Summary

The division between the second and third acts is by common consent placed here. The third act occupies the afternoon, evening, and night of the same day with the second.

This soliloquy is Hamlet's first, and perhaps we may find it correct to say only outbreak of self-accusation. He charges himself with lack of feeling, spirit, and courage, in that he has not yet taken vengeance on his uncle. But unless we are prepared to accept and justify to the full his own hardest words against himself, and grant him a muddy-mettled, pigeon-livered rascal, we must examine and understand him, so as to account for his conduct better than he could himself. If we allow that perhaps he accuses himself too much, we may find on reflection that he accuses himself altogether wrongfully. If a man is content to think the worst of Hamlet, I care to hold no argument with that man.

We must not look for expressed logical sequence in a soliloquy, which is a vocal mind. The mind is seldom conscious of the links or transitions of a yet perfectly logical process developed in it. This remark, however, is more necessary in regard to the famous soliloquy to follow.

In Hamlet, misery has partly choked even vengeance; and although sure in his heart that his uncle is guilty, in his brain he is not sure. Bitterly accusing himself in an access of wretchedness and rage and credence, he forgets the doubt that has restrained him, with all besides which he might so well urge in righteous defence, not excuse, of his delay. But ungenerous criticism has, by all but universal consent, accepted his own verdict against himself. So in common life there are thousands on thousands who, upon the sad confession of a man immeasurably greater than themselves, and showing his greatness in the humility whose absence makes admission impossible to them, immediately pounce upon him with vituperation, as if he were one of the vile, and they infinitely better. Such should be indignant with St. Paul and say—if he was the chief of sinners, what insolence to lecture them! and certainly the more justified publican would never by them have been allowed to touch the robe of the less justified Pharisee. Such critics surely take little or no pains to understand the object of their contempt: because Hamlet is troubled and blames himself, they without hesitation condemn him—and there where he is most commendable. It is the righteous man who is most ready to accuse himself; the unrighteous is least ready. Who is able when in deep trouble, rightly to analyze his feelings? Delay in action is not necessarily abandonment of duty; in Hamlet's case it is a due recognition of duty, which condemns precipitancy—and action in the face of doubt, so long as it is nowise compelled, is precipitancy. The first thing is to be sure: Hamlet has never been sure; he spies at length a chance of making himself sure; he seizes upon it; and while his sudden resolve to make use of the players, like the equally sudden resolve to shroud himself in pretended madness, manifests him fertile in expedient, the carrying out of both manifests him right capable and diligent in execution—a man of action in every true sense of the word.

The self-accusation of Hamlet has its ground in the lapse of weeks during which nothing has been done towards punishing the king. Suddenly roused to a keen sense of the fact, he feels as if surely he might have done something. The first act ends with a burning vow of righteous vengeance; the second shows him wandering about the palace in profoundest melancholy—such as makes it more than easy for him to assume the forms of madness the moment he marks any curious eye bent upon him. Let him who has never loved and revered a mother, call such melancholy weakness. He has indeed done nothing towards the fulfilment of his vow; but the way in which he made the vow, the terms in which he exacted from his companions their promise of silence, and his scheme for eluding suspicion, combine to show that from the first he perceived its fulfilment would be hard, saw the obstacles in his way, and knew it would require both time and caution. That even in the first rush of his wrath he should thus be aware of difficulty, indicates moral symmetry; but the full weight of what lay in his path could appear to him only upon reflection. Partly in the light of passages yet to come, I will imagine the further course of his thoughts, which the closing couplet of the first act shows as having already begun to apale 'the native hue of resolution.'

'But how shall I take vengeance on my uncle? Shall I publicly accuse him, or slay him at once? In the one case what answer can I make to his denial? in the other, what justification can I offer? If I say the spirit of my father accuses him, what proof can I bring? My companions only saw the apparition—heard no word from him; and my uncle's party will assert, with absolute likelihood to the minds of those who do not know me—and who here knows me but my mother!—that charge is a mere coinage of jealous disappointment, working upon the melancholy I have not cared to hide. (174-6.) When I act, it must be to kill him, and to what misconstruction shall I not expose myself! (272) If the thing must so be, I must brave all; but I could never present myself thereafter as successor to the crown of one whom I had first slain and then vilified on the accusation of an apparition whom no one heard but myself! I must find proof—such proof as will satisfy others as well as myself. My immediate duty is evidence, not vengeance.'

We have seen besides, that, when informed of the haunting presence of the Ghost, he expected the apparition with not a little doubt as to its authenticity—a doubt which, even when he saw it, did not immediately vanish: is it any wonder that when the apparition was gone, the doubt should return? Return it did, in accordance with the reaction which waits upon all high-strung experience. If he did not believe in the person who performed it, would any man long believe in any miracle? Hamlet soon begins to question whether he can with confidence accept the appearance for that which it appeared and asserted itself to be. He steps over to the stand-point of his judges, and doubts the only testimony he has to produce. Far more:—was he not bound in common humanity, not to say filialness, to doubt it? To doubt the Ghost, was to doubt a testimony which to accept was to believe his father in horrible suffering, his uncle a murderer, his mother at least an adulteress; to kill his uncle was to set his seal to the whole, and, besides, to bring his mother into frightful suspicion of complicity in his father's murder. Ought not the faintest shadow of a doubt, assuaging ever so little the glare of the hell-sun of such crime, to be welcome to the tortured heart? Wretched wife and woman as his mother had shown herself, the Ghost would have him think her far worse—perhaps, even accessory to her husband's murder! For action he must have proof!

At the same time, what every one knew of his mother, coupled now with the mere idea of the Ghost's accusation, wrought in him such misery, roused in him so many torturing and unanswerable questions, so blotted the face of the universe and withered the heart of hope, that he could not but doubt whether, in such a world of rogues and false women, it was worth his while to slay one villain out of the swarm.

