Page:Hamlet - The Arden Shakespeare - 1899.djvu/149

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116
HAMLET
[ACT III.
Enter a King and a Queen, very lovingly; the Queen embracing him, and he her. She kneels, and makes show of protestation unto him. He takes her up, and declines his head upon her neck: lays him down upon a bank of flowers: she, seeing him asleep, leaves him. Anon comes in a fellow, takes off his crown, kisses it, and pours poison in the King's ears, and exit. The Queen returns; finds the King dead, and makes passionate action. The Poisoner, with some two or three Mutes, comes in again, seeming to lament with her. The dead body is carried away. The Poisoner wooes the Queen with gifts; she seems loath and unwilling awhile, but in the end accepts his love. [Exeunt.

    Lucianus with Poyson in a Viall, and powres it in his eares, and goes away: Then the Queene commeth and finds him dead; and goes away with the other." In our elder drama dumb-show was employed occasionally to indicate action not developed by subsequent dialogue, or in a kind of allegory to shadow forth what was to follow. Shakespeare's use of it here is singular. Hunter cited an example of Danish soldiers in England, 1688, presenting the action of a sacred drama, given in Danish, in dumb-show before the play, and assumed that this was a common practice of the Danish theatre. Elze conjectured that English actors of Shakespeare's time on the Continent expounded the action of plays in this way. Ophelia suggests that the show may import the argument; but, according to English practice, such a supposition was not warranted, except in so far that it might symbolically indicate the general tendency of the action. The King, on the other hand, does not recognise in the dumb-show the argument; see line 244; his suspicions would doubtless he aroused, and he would watch the play with keener interest, but he might suppose that the dumb-show presented, in English fashion, action which was not to be developed through dialogue. Hamlet would have thus a double opportunity of catching the conscience of the King. The following passage has perhaps not been quoted in connection with the use of dumb-show: Janua Linguarum Quadralinguis; or, A Messe of Tongues, 1617 [by J. Barbier]; the writer explains why he puts his "Advertisement" at the end of the volume: "As in a Comedie the Prologue, or in a Tragedie the Chorus, is not for the most acute spectator, able (and more delighted) of himselfe to discerne the pretention of every Act presented, though intimated onely in a dumbe shew."

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