Second Soliloquy (Smile and Smile)
I. v. 92-112 -- 777-796
777 Ham O all you host of heaven, O earth -- what else? 778 And shall I couple hell -- O fie, hold, my heart. 779 And you, my sinews, grow not instant old, 780 But bear me stiffly up. Remember thee, 781 Aye, thou poor Ghost, while memory holds a seat 782 In this distracted globe,[1] remember thee -- 783 Yea, from the table[2] of my memory 784 I'll wipe away all trivial fond[3] records, 785 All saws[4] of books, all forms, all pressures past[5] 786 That youth and observation copied there, 787 And thy commandment all alone shall live 788 Within the book and volume of my brain 789 Unmixt with baser matter. Yes, by heaven. 790 O most pernicious woman![6] 791 O villain, villain, smiling damnéd villain! 792 My tables -- meet it is I set it down 793 That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain. 794 At least I'm sure it may be so in Denmark. 795 So Uncle, there you are. Now to my word, 796 It is "Adieu, adieu, remember me." 797 I have sworn it. 777-79 This soliloquy lays the foundation for a side story running through the play: Hamlet's (and Shakespeare's) passion for words -- words written, words spoken, words in books, words on the stage. Burton, directed by Gielgud, manages just by gestures alone to evoke all this passion for reading and writing -- on a bare stage without props. This is the first chance an actor playing him gets to show that Hamlet considers his brain to be a book, his memory a tablet, and experiences, such as this one, as indelibly written on it. One suspects that Hamlet has at some point kept a journal. How would Hamlet's journal read? His intimacy with himself suggests that we might even find his dreams recorded in them -- like those in journals and letters of Descartes, Laud, and Pepys. While we imagine that Polonius's dreams would go little beyond the allegorical dreamer of the Faerie Queene and Piers Plowman, probably Hamlet's dreams would be yet another way for him to plumb his own conscience. The actual diaries of people in the seventeenth century do record their dreams. Furthermore, the diaries of these early modern individuals show that their intuitions about dreams are compatible with a more modern understanding of how dreams work than those of medieval individuals. (All this is from A. Kucharski, unpublished: Abp Wm Laud.) This "modern" way of thinking about dreams is different from the medieval consciousness in that the dreams of the former are not merely recorded as portents of the future or a string of symbols: "Modern" minds of the time also connected them with the day's events (Freud's "day residue") and assumed they had some personal inner meaning: In their commentaries on their dreams they noticed that they were troubled or made happy by them, and they speculated about why. After this soliloquy several critical things happen: Hamlet decides to pretend to be insane, TNL 818-82: At first his thinking is tangled. This is a pivotal moment for the actor playing Hamlet and the director of the play: Hamlet can be sane throughout the play but pretending to be mad. Hamlet can be increasingly mad in fact. Hamlet can be increasingly mad but sometimes pretending to be sane, fooling even himself. Or it can be episodic: Hamlet can be (or pretend to be) increasingly mad until he returns from England at the beginning of Act 5, when he can then be recovered and sane again. There is debate about whether he even needs to act crazy in order to accomplish revenge, but he does anyway. The motive for his antic disposition needs to be decided deliberately in any given production, and kept in mind: In one reading it isn't for self-protection alone -- it is a feint that allows him to gather evidence against Claudius, whom he must publicly expose in his crime. Hamlet can't just kill the popular Claudius, he has to justify it for the court, because Denmark is an electorate. | 778 And shall I coupple hell, ô fie, hold, {hold} my hart, 779 And you my sinnowes, growe not instant old, 780 But beare me {swiftly} <stiffely> vp; remember thee, 781 I thou poore Ghost {whiles} <while> memory holds a seate 782 In this distracted globe, remember thee, 783 Yea, from the table of my memory 784 Ile wipe away all triuiall fond records, 785 All sawes of bookes, all formes, all pressures past 786 That youth and obseruation coppied there, 787 And thy commandement all alone shall liue, 788 Within the booke and volume of my braine 789 Vnmixt with baser matter, yes <, yes,> by heauen, 790 O most pernicious woman. 791 O villaine, villaine, smiling damned villaine, 792 My tables, <my Tables;> meet it is I set it downe 793 That one may smile, and smile, and be a villaine, 794 At least {I am} <I'm> sure it may be so in Denmarke. 795 So Vncle, there you are, now to my word, 796 It is adew, adew, remember me. 797 I haue sworn't.
Hamlet can even be sane but simulating madness by means of method acting so good that he sometimes believes it. Bloom says that Shakespeare's characters become personalities by overhearing themselves and growing from it. This metaphor becomes flesh in Hamlet, where Hamlet eavesdrops on himself and grows and changes from scene to scene. (Verbum caro factus est. The word is made flesh.) Some critics think him actually mad, some think not. Shakespeare has made it possible to believe either -- so that it's not just the court of Denmark that is fooled but the audience. Shakespeare has scripted a number of possible interpretations -- any of them playable. But the problem that leads to a muddy production of the play and a sloppy reading of Hamlet is a lack of discipline in actor and director to decide -- and keep in mind -- exactly which version of Hamlet's madness -- or faux-madness or pseudo-faux-madness -- it is. The audience needs to be amazed, not manipulated. The next thing that happens after this speech is that Hamlet starts to reveal his philosophy, and his notions about the afterlife. Kant says that there are only three transcendent questions to think about: The existence of God, the immortality of the soul, and the freedom of the will. Hamlet contemplates all of them. 851 Swear by my sword. When Hamlet and the Ghost make Horatio and Marcellus swear on the sword (depending on the director), they can be swearing on the sword as standing for a soldier's honor, swearing on it because of its cruciform shape -- classical, Christian -- or both. This oath-taking -- as well as his swearing by Saint Patrick -- deepen the audience's curiosity about what exactly Hamlet does believe -- and how it's changing because of these experiences of the supernatural. Shakespeare's religion (if any) is much debated, and there are arguments pro and con his being secretly Catholic. One of the arguments for is that the existence of purgatory was not part of the teachings of the Church of England -- nor was the idea of expiation of sin by serving a term in it. Yet a very Catholic purgatory is the pivotal mechanism whereby the ghost of his father -- if in fact it is his father -- comes to exhort Hamlet to revenge. One of the ways the uncanny is evoked is the offstage (or under the Elizabethan stage) voice of the Ghost making the companions take an oath. It moves around in "hell" and they chase it on the "earth" above. Even in mediocre productions, this bit of business is hilarious and chilling. 864 Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. . . . What their philosophy is (science really, or theory of causation) we come to know better as the relationship between Hamlet and Horatio grows closer through the play and Hamlet confides more in Horatio, the archetypal best friend. 886 The time is out of joint. In a play about haste and procrastination this is a fitting Act 1 curtain line. Hamlet's regret that he was born to set it right is somewhat arresting -- one would think he would be used to the demands and burdens imposed by his birth and station. Has he been ambivalent all along about assuming the throne?
Note on the text: The primary source here is the Enfolded Hamlet of Bernice W. Kliman, ©1996, a conflation of the 1604/05 Second Quarto and the First Folio of 1623. (This is found at www.leoyan.com/global-language.com/ENFOLDED/ ) Through Line Numbers (TLNs) are based on the Folio. Depending on what readings seem most sensible and accessible to the modern ear, textual choices have been made on a line-by-line, within-line, and word-by-word basis from the melded version. The First Quarto of 1603 has been consulted where possible in an attempt to resolve conflicts in meaning between the Folio and Second Quarto. Spelling is updated to US English, and each line has been repunctuated in accordance with my understanding of the text. -- J Groves |