Ophelia's behaviour to him, in obedience to her father, of which she gives him no explanation, has added 'the pangs of disprized love,' and increased his doubts of woman-kind. 120.

But when his imagination, presenting afresh the awful interview, brings him more immediately under the influence of the apparition and its behest, he is for the moment delivered both from the stunning effect of its communication and his doubt of its truth; forgetting then the considerations that have wrought in him, he accuses himself of remissness, blames himself grievously for his delay. Soon, however, his senses resume their influence, and he doubts again. So goes the mill-round of his thoughts, with the revolving of many wheels.

His whole conscious nature is frightfully shaken: he would be the poor creature most of his critics would make of him, were it otherwise; it is because of his greatness that he suffers so terribly, and doubts so much. A mother's crime is far more paralyzing than a father's murder is stimulating; and either he has not set himself in thorough earnest to find the proof he needs, or he has as yet been unable to think of any serviceable means to the end, when the half real, half simulated emotion of the Player yet again rouses in him the sense of remissness, leads him to accuse himself of forgotten obligation and heartlessness, and simultaneously suggests a device for putting the Ghost and his words to the test. Instantly he seizes the chance: when a thing has to be done, and can be done, Hamlet is never wanting—shows himself the very promptest of men.

In the last passage of this act I do not take it that he is expressing an idea then first occurring to him: that the whole thing may be a snare of the devil is a doubt with which during weeks he has been familiar.

The delay through which, in utter failure to comprehend his character, he has been so miserably misjudged, falls really between the first and second acts, although it seems in the regard of most readers to underlie and protract the whole play. Its duration is measured by the journey of the ambassadors to and from the neighbouring kingdom of Norway.

It is notably odd, by the way, that those who accuse Hamlet of inaction, are mostly the same who believe his madness a reality! In truth, however, his affected madness is one of the strongest signs of his activity, and his delay one of the strongest proofs of his sanity.

This second act, the third act, and a part always given to the fourth, but which really belongs to the third, occupy in all only one day.

[Footnote 1: Here follows in 1st Q.

[Footnote 2:

'Stones have been known to move, and trees to speak;' &c.

Macbeth, iii. 4.]

[Footnote 3: In the 1st Q. Hamlet, speaking to Horatio (l 37), says,

And if he doe not bleach, and change at that,—

Bleach is radically the same word as blench:—to bleach, to blanch, to blench—to grow white.]

[Footnote 4: Emphasis on May, as resuming previous doubtful thought and suspicion.]

[Footnote 5: —caused from the first by his mother's behaviour, not constitutional.]

[Footnote 6: —'such conditions of the spirits'.]

[Footnote 7: Here is one element in the very existence of the preceding act: doubt as to the facts of the case has been throughout operating to restrain him; and here first he reveals, perhaps first recognizes its influence. Subject to change of feeling with the wavering of conviction, he now for a moment regards his uncertainty as involving unnatural distrust of a being in whose presence he cannot help feeling him his father. He was familiar with the lore of the supernatural, and knew the doubt he expresses to be not without support.—His companions as well had all been in suspense as to the identity of the apparition with the late king.]

[Page 116]

Enter King, Queene, Polonius, Ophelia, Rosincrance, Guildenstern, and Lords.[1] [Sidenote: Guyldensterne, Lords.]

Rosin. He does confesse he feeles himselfe distracted, [Sidenote: 92] But from what cause he will by no meanes speake. [Sidenote: a will]

Qu. Did he receiue you well?

Rosin. Most like a Gentleman.

Guild. But with much forcing of his disposition.[4]

Rosin. Niggard of question, but of our demands Most free in his reply.[5]

Qu. Did you assay him to any pastime?

Pol. 'Tis most true; And he beseech'd me to intreate your Majesties To heare, and see the matter.

King. With all my heart, and it doth much content me To heare him so inclin'd. Good Gentlemen,

[Footnote 1: This may be regarded as the commencement of the Third Act.]

[Footnote 2: The phrase seems to imply a doubt of the genuineness of the lunacy.]

[Footnote 3: Nominative pronoun omitted here.]

[Foonote 6: over-reached—came up with, caught up, overtook.]

[Page 118]

Ophe. Madam, I wish it may.

[Footnote 1: 'edge him on'—somehow corrupted into egg.]

[Footnote 2: confront.]

[Footnote 3: Clause in parenthesis not in Q.]

[Footnote 4: —apologetic to the queen.]

[Footnote 5: —going up to Ophelia—I would say, who stands at a little distance, and has not heard what has been passing between them.]

[Footnote 6: The queen encourages Ophelia in hoping to marry Hamlet, and may so have a share in causing a certain turn her madness takes.]

[Footnote 7: —aside to the king.]

[Footnote 8: —to Ophelia: her prayer-book. 122.]

[Footnote 9: 1st Q.

[Footnote 10: —aside to the king. I insert these asides, and suggest the queen's going up to Ophelia, to show how we may easily hold Ophelia ignorant of their plot. Poor creature as she was, I would believe Shakspere did not mean her to lie to Hamlet. This may be why he omitted that part of her father's speech in the 1st Q. given in the note immediately above, telling her the king is going to hide. Still, it would be excuse enough for her, that she thought his madness justified the deception.]

[Footnote 11: —ugly to the paint that helps by hiding it—to which it lies so close, and from which it has no secrets. Or, 'ugly to' may mean, 'ugly compared with.']

[Footnote 12: 'most painted'—very much painted. His painted word is the paint to the deed. Painted may be taken for full of paint.]

[Footnote 13: This speech of the king is the first assurance we have of his guilt.]

[Page 120]

Enter Hamlet.[2]

[Footnote 1: Not in Q.—They go behind the tapestry, where it hangs over the recess of the doorway. Ophelia thinks they have left the room.]

