AND now I will turn to what has always been acknowledged as the crucial problem of the drama: the character of the hero himself, his melancholy and irresolution. The main problem of Hamlet always has been to determine why Hamlet does not act. He knows what he ought to do; he himself realises it fully. Why does he not complete his task? Does he hesitate, as Goethe thinks, because of a fineness of nature too great for the coarseness of the task which is thrust upon him? Does he hesitate, as he himself accuses himself, out of mere slothfulness? Does he hesitate, as Coleridge suggests, because in him the powers of thought have so far outweighed the powers of action that he cannot act? Does he hesitate because incipient insanity is sapping his intellect? All these points of view have been advanced, have been discussed at length in volume after volume. Mr Bradley, in his Shakespearean Tragedy, has reviewed many of them with admirable cogency, and in The Problem of Hamlet Mr J. M. Robertson has shown that in his opinion the inconsistencies in the character of Hamlet cannot be really reconciled, which he explains by the fact that Shakespeare is working over material set for him by an early play.

A study of Furness's "Variorum Edition" of Hamlet will show how numerous these explanations are, and how very greatly they vary.

My own suggestion would be that Hamlet was probably a great deal simpler for Shakespeare's audience to understand than it is for us; they carried in all likelihood a commentary in their own minds which enabled them to comprehend it more easily than we can. Tolstoy has, in fact, accused Shakespeare of not being a great artist, [What is Art?] precisely because Hamlet is so difficult to understand; now as Shakespeare was not only a great artist, but, also, as we know him to have been, a popular dramatist of intense appeal, the difficulty is probably one which exists mainly for later commentators and did not exist to the same extent for the original audience.

My own explanation of the central theme of the play would be that Shakespeare was stating with unexampled force and cogency an historical problem which neither he nor any member of his audience possessed at that time the data for quite adequately solving. It is my purpose to show, however, that the problem was essentially historical and political. Let us first observe clearly one point; there is not a hint or shadow of the main problem in the prose source.

In Saxo Grammaticus and the Hystorie of Hamblet alike the task before the hero is perfectly simple and the difficulties are all obvious and material. The hero desires to avenge his father's murder and he desires to gain for himself the crown which his uncle has usurped; he pursues these aims with relentless determination and undeviating skill; but, since he is isolated among enemies, he shams madness as a means of putting these enemies off the scent, and his madness takes the most grotesque and ridiculous form.

Saxo says:

"Every day he remained in his house utterly listless and unclean, flinging himself on the ground and bespattering his person with foul and filthy dirt. His discoloured face and visage smutched with slime denoted foolish and grotesque madness.

". . . He used at times to sit by the fire and rake the embers with his hands."

The Hystorie of Hamblet is still more extravagant:

"hee rent and tore his clothes, wallowing and lying in the dust and mire, his face all filthy and blacke, running through the streets like a man distraught, not speaking one word but such as seemed to proceed from madness and mere frenzy."

We can see at once the enormous difference between this coarse and crude representation and the subtlety of Hamlet.

Now let us compare the character of Hamlet carefully with what was, at that time, known of James I.

There is, as already pointed out, the fact of education at a university specially associated with Protestant theology; James himself was, of course, all his life famous as a Protestant theologian; he took part in theological discussions, he presided at theological discussions, and he showed marked ability in argument.

Hamlet is the most philosophic and meditative of all Shakespeare's characters, and he shows a curious love of the darker side of nature.

Now James was the pupil of a distinguished scholar—Buchanan; he took all his life a great interest in philosophy, and he was, as his books show, especially fond of studying the darker side of nature.

James was, in his early life at least, much isolated; there was hardly anyone whom he really trusted except possibly Erskine of Mar, in whom he had immense confidence, and with whom he had been educated. So Shakespeare represents Hamlet as being lonely and isolated; but as having one friend in whom he reposes perfect confidence and absolute trust—that one friend being his fellow-student—Horatio.

This second Earl of Mar was the son of the first Earl who had rescued James in his infancy from the hands of Bothwell as recounted above; this second Earl having been James' own fellow-student, it was to him that he entrusted the education of Prince Henry. We may also observe that Mar was in England at the time Hamlet was written; he had been sent by James to confer with Essex; when he arrived, however, he found that Essex had already been executed, and he chose his own line of action, his aim being to get his master's right to the succession established; Elizabeth is said to have given him the promise he required.

On March 25th, Tobie Matthew writes to Dudley Carleton:

"The Earl of Mar is here, as ambassador out of Scotland, to congratulate the queen's deliverance, to desire that his master may be declared successor, and to act, as is conjectured, some greater business which is likely enough, for he is a man of extraordinary courage and place."

