Read Complete Plays, The Online
Authors: William Shakespeare
Complete Plays, The (58 page)
Hamlet
Saw? who?
Horatio
My lord, the king your father.
Hamlet
The king my father!
Horatio
Season your admiration for awhile
With an attent ear, till I may deliver,
Upon the witness of these gentlemen,
This marvel to you.
Hamlet
For God’s love, let me hear.
Horatio
Two nights together had these gentlemen,
Marcellus and Bernardo, on their watch,
In the dead vast and middle of the night,
Been thus encounter’d. A figure like your father,
Armed at point exactly, cap-a-pe,
Appears before them, and with solemn march
Goes slow and stately by them: thrice he walk’d
By their oppress’d and fear-surprised eyes,
Within his truncheon’s length; whilst they, distilled
Almost to jelly with the act of fear,
Stand dumb and speak not to him. This to me
In dreadful secrecy impart they did;
And I with them the third night kept the watch;
Where, as they had deliver’d, both in time,
Form of the thing, each word made true and good,
The apparition comes: I knew your father;
These hands are not more like.
Hamlet
But where was this?
Marcellus
My lord, upon the platform where we watch’d.
Hamlet
Did you not speak to it?
Horatio
My lord, I did;
But answer made it none: yet once methought
It lifted up its head and did address
Itself to motion, like as it would speak;
But even then the morning cock crew loud,
And at the sound it shrunk in haste away,
And vanish’d from our sight.
Hamlet
’Tis very strange.
Horatio
As I do live, my honour’d lord, ’tis true;
And we did think it writ down in our duty
To let you know of it.
Hamlet
Indeed, indeed, sirs, but this troubles me.
Hold you the watch to-night?
Marcellus
Bernardo
We do, my lord.
Hamlet
Arm’d, say you?
Marcellus
Bernardo
Arm’d, my lord.
Hamlet
From top to toe?
Marcellus
Bernardo
My lord, from head to foot.
Hamlet
Then saw you not his face?
Horatio
O, yes, my lord; he wore his beaver up.
Hamlet
What, look’d he frowningly?
Horatio
A countenance more in sorrow than in anger.
Hamlet
Pale or red?
Horatio
Nay, very pale.
Hamlet
And fix’d his eyes upon you?
Horatio
Most constantly.
Hamlet
I would I had been there.
Horatio
It would have much amazed you.
Hamlet
Very like, very like. Stay’d it long?
Horatio
While one with moderate haste might tell a hundred.
Marcellus
Bernardo
Longer, longer.
Horatio
Not when I saw’t.
Hamlet
His beard was grizzled — no?
Horatio
It was, as I have seen it in his life,
A sable silver’d.
Hamlet
I will watch to-night;
Perchance ’twill walk again.
Horatio
I warrant it will.
Hamlet
If it assume my noble father’s person,
I’ll speak to it, though hell itself should gape
And bid me hold my peace. I pray you all,
If you have hitherto conceal’d this sight,
Let it be tenable in your silence still;
And whatsoever else shall hap to-night,
Give it an understanding, but no tongue:
I will requite your loves. So, fare you well:
Upon the platform, ’twixt eleven and twelve,
I’ll visit you.
All
Our duty to your honour.
Hamlet
Your loves, as mine to you: farewell.
Exeunt all but Hamlet
My father’s spirit in arms! all is not well;
I doubt some foul play: would the night were come!
Till then sit still, my soul: foul deeds will rise,
Though all the earth o’erwhelm them, to men’s eyes.
