3434 What . . . Ophelia] Knight (ed. [1841]) : “Of Hamlet’s violence at the grave of Ophelia we think with the critic on Sir Henry Halford’s Essay, that it was a real aberration, and not a simulated frenzy. His apparently cold expression, ‘What the faire Ophelia!’ appears to us to have been an effort of restraint, which for the moment overmastered his reason. In the interval between this ‘towering passion’ and the final catastrophe, Hamlet is thoroughly himself--meditative to excess with Horatio--most acute, playful, but altogether gentlemanly, in the scene with the frivolous courtier. But observe that he forms no plans. He knows the danger which surrounds him; and he still feels with regard to the usurper as he always felt: ‘is’t not perfect conscience,‘To quit him with this arm?’ But his will is still essentially powerless; and now he yields to the sense of predestination: [cites ‘If it be now . . . speech] The catastrophe is perfectly in accordance with this prostration of Hamlet’s mind. It is the result of an accident, produced we know not how. Some one has suggested a polite ceremonial on the part of Hamlet, by which the foils might be exchanged with perfect consistency. We would rather not know how they were exchanged. [cites JOHNSON:’The catastrophe is not very happily produced; the exchange of weapons is rather an expedient of necessity than a stroke of art. A scheme might easily be formed to kill Hamlet with the dagger, and Laerets with the bowl’] No doubt. A tragedy terminated by chance appears to be a capital thing for the rule-and-line men to lay hold of. But they forget the poet’s purpose. Had Hamlet been otherwise, his will would have been the predominant agent in the catastrophe. The empire of chance would have been over-ruled; the guilty would have been punished; the innocent perhaps would have beens pared. Have we lost any thing? Then we should have had the Hamlet who is ‘the darling of every country in which the literature of England has been fostered;’[Coleridge] then we should not have had the Hamlet who is ‘a concentration of all the interests that belong to humanity; in whom there is a more intense conception of individual human life than perhaps in any other human composition; that is, a being with springs of thought, and feeling, and action, deeper than we can search;’ [Blackwood, Vol. II] then we should not have had the Hamlet, of whom it has been said, ‘Hamlet is a name; his speeches and sayings but the idle coinage of the poet’s brain. What then, are they not real? They are as real as our own thoughts. Their reality is in the reader’s mind. It is we who are Hamlet.’ [Hazlitt].” Wade (1855, pp. 23-24): <p. 23> Upon hearing this [3430-33], Hamlet can no longer strive to conceal from himself that the corse about to be committed to the earth, is that of his fair and young deserted mistress; her whom his mother hoped to have seen, and who ought to have been, his wife:—[cites 3436-38] ‘What,’ exclaims the to-himself-acting Hamlet, as the word ‘sister’ falls from the lips of Laertes—’What? the fair Ophelia!’ and, feeling that he ought to be passionately grieved for her and, feeling that he ought to be passionately grieved for her (believed) self-inflicted death, himself the dire involuntary cause of that death, when Laertes, in a momentary paroxysm of unfeigned and naturally exaggerative despair, leaps into his sister’s too early grave, and denounces the real author of her melancholy death—her false lover, and her father’s murderer—[cites 3439-48] </p. 23> <p. 24>

3434 What . . . Ophelia] Delius (ed. 1854) : “Dass es sich um Ophelia handelt, erfährt Hamlet erst, da laerts von my sister spricht.” [That this concerns Ophelia, Hamlet first discovers when Laertes speaks of my sister.]

3434-48 Wade (1855, pp. 23-24): <p. 23> Upon hearing this [3430-33], Hamlet can no longer strive to conceal from himself that the corse about to be committed to the earth, is that of his fair and young deserted mistress; her whom his mother hoped to have seen, and who ought to have been, his wife:—[cites 3436-38] ‘What,’ exclaims the to-himself-acting Hamlet, as the word ‘sister’ falls from the lips of Laertes—’What? the fair Ophelia!’ and, feeling that he ought to be passionately grieved for her and, feeling that he ought to be passionately grieved for her (believed) self-inflicted death, himself the dire involuntary cause of that death, when Laertes, in a momentary paroxysm of unfeigned and naturally exaggerative despair, leaps into his sister’s too early grave, and denounces the real author of her melancholy death—her false lover, and her father’s murderer—[cites 3439-48] </p. 23> <p. 24>

3434 Ophelia] Abbott (§469): “Hence polysyllabic names often receive but one accent at the end of the line in pronunciation.

“Proper names, not conveying, as other nouns do, the origin and reason of their formation,a re of course peculiarly liable to be modified; and this modification will generally shorten rather than lengthen the name. . . . ‘When thóu| liest how | ling. Whát! | the fair | Ophélia.’ [Ham. 5.1.265 (3434)].”

3434 MacDonald (ed. 1885): “Everything here depends on the actor.”

3434 Stewart (1914, pp. 223-4): <p. 223>“ It must be remembered that not the least source of Hamlet’s inner pain was memory, the recollection of what he had formerly been. More than by his father’s ghost, Hamlet was haunted by his dead self. Such an occasion as this, besides outfacing him in the present, was calculated to work on him in that way. He had loved Ophelia, a most poignant memory. As to his incapacity for emotion, we do not refer, of course, to passing elations of mere in- tellectual triumph, as when he worms out the secret of the king’s guilt — if that may be called emotion. It was the breaking down of all the vital relations of life, beginning with his mother, </p. 223><p. 224> that made Hamlet’s life a tragedy. Whichever way he turned he was faced by a mother guilty of incest and easy in her love; an uncle who was a murderer and a hypocrite; a love that proved a disappointment; a court that was shallow and merely political. And he was incapacitated to have emotion in the face of the facts.

“He was a man not only of the profoundest intellect but of the richest and finest nature. If these things had not happened there would not have been the inward tragedy. If Ophelia had turned out to meet his essential ideals of a woman (apart from any ability of hers to take part in his stern business in life) his tragedy would not have been unmitigated. But Shakespeare has taken pains to make it utter and com plete; it is most systematically complete. Therefore, to regard Hamlet as still loving Ophelia, or in any way cherishing the ideal, is to work at cross-purposes to the whole intent of the play. ‘The fair Ophelia’ —this is his casual comment to Horatio upon his first learning who it is that is being buried.”</p. 224>

3434 Edwards (ed. 1985, Introduction, 56): <p. 56>“Not until the funeral procession arrives does Hamlet learn that the grave is for Ophelia, and it does not appear from the play that he was aware of her madness. Many people feel that in Hamlet’s reflections over the empty grave on the vanity of life and the inevitability of death there is a mature and sober wisdom. But the presentation of this wisdom is entirely ironic. His [Hamlet’s] truths are based on a chasm of ignorance. He speaks his words over a grave which he does not know is intended for a woman whose madness and death he is responsible for.[note 1] The fact of the dead girl punctuates his philosophy. For us, at any rate. He never speaks of his regret for the suffering he caused her even before Polonius’s death.” </p. 56>

<n>“[1] See the excellent comment by Dover Wilson, What Happens in ‘Hamlet’, 1935; 3rd edn, 1951, p. 268.” </n>

3434 Andrews (ed. 1989): “This is Hamlet’s first realization that Ophelia is dead. His words echo III.i.86.”