at private entertainments exist does not at all indicate that they were regularly used to illuminate private theatres. They are not the sort of lights to be expected in a closed auditorium; and in view of what precedes, before one can dogmatically restrict Cotgrave's reference as applying to private theatres only, one must do two things, it seems to me, which have never yet been done: (1) prove that cressets-like torches and candles-were used in private playhouses; (2) show that they were not employed in public theatres.

Again, Mr. Lawrence, in his endeavor to minimize the use of artificial lights in the public theatres, unintentionally gives a wrong impression when he writes: "That the players desired to make the most of natural light and thus minimize expense is shown by the fact that they constructed their theatres in the Fields and on the Bankside with open roofs and abundance of windows" (p. 220). No one will deny that they desired to make the most of natural light, but this was decidedly a minor consideration when the actors selected the sites of their playhouses and determined the architecture of their buildings. They selected "open" places because the authorities objected to theatres in crowded districts and because the sites in the Fields and Bankside were not only outside the jurisdiction of the Common Council but were cheap as well; and they constructed "open" houses largely for the reason that the authorities considered such structures less dangerous for the spreading of plagues.

Finally, Mr. Lawrence argues that a grave risk would have been incurred by the placing of a considerable number of naked lights throughout a large wooden building; and he is inclined to believe in this connection that the first Fortune87 caught fire at twelve o'clock no matter how large and well ventilated that hall may have been. I am inclined to believe, therefore, that "Jube the Sane" was an out-door tilting (Juga Cana). Cf. Camden Society edition of Machyn's Diary (p. 82) and Stowe's comment, ibid. pp. 342-43. Stowe says "lxx. cresset lights" were employed.

87 Greg (Henslowe's Diary, II, 65) says that the origin of the fire which consumed the Fortune is unknown. Prynne (Histriomastix, folio 556) gives an atmosphere of mystery to the event, when he asserts that he will refrain from reciting “the sudden feareful burning even to the ground, both of the Globe and the Fortune Play-houses, no man perceiving how these fires came." Howes (Malone-Boswell Shakspere, III, 55) and Sir Richard Baker (Chronicle, ed, 1653, p. 615) are more specific, when they write that the Fortune was destroyed by "negligence of a candle."

That the fire started inside the theatre is made probable by John Chamberlain's statement (Malone-Boswell, III, 55) that there were "two other houses on fire, but with great labour and danger were saved."

during a Sunday night performance (pp. 227-28). Now, in the first place, as I have shown in my note on stage lights, referred to above, there is no reason why naked lights should have been scattered throughout the body of the open theatre; they were probably confined to stage regions. And in the second place, whereas even naked stage lights were perhaps rather dangerous, we know that Elizabethan actors were entirely willing to take such risks. They risked repeatedly in more ways than one the anger of municipal and crown officials; they risked burning their private theatres when they consistently lighted them by a large number of naked lights; they risked burning all their playhouses when time and time again they employed fireworks in the "heavens" and elsewhere, and when they flashed flames from "hell" and hell-mouths; they burnt the Globe by firing chambers, and they continued to fire chambers after the second Globe was built. The Fortune was burnt by "negligence of a candle," and they rebuilt it of brick to lessen the chances of a similar accident perhaps; but there is no doubt that they continued to illuminate the stage of this very theatre, when occasion demanded, by means of naked lights. Trinity College, N. C.

Did the Fortune catch during a performance? According to Chamberlain, the fire lasted two hours; and according to Alleyn, "this night att 12 of ye clock ye fortune was burnt." Alleyn may possibly mean that the building was consumed by twelve o'clock, after having burnt about two hours; but he more probably means that the fire started at about twelve. Now twelve o'clock is rather late for a public play to be in progress, though night plays at court and elsewhere sometimes lasted until even later. In view of the lateness of the hour, I am inclined to think that the candle which caused the destruction of the Fortune was being used by those who were dividing the receipts taken in at a Sunday evening performance. It was a regular practice to divide the "gatherings" after the play concluded (cf. Actor's Remonstrance, 1643; epilogue to Brome's English Moor; contract between Mead and Henslowe and a company of actors about 1613, Henslowe Papers, ed. Greg, 24; Wallace, First London Theatre, 129, 142). Again, if the Fortune actually caught fire during a Sunday night performance, it is strange that Puritans such as Prynne and Beard, who made so much of God's judgments on Sabbath-breakers, did not make use of this "judgment" as they did the earlier one at Paris Garden. But it is equally strange that they neglected to mention that the Fortune burnt on Sunday, whether during a performance or not.

HAMLET'S THIRD SOLILOQUY

BY TUCKER BROOKE

The seven great soliloquies of Hamlet may be divided into two groups. Three of them-the first ("O, that this too too solid flesh would melt," etc., I.ii.129 ff.), the fourth ("To be or not to be," III.i.56 ff.), and the sixth ("Now might I do it pat," etc., III.iii. 73 ff.)-show the hero inert and over-reflective, inclined to toy with the idea of suicide, to overlook the responsibilities of life, and speculate in an unhealthy manner on existence beyond the grave. Indeed, the fourth soliloquy-the famous "To be or not to be"-marks the lowest intellectual level reached by Hamlet. The complete selfishness of the argument, the refusal to recognize any duty to live for the sake of his mission, and the astonishing "bestial oblivion" evidenced by the allusion to

The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns

on the tongue of one who has recently spoken with his own father's ghost-these all shock the attentive reader and show the speaker's intelligence at its nadir. Such, I think, was clearly Shakespeare's intention; and despite the rhetorical brilliance of the lines when taken absolutely, the critic may well be pardoned a cynical amusement at the fact that just this speech and Polonius's fatuous advice to his son-advice very worthy of Lord Chesterfield-should be enshrined in the memory of the general public as particular gems of Shakespearian wisdom.