Now, when we remember that Mar was actually in England at the time Hamlet was composed, and that Shakespeare had every reason for furthering his mission, it does look as if he might have given hints for Horati—the trusted friend and fellow-student.

The most peculiar trait in Hamlet's character is his vacillation. He knows how he ought to act, yet he hesitates whenever action is necessary; on the other hand, he has plenty of nerve in important crises; when a crisis arrives he can act, and often does act, with quite exceptional strength and vigour.

Professor Bradley analyses at some length this extraordinary contradiction; he does not find Hamlet essentially the meditative, irresolute person whom Coleridge and Schlegel believe him to be; he finds that he has a capacity for strong and vigorous action which is, however, lamed by his melancholy:

"This state accounts for Hamlet's energy as well as for his lassitude, these quick decided actions of his being the outcome of a nature normally far from passive, now suddenly stimulated and producing healthy impulses which work themselves out before they have time to subside."

Examples of this sudden vigorous action are, of course, Hamlet's behaviour in the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern affair, also his conduct at the end of the play, etc., etc.

Now, this curious baffling character, this hesitancy and delay combined with sudden vigour in emergencies, is just precisely the character of James I as it appeared to his contemporaries.

Perhaps the best evidence on this point can be found in the correspondence of Elizabeth and James. We there find Elizabeth, in letter after letter, taking almost precisely this view of James' character; she advises him to be stern and to punish where punishment is due; it is not, she declares, that she herself loves bloodshed or revenge; but it is a monarch's duty both to himself and to his kingdom that he should punish rebellious subjects. She warns James that the younger Bothwell (the nephew of his mother's husband), has repeatedly plotted against his life; he knows that Bothwell has so conspired; he knows that his life is endangered.

Why does he not take adequate means to defend himself and his kingdom? His delay is not so much mercy as slothfulness and sheer weakness of will. It is unkingly. He talks, but achieves nothing.

Let me quote some highly significant examples:

"If with my eyes I had not viewed these treasons I should be ashamed to write them you. And shall I tell you my thought herein? I assure you, you are well worthy of such traitors, that, when you knew them and had them, you betrayed your own safety in favouring their lives. Good Lord! who but yourself would have left such people to be able to do you wrong? Give order with speed, that such scape not your correction." [Camden Society's Publications. Letter XXXIV. (spelling modernised).]

We may compare this with Hamlet's bitter self-reproaches: [Act II, ii.]

"I . .
A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak,
Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
And can say nothing; . . .
                                it cannot be
But I am pigeon-liver'd and lack gall
To make oppression bitter."

Let us keep in mind all the time that there is not one word of this reproach or hesitation in Shakespeare's source. The hero of the saga story pits himself as directly as possible against the king; he is delayed by external circumstances solely, never by his own fault; indeed, the whole point of the tale lies in the courage and decision of the prince who pursues his plan with undeviating resolution in the midst of the most difficult circumstances, and we have no reason to assume any difference in the Hamlet of Kyd's play.

Again let us quote Elizabeth [Letter XXXV.]:

"I hope you will not be careless of such practises as hath passed from any of yours without your commission, specially such attempts as might ruin your realm and danger you. If any respect whatever make you neglect so expedient a work, I am afraid your careless hide will work your unlooked danger."

Place this beside Hamlet [Act IV, iv.]:

"How all occasions do inform against me,
And spur my dull revenge! What is a man,
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more.
                      . . . Now, whether it be
Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple
Of thinking too precisely on the event,—
A thought which, quarter'd, hath 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."

Hamlet, in fact, is as candid with himself as Elizabeth is with James; the mental malady which they are analysing appears to be of exactly the same type. The main outlines of James' character, as shown by his actions were, of course, known to every one who followed public affairs; Shakespeare was certainly no less keen a student of character than Elizabeth and the analysis which would be possible to her would be equally possible to the poet.

Again we quote Elizabeth. The occasion of the next letter is described as follows by Mr Tytler:

"Attacking the palace of Holyrood at the head of his desperate followers Bothwell had nearly surprised and made prisoners both the king and his chancellor. . . . An alarm was given, the king took refuge in one of the turrets, the chancellor barricaded his room and bravely beat off his assailants; whilst the citizens of Edinburgh, headed by their provost, rushed into the outer court of the palace, and, I cutting their way through the outer ranks of the borderers, compelled Bothwell to precipitate flight."

Elizabeth's letter runs:

"My dear brother. Though the hearing of your most dangerous peril be that thing that I most reverently render my most lowly thanks to God that you, by his mighty hand, hath scaped yet hath it been no other hazard than such as both hath been foreseen and foretold. . . . I know not what to write, so little do I like to lose labour in vain; for if I saw counsel avail or aught pursued in due time or season, I should think my time fortunately spent to make you reap the due fruit of ripe opportunity; but I see you have no look to help your state nor to assure you from treason's leisure. You give too much respite to rid your harm or shorten other's haste. Well: I will pray for you that God will unseal your eyes that have too long been shut."

