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MAN AND THE SUPERNATURAL 265
ignorance is the very respect that makes calamity of so long life, as against suicide which could end it :
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, Th' oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The pangs of despis'd love, the law's delay. The insolence of office, and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin ? who would these fardels bear. To grunt and sweat under a weary life. But that the dread of something
(something — what we know not)
after death. The undiscover'd country from whose bourn No traveller returns, puzzles the will. And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of?
But in a little while we find that Hamlet does not really believe we are so ignorant of what is to happen after death : we find that death is so far from being an undiscovered country to him that he really believes, or believes he be- lieves, that we know all about it. For look what he pres- ently does, and argues- The To be soliloquy is in Act III, Scene I ; presently in Scene III, that is, only two scenes farther on in the same act, Hamlet, on the way to his mother for that dreadful interview, comes unawares behind the guilty King, who is kneeling at his prayers. If Ham- let ever desired to put this monster out of the way, now is the time : but he does not stab him ; and why ? Why, because, as he alleges, of a perfectly clear conviction as to what will happen to the King after deaths a point which a moment ago he said neither he nor any other man had or
266 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
could have any clear convictions on at all. Hear him, with the soliloquy in your mind- As Hamlet, pacing along the corridor towards his mother's room, suddenly finds the King there praying, his back turned to Hamlet, absorbed, unconscious of an enemy, defenceless, the thought rushes over him and stops him like a shot, kill him now. NoWy he says,
might I do it pat, now he is praying ; And now Til do't : and so he goes to heaven : And so am I reveng'd ? That would be scann'd : A villain kills my father ; and for that, I, his sole son, do this same villain send To heaven.
Why, this is hire and salary, not revenge. . . . And am I then reveng'd. To take him in the purging of his soul. When he is fit and season'd for his passage ?
(That is, in saying his prayers.)
No.
Up, sword, and know thou a more horrid bent :
When he is drunk, asleep, or in his rage, . . .
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.
Just now death was an undiscovered country ; we knew and could know nothing of what happens in it : now we know all about it ; we know heaven and hell ; we know that if a villain be killed while he is saying his prayers he will go to heaven, and that if he be killed while he is asleep he will go to hell ; and I Hamlet believe that I believe this, and so I will not take this opportunity for revenge. Nay, how absurd is Hamlet's undiscovered
MAN AND THE SUPERNATURAL 267
country from which no traveller returns, when even now the ghost of his father, who had travelled beyond death, returns^ and discovers to Hamlet how he is doomed to walk for a certain time, and so on ! Thus we see that the key to Hamlet's character is that half-belief which does not know that it believes, but only believes that it believes, and so twists its belief from moment to moment to suit its mood, and hence a thousand inconsistencies. This shifting the belief to suit the desire, this half-belief which is worse than no belief, seems wonderftilly charac- teristic of our present age, and well may it be called the Hamlet age. I do not know how I can better illustrate this curious and puzzling state, which is so characteristic of much that we flatter as belief, than by recalling an incident which occurred a short time ago, and which seemed to me to illustrate a whole belief, the opposite of Hamlet's half- belief, in a most admirable manner. Four or five years ago I happened to be in St. Augustine when a party of Indians arrived who had been captured in the West and sent to this far-away place by the government, for con- finement as notorious disturbers of the peace on our Western frontier. When these Indians left the cars at the station, I observed that one of them was very ill, and that another was nursing the sick man. I was greatly im- pressed with the tenderness of the rude nurse, and with the evident love which underlay his ministrations. The sick Indian was sent to the hospital, and his friend, who I afterwards learned was his cousin, was allowed to go with him and nurse him. On the next night the sick one grew worse, and was told that he must presently die. Soon afterward he called to his cousin to hand him his bundle from under his cot ; fumbling in it, he drew out a knife which he had secreted there, and, while his cousin was tenderly leaning over him, he suddenly plunged the
a68 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
open blade into his cousin's breast. The feebleness of death was upon him, and the wound was slight; and presently, when the commotion over this singular act had subsided, the hospital people asked the dying Indian what conceivable reason he could have for desiring to murder his best friend in such a manner. He replied : ** I am going to the Happy Hunting Grounds; I wished to kill him, that he might go with me : I love him so that I cannot part with him."
No undiscovered country here ; and this rude whole faith is a good foil to set off Hamlet's cultivated half-faith. In short, the attitude of man towards the supernatural in Hamlet is that of practical doubt underlying a belief that he believes : the most wretched and perplexing of all con- ditions. Even when the Ghost comes from the undis- covered country to give him light, he never quite knows whether to doubt the Ghost or not, in the midst of all his plots based on the Ghost's information.
