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Updated: June 23, 2025
We were bewildered at school to be told that walking was a perpetual falling. But life is, in a far more significant way, a perpetual dying. Death is not an eccentricity, but a settled habit of the universe. The drums of to-day call to us, as they call to young Fortinbras in the fifth act of Hamlet, over corpses piled up in such abundance as to be almost ridiculous.
"You will be so miserable when you find you have been madly obstinate. It is very hard, in a country like England, for a young woman to set herself in opposition to certain prejudices." "Are the Duke and Duchess of Fortinbras respectable?" asked Brigit. "What a question!" said Pensée; "of course they are most exclusive."
There was no time to breathe between the departure of this pair of lovers and the arrival of Alda's splendid Life Guardsman, who, horses and all, took up his abode at the Fortinbras Arms, and spent his days in felicity with Alda. A very demonstrative pair they were.
A drama of Hamlet is only possible because the one sceptic is surrounded by characters who have some positive faith, who do their work for good or evil undoubtingly while he is speculating about his. And both Ophelia, and Laertes, Fortinbras, the king, yea the very grave-digger, know well enough what they want, whether Hamlet does or not.
Audley would take rooms at the Fortinbras Arms for the remainder of his stay at Bexley; and indeed, there was a good deal to break the old habit of constantly depending on him, for his brother's young wife was slowly dying in London, and the whole family seemed instinctively to turn to him for comfort and advice, so that he was obliged to be continually going backwards and forwards.
Dauvray and Celia left the rooms and walked to the entrance-doors. But as they walked Celia became alarmed. She was by nature extraordinarily sensitive to impressions. It was to that quick receptivity that the success of "The Great Fortinbras" had been chiefly due. She had a gift of rapid comprehension. It was not that she argued, or deducted, or inferred. But she felt.
In modern stage versions all this falls away, and nobody who has not studied the printed text is conscious of its absence. The commentators, indeed, have proved that Fortinbras is an immensely valuable element in the moral scheme of the play; but from the point of view of pure drama, there is not the slightest necessity for this Norwegian-Danish embroilment or its consequences.
The end of Hamlet is not the end even of a kingdom. Fortinbras comes upon the scene, and life goes on. Our mournings are only interruptions. The ranks of the procession close up and little is changed. Even the funeral of a king is as a rule less an occasion for grief than a spectacle for the curious.
You may remember, sir, that at one point the Prince of Denmark is instructed to 'enter reading. That stage direction I caught at, and by a happy 'improvisation' spread it over the entire play. Not as 'Polonius' only, but as `Bernardo' upon the midnight platform, as 'Osric, as 'Fortinbras, as the 'Second Gravedigger, as one of the odd Players always I entered reading.
In this scene, too, as in others, Forbes-Robertson makes it clear that that final tribute of Fortinbras was fairly won. The soldier if necessary, the fighter is there as supple and strong as a Damascus blade. One is always aware of the "something dangerous," for all his princely manners and scholarly ways. One is never left in doubt as to how this Hamlet will play the man.
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