[Footnote 2: In Q. before last speech.]

[Footnote 3: Perhaps to a Danish or Dutch critic, or one from the eastern coast of England, this simile would not seem so unfit as it does to some.]

[Footnote 4: To print this so as I would have it read, I would complete this line from here with points, and commence the next with points. At the other breaks of the soliloquy, as indicated below, I would do the same—thus:

[Footnote 5: Break.]

[Footnote 6: Break.]

[Footnote 7: Emphasis on what.]

[Footnote 8: Such dreams as the poor Ghost's.]

[Footnote 9: Break. —'pawse' is the noun, and from its use at page 186, we may judge it means here 'pause for reflection.']

[Footnote 10: 'makes calamity so long-lived.']

[Footnote 11: —not necessarily disprized by the lady; the disprizer in Hamlet's case was the worldly and suspicious father—and that in part, and seemingly to Hamlet altogether, for the king's sake.]

[Footnote 12: small sword. If there be here any allusion to suicide, it is on the general question, and with no special application to himself. 24. But it is the king and the bare bodkin his thought associates. How could he even glance at the things he has just mentioned, as each, a reason for suicide? It were a cowardly country indeed where the question might be asked, 'Who would not commit suicide because of any one of these things, except on account of what may follow after death?'! One might well, however, be tempted to destroy an oppressor, and risk his life in that.]

[Footnote 13: Fardel, burden: the old French for fardeau, I am informed.]

[Footnote 14: —a dread caused by conscience.]

[Footnote 15: The Ghost could not be imagined as having returned.]

[Footnote 16: 'of us all' not in Q. It is not the fear of evil that makes us cowards, but the fear of deserved evil. The Poet may intend that conscience alone is the cause of fear in man. 'Coward' does not here involve contempt: it should be spoken with a grim smile. But Hamlet would hardly call turning from suicide cowardice in any sense. 24.]

[Footnote 17: —such as was his when he vowed vengeance.]

[Footnote 18: —such as immediately followed on that The native hue of resolution—that which is natural to man till interruption comes—is ruddy; the hue of thought is pale. I suspect the 'pale cast' of an allusion to whitening with rough-cast.]

[Page 122]

Ophe. Good my Lord, How does your Honor for this many a day?

Ham. I humbly thanke you: well, well, well.[5]

Ophe. My Lord, I haue Remembrances of yours, That I haue longed long to re-deliuer. I pray you now, receiue them.

Ham. Ha, ha: Are you honest?[9]

Ophe. My Lord.

Ham. Are you faire?

Ophe. What meanes your Lordship?

Ham. That if you be honest and faire, your [Sidenote: faire, you should admit] Honesty[10] should admit no discourse to your Beautie.

Ophe. Could Beautie my Lord, haue better Comerce[11] then your Honestie?[12] [Sidenote: Then with honestie?[11]]

Ham. I trulie: for the power of Beautie, will sooner transforme Honestie from what it is, to a Bawd, then the force of Honestie can translate Beautie into his likenesse. This was sometime a Paradox, but now the time giues it proofe. I did loue you once.[13]

Ophe. Indeed my Lord, you made me beleeue so.

[Footnote 1: How could suicide be styled an enterprise of great pith? Yet less could it be called of great pitch.]

[Footnote 2: I allow this to be a general reflection, but surely it serves to show that conscience must at least be one of Hamlet's restraints.]

[Footnote 3: —by way of intercession.]

[Footnote 4: Note the entire change of mood from that of the last soliloquy. The right understanding of this soliloquy is indispensable to the right understanding of Hamlet. But we are terribly trammelled and hindered, as in the understanding of Hamlet throughout, so here in the understanding of his meditation, by traditional assumption. I was roused to think in the right direction concerning it, by the honoured friend and relative to whom I have feebly acknowledged my obligation by dedicating to him this book. I could not at first see it as he saw it: 'Think about it, and you will,' he said. I did think, and by degrees—not very quickly—my prejudgments thinned, faded, and almost vanished. I trust I see it now as a whole, and in its true relations, internal and external—its relations to itself, to the play, and to the Hamlet, of Shakspere.

Neither in its first verse, then, nor in it anywhere else, do I find even an allusion to suicide. What Hamlet is referring to in the said first verse, it is not possible with certainty to determine, for it is but the vanishing ripple of a preceding ocean of thought, from which he is just stepping out upon the shore of the articulate. He may have been plunged in some profound depth of the metaphysics of existence, or he may have been occupied with the one practical question, that of the slaying of his uncle, which has, now in one form, now in another, haunted his spirit for weeks. Perhaps, from the message he has just received, he expects to meet the king, and conscience, confronting temptation, has been urging the necessity of proof; perhaps a righteous consideration of consequences, which sometimes have share in the primary duty, has been making him shrink afresh from the shedding of blood, for every thoughtful mind recoils from the irrevocable, and that is an awful form of the irrevocable. But whatever thought, general or special, this first verse may be dismissing, we come at once thereafter into the light of a definite question: 'Which is nobler—to endure evil fortune, or to oppose it à outrance; to bear in passivity, or to resist where resistance is hopeless—resist to the last—to the death which is its unavoidable end?'

Then comes a pause, during which he is thinking—we will not say 'too precisely on the event,' but taking his account with consequences: the result appears in the uttered conviction that the extreme possible consequence, death, is a good and not an evil. Throughout, observe, how here, as always, he generalizes, himself being to himself but the type of his race.

