point, because he sees their coarse, gaudy, superficial significance. It is his part to do fine things, and make fine speeches; to enter the king's presence, gallantly demanding atonement for his father's murder; to leap into his sister's grave and utter a theatrical rant of sorrow. No overweight of thought, no susceptibility of conscience, retard the action of the young gallant. Laertes has been no student of philosophic Wittenberg. The French capital, "so dear to the average, sensual man,” is Laertes' school of education.'* 6, 7. VOLTIMAND and CORNELIUS.-Courtiers of Denmark, sent as ambassadors to Norway; the name of the latter, connected with cornu, a horn, indicates firmness, hardihood, one distinguished by bravery; that of the former, derived from voltus, a countenance, and mando, to confide, may be taken to signify Trusty-face. 8, 9. ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN.-These names actually appear in the List of the Council of Regency, 1588, who held the governing power in Denmark during the minority of Christian IV, brother of Anne of Denmark, wife of James I. They do not appear in Ayrer's German adaptation of the prototype play of Hamlet; but they have a place in the 1603 quarto, as Gilderstone and Rosencraft. They are walking gentlemen of the Gold-Stick-in-Waiting order, inseparables_in_their diplomatic duplicity. They are,' as Professor E. Dowden says, 'six of the one and half-a-dozen of the other. With no tie of friendship or capacity for true human comradeship, the companions hunt in couples, and they go with the same indistinguishable smirking and bowing to their fate in England.'+ 'The poet has sketched them in few and bold outlines; their subtilties of character stare out like the bones of a starved beast. They are time-servers by profession, and upon hire.' Like the 'fortemque Gyan fortemque Cloanthum' of Virgil, the same term couples and describes them : 'King. Thanks, Rosencrantz and gentle Guildenstern. Queen. Thanks, Guildenstern and gentle Rosencrantz ' -II, ii, 33, 34. Their names signify Rose-wreath and Goldenstar. 10. OSRIC is a specimen of the foppish gallants of Queen Elizabeth's court, who affected the style of language called * Professor E. Dowden's Shakespeare, His Mind and Art, p. 137. + Shakespeare's Mind and Art, p. 151. Cowden Clarke's Shakespeare Characters, p. 84. Euphuism (from William Lyly's Euphues and his England, 1579). The vapid pliancy and the choice language and peculiar idiom of the dandy lord give special aptness to Hamlet's designation of him—the gilded waterfly. 'Who that has ever observed the action of that peculiar insect-skimming to and fro and round and round upon the water's face, with no apparent purpose but mere inconsequence, can fail to recognise the aptitude of that' term to indicate the manikin man, the nullity of the court, the insipid petit maitre of fashion, the umpire of frivolities, and the arbiter of the elegancies of society. Osric etymologically signifies Divine rule, though we might almost be tempted to regard it as a satirical hybrid, meaning mouth-power. C. E. Browne says: 'This was a name well known at the time. Henslowe's company performed an Oserych, 1597, perhaps Heywood's lost play of Marshal Osrick. pas II. MARCELLUS was, as we have noted above, the name of the most illustrious of the plebeian families of the Claudian gens. It had also been made sacred to poetry in that beautiful sage of Virgil's Eneid, vi, 860-886, devoted to the embalmment of the memory of the son of Augustus and Octavia, B.C. 23. Marcellus, according to Camden, is a name 'martiall and warlike' from Mars, and therefore suitable for a military man. But we may also place on record the fact that Owen, the epigrammatist, characterised Sir Philip Sidney as 'the Marcellus of the English nation;' and Nat Lee, speaking of that notable soldier, patriot, poet, and scholar, says, 'I have paid just veneration to his name, and methinks the spirit of Shakespeare pushed the commendation.' It may only be a coincidence, but, like the early-dying Marcellus of Virgil and Sir Philip Sidney, the part of Marcellus in the drama is soon played out, for he only appears in scenes i, ii, iv, and v of Act I. 12, 13. BERNARDO and FRANCISCO.-'The names of Bernardo and Francisco, associated together in this play, had been previously associated in one of the greatest crimes of the fifteenth century. Bernardo Bandini and Francisco di Pazzi were the assassins of Guiliano di Medici in the cathedral of Florence [1478].'* 14. REYNALDO.-Probably like the steward in All's Well that Ends Well, who is called Rinaldo by the countess in the play, this name is derived from the Rinaldo of the romantic * C. Elliot Browne in Athenæum, 29th July 1876. tales of Italy and France. 'The best known of the historical Rinaldos-and several probably went to the composition of the Rinaldo of romance-was high steward to Louis the Pious.' There seems, however, from the spelling to be an importation of the fox, Reynardo, introduced into this name. Perhaps this had come to be a common nickname for a Dane in Shakespeare's day-or have we here another early Hamlet reference?-for, in Samuel Rowland's Looke to It, For Ile Stabbe Ye, 1604, we have 'You will drink Reynaldo unto death; the Dane that wold carowse out of his boote.'* 15. FORTINBRAS.-French Fortenbras, a compound name having the same meaning as Strong-i'-the-arm, or Armstrong, indicating prowess in fight. Dr R. G. Latham, in Athenæum, 1872, speaks of this name as a corrupt French form, equivalent to Fierumbras or Fierabras, which is a derivative from Ferri brachium, Iron-arm. 'It may have come,' C. Elliot Browne thinks, 'directly from Niccolo Fortebraccio, the famous leader of the Condottieri,' or it might have its original in Sir Ferumbras, the hero of the old romance of the same name. 