment the morning cock crew, and
it shrunk in haste away, and vanished out of their sight.

The young prince, strangely amazed at their relation, which was too
consistent and agreeing with itself to disbelieve, concluded that it was
his father's ghost which they had seen, and determined to take his
watch with the soldiers that night, that he might have a chance of
seeing it; for he reasoned with himself, that such an appearance did
not come for nothing, but that the ghost had something to impart, and
though it had been silent hitherto, yet it would speak to him. And he
waited with impatience for the coming of night.

When night came he took his stand with Horatio, and Marcellus, one
of the guard, upon the platform, where this apparition was accustomed
to walk: and it being a cold night, and the air unusually raw and
nipping, Hamlet and Horatio and their companion fell into some talk
about the coldness of the night, which was suddenly broken off by
Horatio announcing that the ghost was coming.

At the sight of his father's spirit, Hamlet was struck with a sudden
surprise and fear. He at first called upon the angels and heavenly
ministers to defend them. for he knew not whether it were a good
spirit or bad; whether it came for good or evil: but he gradually
assumed more courage; and his father (as it seemed to him) looked
upon him so piteously, and as it were desiring to have conversation
with him, and did in all respects appear so like himself as he was
when he lived, that Hamlet could not help addressing him: he called
him by his name, Hamlet, King, Father! and conjured him that he
would tell the reason why he had left his grave, where they had seen
him quietly bestowed, to come again and visit the earth and the
moonlight: and besought him that he would let them know if there
was anything which they could do to give peace to his spirit. And the
ghost beckoned to Hamlet, that he should go with him to some more
removed place, where they might be alone; and Horatio and Marcellus
would have dissuaded the young prince from following it, for they
feared lest it should be some evil spirit, who would tempt him to the
neighbouring sea, or to the top of some dreadful cliff, and there put on
some horrible shape which might deprive the prince of his reason. But
their counsels and entreaties could not alter Hamlet's determination,
who cared too little about life to fear the losing of it; and as to his
soul, he said, what could the spirit do to that, being a thing immortal
as itself? And he felt as hardy as a lion, and bursting from them, who
did all they could to hold him, he followed whithersoever the spirit
led him.

And when they were alone together, the spirit broke silence, and told
him that he was the ghost of Hamlet, his father, who had been cruelly
murdered, and he told the manner of it; that it was done by his own
brother Claudius, Hamlet's uncle, as Hamlet had already but too much
suspected, for the hope of succeeding to his bed and crown. That as he
was sleeping in his garden, his custom always in the afternoon, his
treasonous brother stole upon him in his sleep, and poured the juice of
poisonous henbane into his ears, which has such an antipathy to the
life of man, that swift as quicksilver it courses through all the veins of
the body, baking up the blood, and spreading a crustlike leprosy all
over the skin: thus sleeping, by a brother's hand he was cut off at once
from his crown, his queen, and his life: and he adjured Hamlet, if he
did ever his dear father love that he would revenge his foul murder.
And the ghost lamented to his son, that his mother should so fall off
from virtue, as to prove false to the wedded love of her first husband,
and to marry his murderer, but he cautioned Hamlet, howsoever he
proceeded in his revenge against his wicked uncle, by no means to act
any violence against the person of his mother, but to leave her to
heaven, and to the stings and thorns of conscience. And Hamlet
promised to observe the ghost's direction in all things, and the ghost
vanished.

And when Hamlet was left alone, he took up a solemn resolution, that
all he had in his memory, all that he had ever learned by books or
observation, should be instantly forgotten by him, and nothing live in
his brain but the memory of what the ghost had told him, and enjoined
him to do. And Hamlet related the particulars of the conversation
which had passed to none but his dear friend Horatio; and he enjoined
both to him and Marcellus the strictest secrecy as to what they had
seen that night.

The terror which the sight of the ghost had left upon the senses of
Hamlet, he being weak and dispirited before, almost unhinged his
mind, and drove him beside his reason. And he, fearing that it would
continue to have this effect, which might subject him to observation,
and set his uncle upon his guard, if he suspected that he was
meditating anything against him, or that Hamlet really knew more of
his father's death than he professed, took up a strange resolution, from
that time to counterfeit as if he were really and truly mad; thinking
that he would be less an object of suspicion when his uncle should
believe him incapable of any serious project, and that his real
perturbation of mind would be best covered and pass concealed under
a disguise of pretended lunacy.