Exit
A CRITICAL INTRODUCTION TO SHAKESPEARE
BY
H. N. MacCRACKEN, F. E. PIERCE, AND
W. H. DURHAM
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LITERATURE
YALE UNIVERSITY
AN INTRODUCTION TO SHAKESPEARE: TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
:
AN OUTLINE OF SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE
CHAPTER II
:
ENGLISH DRAMA BEFORE SHAKESPEARE
CHAPTER III
:
THE ELIZABETHAN THEATER
CHAPTER V
:
SHAKESPEARE'S NONDRAMATIC WORKS
CHAPTER VI
:
THE SEQUENCE OF SHAKESPEARE'
S
PLAYS
CHAPTER VII
:
SHAKESPEARE'S DEVELOPMENT AS A DRAMATIST
CHAPTER VIII
:
THE CHIEF SOURCES OF SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS
CHAPTER IX
:
HOW SHAKESPEARE GOT INTO PRINT
CHAPTER X
:
THE PLAYS OF THE FIRST PERIOD—IMITATION AND EXPERIMENT
CHAPTER XI
:
THE PLAYS OF THE SECOND PERIOD—COMEDY AND HISTORY
CHAPTER XII
:
THE PLAYS OF THE THIRD PERIOD—TRAGEDY
CHAPTER XIII
:
THE PLAYS OF THE FOURTH PERIOD—ROMANTIC TRAGI-COMEDY
CHAPTER XIV
:
FAMOUS MISTAKES AND DELUSIONS ABOUT SHAKESPEARE
CHAPTER I
AN OUTLINE OF SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE
Our Knowledge of Shakespeare
.—No one in Shakespeare's day seems to have been interested in learning about the private lives of the dramatists. The profession of play writing had scarcely begun to be distinguished from that of play acting, and the times were not wholly gone by when all actors had been classed in public estimation as vagabonds. While the London citizens were constant theatergoers, and immensely proud of their fine plays, they were content to learn of the writers of plays merely from town gossip, which passed from lip to lip and found no resting place in memoirs. There were other lives which made far more exciting reading. English sea-men were penetrating every ocean, and bringing back wonderful tales. English soldiers were aiding the Dutch nation towards freedom, and coming back full of stories of heroic deeds. At home great political, religious, and scientific movements engaged the attention of the more serious readers and thinkers. It is not strange, therefore, that the writers of plays, whose most exciting incidents were tavern brawls or imprisonment for rash satire of the government, found no biographer. After Shakespeare's death, moreover, the theater rapidly fell into disrepute, and many a good story of the playhouse fell under the ban of polite conversation, and was lost.
Under such conditions we cannot wonder that we know so little of Shakespeare, and that we must go to town records, cases at law, and book registers for our knowledge. Thanks to the diligence of modern scholars, however, we know much more of Shakespeare than of most of his fellow-actors and playwrights. The life of Christopher Marlowe, Shakespeare's great predecessor, is almost unknown; and of John Fletcher, Shakespeare's great contemporary and successor, it is not even known whether he was married, or when he began to write plays. Yet his father was Bishop of London, and in high favor with Queen Elizabeth. We ought rather to wonder at the good fortune which has preserved for us, however scanty in details or lacking in the authority of its traditions, a continuous record of the life of William Shakespeare from birth to death.
Stratford
.—The notice of baptism on April 26, 1564, of William, son of John Shakespeare, appears in the church records of Stratford-on-Avon in Warwickshire. Stratford was then a market town of about fifteen hundred souls. Under Stratford Market Cross the farmers of northern Warwickshire and of the near-lying portions of Worcestershire, Gloucestershire, and Oxfordshire carried on a brisk trade with the thrifty townspeople. The citizens were accustomed to boast of their beautiful church by the river, and of the fine Guildhall, where sometimes plays were given by traveling companies. Many of their gable-roofed houses of timber, or timber and plaster, are still to be found on the pleasant old streets. The river Avon winds round the town in a broad reach under the many-arched bridge to the ancient church. Beyond it the rich pasture land rises up to green wooded hills. Not far away is the famous Warwick Castle, and a little beyond it Kenilworth, where Queen Elizabeth was entertained by the Earl of Leicester with great festivities in 1575. Coventry and Rugby are the nearest towns.
Birth and Parentage
.—The record of baptism of April 26, 1564, is the only evidence we possess of the date of Shakespeare's birth. It is probable that the child was baptized when only two or three days old. The poet's tomb states that Shakespeare was in his fifty-second year when he died, April 23, 1616. Accepting this as strictly true, we cannot place the poet's birthday earlier than April 23, 1564. There is a tradition, with no authority, that the poet died upon his birthday.
