My Unknown Chum Part 10

I do not know of a more quietly funny sight than a group of school-girls, all talking as fast as their tongues can wag, (forty-woman power,) and clinging inextricably together like a parcel of macaroni, _ la Napolitaine_. Their independence is quite refres.h.i.+ng. Lady Blessington in her diamonds never descended the grand staircase at Covent Garden Opera House with half the consciousness of making a sensation, that you may notice in these school-girls whenever you take your walks abroad. It is delightful to see them step off so proudly, and look you in the face so coolly, thinking all the time of just nothing at all. Their boldness is the boldness of innocence; for perfect modesty does not even know how to blush. How vain they grow as they advance in their teens! How careful they are that the crinoline "sticks out"

properly before they venture on the road to school! If Mother Goose (of blessed memory) could take a look into this world now, she would wish to revise her ancient rhyme to her patrons,

"Come with a whoopcome with a call," &c.,

for she would find that it is now their custom to come with a _hoop_ when they come for a call.

When unhappy Romeo stands in old Capulets garden, under the pale beams of the "envious moon," and watches the unconscious Juliet upon the balcony, he utters, in the course of his incoherent soliloquial apostrophe, these remarkable words concerning that interesting young person:

"She speaks, yet she says nothing."

I have seen many young ladies of Juliets time of life in my day of whom the same thing might be said. They indeed speak, yet say nothing. Yet take them on such a subject as the tr.i.m.m.i.n.g of a new bonnet for Easter Sunday, or any of those entertaining topics more or less connected with the adornment of their persons, and how voluble they are! To the stronger s.e.x, which of course cares nothing about dress, being entirely free from vanity, the terms used in their never-ending colloquies on such themes are mere unmeaning words; but I must do the gentler side of humanity the justice to say that they are not all vanity, as their fathers and husbands find to their dismay, when the quarterly bills come in, that gimp, and flounces, and tr.i.m.m.i.n.g generally, have a real, tangible existence.

How sentimental they are! In my young days alb.u.ms were all the rage among young ladies; but now they seem to be somewhat out of date, and young ministers have taken their place. What pains will they not take to get a bow from the Rev. Mr. Simkins! They swarm around him after service, like flies around the bung of a mola.s.ses cask. Raphael never had such a face as his; Ma.s.sillon never preached as he does. What a wilderness of worsted work are they not willing to travel over for his sake! How do they exhaust their inventive faculties in the search after new patterns for lamp mats, watch cases, pen wipers, and slippers to encase the feet at which they delight to sit! But when Simkins marries old Thompsons youngest daughter and a snug property, he finds a sad abatement in his popularity. The Rev. Mr. Jenkins, a young preacher with a face every whit as milk-and-watery as his own, succeeds to the throne he occupied, and reigns in his stead among the volatile devotees; and Simkins then sees that his popularity was no more an evidence of the favour his preaching of the gospel found among those thoughtless young people than was the popularity of the good-looking light comedian, after whom the girls ran as madly as they did after his own white neckerchief and nicely-brushed black frock coat.

Exaggeration is one of the great faults of girlhood. Whatever meets their eyes is either "splendid" or "horrid." They delight to exaggerate their likes and dislikes. Self-restraint seems to be a term not contained in their lexicon. They take a momentary fancy to a young man, and flatter him with their smiles until some new face takes his place in their fleeting memory. In this way many young hearts are frittered away in successive flirtations before their possessors have reached womanhood. But it would be wrong to confine action from mere blind impulse and exaggeration to young girls alone. I think it is St. Paul who gives us some good counsel about "speaking the truth in love." I fear that very few victims of the tender pa.s.sion, from Pyramus and Thisbe down to Petrarch and Laura, and from the latter couple down to Mr. Smith with Miss Brown hanging on his arm,who have not sadly needed the advice of the Apostle of the Gentiles. I have seen very few people in my day who really speak the truth in love. Therefore I will not blame girls for a fault which is common to all mankind.