From this time Hamlet affected a certain wildness and strangeness in
his apparel, his speech, and behaviour, and did so excellently
conterfeit the madman, that the king and queen were both deceived,
and not thinking his grief for his father's death a sufficient cause to
produce such a distemper, for they knew not of the appearance of the
ghost, they concluded that his malady was love, and they thought they
had found out the object.

Before Hamlet fell into the melancholy way which has been related,
he had dearly loved a fair maid called Ophelia, the daughter of
Polonius, the king's chief counsellor in affairs of state. He had sent her
letters and rings, and made many tenders of his affection to her, and
importuned her with love in honourable fashion: and she had given
belief to his vows and importunities. But the melancholy which he fell
into latterly had made him neglect her, and from the time he
conceived the project of counterfeiting madness, he affected to treat
her with unkindness, and a sort of rudeness: but she good lady, rather
than reproach him with being false to her, persuaded herself that it
was nothing but the disease in his mind, and no settled unkindness,
which had made him less observant of her than formerly; and she
compared the faculties of his once noble mind and excellent
understanding, impaired as they were with the deep melancholy that
oppressed him, to sweet bells which in themselves are capable of most
exquisite music, but when jangled out of tune, or rudely handled,
produce only a harsh and unpleasing sound.

Though the rough business which Hamlet had in hand, the revenging
of his father's death upon his murderer, did not suit with the playful
state of courtship, or admit of the society of so idle a passion as love
now seemed to him, yet it could not hinder but that soft thoughts of
his Ophelia would come between, and in one of these moments, when
he thought that his treatment of this gentle lady had been
unreasonably harsh, he wrote her a letter full of wild starts of passion,
and in extravagant terms, such as agreed with his supposed madness,
but mixed with some gentle touches of affection, which could not but
show to this honoured lady that a deep love for her yet lay at the
bottom of his heart. He bade her to doubt the stars were fire, and to
doubt that the sun did move, to doubt truth to be a liar, but never to
doubt that he loved; with more of such extravagant phrases. This letter
Ophelia dutifully showed to her father, and the old man thought
himself bound to communicate it to the king and queen, who from
that time supposed that the true cause of Hamlet's madness was love.
And the queen wished that the good beauties of Ophelia might be the
happy cause of his wildness, for so she hoped that her virtues might
happily restore him to his accustomed way again, to both their
honours.

But Hamlet's malady lay deeper than she supposed, or than could be
so cured. His father's ghost, which he had seen, still haunted his
imagination, and the sacred injunction to revenge his murder gave him
no rest till it was accomplished. Every hour of delay seemed to him a
sin, and a violation of his father's commands. Yet how to compass the
death of the king, surrounded as he constantly was with his guards,
was no easy matter. Or if it had been, the presence of the queen,
Hamlet's mother, who was generally with the king, was a restraint
upon his purpose, which he could not break through. Besides, the very
circumstance that the usurper was his mother's husband filled him
with some remorse, and still blunted the edge of his purpose. The
mere act of putting a fellow-creature to death was in itself odious and
terrible to a disposition naturally so gentle as Hamlet's was. His very
melancholy, and the dejection of spirits he had so long been in,
produced an irresoluteness and wavering of purpose which kept him
from proceeding to extremities. Moreover, he could not help having
some scruples upon his mind, whether the spirit which he had seen
was indeed his father, or whether it might not be the devil, who he had
heard has power to take any form he pleases, and who might have
assumed his father's shape only to take advantage of his weakness and
his melancholy, to drive him to the doing of so desperate an act as
murder. And he determined that he would have more certain grounds
to go upon than a vision, or apparition, which might be a deluston.

