HAMITIC 



3812 



HAMLEY 



* 



Hamlet 



The play scene, where Hamlet, lying at Ophelia's feet, watches the effect of tae play upon 

 his uncle Claudius. From the painting by Maclise 

 Tale Gallery, London 



conscience of 



Hamitic. Terra denoting an 

 ethnic and linguistic group in N.E. 

 Africa. So called from Ham, one of 

 the sons of Noah, in ethnology it 

 designates a frizzy-haired, medium - 

 headed, red-brown, thin-lipped 

 type, of nomadic culture, best 

 represented by the Nubian Beja, 

 Abyssinian Agaos, and the Dan- 

 akil, Galla, and Somali tribes. 

 Their relationship to the ancient 

 Egyptians is still undecided. An 

 early Himyarite-negroid blend 

 rather than a distinct race, their 

 contact with peoples of lower cul- 

 ture produced three great ethnic 

 fusions : with Bushmen, the Hotten- 

 tot ; with lake negroes, the Bantu ; 

 with Nilotic negroes, the Masai. 

 Hamitic speech may be related to 

 Semitic through a common precur- 

 sor in W. Asia. It is classified into 

 47 stocks, comprising 71 dialects, 

 spoken over one-fifth of Africa. 



Hamlet. Tragedy by Shake- 

 speare. Hamlet, Prince of Den- 

 mark, learning from his father's 

 ghost that the father was poisoned 

 by Claudius, his brother and suc- 

 cessor, has a play acted before 

 Claudius, in which a similar case 

 of poisoning is represented. Claud- 

 ius rises in excitement and betrays 

 his guilt. Hamlet rebukes his 

 mother for her unnatural union 

 with Claudius, and sails for England 

 with the courtiers Rosencrantz and 

 Guildenstern. Having altered the 

 letter they carried from Claudius 

 for delivery to the English king, 

 Hamlet _ sends them to the de- 

 struction intended for himself, and 

 returns to Denmark. Laertes, to 

 avenge the death of his father, 



Polonius, whom Hamlet had killed, 

 and that of his sister Ophelia, who, 

 losing her reason, had drowned her- 

 self, stabs Hamlet with a poisoned 

 foil, but not before he himself had 

 been fatally wounded with the same 

 weapon. Hamlet kills the king, and 

 the queen dies from drinking of a 

 poisoned cup intended for Hamlet. 



The scene is laid in Elsinore, and 

 relief from the main theme is sup- 

 plied by the sententiousness of 

 Polonius, the king's counsellor, and 

 the witticisms of the two grave- 

 diggers who bury Ophelia. Its 

 stock of varying and exciting in- 

 cidents, its store of pregnant utter- 

 ances and maxims, its fairly equal 

 division into scenes of tragedy and 

 comedy, above all, the appeal of its 

 leading character, have made 

 Hamlet the most popular of all 

 Shakespeare's plays. Henry Irving 

 (Lyceum, Oct. 31, 1874) and 

 Forbes- Robertson (Lyceum, Sept. 

 11, 1897) have been the most 

 famous of modern Hamlets. But 

 nearly all the more prominent 

 English-speaking players of re- 

 cent times, Edwin Booth, Wilson 

 Barrett, Frank Benson, Beerbohm 

 Tree, H. B. Irving, Martin Harvey, 

 and Matheson Lang, have assumed 

 the r61e, as have such celebrated 

 foreigners as Salvini, Rossi, Mounet- 

 Sully, and Sarah Bernhardt. 



Hamlet is based on an ancient 

 Icelandic saga of the Danish kings, 

 which found its way, in 1570, 

 from the Historia Danica of Saxo 

 Grammaticus, 1514, into Belle- 

 forest's Histoires Tragiques. There 

 existed a previous play in Eng- 

 lish on the subject, probably by 



Kyd. Shakespeare's play was first 

 acted at The Globe, 1602, with 

 Burbage in the title-role, and there 

 is a tradition that the poet took 

 the part of the Ghost. It was first 

 published in 1603. There were four 

 other quartos between 1604 and 

 1611. The existing text is collated 

 from the Second Quarto of 1604 and 

 the 1623 folio. The play is in five 

 acts, contains 3,924 lines, of which 

 1,208 are prose and 2,490 blank 

 verse, with 81 pentametric rhymes, 

 and has found more commentators 

 than any other of Shakespeare's 

 plays. See Barrett, Wilson ; Forbes- 

 Robertson; consult also Shake- 

 speare's Hamlet; a New Commen- 

 tary, W. F. Trench, 1913 ; Hamlet 

 and the Scottish Succession, L. 

 Winstanley, 1921. 



Hamley, SIB EDWAKD BRUCE 

 (1824-93). British soldier. Born 

 at Bodmin, April 27, 1824, and 

 educated a t 

 the Royal 

 Military Acad- 

 emy, Wool- 

 wich, he en- 

 tered the 

 artillery in 

 1843, and first 

 saw active 

 service in the 

 Crimean War. 

 In 1859 he was 

 appoi n ted 

 professor of military history at the 

 Staff College at Sandhurst, and his 

 lectures formed the basis of his 

 great work The Operations of War, 

 1866. From 1870-77 he was com- 

 mandant of the Staff College. In 

 1882 he served in the Egyptian War. 





Sir E. B. Hamley, 

 British soldier 



