Mr. WILSON BARRETT 
Him iurnrr 
ON -* 
THE SANITY AND AGE 
OF 
HAMLET. 
[By special permission from Lippincott's Magazine, April, 1890.] 
On the stage, nothing is more hard to kill than tradition 
The play goer often forms his conception of a characte 
upon that of the first actor he sees attempt to play it. When 
afterwards be takes up the drama to read it, the actor's per- 
sonality is in his mind's eye, and it is almost an impossi- 
bility for him to disconnect that actor and the character. 
Who that has read Dickens can picture his characters 
otherwise than as Phiz drew them ? What a shock it would 
be to have a new illustrator of Dickens, who would give us' 
entirely fresh conceptions of Peggotty, of Captain Cuttie, of 
the Artful Dodger, of Fagan, Sykes, Pickwick, Weller, and 
the other characters which Phiz has stamped upon our 
memories ! and yet it has been said that Dickens did not by 
any means agree with all of Phiz's realizations of his 
ideals. 
Something like this feeling is engendered in the mind of 
he play goer when an actor appears who has sufficient 
originality to strike out for himself an entirely new concep- 
tion of a favorite part: unconsciously he resents the innova- 
tion, and during the performance he sees constantly before 
him, side by side with the new, the old interpretation and 
interpreter. It may be that the old is the wrong and the 
new the right idea of the character. This does not lessen 
the shock that the new notion gives the auditor. Thus an 
actor who gives an entirely new rendition of "Hamlet" 
places himself at once at an enormous disadvantage. Most 
play goers have formed a conception of Hamlet, and they 
are not grateful to the man who wantonly disturbs it. Still, 
tradition may be false, and when an actor continues to be 
true to a false tradition he is false to his art. At any sacri- 
fice let truth prevail. To no play has tradition done so much 
harm as to " Hamlet." Bold as this contention is, I think I 
shad prove it a just one before I finish this article, if the 
reader will patiently read the text of the play with me as I 
go along, uninfluenced by any commentator whatsoever 
except his own common sense. Before attempting to analyze 
the character of Hamlet, I will endeavor to point out a few 
of the gross absurdities which have for generations been per- 
petrated in the acting version of the play. 
Since Betterton's time the actors have invariably finished 
the third act of " Hamlet" with the lines- 
T must be cruel only to be kind ; 
Thus bad begins, but worse remains behind. 
Turn to the published acting versions of the play, and you 
will find the proof of what I say. What is the result of this 
arrangement ? The fourth act commences with the meeting 
of the king and the queen. The king learns from her that 
Hamlet has just slain Polonius; he confides the secret to 
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern; they are sent to find the body 
of Polonius, and, before that task is accomplished, Ophelia 
enters, mad with grief for her father's death, of which she 
has never beard, and describes in her madness his funeral, 
which has never taken place. Furthermore, Laertes enters, 
and demands of the king, "O thou vile king, give me my 
father," and goes on to talk of his " means of death,-his 
obscure funeral." Obscure indeed, considering the fact that 
the body has not been found. Remember, too, that Laertes 
was in France when his father was murdered, that the news 
had to travel from Denmark to France, that Laertes had to 
journey from France to Denmark and stir up the rebellion 
which he guides and leads,-and all this has been done in the 
few hours, or rather minutes, wThich elapse between the slay- 
ing of Polonius and the despatch of Rosencrantzand Guilden- 
stern to find the body. Hamlet has been sent a moment be- 
fore to England: ere he has had time to cross the court-yard of 
the castle, a letter is brought to the king from him, in which 
he says he has been " three days at sea," has been captured 
by the pirates, and has been by them set naked on the shores 
of Denmark. What a jumble is here ! And yet for genera- 
tions this maltreatment of this glorious tragedy has been al- 
lowed to pass unquestioned. By finishing the act where 
Shakespeare meant it should be finished,-viz., after Hamlet's 
departure for England,-we get the interregnum which the 
dramatist intended. Some six weeks have elapsed, there has 
been time to bury Polonius, time for Ophelia's grief to affect 
her brain, time for Laertes to travel from France, and time 
for Hamlet to be captured by the pirates at sea and be released 
again. I have pointed out a few of the mistakes which have 
been tolerated for a hundred and fifty years at least. Space 
will not allow me to enumerate them all, nor do I so much wish 
to criticise the stage version of the play as to endeavor to put 
right the conception of the leading character. Casting tradi- 
tion to the winds, I took up " Hamlet " to study it as I would 
a character written but yesterday,-entirely by the light of the 
author's words, uninfluenced either by commentator or by 
the conceptions of other actors. Here I trust I was in the 
right, for nearly every one will admit that it is the first duty 
of an actor when studying a character to endeavor to discover 
the meaning of his author, to get at the motive and the psy- 
chology of the part, and then to the best of his ability to em- 
body the poet's ideal, and to reproduce, as nearly as his physi- 
cal qualifications will allow, the outward appearance of that 
ideal. 