Impulse is commonly supposed to be inconsistent with cunning; but in most girls I think the two things are singularly combined. I am told that there is an academy in this city, frequented by many young women, known as the School of Design. The fact is a gratifying one to me; for my observation of girlish nature had led me to suppose that there were very few indeed of the young ladies of these days who required any tuition in the arts of design. I hail the fact as a good omen for the s.e.x. Action from impulse carries its young victims to the extremes of good and evil. Queen Dido is a fair type of the majority of her s.e.x.

Defeated in their hopes, they are willing to make a funeral pile of all that remains to them. But there is a spirit of generosity in them which does not find a place in the hearts of men. It was the part of Eve to bring death into this world, and all our woe, by her inquisitiveness and credulity; but it was reserved for Adam to inaugurate the meanness of mankind by laying all the blame to his silly little wife. The accusation ought to have blistered Adams cowardly tongue.

But I am making a long preachment, and yet I have said very little. I must leave my young friends, however, to draw their own lessons from the portrait I have given of one whose perfections would far outweigh the silliness and vanity of a generation of girls. Let them take the gentle Josey as the model of their youth, and they will not wish to sculpture their later career after any less perfect shape. There will then be fewer heartless flirts, fewer vain exhibitors of the works of the milliner and dressmaker parading the streets, and more true women presiding over the homes of America. The imitation of her virtues will be found a better preservative of beauty than any _eau l.u.s.trale_; for it will create a beauty which "times effacing fingers" are powerless to destroy, and give to those who practise it a serene and lovely old age, whose recollection of the past, instead of awakening any self-reproach, shall be a source of perpetual benediction.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS COMMENTATORS

It was a favourite wish of the beneficent Caligula that all mankind had but one neck, that he might finish them off at a single chop. It would ill comport with my known modesty, were I to lay claim to any thing like the all-embracing humanity of the old Roman philanthropist; but I must acknowledge that I have frequently felt inclined to apply his pious aspiration to the commentators on Shakespeare. Impatience is not my prevailing weakness; but these pestilent annotators have often been instrumental in convincing me that I am no stoic. I have frequently regretted the days of my youth, when no envious commentary obscured the brilliancy of that genius which has consecrated the language through which it finds utterance, and made it venerable to the scholars of all lands and ages. My love of Shakespeare, like the gout which has been stinging my right foot all the morning, is hereditary. My revered grandmother was very fond of solid English literature. She had not had, it is true, the advantages which the young people of the present day rejoice in; she had not studied in any of those seminaries which polish off an education in a most Arabian-Nightsy style of expedition, and send a young lady home in the middle of her teens, accomplished in innumerous ologies, and knowing little or nothing that is really useful, or that will attract her to intellectual pursuits or pleasure in after life. She had acquired what is infinitely better than the superficial omniscience which is so much cultivated in these days. The more active duties of life pleased her not; and Shakespeare was the never-failing resource of her leisure hours. Mr. Addisons Spectator was for her a "treasure of contentment, a mine of delight, and, with regard to style, the best book in the world." I shall never forget that happy day (anterior even to the jacket era of my life) when she took me upon her knee, and read to me the speeches of Marullus, and Mark Antony, and Brutus. In that hour I became as sincere a devotee as ever bent down before the shrine of Shakespeares genius. Nor has that innocent fanaticism abated any of its ardour under the weight laid upon me by increasing years. The theatre has lost many of its old charms for me. The friends.h.i.+ps of youththe only enduring intimacies, for our palms grow callous in the promiscuous intercourse of the world, and cannot easily receive new impressionshave either been terminated by that inexorable power whose chilling touch is merciless alike to love and enmity, or have been interfered with by the varying pursuits of life. But Shakespeare still maintains his wonted sway, and my loyalty to him has not been disturbed by any of the revolutionary movements which have made such changes in most other things. Martin Farquhar Tupper has written, but I am so old-fas.h.i.+oned in my prejudices that I find myself constantly turning to my Shakespeare, in preference even to that gifted and proverbially philosophic bard.

