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Big Java Early Objects 5th Edition Horstmann Test Bank pdf download

The document provides links to various test banks and solutions manuals for Java programming textbooks, including 'Big Java Early Objects' and 'Java How to Program Early Objects'. It also contains multiple-choice questions related to Java interfaces, covering topics such as method declarations, access levels, and polymorphism. The questions include answers and reference sections for further study.

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100% found this document useful (1 vote)
7 views

Big Java Early Objects 5th Edition Horstmann Test Bank pdf download

The document provides links to various test banks and solutions manuals for Java programming textbooks, including 'Big Java Early Objects' and 'Java How to Program Early Objects'. It also contains multiple-choice questions related to Java interfaces, covering topics such as method declarations, access levels, and polymorphism. The questions include answers and reference sections for further study.

Uploaded by

aarenxtilow7q
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Chapter 10: Interfaces
Test Bank

Multiple Choice

1. Which of the following statements about a Java interface is NOT true?


a) A Java interface defines a set of methods that are required.
b) A Java interface must contain more than one method.
c) A Java interface specifies behavior that a class will implement.
d) All methods in a Java interface must be abstract.

Answer: b

Section Reference: 10.1 Using Interfaces for Algorithm Reuse


Title: Which statement about a Java interface is NOT true?
Difficulty: Medium

2. A method that has no implementation is called a/an ____ method.


a) interface
b) implementation
c) overloaded
d) abstract

Answer: d

Section Reference: 10.1 Using Interfaces for Algorithm Reuse


Title: What is a method with no implementation called?
Difficulty: Easy

3. Which statement about methods in an interface is true?


a) All methods in an interface are automatically private.
b) All methods in an interface are automatically public.
c) All methods in an interface are automatically static.
d) All methods in an interface must be explicitly declared as private or public.

Answer: b

Section Reference: 10.1 Using Interfaces for Algorithm Reuse


Title: Which statement about methods in an interface is true?
Difficulty: Medium
4. Which of the following statements about abstract methods is true?
a) An abstract method has a name, parameters, and a return type, but no code in the body
of the method.
b) An abstract method has parameters, a return type, and code in its body, but has no
defined name.
c) An abstract method has a name, a return type, and code in its body, but has no
parameters.
d) An abstract method has only a name and a return type, but no parameters or code in its
body.

Answer: a

Section Reference: 10.1 Using Interfaces for Algorithm Reuse


Title: Which statement about abstract methods is true?
Difficulty: Hard

5. Which of the following statements about an interface is true?


a) An interface has methods and instance variables.
b) An interface has methods but no instance variables.
c) An interface has neither methods nor instance variables.
d) An interface has both public and private methods.

Answer: b

Section Reference: 10.1 Using Interfaces for Algorithm Reuse


Title: Which statement about an interface is true?
Difficulty: Medium

6. Which of the following statements about interfaces is NOT true?


a) Interfaces can make code more reusable.
b) Interface types can be used to define a new reference data type.
c) Interface types can be used to express common operations required by a service.
d) Interfaces have both private and public methods.

Answer: d

Section Reference: 10.1 Using Interfaces for Algorithm Reuse


Title: Which statement about interfaces is NOT true?
Difficulty: Medium

7. To use an interface, a class header should include which of the following?


a) The keyword extends and the name of an abstract method in the interface
b) The keyword extends and the name of the interface
c) The keyword implements and the name of an abstract method in the interface
d) The keyword implements and the name of the interface

Answer: d

Section Reference: 10.1 Using Interfaces for Algorithm Reuse


Title: To use an interface, what must a class header include?
Difficulty: Medium

8. ____ can reduce the coupling between classes.


a) Static methods
b) Abstract methods
c) Interfaces
d) Objects

Answer: c

Section Reference: 10.1 Using Interfaces for Algorithm Reuse


Title: ____ can reduce the coupling between classes.
Difficulty: Easy

9. Consider the following code snippet:


public class Inventory implements Measurable
{
. . .
public double getMeasure();
{
return onHandCount;
}
}

Why is it necessary to declare getMeasure as public ?


a) All methods in a class are not public by default.
b) All methods in an interface are private by default.
c) It is necessary only to allow other classes to use this method.
d) It is not necessary to declare this method as public.

Answer: a

Section Reference: Common Error 9.1


Title: Why is it necessary to declare getMeasure as public?
Difficulty: Hard
10. Which of the following statements about interfaces is NOT true?
a) Interfaces can make code more reusable.
b) An interface provides no implementation.
c) A class can implement only one interface type.
d) Interfaces can reduce the coupling between classes.

Answer: c

Section Reference: 10.1 Using Interfaces for Algorithm Reuse


Title: Which statement about interfaces is NOT true?
Difficulty: Medium

11. ____ methods must be implemented when using an interface.


a) Abstract.
b) Private.
c) Public.
d) Static

Answer: a

Section Reference: 10.1 Using Interfaces for Algorithm Reuse


Title: ____ methods must be implemented when using an interface.
Difficulty: Easy

12. Suppose you are writing an interface called Resizable, which includes one void
method called resize.

public interface Resizable


{
_________________________
}

Which of the following can be used to complete the interface declaration correctly?

a) private void resize();


b) protected void resize();
c) void resize();
d) public void resize() { System.out.println("resizing ..."); }

Answer: c

Title: Identify correct method declaration in interface


Difficulty: Easy
Section Reference 1: 10.1 Using Interfaces for Algorithm Reuse
13. Consider the following declarations:

public interface Encryptable


{
void encrypt(String key);
}

public class SecretText implements Encryptable


{
private String text;

_____________________________
{
// code to encrypt the text using encryption key goes here
}
}

Which of the following method headers should be used to complete the SecretText
class?

a) public void encrypt()


b) public void encrypt(String aKey)
c) public String encrypt(String aKey)
d) void encrypt(String aKey)

Answer: b

Title: Identify correct method header to use when implementing interface


Difficulty: Medium
Section Reference 1: 10.1 Using Interfaces for Algorithm Reuse

14. Consider the following code snippet:


public class Inventory implements Measurable
{
. . .
double getMeasure();
{
return onHandCount;
}
}

What is wrong with this code?


a) The getMeasure() method must be declared as private.
b) The getMeasure() method must include the implements keyword.
c) The getMeasure() method must be declared as public.
d) The getMeasure() method must not have any code within it.
Answer: c

Section Reference: Common Error 10.1


Title: What is wrong with this code about interfaces?
Difficulty: Medium

15. Consider the following code snippet:


public interface Sizable
{
int LARGE_CHANGE = 100;
int SMALL_CHANGE = 20;

void changeSize();
}

Which of the following statements is true?


a) LARGE_CHANGE and SMALL_CHANGE are automatically public static final.
b) LARGE_CHANGE and SMALL_CHANGE are instance variables
c) LARGE_CHANGE and SMALL_CHANGE must be defined with the keywords private
static final.
d) LARGE_CHANGE and SMALL_CHANGE must be defined with the keywords public static
final.

Answer: a

Section Reference: Special Topic 10.1


Title: Which statement about interface definitions is true?
Difficulty: Hard

16. Consider the following code snippet:


public class Inventory implements Measurable
{
. . .
double getMeasure();
{
return onHandCount;
}
}

The compiler complains that the getMeasure method has a weaker access level than the
Measurable interface. Why?
a) All of the methods in a class have a default access level of package access, while the
methods of an interface have a default access level of private.
b) All of the methods in a class have a default access level of package access, while the
methods of an interface have a default access level of public.
c) The variable onHandCount was not declared with public access.
d) The getMeasure method was declared as private in the Measurable interface.

Answer: b

Section Reference: Common Error 10.1


Title: What is wrong with this code implementing an interface?
Difficulty: Hard

17. Which of the following is true regarding a class and interface types?
a) You can convert from a class type to any interface type that is in the same package as
the class.
b) You can convert from a class type to any interface type that the class implements.
c) You can convert from a class type to any interface type that the class defines.
d) You cannot convert from a class type to any interface type.

Answer: b

Section Reference: 10.2 Working with Interface Variables


Title: Which is true regarding a class and interface types?
Difficulty: Hard

18. Consider the following code snippet.


public interface Measurable
{
double getMeasure();
}

public class Coin implements Measurable


{
public double getMeasure()
{
return value;
}
...
}

public class DataSet


{
...
public void add()
{
...
}
}

public class BankAccount


{
...
public void add()
{
...
}
}

Which of the following statements is correct?

a)
Coin dime = new Coin(0.1, "dime");
Measurable x = dime;
b)
Coin dime = new Coin(0.1, "dime");
Dataset x = dime;
c)
Coin dime = new Coin(0.1, "dime");
DataSet x == (Measureable)dime;
d)
Coin dime = new Coin(0.1, "dime");
BankAccount x = dime;

Answer: a

Section Reference: 10.2 Working with Interface Variables


Title: Which code statement is correct?
Difficulty: Medium

19. Which of the following statements about converting between types is true?

a) When you cast number types, you take a risk that an exception will occur.
b) When you cast number types, you will not lose information.
c) When you cast object types, you take a risk of losing information.
d) When you cast object types, you take a risk that an exception will occur.

Answer: d

Section Reference: 10.2 Working with Interface Variables


Title: Which statement about converting between types is true?
Difficulty: Medium

20. Which of the following statements about interfaces is true?

a) You can define an interface variable that refers to an object of any class in the same
package.
b) You cannot define a variable whose type is an interface.
c) You can instantiate an object from an interface class.
d) You can define an interface variable that refers to an object only if the object belongs
to a class that implements the interface.

