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SHAKESPEARE SURVEY "harbingers preceding still the fates" and "prologue to the omen coming on" (i, i, 122-3). At the end of the tragedy he compares himself to "an antique Roman" (v, ii, 354). We think the following image is likewise classical in nature: Horatio calls the cock "the trumpet to the morn" that "doth.. .awake the god of day", i.e. the sun (1, i, 150). In his book Shakespeare and the Popular Dramatic Tradition, the English investigator Bethell, mentioned above,? uses all possible means to prove that Shakespeare did not individualize his characters, and, consequently, the style of speech of his characters. He contends that it was a matter of indifference to Shakespeare which of his characters pronounced descriptive speeches. We find matter-of-fact Horatio exclaiming lyrically about the sunrise: "But, look, the morn, in russet mantle clad, walks o'er the dew of yon high eastern hill" (1, i, 166). 10 Had Bethell glanced more attentively at matter-of-fact Horatio's world of images, he would have found more than one poetic image there. Besides the above splendid picture of the morning dressed in a russet mantle, and the no less vivid image: "the trumpet to the morn" that "doth.. .awake the god of day", we can mention his description of the colour of the old Hamlet's beard as "sable silver'd" (1, ii, 241), or Horatio's exclamation at the end of the tragedy: "And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest" (v, ii, 374), which brings to mind the pictures of the Italian Renaissance painters. Horatio, the poor student, who is like Hamlet in the realism of his metaphors and his knowledge of ancient Roman hterature, is not an artificial poet like Laertes, but he is a genuine poet. It is, of course, impossible to speak of any "world of images" in regard to the minor, episodic roles in Shakespeare. But even in regard to them we can draw characteristic conclusions, although these are rather more of a negative nature, so to say, than positive. For example, the three soldiers who stand on guard on the platform before the castle—Marcellus, Bernardo and Francisco—use no classical or 'scholarly' images. In general, the few images we do find in their speeches are far from 'bookish'. " Something is rotten in the state of Denmark", says Marcellus (1, iv, 90). The image used by the "honest soldier" Francisco is also coarse: "Not a mouse stirring" (1, i, 9)—probably a stock expression at the time, approximating the Russian: "Not even a fly flew past." Bernardo borrows a metaphor from military life: "Sit down awhile; and let us once again assail your ears that are so fortified against our story" (1, i, 31). Such is this modest, primitive world, which, however, does have its own individuality. POLONIUS Polonius' world of images is expressive in its own way. He is indeed a very sober man, and, despite his cunning, a very primitive, limited character. "And it must follow, as the night the day" (1, iii, 79). The unquestionable, primitive logic of this metaphor evidently pleases Polonius, for in another passage he uses it again, varying it as follows: "To expostulate.. .why day is day, night, night, and time is time, were nothing but to waste night, day, and time" (n, ii, 85). Metaphysics is evidently not to his taste, although he does like to use high-flown phrases. "Take this from this if this be otherwise", says Polonius (n, ii, 156). Most of his images are similarly straightforward. The word 'tether' is frequently used idiomatically in modern English as a fossilized image in the sense of limit, sphere. In Shakespeare's time it evidently still had the quality of a coloured image in analogous phrases. Polonius says that as a prince Hamlet has a 104 Shakespeare Survey Online © Cambridge University Press, 2007
INDIVIDUALIZATION OF SHAKESPEARE'S CHARACTERS longer tether than Ophelia (i, iii, 125). Comparing Hamlet and his own daughter to cattle is quite in the spirit of Polonius. Polonius tells the King that if he, Polonius, errs in considering love the cause of Hamlet's insanity, "let me be no assistant for a state, but keep a farm and carters" (n,ii, 166). Polonius, the ICing's chamberlain, here appears to us as the proprietor of a manure farm, which, evidently, just suits his character. It is no wonder that a few lines later Hamlet calls him a 'fishmonger' (n, ii, 174), adding, immediately, that he wishes he were as honest. London's fish-dealers evidently were not famed for their honesty, yet in Hamlet's opinion they were more honest than was the courtier Polonius. The term 'fishmonger', by the way, also meant a procurer, the proprietor of a brothel, which, of course, was likewise a suitable vocation for Polonius. The latter is fond of indecencies. "He's for a jig or a tale of bawdry, or he sleeps", Hamlet says of him (n, ii, 530). Polonius himself makes mention of a brothel, calling it "a house of sale" (n, i, 60). Polonius calls Hamlet's vows to Ophelia "sanctified and pious bawds" (1, iii, 130). As was to be expected, Polonius' images are simple and concrete for the most part. Friends should be 'grappled' to the soul "with hoops of steel" (1, iii, 63). A newly acquired and still untried friend is a "new hatcht, unfledged comrade" (1, iii, 65). Vows of love are "blazes... giving more light than heat" (1, iii, 117). Reynaldo has the right to 'sully' Laertes a little "as 'twere a thing a little soil'd i' th' working" (n, i, 40). Polonius says that he did not want to "play the desk or table-book" (n, ii, 136). He likens his artful tricks to the game of bowling (n, i, 66). Good news at the end of a story is like "fruit to" a "great feast" (n, ii, 52). "With devotion's visage and pious action", says Polonius, "we do sugar o'er the devil himself" (m, i, 48). He uses fishing metaphors: wise people, he says, take the "carp of truth" with a "bait of falsehood" (n, i, 63); and hunting metaphors: he knows how to hunt "the trail of policy" (n, ii, 47), and in speaking with Ophelia he calls Hamlet's vows of love "springes to catch woodcocks" (1, iii, 115). The latter image echoes one of Laertes' that we mentioned above (v, ii, 320), when, as we have seen, at the end of the tragedy Laertes casts off, as it were, the brilliantly embroidered cloak of euphuisms. All this points to Polonius' quite realistic turn of mind. We should look in vain for poetic images in his speeches. Even what seems so 'pretty' an image in the eyes of the modern reader— "the wind sits in the shoulder of your sail" (1, iii, 56)—was probably merely a stock phrase and simply meant that there was a fair wind blowing. Polonius, as we have already mentioned, likes to talk 'eloquently'. Remember how he shows off with his figures of speech in the presence of the King and Queen (n, ii, 86 £). "In his young days", Belinski 11 writes about Polonius, "he was a feather-brained, mischievous rake; then, having sown his wild oats, he turned staid, as is the general way, and became: An old man, jesting as of old, exquisitely, adroitly and cleverly, which is now rather ridiculous. (PUSHKIN) Polonius was a great admirer of the theatre. In his student days he took part in plays and "was accounted a good actor". "I did enact Julius Caesar. I was kill'd i' th' Capitol, Brutus kill'd me" (m, ii, 109), he relates. Enumerating all kinds of plays, he makes mention of Seneca and 105 Shakespeare Survey Online © Cambridge University Press, 2007
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the individualization of shakespeare's characters through imagery

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