2056-80 Furness (ed. 1877): “
Sievers (
Hamlet, p. 142, Leipzig,
185
1) was, I believe, the first to point out the dozen or sixteen lines which Ham. had promised to insert in the play; and he supposed them to be lines [3.2.255-60 (2124-30)], but Mr and Mrs
Cowden Clarke, in their ed., believe that they are to be found in the present passage; because: the diction is different from the remainder of the dialogue, and is signally like
Hamlet’s own argumentative mode. ‘This world is not for aye,’ the thoughts upon the fluctuations of ‘love’ and ‘fortune,’ and the final reflection upon the contrary current of ‘our wills and fates,’ with the overthrow of our ‘devices,’ and the ultimate diversity between our intentions and their ‘ends,’ are as if proceeding from the Prince himself. His motive in writing these additional lines for insertion, and getting the player to deliver them, we take to be a desire that they shall serve to divert attention from the special passages directed at the King, and to make these latter seem less pointed. We have fancied that this is Shakespeare’s intention, because of the emphatic variation in the style just here. Observe how very different are the mythological allusions to ‘Phoebus,’ ‘Neptune,’ &c., and the stiff inversions of ‘about the world have times twelve thirties been,’ ‘discomfort you, my lord, it nothing must,’ &c.; and, moreover, observe how exactly the couplet commencing the Player-King’s speech, ‘I do believe,’ &c., and the couplet concluding it, ‘So think thou wilt,’ &c., would conjoin were the intervening lines omitted. To the same effect
Tschischwitz, who finds in lines 194-199 an allusion to Ros. and Guild; see [2.2.363-7 (1409-12)]. A discussion as to whether or not these were
Hamlet’s dozen or sixteen lines was started by a note from
Furnivall in
The Academy, 3 Jan. 1874
, to the effect that both
Seeley and himself, independently and without any knowledge of Clarke’s note on the subject, had hit upon these lines as those written by Ham. The discussion is carried on in the pages of
The New Sh. Soc. Trans. i Series, pt. ii. p. 465, and as it there takes up some thirty or more pages, a mere digest of it can be given here.
Malleson contends that these are not the lines written by Ham.
i. They do not apply to the King’s character or position, but rather to Ham. himself. 2. There is nothing in them of the torrent, tempest, and whirlwind of passion that Ham. was so anxious should not be torn to tatters. And, lastly, there was one
scene which Ham. tells Hor. is to be the test, during which he is to watch the King with every faculty of his being, while Ham. will do the same during one
speech. Beyond doubt the
scene is where poison is poured into the Player-King’s ear, and here, likewise, at the crisis of the plot is to be found the
speech, viz. ‘Thoughts black, hands apt, drugs fit,’ &c. and this is
Hamlet’s addition to the play. Had the King not blenched, we should have had probably the rest of the dozen lines, which might have contained a hint of the Poisoner’s next aim, the seduction to a sudden second marriage of the seeming-virtuous Queen. It was the success of this alteration or addition that Ham. declared would get him a fellowship in a cry of players, and this success was due to the ‘talk of the poisoning,’ and this ‘talk of the poisoning’ is found only in this speech of Lucianus.
Seeley, on the other hand, believed that the dozen or sixteen lines were some of those which make up the long speech beginning ‘I do believe you think what now you speak.’ To avoid conjecture as much as possible, we must consider two characteristics which the inserted speech
must necessarily have:
i. It must consist of some dozen or sixteen lines. 2. Being an insertion, it must be such a speech as can be removed without affecting the action of the play. Now, these two characteristics belong to this speech of the Player-King, and to it alone. It is exceptionally long, and the whole of it could not be spared, but it is quite easy to spare about a dozen or sixteen lines from the middle of it, and such a retrenchment would bring the speech to about the average length of the other speeches. There is no reason why Ham. should make his lines ‘charge the King with murder, or to drive the moral of the play home to the King’s conscience.’* The play might be trusted to do that; no speech could make the application plainer. It is impossible for the speech beginning ‘Thoughts black,’ &c., to be the inserted speech, because it satisfies none of the conditions. It is not a dozen or sixteen lines, but only six; it is not an inserted speech, but belongs essentially to the action. It is also impossible to suppose exactly that it was broken off by the King’s rising, for the six lines in question form only one sentence, and must therefore belong entirely to the play itself in its original form, unless the murder were to be done in dumb show, which nobody supposes. His uncle’s guilt is by no means the absorbing topic of