Here, again, we have a situation very closely parallel to the one in Hamlet, and all these letters are connected, be it noted, with the younger Bothwell.

The younger Bothwell had been practising against the life and liberty of James almost exactly as Claudius practised against the life of Hamlet; but the most open practices, the most manifest insults, cannot sting James into action. Elizabeth is filled with wonder and horror that a monarch can submit to such insults.

So Hamlet accuses himself of submission to insult: [Act II, ii.]

                                 "Am I a coward?
Who calls me villain? Breaks my pate across?
Plucks off my beard, and blows it in my face?
Tweaks me by the nose? gives me the lie i' the throat,
As deep as to the lungs? who does me this?
Ha!
'Swounds I should take it."

After the conspiracy known as the "Spanish Blanks" Elizabeth writes to James:

"If you do not rake it to the bottom, you will verify what many a wise man hath (viewing your proceedings) judged of your guiltiness of your own wrack. . . .

"I have beheld of late, a strange dishonourable and dangerous pardon which, if it be true, you have not only neglected yourself but wronged me!"

Another letter of vehement expostulation seems to belong to the year 1592 when James had been literally driven from place to place by the factious Bothwell: [Letter XLIV.]

"To redouble crimes so oft, I say, with your pardon, must to your charge, which never durst have been renewed if the first had received the condign reward; for slacking of due correction engenders the bold minds for new crimes. . . . I hear of so uncouth a way taken by some of your conventions, yea agreed to by your selfe that I must wonder how you will be clerk to such lessons.

". . . O Lord, what strange dreams hear I that would God they were so, for then at my waking I should find them fables. If you mean, therefore, to reign I exhort you to show yourself worthy of the place which never can be surely settled without a steady course held to make you loved and feared. I assure myself many have escaped your hands more for dread of your remissness than for love of the escaped; so oft they see you cherishing some men for open crimes and so they mistrust more their revenge than your assurance. . . . And since it so likes your to demand my counsel, I find so many ways your state so unjoynted, that it needs a skilfuller bone-setter than I to joyne each part in its right place."

One may compare this with Hamlet's bitter cry: [Act I, v.]

"The time is out of joint: O cursed spite
That ever I was born to set it right."

In exactly the same way as Elizabeth piles up the indignities James has suffered, so Hamlet piles up those he endures himself: [Act IV, iv.]

                            "How stand I then,
That have a father kill'd, a mother stain'd,
Excitements of my reason and my blood,
And let all sleep? while to my shame I see
The imminent death of twenty thousand men,
That, for a fantasy and trick of fame,
Go to their graves like beds."

In another letter Elizabeth points out to him how his laxness has caused corruption in the whole state:

"A long-rooted malady, falling to many relapses, argues, by reason that the body is so corrupt that it may never be sound. When great infections light on many it almost poisons the whole country." [Letter XLVIII.]

Compare this with Hamlet:

"How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on't! ah fie! 'tis an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely." [Act I, ii.]

Again Elizabeth says:

"If the variableness of Scotch affairs had not inured me with too old a custom I should never leave wondering at such strange and uncouth actions; but I have so oft with careful eyes foreseen the evil-coming harms and . . . see them either not believed or not redressed that I grow weary of such fruitless labour. One while I receive a writ of oblivion and foregiveness, then a revocation, with new additions of later consideration; sometimes, some you call traitors with proclaim, and anon, there must be no proof allowed, though never so apparent, against them."

Here, again, we have the likeness to Hamlet. Hamlet has proof after proof of the king's guilt, yet always demands more and more and is never, apparently, satisfied.

"What thank may they give your mercy," Elizabeth continues, "when no crime is tried? . . . And for Bothwell, Jesus! Did ever any muse more than I, that you could so quietly put up so temerous, indigne, a fact, and yet by your hand receiving assurance that all was pardoned and finished, I refer me to my own letter what doom I gave thereof. And now to hear all revoked and either scanted or denied and the wheel to turn to as ill a spoke." [Quoted from Tytler, Answer LIII.]

Yet again (1593), James pardons Bothwell, and Elizabeth replies in the height of impatience and anger:

"My Dear Brother—To see so much, I rue my sight, that views the evident spectacle of a seduced king, abusing council and wry-guided kingdom. . . .