Then follows another pause, during which he seems prosecuting the thought, for he has already commenced further remark in similar strain, when suddenly a new and awful element introduces itself:

He had been thinking of death only as the passing away of the present with its troubles; here comes the recollection that death has its own troubles—its own thoughts, its own consciousness: if it be a sleep, it has its dreams. 'What dreams may come' means, 'the sort of dreams that may come'; the emphasis is on the what, not on the may; there is no question whether dreams will come, but there is question of the character of the dreams. This consideration is what makes calamity so long-lived! 'For who would bear the multiform ills of life'—he alludes to his own wrongs, but mingles, in his generalizing way, others of those most common to humanity, and refers to the special cure for some of his own which was close to his hand—'who would bear these things if he could, as I can, make his quietus with a bare bodkin'—that is, by slaying his enemy—'who would then bear them, but that he fears the future, and the divine judgment upon his life and actions—that conscience makes a coward of him!'[14]

To run, not the risk of death, but the risks that attend upon and follow death, Hamlet must be certain of what he is about; he must be sure it is a right thing he does, or he will leave it undone. Compare his speech, 250, 'Does it not, &c.':—by the time he speaks this speech, he has had perfect proof, and asserts the righteousness of taking vengeance in almost an agony of appeal to Horatio.

The more continuous and the more formally logical a soliloquy, the less natural it is. The logic should be all there, but latent; the bones of it should not show: they do not show here.]

[Footnote 5: One 'well' only in Q.]

[Footnote 6: He does not want to take them back, and so sever even that weak bond between them. He has not given her up.]

[Footnote 7: The Q. reading seems best. The perfume of his gifts was the sweet words with which they were given; those words having lost their savour, the mere gifts were worth nothing.]

[Footnote 8: Released from the commands her father had laid upon her, and emboldened by the queen's approval of more than the old relation between them, she would timidly draw Hamlet back to the past—to love and a sound mind.]

[Footnote 9: I do not here suppose a noise or movement of the arras, or think that the talk from this point bears the mark of the madness he would have assumed on the least suspicion of espial. His distrust of Ophelia comes from a far deeper source—suspicion of all women, grown doubtful to him through his mother. Hopeless for her, he would give his life to know that Ophelia was not like her. Hence the cruel things he says to her here and elsewhere; they are the brood of a heart haunted with horrible, alas! too excusable phantoms of distrust. A man wretched as Hamlet must be forgiven for being rude; it is love suppressed, love that can neither breathe nor burn, that makes him rude. His horrid insinuations are a hungry challenge to indignant rejection. He would sting Ophelia to defence of herself and her sex. But, either from her love, or from gentleness to his supposed madness, as afterwards in the play-scene, or from the poverty and weakness of a nature so fathered and so brothered, she hears, and says nothing. 139.]

[Footnote 10: Honesty is here figured as a porter,—just after, as a porter that may be corrupted.]

[Footnote 11: If the Folio reading is right, commerce means companionship; if the Quarto reading, then it means intercourse. Note then constantly for our than.]

[Footnote 12: I imagine Ophelia here giving Hamlet a loving look—which hardens him. But I do not think she lays emphasis on your; the word is here, I take it, used (as so often then) impersonally.]

[Footnote 13: '—proof in you and me: I loved you once, but my honesty did not translate your beauty into its likeness.']

[Footnote 14: That the Great Judgement was here in Shakspere's thought, will be plain to those who take light from the corresponding passage in the 1st Quarto. As it makes an excellent specimen of that issue in the character I am most inclined to attribute to it—that of original sketch and continuous line of notes, with more or less finished passages in place among the notes—I will here quote it, recommending it to my student's attention. If it be what I suggest, it is clear that Shakspere had not at first altogether determined how he would carry the soliloquy—what line he was going to follow in it: here hope and fear contend for the place of motive to patience. The changes from it in the text are well worth noting: the religion is lessened: the hope disappears: were they too much of pearls to cast before 'barren spectators'? The manuscript could never have been meant for any eye but his own, seeing it was possible to print from it such a chaos—over which yet broods the presence of the formative spirit of the Poet.

[Page 126]

Ham. You should not haue beleeued me. For vertue cannot so innocculate[1] our old stocke,[2] but we shall rellish of it.[3] I loued you not.[4]

Ophe. I was the more deceiued.

Ham. Get thee to a Nunnerie. Why would'st [Sidenote: thee a] thou be a breeder of Sinners? I am my selfe indifferent[5] [Sidenote: 132] honest, but yet I could accuse me of such things,[6] that it were better my Mother had [Sidenote: 62] not borne me,[7] I am very prowd, reuengefull, Ambitious, with more offences at my becke, then I haue thoughts to put them in imagination, to giue them shape, or time to acte them in. What should such Fellowes as I do, crawling betweene Heauen [Sidenote: earth and heauen] and Earth.[8] We are arrant Knaues all[10], beleeue none of vs.[9] Goe thy wayes to a Nunnery. Where's your Father?[11]

Ophe. At home, my Lord.[12]

Ham. Let the doores be shut vpon him, that he may play the Foole no way, but in's owne house.[13] [Sidenote: no where but] Farewell.[14]

Ophe. O helpe him, you sweet Heauens.

Ham.[15] If thou doest Marry, Ile giue thee this Plague for thy Dowrie. Be thou as chast as Ice, as pure as Snow, thou shalt not escape Calumny.[16] Get thee to a Nunnery. Go,[17] Farewell.[18] Or if thou wilt needs Marry, marry a fool: for Wise men know well enough, what monsters[19] you make of them. To a Nunnery go, and quickly too. Farwell.[20]

Ophe. O[21] heauenly Powers, restore him.

Ham.[22] I haue heard of your pratlings[23] too wel [Sidenote: your paintings well] enough. God has giuen you one pace,[23] and you [Sidenote: hath | one face,] make your selfe another: you gidge, you amble, [Sidenote: selfes | you gig and amble, and] and you lispe, and nickname Gods creatures, and [Sidenote: you list you nickname] make your Wantonnesse, your[24] Ignorance.[25] Go

[Footnote 1: 'inoculate'—bud, in the horticultural use.]