Answer: d

Section Reference: Common Error 10.2


Title: Which statement about interfaces is true?
Difficulty: Hard

21. You have created a class named Motor that implements an interface named
Measurable. You have declared a variable of type Measureable named
motorTemperature. Which of the following statements is true?

a) The object to which motorTemperature refers has type Measurable.


b) The object to which motorTemperature refers has type Motor.
c) This declaration is illegal.
d) You must construct a motorTemperature object from the Measurable interface.

Answer: b

Section Reference: 10.2 Working with Interface Variables


Title: Which statement about a variable whose type is an interface variable is true?
Difficulty: Medium

22. ____ occurs when a single class has several methods with the same name but
different parameter types.

a) Casting
b) Polymorphism
c) Overloading
d) Instantiation

Answer: c

Section Reference: 10.2 Working with Interface Variables


Title: ____ occurs when a single class has several methods with the same name.
Difficulty: Easy

23. Consider the following code snippet:


public class Demo
{
public static void main(String[] args)
{
Point[] p = new Point[4];
p[0] = new Colored3DPoint(4, 4, 4, Color.BLACK);
p[1] = new ThreeDimensionalPoint(2, 2, 2);
p[2] = new ColoredPoint(3, 3, Color.RED);
p[3] = new Point(4, 4);

for (int i = 0; i < p.length; i++)


{
String s = p[i].toString();
System.out.println("p[" + i + "] : " + s);
}
return;
}
}

This code is an example of ____.

a) overloading
b) callback
c) early binding
d) polymorphism

Answer: d

Section Reference: 10.2 Working with Interface Variables


Title: his code is an example of ____.
Difficulty: Medium

24. If you have multiple classes in your program that have implemented the same
interface in different ways, how is the correct method executed?

a) The Java virtual machine must locate the correct method by looking at the class of the
actual object.
b) The compiler must determine which method implementation to use.
c) The method must be qualified with the class name to determine the correct method.
d) You cannot have multiple classes in the same program with different implementations
of the same interface.

Answer: a

Section Reference: 10.2 Working with Interface Variables


Title: How does the correct method get called?
Difficulty: Medium

25. Consider the following declarations:

public interface Displayable


{
void display();
}

public class Picture implements Displayable


{
private int size;

public void increaseSize()


{
size++;
}

public void decreaseSize()


{
size--;
}

public void display()


{
System.out.println(size);
}

public void display(int value)


{
System.out.println(value * size);
}
}

What method invocation can be used to complete the code segment below?

Displayable picture = new Picture();


picture._________________;

a) increaseSize()
b) decreaseSize()
c) display()
d) display(5)

Answer: c

Title: Identify legal method invocation for variable of interface type


Difficulty: Medium
Section Reference 1: 10.2 Working with Interface Variables

26. Which of the following can potentially be changed when implementing an interface?

a) The parameters of a method in the interface.


b) The name of a method in the interface.
c) The return type of a method in the interface.
d) You cannot change the name, return type, or parameters of a method in the interface.
Answer: d

Section Reference: Common Error 10.3


Title: Which can be changed when implementing an interface?
Difficulty: Medium

27. Consider the following class:


public class Player implements Comparable
{
private String name;
private int goalsScored;

// other methods go here

public int compareTo(Object otherObject)


{
__________________________________
return (goalsScored – otherPlayer.goalsScored);
}
}

What statement can be used to complete the compareTo() method?

a) Player otherPlayer = otherObject;


b) Object otherPlayer = otherObject;
c) Player otherPlayer = (Player) otherObject;
d) Object otherPlayer = (Player) otherObject;

Answer: c

Title: Identify correct statement to complete compareTo() method in sample class


Difficulty: Medium
Section Reference 1: 10.3 The Comparable Interface

28. The method below is designed to print the smaller of two values received as
arguments. Select the correct expression to complete the method.

public void showSmaller(Comparable value1, Comparable value2)


{
if ( _________________________ )
System.out.println(value1 + " is smaller.");
else
System.out.println(value2 + " is smaller.");
}

a) value1 < value2


b) value1.compareTo(value2) > 0
c) value1.compareTo(value2) == 0
d) value1.compareTo(value2) < 0

Answer: d

Title: Identify correct statement to compare two Comparable objects


Difficulty: Medium
Section Reference 1: 10.3 The Comparable Interface

29. Which of the following statements about a callback is NOT true?

a) A callback can allow you to implement a new method for a class that is not under your
control.
b) A callback can be implemented using an interface.
c) A callback is a mechanism for specifying code to be executed later.
d) A callback method declared in an interface must specify the class of objects that it will
manipulate.

Answer: d

Section Reference: 10.4 Using Interfaces for Callbacks


Title: Which statement about a callback is NOT true?
Difficulty: Medium

30. In Java, ____ can be used for callbacks.


a) Objects
b) Interfaces
c) Classes
d) Operators

Answer: b

Section Reference: 10.4 Using Interfaces for Callbacks


Title: In Java, ____ can be used for callbacks.
Difficulty: Easy

31. You wish to implement a callback method for an object created from a system class
that you cannot change. What approach does the textbook recommend to accomplish
this?

a) Create a new class that mimics the system class.


b) Extend the system class.
c) Use an inner class in the interface.
d) Use a helper class that implements the callback method.

Answer: d

Section Reference: 10.4 Using Interfaces for Callbacks


Title: How to implement a callback method for a system class.
Difficulty: Medium

32. Which of the following statements about helper classes is true?

a) Helper classes must be inner classes.


b) Helper classes must implement interfaces.
c) Helper classes help reduce coupling.
d) Helper classes cannot contain instance variables.

Answer: c

Section Reference: 10.4 Using Interfaces for Callbacks


Title: Which statement about helper classes is true?
Difficulty: Easy

33. Consider the following declarations:

public interface Measurer


{
int measure(Object anObject);
}

public class StringLengthMeasurer implements Measurer


{
public int measure(_________________)
{
String str = (String) anObject;
return str.length();
}
}

What parameter declaration can be used to complete the callback measure method?

a) Object anObject
b) String anObject
c) Object aString
d) String aString

Answer: a
Title: Identify correct parameter declaration to complete callback method
Difficulty: Easy
Section Reference 1: 10.4 Using Interfaces for Callbacks

34. Assuming that interface Resizable is declared elsewhere, consider the following
class declaration:

public class InnerClassExample


{
public static void main(String[] args)
{
class SizeModifier implements Resizable
{
// class methods
}

__________________________ // missing statement


}
}

Which of the following declarations can be used to complete the main method?

a) Resizable something = new Resizable();


b) Resizable something = new SizeModifier();
c) Resizable something = new InnerClassExample();
d) SizeModifier something = new Resizable();

Answer: b

Title: Identify correct declaration using inner class to complete main method
Difficulty: Medium
Section Reference 1: 10.5 Inner Classes

35. Which of the following statements about an inner class is true?

a) An inner class can only be defined within a specific method of its enclosing class.
b) An inner class can only be defined outside of any method within its enclosing class.
c) An inner class must implement an interface.
d) An inner class may be anonymous.

Answer: d

Section 10.5 Inner Classes


Title: Which statement about an inner class is true?
Difficulty: Easy
36. A/an ____ class defined in a method signals to the reader of your program that the
class is not interesting beyond the scope of the method.

a) A class cannot be defined within a method


b) abstract
c) interface
d) inner

Answer: d

Section 10.5 Inner Classes


Title: A/an ___ class defined in a method signals what?
Difficulty: Easy

37. Which of the following statements about an inner class is true?

a) An inner class that is defined inside a method is publicly accessible.


b) An inner class that is defined inside a method is not publicly accessible.
c) An inner class that is defined inside an enclosing class but outside of its methods is not
available to all methods of the enclosing class.
d) An inner class is used for a utility class that should be visible elsewhere in the
program.

Answer: b

Section 10.5 Inner Classes


Title: Which statement about an inner class is true?
Difficulty: Hard

38. Which of the following is a good use for an anonymous class?

a) Use an anonymous class to implement polymorphism.


b) Use an anonymous class to implement a callback.
c) Use an anonymous class when all methods of the class will be static methods.
d) Use an anonymous class when the program will only need one object of the class.

Answer: d

Section Reference: Special Topic 9.2


Title: Which is a good use for an anonymous class?
Difficulty: Hard
39. Consider the following code snippet:
myImage.add(new Rectangle(10,10,10,10));

This code is an example of using ____.

a) An anonymous class.
b) An anonymous object.
c) An abstract object.
d) An abstract class.

Answer: b

Section Reference: Special Topic 10.2


Title: This code is an example of using ____.
Difficulty: Hard

40. Which of the following statements about a mock class is true?

a) A mock class does not provide an implementation of the services of the actual class.
b) A mock class provides a complete implementation of the services of the actual class.
c) A mock class provides a simplified implementation of the services of the actual class.
d) A mock class must be an interface.

Answer: c

Section 10.6 Mock Objects


Title: Which statement about a mock class is true?
Difficulty: Easy

41. What role does an interface play when using a mock class?

a) The mock class should be an interface that will be implemented by the real class.
b) The real class should be an interface that will be implemented by the mock class.
c) Interfaces are not involved when using mock classes.
d) An interface should be implemented by both the real class and the mock class to
guarantee that the mock class accurately simulates the real class when used in a program.