In modern plays, as a rule, the actor has the advantage of 
personal communication with the author, and from him he can 
learn what the text of the play may leave uncertain. Fail- 
ing this personal instruction, he resorts to the drama itself 
and no drama should leave in doubt for a moment the inten- 
tion of the author on certain fundamental conditions'. 2 
THE SANITY AND AGE OF HAMLET. 
Shakespeare was too practical a dramatist not to take the 
utmost care in, so to speak, labelling his characters, that the 
actors in his plays might not have the least excuse for making 
a mistake as to his intentions. 
As a rule, so anxious is he to instruct the player that he 1 
repeats to an almost tiresome extent his descriptions of his 
characters. In nearly all cases these labellings and instruc- 
tions are accepted by actors and commentators alike; but 
there is one instance to the contrary, and that is, oddly 
enough, the one of all others most clearly and carefully 
worked out by the poet. There is no character throughout 
the whole range of his plays which Shakespeare has taken 
so much pains to describe as Hamlet. His personal appear- 
ance, his age, his mental qualifications, all are insisted upon 
with a lucidity and an accuracy which Shakespeare no doubt 
fondly thought would render misapprehension impossible. 
But, alas ! no other character has been so deliberately mis- 
understood, or so distorted. No two commentators seem 
able to agree upon Hamlet; they build up the most astonish- 
ing theories, volumes of speculations are written upon this 
or that fad of this or that critic. In the meantime there is 
Shakespeare's own authority for what he intended Hamlet 
to be (writ so large that he who runs may read), ignored, 
neglected, and despised with the most astonishing persistence. 
"This is white," says Shakespeare, "white," and again 
"white." "Ah 1 " says the commentator, "what does he mean 
by that? He has told us three times that it is white; there 
dore he must mean that it is black, or at least whity-brown; 
be would never insist so strongly upon its being white unless 
he meant us to understand that it was some other color." 
" Hamlet is not mad," says Shakespeare, again and again. 
"Hamlet is mad, or at least half mad," says the critic. 
" Hamlet is young, young, young; please do not think I 
mean anything else but a youth," says Shakespeare. "Ham- 
let is thirty-five,-a middle-aged man," say his commenta- 
tors. Let me endeavor to point out what Shakespeare has to 
say on the subjects of Hamlet's sanity and his age. First, as 
to his sanity. There can be no doubt as to Ophelia's mad- 
ness. Is it likely that Shakespeare would be guilty of the 
serious dramatic error of making both the hero and the hero- 
ine of his play insane ? Is Hamlet ever mad in soliloquy? 
Is he ever mad when with his one trusted friend, Horatio ? 
Is there the slightest allusion in the first act to Hamlet's 
madness until he has announced to his two friends that he 
" hereafter may think meet to put an antic disposition on " ? 
Hamlet, after he has seen the ghost, has rapidly made up 
his mind to avenge the death of his father. He knows his 
uncle is a murderer. He knows his own life would not be 
worth a pin's purchase if by any accident the king should 
learn that he is cognizant of his crime. He will feign mad- 
ness, to cloak his designs and lull the suspicions of the king. 
He knows, however, that Horatio and Marcellus are aware 
that he is perfectly sane, and he makes them swear not only 
that they will never " make known that which they have 
seen," but, further, 
Never, so help you mercy, 
How strange or odd soe'er I bear myself, 
As 1 perchance hereafter shall think meet 
To put an antic disposition on, 
Thst you, at such times seeing me, never shall, 
With arms encumbered thus, or this head-shake, 
Or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase, 
As, Well, well, we know, or, We could, an if he would, 
Or, If we list to speak ; or, There be, an if they might, 
Or such ambiguous giving out, to note 
That you know aught of me; this not to do, 
So grace and mercy at your most need help you, 
Swear. 
So all important to the understanding of the character of 
Hamlet does Shakespeare consider this that he brings the 
ghost back twice to make Horatio and Marcellus swear that 
they will never reveal, by act or deed, the fact that Hamlet 
is not mad. And if this is not evidence enough, we have 
Hamlet making his mother promise that the king will not 
for 
A pair of reechy kisses 
Make you to ravel all this matter out, 
That I essentially am not in madness, 
But mad in craft. 