[Footnote 2: trunk or stem of the family tree.]

[Footnote 3: Emphasis on relish—'keep something of the old flavour of the stock.']

[Footnote 4: He tries her now with denying his love—perhaps moved in part by a feeling, taught by his mother's, of how imperfect it was.]

[Footnote 5: tolerably.]

[Footnote 6: He turns from baiting woman in her to condemn himself. Is it not the case with every noble nature, that the knowledge of wrong in another arouses in it the consciousness of its own faults and sins, of its own evil possibilities? Hurled from the heights of ideal humanity, Hamlet not only recognizes in himself every evil tendency of his race, but almost feels himself individually guilty of every transgression. 'God, God, forgive us all!' exclaims the doctor who has just witnessed the misery of Lady Macbeth, unveiling her guilt.

This whole speech of Hamlet is profoundly sane—looking therefore altogether insane to the shallow mind, on which the impression of its insanity is deepened by its coming from him so freely. The common nature disappointed rails at humanity; Hamlet, his earthly ideal destroyed, would tear his individual human self to pieces.]

[Footnote 7: This we may suppose uttered with an expression as startling to Ophelia as impenetrable.]

[Footnote 8: He is disgusted with himself, with his own nature and consciousness—]

[Footnote 9: —and this reacts on his kind.]

[Footnote 10: 'all' not in Q.]

[Footnote 11: Here, perhaps, he grows suspicious—asks himself why he is allowed this prolonged tête à tête.]

[Footnote 12: I am willing to believe she thinks so.]

[Footnote 13: Whether he trusts Ophelia or not, he does not take her statement for correct, and says this in the hope that Polonius is not too far off to hear it. The speech is for him, not for Ophelia, and will seem to her to come only from his madness.]

[Footnote 14: Exit.]

[Footnote 15: (re-entering)]

[Footnote 16: 'So many are bad, that your virtue will not be believed in.']

[Footnote 17: 'Go' not in Q.]

[Footnote 18: Exit, and re-enter.]

[Footnote 19: Cornuti.]

[Footnote 20: Exit.]

[Footnote 21: 'O' not in Q.]

[Footnote 22: (re-entering)]

[Footnote 23: I suspect pratlings to be a corruption, not of the printed paintings, but of some word substituted for it by the Poet, perhaps prancings, and pace to be correct.]

[Footnote 24: 'your' not in Q.]

[Footnote 25: As the present type to him of womankind, he assails her with such charges of lightness as are commonly brought against women. He does not go farther: she is not his mother, and he hopes she is innocent. But he cannot make her speak!]

[Page 128]

too, Ile no more on't, it hath made me mad. I say, we will haue no more Marriages.[1] Those that are [Sidenote: no mo marriage,] married already,[2] all but one shall liue, the rest shall keep as they are. To a Nunnery, go.

Exit Hamlet. [Sidenote: Exit]

Enter King, and Polonius.

[Footnote 1: 'The thing must be put a stop to! the world must cease! it is not fit to go on.']

[Footnote 2: 'already—(aside) all but one—shall live.']

[Footnote 3: 1st Q.

To his cruel words Ophelia is impenetrable—from the conviction that not he but his madness speaks.

The moment he leaves her, she breaks out in such phrase as a young girl would hardly have used had she known that the king and her father were listening. I grant, however, the speech may be taken as a soliloquy audible to the spectators only, who to the persons of a play are but the spiritual presences.]

[Footnote 4: 'The hope and flower'—The rose is not unfrequently used in English literature as the type of perfection.]

[Footnote 5: 'he by whom Fashion dressed herself'—he who set the fashion. His great and small virtues taken together, Hamlet makes us think of Sir Philip Sidney—ten years older than Shakspere, and dead sixteen years before Hamlet was written.]

[Footnote 6: 'he after whose ways, or modes of behaviour, men shaped theirs'—therefore the mould in which their forms were cast;—the object of universal imitation.]

[Footnote 7: I do not know whether this means—the peal rung without regard to tune or time—or—the single bell so handled that the tongue checks and jars the vibration. In some country places, I understand, they go about ringing a set of hand-bells.]

[Footnote 8: youth in full blossom.]

[Footnote 9: madness 177.]

[Footnote 10: 'to see now such a change from what I saw then.']

[Footnote 11: The king's conscience makes him keen. He is, all through, doubtful of the madness.]

[Footnote 12: —of the fact- or fancy-egg on which his melancholy sits brooding]

[Page 130]

Ham.[7] Speake the Speech I pray you, as I pronounc'd it to you trippingly[8] on the Tongue: But if you mouth it, as many of your Players do, [Sidenote: of our Players] I had as liue[9] the Town-Cryer had spoke my [Sidenote: cryer spoke] Lines:[10] Nor do not saw the Ayre too much your [Sidenote: much with] hand thus, but vse all gently; for in the verie Torrent, Tempest, and (as I may say) the Whirlewinde [Sidenote: say, whirlwind] of Passion, you must acquire and beget a [Sidenote: of your] Temperance that may giue it Smoothnesse.[11] O it offends mee to the Soule, to see a robustious Perywig-pated [Sidenote: to heare a] Fellow, teare a Passion to tatters, to [Sidenote: totters,] verie ragges, to split the eares of the Groundlings:[12] [Sidenote: spleet] who (for the most part) are capeable[13] of nothing, but inexplicable dumbe shewes,[14] and noise:[15] I could haue such a Fellow whipt for o're-doing [Sidenote: would]

[Footnote 1: 'something of settled matter'—idée fixe.]

[Footnote 2: 'away from his own true likeness'; 'makes him so unlike himself.']