Answer: d

Section 10.6 Mock Objects


Title: What role does an interface play in a mock class?
Difficulty: Medium
42. Which of the following statements about events and graphical user interface programs
is true?

a) Your program must instruct the Java window manager to send it notifications about
specific types of events to which the program wishes to respond.
b) The Java window manager will automatically send your program notifications about
all events that have occurred.
c) Your program must respond to notifications of all types of events that are sent to it by
the Java window manager.
D) Your program must override the default methods to handle events.

Answer: a

Section 10.7 Event Handling


Title: Which statement about events and GUI programs is true?
Difficulty: Medium

43. Consider the following class:


public class ClickListener implements ActionListener
{
__________________________________________
{
System.out.println("mouse event ...");
}
}

Which of the following method headers should be used to complete the ClickListener
class?

a) public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent event)


b) public void actionPerformed(ClickListener event)
c) public void actionPerformed()
d) public void actionPerformed(ActionListener event)

Answer: a

Title: Identify correct actionPerformed method header


Difficulty: Easy
Section Reference 1: 10.7 Event Handling

44. ____ are generated when the user presses a key, clicks a button, or selects a menu
item.

a) Listeners
b) Interfaces.
c) Events.
d) Errors.

Answer: c

Section 10.7 Event Handling


Title: ____ are generated when the user interacts with GUI components.
Difficulty: Easy

45. A/an ____ belongs to a class whose methods describe the actions to be taken when a
user clicks a user-interface graphical object.

a) Event listener
b) Event source
c) Action listener
d) Action method

Answer: a

Section 10.7 Event Handling


Title: A/an ____ belongs to a class whose methods describe actions to be taken.
Difficulty: Easy

46. Which of the following is an event source?

a) A JButton object.
b) An event listener.
c) An inner class.
d) An event adapter.

Answer: a

Section 10.7 Event Handling


Title: Which is an event source?
Difficulty: Easy

47. To respond to a button event, a listener must supply instructions for the ____ method
of the ActionListener interface.

a) actionEvent.
b) actionPerformed
c) eventAction
d) eventResponse
Answer: b

Section 10.7 Event Handling


Title: To respond to a button event, a listener must implement the ____ method.
Difficulty: Medium

48. To associate an event listener with a JButton component, you must use the ___
method of the JButton class.

a) addEventListener.
b) addActionListener.
c) addButtonListener.
d) addListener

Answer: b

Section 10.7 Event Handling


Title: How to associate an event listener with a JButton component.
Difficulty: Easy

49. The methods of a/an ____ describe the actions to be taken when an event occurs.

a) event source
b) event listener
c) event interface
d) action source

Answer: b

Section 10.7 Event Handling


Title: The methods of a/an ____ describe the actions when an event occurs.
Difficulty: Easy

50. When an event occurs, the event source notifies all ____.

a) components
b) panels
c) interfaces
d) event listeners

Answer: d
Section 10.7 Event Handling
Title: When an event occurs, the event source notifies all ____.
Difficulty: Easy

51. Which container is used to group multiple user-interface components together?

a) text area
b) table
c) panel
d) rectangle

Answer: c

Section 10.7 Event Handling


Title: Which container groups user-interface components?
Difficulty: Easy

52. Which of the following statements will compile without error?

a)
public interface AccountListener()
{
void actionPerformed(AccountEvent event);
}
b)
public interface AccountListener()
{
void actionPerformed(AccountEvent);
}
c)
public interface AccountListener
{
void actionPerformed(AccountEvent event);
}
d)
public abstract AccountListener
{
void actionPerformed(AccountEvent event);
}

Answer: c

Section 10.7 Event Handling


Title: Which interface definition compiles without error?
Difficulty: Hard
53. Which of the following statements about listener classes is true?

a) A listener class cannot be declared as an anonymous inner class.


b) A listener class cannot be declared as an inner class.
c) A listener class must be declared as an inner class.
d) A listener class must be declared as an anonymous inner class.

Answer: a

Section 10.7 Event Handling


Title: Which statement about listener classes is true?
Difficulty: Hard

54. Consider the following code snippet:


JFrame frame = new JFrame();
JPanel panel = new JPanel

Which statement would add the panel to the frame?

a) frame.add(panel);
b) frame.add(JPanel panel);
c) frame.addComponent(panel);
d) frame.addComponent(JPanel panel);

Answer: a

Section 10.8 Building Applications with Buttons Title: How to add a panel to a frame.
Difficulty: Easy

55. Consider the following code snippet:


import ____________________
import java.awt.event.ActionListener;

/**
An action listener that prints.
*/
public class ClickListener implements ActionListener
{
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent event)
{
System.out.println("I was clicked.");
}
}
Which of the following statements will complete this code?

a) java.swing.event.ActionEvent;.
b) javax.swing.event.ActionEvent;
c) javax.awt.event.ActionEvent;
d) java.awt.event.ActionEvent;

Answer: d

Section 10.7 Event Handling


Title: Which statement will complete this code?
Difficulty: Hard

56. Event listeners are often installed as ____ classes so that they can have access to the
surrounding fields, methods, and final variables.

a) Inner
b) Interface
c) Abstract
d) Helper

Answer: a

Section 10.7 Event Handling


Title: Event listeners are often installed as ____ classes.
Difficulty: Medium

57. Which of the following statements about an inner class is true?

a) An inner class may not be declared within a method of the enclosing scope.
b) An inner class may only be declared within a method of the enclosing scope.
c) An inner class can access variables from the enclosing scope only if they are passed as
constructor or method parameters.
d) The methods of an inner class can access variables declared in the enclosing scope.

Answer: d

Section 10.7 Event Handling


Title: Which statement about an inner class is true?
Difficulty: Medium

58. Consider the following code snippet:


public class ClickListener implements ActionListener
{
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent event)
{
System.out.println("I was clicked.");
}
}
public class ButtonTester
{
public static void main(String[] args)
{
JFrame frame = new JFrame();
JButton button = new JButton("Click me!");
frame.add(button);

ActionListener listener = new ClickListener();


button.addActionListener(listener);
...
}
}

Which of the following statements is correct?

a) Class ButtonTester is an interface type.


b) A ClickListener object can be added as a listener for the action events that buttons
generate.
c) Class ClickListener is an interface type.
d) Class ButtonTester implements an interface type.

Answer: b

Section 10.7 Event Handling


Title: Select the correct statement about a button's event code.
Difficulty: Medium

59. An inner class can access local variables from the enclosing scope only if they are
declared as ____.

a) private
b) public
c) static
d) final

Answer: b

Section 10.7 Event Handling


Title: An inner class can access local variables declared as ____.
Difficulty: Medium
60. Which of the following code statements creates a graphical button which has
"Calculate" as its label ?

a) Button JButton = new Button("Calculate").


b) button = new Button(JButton, "Calculate").
c) button = new JButton("Calculate").
d) JButton button = new JButton("Calculate").

Answer: d

Section 10.8 Building Applications with ButtonsTitle: Which statement creates a button?
Difficulty: Easy

61. To build a user interface that contains graphical components, the components ____.
a) Must be added directly to a frame component.
b) Must each be added to a separate panel.
c) Must be added to a panel that is contained within a frame.
d) Must be added to a frame that is contained within a panel.

Answer: c

Section 10.8 Building Applications with ButtonsTitle: To build a user interface, the
graphical components ____.
Difficulty: Easy

62. How do you specify what the program should do when the user clicks a button?

a) Specify the actions to take in a class that implements the ButtonListener interface.
b) Specify the actions to take in a class that implements the ButtonEvent interface .
c) Specify the actions to take in a class that implements the ActionListener interface.
d) Specify the actions to take in a class that implements the EventListener interface.

Answer: c

Section 10.8 Building Applications with ButtonsTitle: How to specify action for a
button?
Difficulty: Medium

63. A(n) ____ has an instance method addActionListener() for specifying which
object is responsible for implementing the action associated with the object.

a) JFrame
b) JSlider
c) JButton
d) JLabel

Answer: c

Section 10.8 Building Applications with ButtonsTitle: How to specify action for a button.
Difficulty: Medium

64. Consider the following code snippet:

public static void main(String[] args)


{
Order myOrder = new Order();
JButton button = new JButton("Calculate");
JLabel label = new JLabel("Total amount due");
. . .
class MyListener implements ActionListener
{
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent event)
{
label.setText("Total amount due " + myOrder.getAmountDue());
}
}
}

What is wrong with this code?


a) label must be declared as final.
b) myOrder must be declared as final
c) label and myOrder must be declared as final
d) label and button must be declared as final.

Answer: c

Section 10.8 Building Applications with ButtonsTitle: What is wrong with this listener
code?
Difficulty: Medium

65. Consider the following code snippet:


public static void main(String[] args)
{
final Order myOrder = new Order();
JButton button = new JButton("Calculate");
final JLabel label = new JLabel("Total amount due");
. . .
class MyListener implements ActionListener
{
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent event)
{
. . .
}
}
}

Which of the local variables can be accessed within the actionPerformed method?

a) Only button can be accessed..


b) All of the local variables can be accessed.
c) label and myOrder can be accessed.
d) Only myOrder can be accessed.

Answer: c

Section 10.8 Building Applications with ButtonsTitle: Which local variables can be
accessed?
Difficulty: Medium

66. Consider the following code snippet which is supposed to show the total order
amount when the button is clicked:
public static void main(String[] args)
{
final Order myOrder = new Order();
JButton button = new JButton("Calculate");
final JLabel label = new JLabel("Total amount due");
. . .
class MyListener implements ActionListener
{
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent event)
{
label.setText("Total amount due " + myOrder.getAmountDue());
}
}
ActionListener listener = new MyListener();
}

What is wrong with this code?

a) button should be declared as final


b) The listener has not been attached to the button.
c) The listener cannot access the methods of the myOrder object.
d) This code will display the total order amount.