Hamlet’s thoughts; it is an annoying subject that weighs upon his mind without interesting it, and his only desire is to postpone and keep at arm’s length everything connected with it, and with his duty to punish it. His real feeling for his uncle is only contempt, as for a vulgar knave, whom there is no satisfaction in thinking about, --and it would be source of wonder if he should think about him enough to take the trouble to write a dozen or sixteen lines to make clear what was already as clear as the day. But the subject that really does fill
Hamlet’s mind, to the exclusion of what ought to engage his attention more, is his mother, and she it is with whom these inserted lines deal. From what we know of
Hamlet’s feelings she would be,
à priori, the subject of his inserted speech. Furthermore, if the speech were about the murder, it would be of no help in the progress of the play, nothing would be revealed to us by it. Whereas, if the speech dealt with the mother, it would be a broad hint to us not to trust
Hamlet’s professions, and that the experiment of the play, with all its parade of ingenuity and of vengeance to follow, is a mere blind by which Ham. hides both from himself and Hor. that he does not intend to act at all, but will go one for ever brooding over the frailty of his mother and of all womankind. To this
Malleson rejoins: Ham. never says he
has written a passage of so many lines, but that he
intended to write some uncertain number, a dozen or sixteen. When he sat down with the play before him, he may have written twenty or twenty-six, and indeed, if the Player-King’s speech be accepted as partly
Hamlet’s, all of it might be claimed for him except the first two and the last two lines, which, omitting the intervening twenty-six, go fairly together. There is no reason why the inserted lines must be such as can be removed without affecting the play; may not Ham. have substituted his lines for those which he struck out? If lines 178-203 were made, as Seeley contends, to catch the conscience of the Queen, there appears to be in them when closely analyzed nothing with any special reference to her, and accordingly she is perfectly unmoved by them; her response, when appealed to by
Hamlet as to how she likes the play, betokens perfect self-possession. Afterwards, to be sure, she is thrown into ‘most great affliction of spirit,’ but it is entirely on her husband’s account,--as far as she was concerned, this speech was pointless. Grant that the plot of the play, by itself, sufficiently emphasized the King’s guilt, there is nothing unnatural in
Hamlet’s wishing to make assurance doubly sure. In
Seeley’s final remarks he admitted that
Hamlet’s instructions to the Player suggest a speech that is in some sense passionate, but that in reality Ham. takes the occasion of a particular speech to give a general lecture on elocution, or on the general way in which a passion should be expressed. And these lines, which may appear tame to us, may have borne a much more intense feeling to Ham. The insertion is introduced to tell us something about Ham. that we should not otherwise have known. Its object was not to catch the conscience of the Queen, but to give us an additional insight into the dreamy, unpractical character of Ham. He had been from the first brooding over his mother’s conduct, and the play offers him an opportunity to relieve his feelings; the lines may not produce much effect upon her, --he knows how unimpressionable she is,--but his object will be gained if he only writes them.
Furnivall sums up: Technically, Seeley’s position is very strong, but ‘on the merits’ he breaks down,--he has a capital case at Law, but none in Equity. I cannot resist Malleson’s argument, that
Hamlet’s inserted speech is the
one speech in which he tell Hor. the King’s guilt is to unkennel itself. But I hold very strongly that Lucianus’s speech is not the speech, and that, in fact, the speech is not in the printed play. Either the King’s conscience was more quickly stung than Ham. anticipated, and so the written speech was never needed; or (as Mr Matthew has suggested) Sh. contented himself with showing us, or letting us assume, that Ham. altered the play, and put his ‘dozen or sixteen lines’ into action instead of words; if he had not modified the play, what credit could he have claimed for himself as a play-writer or adapter. The inconsistency of Shakespeare’s having made Ham. first talk so much about inserting a speech, and then leaving it out after all, is what one might fairly expect in the recast
Hamlet after its other startling inconsistencies,
e.g. Hamlet’s age and Ophelia’s suicide. What can it matter whether an actual speech of a dozen or sixteen lines, though often announct, be really in the play or not?
Simpson calls attention to the fact that just as the historical drama takes for granted those events which are made known by previous allusions, so the sub-play generally omits all those details which have been previously described or alluded to. Thus in
MND. we have both the play as presented before Theseus and a rehearsal of it. The lines rehearsed are different from any in the actual play. ‘Looking at the practice of the time and at the previous likelihoods of the case, I see no reason whatever for expecting to find that Sh. would have put into the sub-play the dozen lines that he makes Ham. promise.’
Bathurst (p. 70) says that he sees ‘no symptoms of the lines which Ham. was to insert.’
