point in the invention of Shakespeare, and the turning-point of the piece, the thing inwardly accomplished, but only made visible outwardly in the catastrophe.

This blind death of Polonius is the death of all; but it also unmasks the criminal! Through that thrust, by which Hamlet in blind passion tries to hit the King and does not hit him; by this thrust the King is really hit! But only because Hamlet has not in downright reality hit him, is he in truth hit,—so hit that the truth comes to light! On this account, it is true, Hamlet himself falls,-but his task is fulfilled. . . .

....

By the death of Polonius, Hamlet stirs up against himself a vengeance similar to that which he has to inflict; but only similar,-it has no righteous claim to his life, -and since, nevertheless, it is fulfilled, and he suffers death therefrom, it assists him to do what he is bound to do.

And it thus assists him: because the criminal whom he is to punish avails himself of it, and directs it, in order to secure himself and destroy Hamlet.

Such is the wonderful combination here before us. Hamlet stands involved in the Cause: he cannot choose his plan, for it strides on before him. And this it is that is described as 'the hero's having no plan!' This is the positive content of that negative proposition. He suffers himself to be led; for that, he is intelligent and passive enough,-passive in the large sense that he understands the difficulty of his task, understands in fear and agony; and thus he goes straight to the mark,— straight into the heart of the crime. And by no means slowly! This preposterous idea, that he goes slowly, has come to be a settled notion, only from the silly desire that he should slay the King right off. # The piece knows of no delay. It drives ahead in storm! The fulfilment, the judgement,—and the death also of the King, come even quicker than Hamlet and we can foresee. With one stroke all is fulfilled, in overwhelming surprise!

Now may Hamlet strike the King down, now at last when he himself is dying; now may he hearken to his blood when his blood is flowing! And now his thrust cannot injure the Cause; it seals and fulfils it. But never till now, only in this last moment, when Laertes and the Queen also have fallen.

And this is what is considered a needless blood-bath! Justice and her poet know better what blood she demands in expiation, and who is her debtor.

Indeed, even now the King makes no confession; even Death opens his mouth only for a lie, not for the confession of the truth; but his own confession is no longer indispensable. Laertes confesses for him, and the corpse of the Queen and the blood of the prince, all these victims proclaim aloud the murderer to all the world; now also Ophelia, and Polonius, and Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern, testify against him! All these dead now form the chorus to the solo of the Ghost; and when Horatio comes forward as the reporter to tell Hamlet's story, and to explain his cause to the unsatisfied, he will produce in all his hearers the conviction which he himself has and which we have, and the story which the Grave tells will be an unquestionable truth for the world,-now, when Hamlet himself exists no more on earth, and is no more a party to the scene.

When the piece is thus understood,—its foundation, its progress, its aim,—when the purpose of the action and its method,-when its meaning is thus conceived, then

* Let it only be considered how short the time occupied is; from the beginning of the second act, only a few days! This escapes notice, because the contents of the piece are so rich and deep, the subject so great, and the task of Hamlet so hard, and his suffering so intense. This interior infiniteness it is which makes it appear as if the process lasted long.

those significant passages ring out with the power of a refrain, with the clear tone of a catchword: 'Our wills and fates do so contrary run,' and 'That our devices still are overthrown,'-'Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well, When our deep plots do pall.'

HERMAN GRIMM (1875)

(Hamlet. Preussische Jahrbücher, April, 1875, p. 386.)—The labors which have, up to this time, been bestowed upon the play of Hamlet, so far as they are known to me, have had this in common, that they treat Hamlet as a self-included individual, whose nature is to be studied in connection with his actual life, even outside of what is represented on the stage. As Goethe's homunculus owes his origin to the creative effort of a bungler, who distilled an impossible individual from the noblest ingredients, Hamlet, on the other hand, represents the perfectly successful experiment. Shakespeare has introduced into the world a real human being, a sort of supplement to the divine Creation, for nowhere as yet has there been found a being run in the same mould with this Hamlet. There he is, living and moving. He is answerable for himself. He and his fellow-players are summoned directly before his judges. Whoever in this drama passes over the stage, and speaks only a couple of words, is regarded as one who knows, and is interrogated accordingly. Every one of these persons has, for the commentators, a life of his own, and an opinion of his own in regard to Hamlet, which must be brought out and elucidated. We thus have a view of an extended process, in which the various witnesses are of greater or less weight in the judgement of the different critics. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, for example, are by some esteemed to be very important persons, whose secret is to be discov ered, and whose final destruction is a very serious matter. Every critic constitutes himself presiding judge in an ideal court of justice, endeavoring according to his best conscience to examine and to render a righteous judgment.

