Part 34 (1/2)

Now I quite agree that the obvious interpretation of this pa.s.sage is that universally accepted, that Hamlet, like Horatio, was at Wittenberg when his father died; and I do not say that it is wrong. But it involves difficulties, and ought not to be regarded as certain.

(1) One of these difficulties has long been recognised. Hamlet, according to the evidence of Act V., Scene i., is thirty years of age; and that is a very late age for a university student. One solution is found (by those who admit that Hamlet _was_ thirty) in a pa.s.sage in Nash's _Pierce Penniless_: 'For fas.h.i.+on sake some [Danes] will put their children to schoole, but they set them not to it till they are fourteene years old, so that you shall see a great boy with a beard learne his A.B.C. and sit weeping under the rod when he is thirty years old.'

Another solution, as we saw (p. 105), is found in Hamlet's character. He is a philosopher who lingers on at the University from love of his studies there.

(2) But there is a more formidable difficulty, which seems to have escaped notice. Horatio certainly came from Wittenberg to the funeral.

And observe how he and Hamlet meet (I. ii. 160).

_Hor._ Hail to your lords.h.i.+p!

_Ham._ I am glad to see you well: Horatio,--or I do forget myself.

_Hor._ The same, my lord, and your poor servant ever.

_Ham._ Sir, my good friend; I'll change that name with you: And what make you from Wittenberg, Horatio?

Marcellus?

_Mar._ My good lord--

_Ham._ I am very glad to see you. Good even, sir.[251]

But what, in faith, make you from Wittenberg?

_Hor._ A truant disposition, good my lord.

_Ham._ I would not hear your enemy say so, Nor shall you do my ear that violence, To make it truster of your own report Against yourself: I know you are no truant.

But what is your affair in Elsinore?

We'll teach you to drink deep ere you depart.

_Hor._ My lord, I came to see your father's funeral.

_Ham._ I pray thee, do not mock me, fellow-student; I think it was to see my mother's wedding.

Is not this pa.s.sing strange? Hamlet and Horatio are supposed to be fellow-students at Wittenberg, and to have left it for Elsinore less than two months ago. Yet Hamlet hardly recognises Horatio at first, and speaks as if he himself lived at Elsinore (I refer to his bitter jest, 'We'll teach you to drink deep ere you depart'). Who would dream that Hamlet had himself just come from Wittenberg, if it were not for the previous words about his going back there?

How can this be explained on the usual view? Only, I presume, by supposing that Hamlet is so sunk in melancholy that he really does almost 'forget himself'[252] and forget everything else, so that he actually is in doubt who Horatio is. And this, though not impossible, is hard to believe.

'Oh no,' it may be answered, 'for he is doubtful about Marcellus too; and yet, if he were living at Elsinore, he must have seen Marcellus often.' But he is _not_ doubtful about Marcellus. That note of interrogation after 'Marcellus' is Capell's conjecture: it is not in any Quarto or any Folio. The fact is that he knows perfectly well the man who lives at Elsinore, but is confused by the appearance of the friend who comes from Wittenberg.

(3) Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are sent for, to wean Hamlet from his melancholy and to worm his secret out of him, because he has known them from his youth and is fond of them (II. ii. 1 ff.). They come _to_ Denmark (II. ii. 247 f.): they come therefore _from_ some other country.

Where do they come from? They are, we hear, Hamlet's 'school-fellows'

(III. iv. 202). And in the first Quarto we are directly told that they were with him at Wittenberg:

_Ham._ What, Gilderstone, and Rossencraft, Welcome, kind school-fellows, to Elsanore.

_Gil._ We thank your grace, and would be very glad You were as when we were at Wittenberg.

Now let the reader look at Hamlet's first greeting of them in the received text, and let him ask himself whether it is the greeting of a man to fellow-students whom he left two months ago: whether it is not rather, like his greeting of Horatio, the welcome of an old fellow-student who has not seen his visitors for a considerable time (II. ii. 226 f.).