But I am wandering. From the day I have mentioned, Robinson Crusoe was obliged to abdicate, and Englands "monarch bard" (as Mr. Sprague calls Anne Hathaways husband) reigned in his stead. I first devoured the Julius Csar. I say "devoured," for no other word will express the eager earnestness with which I read. The last time I read that play through, it was "within a bowshot where the Csars dwelt," and but a few minutes walk from the palace which now holds great Pompeys statua, at whose foot the mighty Julius fell. Increase of appet.i.te grew rapidly by what it fed on, and I was not long in learning as much about the black-clad prince, the homeless king, the exacting usurer, the fat knight and his jolly companions, the remorseful Thane, and generous, jealous Moor, as I knew about Brutus and the other red republican a.s.sa.s.sins of imperial Rome. My love of Shakespeare was greatly edified by a friends.h.i.+p which I formed in my earliest foreign journeyings. It was before the days of railways,which, convenient as they are, have robbed travelling of half its zest, by rendering it so common. I had been making a little tour through the north of France. I had admired the white caps and pious simplicity of the peasants of Normandy, and had drunk in that exaltation of soul which the lofty nave of the majestic Cathedral of Amiens always imparts, and was about returning to Paris, when a rheumatic attack arrested my progress and prolonged my stay in the pleasant city of Douai. I there met accidentally with an English monk of that grand old Benedictine order, whose history for more than twelve centuries has been the history of civilization, and literature, and religion. He was descended from one of those old families which refused to modify their creed at the demand of a divorce-seeking king. He was a man of clear intellect and fascinating simplicity of character. He seemed to carry suns.h.i.+ne with him wherever he went. He occupied a professional chair in the English College attached to the Benedictine Monastery at Douai, and when his cla.s.s hours were ended, he daily came to visit me. His sensible and sprightly conversation did more towards untying the rheumatic knots in my poor shoulder, than all the pills and lotions for which _M. le Mdecin_ charged me so roundly. When I visited him in his cell, I found that a well-worn copy of Shakespeare was the only companion of his Breviary, his Aquinas and St. Bernard on his study table. He loved Shakespeare for himself alone. He never used him as a lay figure on which he might display the drapery of a pedant. He hated commentators as heartily as a man so sincerely religious can hate any thing except sin, and was as earnest in his predilection for Shakespeare, "without note or comment," as his dissenting fellow-countrymen would have wished him to be for a similar edition of the only other inspired book in the world.

He had his theories, however, concerning Shakespeares characters, and we often talked them over together; but I must do him the justice to say that he never published any of them. I always regarded this fact as a splendid evidence of the entireness of his self-abnegation, and of his extraordinary advancement in the path of religious perfection. Many have taken the three monastic vows by which he was bound, and have lived up to them with conscientious fidelity; but few scholars have studied Shakespeare as he did, and yet resisted the temptation to tell the world all about it in a book.

Mousing the other day in the library of a venerable citizen of Boston, who is no less skilled in the gospel (let us hope) than in the law, I stumbled over a seedy-looking folio containing _A Treatise of Original Sinne_, by one Anthony Burgesse, who flourished in England something more than two centuries ago. One of the discoloured fly-leaves of this entertaining tome informed me, in a hand-writing which resembled a dilapidated rail-fence looked at from the window of an express train, that _Jacobus Keith me possedit, An. Dom. 1655_; and also bore this inscription, so pertinent to my present theme: "Expositors are wise when they are not otherwise." I feel that it is safe to leave my readers to make the application of this apothegm to the Shakespearean annotators of their acquaintance, so few of whom are wise, so many otherwise. I think it was the late Mr. Hazlitt who said (and if it was not, it ought to have been) that if you desire to know to what sublimity human genius is capable of ascending, you must read Shakespeare; but that if you seek to ascertain to what a depth of imbecility the intellect of man may be brought down, you must read his commentators.

Notwithstanding the low estimate which I am inclined to place upon the labour of the majority of the commentators on Shakespeare, still I have often felt a strong temptation to enroll myself among them. Not all their stupidity in explaining things which are clear to the meanest capacity, not all their pedantry in elucidating matters which are simply inexplicable, not all their inordinate voluminousness, could quench my ambition to fasten my roll of waste paper to the bob (already so unwieldy) of the Shakespearean kite. Others have soared into fame by such means; why should not I? We ought not to study Shakespeare so many years for nothing, and I feel that a sacred duty would be neglected if the result of my researches were withheld from my suffering fellow-students. But let me be more merciful than other commentators; let me confine my remarks to a single play. From that one you may learn the tenor of my theories concerning the others; and if you wish for another specimen, I shall consider that I have achieved an unheard-of triumph in this department of literature.