But if we go on to see how this condition of mind as to the supernatural has arranged itself by 1610, we are met with a faith as fine and clear as the Indian's, and as intelligent as the Indian's was ignorant. In The Tempest there is a Providence indeed. We find Him shining, here and there, all through. In Act I, Scene II, when Pros- pero has been telling Miranda how he, and she, a pitiful infant, were put into the open boat and turned out to the wild sea, Miranda says :
O the heavens ! What foul play had we, that we came from thence ? Or blessed was't we did ?
Prospero replies:
Both, both, my girl :
By foul play, as thou say'st, were we heav'd thence ;
But blessedly holp hither.
MAN AND THE SUPERNATURAL 269
Acknowledging, of course, that there is One who blessedly helps.
Again, we have it in terms. Presently, after hearing the tremendous story of their voyage in the open boat, Miranda cries :
How came we ashore ?
and Prospero answers :
By Providence divine.
More than that, the character of this Providence is very different from any that has before appeared. In Hamlet Pi evidence is sending a ghost back out of the jaws of darkness, for what purpose? To organise Revenge. In The Tempest Providence sends supernatural powers to Prospero to organise Forgiveness. Now, cries Hamlet, when he finds the King in his power, now might I stab him pat. But listen to Ariel and Prospero talking in the first scene of the fifth act of The Tempest. The charms have all worked, things gather to a head, Prosperous ene- mies are all in his power, he could stab them all at one stroke if he liked, and they are not saying their prayers, either. But Ariel, darting up and reporting these matters.
says:
If you now beheld them, your affections Would become tender.
Prospero. Dost thou think so, spirit ?
jfriel. Mine would, sir, were I human.
Prospero. And mine shall. . . .
Though with their high wrongs I am struck to the quick, Yet . . .
the rarer action is
270 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
In virtue than in vengeance : they being penitent. The sole drift of my purpose doth extend Not a frown further.
And so, when the wondering wrecked company are led in by Ariel, after a while Prospero says :
For you, most wicked sir, whom to call brother Would even infect my mouth, I do forgive Thy rankest fault, — all of them.
And it is a most heavenly touch of the fulness of this pardon when presently, stricken with overwhelming com- punction as he looks into the cell and sees Ferdinand and Miranda playing chess, the brother laments :
But, O, how oddly will it sound that I Must ask my child forgiveness !
and Prospero quickly interrupts :
There, sir, stop : Let us not burden our remembrance with A heaviness that's gone.
Which is almost like a paraphrase of St. Paul's Forgetting what is behind J let us press forward y and so forth. And so Prosperous art and Prosperous forgiveness rise above the most galling oppositions of life, and we see that Shakspere has found out moral exaltation to be the secret of manag- ing all the moral antagonisms of existence. How changed is the attitude of man towards the supernatural, here, from what it was in the dream play of the Midsummer Nighty and in the real play of Hamlet! In the first, man is the sport of chance ; in the second, man knows not what is above ; in the third, repentance, forgiveness, and Provi- dence rise like stars out of the dark of Hamlet.
MAN AND THE SUPERNATURAL 271
In the next two lectures we will trace those cunning and often amusing revelations of the attitude of man to- wards his fellow-man and towards nature proper which will complete our examination of these plays. Meantime let me close this lecture with remarking that it is instructive to observe from a different point of view the three phases of the supernatural presented by these plays. The supernat- ural, you see, is in all these plays. In Midsummer Night's Dream it is a flippant Oberon ; in Hamlet it is a ghost ; here in Tempest it is in the first place God, and in the sec- ond place man made in God's image controlling the pucks and ghosts who formerly controlled him. Puck, the bright trickster, changes to Ariel, the bright minister, through the intermediate ghost, the dark messenger. Thus the Ideal Period has come round by a wonderful cyclus to be simply the Dream Period reinformed with a new youth, and Shakspere's age, with its fairy-tale. The Tempesty is but a new and immortally fine reconstruction of his youth, with its fairy-tale, the Dream. I cannot think of the manner in which this glimmering Puck melts into this sombre ghost, and this ghost into the radiant Ariel, without re- calling a series of ideas which I found some years ago in a long-forgotten essay of Bulwer's. He was draw- ing a comparison between the different appearances things would present to us if slight changes were made in the powers of our sense of sight ; and these changes strikingly represent the actual changes in views of things which we have here been tracing as between Shakspere's youth and his ripeness. Said Bulwer, in substance : Our present eyesight takes only the view which comes from the surface of things, whence the ray of light glances and strikes our retina. What we see, therefore, under present conditions, is a sort of film, or dreamy covering of things. That is, what we call a beautiful face really applies only to the colours and
272 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
outlines of the skin which covers the actual framework of the face. Now, before going on, let us analogise this to the state of the young man's eyes, the state of Shakspere's eyes in the Midsummer Night^s Dream^ seeing only the sur- face of things, seeing things as in a dream, not seeing the real at all, not realising anything.
