Fort. This quarry cries on havock!-O proud death! What feaft is toward in thine eternal cell', That thou fo many princes, at a fhot, So bloodily haft ftruck? 1. Amb. The fight is difmal; And our affairs from England come too late : Her. Not from his mouth 2, Had it the ability of life to thank you; He never gave commandment for their death. "Why, I will fight with him upon this theme, When Hamlet fays, "the bravery of his grief did put me into a towering paffion," I think, he means, into a lofty expreffion (not of refentment, but) of forrow. So, in King John, Vol. IV. p. 487: "She is fad and paffionate at your highness' tent." Again, more appofitely in the play before us: "The inftant burst of clamour that she made, "Would have made milch the burning eyes of heaven, And paffion in the gods." I may also add, that he neither affaulted, nor infulted Laertes, till that nobleman had curfed him, and feized him by the throat. MALONE. 9 This quarry cries on bawock!] Hanmer reads, cries out, bavock! To cry on, was to exclaim against. I fuppofe, when unfair sportsmen deftroyed more quarry or game than was reafonable, the cenfure was to cry, Havock. JOHNSON. What feast is toward in thine eternal cell,] Shakspeare has already employed this allufion to the Choa, or feafts of the dead, which were anciently celebrated at Athens, and are mentioned by Plutarch in the life of Antonius. Our author likewife makes Talbot fay to his fon in the First Part of King Henry VI: Now art thou come unto a feaft of death." STERVENS.. 2- bis mouth,] i. e. the king's. STEEVENS. High on a ftage be placed to the view; Of accidental judgments, cafual slaughters; 4 Of deaths put on by cunning, and forc'd causes; Fall'n on the inventors' heads: all this can I Fort. Let us hafte to hear it, And call the nobleft to the audience. For me, with forrow I embrace my fortune; Hor. Of that I fhall have allo cause to speak, 3 Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural a&s;] Of fanguinary and unnatural acts, to which the perpetrator was inftigated by concupifcence, or, to use our poet's own words, by "carnal stings." The speaker ailudes to the murder of old Hamlet by his brother, previous to his incestuous union with Gertrude. A feeble Remarker asks, "was the relationship between the ufurper and the deceased king a fecret confined to Horatio?" No, but the murder of Hamlet by Claudius was a fecret which the young prince had imparted to Horatio, and had imparted to him alone; and to this it is he principally, though covertly, alludes.-Carnal is the reading of the only authentick copies, the quarto 1604, and the folio 1623. The modern editors, following a quarto of no authority, for carnal, read cruel. MALONE. 4 Of deaths put on-] i. e. inftigated, produced. See Vol. VII. P. 217, n. 7. MALONE, 5- and forc'd caufe ;] Thus the folio. The quartos read-and for no caufe. STEEVENS. 6-fome rights of memory in this kingdom,] Some rights, which are remembered in this kingdom. MALONE. 1 And from bis mouth whose voice will draw on more :] Thus the folio. The quarto 1604, reads-draw no more. MALONE. Hamlet, juft before his death, had faid, But I do propbefy, the election lights On Fortinbras: be has my dying voice; Accordingly, Horatio here delivers that meffage; and very juftly infers, that Hamlet's voice will be feconded by others, and procure them in favour of Fortinbras's fucceffion. THEOBALD. But But let this fame be prefently perform'd, Even while men's minds are wild; left more mifchance, On plots, and errors, happen. Fort. Let four captains Bear Hamlet, like a foldier, to the stage; For he was likely, had he been put on, To have prov'd molt royally: and, for his paffage, 'The foldiers' musick, and the rites of war, Speak loudly for him.— Take up the bodies:-Such a fight as this [A dead march. [Exeunt, bearing off the dead bodies; after which, a peal of ordnance is shot off. 8 If the dramas of Shakspeare were to be characterifed, each by the particular excellence which diftinguishes it from the rest, we must allow to the tragedy of Hamlet the praife of variety. The incidents are fo numerous, that the argument of the play would make a long tale. The fcenes are interchangeably diverfified with merriment and fo.. lemnity; with merriment that includes judicious and inftructive obfervations; and folemnity not flrained by poetical violence above the natural fentiments of man. New characters appear from time to time in continual fucceffion, exhibiting various forms of life and particular modes of converfation. The pretended madness of Hamlet caufes much mirth, the mournful distraction of Ophelia fills the heart with tenderness, and every perfonage produces the effect intended, from the apparition that in the first act chills the blood with horrour, to the fop in the laft, that exposes affectation to just contempt. The conduct is perhaps not wholly fecure against objections. The action is indeed for the most part in continual progreffion, but there are some scenes which neither forward nor retard it. Of the feigned madness of Hamlet there appears no adequate caufe, for he does nothing which he might not have done with the reputation of fanity. He plays the madman moft, when he treats Ophelia with so much rudeness, which feems to be useless and wanton cruelty. Hamlet is, through the whole piece, rather an inftrument than an agent. After he has, by the ftratagem of the play, convicted the king, he makes no attempt to punih him; and his death is at laft effected by an incident which Hamlet had no part in producing. The catastrophe is not very happily produced; the exchange of weapons is rather an expedient of neceflity, than a ftroke of art. A scheme might eafily be formed to kill Hamlet with the dagger, and Laertes with the bowl. The poet is accused of having fhewn little regard to poetical justice, and may be charged with equal neglect of poetical probability. The apparition left the regions of the dead to little purpofe; the revenge which he