The three soliloquies just mentioned are all the product of a relatively quiescent frame of mind. The first is uttered before Hamlet has learned of his father's murder; the fourth is spoken in the quiet of the morning (?) before the play; while in the sixth, though the presence of Claudius disturbs Hamlet's conscience, the motionless and suppliant posture of the King evidently acts as a check on the speaker's emotions.

In the four other soliloquies we see Hamlet in far more normal and admirable moods, and each of these soliloquies is produced by a state of special excitement. The second immediately follows the exit of the Ghost, the third is inspired by the Player's moving declamation, the fifth follows the success of the "Mousetrap," and the seventh is evoked by the impressive sight of Fortinbras and his army. This

last soliloquy is certainly the finest in the play, and it gives ground for the idea that Hamlet's tragedy arises not from the excessive postponement but from the too early development of the crisis. The fine words about the purposes of "god-like reason," the clear sense of personal power, the sympathetic appreciation of Fortinbras's spirit, coupled with the discriminating realization of what it is "Rightly to be great," evidence that "slight thinning of the dark cloud of melancholy," which Professor Bradley thinks he observes in the following (fifth) act.

Now this last soliloquy is a close and doubtless intentional counterpart of the third, which I wish more particularly to discuss. Both speeches mark a psychological progress from intense self-dissatisfaction and even self-abuse ("How all occasions do inform against me!"-"O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!"), through elaborate self-analysis, to self-confidence; and each ends with an almost triumphant declaration of the speaker's practical resolution:

O, from this time forth

My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!

The play's the thing,

Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.

In these two speeches, which represent a wider intellectual range than any other in the play, is to be found the surest key to Hamlet's mental difficulty; and the clue is most distinct in the earlier, which is the longer indeed much the longest of all the soliloquies.

In the third soliloquy I find confirmation of Professor Bradley's theory of Hamlet's melancholy, of which that most careful critic seems inobservant. Indeed, it is strange to find that Professor Bradley and his most determined opponent, Mr. W. F. Trench, who thinks Hamlet definitely mad, occupy the same ground in their interpretation of the vastly important conclusion of the third soliloquy, where Hamlet resolves to test the King's guilt by means of the "Mousetrap."

Professor Bradley writes (Shakespearean Tragedy, p. 131):"Nothing, surely, can be clearer than the meaning of this famous soliloquy. (Sic!) The doubt which appears at its close, instead of being the natural conclusion of the preceding thoughts, is totally inconsistent with them. For Hamlet's self-reproaches, his curses on his enemy, and his perplexity about his own inaction, one and all imply his faith in the identity and truthfulness of the Ghost. Evidently this sudden doubt, of which there has not been the slightest

trace before, is no genuine doubt; it is an unconscious fiction, an excuse for his delay-and for its continuance."

Mr. Trench's explanation is essentially the same (Shakespeare's Hamlet, p. 126):—

"The doubt upon this point (i.e. the King's guilt) is a supposititious doubt invented to excuse the substitution of another sort of action for the action that is required."

Now in the case of that other artist in soliloquies, Iago, we are accustomed to discount the probability of conscious or unconscious insincerity; but Hamlet is a very different character, and Shakespeare's dramatic problem is in his case altogether different. Iago's various insincerities mutually confute and explain one another and are explained by his many actions; but Hamlet does not thus interpret his words by the constant comment of action, and I can find no other instance in which his words seem intended to be taken at less than their full face value.

The idea, then, that Shakespeare ventured upon the hazardous expedient of requiring his auditors to understand the eloquent conclusion of this most elaborate soliloquy in a Pickwickian sense, as "no genuine doubt" or as "supposititious," would seem allowable only as a last resort after failure to discover any logical reason for the words. I cannot at all agree with Professor Bradley's assumption that the doubt about the King's guilt, "instead of being the natural conclusion of the preceding thoughts, is totally inconsistent with them." Let us consider the third soliloquy as a whole and in connection with the feelings which prompted it.

The speech is Hamlet's reaction on the Player's declamation concerning the death of Priam. In introducing that declamation, Shakespeare seems to have been actuated by three motives, of which the first two have been noted by the critics. I do not remember, however, to have seen any mention of the third and most important. Certainly, it is ignored by Professor Bradley and Mr. Trench, whose difficulties regarding the following soliloquy can thus, I think, be accounted for.

The dramatic purposes of the "rugged Pyrrhus" declamation appear to be:

1. It continues the rather good-natured protest concerning the "little eyases" of the Queen's Chapel by an obvious, though not very uncomplimentary parody of the turgid lines on the death of Priam. in their play of Dido (by Marlowe and Nashe).