Certain New Elucidations of Shakespeare 69 



One word of Ophelia, misjudged and misprized Ophelia. 

 Quiller-Couch says (p. 151) that she was not present in the room 

 of state when Hamlet threw down the gauntlet of scorn (I. ii) 

 to the new sovereign and his court. Shakespeare, we might have 

 been sure, would not have had Ophelia miss that. It is only the 

 modern editors who have considered her unworthy. The Folios 

 allow her to enter the scene with her father and Laertes. ' She 

 is colorless, insipid, characterless.' Well, could l^ortia have ans- 

 wered Laertes (L iii. 45-51) with such consummate and feminine 

 finality? That she should disally herself with Hamlet at her 

 father's order — Hamlet having made himself the king's enemy in 

 the last scene — argues no lack of will or personality. She is 

 typically the high-born maid of the Northland, she is the Ingeborg 

 of the sagas, who refuses to break from loyalty to her home and 

 family. Tegner has faithfully expanded her devotion thus : 



Frithiof. Art thou not free if thou but will? Thy father 



No longer liveth. 

 Ingeborg. Helge is my father, 



Now stands in place of father, and my hand 

 Waits his award. King Bele's daughter never 

 Will steal her joy, however near it lie. 

 What, pray, were woman, should she free herself 

 From bonds wherewith Allfather has made fast 

 Unto the strong her being's helplessness ! 

 The snow-white water lily is like her. 

 It rises with the waves, with waves it sinks, 

 over to Kronberg to get into communication with the king. Why are they 

 not hanged on sight? Quite evidently the king is chary of measures 

 against those who thwart his will. 



One would be glad to see, in a volume like this one, a corrective para- 

 graph on stage abuses in the rendition of important parts. Nothing could 

 sooner make Shakespeare's ghost haunt the greenroom, than a manager's 

 causing or allowing Gertrude, for cheap effect, to leave the stage at the 

 end of Act III sobbing, and be heard in hysterics along the corridors of 

 the castle. No part of the drama is more touching than the perfect sym- 

 pathy and understanding with which Hamlet and his mother, after he has 

 entrusted her with his secret, are prepared for their last meeting. Once 

 more, to cause or allow the actor taking the part of Hamlet to creep in 

 the very article of death to the foot of the throne and with his last energy 

 v^rrithe himself into it — as if this were the sum total of all his mortal aspi- 

 rations — is the acme of outrage to his nature and to Shakespeare's thought. 



171 