"I doubt whether shame or sorrow have had the upper hand when I read your last lines to me. . . . Abuse not yourself so far. . . . Assure yourself no greater peril can ever befall you, nor any king else, than to take for payment evil accounts; for they deride such and make their prey of your neglect. There is no prince alive, but if he show fear or yielding but he shall have tutors enough though he be out of minority. And when I remember what sore punishment these lewd traitors should have, then I read again, lost at first I mistook your mind; but when the reviewing granted my lecture true, Lord! what wonder grew in me, that you should correct them with benefits who deserve much severer correction. . . . Is it possible that you can swallow the taste of so bitter a drug more meet to purge you of them, than worthy of your kindly acceptance.

"I never heard a more deriding scorn."

Here, again, Elizabeth wonders at the disgraces and scorns to which James will submit just precisely as Hamlet wonders why he submits to such infamies and shames.

Does it not look as if the mental malady in the two were identical? Elizabeth and Shakespeare were both people of genius and they were analysing one and the same case.

We may quote here an incident, no doubt among those alluded to by the queen, which seems to have an important bearing on Hamlet:

"On 21st July sentence of forfeiture was passed against him (Bothwell) by parliament, all his property being confiscated, and his arms riven at the cross of Edinburgh. His friends thereupon determined to make a special effort upon his behalf. The Duke of Lennox and other noblemen secretly sympathised with him, on account of their jealousy of Maitland. On the evening of the 24th, after assembling their retainers in the neighbourhood of the palace, Bothwell in disguise was introduced into the king's chamber during his temporary absence. On returning, the king found Bothwell on his knees, with his drawn sword laid before him crying with a loud voice for pardon and mercy.

"The king called out 'Treason'; the citizens of Edinburgh hurried in battle array into the inner court; but the king, pacified by the assurances of those in attendance on him, commanded them to retire. Bothwell persisted that he did not come in 'any manner of hostility, but in plain simplicity.'

"To remove the king's manifest terror he offered to depart immediately and remain in banishment, or in any other part of the country till his day of trial.

"The king permitted him to leave and an act of condonation and remission was passed in his favour but . . . the king remained 'in perpetual grief of mind,' affirming that he was virtually the captive of Bothwell and the other noblemen who had abetted him. . . .

"On 14th August, he signed an agreement binding himself to pardon Bothwell and his adherents, and to restore them to their estates and honours, the agreement to be ratified by a parliament to be held in the following November; but at a convention held at Stirling on 8th September an attempt was made to modify the bargain, it being set forth as a condition of Bothwell's restoration that he should remain beyond seas during the king's pleasure. Matters soon drifted into the old unsatisfactory condition." [Dict. Nat. Biog.]

Now, here we surely have a very close approximation to one of the most curious scenes in Hamlet. James has suffered all kinds of outrages and indignities from the younger Bothwell who has plotted against his life; at last he has Bothwell on his knees before him, and apparently at his mercy; Bothwell implores pardon and James hears the prayer and spares him; but he does not and cannot alter their real relations which, soon after, assume the same unsatisfactory character.

So Hamlet finds Claudius upon his knees, at prayer and defenceless; he has Claudius at his mercy and could destroy him; he spares him for the time, making the excuse that he does not want to send his soul to heaven; all the same he knows that Claudius plots against his life, and that he is practically helpless in his toils; in no real sense are their relations altered.

In 1595 Bothwell's position became desperate:

"His association with the Catholic earls proved fatal. The king demanded his excommunication by the kirk and although Bothwell wrote to the clergy of Edinburgh offering to receive their correction for whatever offence he had committed he was on 18th February excommunicated by the presbytery of Edinburgh at the king's command."

It looks very much as if this incident had suggested Hamlet's determination to spare Claudius until he had achieved his religious ruin, until he finds him about some act "that has no relish of salvation in't"; this incident has startled many of Shakespeare's commentators who cannot believe that Hamlet is stating his motive correctly because it would be "too horrible"; but if Shakespeare is simply dramatising history, then all we can say is that the parallel is remarkably complete. James did find Bothwell on his knees and at his mercy; he did spare him, and he spared him until the time when Bothwell, at the king's request, was excommunicated and his religious ruin achieved.

There is no trace of such an incident either in Saxo Grammaticus or in the Hystorie of Hamblet.

Bothwell, one may note, had very often professed friendship towards the king, and had declared it impossible to hate "where both benefits and blood compelled him to love." [Dict. Nat. Biog.]

One may compare this with the bitter irony of Hamlet's:

"A little more than kin and less than kind."

Elizabeth, as we have seen from the letters already quoted, was continually pointing out to James that he did not do his duty by his kingdom; the younger Bothwell provided the most conspicuous example of this neglect, but there were many other instances. The final result is that James' realm goes from bad to worse.

