XV.

A CONSIDERATION of the First Quarto and of the old Hystorie of Hamblet will help us to make a judgment, as to the subject of the prince's thoughts; but first we must convince ourselves that Hamlet has absolutely no doubt of the immortality of the soul, and steadfastly believes in a state of future rewards and punishments. He could not express this more strongly than he does in the Sixth Soliloquy, as he who runs may read. But, indeed, the return of his father's spirit from the grave should have convinced him that death did not end existence, had he ever felt any doubt, of which there is no proof. Most of Hamlet's suffering was the reflex of what his father was enduring after death. We need only now consider the Sixth Soliloquy with reference to the proof it gives us of Hamlet's belief in a future life. He sees the king on his knees absorbed in prayer, and is tempted to kill him.

Now might I do it pat, now he is praying;

And now I'll do't. And so he goes to heaven;
And so I am revenged. That would be scann'd:
A villain kills my father; and for that,

I, his sole son, do this same villain send
To heaven.

O, this is hire and salary, not revenge.

He took my father grossly, full of bread;

With all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May;

And how his audit stands who knows save heaven?
But in our circumstance and course of thought,
'Tis heavy with him: and am I then revenged,
To take him in the purging of his soul,
When he is fit and season'd for his passage?
No!

Up, sword; and know thou a more horrid hent:
When he is drunk asleep, or in his rage,
Or in the incestuous pleasure of his bed;
At gaming, swearing, or about, some act
That has no relish of salvation in't;

Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven,
And that his soul may be as damn'd and black
As hell, whereto it goes. My mother stays:
This physic but prolongs thy sickly days.

Does not this convince us that Hamlet knew death was much more than a dreamless sleep?

In the First Quarto the soliloquy To be, or not to be, and the succeeding conversation with Ophelia are introduced earlier in the drama. They precede the coming of the players and the conception of the idea of the mock-play: they immediately succeed the interview with Ophelia in her chamber. The conversation with Ophelia in the lobby is in substance, though not in literal expression, the same as that which Shakespeare, while altering its location, preserves in the Second Quarto, but the soliloquy is as follows:

To be, or not to be, I there's the point,
To Die, to fleepe, is that all? I all :

No, to fleepe, to dreame, I mary there it goes,
For in that dreame of death, when wee awake,
And borne before our euerlasting Iudge,
From whence no passenger euer return'd,

The vndifcouered country, at whose fight
The happy fmile, and the accurfed damn'd.

But for this, the ioyfull hope of this,

Whol'd bear the fcornes and flattery of the world,
Scorned by the right rich, the rich curffed of the poore?
The widow being oppreffed, the orphan wrong'd,

The taste of hunger, or a tirants raigne,

And thoufand more calamities befides,

To grunt and fweate vnder this weary life,
When that he may his full Quietus make,
With a bare bodkin, who would this indure,
But for a hope of something after death?

Which pufles the braine, and doth confound the fence,
Which makes vs rather beare thofe euilles we haue,
Than flie to others that we know not of.

I that, O this confcience makes cowardes of vs all, Lady in thy orizons, be all my finnes remembred, Shakespeare, when he revised the play, kept the soliloquy and the conversation with Ophelia in apposition, but, while he made very little change in the conversation, he entirely re-wrote the soliloquy, altering and expanding it, and changing its application and its prominent idea.

In the First Quarto, the soliloquy, in the relation in which it stood to the other scenes, could not refer to the mock-play. There was no question of a play the result of which might necessitate killing Claudius, but Hamlet squarely debated the subject he had been considering for two months,-whether he should believe the ghost and act on its command or not. In the First Quarto the words, To be, or not to be, refer for their antecedent phrase to the revelation of the ghost and the duty imposed by it. The question thus suggested is the one for which the

comprehensive it (understood) is substituted. Το be, or not to be, I there's the point, means, 'Am I to take the word of the apparition for sooth, and kill the king on this testimony, or not? Is it to be, or not to be?'

Shakespeare saw the possibility that the application of these words might not be perfectly plain, and he saw that the place they occupied in the First Quarto was not the most effective for them: therefore he removed the soliloquy to its present posi

tion.

I there's the point

did not suggest the consideration of alternatives as plainly as,

That is the question.

Therefore he removed the former phrase from its position in the first line, and inserted it further on, as, ay, there's the rub,

filling the hiatus formed by its removal with, That is the question.

Then he expressed another question, on the answer to which the answer to the first depended:

Whether 'tis (= is it) nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?

This second question is not given in the First Quarto that instantly jumps to the consideration that death might result from Hamlet's efforts to obey the ghost. But Shakespeare, when he wrote,

And by opposing end them,

did not think that the phrase would be interpreted and by uniting with them enable them to overcome me. He thought he had exhibited Hamlet with such a noble character that other noble minds would not accuse him of cowardice and procrastination. He held the clue to all of Hamlet's thoughts and hesitations and actions, and he believed he had expressed all that was necessary to give others a hold on it. In a drama a character does not, as in a narrative, say, "At such a juncture I thought so and so:" his thoughts must be divined from his actions. Hamlet's soliloquies are, in this sense, his actions.

Some critics think that the change of position of the Fourth Soliloquy was injudicious, and their judgment is right if Hamlet was thinking of suicide. Its proper place with that interpretation is as near the First Soliloquy—

O, that this too too solid flesh would melt

as possible. But Shakespeare did not make the change of place without consideration. The elaboration of the soliloquy and the change of the restraining motive should convince us that he considered this matter also, and put the lines where he thought they were needed, filling the place from which he took them by the conversation of Hamlet and Polonius, and supplying words to introduce it that were not called for where the soliloquy was before located.

The change in the position of the soliloquy and its amplification was not the only alteration.