The tragedy of _Hamlet_ has always been regarded as one of the most creditable of Shakespeares performances. It needs no new commendation from me. Dramatic composition has made great progress within the two hundred and sixty years that have elapsed since Hamlet was written, yet few better things are produced nowadays. We may as well acknowledge the humiliating fact that Hamlet, with all its age, is every whit as good as if it had been written since Lady Day, and were announced on the playbills of to-morrow night, with one of Mr. Boucicaults most eloquent and elaborate prefaces. The character of Hamlet has been much discussed, but, with all due respect for the genius of those who have fatigued their reader with their treatment of the subject, I would humbly suggest that they are all wrong. Hamlet resembles a picture which has been scoured, and retouched, and varnished, and restored, until you can hardly see any thing of the original. Critics and commentators have bedaubed the original character so thoroughly, and those credulous people who rejoice that Chathams language is their mother tongue, have heard so much of their estimate of Hamlets character, that they receive them on faith, flattering themselves all the while that they are paying homage to the Hamlet of Shakespeare. High-flown philosophy exerts its powers upon the theme, and Goethe gives it as his opinion that the dramatist wished to portray the effects of a great action, imposed as a duty upon a mind too feeble for its accomplishment, and compares it to an oak planted in a china vase, proper to receive only the most delicate flowers, and which flies to pieces as soon as the roots begin to strike out.

Now let us drop all this metaphysical and poetical cant, and go back to the play itself. Shakespeare will prove his own best expositor, if we read him with docile minds, having previously instructed ourselves concerning the history of the time of which he wrote. There is a tradition common in the north of Ireland that Hamlets father was a native of that country, named Howndale, and that he followed the trade of a tailor; that he was captured by the Danes, in one of their expeditions against that fair island, and carried to Jutland; that he married and set up in business again in that cold region, but that he afterwards forsook the sartorial for the regal line, by usurping the throne of Denmark. The tradition represents him to have been a man of violent character, a hard drinker, and altogether a most unprincipled and unamiable person, though an excellent tailor. Now, if we take the old chronicle of Saxo Grammaticus, (_Historia Danorum_,) from which Shakespeare drew the plot for his tragedy, we shall find there little that does not harmonize with this tradition. Saxo Grammaticus tells us that Hamlet was the son of Horwendal, who was a famous pirate of Jutland, whom the king, Huric, feared so much, that, to propitiate him, he was obliged to appoint him governor of Jutland, and afterwards to give him his daughter Gertrude in marriage. Thus he obtained the throne.

The old Irish name, Howndale, might easily have been corrupted into Horwendal by the jaw-breaking Northmen, and for the rest, the Danish chronicle and the Irish tradition are perfectly consistent. That there was frequent communication at that early period between Denmark and Ireland, I surely need not take the trouble to prove. All the early chronicles of both of those countries bear witness to it. It was to the land evangelized by St. Patrick that Denmark was indebted for the blessings of education and the Christian faith. But the visits of the Danes were not dictated by any holy zeal for the salvation or mental advancement of their benefactors, if we may believe all the stories of their piratical expeditions. An Irish monk of the great monastery of Banchor, who wrote very good Latin for the age in which he lived, alludes to this period in his countrys history in a poem, one line of which is sometimes quoted, even now:

_Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes._ "Time was, O Danes, we feared your gifts."

The great Danish poet, hlenschlger, makes frequent allusions in the course of his epic, _The G.o.ds of the North_, to the relations that once existed between Denmark and Ireland, and to the fact that his native land received from Ireland the custom of imbibing spirituous liquors in large quant.i.ties.

Hamlets Irish parentage would naturally be concealed as much as possible by him, as it might prejudice his claims to the throne of Denmark; therefore we can hardly expect to find the ancient legend confirmed in the play, except in a casual manner. The free, outspoken, Irish nature would make itself known occasionally. Thus we find that when Horatio tells him that "theres no offence," he rebukes him with

"Yes, _by St. Patrick_, but there is, Horatio!"