Answer: b

Section Reference: Common Error 10.4


Title: What is wrong with this listener code?
Difficulty: Medium
67. Use the ____ method to specify the height and width of a graphical component when
you add it to a panel.

a) setPreferredDimensions.
b) setInitialDimensions.
c) setPreferredSize.
d) setInitialSize.

Answer: c

Section Reference: Common Error 10.5


Title: Use the ____ method to specify dimensions of a graphical component .
Difficulty: Easy

68) Assuming that the ClickListener class implements the ActionListener interface,
what statement should be used to complete the following code segment?

ClickListener listener = new ClickListener();


JButton myButton = new JButton("Submit");
JPanel myPanel = new JPanel();
myPanel.add(myButton);
______________________ // missing statement

a) myPanel.addActionListener(listener);
b) myButton.addActionListener(listener);
c) myPanel.addActionListener(myButton);
d) myButton.addActionListener(ClickListener);

Answer: b

Title: Identify correct statement to add event listener object to a graphical object
Difficulty: Medium
Section Reference 1: 10.8 Building Applications with Buttons

69) Assume that the TimerListener class implements the ActionListener interface. If
the actionPerformed method in TimerListener needs to be executed every second,
what statement should be used to complete the following code segment?

ActionListener listener = new TimerListener();


_________________________________ // missing statement
timer.start();

a) Timer timer = new Timer(listener);


b) Timer timer = new Timer(1, listener);
c) Timer timer = new Timer(100, listener);
d) Timer timer = new Timer(1000, listener);

Answer: d

Title: Identify correct statement to initialize a Timer object


Difficulty: Easy
Section Reference 1: 10.9 Processing Timer Events

70. The Timer class is found in the ____ package.

a) java.awt.
b) javax.awt.
c) java.swing.
d) javax.swing.

Answer: d

Section 10.9 Processing Timer Events


Title: The Timer class is found in which package?
Difficulty: Easy

71. When you use a timer, you need to define a class that implements the ____ interface.

a) TimerListener
b) TimerActionListener
c) ActionListener
d) StartTimerListener

Answer: c

Section 10.9 Processing Timer Events


Title: The Timer component requires which interface?
Difficulty: Medium

72. The ____ class in the javax.swing package generates a sequence of events, spaced
apart at even time intervals.
a) TimeClock
b) Timer
c) Clock
d) StopWatch

Answer: b
Section 10.9 Processing Timer Events
Title: Which class generates events at even time intervals?
Difficulty: Easy

73. Consider the following code snippet:


final RectangleComponent component = new RectangleComponent();

MouseListener listener = new MousePressListener();


component.addMouseListener(listener);
______________
frame.add(component);

frame.setSize(FRAME_WIDTH, FRAME_HEIGHT);
frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
frame.setVisible(true);

Which of the following statements completes this code?

a) private static final int FRAME_WIDTH = 300;


b) private static final int FRAME_HEIGHT = 400;
c) Frame frame = new Frame();
d) JFrame frame = new JFrame();

Answer: d

Section 10.10 Mouse Events


Title: Which statement completes this code?
Difficulty: Medium

74. Consider the code snippet below:


public class RectangleComponent extends JComponent
{
private Rectangle box;

private static final int BOX_X = 100;


private static final int BOX_Y = 100;
private static final int BOX_WIDTH = 20;
private static final int BOX_HEIGHT = 30;

public RectangleComponent()
{
// The rectangle that the paint method draws
box = new Rectangle(BOX_X, BOX_Y,
BOX_WIDTH, BOX_HEIGHT);
}

public void paintComponent(Graphics g)


Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
this discrepancy between the mediæval character of the fable and its
Renaissance hero, who is so deep and many-sided that he has
almost a modern air.
The figure of Hamlet, as it at last shaped itself in Shakespeare's
imagination and came to life in his drama, is one of the very few
immortal figures of art and poetry, which, like Cervantes' Don
Quixote, exactly its contemporary, and Goethe's Faust of two
centuries later, present to generation after generation problems to
brood over and enigmas to solve. If we compare the two great
figures of Hamlet (1604) and Don Quixote (1605), we find Hamlet
undoubtedly the more enigmatic and absorbing of the two. Don
Quixote belongs to the past. He embodies the naïve spirit of chivalry
which, having outlived its age, gives offence on all hands in a time of
prosaic rationalism, and makes itself a laughing-stock through its
importunate enthusiasms. He has the firm, easily-comprehensible
contours of a caricature. Hamlet belongs to the future, to the
modern age. He embodies the lofty and reflective spirit, standing
isolated, with its severely exalted ideals, in corrupt or worthless
surroundings, forced to conceal its inmost nature, yet everywhere
arousing hostility. He has the unfathomable spirit and ever-changing
physiognomy of genius. Goethe, in his celebrated exposition of
Hamlet (Wilhelm Meister, Book iv. chap. 13), maintains that in this
case a great deed is imposed upon a soul which is not strong
enough for it:—

"There is an oak-tree planted in a costly jar, which should have


borne only pleasant flowers in its bosom; the roots expand, the
jar is shivered. A lovely, pure, noble, and most moral nature,
without the strength of nerve which forms a hero, sinks beneath
a burden which it cannot bear and must not cast away."

This interpretation is brilliant and thoughtful, but not entirely just.


One can trace in it the spirit of the period of humanity, transforming
in its own image a figure belonging to the Renaissance. Hamlet
cannot really be called, without qualification, "lovely, pure, noble and
most moral"—he who says to Ophelia the penetratingly true,
unforgettable words, "I am myself indifferent honest; but yet I could
accuse me of such things, that it were better my mother had not
borne me." The light of such a saying as this takes the colour out of
Goethe's adjectives. It is true that Hamlet goes on to ascribe to
himself evil qualities of which he is quite innocent; but he was
doubtless sincere in the general tenor of his speech, to which all
men of the better sort will subscribe. Hamlet is no model of virtue.
He is not simply pure, noble, moral, &c., but is, or becomes, other
things as well—wild, bitter, harsh, now tender, now coarse, wrought
up to the verge of madness, callous, cruel. No doubt he is too weak
for his task, or rather wholly unsuited to it; but he is by no means
devoid of physical strength or power of action. He is no child of the
period of humanity, moral and pure, but a child of the Renaissance,
with its impulsive energy, its irrepressible fulness of life and its
undaunted habit of looking death in the eyes.
Shakespeare at first conceived Hamlet as a youth. In the First
Quarto he is quite young, probably nineteen. It accords with this age
that he should be a student at Wittenberg; young men at that time
began and ended their university course much earlier than in our
days. It accords with this age that his mother should address him as
"boy" ("How now, boy!" iii. 4—a phrase which is deleted in the next
edition), and that the word "young" should be continually prefixed to
his name, not merely to distinguish him from his father. The King,
too, in the early edition (not in that of 1604) currently addresses him
as "son Hamlet;" and finally his mother is still young enough to
arouse—or at least to enable Claudius plausibly to pretend—the
passion which has such terrible results. Hamlet's speech to his
mother—
"At your age
The hey-day of the blood is tame, it's humble,
And waits upon the judgment,"
does not occur in the 1603 edition. The decisive proof, however, of
the fact that Hamlet at first appeared in Shakespeare's eyes much
younger (eleven years, to be precise) than he afterwards made him,
is to be found in the graveyard scene (v. I). In the older edition, the
First Gravedigger says that the skull of the jester Yorick has lain a
dozen years in the earth; in the edition of 1604 this is changed to
twenty-three years. Here, too, it is explicitly indicated that Hamlet,
who as a child knew Yorick, is now thirty years old; for the
Gravedigger first states that he took to his trade on the very day on
which Prince Hamlet was born, and a little later adds: "I have been
sexton here, man and boy, thirty years." It accords with this that the
Player-King now mentions thirty years as the time that has elapsed
since his marriage with the Queen, and that Ophelia (iii. I) speaks of
Hamlet as the "unmatch'd form of blown [i.e. mature] youth."
The process of thought in Shakespeare's mind is evident. At first it
seemed to him as if the circumstances of the case demanded that
Hamlet should be a youth; for thus the overwhelming effect
produced upon him by his mother's prompt forgetfulness of his
father and hasty marriage seemed most intelligible. He had been
living far from the great world, in quiet Wittenberg, never doubting
that life was in fact as harmonious as it is apt to appear in the eyes
of a young prince. He believed in the realisation of ideals here on
earth, imagined that intellectual nobility and fine feelings ruled the
world, that justice reigned in public, faith and honour in private, life.
He admired his great father, honoured his beautiful mother,
passionately loved the charming Ophelia, thought nobly of
humankind, and especially of women. From the moment he loses his
father, and is forced to change his opinion of his mother, this serene
view of life is darkened. If his mother has been able to forget his
father and marry this man, what is woman worth? and what is life
worth? At the very outset, then, when he has not even heard of his
father's ghost, much less seen or held converse with it, sheer
despair speaks in his monologue:
"O that this too too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew:
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter!"
Hence, also, his naïve surprise that one may smile and smile and yet
be a villain. He regards what has happened as a typical occurrence,
a specimen of what the world really is. Hence his words to
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern: "I have of late—but wherefore I
know not—lost all my mirth." And those others: "What a piece of
work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! ... in
action, how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! the
beauty of the world!" These words express his first bright view of
life. But that has vanished, and the world is no longer anything to
him but a "foul and pestilent congregation of vapours." And man!
What is this "quintessence of dust" to him? He has no pleasure in
man or woman.
Hence arise his thoughts of suicide. The finer a young man's
character, the stronger is his desire, on entering life, to see his ideals
consummated in persons and circumstances. Hamlet suddenly
realises that everything is entirely different from what he had
imagined, and feels as if he must die because he cannot set it right.
He finds it very difficult to believe that the world is so bad; therefore
he is always seeking for new proofs of it; therefore, for instance, he
plans the performance of the play. His joy whenever he tears the
mask from baseness is simply the joy of realisation, with deep
sorrow in the background—abstract satisfaction produced by the
feeling that at last he understands the worthlessness of the world.
His divination was just—events confirm it. There is no cold-hearted
pessimism here. Hamlet's fire is never quenched; his wound never
heals. Laertes' poisoned blade gives the quietus to a still tortured
soul.[1].
All this, though we can quite well imagine it of a man of thirty, is
more natural, more what we should expect, in one of nineteen. But
as Shakespeare worked on at his drama, and came to deposit in
Hamlet's mind, as in a treasury, more and more of his own life-
wisdom, of his own experience, and of his own keen and virile wit,
he saw that early youth was too slight a framework to support this
intellectual weight, and gave Hamlet the age of ripening manhood.
[2]

