Montaigne and Shakspere. J. M. Robertson
expresses to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern the veering of his mood from joy in things to disgust with them, and the paragraph in the Apology of Raimond Sebonde in which Montaigne sets against each other the splendour of the universe and the littleness of man. Here the thought diverges, Shakspere making it his own as he always does, and altering its aim; but the language is curiously similar. Hamlet says:
"It goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory: this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof, fretted with golden fire, why it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving, how express and admirable! in action, how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a God! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet to me what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me."
Montaigne, as translated by Florio, has:
"Let us see what hold-fast or free-hold he (man) hath in this gorgeous and goodly equipage. … Who hath persuaded him, that this admirable moving of heaven's vaults, that the eternal light of these lamps so fiercely rolling over his head … were established … for his commodity and service? Is it possible to imagine anything so ridiculous as this miserable and wretched creature, which is not so much as master of himself, exposed and subject to offences of all things, and yet dareth call himself Master and Emperor of this universe? … [To consider … the power and domination these (celestial) bodies have, not only upon our lives and conditions of our fortune … but also over our dispositions and inclinations, our discourses and wills, which they rule, provoke, and move at the pleasure of their influences.] … Of all creatures man is the most miserable and frail, and therewithal the proudest and disdainfullest. Who perceiveth himself placed here, amidst the filth and mire of the world … and yet dareth imaginarily place himself above the circle of the Moon, and reduce heaven under his feet. It is through the vanity of the same imagination that he dare equal himself to God."
The passage in brackets is left here in its place, not as suggesting anything in Hamlet's speech, but as paralleling a line in Measure for Measure, to be dealt with immediately. But it will be seen that the rest of the passage, though turned to quite another purpose than Hamlet's, brings together in the same way a set of contrasted ideas of human greatness and smallness, and of the splendour of the midnight firmament.39
IX. The nervous protest of Hamlet to Horatio on the point of the national vice of drunkenness,40 of which all save the beginning is added in the Second Quarto just before the entrance of the Ghost, has several curious points of coincidence with Montaigne's essay41 on The History of Spurina, which discusses at great length a matter of special interest to Shakspere—the character of Julius Cæsar. In the course of the examination Montaigne takes trouble to show that Cato's use of the epithet "drunkard" to Cæsar could not have been meant literally; that the same Cato admitted Cæsar's sobriety in the matter of drinking. It is after making light of Cæsar's faults in other matters of personal conduct that the essayist comes to this decision:
"But all these noble inclinations, rich gifts, worthy qualities, were altered, smothered, and eclipsed by this furious passion of ambition. … To conclude, this only vice (in mine opinion) lost and overthrew in him the fairest natural and richest ingenuity that ever was, and hath made his memory abominable to all honest minds."
Compare the exquisitely high-strung lines, so congruous in their excited rapidity with Hamlet's intensity of expectation, which follow on his notable outburst on the subject of drunkenness:
"So oft it chances in particular men, That for some vicious mode of nature in them, As in their birth (wherein they are not guilty, Since nature cannot choose its origin), By the o'ergrowth of some complexion, Oft breaking down the pales and forts of reason; Or by some habit that too much o'er-leavens The form of plausive manners; that these men— Carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect; Being nature's livery, or fortune's star— Their virtues else (be they as pure as grace, As infinite as man may undergo) Shall in the general censure take corruption From that particular fault. … "
Even the idea that "nature cannot choose its origin" is suggested by the context in Montaigne.42 Shakspere's estimate of Cæsar, of course, diverged from that of the essay.
X. I find a certain singularity of coincidence between the words of King Claudius on kingship:
"There's such divinity doth hedge a king, That treason can but peep to what it would, Acts little of his will,"
and a passage in the essay43 Of the Incommodity of Greatness:
"To be a king, is a matter of that consequence, that only by it he is so. That strange glimmering and eye-dazzling light, which round about environeth, over-casteth and hideth from us: our weak sight is thereby bleared and dissipated, as being filled and obscured by that greater and further-spreading brightness."
The working out of the metaphor here gives at once to Shakspere's terms "divinity" and "can but peep" a point not otherwise easily seen; but the idea of a dazzling light may be really what was meant in the play; and one is tempted to pronounce the passage a reminiscence of Montaigne. Here, however, it has to be noted that in the First Quarto we have the lines:
"There's such divinity doth wall a king That treason dares not look on."
And if Shakspere had not seen or heard the passage in Montaigne before the publication of Florio's folio—which, however, he may very well have done—the theory of reminiscence here cannot stand.
XI. In Hamlet's soliloquy on the passage of the army of Fortinbras—one of the many passages added in the Second Quarto—there is a strong general resemblance to a passage in the essay Of Diversion.44 Hamlet first remarks to the Captain:
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