"Weeds in the fields, if they be suffered, will quickly overgrow the corn, but subjects being dandled, will make their own reigns and forlet another reign." [Letter LVII.]

Compare this once again with Hamlet's cry:

"How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on't: ah fie! 'tis an unweeded garden,
Grown to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely."

The resemblances between the situation dramatised in Hamlet and the situation revealed in the letters of Elizabeth are so close that we might almost believe that Shakespeare had been leaning over the queen's shoulder while she wrote.

Surely the most obvious explanation of such coincidences is that they were analysing the same curious mentality.

In this connection I may refer to Mr Bradley, who points out that there is undoubtedly a large element of lethargy in the character of Hamlet:

"We are bound to consider the evidence which the text supplies of this, though it is usual to ignore it. When Hamlet mentions, as one possible cause of his inaction, his 'thinking too precisely on the event,' he mentions another 'bestial oblivion,' and the thing against which he inveighs in the greater part of that soliloquy (IV, iv.) is not the excess and misuse of reason (which for him here and always is godlike); but his bestial oblivion or dullness, this letting all sleep, this allowing of heaven-sent reason to 'fust unused.'

                                'What is a man,
If his chief good and market of his time,
Be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more.'

"So, in the soliloquy (II, ii.) he accuses himself of being 'a dull and muddy-mettled rascal' who 'peaks like John-a-dreams unpregnant of his cause,' dully indifferent to his cause. So, when the Ghost appears to him the second time, he accuses himself of being tardy and lapsed in time; and the Ghost speaks of his purpose as being almost blunted and bids him not to forget." [Shakespearean Tragedy.]

On the ordinary supposition that Hamlet is simply a psychological problem which happened to interest Shakespeare at the time, it has always been somewhat difficult to comprehend how the play could appeal to great popular audiences in the way it undoubtedly did, for it was one of the most frequently acted of all Shakespeare's tragedies.

Revenge tragedies were common, but they were, as a rule, sufficiently simple in their appeal. Now Mr Robertson divines, in Kyd's original Hamlet, almost exactly such a tragedy where the stress was laid, as it is in Saxo and in the Hystorie of Hamblet, mainly upon the motive of revenge.

But the problem dramatised in Hamlet is one of singular subtlety and complexity; it is the problem of a man who sees what he ought to do, and yet cannot do it; who permits people to heap upon him outrage after outrage, insult upon insult, and yet does not punish even when he has the offender in his power; it is the problem of one who is ready to give the benefit of every doubt, who cannot believe even in reiterated evidences of crime and who, even when he is convinced, still goes on pardoning.

Is the incapacity for action due to the fineness of a too refined nature in its conflict with a coarse world? Is it mere sloth and cowardice and a want of princely, nay, of human dignity? Certainly Hamlet does not spare himself.

Whatever the solution of the problem may be, there is no doubt that the problem itself is the central interest of Shakespeare's play, and that there is not a trace of it in the original story. In the Amleth Saga the hero has to employ devious methods to attain his purpose; but in the purpose itself he never falters or wavers, and we have no reason to imagine that the hero of Kyd's play differed greatly. To make the incapacity for action the very centre of a tragedy was a startling innovation, and a most curious and subtle problem to bring before a popular audience. But, if the problem were really historical, if the problem concerned the character of the man whose succession to the crown was just then the chief question of practical politics, if the problem concerned the character of their own future monarch upon whom all the destiny of England, the destiny of each member of the audience, essentially depended, we can understand at once why Shakespeare selected a subject so unusual, and why it so greatly fascinated both his audience and himself.

At any rate, one thing is certain. Shakespeare's central problem does not, so far as we know, exist in any of his so-called sources; it does exist in the history—unmistakable, definite and clear; moreover, it was the precise historical problem which, at the exact moment Hamlet was written, was likely to interest Shakespeare's audience most.

It may, of course, be only coincidence; but this seems to me very improbable; a great dramatist is not a person working in a void, independent of time and space; every great dramatist has to deal with two materials: one is the stuff or substance of his own dramatic genius, the other is the mentality of his audience.

It is and must be a main part of dramatic genius to utilise the susceptibilities and interests of the audience in the fullest way possible.

Now, suppose that Shakespeare really desires to do this. His audience, just at that moment, are probably more interested in the question of the Scottish succession and the Essex conspiracy than in anything else upon earth. Suppose he wishes to avail himself of this interest and to dramatise Scottish history and the character of James.

How will he set about it?

From the point of view of drama history is too diffuse its interest is distracted and dissipated.

Thus the situation of James whose father has been murdered, and whose mother has married his father's murderer, this situation is, in itself, an intensely interesting one, the more so as the prince himself is claimed as "the avenger of his father"; dramatically considered the situation has, however, one serious flaw—the flaw that the prince is an infant at the time, and cannot possibly pursue in person this "vengeance."