Hamlet's faith and trust in humankind are shattered before the Ghost
appears to him. From the moment when his father's spirit
communicates to him a far more appalling insight into the facts of
the situation, his whole inner man is in wild revolt.
This is the cause of the leave-taking, the silent leave-taking, from
Ophelia, whom in letters he had called his soul's idol. His ideal of
womanhood no longer exists. Ophelia now belongs to those "trivial
fond records" which the sense of his great mission impels him to
efface from the tablets of his memory. There is no room in his soul
for his task and for her, passive and obedient to her father as she is.
Confide in her he cannot; she has shown how unequal she is to the
exigencies of the situation by refusing to receive his letters and
visits. She actually hands over his last letter to her father, which
means that it will be shown and read at court. At last, she even
consents to play the spy upon him. He no longer believes or can
believe in any woman.
He intends to proceed at once to action, but too many thoughts
crowd in upon him. He broods over that horror which the Ghost has
revealed to him, and over the world in which such a thing could
happen; he doubts whether the apparition was really his father, or
perhaps a deceptive, malignant spirit; and, lastly, he has doubts of
himself, of his ability to upraise and restore what has been
overthrown, of his fitness for the vocation of avenger and judge. His
doubt as to the trustworthiness of the Ghost leads to the
performance of the play within the play, which proves the King's
guilt. His feeling of his own unfitness for his task leads to continued
procrastination.
During the course of the play it is sufficiently proved that he is not,
in the main, incapable of action. He does not hesitate to stab the
eavesdropper behind the arras; without wavering and without pity
he sends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to certain death; he boards
a hostile ship; and, never having lost sight of his purpose, he takes
vengeance before he dies. But it is clear, none the less, that he has a
great inward obstacle to overcome before he proceeds to the
decisive act. Reflection hinders him; his "resolution is sicklied o'er
with the pale cast of thought," as he says in his soliloquy.
He has become to the popular mind the great type of the
procrastinator and dreamer; and far on into this century, hundreds
of individuals, and even whole races, have seen themselves reflected
in him as in a mirror.
We must not forget, however, that this dramatic curiosity—a hero
who does not act—was, to a certain extent, demanded by the
technique of this particular drama. If Hamlet had killed the King
directly after receiving the Ghost's revelation, the play would have
come to an end with the first act. It was, therefore, absolutely
necessary that delays should arise.
Shakespeare is misunderstood when Hamlet is taken for that entirely
modern product—a mind diseased by morbid reflection, without
capacity for action. It is nothing less than a freak of ironic fate that
he should have become a sort of symbol of reflective sloth, this man
who has gunpowder in every nerve, and all the dynamite of genius
in his nature.
It was undeniably and indubitably Shakespeare's intention to give
distinctness to Hamlet's character by contrasting it with youthful
energy of action, unhesitatingly pursuing its aim.
While Hamlet is letting himself be shipped off to England, the young
Norwegian prince, Fortinbras, arrives with his soldiers, ready to risk
his life for a patch of ground that "hath in it no profit but the name.
To pay five ducats, five, I would not farm it." Hamlet says to himself
(iv. 4):
"How all occasions do inform against me,
And spur my dull revenge! ...
... I do not know
Why yet I live to say, 'This thing's to do.'"
And he despairs when he contrasts himself with Fortinbras, the
delicate and tender prince, who, at the head of his brave troops,
dares death and danger "even for an egg-shell":
"Rightly to be great
Is not to stir without great argument,
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw
When honour's at the stake."
But with Hamlet it is a question of more than "honour," a conception
belonging to a sphere far below his. It is natural that he should feel
ashamed at the sight of Fortinbras marching off to the sound of
drum and trumpet at the head of his forces—he, who has not carried
out, or even laid, any plan; who, after having by means of the play
satisfied himself of the King's guilt, and at the same time betrayed
his own state of mind, is now writhing under the consciousness of
impotence. But the sole cause of this impotence is the paralysing
grasp laid on all his faculties by his new realisation of what life is,
and the broodings born of this realisation. Even his mission of
vengeance sinks into the background of his mind. Everything is at
strife within him—his duty to his father, his duty to his mother,
reverence, horror of crime, hatred, pity, fear of action, and fear of
inaction. He feels, even if he does not expressly say so, how little is
gained by getting rid of a single noxious animal. He himself is
already so much more than what he was at first—the youth chosen
to execute a vendetta. He has become the great sufferer, who jeers
and mocks, and rebukes the world that racks him. He is the cry of
humanity, horror-struck at its own visage.
There is no "general meaning" on the surface of Hamlet. Lucidity
was not the ideal Shakespeare had before him while he was
producing this tragedy, as it had been when he was composing
Richard III. Here there are plenty of riddles and self-contradictions;
but not a little of the attraction of the play depends on this very
obscurity.
We all know that kind of well-written book which is blameless in
form, obvious in intention, and in which the characters stand out
sharply defined. We read it with pleasure; but when we have read it,
we are done with it. There is nothing to be read between the lines,
no gulf between this passage and that, no mystic twilight anywhere
in it, no shadows in which we can dream. And, again, there are
other books whose fundamental idea is capable of many
interpretations, and affords matter for much dispute, but whose
significance lies less in what they say to us than in what they lead us
to imagine, to divine. They have the peculiar faculty of setting
thoughts and feelings in motion; more thoughts than they
themselves contain, and perhaps of a quite different character.
Hamlet is such a book. As a piece of psychological development, it
lacks the lucidity of classical art; the hero's soul has all the
untranspicuousness and complexity of a real soul; but one
generation after another has thrown its imagination into the
problem, and has deposited in Hamlet's soul the sum of its
experience.
To Hamlet life is half reality, half a dream. He sometimes resembles
a somnambulist, though he is often as wakeful as a spy. He has so
much presence of mind that he is never at a loss for the aptest
retort, and, along with it, such absence of mind that he lets go his
fixed determination in order to follow up some train of thought or
thread some dream-labyrinth. He appals, amuses, captivates,
perplexes, disquiets us. Few characters in fiction have so disquieted
the world. Although he is incessantly talking, he is solitary by nature.
He typifies, indeed, that solitude of soul which cannot impart itself.
"His name," says Victor Hugo, "is as the name on a woodcut cut of
Albert Dürer's: Melancholia. The bat flits over Hamlet's head; at his
feet sit Knowledge, with globe and compass, and Love, with an
hour-glass; while behind him, on the horizon, rests a giant sun,
which only serves to make the sky above him darker." But from
another point of view Hamlet's nature is that of the hurricane—a
thing of wrath and fury, and tempestuous scorn, strong enough to
sweep the whole world clean.
There is in him no less indignation than melancholy; in fact, his
melancholy is a result of his indignation. Sufferers and thinkers have
found in him a brother. Hence the extraordinary popularity of the
character, in spite of its being the reverse of obvious.
Audiences and readers feel with Hamlet and understand him; for all
the better-disposed among us make the discovery, when we go forth
into life as grown-up men and women, that it is not what we had
imagined it to be, but a thousandfold more terrible. Something is
rotten in the state of Denmark. Denmark is a prison, and the world
is full of such dungeons. A spectral voice says to us: "Horrible things
have happened; horrible things are happening every day. Be it your
task to repair the evil, to rearrange the course of things. The world
is out of joint; it is for you to set it right." But our arms fall
powerless by our sides. Evil is too strong, too cunning for us.
In Hamlet, the first philosophical drama of the modern era, we meet
for the first time the typical modern character, with its intense
feeling of the strife between the ideal and the actual world, with its
keen sense of the chasm between power and aspiration, and with
that complexity of nature which shows itself in wit without mirth,
cruelty combined with sensitiveness, frenzied impatience at war with
inveterate procrastination.
[1] See Hermann Türck: Das psychologische Problem in der Hamlet-Tragödie.
1890.
[2] See E. Sullivan: "On Hamlet's Age." New Shakspere Society's Transactions.
1880-86.