[Footnote 3: Polonius is crestfallen, but positive.]

[Footnote 4: This supports the notion of Ophelia's ignorance of the espial. Polonius thinks she is about to disclose what has passed, and informs her of its needlessness. But it might well enough be taken as only an assurance of the success of their listening—that they had heard without difficulty.]

[Footnote 5: 'If she do not find him out': a comparable phrase, common at the time, was, Take me with you, meaning, Let me understand you.

Polonius, for his daughter's sake, and his own in her, begs for him another chance.]

[Footnote 6: 'in the insignificant, madness may roam the country, but in the great it must be watched.' The unmatcht of the Quarto might bear the meaning of countermatched.]

[Footnote 7: I should suggest this exhortation to the Players introduced with the express purpose of showing how absolutely sane Hamlet was, could I believe that Shakspere saw the least danger of Hamlet's pretence being mistaken for reality.]

[Footnote 8: He would have neither blundering nor emphasis such as might rouse too soon the king's suspicion, or turn it into certainty.]

[Footnote 9: 'liue'—lief]

[Footnote 10: 1st Q.:—

Lines is a player-word still.]

[Footnote 11: —smoothness such as belongs to the domain of Art, and will both save from absurdity, and allow the relations with surroundings to manifest themselves;—harmoniousness, which is the possibility of co-existence.]

[Footnote 12: those on the ground—that is, in the pit; there was no gallery then.]

[Footnote 13: receptive.]

[Footnote 14: —gestures extravagant and unintelligible as those of a dumb show that could not by the beholder be interpreted; gestures incorrespondent to the words.

A dumb show was a stage-action without words.]

[Footnote 15: Speech that is little but rant, and scarce related to the sense, is hardly better than a noise; it might, for the purposes of art, as well be a sound inarticulate.]

[Page 132]

Termagant[1]: it out-Herod's Herod[2] Pray you auoid it.

Player. I warrant your Honor.

Ham. Be not too tame neyther: but let your owne Discretion be your Tutor. Sute the Action to the Word, the Word to the Action, with this speciall obseruance: That you ore-stop not the [Sidenote: ore-steppe] modestie of Nature; for any thing so ouer-done, [Sidenote ore-doone] is fro[3] the purpose of Playing, whose end both at the first and now, was and is, to hold as 'twer the Mirrour vp to Nature; to shew Vertue her owne [Sidenote: her feature;] Feature, Scorne[4] her owne Image, and the verie Age and Bodie of the Time, his forme and pressure.[5] Now, this ouer-done, or come tardie off,[6] though it make the vnskilfull laugh, cannot but make the [Sidenote: it makes] Iudicious greeue; The censure of the which One,[7] [Sidenote: of which one] must in your allowance[8] o're-way a whole Theater of Others. Oh, there bee Players that I haue scene Play, and heard others praise, and that highly [Sidenote: praysd,] (not to speake it prophanely) that neyther hauing the accent of Christians, nor the gate of Christian, Pagan, or Norman, haue so strutted and bellowed, [Sidenote: Pagan, nor man, haue] that I haue thought some of Natures Iouerney-men had made men, and not made them well, they imitated Humanity so abhominably.[9]

[Sidenote: 126] Play. I hope we haue reform'd that indifferently[10] with vs, Sir.

Ham. O reforme it altogether. And let those that play your Clownes, speake no more then is set downe for them.[12] For there be of them, that will themselues laugh, to set on some quantitie of barren Spectators to laugh too, though in the meane time, some necessary Question of the Play be then to be considered:[12] that's Villanous, and shewes a most pittifull Ambition in the Fool that vses it.[13] Go make you readie. Exit Players

[Footnote 1: 'An imaginary God of the Mahometans, represented as a most violent character in the old Miracle-plays and Moralities.'—Sh. Lex.]

[Footnote 2: 'represented as a swaggering tyrant in the old dramatic performances.'—Sh. Lex.]

[Footnote 3: away from: inconsistent with.]

[Footnote 4: —that which is deserving of scorn.]

[Footnote 5: impression, as on wax. Some would persuade us that Shakspere's own plays do not do this; but such critics take the accidents or circumstances of a time for the body of it—the clothes for the person. Human nature is 'Nature,' however dressed.

There should be a comma after 'Age.']

[Footnote 6: 'laggingly represented'—A word belonging to time is substituted for a word belonging to space:—'this over-done, or inadequately effected'; 'this over-done, or under-done.']

[Footnote 7: 'and the judgment of such a one.' 'the which' seems equivalent to and—such.]

[Footnote 8: 'must, you will grant.']

[Footnote 9: Shakspere may here be playing with a false derivation, as I was myself when the true was pointed out to me—fancying abominable derived from ab and homo. If so, then he means by the phrase: 'they imitated humanity so from the nature of man, so inhumanly.']

[Footnote 10: tolerably.]

[Footnote 11: 'Sir' not in Q.]

[Footnote 13: Here follow in the 1st Q. several specimens of such a clown's foolish jests and behaviour.]

[Page 134]

Pol. And the Queene too, and that presently.[2]

Ham. Bid the Players make hast.

Exit Polonius.[3]

Will you two helpe to hasten them?[4]

Both. We will my Lord. Exeunt. [Sidenote: Ros. I my Lord. Exeunt they two.]

Enter Horatio[5]

Ham. What hoa, Horatio? [Sidenote: What howe,]

Hora. Heere sweet Lord, at your Seruice.

Hora. O my deere Lord.[6]

[Footnote 1: In Q. at end of speech.]

[Footnote 2: He humours Hamlet as if he were a child.]

[Footnote 3: Not in Q.]

[Footnote 4: He has sent for Horatio, and is expecting him.]

[Footnote 5: In Q. after next speech.]

[Footnote 6: —repudiating the praise.]