Again, the whole of the relations between James and the younger Bothwell are singularly interesting as an illustration of the character of James—the doubts, the hesitancy, the reluctance to punish, the demanding ever fresh and fresh proofs, which proofs never satisfy, the refusal to be roused even by insults, even by manifest plots against his own life, all this is exceedingly interesting; but it is really quite a different story from the story of his father's murder, and to put them both into a drama would be, quite inevitably, to diffuse and break the dramatic interest.

It could not make a good play. An excellent drama can, however, be made by combining in one the parts played by the two Bothwells. There is nothing difficult in such a conception: the two belonged to the same family, [The younger Bothwell on the mother's side; on the father's he was a Stuart.] they were uncle and nephew, they held the same title; they were not very dissimilar in character; even modern Scottish historians have remarked that the younger Bothwell seemed like a reincarnation of the elder.

The device of putting the two in one is quite simple and obvious, and makes excellent drama: the crimes committed by Claudius are the crimes of the elder Bothwell which are far more striking and dramatic than the crimes of the younger Bothwell; but the relation of Hamlet to Claudius is the relation of James to the younger Bothwell. Why not? James was neglecting his duty to his kingdom just as thoroughly as Hamlet was neglecting his duty to his father, only the latter happens to be the thing which can, most effectively, be put upon the stage.

Thus, instead of two stories with their interests diffused, we have one story with its interest enormously concentrated. And there is this further advantage, that whereas no censorship would permit Shakespeare to dramatise Scottish history as it really occurred, the censorship could not prevent him from dramatising history, if he altered it to some extent, and called it Hamlet.

This, it seems to me, is the essential part of the play, and this is the real reason why Shakespeare borrows a name and a situation and practically nothing else from the Amleth Saga.

A similar method of construction is, we may point out, suggested by Shakespeare himself and in Hamlet also; it is Hamlet's own method of dealing with the Gonzago story; he selects a tale which resembles very closely indeed the actual details of his father's murder, he alters it to make it more like, and then, when the king is filled with horror and anger, Hamlet insists that "the story is extant and writ in choice Italian."

When we remember that this was exactly the method which Shakespeare and his company were in disgrace for employing in the case of Richard II, we must surely admit that our evidence is cumulative.

There are many other resemblances to the character of James which may also be developed.

Thus, as Professor Bradley has pointed out, the character of Hamlet, notwithstanding its curious hesitancy and indecision, shows a singular power of acting in sudden crises with vigour and strength; it is as of a sudden emergency let loose a different strain in his nature; thus, when he is on the voyage to England, he guesses the plan of the king against him, and substitutes for his own name as the name of the person to be executed those of his two companions.

The type of morality involved in this particular proceeding has seriously shocked some critics; but here we need only refer to it as proving Hamlet's capacity for swift action in emergency; it is one of the few things that Shakespeare takes directly from the saga, and it has something about it of peculiar crudity but it serves to show that Shakespeare's full portrait of Hamlet included this power of swift action in emergency.

Similar power of swift and decisive action is, of course, revealed in the final scene when Hamlet kills the king; after all the seemingly endless delays he rushes to the point in a moment: "Then venom, do thy work," and the work is done.

Now this peculiar contradiction, as we have seen, was characteristic also of James, and was one of the things that most astonished his contemporaries.

Burton says:

"He was a very timid and irresolute man, and yet on more than one occasion he behaved with an amount of nerve and courage which the greatest of heroes could not have excelled. . . . People on the other side of the North Sea speak of his journey to bring home his wife as a thing which he surely would not have attempted had he known the perils of the coast of Norway in winter. Whether he knew what he incurred or not on that occasion, we have seen his conduct on another [The Gowry Conspiracy.] I when the peril was not of his own seeking. He held his own in the hand-to-hand struggle with young Ruthven. He reminded the young man of the presence he was in and the propriety of removing his hat. He corrected the mysterious man in armour when he was opening the wrong window. . . .

"Finally the struggle had taught him that his assailant wore secret armour, so he told Ramsay to strike below it. It is known that men of a nervous temperament will, when at bay and desperate, become unconscious of their position, and act from a sort of mechanical influence, as if there were no danger near them. Are we so to account for these wonderful instances of presence of mind?"

Here, again, we have a historical trait exactly similar to a trait noticeable in Hamlet.

Another curious trait in James's character was his indifference to dress. His mother had never been careless in this matter; if not a lover of splendour in the same sense as Elizabeth, she had always been decorous and dignified and, on appropriate occasions, magnificent.