John Shakespeare, the poet's father, sold the products of near-by farms to his fellow-townsmen. He is sometimes described as a glover, sometimes as a butcher; very likely he was both. A single reference, half a century later than his day, preserves for us a picture of John Shakespeare. The note reads: "He [William Shakespeare] was a glover's son. Sir John Mennes saw once his old father in his shop, a merry-cheekt old man, that said, 'Will was a good honest fellow, but he durst have crackt a jesst with him att any time.'"[
1
]
John Shakespeare's father, Richard Shakespeare, was a tenant farmer, who was in 1550 renting his little farm at Snitterfield, four miles north of Stratford, from another farmer, Robert Arden of Wilmcote. John Shakespeare married Mary Arden, the daughter of his father's rich landlord, probably in 1557. He had for over five years been a middleman at Stratford, dealing in the produce of his father's farm and other farms in the neighborhood. In April, 1552, we first hear of him in Stratford records, though only as being fined a shilling for not keeping his yard clean. Between 1557 and 1561 he rose to be ale tester (inspector of bread and malt), burgess (petty constable), affeeror (adjuster of fines), and finally city chamberlain (treasurer).
Eight children were born to him, the two eldest, both daughters, dying in infancy. William Shakespeare was the third child, and eldest of those who reached maturity. During his childhood his father was probably in comfortable circumstances, but not long before the son left Stratford for London, John Shakespeare was practically a bankrupt, and had lost by mortgage farms in Snitterfield and Ashbies, near by, inherited in 1556 by his wife.
Education
.—William Shakespeare probably went to the Stratford Grammar School, where he and his brothers as the sons of a town councilor were entitled to free tuition. His masters, no doubt, taught him Lilly's Latin Grammar and the Latin classics,—Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Cicero, Seneca, and the rest,—and very little else. If Shakespeare ever knew French or Italian, he picked it up in London life, where he picked up most of his amazing stock of information on all subjects. Besides Latin, he must have read and memorized a good deal of the English Bible.
Marriage
.—In the autumn of 1582 the eighteen-year-old Shakespeare married a young woman of twenty-six. On November 28, of that year two farmers of Shottery, near Stratford, signed what we should call a guarantee bond, agreeing to pay to the Bishop's Court £40, in case the marriage proposed between William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway should turn out to be contrary to the canon—or Church—law, and so invalid. This guarantee bond, no doubt, was issued to facilitate and hasten the wedding. On May 26, 1583, Shakespeare's first child, Susanna, was baptized. His only other children, his son Hamnet and a twin daughter Judith, were baptized February 2, 1584-5[
2
]. It is probable that soon after this date Shakespeare went to London and began his career as actor, and afterwards as writer of plays and owner of theaters.
Anne Hathaway, as we have said, was eight years older than her husband. She was the daughter of a small farmer at Shottery, a little out of Stratford, whose house is still an object of pilgrimage for Shakespeare lovers. We have really no just ground for inferring, from the poet's early departure for London, that his married life was unhappy. The Duke in
Twelfth Night
(IV, iii) advises Viola against women's marrying men younger than themselves, it is true; but such advice is conventional. No one can tell how much the dramatist really felt of the thoughts which his characters utter. Who would guess from any words in
I Henry IV
, for instance, a play containing some of his richest humor and freest joy in life, that, in the very year of its composition, Shakespeare was mourning the death of his little son Hamnet, and that his hopes of founding a family were at an end? Another piece of evidence, far more important, is the fact that Shakespeare does not mention his wife at all in his will, except by an interlined bequest of his "second-best bedroom set." But here, again, it is easy to misread the motives of the man who makes a will. Such omissions have been made when no slight was intended, sometimes because of previous private settlements, sometimes because a wife is always entitled to her dower rights. The evidence is thus too slight to be of value.