While he was in this irresolute mind there came to the court certain
players, in whom Hamlet formerly used to take delight, and
particularly to hear one of them speak a tragical speech, describing the
death of old Priam, King of Troy, with the grief of Hecuba his queen.
Hamlet welcomed his old friends, the players, and remembering how
that speech had formerly given him pleasure, requested the player to
repeat it; which he did in so lively a manner, setting forth the cruel
murder of the feeble old king, with the destruction of his people and
city by fire, and the mad grief of the old queen, running barefoot up
and down the palace, with a poor clout upon that head where a crown
had been, and with nothing but a blanket upon her loins, snatched up
in haste, where she had worn a royal robe; that not only it drew tears
from all that stood by, who thought they saw the real scene, so lively
was it represented, but even the player himself delivered it with a
broken voice and real tears. This put Hamlet upon thinking, if that
player could so work himself up to passion by a mere fictitious
speech, to weep for one that he had never seen, for Hecuba, that had
been dead so many hundred years, how dull was he, who having a
read motive and cue for passion, a real king and a dear father
murdered, was yet so little moved, that his revenge all this while had
seemed to have slept in dull and muddy forgetfulness! and while he
meditated on actors and acting, and the powerful effects which a good
play, represented to the life, has upon the spectator, he remembered
the instance of some murderer, who seeing a murder on the stage, was
by the mere force of the scene and resemblance of circumstances so
affected, that on the spot he confessed the crime which he had
committed. And he determined that these players should play
something like the murder of his father before his uncle, and he would
watch narrowly what effect it might have upon him, and from his
looks he would be able to gather with more certainty if he were the
murderer or not. To this effect he ordered a play to be prepared, to the
representation of which he invited the king and queen.

The story of the play was of a murder done in Vienna upon a duke.
The duke's name was Gonzago, his wife Baptista. The play showed
how one Lucianus, a near relation to the duke, poisoned him in his
garden for his estate, and how the murderer in a short time after got
the love of Gonzago's wife.

At the representation of this play, the king, who did not know the trap
which was laid for him, was present, with his queen and the whole
court: Hamlet sitting attentively near him to observe his looks. The
play began with a conversation between Gonzago and his wife, in
which the lady made many protestations of love, and of never
marrying a second husband, if she should outlive Gonzago; wishing
she might be accursed if she ever took a second husband, and adding
that no woman did so, but those wicked women who kill their first
husbands. Hamlet observed the king his uncle change colour at this
expression, and that it was as bad as wormwood both to him and to
the queen. But when Lucianus, according to the story, came to poison
Gonzago sleeping in the garden, the strong resemblance which it bore
to his own wicked act upon the late king, his brother, whom he had
poisoned in his garden, so struck upon the conscience of this usurper,
that he was unable to sit out the rest of the play, but on a sudden
calling for lights to his chamber, and affecting or partly feeling a
sudden sickness, he abruptly left the theatre. The king being departed,
the play was given over. Now Hamlet had seen enough to be satisfied
that the words of the ghost were true, and no illusion; and in a ht of
gaiety, like that which comes over a man who suddenly has some
great doubt or scruple resolved, he swore to Horatio, that he would
take the ghost's word for a thousand pounds. But before he could
make up his resolution as to what measures of revenge he should take,
now he was certainly informed that his uncle was his father's
murderer, he was sent for by the queen his mother, to a private
conference in her closet.

It was by desire of the king that the queen sent for Hamlet, that she
might signify to her son how much his late behaviour had displeased
them both, and the king, wishing to know all that passed at that
conference, and thinking that the too partial report of a mother might
let slip some part of Hamlet's words, which it might much import the
king to know, Polonius, the old counsellor of state, was ordered to
plant himself behind the hangings in the queen's closet, where he
might unseen hear all that passed. This artifice was particularly
adapted to the disposition of Polonius, who was a man grown old in
crooked maxims and policies of state, and delighted to get at the
knowledge of matters in an indirect and cunning way.