XV

HAMLET AS A DRAMA

Let us now look at Hamlet as a drama; and, to get the full


impression of Shakespeare's greatness, let us first recall its purely
theatrical, materially visible side, that which dwells in the memory
simply as pantomime.[1].
The night-watch on the platform before the Castle of Elsinore, and
the appearance of the Ghost to the soldiers and officers there. Then,
in contrast to the splendidly-attired courtiers, the blackrobed figure
of the Prince, standing apart, a living image of grief, his countenance
bespeaking both soul and intellect, but with an expression which
seems to say that henceforth joy and he are strangers. Next, his
meeting with his father's spirit; the oath upon the sword, with the
constant change of place. Then his wild behaviour when, to hide his
excitement, he feigns madness. Then the play within the play; the
sword-thrust through the arras; the beautiful Ophelia with flowers
and straw in her hair; Hamlet with Yorick's skull in his hand; the
struggle with Laertes in Ophelia's grave, that grotesque but most
significant episode. According to the custom of the time, a dumb
show foretold the poisoning in the play, and this fight in the grave is
the dumb show which foretells the mortal combat that is soon to
take place: both are presently to be swallowed up by the grave in
which they stand. Then follows the fencing-scene, during the course
of which the Queen dies by the poison which the King destined for
Hamlet, and Laertes by the stroke of the poisoned sword also
prepared for the Prince, who, with a last great effort, kills the King,
and then sinks down poisoned. This wholesale "havock" arranged by
the poet, a fourfold lying-in-state, has its gloom broken by the
triumphal march of young Fortinbras, which, in its turn, soon
changes to a funeral measure. The whole is as effective to the eye
as it is great and beautiful.
And now add to this ocular picturesqueness of the play the
fascination which it owes to the sympathy Shakespeare has made us
feel for its principal character, the impression he has given us of the
agonies of a strong and sensitive spirit surrounded by corruption and
depravity. Hamlet was by nature candid, enthusiastic, trustful,
loving; the guile of others forces him to take refuge in guile; the
wickedness of others drives him to distrust and hate; and the crime
committed against his murdered father calls upon him from the
underworld for vengeance.
His indignation at the infamy around him is heartrending, his
contempt for it is stimulating.
By nature he is a thinker. He thinks not only when he is
contemplating and planning a course of action, but also from a
passionate longing for comprehension in the abstract. Though he is
merely making use of the players to unmask the murderer, he gives
them apt and profound advice with regard to the practice of their
art. When Rosencrantz and Guildenstern question him as to the
reason of his melancholy, he expounds to them in words of deep
significance his rooted distaste for life.
The feeling produced in him by any strong impression never finds
vent in straightforward, laconic words. His speeches never take the
direct, the shortest way to express his thoughts. They consist of
ingenious, far-fetched similes and witty conceits, apparently remote
from the matter in hand. Sarcastic and enigmatical phrases conceal
his emotions. This dissimulation is forced upon him by the very
strength of his feelings: in order not to betray himself, not to give
way to the pain he is suffering, he must smother it in fantastic and
boisterous ejaculations. Thus he shouts after having seen the
apparition: "Hillo, ho, ho, boy! come, bird, come!" Thus he
apostrophises the Ghost: "Well said, old mole! canst work i' the
earth so fast?" And therefore, after the play has made the King
betray himself, he cries: "Ah, ha! Come, some music! come, the
recorders!" His feigned madness is only an intentional exaggeration
of this tendency.
The horrible secret that has been discovered to him has upset his
equilibrium. The show of madness enables him to find solace in
expressing indirectly what it tortures him to talk of directly, and at
the same time his seeming lunacy diverts attention from the real
reason of his deep melancholy. He does not altogether dissemble
when he talks so wildly; given his surroundings, these fantastic and
daring sarcasms are a natural enough mode of utterance for the wild
agitation produced by the horror that has entered into his life;
"though this be madness, yet there is method in't." But the almost
frenzied excitement into which he is so often thrown by the action of
others subsides at intervals, when he feels the need for mental
concentration—a craving which he satisfies in the solitary reflections
forming his monologues.
When his passions are roused, he has difficulty in controlling them.
It is nervous over-excitement that finds vent when he bids Ophelia
get her to a nunnery, and it is in a fit of nervous frenzy that he stabs
Polonius. But his passion generally strikes inwards. Constrained as
he is, or thinks himself, to employ dissimulation and cunning, he is in
a fever of impatience, and is for ever reviling and scoffing at himself
for his inaction, as though it were due to indifference or cowardice.
Distrust, that new element in his character, makes him cautious; he
cannot act on impulse, nor even speak. "There's ne'er a villain
dwelling in all Denmark," he begins; "so great as the King" should be
the continuation; but fear of being betrayed by his comrades takes
possession of him, and he ends with, "but he's an arrant knave."
He is by nature open-hearted and warm, as we see him with
Horatio; he speaks to the sentinel on the platform as to a comrade;
he is cordial, at first, to old acquaintances like Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern; and he is frank, amiable, kind without condescension,
to the troupe of travelling players. But reticence has been suddenly
forced upon him by the bitterest, most agonising experiences; no
sooner has he put on a mask, so as not to be instantly found out,
than he feels that he is being spied upon; even his friends and the
woman he loves are on the side of his opponents; and though he
believes his life to be threatened, he feels that he must keep silent
and wait.
His mask is often enough only of gauze; if only for the sake of the
spectators, Shakespeare had to make the madness transparent, that
it might not pall.
Read the witty repartees of Hamlet to Polonius (ii. 2), beginning
with, "What do you read, my lord?" "Words, words, words." In reality
there is no trace of madness in all these keenedged sayings, till
Hamlet at last, in order to annul their effect, concludes with the
words, "For yourself, sir, should be old as I am, if, like a crab, you
could go backward."
Or take the long conversation (iii. 2) between Hamlet and
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern about the pipe he has sent for, and
asks them to play on. The whole is a parable as simple and direct as
any in the New Testament. And he points the moral with triumphant
logic in poetic form—

"Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you would make of
me! You would play upon me; you would seem to know my
stops; you would pluck out the heart of my mystery; you would
sound me from my lowest notes to the top of my compass: and
there is much music, excellent music in this little organ; yet
cannot you make it speak. 'Sblood, do you think I am easier to
be played on than a pipe? Call me what instrument you will,
though you can fret me, yet you cannot play upon me."

It is in order to account for such contemptuous and witty outbursts


that Hamlet says: "I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is
southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw."
To outward difficulties are added inward hindrances, which he
cannot overcome. He reproaches himself passionately for this, as we
have seen. But these self-reproaches of Hamlet's do not represent
Shakespeare's view of his character or judgment of his action. They
express the impatience of his nature, his longing for reparation, his
eagerness for the triumph of the right; they do not imply his guilt.
The old doctrine of tragic guilt and punishment, which assumes that
the death at the end of a tragedy must always be in some way
deserved, is nothing but antiquated scholasticism, theology masking
as æsthetics; and it may be regarded as an instance of scientific
progress that this view of the matter, which was heretical only a
generation since, is now very generally accepted. Very different was
the case when the author of these lines, in his earliest published
work, entered a protest against such an intrusion of traditional
morality into a sphere from which it ought simply to be banished.[2]
Some critics have summarily disposed of the question of Hamlet's
possible guilt by the assertion that his madness was not only
assumed, but real. Brinsley Nicholson, for instance, in his essay "Was
Hamlet Mad?" (New Shakspere Society's Transactions, 1880-86),
insists on his morbid melancholy; his strange and incoherent talk
after the apparition of the Ghost; his lack of any sense of
responsibility for the deaths of Polonius, Rosencrantz, and
Guildenstern, of which he was either the direct or indirect cause; his
fear of sending King Claudius to heaven by killing him while he is
praying; his brutality towards Ophelia; his constant suspiciousness,
&c., &c. But to see symptoms of real insanity in all this is not only a
crudity of interpretation, but a misconception of Shakespeare's
evident meaning. It is true that Hamlet does not dissemble as
systematically and coldly as Edgar in the subsequent King Lear; but
that is no reason why his state of mental exaltation should be
mistaken for derangement. He makes use of insanity; he is not in its
power.
Not that it proves really serviceable to him or facilitates his task of
vengeance; on the contrary, it impedes his action by tempting him
from the straight path into witty digressions and deviations. It is
meant to hide his secret; but after the performance of the play the
King knows it, and, though he keeps it up, the feigned madness is
useless. It is because his secret is betrayed that Hamlet now, in
obedience to the Ghost's command, endeavours to awaken his
mother's sense of shame and to detach her from the King. But
having run Polonius through the body, in the belief that he is killing
his stepfather, he is put under guards and sent away, and has still
farther to postpone his revenge.
While many critics of this century, especially Germans, such as
Kreyssig, have contemned Hamlet as a "witty weakling", one
German writer has passionately denied that Shakespeare intended to
represent him as morbidly reflective. This critic, with much
enthusiasm, with fierce onslaughts upon many of his countrymen,
but with a conception of the play which debases its whole idea and
belittles its significance, has tried to prove that the hindrances
Hamlet had to contend with were purely external. I refer to the
lectures on Hamlet delivered by the old Hegelian, Karl Werder, in the
University of Berlin between 1859 and 1872.[3] Their train of
thought, in itself not unreasonable, may be rendered thus:—
What is demanded of Hamlet? That he should kill the King
immediately after the Ghost has revealed his father's fate? Good. But
how, after this assassination, is he to justify his deed to the court
and the people, and ascend the throne? He can produce no proof
whatever of the truth of his accusation. A ghost has told him; that is
all his evidence. He himself is not the hereditary supreme judge of
the land, deprived of his throne by a usurper. The Queen is
"jointress to this warlike state." Denmark is an elective monarchy—
and it is not till the very end of the play that Hamlet speaks of the
King as having "popp'd in between the election and my hopes." In
the eyes of all the characters in the play, the existing state of the
government is quite normal. And is he to overturn it with a dagger-
thrust? Will the Danish people believe his tale of the apparition and
the murder? And suppose that, instead of having recourse to the
dagger, he comes forward with a public accusation, can there be any
doubt that such a king and such a court will speedily make away
with him? For where in this court are the elder Hamlet's adherents?
We see none of them. It seems as though the old hero-king had
taken them all with him to the grave. What has become of his
generals and of his council? Did they die before him? Or was he
solitary in his greatness? Certain it is that Hamlet has no friend but
Horatio, and finds no supporters at the court.
As matters stand, the truth can be brought to light only by the royal
criminal's betraying himself. Hence Hamlet's perfectly logical, most
ingenious device for forcing him to do so. Hamlet's object is not to
take a purely material revenge for the crime, but to reinstate right
and justice in Denmark, to be judge and avenger in one. And this he
cannot be if he simply kills the king off-hand.
All this is acute, and in part correct; only it misstates the theme of
the play. Had Shakespeare had this outward difficulty in mind, he
would have made Hamlet expound, or at least allude to it. As a
matter of fact, Hamlet does nothing of the sort. On the contrary, he
upbraids himself for his inaction and sloth, thereby indicating clearly
enough that the great fundamental difficulty is an inward one, and
that the real scene of the tragedy lies in the hero's soul.
Hamlet himself is comparatively planless, but, as Goethe has
profoundly remarked, the play is not therefore without a plan. And
where Hamlet is most hesitating, where he tries to palliate his
planlessness, there the plan speaks loudest and clearest. Where, for
example, Hamlet comes upon the King at his prayers, and will not
kill him, because he is not to die "in the purging of his soul" but
revelling in sinful debauch, we hear Shakespeare's general idea in
the words which, in the mouth of the hero, sound like an evasion.
Shakespeare, not Hamlet, reserves the King for the death which in
fact overtakes him just as he has poisoned Laertes's blade, seasoned
"a chalice" for Hamlet, out of cowardice allowed the Queen to drain
it, and been the efficient cause of both Laertes's and Hamlet's fatal
wounds. Hamlet thus actually attains his declared object in allowing
the King to live.