There certainly needs no ghost come from the grave to tell us that no true-born Scandinavian would have sworn in an unguarded moment by the Apostle of Ireland. Again, when Hamlet thinks of killing his uncle, the wrongful king, he apostrophizes himself by the name which he probably bore when he a.s.sisted his father (whose death he wishes to avenge) in his shop in Jutland:

"Now, might I do it, Pat, now he is praying."

Then, too, he speaks to Horatio of the "funeral baked meats" coldly furnis.h.i.+ng forth the marriage table at his mothers second espousal. The custom of baking meats is as well known to be of Irish origin, as that of roasting them is to be peculiar to the northern nations of continental Europe.

The frequent allusions in the course of the play to drinking customs not only prove that Hamlet descended from that nation whose hospitality is its greatest fault, but that he and his family were far from being the refined and philosophic people some of the commentators would have us believe. Thus he promises his old companion,

"Well teach you to drink deep ere you depart,"

which the most prejudiced person will freely allow to be truly a _Corkonian_ phrase. This frailty of the family may be seen throughout the play. In the last scene, it is especially apparent. All the royal family of Denmark seem to have joined an intemperance society. The queen even, in spite of her husbands remonstrances, joins in the carousal.

Hamlet, too, while he is dying, starts up on hearing Horatio say, "Heres yet some liquor left," and insists upon the cup being given to him. I know that it may be urged, on the other hand, that in the scene preceding the first appearance of the ghost before Hamlet, he indulges in some remarks which would prove him to have entertained sentiments becoming his compatriot, the n.o.ble Father Mathew. Speaking of the custom of draining down such frequent draughts of Rhenish, he p.r.o.nounces it to his mind

"a custom More honoured in the breach than the observance."

It must be remembered that the occasion on which this speech was uttered was a solemn one. Under such supernatural circ.u.mstances old Silenus or the King of Prussia himself might be pardoned for growing somewhat homiletic on the subject of temperance. The conclusion of this speech has given the commentators a fine chance to exercise their ingenuity.

"The dram of bale Doth all the n.o.ble substance often doubt To his own scandal."

They have called it the "dram of base," the "dram of eale," &c., and then have been as much in the dark as before. Some have thought that Shakespeare intended to have written it "the dram of Bale," as a sly hit at Dr. John Bale, the first Protestant Bishop of Ossory in Ireland, who was an unscrupulous dram-drinker as well as dramatist, for he wrote a play called "Kynge Johan," which was reprinted under the editorial care of my friend, Mr. J. O. Halliwell, by the Camden Society, in 1838. But this attempt to make it reflect upon the Ossory prelate is entirely uncalled for. A little research would have showed that _bale_ was a liquor somewhat resembling our whiskey of the true R. G. brand, the consumption of which in the dram-shops of his country the Prince Hamlet so earnestly deplored. The great Danish philosopher, V. Scheerer Homboegger, in his autobiography, speaks of it, and says that like all the Danes he prefers it to either wine or ale, or water even: _Der er vand, her er vun og oel,men allested BAELE drikker saaledes de Dansker._ (Autobiog. II. xiii. Ed. Copenhag.)

As to the proofs that Hamlets family was closely connected with the tailoring interest, they are so thickly scattered through the entire tragedy, and are so apparent even to the casual reader, that, even if I had room, it would only be necessary to mention a few of the princ.i.p.al ones. In the very first scene in which he is introduced, Hamlet talks in an experienced manner about his "inky cloak," "suits of solemn black,"

"forms" and "modes," and tries to defend himself from the suspicion which he feels is attached to him by many of the courtiers, by saying plainly, "I know not _seams_." This first speech of Hamlets is a key to the wanton insincerity of his character. His mother has begged him to change his clothes,to "cast his nighted colour off,"and he answers her requests with, "I shall _in all my best_ obey you, madam;" yet it is notorious that he heeds not this promise, but wears black to the end of his career.

