NOTES AND COMMENT

ACT I. SCENE I.

The first thing which the dramatist has to do is to give the audience the facts which must be known in order to understand the play. He must make clear, to begin with, enough of what has preceded the opening of the play to enable us to grasp quickly and intelligently the significance of the situation with which the action starts; the opening scenes, that is, must look backward. We must, further, be made to feel that this situation is not put before us merely for its own sake, but because it is charged, so to speak, with latent possibilities—because it carries within it the seeds of further actions, further situations; the opening scenes, that is, must also look forward. The speakers, moreover, must be at once so presented that we shall know, without too much puzzling, who they are and where they are, with some indication of time as well; what is happening before us now, that is, must define itself without obscurity. And finally-although this last is not always attempted-the dramatist may seek to awaken in us a particular mood, to create a particular atmosphere, which shall foreshadow, in a way, the spirit of the drama. All that portion of the play (usually the first two or three scenes) which accomplishes these ends is called the Exposition.

The first scene of Hamlet is a very wonderful piece of exposition, and should be carefully examined in order to see just what information, of the kinds indicated, Shakespeare has actually given us, and how he has accomplished it. And this exercise will gain both interest and value, if one compare with the first scene of Hamlet the first scenes of Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, and Julius Cæsar-all of them striking examples of skill in exposition-and try to discover wherein their methods are alike, and wherein different.

Moreover, all that has been indicated the dramatist must

accomplish by means of dialogue and action alone; he must do it with the extreme of brevity, because the time of performance is inexorably limited; and he must do it with the utmost freedom from obscurity or ambiguity, because the actors cannot be stopped and asked to repeat what is not clear. To the opening of a novel, however, none of these restrictions apply, and it will amply repay the time, if one compare with the first scene of Hamlet (and of the other plays named as well) the opening chapters of (for instance) Ivanhoe, Silas Marner, A Tale of Two Cities, The House of the Seven Gables, The Last of the Mohicans, and observe the totally different fashion in which the necessary information is there given. It is after four long paragraphs that Scott remarks, in Ivanhoe: "This state of things I have thought it necessary to premise for the information of the general reader," etc.; it is after some thirty pages of preliminary information that Hawthorne concludes: "And now we proceed to open our narrative." How does Shakespeare give us this same sort of preliminary information?

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The notes on the first three scenes are intended, in part, to emphasize their qualities as exposition, and to suggest the sort of observation that should be applied throughout the play. 2. Nay, answer me. Observe that me is emphatic. Why? Whose business is it to challenge? Notice that the first two lines of the play, with their accompanying action, disclose at once a certain nervous tension among the watchers on the platform. Shakespeare's preparation of the audience for the appearance of the Ghost begins with the first two words of the play.

8-9. 'Tis bitter cold, And I am sick at heart. What does this add to the effect already produced?

IO. Have you had quiet guard? Observe the implication that for some reason Bernardo thinks the watch may not have been quiet.

13. Bid them make haste. Is Bernardo unwilling to be left alone? Or is he expecting something to happen at any moment? Or is it both?

14. Stand, ho! Who's there? Notice that Francisco, who has been relieved, is startled into the challenge which Bernardo should now give. What impression of the state of things

on the platform has Shakespeare succeeded in producing in the first fourteen lines?

19. What, is Horatio there? Observe the skill with which Shakespeare leads up to Horatio's part in the scene. Has Bernardo been certain that he would come? Does the reason for his doubt appear later?

19. A piece of him: a playful remark, into which no deep significance is to be read.

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21. What, has this thing appear'd again to-night? The reason for the agitation of the sentinels now begins to appear. But observe how gradually it is still led up to: "this thing"; "this dreaded sight"; "this apparition "-then the Ghost itself, and finally, "like the king that's dead." Compare the approach of the phantom ship in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner: something in the sky" (Part III, line 6); "a little speck (line 7); a mist (line 8); "a certain shape" (line 10); a sail! a sail!" (line 19)—and then the detailed description. It was Coleridge who pointed out that in Marcellus's question even the word again' has its credibilizing effect." How? 29. And speak to it. Why should not the others speak to it? See note on line 42 below.

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36. Yond same star: probably the Great Bear, or some star in it.

36. The pole: the pole star. Observe the heightening of Bernardo's language under the stress of his feeling, and notice, too, the naturalness of representing him as marking the time, on his lonely watch, by the position of the stars.