James was singularly careless and unkinglike, to such an extent that he excited the derision of English visitors, and was jeered at for indecorum.

Sir Anthony Weldon says:

"In his diet, apparel and journeys he was very constant. In his apparel so constant as by his goodwill he would never change his clothes till almost worn out to rags . . . his fashion never; inasmuch as one bringing to him a hat of a Spanish block, he cast it from him, swearing he neither loved them nor their fashions. Another time, bringing him roses on his shoes, he asked them if they would make him a ruff-footed dove—one yard of sixpenny ribbon served that turn."

Here, again, it is impossible not to see the likeness to Hamlet: Hamlet's indifference to dress and his scorn for the courtiers to whom it means so much.

Ophelia speaks of him as wearing disordered apparel [Act II, i.]:

"Lord Hamlet with his doublet all unbraced
No hat upon his head; his stockings foul'd
Ungarter'd and down-gyved to his ancle ";

and Hamlet shows the utmost contempt for Osric "the water-fly," and for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

Other portions of Sir Anthony Weldon's description may also be quoted:

"He was very witty, and has as many ready, witty jests as any man living at which he would not smile himselfe, but deliver them in a grave and serious manner. . . .

"He would make a great deal too bold with God in his passion both in cursing and swearing and one strain higher verging on blasphemy; but would in his better temper say: 'He hoped God would not impute them as sins and lay them to his charge, seeing they proceeded from passion.'"

"He was infinitely inclined to peace."

"His chosen motto was: 'Beati pacifici.'"

Here, again, we have traits which closely resemble those of Hamlet. Hamlet's wit and his ready jests are shown in many scenes. At the same time he does deliver his jests in a grave and serious manner; particularly in his relations to Polonius and to Osric and Guildenstern he is full of irony.

We have several examples of his cursing with regard to the king; he accuses himself, [Act II, ii.] of cursing like a whore or a scullion:

"Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words,
And fall a-cursing, like a very drab,
A scullion!"

As examples of James' witty sayings Weldon quotes:

I wonder not so much that women paint themselves, as that when they are painted, men can love them."

We may compare Hamlet [Act III, i.]: "God has given you one face and you make yourselves another."

Again, James was a student; he was particularly fond, as we have seen, of discoursing on theology and philosophy; he was also in the habit of taking tablets wherever he went to make notes; his tablets were always on hand, and this was a marked peculiarity of his. Hamlet, also, has this peculiarity, and shows it in a most extraordinary manner; he even carries his tablets with him in his interview with the ghost, and notes down the fact that

"A man may smile and smile and be a villain ";

It is surely the most extraordinary example recorded of the use of tablets and serves to show, at the least, that Hamlet must have been particularly addicted to their employment. In fact, it is difficult to see any motive for such a bizarre example except to show a personal trait.

Hamlet is described by the queen as being "fat and scant o f breath." James also was corpulent. "He was of middle stature," says Sir Anthony Weldon, "more corpulent through his clothes than in reality, his body yet fat enough."

Hamlet is described as being thirty years of age, [Act V, i.] for the sexton came to his office when young Hamlet was born and says: "I have been sexton here, man and boy, for thirty years."

James was actually about thirty-three when Hamlet was produced; it was the custom, however, to state age in round numbers, and we occasionally find James mentioned as being thirty years of age when he came to the throne. [See, for instance, Secret History of Four Last Monarchs, pub. 1691.] This is almost the only case in Shakespeare where a definite age is given to the hero, and it looks as if there were a reason for it.

Again we observe Hamlet's curious methods of circumventing people, of finding out their intentions by means of tricks; this is revealed most plainly in the case of Polonius; but the same thing happens with Osric, with Rosencrantz, and with Guildenstern, also with the king.

This, again, was a trait characteristic of James:

"If he had not that extreme timidity with which he has often been charged, he certainly shrank from facing dangers; and this shrinking was allied in early life with a habit of cautious fencing with questioners, without much regard for truth, which was the natural outcome of his position among hostile parties." [Dict. Nat. Biog.]

So Sir Anthony Weldon says of him: "He was very crafty and cunning in petty things, as the circumventing any great man."

This, surely, exactly resembles the position of Hamlet. Hamlet fences with Polonius, with the king, with Osric, with Rosencrantz, and certainly without much regard to the truth; at the same time, it is justified to the mind of the audience by the manifest peril in which he stands and by the fact that the people who surround him are inimical and hostile, intent on betraying him; the audience cordially approves of his trick of outwitting his enemies by verbal subtleties. Hamlet's policy delivers him from many perils, and James also earned the reward of a similar skill.