[Footnote 7: To know a man, there is scarce a readier way than to hear him talk of his friend—why he loves, admires, chooses him. The Poet here gives us a wide window into Hamlet. So genuine is his respect for being, so indifferent is he to having, that he does not shrink, in argument for his own truth, from reminding his friend to his face that, being a poor man, nothing is to be gained from him—nay, from telling him that it is through his poverty he has learned to admire him, as a man of courage, temper, contentment, and independence, with nothing but his good spirits for an income—a man whose manhood is dominant both over his senses and over his fortune—a true Stoic. He describes an ideal man, then clasps the ideal to his bosom as his own, in the person of his friend. Only a great man could so worship another, choosing him for such qualities; and hereby Shakspere shows us his Hamlet—a brave, noble, wise, pure man, beset by circumstances the most adverse conceivable. That Hamlet had not misapprehended Horatio becomes evident in the last scene of all. 272.]

[Footnote 8: The mother of flattery is self-advantage.]

[Footnote 9: sugared. 1st Q.:

[Footnote 10: A pregnant figure and phrase, requiring thought.]

[Footnote 11: 'since my real self asserted its dominion, and began to rule my choice,' making it pure, and withdrawing it from the tyranny of impulse and liking.]

[Footnote 12: The old word medle is synonymous with mingle.]

[Footnote 13: To Hamlet, the lordship of man over himself, despite of circumstance, is a truth, and therefore a duty.]

[Footnote 14: The man who has chosen his friend thus, is hardly himself one to act without sufficing reason, or take vengeance without certain proof of guilt.]

[Footnote 15: He justifies the phrase, repeating it.]

[Footnote 16: —apologetic for having praised him to his face.]

[Page 136]

Enter King, Queene, Polonius, Ophelia, Rosincrance, Guildensterne, and other Lords attendant with his Guard carrying Torches. Danish March. Sound a Flourish. [Sidenote: Enter Trumpets and Kettle Drummes, King, Queene, Polonius, Ophelia.]

Ham. They are comming to the Play: I must [Sidenote: 60, 156, 178] be idle.[7] Get you a place.

King. How fares our Cosin Hamlet?

Ham. Excellent Ifaith, of the Camelions dish: [Sidenote: 154] I eate the Ayre promise-cramm'd,[8] you cannot feed Capons so.[9]

King. I haue nothing with this answer Hamlet, these words are not mine.[10]

Ham. No, nor mine. Now[11] my Lord, you plaid once i'th'Vniuersity, you say?

Polon. That I did my Lord, and was accounted [Sidenote: did I] a good Actor.

[Footnote 1: Here follows in 1st Q.

[Footnote 2: I take 'my' to be right: 'watch my uncle with the comment—the discriminating judgment, that is—of my soul, more intent than thine.']

[Footnote 3: He has then, ere this, taken Horatio into his confidence—so far at least as the Ghost's communication concerning the murder.]

[Footnote 4: a dissyllable: stithy, anvil; Scotch, studdy.

Hamlet's doubt is here very evident: he hopes he may find it a false ghost: what good man, what good son would not? He has clear cause and reason—it is his duty to delay. That the cause and reason and duty are not invariably clear to Hamlet himself—not clear in every mood, is another thing. Wavering conviction, doubt of evidence, the corollaries of assurance, the oppression of misery, a sense of the worthlessness of the world's whole economy—each demanding delay, might yet well, all together, affect the man's feeling as mere causes of rather than reasons for hesitation. The conscientiousness of Hamlet stands out the clearer that, throughout, his dislike to his uncle, predisposing him to believe any ill of him, is more than evident. By his incompetent or prejudiced judges, Hamlet's accusations and justifications of himself are equally placed to the discredit of his account. They seem to think a man could never accuse himself except he were in the wrong; therefore if ever he excuses himself, he is the more certainly in the wrong: whatever point may tell on the other side, it is to be disregarded.]

[Footnote 5: 'bring our two judgments together for comparison.']

[Footnote 6: 'in order to judge of the significance of his looks and behaviour.']

[Footnote 7: Does he mean foolish, that is, lunatic? or insouciant, and unpreoccupied?]

[Footnote 8: The king asks Hamlet how he fares—that is, how he gets on; Hamlet pretends to think he has asked him about his diet. His talk has at once become wild; ere the king enters he has donned his cloak of madness. Here he confesses to ambition—will favour any notion concerning himself rather than give ground for suspecting the real state of his mind and feeling.

In the 1st Q. 'the Camelions dish' almost appears to mean the play, not the king's promises.]

[Footnote 9: In some places they push food down the throats of the poultry they want to fatten, which is technically, I believe, called cramming them.]

[Footnote 10: 'You have not taken me with you; I have not laid hold of your meaning; I have nothing by your answer.' 'Your words have not become my property; they have not given themselves to me in their meaning.']

[Footnote 11: Point thus: 'No, nor mine now.—My Lord,' &c. '—not mine, now I have uttered them, for so I have given them away.' Or does he mean to disclaim their purport?]

[Page 138]

Ham. And[1] what did you enact?

Pol. I did enact Iulius Caesar, I was kill'd i'th'Capitol: Brutus kill'd me.

Ham. It was a bruite part of him, to kill so Capitall a Calfe there.[2] Be the Players ready?

Rosin. I my Lord, they stay vpon your patience.

Qu. Come hither my good Hamlet, sit by me. [Sidenote: my deere]

Ham. No good Mother, here's Mettle more attractiue.[3]

Pol. Oh ho, do you marke that?[4]

Ham. Ladie, shall I lye in your Lap?

Ophe. No my Lord.

Ham. I meane, my Head vpon your Lap?[5]

Ophe. I my Lord.[6]

Ham. Do you thinke I meant Country[7] matters?