And 
Lay not that flattering unction to your soul, 
That not your trespass, but my madness speaks. 
Again,- 
Bring me to the test, 
And I the matter will re-word; which madness 
Would gambol from. 
Even the king, after watching Hamlet with Polonius, says: 
Nor what he spake, though it lacked form a little, 
Was not like madness. 
"He shall with speed to England." He is not insane: 
therefore he is dangerous. Could any author have taken 
more pains than this to instruct the actor how a character is 
to be played ? And yet, in the face of all this, against the 
author's express instructions, commentators will distort and 
misinterpret Shakespeare's language and build up theories 
of their own, to the destruction of his meaning, and the ruin 
of the tragedy. Hamlet's inaction, retrospection, and inde- 
cision are often insisted upon as another sign of mental weak- 
ness. Surely far too much stress has been put upon this one 
side of his many-sided character. As a fact, Hamlet at times 
acts with the most remarkable quickness and decision. Let 
us take his first scene as an example. No sooner has Horatio 
told him of the appearance of the ghost than Hamlet sets to 
work and cross-examines him with all the alertness of a 
practical lawyer. The when, where, and how are brought 
out in the clearest manner, and immediately Hamlet says, 
" I will watch to-night;" and he does watch that night. ''I 
will speak to it;" and he does speak. Not much lack of de- 
cision here. When the players arrive, does he not at once 
conceive the idea of the play,-7" to catch the conscience of 
the king " ? Immediately on the success of this ruse, going 
straight from the play to his mother's closet, he comes across 
the king, and draws his sword upon him, and would then 
and there kill him; but that would not be revenge, to send 
the murderer, purged of his sins, to heaven. No, he cries,- 
Up, sword, and know thou a more horrid hent, 
When he is drunk asleep, or in his rage. 
Or in the incestuous pleasure of his bed ; 
At gaming, swearing ; or about some act 
That has no relish of salvation irt't; 
Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven, 
And that his soul may be as damned and black 
As hell, whereto it goes. 
But a few moments later, in his mother's closet, he believes, 
on hearing the cry of Polonius, that he has caught the king 
about " some act that has no relish of salvation in't," and, 
without a pause, his sword is out, and Polonius is slain. 
Where is the lack of action here ? 
Again, when he suspects Rosencrantz and Guildenstern on 
the voyage to England, he abstracts the commission from 
their cabin, copies it, inserts in it their names in place of his 
own, and adds, " That England should the bearers put to 
sudden death, not shriving time allow." Is not this de- 
cision ? 
When the pirate gave the vessej chase and grappled with 
it, Hamlet says, "I boarded them; on the instant they got 
clear of our ship; so I alone became their prisoner." There- 
fore he was the only one who had boarded the pirate,-the 
first in action, the first to decide. 
It is too often supposed that Hamlet delays his revenge 
over a period of some years. This is another absurd mis- 
take; as a matter of fact, the whole action of the play does 
not extend over four months. At the opening of the play, 
Hamlet's father has been dead barely two months,-" nay, 
not so much,-not two." In the play-scene in the third act, 
; Ophelia says, " 'Tis twice two months, my lord;" so that 
from the beginning of the first act to the close of the third 
we must allow about ten weeks. Allowing six weeks for the 
time between Hamlet's murder of Polonius and the death of 
Ophelia, we have only the four months; for Ophelia dies at the 
end of the fourth act, and is buried at the commencement of 
the fifth. Immediately after the burial the bout of foils 
takes place, and Hamlet kills the king, Hamlet does hesi- 
tate, he does pause and ponder, at times, but at others the 
swiftness of his action is most marvelous; and surely both 
sides of his character should be considered. 
Another most important point is the age of Hamlet. Fol- 
lowing some interpolated lines in the grave digger's scene, 
many commentators fix it at thirty, to the utter destruction of 
Shakespeare's conception of Hamlet and the whole meaning of 
the play. The lines are, " I have been sexton here, man and 
boy, for thirty years." My reply to this is that these are not 3 
THE SANITY AND AGE OF HAMLET. 
