Notes for lines 1018-2022 ed. Eric Rasmussen
1747 warb
Warburton: contra Dryden and Pope
1493-1561] Warburton (ed. 1747): "The two greatest poets of this and the last age, Mr.
Dryden, in the preface to
Troilus and Cressida, and Mr.
Pope, in his note on this place, have concurred in thinking that
Shakespeare produced this long passage with design to ridicule and expose the bombast of the play from whence it was taken; and that
Hamlet’s commendation of it is purely ironical. This is become the general opinion. I think just otherwise; and that it was given with commendation to upbraid the false taste of the audience of that time, which would not suffer them to do justice to the simplicity and sublime of this production. And I reason, first, from the Character
Hamlet gives of the play, from whence the passage is taken. Secondly, from the passage itself. And thirdly, from the effect it had on the audience.
Let us consider the character Hamlet gives of it, (TLN 1480-1488) They who suppose the passage given to be ridiculed, must needs suppose this character to be purely ironical. But if so, it is the strangest irony that ever was written. It pleased not the multitude. This we must conclude to be true, however ironical the rest be. Now the reason given of the designed ridicule is the supposed bombast. But those were the very plays, which at that time we know took with the multitude. And Fletcher wrote a kind of Rehearsal purposely to expose them. But say it is bombast, and that therefore it took not with the multitude. Hamlet presently tells us what it was that displeased them. There was no salt in the lines to make the matter savoury; nor no matter in the phrase that might indite the author of affection; but called it an honest method. Now whether a person speaks ironically or no, when he quotes others, yet common sense requires he should quote what they say. Now it could not be, if this play displeased because of the bombast, that those whom it displeased should give this reason for their dislike. The same inconsistencies and absurdities abound in every other part of Hamlet’s speech, supposing it to be ironical: but take him as speaking his sentiments, the whole is of a piece; and to this purpose, The play, I remember, pleased not the multitude, and the reason was, its being wrote on the rules of the ancient drama; to which they were entire strangers. But, in my opinion, and in the opinion of those for whose judgment I have the highest esteem, it was an excellent play, well digested in the scenes, i.e. where the three unities were well preserved. Set down with as much modesty as cunning, i.e. where not only the art of composition, but the simplicity of nature, was carefully attended to. The characters were a faithful picture of life and manners, in which nothing was overcharged into farce. But these qualities, which gained my esteem, lost the public’s. For I remember one said, There was no salt in the lines to make the matter savoury, i.e. there was not, according to the mode of that time, a fool or clown to joke, quibble, and talk freely. Nor no matter in the phrase that might indite the author of affection, i.e. nor none of those passionate, pathetic love scenes, so essential to modern tragedy. But he called it an honest method, i.e. he owned, however tasteless this method of writing, on the ancient plan, was to our times, yet it was chaste and pure; the distinguishing character of the Greek drama. I need only make one observation on all this; that, thus interpreted, it is the justest picture of a good tragedy, wrote on the ancient rules. And that I have rightly interpreted it appears farther from what we find in the old quarto, An honest method, as wholesome as sweet, and by very much more handsome than fine, i.e. it had a natural beauty, but none of the fucus of false art.
2. A second proof that this speech was given to be admired, is from the intrinsic merit of the speech itself: which contains the description of a circumstance very happily imagined, namely, Ilium and Priam’s falling together, with the effect it had on the destroyer, ’The hellish Pyrrhus, &c. To, —Repugnant to command. The unnerved father falls, &c. To, —So after Pyrrhus’ pause. Now this circumstance, illustrated with the fine similitude of the storm, is so highly worked up, as to have well deserved a place in Virgil’s second book of the Æneid, even though the work had been carried on to that perfection which the Roman poet had conceived.
3. The third proof is, from the effects which followed on the recital. Hamlet, his best character, approves it; the player is deeply affected in repeating it; and only the foolish Polonius tired with it. We have said enough before of Hamlet’s sentiments. As for the player, he changes colour, and the tears start from his eyes. But our author was too good a judge of nature to make bombast and unnatural sentiment produce such an effect. Nature and Horace both instructed him, Si vis me flere, dolendum est Primum ipsi tibi; tunc tua me infortunia loedent, Telephe, vel Peleu. Male si mandata loqueris, Aut dormitabo aut ridebo. And it may be worth observing, that Horace gives this precept particularly to shew, that bombast and unnatural sentiments are incapable of moving the tender passions, which he is directing the poet how to raise. For, in the lines just before, he gives this rule, ’Teleus & Peleus, cum pauper & exul uterque, Projicit Ampullas, & sesquipedalia verba.’ Not that I would deny, that very bad lines in bad tragedies have had this effect. But then it always proceeds from one or other of these causes.
1. Either when the subject is domestic, and the scene lies at home: the spectators, in this case, become interested in the fortunes of the distressed; and their thoughts are so much taken up with the subject, that they are not at liberty to attend to the poet; who, otherwise, by his faulty sentiments and diction, would have stifled the emotions springing up from a sense of the distress. But this is nothing to the case in hand. For, as Hamlet says, ’What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba?’
