Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/22

 16 The Play Scene in "Hamlet" of the poison in the ears. They know that he was superintending the performance of the play, writing in a speech, and training the actors; that the play was of his own choice, and that one part of it was to be very like the murder of the elder Hamlet. That is enough, surely, for ordinary dramatic purposes. Shakspere has, indeed, been somewhat more careful here than is his wont; he fre- quently asks his audience to swallow very large coincidences for the sake of dramatic effect. In the present instance, the coincidences are not really so great, perhaps, as they seem. They may be summed up in a sentence: a king with an apparently devoted wife is murdered, while asleep in his garden, by a relative who pours poison in his ears, and wins the love of the queen, pressing his suit with gifts. 11 The murderer in the play is the nephew, not the brother of the victim. Stories of a man who makes love to a female relative or betrothed of a man he has killed are not uncommon, either in history or fiction. They are frequent in Elizabethan drama of the revenge type the 'Spanish Tragedy/ 'Hoffman,' 'Antonio's Revenge.' Shakspere had already used the motive in 'Richard III.' The most striking correspondence is the pouring of the poison into the ears; and this detail may be imagined, if we choose, to have been inserted at Hamlet's command, in view of what is said of his part in choosing the play, and in giving directions for its proper production, with additions to the dialog. But I do not believe that Shakspere meant his audience to go so far as this. Those who are disturbed by the coincidence of Hamlet's finding a play which contained a scene so like that of his father's murder will do well to ponder the resemblances of action in the 'Spanish Tragedy' between the main plot and the play within the play. In the main plot, Horatio is betrothed to Bel-Imperia; Balthazar desires her, and employs Lorenzo to kill Horatio. Balthazar then makes love to Bel-Imperia, who kills him and commits suicide. Supply in this outline Erasto for Horatio, Soliman for Balthazar, the bashaw for Lorenzo, and Perseda for Bel-Imperia, and the plot of the play within the play is stated. Moreover, Hieronimo dis- closes the action of this inserted play to the murderers who are to take part, Lorenzo and Balthazar, and who are destined to suffer 11 This seems to me to include all the resemblances which seem so striking to Greg.