Hamlet being come to his mother, she began to tax him in the
roundest way with his actions and behaviour, and she told him that he
had given great offence to his father, meaning the king, his uncle,
whom, because he had married her, she called Hamlet's father.
Hamlet, sorely indignant that she should give so dear and honoured a
name as father seemed to him, to a wretch who was indeed no better
than the murderer of his true father, with some sharpness replied:
'Mother, you have much offended my father.' The queen said that was
but an idle answer. 'As good as the question deserved,' said Hamlet.
The queen asked him if he had forgotten who it was he was speaking
to? 'Alas!' replied Hamlet, 'I wish I could forget. You are the queen,
your husband's brother's wife; and you are my mother: I wish you were
not what you are.' 'Nay, then,' said the queen, 'if you show me so little
respect, I will set those to you that can speak,' and was going to send
the king or Polonius to him. But Hamlet would not let her go, now he
had her alone, till he had tried if his words could not bring her to some
sense of her wicked life; and, taking her by the wrist, he held her fast,
and made her sit down. She, affrighted at his earnest manner, and
fearful lest in his lunacy he should do her a mischief, cried out; and a
voice was heard from behind the hangings: 'Help, help, the queen!'
which Hamlet hearing, and verily thinking that it was the king himself
there concealed, he drew his sword and stabbed at the place where the
voice came from, as he would have stabbed a rat that ran there, till the
voice ceasing, he concluded the person to be dead. But when he
dragged for the body, it was not the king, but Polonius, the old
officious counsellor, that had planted himself as a spy behind the
hangings. 'Oh me!' exclaimed the queen, 'what a rash and bloody deed
have you done!' 'A bloody deed, mother,' replied Hamlet, 'but not so
bad as yours, who killed a king, and married his brother.' Hamlet had
gone too far to leave off here. He was now in the humour to speak
plainly to his mother, and he pursued it. And though the faults of
parents are to be tenderly treated by their children, yet in the case of
great crimes the son may have leave to speak even to his own mother
with some harshness, so as that harshness is meant for her good, and
to turn her from her wicked ways, and not done for the purpose of
upbraiding. And now this virtuous prince did in moving terms
represent to the queen the heinousness of her offence, in being so
forgetful of the dead king, his father, as in so short a space of time to
marry with his brother and reputed murderer: such an act as, after the
vows which she had sworn to her first husband was enough to make
all vows of women suspected, and ail virtue to be accounted
hypocrisy, wedding contracts to be less than gamesters' oaths, and
religion to be a mockery and a mere form of words. He said she had
done such a deed, that the heavens blushed at it, and the earth was
sick of her because of it. And he showed her two pictures, the one of
the late king, her first husband, and the other of the present king, her
second husband, and he bade her mark the difference; what a grace
was on the brow of his father, how like a god he looked! the curls of
Apollo, the forehead of Jupiter, the eye of Mars, and a posture like to
Mercury newly alighted on some heaven-kissing hill! this man, he
said, had been her husband. And then he showed her whom she had
got in his stead: how like a blight or a mildew he looked, for so he had
blasted his wholesome brother. And the queen was sore ashamed that
he should so turn her eyes inward upon her soul, which she now saw
so black and deformed. And he asked her how she could continue to
live with this man, and be a wife to him, who had murdered her first
husband, and got the crown by as false means as a thief--and just as he
spoke, the ghost of his father, such as he was in his lifetime, and such
as he had lately seen it, entered the room, and Hamlet, in great terror,
asked what it would have; and the ghost said that it came to remind
him of the revenge he had promised, which Hamlet seemed to have
forgot; and the ghost bade him speak to his mother, for the grief and
terror she was in would else kill her. It then vanished, and was seen by
none but Hamlet, neither could he by pointing to where it stood, or by
any description, make his mother perceive it; who was terribly
frightened all this while to hear him conversing, as it seemed to her,
with nothing; and she imputed it to the disorder of his mind. But
Hamlet begged her not to flatter her wicked soul in such a manner as
to think that it was his madness, and not her own offences, which had
brought his father's spirit again on the earth. And he bade her feel his
pulse, how temperately it beat, not like a madman's. And he begged of
her with tears, to confess herself to heaven for what was past, and for
the future to avoid the company of the king, and be no more as a wife
to him: and when she should show herself a mother to him, by
respecting his father's memory, he would ask a blessing of her as a
son. And she promising to observe his directions, the conference
ended.

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