[1] K. Werder: Vorlesungen über Hamlet, p. 3 et seq.


[2] Georg Brandes: Æsthetiske Studier. Essay "On the Concept: Tragic Fate."
[3] Karl Werder: Vorlesungen über Shakespeare's Hamlet, 1875.

XVI

HAMLET AND OPHELIA

There is nothing more profoundly conceived in this play than the


Prince's relation to Ophelia. Hamlet is genius in love—genius with its
great demands and its highly unconventional conduct. He does not
love like Romeo, with a love that takes entire possession of his mind.
He has felt himself drawn to Ophelia while his father was still in life,
has sent her letters and gifts, and thinks of her with an infinite
tenderness; but she has not it in her to be his friend and confidant.
"Her whole essence," we read in Goethe, "is ripe, sweet
sensuousness." This is saying too much; it is only the songs she
sings in her madness, "in the innocence of madness," as Goethe
himself strikingly says, that indicate an undercurrent of sensual
desire or sensual reminiscence; her attitude towards the Prince is
decorous, almost to severity. Their relations to each other have been
close—how close the play does not tell.
There is nothing at all conclusive in the fact that Hamlet's manner to
Ophelia is extremely free, not only in the affecting scene in which he
orders her to a nunnery, but still more in their conversation during
the play, when his jesting speeches, as he asks to be allowed to lay
his head in her lap, are more than equivocal, and in one case
unequivocally loose. We have already seen (p. 48) that this is no
evidence against Ophelia's inexperience. Helena in All's Well that
Ends Well is chastity itself, yet Parolles's conversation with her is
extremely—to our way of thinking impossibly—coarse. In the year
1602, speeches like Hamlet's could be made without offence by a
young prince to a virtuous maid of honour.
Whilst English Shakespearians have come forward as Ophelia's
champions, several German critics (among others Tieck, Von Friesen,
and Flathe) have had no doubt that her relations with Hamlet were
of the most intimate. Shakespeare has intentionally left this
undecided, and it is difficult to see why his readers should not do the
same.
Hamlet draws away from Ophelia from the moment when he feels
himself the appointed minister of a sacred revenge. In deep grief he
bids her farewell without a word, grasps her wrist, holds it at arm's
length from him, "peruses" her face as if he would draw it—then
shakes her arm gently, nods his head thrice, and departs with a
"piteous" sigh.
If after this he shows himself hard, almost cruel, to her, it is because
she was weak and tried to deceive him. She is a soft, yielding
creature, with no power of resistance; a loving soul, but without the
passion which gives strength. She resembles Desdemona in the
unwisdom with which she acts towards her lover, but falls far short
of her in warmth and resoluteness of affection. She does not in the
least understand Hamlet's grief over his mother's conduct. She
observes his depression without divining its cause. When, after
seeing the Ghost, he approaches her in speechless agitation, she
never guesses that anything terrible has happened to him; and, in
spite of her compassion for his morbid state, she consents without
demur to decoy him into talking to her, while her father and the King
spy upon their meeting. It is then that he breaks out into all those
famous speeches: "Are you honest? Are you fair?" &c.; the secret
meaning of them being: You are like my mother! You too could have
acted as she did!
Hamlet has not a thought for Ophelia in his excitement after the
killing of Polonius; but Shakespeare gives us indirectly to understand
that grief on her account overtook him afterwards—"he weeps for
what is done." Later he seems to forget her, and therefore his anger
at her brother's lamentations as she is placed in her grave, and his
own frenzied attempt to outdo the "emphasis" of Laertes's grief,
seem strange to us. But from his words we understand that she has
been the solace of his life, though she could not be its stay. She on
her side has been very fond of him, has loved him with unobtrusive
tenderness. It is with pain she has heard him speak of his love for
her as a thing of the past ("I did love you once"); with deep grief
she has seen what she takes to be the eclipse of his bright spirit in
madness ("Oh, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!"); and at last
the death of her father by Hamlet's hand deprives her of her own
reason. At one blow she has lost both father and lover. In her
madness she does not speak Hamlet's name, nor show any trace of
sorrow that it is he who has murdered her father. Forgetfulness of
this cruellest blow mitigates her calamity; her hard fate condemns
her to solitude; and this solitude is peopled and alleviated by
madness.
In depicting the relation between Faust and Gretchen, Goethe
appropriated and reproduced many features of the relation between
Hamlet and Ophelia. In both cases we have the tragic love-tie
between genius and tender girlhood. Faust kills Gretchen's mother
as Hamlet kills Ophelia's father. In Faust also there is a duel between
the hero and his mistress's brother, in which the brother is killed.
And in both cases the young girl in her misery goes mad. It is clear
that Goethe actually had Ophelia in his thoughts, for he makes his
Mephistopheles sing a song to Gretchen which is a direct imitation,
almost a translation, of Ophelia's song about Saint Valentine's Day.
[1] There is, however, a more delicate poetry in Ophelia's madness
than in Gretchen's. Gretchen's intensifies the tragic impression of the
young girl's ruin; Ophelia's alleviates both her own and the
spectator's suffering.
Hamlet and Faust represent the genius of the Renaissance and the
genius of modern times; though Hamlet, in virtue of his creator's
marvellous power of rising above his time, covers the whole period
between him and us, and has a range of significance to which we,
on the threshold of the twentieth century, can foresee no limit.
Faust is probably the highest poetic expression of modern humanity
—striving, investigating, enjoying, and mastering at last both itself
and the world. He changes gradually under his creator's hands into a
great symbol; but in the second half of his life a superabundance of
allegoric traits veils his individual humanity. It did not lie in
Shakespeare's way to embody a being whose efforts, like Faust's,
were directed towards experience, knowledge, perception of truth in
general. Even when Shakespeare rises highest, he keeps nearer the
earth.
But none the less dear to us art thou, O Hamlet! and none the less
valued and understood by the men of to-day. We love thee like a
brother. Thy melancholy is ours, thy wrath is ours, thy contemptuous
wit avenges us on those who fill the earth with their empty noise
and are its masters. We know the depth of thy suffering when wrong
and hypocrisy triumph, and oh! thy still deeper suffering on feeling
that that nerve in thee is severed which should lead from thought to
victorious action. To us, too, the voices of the mighty dead have
spoken from the under-world. We, too, have seen our mother wrap
the purple robe of power round the murderer of "the majesty of
buried Denmark." We, too, have been betrayed by the friends of our
youth; for us, too, have swords been dipped in poison. How well do
we know that graveyard mood in which disgust and sorrow for all
earthly things seize upon the soul. The breath from open graves has
set us, too, dreaming with a skull in our hands!
[1]
OPHELIA.
"To-morrow is Saint Valentine's day,
All in the morning betime,
And I a maid at your window,
To be your Valentine.
Then up he rose, and donn'd his clothes
And dupp'd the chamber-door;
Let in the maid, that out a maid
Never departed more."
MEPHISTOFELES.
"Was machst Du mir
Vor Liebchens Thür
Kathrinchen, hier
Bei frühem Tagesblicke?
Lass, lass es sein!
Er lässt dich ein
Als Mädchen ein
Als Mädchen nicht zurücke."