39. The bell then beating one. What time was it in line 7? What time is it now (cf. line 65)? How long does it take to speak 32 lines? The time allowed to represent the action on the stage must inevitably be very much shorter than the actual duration of the action itself, and Shakespeare's skill in making us forget that there is such a discrepancy is strikingly illustrated here.

[Enter Ghost]. The Ghost in Hamlet is remarkable, among other things, for the number of its appearances, and for the amazing skill with which each appearance is made to come as a surprise. We have seen how its first appearance has beer. led up to; the way in which the others are introduced should be carefully observed. And 2 comparison with the

appearance of Banquo's ghost and of the ghost of Cæsar is worth making.

42. Thou art a scholar; speak to it. Exorcisms were usually in Latin, and frequently in the form of a palindrome (a sentence which reads the same backwards as forwards), as: Signa te signa, temere me tangis et angis. Moreover, it was believed that a ghost could not speak until it was spoken to. 44. Most like, etc. Observe the total change in Horatio's attitude, and also the "credibilizing effect" of this change upon the attitude of the audience towards the Ghost. What would have been the difference, in other words, if all the speakers had from the first believed in the Ghost?-From this time on to the end of the scene it is Horatio who holds the center of the stage.

45. Question it: speak to it—not, interrogate it. See question in the Glossary.

63. The sledded Polacks: Poles traveling in sleds or sledges. The earliest texts spell the word pollax (or polax), with or without a capital, and an alternative interpretation is that offered by the spelling of the Fourth Folio, Poleaxe. In this case "sledded poleaxe" is commonly explained as a poleaxe (or battle-axe) weighted with a heavy sledge or hammer. But Polacks (an emendation which is due to Pope's keenness) is probably correct. Compare the use of Polack elsewhere in the play (see Concordance).

68. In the gross and scope of my opinion: speaking generally-as contrasted with 'particular thought." Gross and scope" is probably hendiadys for " gross scope"; see Glossary under gross.

70. Good now: an interjectional expression denoting acquiescence, entreaty, expostulation or surprise" (Oxford Dictionary). Observe that the four long speeches which follow (in sharp contrast with the quicker movement of the earlier dialogue) accomplish two things: they familiarize us with some of the events which have preceded the opening of the play; and they distract our attention, as we follow their rather complicated statements, from the Ghost, so that its second appearance comes, like the first, as a surprise.

84. Our valiant Hamlet: the elder Hamlet, not the hero of the play.

87. Law and heraldry. This means either coinmon law and the regulations of heraldry, or possibly (by hendiadys; see line 68 above) the law of heraldry.

90. A moiety competent: a portion equivalent to that of Fortinbras. Moiety strictly means one-half (see, for instance, Henry VIII, I, ii, 12); but Shakespeare frequently uses it in the general sense of portion.

94. Carriage of the article design'd: the tenor (or import) of the stipulation just mentioned.

96. Unimproved mettle: probably, unimpugned courage (or spirit). But unimproved may possibly mean either untutored or "not turned to account," since improve has several meanings in Elizabethan English.

100. That hath a stomach in't: that demands stubborn courage with a possible play on the other sense of stomach, namely, "appetite." Cf. Henry V, III, vii, 166: "they have only stomachs to eat and none to fight."

109. Portentous: of the nature of a portent, ominous-not merely in the sense of "prodigious, monstrous, extraordinary," as frequently in present usage. Notice especially its use in Julius Cæsar, I, iii, 31, when that passage is read as indicated below, under line 113.

110. So like the king. Turn back to lines 47-49, 58-59, 81. Why is this point so emphasized?

113 ff. Compare Julius Cæsar, I, iii, 1-78; II, ii, 13-31, for a fuller account. In both instances Shakespeare is recalling certain passages in Plutarch's life of Julius Cæsar, which he knew in North's translation. Compare especially the following, where Plutarch speaks of "the strange and wonderful signs that were said to be seen before Cæsar's death": "For, touching the fires in the element, and spirits running up and down in the night, and also the solitary birds to be seen at noondays sitting in the great market-place: are not all these signs perhaps worth the noting, in such a wonderful chance as happened? But Strabo the Philosopher writeth, that divers men were seen going up and down in fire. . . . Again, of signs in the element, the great comet which seven nights together was seen very bright after Cæsar's death," etc. (Temple edition, VII, pp. 202-03, 211).

117. As stars, etc. Either a line has dropped out before