Gervinus (2te Band, p
102, 3te Auflage) believes that Sh. meant the passage from line 177 to 187 to apply to Ham. ‘Indeed, Gonzago acted the part of
Hamlet’s father. Ham. as well as his mother must have a taste of “wormwood.”’ My friend Dr
Ingleby has kindly sent me extracts from a Paper on this subject, which is announced for reading to the
New Shakspere Society, 9 February, 1877. In these extracts Dr Ingleby dissents from all that has been assumed heretofore on this subject in that Society’s
Transactions, and maintains his own view, very briefly thus: The court-play is but a part of
Hamlet; that Ham. writes no speech at all, whether of six, twelve, or sixteen lines, nor recites such a speech; Sh. simply wrote the entire play,
not writing any additions
in personâ Hamleti, still less writing an addition to a play which he had previously written in the character of the author of an Italian morality. To trace into its issues every suggestion in the play,
so that the event should justify the hint, is ‘to consider too curiously.’ A drama is a work of art, a contrivance for imposing upon the spectator, causing him to take no account of actual time, place, and circumstance, making him almost forget that he is in a play-house. In real life a
Hamlet might compose and insert a few lines to add point and force to an ordeal, like that of the court-play, to which the fictitious
Hamlet subjects the supposed criminal; and if we had the play before us, we might detect the insertion by means of our various tests of metre, phraseology, &c. If we failed to discover the added lines, the fault is ours; the lines would be there. Now to suppose that Sh. in composing
Hamlet followed out the exact course that a real living prince would have followed, is to impute to him a lack of the simplest art of the playwright, and a neglect of the artifices which the drama places at his command. Whereas, Shakespeare’s procedure was probably this: In the course of enlarging the first sketch of his
Hamlet he conceived the design of making it a vehicle for the highest possible instruction in the art of elocution. The play-scene was already devised, and he had, therefore, to introduce the Players as arriving at Elsinore. Here was the chance he wanted. He would make Ham. instruct the Player, and through him all players, how to act. But how was this to be brought about? Ham. could hardly be supposed to know by heart the roles of a strolling player. Wherefore, Sh. makes Ham. speak as if he had already recited to the Player a speech of his own composition, and hereupon give his instructions. Thus, having found or made the occasion, Sh. had to prepare the audience for the supposed recitation, and this was done by representing Ham. at a former interview imparting to the old Player his intention of writing ‘a speech of some dozen or sixteen lines’ (
i.e. a speech of
several lines) for insertion in
The Murder of Gonzago. But all the while Shakespeare’s object (kept wholly out of view) was to prepare the audience for his own lesson (
voce Hamleti) on elocution. It is a rule of dramatic art that, a dramatic expedient not essential to the plot, introduced for a collateral object, is to be left out of consideration as soon as that object is attained. As soon, therefore, as Ham. has given the old Player his lesson, the
dramatic need of the ‘dozen or sixteen lines’ is satisfied, and we have no further concern with them. The suggestion, however, served (
1) to prepare the way for
Hamlet’s advice; (2) to suggest the possibility, vague to the last degree, that Ham. had the old play touched and tinkered to suit his purpose more completely. The phrase, ‘some dozen or sixteen,’ does not mean what it says; it is even more indefinite than ‘ten or a dozen,’ or ‘a dozen or fourteen,’ which Mrs Quickly uses in
Hen. V: II,
i; the prefix ‘some’ adds vagueness to what was vague already. These lines, by the very nature of the case, can never have been in
Hamlet. [It is to task the credulity of an audience too severely to represent the possibility of
Hamlet’s finding an old play exactly fitted to Claudius’s crime, not only in the plot, but in all the accessories, even to a single speech which should tent the criminal to the very quick. In order, therefore, to give an air of probability to what every one would feel to be thus highly improbable, Sh. represents Ham. as adapting an old play to his present needs by inserting in it some pointed lines. Not that such lines were actually inserted, but, mindful of this proposal of
Hamlet’s, the spectator is prepared to listen to a play which is to unkennel the King’s occulted guilt in a certain speech; the verisimilitude of all the circumstances is thus maintained. No matter how direct or pointed the allusion to the King’s guilt may be, we accept it all, secure under Shakespeare’s promise that the play shall be made to hit Claudius fatally. And we hear the fulfillment of this promise in
Hamlet’s cry of exultation over the success of his attempt at play-writing. The discussion, therefore, that has arisen over these ‘dozen or sixteen lines’ is a tribute to Shakespeare’s consummate art. Ingleby, I think, is right in maintaining that Sh. did not first write
The Murder of Gonzago, and then insert in it certain lines, as though written by
Hamlet. And Sievers, the Clarkes, Malleson, and others are also right, I think, in believing that certain lines of the court-play are especially applicable to Claudius, and which we may imagine are those that Ham. told the Player he would give him. It is the very impression which, I think, Sh. wished to convey.’
Ed” 