Shakespeare's words at all, but were introduced for the con- 
venience of the actor, either Taylor or Burbage, both of whom 
were incapable of looking the youthful prince. A man who 
has been sexton, man and boy, for thirty years, supposing 
him to have been twelve years of age when he began to dig 
graves, would be forty-two. Why, then, for generations has 
the actor been allowed to make up as the grave-digger look- 
ing at least sixty or seventy years of age, without remon- 
strance? If the text is right, the actor must be wrong. I 
have never yet seen a picture or drawing of the grave-yard 
scene in which the grave-digger is not represented as a very 
old man; and quite right, too; the sexton should be a very 
old man; and he is always presented to the imagination as 
such. The lines fixing his age at forty-two have crept into 
the text without thought on the part of the interpolator, and 
the actor while altering the text retained the conception of 
the character. The other line, ''Yorick's skull has been 
buried in the earth three-and-twenty years," has been inserted 
for the same purpose; the original line reads " a dozen years." 
The other lines are no more Shakespeare's than the passage 
introduced for the same purpose, reading,''Our son is fat 
and scant of breath." The statement that Hamlet is thirty 
years of age no more accords with the rest of the play than 
does the line " fat and scant of breath " accord with Ophelia's 
description of Hamlet, " The glass of fashion and the mould 
of form." Other lines quoted in support of the theory of 
Hamlet's being over thirty are those spoken by the player 
king: 
Full thirty times hath Phoebus' cart ?one round 
Neptune's salt wash and Telius' orbed ground, 
And thirty dozen moons with borrowed sheen 
About the world have times twelve thirties been, 
Since love our hearts and Hymen did our hands 
Unite commutual in most sacred bands. 
These are understood to imply that Hamlet's father and 
mother have been married thirty years, and are also accepted 
as a statement of Hamlet's age. If his father and mother 
were married only thirty years, and he is over thirty years 
of age, why does not Shakespeare allude to his illegitimacy 
at some portion of the play? Yet another argument is that 
Hamlet says to his mother, when reproaching her for her 
sin,- 
Rebellious hell, 
If thou canstmutine in a matron's bones. 
And we are asked to believe that the word " matron " signifies 
a woman fifty or sixty years of age, and therefore Hamlet 
must be thirty. Is not every mother a matron, whether she 
be sixty or sixteen ? The whole play turns upon the inces- 
tuous intercourse of the queen and her husband's brother. 
This had been going on during the lifetime of the dead king, 
if we may trust the words of the ghost, who says,- 
Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast. 
With witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts, 
Won to his shameful lust 
The will of my most seeming virtuous queen. 
Let us imagine a woman fifty or sixty years of age inspir- 
ing such a passion in the mind of a man like Claudius. Does 
it not strike one immediately as being truly revolting ? Can 
we imagine Shakespeare building so glorious a tragedy as 
''Hamlet" on such a theme? With a handsome, sensual, 
attractive woman of forty it is reasonable, but surely not with 
a woman of fifty or sixty. Over the actual statements of 
Hamlet's age made by Shakespeare himself there should be 
surely no controversy. He is constantly referring to him as 
" young." He refers to Romeo as the ''young Romeo," and 
again to Orlando as the ''young Orlando." Will anybody 
assert that Romeo or Orlando is over thirty years of age ? 
Will any one avouch that Shakespeare's power of imagery 
was so poor and scanty that only the one word "young" 
could be found by him to describe a boy of nineteen, like 
Romeo, and a man of thirty ? In the first scene, Horatio 
alludes to Hamlet as the "young Hamlet." Horatio is him- 
self a young man. In the second scene the king says, " For 
your intent in going back to school in Wittenberg." It is 
immaterial to me whether he meant school or college. So 
far as we can gather, the schooling would commence at 
twelve or fourteen, and at the age of thirty a prince like Ham- 
let would be commanding armies in the field. Again, if Ham- 
let had attained his majority, why is he not on the throne? 
Granting that the throne of Denmark went by election, 
Hamlet is the beloved son of a beloved father, " loved by the 
distracted multitude," popular, and with absolutely no bar 
to his claim to the throne. In the third scene, Laertes, in 
warning his sister against Hamlet, says: 
For Hamlet, and the trifling of his favor, 
Hold it a fashion, and a toy in blood; 
A violet in the youth of primy nature; 
Forward, not permanent; sweet, not lasting. 
Can we for a moment believe that Shakespeare would use the 
word forward-i. e., precocious-concerning the love of a 
man over thirty years of age ? Laertes is himself a young 
man of not more than twenty one or twenty-two. Would he 
be likely to speak of the love of a man of thirty as being in 
the youth of primy nature ? Further, he goes on to speak 
two or three lines which seem to have escaped the notice of 
nearly every commentator or critic who has yet endeavored 
to fix the age of Hamlet at thirty, viz: 
For nature crescent does not grow alone 
In thews and bulk; but, as this temple waxes, 
The inward service of the mind and soul 
Grows wide withal. 