He repeatedly uses the expressions which a tailor would naturally employ. His figures of speech frequently smell of the shop. As, for instance, he says to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, "The appurtenance of welcome is fas.h.i.+on and ceremony. Let me comply with you in this garb;"

in the scene preceding the play he declares that, though the devil himself wear black, h.e.l.l "have a suit of sables." In the interview with his mother, who may be supposed not to have forgotten the early history of the family, he uses such figures with still greater freedom:

"That monster _custom_ who all sense doth eat Of _habits_ devil, is angel yet in this; That to the use of actions fair and good He likewise gives a _frock_ or _livery_, That aptly is put on."

In his instruction to the players he speaks of tearing "a pa.s.sion to _tatters_, to very _rags_" and says of certain actors that when he saw them it seemed to him as if "some of natures _journeymen_ had made men and not made them well." In the fourth act, he calls Rosencrantz a _sponge_.

What better evidence of the skill of Hamlet and his father in their common trade can we have than that afforded by the fair Ophelia, who speaks of the Prince as "the gla.s.s of fas.h.i.+on and the mould of form"? In the chamber scene with his mother, Hamlet is taken entirely off his guard by the sudden appearance of his fathers ghost, whom he apostrophizes, not in the set phrases which he used when Horatio and Marcellus were by, but as "_a king of shreds and patches_". Old Polonius does not wish his daughter to marry a tailor, but is too polite to tell her all of his objections to Lord Hamlets suit; so he cloaks his reasons under these figures of speech, instead of telling her, out of whole cloth, that Hamlet is a tailor, and the match will never do:

"Do not believe his vows, for they are brokers, Not of that dye which there in vestments show, But implorators of unholy suits," &c.

Some late editions of the Bard make the second line of this pa.s.sage read,

"Not of that die which their investments show,"

which is as evident a corruption of the text as any of those detected by the indefatigable Mr. Payne Collier.

If any further proof is needed of a matter which must be clear to every reasoning mind, it may be found in that solemn scene in which the Prince, oppressed by the burden of a life embittered and defeated in its highest aims, meditates suicide. Now, if there is a time when all affectation of worldly rank would be likely to be forgotten and swallowed up in the contemplation of the terrible deed which occupies the mind, it is such a time as this. And here we find Shakespeare as true as Nature herself. The soldier, weary of life, uses the sword his enemies once feared, to end his troubles. Hamlets mind overleaps the interval of his princely life, and the weapon which is most naturally suggested by his youthful career is "_a bare bodkin_."

Had I not already written more than I intended on this subject, I might go on with many other evidences of the truth of my view of this remarkable character. I did wish also to show that Hamlet was a most disreputable character, and by no means ent.i.tled to the sympathy or admiration of men. Suffice it to say that he was, even to his last hour, fonder of drink than became a prince (except perhaps a Prince Regent)that he treated Ophelia improperlythat he often spoke of his step-father in profane termsthat he indulged in the use of profane language even in his soliloquies, as for example,

"The spirit I have seen May be a devil; and the devil hath power To a.s.sume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps Out of my weakness, and my melancholy, (As he is very potent with such spirits) Abuses me too,damme!"

His familiarity with the players likewise is an incontrovertible proof of his depravity; for the theatrical people of Denmark in his age were not what the players of our day are. They were too often people of loose and reckless lives, careless of moral and social obligations, and whose company would by no means be acceptable to a truly philosophic prince.

If this pre-Raphaelite sketch of Hamlets character should seem unsatisfactory, it can be filled out by a perusal of the play itself, if the reader will only cast aside the trammels which the commentators have placed in his way. It may be a new view to most of my readers; but I am convinced that the theory, of which I have given an outline, is fully as tenable as many of the countless conjectural essays to which that matchless drama has given rise. If it be untrue, why, then we must conclude that all similar theories, though they may be sustained by as many pa.s.sages as I have adduced in support of my Hibernico-sartorial hypothesis, are equally devoid of a foundation of common sense. If my theory stands, I have the satisfaction of having connected my name (which would else be soon forgotten) with one of Shakespeares masterpieces; and that is all that any commentator has ever done. And if my theory proves false, it consoles me to think that the splendour of the genius which I so highly reverence is in no wise obscured thereby; for the stability and grandeur of the temple cannot be impaired by the obliteration of the ambitious scribblings and chalk-marks with which some aspiring wors.h.i.+ppers may have defaced its portico.