But the truth is, the ships which were to take Hamlet to England sailed only in Shakespeare's imagination, and the echoes around Elsinore have never really answered back the thunders of the cannon, with which King Claudius accompanied his carousals. And the heavy trouble which oppressed Hamlet has, in truth, never moved any human heart, unless it were the heart of the playwright, Shakespeare, who, when he brought out Hamlet and the other dramatis persona on the stage, knew, just as precisely as in his other dramas, what he was to represent and what his players were to represent. Shakespeare certainly knew his audience to the last fibre. The poor Danish prince appeared to him,-not in a night, as the ghost of his father appeared on the terrace to the prince himself,-whispered the secret of his sufferings in Shakespeare's ear, and made him his poetical historiographer and testamentary executor. But Shakespeare, from elements, of which no one will ever have any knowledge, gathered the stuff for the figure of Hamlet, began to model it, worked it out more and more fully, in hours, in nights, in days, of which again no one can ever know, and at last the work stood living there, just as he willed it. We conjecture not how this process went on. Goethe, here and there, has communicated to us how it went with his own labors; his work as a whole stood plainly before him from the very first; but afterwards, for ten years through, at long intervals, additional particulars were suggested, to be wrought into the work not without arduous and repeated labors. Shakespeare has not disclosed anything on this point. We know nothing of the way in which he worked. But we may conclude, not only from his

other dramas, but also from the peculiar nature of the work of writing for the stage, that the poet looked very carefully to all the effects to be produced, and that, before this piece was brought out, his players received from him the most minute instructions. And for this reason his work contains contradictions which seem irreconcilable, but which are not accidental; Shakespeare intended that they should be there, and put them purposely into the scene. The poet knew how all hung together. It is not to be supposed that Shakespeare stood amazed at last before his own creation, as if it contained mysteries to which he himself possessed no key. To him the economy of the plot was entirely familiar. He knew the places where he was to allow things to be acted out visibly, and where they were only to be narrated. He knew how the action was to be gradually evolved, and he calculated what would be the immediate impression upon the spectator. He knew, also, that his public were not prepared with book in hand to call him to account, for his dramas were arranged not to be read, but to be acted directly on the stage. And therefore the best way to arrive at an understanding of the piece seems to be, to inquire, step by step, what Shakespeare intended in his Hamlet, how the situation of affairs, as seen on the stage, must have fashioned itself to the public.

[Herr GRIMM here traces the tragedy as it unfolds itself, scene by scene, before the spectator, and shows how surprises occur at every turn; nothing is to be guessed beforehand. At one time we are convinced that Hamlet is going to act with vigor, the next moment we are sure that he is insane, then again he appears most sane, and so on, first one way and then the other, until we give up conjectures and resign ourselves to Shakespeare's lead, content to await the result in his good time. ED.] [Page 391.] Had Shakespeare wished us to perceive that Hamlet was playing the madman for the first time in his interview with Ophelia, as described by her to Polonius, he would, somehow or other, have given us a hint of it. When Shakespeare's characters have plots, upon the knowledge of which the understanding of the piece depends, he does not leave us a moment in doubt. Claudius lets us know in the most open-hearted manner what he thinks of himself, as well as his villainous plans to get Hamlet out of the way. From Ophelia's relation every spectator must feel that Hamlet acted thus strangely towards her from deep depression of spirits, not because he wished to give Ophelia the idea that he had lost his wits. But this view of things is immediately set aside by the poet himself; for in the following scene Polonius persuades the King and Queen that Hamlet has become crazed from his love to Ophelia. That this absurdity is an error, every spectator knows, and this better knowledge is so far productive, that our opinion, without our needing to know in what way it happens, must again turn in favor of Hamlet. Hamlet is, therefore, not yet insane,-he has his plans; the King and Queen are already aware of it!

People really reflect so little in the theatre. What has just passed is scarcely remembered, yet judgement is pronounced upon what is directly before their eyes; the public depends upon what it sees, and is so engrossed with that, that it is led without thought into the greatest violations of logic. To consider Hamlet insane, then again immediately to believe that it is mere feigning, and then to return to the first impression, and to continue changing thus backwards and forwards, is nothing that a poet like Shakespeare might not count upon in a susceptible public. He commands, and his audience follow him obediently like children, to whom he tells a story, making them laugh and cry by turns.

[Page 395.] The design of the poet is less, we think, to unfold the plot of the

drama in due form than to prepare for us the highest enjoyment by the exhibition of a rare, and, intellectually, a highly gifted man. Hamlet deserves no reproaches, only study. But he is doomed. For when a man thus philosophizes, his energies become so corroded by excess of thought, that he lacks strength for action even under the simplest and most favorable circumstances.

And thus, independently of the crime of Hamlet's parents, of the appearance of the Ghost, and of Hamlet's plans of revenge, from quite another side the impression upon the mind of the spectator is renewed, that this figure is simply the embodiment of a spirit doomed to destruction from the first.

Surely it was the design of the poet to confirm this faith. Hamlet's dialogue with Ophelia, as well as his behavior during the court-play, are of that foolish, nay, repulsive, character, that we give up the idea of determining whether it were caused by real or pretended folly. Why make such cynical remarks to a maiden that he loves?