2. When bad lines raise this affection, they are bad in the other extreme; low, abject, and groveling, instead of being highly figurative and swelling; yet, when attended with a natural simplicity, they have force enough to strike illiterate and simple minds. The tragedies of Banks will justify both these observations.
But if any one will still say, that
Shakespear intended to represent a player unnaturally and fantastically affected, we must appeal to Hamlet, that is, to
Shakespeare himself in this matter; who, on the reflection he makes upon the player’s emotion, in order to excite his own revenge, gives not the least hint that the player was unnaturally or injudiciously moved. On the contrary, his fine description of the actor’s emotion shews, he thought just otherwise: ’—this player here, But in a fiction, in a dream of passion, Could force his soul so to his own conceit, That from her working all his visage wan’d: Tears in his eyes, distraction in his aspect, A broken voice,’ &c. And indeed had Hamlet esteemed this emotion any thing unnatural, it had been a very improper circumstance to spur him to his purpose.
As
Shakespear has here shewn the effects which a fine description of nature, heightened with all the ornaments of art, had upon an intelligent player, whose business habituates him to enter intimately and deeply into the characters of men and manners, and to give nature its free workings on all occasions; so he has artfully shewn what effects the very same scene would have upon a quite different man, Polonius;
by nature, very weak and very artificial [two qualities, though commonly enough joined in life, yet generally so much disguised as not to be seen by common eyes to be together; and which an ordinary poet durst not have brought so near one another]
by discipline, practised in a species of wit and eloquence, which was stiff, forced, and pedantic; and
by trade a politician, and therefore, of consequence, without any of the affecting notices of humanity. Such is the man whom
Shakespeare has judiciously chosen to represent the false taste of that audience which had condemned the play here reciting. When the actor comes to the finest and most pathetic part of the speech, Polonius cries out,
This is too long; on which Hamlet, in contempt of his ill judgment, replies,
It shall to the barber’s with thy beard [intimating that, by this judgment, it appeared that all his wisdom lay in his length of beard,]
Pry’thee, say on. He’s for a jig or a tale of bawdry [the common entertainment of that time, as well as this, of the people]
or he sleeps, say on. And yet this man of modern taste, who stood all this time perfectly unmoved with the forcible imagery of the relator, no sooner hears, amongst many good things, one quaint and fantastical word, put in, I suppose, purposely for this end, than he professes his approbation of the propriety and dignity of it.
That’s good. Mobled queen is good. On the whole then, I think, it plainly appears, that the long quotation is not given to be ridiculed and laughed at, but to be admired. The character given of the play, by Hamlet, cannot be ironical. The passage itself is extremely beautiful. It has the effect that all pathetic relations, naturally written, should have; and it is condemned, or regarded with indifference, by one of a wrong, unnatural taste. From hence (to observe it by the way) the actors, in their representation of this play, may learn how this speech ought to be spoken, and what appearance Hamlet ought to assume during the recital.
That which supports the common opinion, concerning this passage, is the turgid expression in some parts of it; which, they think, could never be given by the poet to be commended. We shall therefore, in the next place, examine the lines most obnoxious to censure, and see how much, allowing the charge, this will make for the induction of their conclusion. ‘Pyrrhus at Priam drives, in rage strikes wide, But with the whiff and wind of his fell sword The unnerved father falls.’ And again, ‘Out, out, thou strumpet fortune! All you gods, In general synod, take away her power: Break all the spokes and fellies from her wheel, And bowl the round nave down the hill of heaven, As low as to the fiends.’
Now whether these be bombast or not, is not the question; but whether
Shakespeare esteemed them so. That he did not so esteem them appears from his having used the very same thoughts in the same expression, in his best plays, and given them to his principal characters, where he aims at the sublime. As in the following passages.
Troilus, in Troilus and Cressida, far outstrains the execution of Pyrrhus’s sword, in the character he gives of Hectors: ‘When many times the cative Grecians fall Even in the fan and wind of your fair sword, You bid them rise and live.’
Cleopatra, in Antony and Cleopatra, rails at fortune in the same manner: ‘No, let me speak, and let me rail so high, That the false huswife Fortune break her wheel, Provok’d at my offence.’
But another use may be made of these quotations; a discovery of the author of this recited play: which, letting us into a circumstance of our author’s life (as a writer) hitherto unknown, was the reason I have been so large upon this question. I think then it appears, from what has been said, that the play in dispute was
Shakespeare’s own: and that this was the occasion of writing it. He was desirous, as soon as he had found his strength, of restoring the chasteness and regularity of the ancient stage; and therefore composed this tragedy on the model of the Greek drama, as may be seen by throwing so much
action into
relation. But his attempt proved fruitless; and the raw, unnatural taste, then prevalent, forced him back again into his old
Gothic manner. For which he took this revenge upon his Audience.”