demands is not obtained, but by the death of him that was required required to take it; and the gratification, which would arife from the deftruction of an ufurper and a murderer, is abated by the untimely death of Ophelia, the young, the beautiful, the harmless, and the pious, JOHNSON. ACT II. SCENE II. P. 275. The rugged Pyrrbus, be, &c.] The two greatest poets of this and the last age, Mr. Dryden, in the preface to Troilus and Creffida, and Mr. Pope in his note on this place, have concurred in thinking that Shakspeare produced this long pailage with design to ridicule and expofe the bombaft of the play from whence it was taken; and that Hamlet's commendation of it is purely ironical. This is become the general opinion. I think juft otherwife; and that it was given with commendation to upbraid the falfe tafe of the audience of that time, which would not fuffer them to do juftice to the fimplicity and fublime of this production. And I reafon, firft, from the character Hamlet gives of the play, from whence the paffage is taken. Secondly, from the paflage itfelf. And thirdly, from the effect it had on the audience. Let us confider the character Hamlet gives of it. The play, I remember, pleafed not the million; 'twas caviare to the general: but it was (as I received it, and others, whofe judgment in such matters cried in the top of mine) an excellent play, well digefted in the scenes, fet down with as much modefty as cunning. I remember one faid, there was no falt in the lines to make the matter favoury; nor no matter in the phrafe that might indite the author of affection; but called it an boneft method. They who fuppofe the paffage given to be ridiculed, must needs fuppofe this character to be purely ironical. But if fo, it is the ftrangeft irony that ever was written. It pleafed not the multitude. This we must conclude to be true, however ironical the reft be. Now the reafon given of the defigned ridicule is the fuppofed bombast. But those were the very plays, which at that time we know took with the multitude. And Fletcher wrote a kind of Rehearsal purposely to expose them. But fay it is bombast, and that therefore it took not with the multitude. Hamlet prefently tells us what it was that difpleafed them. There was no falt in the lines to make the matter favoury; nor no matter in the phrafe that might indite the author of affection; but called it an honest method. Now whether a perfon fpeaks ironically or no, when he quotes others, yet common fente requires he fhould quote what they fay. Now it could not be, if this play difpleafed becaufe of the bombaft, that those whom it dif pleafed fhould give this reafon for their diflike. The fame incontencies and abfurdities abound in every other part of Hamlet's fpeech, fuppofing it to be ironical; but take him as fpeaking his fentiments, the whole is of a piece; and to this purpofe. The play, I remember, pleafed not the multitude, and the reafon was, its being wrote on the rules of the ancient drama; to which they were entire ftrangers. But, in my opinion, and in the opinion of those for whofe judgement I have the highest esteem, it was an excellent play, well digefted in the Scenes, i. e. where the three unities were well preserved preferved. Set down with as much modefty as cunning, i. e. where not only the art of compofition, but the fimplicity of nature, was carefully attended to. The characters were a faithful picture of life and manners, in which nothing was overcharged into farce. But these qualities, which gained my esteem, loft the public's. For I remember one faid, There was no falt in the lines to make the matter favoury, i. e. there was not, according to the mode of that time, a fool or clown, to joke, quibble, and talk freely. Nor no matter in the phrafe that might indite the author of affection, i. e. nor none of thofe paffionate, pathetic love fcenes, fo eflential to modern tragedy. But be called it an boneft method, i. e. he owned, however tasteless this method of writing, on the ancient plan, was to our times, yet it was chafte and pure; the diftinguishing character of the Greek drama. I need only make one obfervation on all this; that, thus interpreted, it is the jufteft picture of a good tragedy, wrote on the ancient rules. And that I have rightly interpreted it, appears farther from what we find in the old quarto, An boneft method, as whalefome as freet, and by very much more HANDSOME than FINE, i. e. it had a natural beauty, but none of the fucus of falie art. 2. A fecond proof that this fpeech was given to be admired, is from the intrinfic merit of the fpeech itself; which contains the defcription of a circumftance very happily imagined, namely, Ilium and Priam's falling together, with the effect it had on the destroyer. -The bellifh Pyrrhus, &c. To, The unnerved father falls, &c. Now this circumftance, illuftrated with the fine fimilitude of the ftorm, is fo highly worked up, as to have well deferved a place in Virgil's fecond book of the Eneid, even though the work had been carried on to that perfection which the Roman poet had conceived. 3. The third proof is, from the effects which followed on the recital. Hamlet, his best character, approves it; the player is deeply affected in repeating it; and only the foolish Polonius tired with it. We have faid enough before of Hamlet's fentiments. As for the player, he changes colour, and the tears ftart from his eyes. But our author was too good a judge of nature to make bombaft and unnatural fentiment produce such an effect. Nature and Horace both inftructed him, Si vis me flere, dolendum eft Primùm ipfi tibi, tunc tua me infortunia ledent, Telepbe, vel Peleu. MALE SI MANDATA LOQUERIS, Aut dormitabo aut ridebo. And it may be worth obferving, that Horace gives this precept particularly to fhew, that bombaft and unnatural fentiments are incapable of moving the tender paffions, which he is directing the poet how to raife. For in the lines just before, he gives this rule : Telepbus |