"He was," says Burton, "the first monarch of his race since the Jameses began who was to be permitted to reach the natural duration of his days; for though his grandfather was not slain, his end was hastened by violence. When we trace the genealogic line of his house, we find it inaugurated by the murder of his father and the ruin of his mother, ending on the scaffold. . . ."

Now the James whom Shakespeare's audience were contemplating as their future king was the very person involved in these tragedies; he had survived until his thirties, after being threatened with the most serious perils from and, indeed, even before his birth; he had survived mainly by the devotion of a few most faithful servants like the Erskines, and, from an extremely early age, by his own gifts; his arts might savour of deceit, but they surely were permissible when the extreme danger and peril of his situation was taken into account: "he was the only one of his race since the Jameses began who was permitted to reach the natural duration of his days."

Could any words be stronger? Do they not correspond with the situation of Hamlet who has only one devoted friend, and who is surrounded by every form alike of violence and of treachery?

But, it may be asked, if the character of Hamlet shows all these resemblances to that of James I, is it to be taken simply as a portrait?

It does not seem to me that Shakespeare's method is essentially one of portraiture and, as I shall attempt to show later, I find other elements in the character of Hamlet besides what he owes to James. It seems to me that the more accurate way of stating the matter would be to say that Shakespeare takes the main conception of Hamlet and the situation of Hamlet, from James and the situation of James.

The central situation, the Orestes-like motive of the play, that the murderer of the father has married the mother, is the situation of James; the central problem of the play—the problem of the vacillating will, of the man who knows he ought to act but cannot act, of the man who is aware that he ought to punish but cannot punish—this is the problem of James's character. That hatred of bloodshed which distinguishes Hamlet also, throughout his life, distinguished James; again we have a similar love of philosophic discussion with an interest in spirits and the night-side of nature; we have the same love of disputation with everybody whom he meets, the same parrying of indiscreet questions and escaping from difficult situations by means of verbal fence, the same feigning of stupidity which goes so far that he is sometimes suspected of madness; we have a similar misogyny, we have the same curious power of swift and sudden action in crises notwithstanding the vacillations, we have the same power of pithy and witty sayings; we have a similar carelessness of dress and a similar dislike of perfumed courtiers; we have even minor details such as the habit of swearing, the use of tablets, the thirty years of age, the being "fat and scant of breath."

The point I wish to insist on is always that of the Elizabethan audience, and I ask, "Could they fail to see resemblances which are, on the one hand, so deep, profound and vital and, on the other hand, so curiously detailed?"

It seems to me that the play of Hamlet is largely an appeal to their interest in their future king: a use for dramatic purposes of his history, his situation, and the leading traits in his character.

A rather curious point may be noted here. Attention has often been called to the close connection which appears to exist between Hamlet and Measure for Measure. Now, the character of the Duke in Measure for Measure also shows marked resemblances to that of James I; but there are two facts to be carefully observed; one is that the character of the Duke is altogether inferior to that of Hamlet, it is not nearly so noble or so attractive, and the other is that the character of the Duke is more like that of the historic James as we usually conceive the latter to have been. I have dwelt on this elsewhere. [Measure for Measure. (Heath of Boston.)]

Now, if Shakespeare takes the central conception of both these characters from the historic James, as he apparently does, the problem at once arises as to why these characters are in themselves so different.

Now it appears to me that the answer to this is probably threefold. In the first place, Shakespeare, when he wrote Hamlet had not seen James I; at that date the Scottish king had not crossed the Border; all that was known of him must have been eagerly canvassed; but the man himself had never set foot in England. Before Shakespeare wrote Measure for Measure, both he and his audience had made the acquaintance of James, and had possibly found him less attractive on a nearer view. In the second place, Shakespeare quite probably intended Hamlet, in part at least, as a pamphlet in favour of the Scottish succession; in such circumstances he would naturally do everything he could to invest the figure of the prince with glamour and with charm; hence we have a philosophic and melancholy prince, seen against a background of dark crimes, a prince whose peace-loving nature makes him abhor the duty of bloodshed laid upon him, an enigmatic figure wayward and strange yet full of fascination.

What are our prevailing feelings as we pursue the course of the play? One of them surely is that we should like to take Hamlet away from his surroundings which are unworthy of him, away from the Denmark which does not merit him, and introduce him to a nobler sphere.

But is not this precisely and exactly the feeling which Shakespeare wished to create? It is, at any rate, plausible.

In the third place, and perhaps most important of all, I do not consider that Hamlet is solely a portrait of James I; it seems to me to contain much of Essex as Essex was in the last year of his life. I shall hope to demonstrate this later, and to show how those portions of the character which are psychologically inconsistent with the rest may have had their origin in this way. Here I need only state that I do not think Hamlet is a portrait of anyone.

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