[Page 398.] In the fifth act the final effects are realized. Hamlet again appears. He philosophizes in the churchyard. We know that beforehand. Over Yorick's skull he forgets himself and the world around him. In a house on fire, instead of saving himself, he would have been absorbed in scientific observations upon the flames consuming the wood-work; in a sinking ship he would have calculated the time it would take in going down. The public have long before given up every hope of a favorable turn in outward circumstances, as well as every hope of such a character as this. King, Queen, Fortinbras, might all lie there dead, and Hamlet be called to be king; but, instead of mounting the steps to the throne, he would philosophize upon a fly buzzing about the golden circlet on his brows. It is true Fortinbras, at the conclusion of the piece, says that if Hamlet had ascended the throne, he would have reigned royally, but these verses belong as a last trump in that category of intended contradictions, by which the poet designed to render a final, decisive judgement impossible. In the mind of the spectator, since no decision between madness and sanity is to be permitted, there has been created a certainty, comprehending the one as well as the other, and supporting both possibilities, viz: ruined! A sorrowful riddle, that was not to be solved.

It is this riddle that the poet intended to present before his public. Thus was his task fulfilled. He had shown, symbolically, a process observed with especial frequency in England: first, over-excitement of the brain, then distrust, whether the mental equilibrium be preserved, next, diversion of this distrust to the surroundings; then come waiting, watching, violent means employed to ward off mischief; dissolution; and, at last, for survivors the feeling of a sad problem, of which the decisive final solution will never be found. Hamlet's fate concerns every one, because every man feels thankful that Fate has not placed him in the situation in which he is required to resort to the last, extreme, uncertain resources of his spiritual strength. Every one who goes deeply into the questions of his own spiritual existence must feel that he is wandering on the brink of the abyss into which Hamlet plunged; and how many are there who have not, once in their lives, looked down into that abyss with a shudder?

In no other piece has Shakespeare employed in such measure all the means of his art. The earlier acts are among the most powerful in all dramatic literature. The epic ductus of the last two must not be considered as a defect. We find the same mode of composition in his other dramas.

[Page 400.] A drama requires a crisis. A number of figures, every one of whom

is recognizable as representative of one, or of several, of our human, spiritual forces, are, by a decree emanating from the upper powers, set one against another. A conflict arises, to be fought out to a decision. The public is satisfied when every single figure is absolutely qualified for the conflict, and when their several modes of action correspond at every moment to our highest demands.

These figures can have but little that is peculiar and individual; they are, as it were, principles clothed in human forms. What they do and suffer is far beyond anything which the spectator himself has ever been in a situation to experience. Antigone, Creon, Edipus, &c., reveal to us the life of a soul, whose concentrated simplicity lies outside of all particular human experience. Without this simplicity the inexorably logical structure of a tragedy would not be possible; in a tragedy, as in a mathematical example, all must accord.

To produce dramas of this kind was to the Greeks, and, among modern nations, to the French, a necessity. The poets of these nations were in a position to produce such ideal conflicts with abstractions in human shape, and their audiences were inspired thereby. To the Germanic races, on the other hand, it is in general wholly impossible, when human beings are poetically represented, to fashion them otherwise than in the semblance of individuals. The spectator wants to see in the drama, not anything transcending his experience, but he requires that his experience shall furnish the measure for what he sees before his eyes on the stage; figures must appear, the very first condition of whose existence is, that they are human beings like ourselves; characters, individuals, although, it may be, in peculiar circumstances. We regard the ideal forms of Grecian art as more individual than the Grecian poets and sculptors themselves conceived of them. Not the simple, but the complex, is what we demand and understand.

But such figures, when they engage in conflict, do not bring about the catastrophe of their collective development in a single battle; they must carry on long wars, with alternations of fortune. And these wars are to be occasioned by some exciting problem, hurled down among them by a higher hand: a necessary revenge, an irresistible temptation (as in Macbeth), a fearful incitement to arrogance (as in Coriolanus), a political inducement to deadly ingratitude (as in Brutus); but the matter is not brought to an end by a single outbreak of the first cause of the conflict. In continued contest only does the character begin to unfold, and this unfolding the Germanic spectator requires to see before his eyes. The Greek was able to show it only in the epos. The development of Achilles step by step is the subject of the noblest epic poem which has ever been composed. Shakespeare, the only true Germanic man, who has labored as poet for a healthy national stage, sought to meet this want, and devised the union of the drama and the epos, which accomplished his purpose. Wherever he really makes the development of an extraordinary individuality the theme of his tragedy, he begins by giving us in the first three acts the urgent cause of the first great conflict, in which the character of his hero reveals, as it were, the deepest fundamental elements of his being; in the fourth and fifth acts the slow unfolding of the contest, to the fall of the one or the other of the parties, or to the destruction of both, is virtually only narrated, although put in the form of scenes dramatically constructed. To the dramas already mentioned, in which this is exemplified, we may add Timon of Athens, Lear, and Richard III. Of the imitators of Shakespeare, Goethe alone, in his Goetz and Egmont, has adopted this method, paying tribute in both pieces, as he himself says, to the great master.

[Page 402.] In the first three acts, Shakespeare lets the tragedy represent what