If these words have any meaning at all, they mean that Ham- 
let has not done growing, either physically or mentally. Is 
this possible in a man thirty years of age ? Surely not. Po- 
lonius. immediately after this, takes occasion to warn 
Ophelia against Hamlet because he is young. He says: 
For Lord Hamlet, 
Believes so much in him, that he is young. 
In the second scene of the second act, speaking to Rosen- 
crantz and Guildenstern, the king says,- 
I entreat you both, 
That being of so young days brought up with him, 
And sith so neighbored to his youth. 
Hamlet himself, speaking to these two young men, appeals 
to them by "the consonancy of their youth." The king 
further alludes to Hamlet as this''mad young man," and 
again speaks of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as his ''two 
school-fellows." In fact, there is hardly a scene in the pla 
in which some allusion to Hamlet's youth is not made. Anu 
yet, in the face of all this, we are to believe that Hamlet is 
over thirty 1 
In the Tatler newspaper, dated Tuesday, September 20, to 
Thursday. September 22, 1709, appears a criticism of the 
Hamlet of Mr. Betterton, who was unquestionably a very 
successful exponent of the character. Almost the first de- 
tailed criticism of any one in this character relates to Better- 
ton. It is generally conceded that Betterton was taught how 
to play the part by Sir William Davenant, who received his 
conception of the character directly from Shakespeare him- 
self. There is no question of Davenant's intimacy with 
Shakespeare, and, if my evidence be trustworthy, he trans- 
mitted his conception of the piece, gained from his intimacy 
with the author, to Betterton. This is the Betterton cum - 
Davenant-cum-Shakespeare idea of Hamlet. 
" I was going on in the reading of my letter, when I was 
interrupted by Mr. Greenbat, who had been this evening at 
the play of Hamlet. 'Mr. Bickerstaff,' said he, ' had you 
been to-night at the play-house you had seen the force of 
action in perfection. Your admired Mr. Betterton behaved 
himself so well that, though now about seventy-six, he acted 
Youth, and, by the prevalent power of proper manner, ges- 
ture, and voice, appeared through the whole drama a youth 
of great expectations, vivacity, and enterprise. The soliloquy 
when he began the celebrated sentence of " To be, or not to 
be," the expostulation when he explains with his mother in 
her closet, the whole ardor after seeing his father's ghost, 
and his generous distress for the death of Ophelia, are each 
of them circumstances which dwell strongly upon the minds 
of the audience, and would certainly affect their behavior on 
the parallel occasion of their own lives. Pray, Mr. Bicker- 
staff, let us have virtue thus represented on the stage with 
its proper ornaments, or let the ornaments be added to her 
in places more sacred. As for my part,' said he, 'I carried 
my cousin Jerry, this little boy, with me, and shall always 
love the child for his partiality for all that concerns the for- 
tune of Hamlet. This is entering youth into the affections 
and passions of manhood beforehand, and, as it were, antedat- 
ing the effects we hope from a long and liberal education.' " 
Thus says Bickerstaff, otherwise Dean Swift. 
In the original legend of Hamlet, by Saxo Grammaticus, 4 
THE SANITY AND AGE OF HAMLET. 
we are informed that " Feggi killed Orvendio and married his 
wife, and that Hamlet was then twenty years of age, and 
that Hamlet, to lull the suspicion of his uncle, feigned mad- 
ness the better to carry out his plans of vengeance." 
By the ancient Northman a madman was considered to be 
sacred, and to injure one would be a sacrilege. Hamlet, in 
his address to his people, says: " I hid my knowledge under 
an assumed cloak of madness," and ''this before I had come 
to man's estate." 
Thus in the original legend and in Shakespeare's play we 
are again and again told that Hamlet was not mad, and that 
he was quite young. 
It is obvious that the tragedy gains in attractiveness if 
Hamlet is played as a young man. By representing the king- 
and queen as beings in the very prime of life they interest 
the audience instead of boring it, and thus the balance of the 
play is preserved. The eye of the spectator is pleased by the 
appearance of the most important characters, the sensibili- 
ties are no longer shocked, the student finds matter for fresh 
thought in the new aspect in which the play is presented to 
him, and, above all, he sees Hamlet as Shakespeare saw him 
first in the crude legend of Saxo Grammaticus, but strength- 
ened, enlarged, glorified, aud immortalized by the grandeur 
of his genius. 
Wilson Barrett. 
Press of Rufus H. Darby.