But suppose, continued Bulwer, that by a slight change the rays of light did not bound back from the surfece, — say from the skin of the face, — but penetrated beneath that, and only bounded back from the muscles, nerves, veins, and bones. What an inconceivably repulsive place would the world become! In looking M^», for instance, at our beautiful face, we would see only that reticulation of nerves and veins and muscles which makes a medical plate so horrible ; we would see the two holes of the skull for nostrils ; we would see a ghastly grin instead of a captivat- ing smile.
And here, again, before going further, let us analo- gise this to the young man's first sight of the real in life, that is, to our Shakspere's Hamlet period, when the for- bidding network of death and murder and revenge and sin and suffering starts out from underneath the smooth ex- terior of life, as the network of veins and muscles and so on starts out from the maiden's cheek to the more power- ful vision. This Hamlet period is, indeed, just that in which the rays of light begin to come to us, not from the surface of things, but from the reality of things ; and we see how our Shakspere is paralysed with horror at the sight.
But Bulwer does not leave us in this condition. Sup- pose again, he says, that our eyes should acquire an in- finitely greater power, so that they should see not only the underlying realities of things but should actually see the purpose and reason of being and function of each thing along
MAN AND THE SUPERNATURAL 273
with the thing itself. Suppose, to carry on the example, that, along with the revolting network of muscles and veins and bones in the human face, we should actually see the functions of each one — how each part was beautifully co- adapted with the other, how the muscle played and swelled and contracted, how the generous blood ever leaped along the artery with nutriment and built up the exquisite struc- ture of the face, depositing this little atom here and this there, and keeping up the form and contour of the flesh, how the nerves thrilled with a sudden impulse that ran into the sensorium and told of colour and of music, and so on. Then, then, if we saw along with these things their working and their final end and purpose, the world which a moment before was hideous as the real would now be- come infinitely beautiful as the ideal.
And so it became to Shakspere : bright but unreal in Midsummer Night^s Dream, when he saw only the external ; hideous in Hamlet, when he saw only the real ; perfectly beautiful in Tempest, when he saw all things together, all things related to a common purpose, nothing common or unclean, because everything was dignified by its functional relation to that purpose — in short, when he saw the world in its ideal. And, finally, I cannot better sum up the re- lations of these three plays than by calling your attention to their epilogues from the point of view of our present status.
At the end of the Midsummer Night's Dream exeunt Oberon, Titania, and their train, and Puck concludes all with this epilogue :
If we shadows have ofFended, Think but this, and all is mended, That you have but slumber'd here, While these visions did appear.
274 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
And this weak and idle theme. No more yielding but a dream. Gentles, do not reprehend : If you pardon, we will mend. And, as I'm an honest Puck, If we have unearned luck, Now to scape the serpent's tongue. We will make amends ere long ; Else the Puck a liar call : So, good night unto you all. Give me your hands,
(that is, the applause of your hands)
if we be friends. And Robin shall restore amends.
Here we have — nothing : fit end of a dream.
When we come to Hamlet^ there is no set epilogue, but they are to bury Hamlet, and to shoot over his grave as a tribute to his soldierhood ; and the stage-direction is, Exeunt^ bearing off the bodies : after which a peal of ordnance is shot off. So the epilogue is really a peal of guns, and truly to this lamentable play there could be no fitter epilogue than these sullen shots from behind the curtain, like inarticulate cries from beyond the grave.
But, lastly, to T^he Tempest we have a set epilogue ; and such a farewell as it is !
Bearing in mind the flippant departure of Puck from the stage, and remembering how likely it is that either The Tempest was Shakspere's last play, or that he thought it would be, we cannot listen unmoved to the passionate human appeal of Shakspere in this epilogue as a personal supplication from the master to his fellow-men whom he had so long entertained with his art. The stage-direc- tion is :
MAN AND THE SUPERNATURAL 275
EPILOGUE
Spoken by Prospero
Now my charms are all o'erthrown, And what strength I have's mine own, Which is most faint:
(Not promising, as in Midsummer Nighl's Dream^ to do better next time if you will but pardon the faults of this.)
now,*tis true, I must be here confin'd by you. Or sent to Naples. Let me not. Since I have my dukedom got. And pardon'd the deceiver, dwell In this bare island by your spell ; But release me from my bands With the help of your good hands : Gentle breath of yours my sails Must fill, or else my project fails. Which was to please. Now I want Spirits to enforce, art to enchant ; And my ending is despair. Unless I be reliev'd by prayer. Which pierces so, that it assaults Mercy itself, and frees all faults. As you from crimes would pardon'd be. Let your indulgence set me free.