'Fortinbras represents that firm and self-possessed power of action which always takes into consideration the prevailing circumstances, but is active nevertheless, and alone succeeds in attaining its ends. For this reason the poet introduces him at the very commencement-even though in the background-and does not lose sight of him till he takes up his position in front as the representative of the future.'† I. GERTRUDE is usually held to signify all-truth. Miss C. M. Yonge regards it as a Valkyr name for spear-maid. She is called Geruth in the old Hystorie, and probably Shakespeare took this as its equivalent or representative. Neither signification seems to have had any influence in its adoption, though our poet probably knew the latter derivavation. See note, IV, v, 40. The queen is the weakling of passion. In her the sensuous sensibility had passed into sensuality. She had drifted from the moorings of morality, and let temptation trifle with right and duty. Inclination governed her. Her wickedness is almost passive and negative. She does not seek sin, but when it comes she does not resist it; she yields—yields with * Hunterian Club edition, p. 21. + Shakespeare's Dramatic Art, by Ulrici, vol. i, p. 499. * strange unconsciousness that there can be anything wrong n the course she takes. She never feels her sinfulness, she is only occasionally irked by the consequences of her transgressions. Even Hamlet's remonstrances cannot awake her to a sense of guilt; they only stir her fears awhile. She puts aside with quiet complacency the opportunity of repentance, and death overtakes her in her callousness of soul. In 1796 the Rev. James Plumptre, M.A., published 'Observations on Hamlet, and on the motives which most probably induced Shakespeare to fix upon the Story of Amleth, from the Danish Chronicle of Saxo Grammaticus, for the plot of that Tragedy; being an attempt to prove that he designed it as an indirect censure on Mary Queen of Scots.' This was followed, in 1797, by an Appendix, containing some further arguments in support of this hypothesis, and the author subsequently wrought out his supposition with great research and ingenuity Karl Silberschlag advocated the same idea in Germany, in the Morgenblatt, Nos. 46 and 47, 1861; and the Rev. C. E. Moberly, in Hamlet, Rugby edition, inclines to the same view. II. OPHELIA.-The name Ophelia is a literal reproduction of the Greek word wpeλía, which occurs in the Andromache of Euripides, line 539, as help, aid, assistance, and may be regarded as adopted from the Greek as an equivalent for the Bible term first used in regard to woman, 'an help meet' for man (Gen. ii, 18, 20). This word, however, was not first used by Shakespeare as a female proper name, for it occurs in the Italian pastoral romance, Arcadia (ecl. ix), by Sannazzaro, published 1502, of which upwards of sixty editions have been issued. Miss Yonge conjectures that Ophelia's name is a Greek rendering of the old Danish serpent-name, Ormilda. C. Elliot Browne says, 'It is probably only a modern form of the Roman Ofella, Horace's Ofellus;' but in his Munera Pulveris, John Ruskin supports the above view, saying, "Ophelia, Serviceableness, the true lost wife of Hamlet, is marked as having a Greek name, by that of her brother Laertes; and its signification is once exquisitely alluded to in that brother's last word of her, where her gentle preciousness is opposed to the uselessness of the churlish clergy: "A ministering angel shall my sister be, —V, i, 225, 226; p. 126 (1872). 'Ophelia is one of those meditative, dreamily-reserved female natures, with deep feelings and a sensitive imagination, but with no acuteness of intellect and clear self-consciousness, which are therefore incapable of expressing what affects them; they live only in their own hearts, and, so to say, upon their own hearts.'* George Dawson, in a lecture delivered about 1850, characterised Ophelia as 'the perfection of sensuousness, with very little inward energy or strength of mind. She possessed a sensuous as distinguished from a sensual nature of which latter the queen was the type-but the one was always trembling on the balance towards the other. She was animal handsomeness nearly perfect, fair and lovable, but not able to hold a high nature long bound to her by her mental attractions. She was intensely pure, though we see through the rent veil of madness the thoughts which she had kept at full arm's length off during sanity affecting her speech. Only in her madness did the touch of temptation sully the peach-like bloom of her sweet innocency.'+ 'One wonders whether either of the Court ladies-Elizabeth Southwell, Mary Howard, Mrs Russell, or the "fairest Brydges"-whose names have been coupled with that of Essex, gave any hint of Ophelia to Shakespeare'-Gerald Massey's Shakespeare's Sonnets, p. 480. G. R. French says the following personages are believed to be indicated by certain names in the play: Sir Henry Sidney, 'the elder Hamlet;' Sir Philip Sidney, 'young Hamlet;' Lord Keeper Sir Nicholas Bacon, Claudius; Polonius, Laertes, and Ophelia Sir William Cecil (Lord Burleigh), Robert Cecil, and Anne Cecil; Horatio, Hubert Languet; Marcellus and Bernardo, Fulke Greville and Sir Edward Dyer; Francisco, Gabriel Harvey; Fortinbras, the Earl of Essex. He, however, would appropriate Horatio to Fulke Greville, Marcellus to Sir Edward Dyer-See 'Notes on Hamlet,' Genealogica Shakespeariana, 299-310. According to Plumptre and Silberschlag, Claudius is Bothwell; Gertrude, Mary Queen of Scots; Hamlet, James I; the Ghost, Henry Lord Darnley; Polonius (in some points), David Rizzio, and (in others), Dr Wotton, the ambassador from England to Scotland. * Ulrici's Shakespeare's Dramatic Art, vol. i, p. 497. See further on 'The Character of Ophelia,' Mrs Jameson's Characteristics of Women, pp. 174-193; and a most excellent critique on that admirable work by John Wilson (Christopher North) in Blackwood's Magazine, January to June 1833. |