XVII

HAMLET'S INFLUENCE ON LATER TIMES

If we to-day can feel with Hamlet, it is certainly no wonder that the


play was immensely popular in its own day. It is easy to understand
its charm for the cultivated youth of the period; but it would be
surprising, if we did not realise the alertness of the Renaissance and
its wonderful receptivity for the highest culture, to find that Hamlet
was in as great favour with the lower ranks of society as with the
higher. A remarkable proof of this tragedy's and of Shakespeare's
popularity in the years immediately following its appearance, is
afforded by some memoranda in a log-book kept by a certain
Captain Keeling, of the ship Dragon, which, in September 1607, lay
off Sierra Leone in company with another English vessel, the Hector
(Captain Hawkins), both bound for India. They run as follows:—

"September 5 [At "Serra Leona"]. I sent the interpreter,


according to his desier, abord the Hector, whear he brooke fast,
and after came abord mee, wher we gave the tragedie of
Hamlett.
"[Sept.] 30. Captain Hawkins dined with me, wher my
companions acted Kinge Richard the Second.
"31. I envited Captain Hawkins to a ffishe dinner, and had
Hamlet acted abord me: wch I permitt to keepe my people from
idlenes and unlawfull games, or sleepe."

Who could have imagined that Hamlet, three years after its
publication, would be so well-known and so dear to English sailors
that they could act it for their own amusement at a moment's notice!
Could there be a stronger proof of its universal popularity? It is a
true picture of the culture of the Renaissance, this tragedy of the
Prince of Denmark acted by common English sailors off the west
coast of Africa. It is a pity that Shakespeare himself, in all human
probability, never knew of it.
Hamlet's ever-increasing significance as time rolls on is proportionate
to his significance in his own day. A great deal in the poetry of the
nineteenth century owes its origin to him. Goethe interpreted and
remodelled him in Wilhelm Meister, and this remodelled Hamlet
resembles Faust. The trio, Faust, Gretchen, Valentin, in Goethe's
drama answers to the trio, Hamlet, Ophelia, Laertes. Faust
transplanted into English soil produced Byron's Manfred, a true
though far-off descendant of the Danish Prince. In Germany, again,
the Byronic development assumed a new and Hamlet-like (or rather
Yorick-like) form in Heine's bitter and fantastic wit, in his hatreds and
caprices and intellectual superiority. Borne is the first to interpret
Hamlet as the German of his day, always moving in a circle and
never able to act. But he feels the mystery of the play, and says
aptly and beautifully, "Over the picture hangs a veil of gauze. We
want to lift it to examine the painting more closely, but find that the
veil itself is painted."
In France, the men of Alfred de Musset's generation, whom he has
portrayed in his Confessions d'un Enfant du Siècle, remind us in
many ways of Hamlet—nervous, inflammable as gunpowder, broken-
winged, with no sphere of action commensurate with their desires,
and with no power Of action in the sphere which lay open to them.
And Lorenzaccio, perhaps Musset's finest male character, is the
French Hamlet—practised in dissimulation, procrastinating, witty,
gentle to women yet wounding them with cruel words, morbidly
desirous to atone for the emptiness of his evil life by one great deed,
and acting too late, uselessly, desperately.
Hamlet, who centuries before had been young England, and was to
Musset, for a time, young France, became in the 'forties, as Borne
had foretold, the accepted type of Germany. "Hamlet is Germany,"
sang Freiligrath.[1]
Kindred political conditions determined that the figure of Hamlet
should at the same period, and twenty years later to a still greater
extent, dominate Russian literature. Its influence can be traced from
Pushkin and Gogol to Gontscharoff and Tolstoi, and it actually
pervades the whole life-work of Turgueneff. But in this case Hamlet's
vocation of vengeance is overlooked; the whole stress is laid on the
general discrepancy between reflection and power of action.
In the development of Polish literature, too, during this century,
there came a time when the poets were inclined to say: "We are
Hamlet; Hamlet is Poland." We find marked traits of his character
towards the middle of the century in all the imaginative spirits of
Poland: in Mickiewicz, in Slowacki, in Krasinski. From their youth
they had stood in his position. Their world was out of joint, and was
to be set right by their weak arms. High-born and noble-minded,
they feel, like Hamlet, all the inward fire and outward impotence of
their youth; the conditions that surround them are to them one
great horror; they are disposed at one and the same time to
dreaming and to action, to over-much reflection and to recklessness.
Like Hamlet, they have seen their mother, the land that gave them
birth, profaned by passing under the power of a royal robber and
murderer. The court to which at times they are offered access strikes
them with terror, as the court of Claudius struck terror to the Danish
Prince, as the court in Krasinski's Temptation (a symbolic
representation of the court of St. Petersburg) strikes terror to the
young hero of the poem. These kinsmen of Hamlet are, like him,
cruel to their Ophelia, and forsake her when she loves them best;
like him, they allow themselves to be sent far away to foreign lands;
and when they speak they dissemble like him—clothe their meaning
in similes and allegories. What Hamlet says of himself applies to
them: "Yet have I something in me dangerous." Their peculiarly
Polish characteristic is that what enervates and impedes them is not
their reflective but their poetic bias. Reflection is what ruins the
German of this type; wild dissipation the Frenchman; indolence, self-
mockery, and self-despair the Russian; but it is imagination that
leads the Pole astray and tempts him to live apart from real life.
The Hamlet character presents a multitude of different aspects.
Hamlet is the doubter; he is the man whom over-scrupulousness or
over-deliberation condemns to inactivity; he is the creature of pure
intelligence, who sometimes acts nervously, and is sometimes too
nervous to act at all; and, lastly, he is the avenger, the man who
dissembles that his revenge may be the more effectual. Each of
these aspects is developed by the poets of Poland. There is a touch
of Hamlet in several of Mickiewicz's creations—in Wallenrod, in
Gustave, in Conrad, in Robak. Gustave speaks the language of
philosophic aberration; Conrad is possessed by the spirit of
philosophic brooding; Wallenrod and Robak dissemble or disguise
themselves for the sake of revenge, and the latter, like Hamlet, kills
the father of the woman he loves. In Slowacki's work the Hamlet-
type takes a much more prominent place. His Kordjan is a Hamlet
who follows his vocation of avenger, but has not the strength for it.
The Polish tendency to fantasticating interposes between him and
his projected tyrannicide. And while Slowacki gives us the radical
Hamlet type, so we find the corresponding conservative Hamlet in
Krasinski. The hero of Krasinski's Undivine Comedy has more than
one trait in common with the Prince of Denmark. He has Hamlet's
sensitiveness and power of imagination. He is addicted to
monologues and cultivates the drama. He has an extremely tender
conscience, but can commit most cruel actions. He is punished for
the excessive irritability of his character by the insanity of his wife,
very much as Hamlet, by his feigned madness, leads to the real
madness of Ophelia. But this Hamlet is consumed by a more modern
doubt than that which besets his Renaissance prototype. Hamlet
doubts whether the spirit on whose behest he is acting is more than
an empty phantasm. When Count Henry shuts himself up in "the
castle of the Holy Trinity," he is not sure that the Holy Trinity itself is
more than a figment of the brain.
In other words: nearly two centuries and a half after the figure of
Hamlet was conceived in Shakespeare's imagination, we find it living
in English and French literature, and reappearing as a dominant type
in German and two Slavonic languages. And now, three hundred
years after his creation, Hamlet is still the confidant and friend of
sad and thoughtful souls in every land. There is something unique in
this. With such piercing vision has Shakespeare searched out the
depths of his own, and at the same time of all human, nature, and
so boldly and surely has he depicted the outward semblance of what
he saw, that, centuries later, men of every country and of every race
have felt their own being moulded like wax in his hand, and have
seen themselves in his poetry as in a mirror.

[1]
"Deutschland ist Hamlet! Ernst und stumm
In seinen Thoren jede Nacht
Geht die begrabne Freiheit um,
Und winkt den Männern auf der Wacht.
Da steht die Hohe, blank bewehrt,
Und sagt dem Zaudrer, der noch zweifelt:
'Sei mir ein Rächer, zieh dein Schwert!
Man hat mir Gift in's Ohr geträufelt.'"

XVIII

HAMLET AS A CRITIC
Along with so much else, Hamlet gives us what we should scarcely
have expected—an insight into Shakespeare's own ideas of his art as
poet and actor, and into the condition and relations of his theatre in
the years 1602-3.
If we read attentively the Prince's words to the players, we see
clearly why it is always the sweetness, the mellifluousness of
Shakespeare's art that his contemporaries emphasise. To us he may
seem audacious, harrowingly pathetic, a transgressor of all bounds;
in comparison with contemporary artists—not only with the specially
violent and bombastic writers, like the youthful Marlowe, but with all
of them—he is self-controlled, temperate, delicate, beauty-loving as
Raphael himself. Hamlet says to the players—

"Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you,


trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of your
players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do
not saw the air too much with your hand, thus; but use all
gently: for in the very torrent, tempest, and (as I may say) the
whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance
that may give it smoothness. O! it offends me to the soul to
hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters,
to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who, for the
most part, are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb-shows,
and noise: I would have such a fellow whipped for o'er-doing—
Termagant; it out-herods Herod: pray you, avoid it.
"I Play. I warrant your honour.
"Ham. Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be
your tutor."

Here ought logically to follow a warning against the dangers of


excessive softness and sweetness. But it does not come. He
continues—

"Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this
special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of

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