Ophe. I thinke nothing, my Lord.

Ham. That's a faire thought to ly between Maids legs.

Ophe. What is my Lord?

Ham. Nothing.

Ophe. You are merrie, my Lord?

Ham. Who I?

Ophe. I my Lord.[8]

Ham. Oh God, your onely Iigge-maker[9]: what should a man do, but be merrie. For looke you how cheerefully my Mother lookes, and my Father dyed within's two Houres.

[Sidenote: 65] Ophe. Nay, 'tis twice two moneths, my Lord.[10]

Ham. So long? Nay then let the Diuel weare [Sidenote: 32] blacke, for Ile haue a suite of Sables.[11] Oh Heauens! dye two moneths ago, and not forgotten yet?[12] Then there's hope, a great mans Memorie, may out-liue his life halfe a yeare: But byrlady [Sidenote: ber Lady a] he must builde Churches then: or else shall he [Sidenote: shall a]

[Footnote 1: 'And ' not in Q.]

[Footnote 2: Emphasis on there. 'There' is not in 1st Q. Hamlet means it was a desecration of the Capitol.]

[Footnote 3: He cannot be familiar with his mother, so avoids her—will not sit by her, cannot, indeed, bear to be near her. But he loves and hopes in Ophelia still.]

[Footnote 4: '—Did I not tell you so?']

[Footnote 5: This speech and the next are not in the Q., but are shadowed in the 1st Q.]

[Footnote 6: —consenting.]

[Footnote 7: In 1st Quarto, 'contrary.'

Hamlet hints, probing her character—hoping her unable to understand. It is the festering soreness of his feeling concerning his mother, making him doubt with the haunting agony of a loathed possibility, that prompts, urges, forces from him his ugly speeches—nowise to be justified, only to be largely excused in his sickening consciousness of his mother's presence. Such pain as Hamlet's, the ferment of subverted love and reverence, may lightly bear the blame of hideous manners, seeing, they spring from no wantonness, but from the writhing of tortured and helpless Purity. Good manners may be as impossible as out of place in the presence of shameless evil.]

[Footnote 8: Ophelia bears with him for his own and his madness' sake, and is less uneasy because of the presence of his mother. To account satisfactorily for Hamlet's speeches to her, is not easy. The freer custom of the age, freer to an extent hardly credible in this, will not satisfy the lovers of Hamlet, although it must have some weight. The necessity for talking madly, because he is in the presence of his uncle, and perhaps, to that end, for uttering whatever comes to him, without pause for choice, might give us another hair's-weight. Also he may be supposed confident that Ophelia would not understand him, while his uncle would naturally set such worse than improprieties down to wildest madness. But I suspect that here as before (123), Shakepere would show Hamlet's soul full of bitterest, passionate loathing; his mother has compelled him to think of horrors and women together, so turning their preciousness into a disgust; and this feeling, his assumed madhess allows him to indulge and partly relieve by utterance. Could he have provoked Ophelia to rebuke him with the severity he courted, such rebuke would have been joy to him. Perhaps yet a small addition of weight to the scale of his excuse may be found in his excitement about his play, and the necessity for keeping down that excitement. Suggestion is easier than judgment.]

[Footnote 9: 'here's for the jig-maker! he's the right man!' Or perhaps he is claiming the part as his own: 'I am your only jig-maker!']

[Footnote 10: This needs not be taken for the exact time. The statement notwithstanding suggests something like two months between the first and second acts, for in the first, Hamlet says his father has not been dead two months. 24. We are not bound to take it for more than a rough approximation; Ophelia would make the best of things for the queen, who is very kind to her.]

[Footnote 11: the fur of the sable.]

[Footnote 12: 1st Q.

nay then there's some Likelyhood, a gentlemans death may outliue memorie, But by my faith &c.]

[Page 140]

suffer not thinking on, with the Hoby-horsse, whose Epitaph is, For o, For o, the Hoby-horse is forgot.

Hoboyes play. The dumbe shew enters. [Sidenote: The Trumpets sounds. Dumbe show followes.]

_Enter a King and Queene, very louingly; the Queene [Sidenote: and a Queene, the queen] embracing him. She kneeles, and makes shew of [Sidenote: embracing him, and he her, he takes her up, and] Protestation vnto him. He takes her vp, and declines his head vpon her neck. Layes him downe [Sidenote: necke, he lyes] vpon a Banke of Flowers. She seeing him a-sleepe, leaues him. Anon comes in a Fellow, [Sidenote: anon come in an other man,] takes off his Crowne, kisses it, and powres poyson [Sidenote: it, pours] in the Kings eares, and Exits. The Queene returnes, [Sidenote: the sleepers eares, and leaues him:] findes the King dead, and makes passionate [Sidenote: dead, makes] Action. The Poysoner, with some two or [Sidenote: some three or foure come in againe, seeme to condole] three Mutes comes in againe, seeming to lament with her. The dead body is carried away: The [Sidenote: with her, the] Poysoner Wooes the Queene with Gifts, she [Sidenote: 54] seemes loath and vnwilling awhile, but in the end, [Sidenote: seemes harsh awhile,] accepts his loue.[1] Exeunt[2] [Sidenote: accepts loue.]

Ophe. What meanes this, my Lord?

Ham. Marry this is Miching Malicho[3] that [Sidenote: this munching Mallico] meanes Mischeefe.

Ophe. Belike this shew imports the Argument of the Play?

Ham. We shall know by these Fellowes: [Sidenote: this fellow, Enter Prologue] the Players cannot keepe counsell, they'l tell [Sidenote: keepe, they'le] all.[4]

Ophe. Will they tell vs what this shew meant? [Sidenote: Will a tell]

Ham. I, or any shew that you'l shew him. Bee [Sidenote: you will] not you asham'd to shew, hee'l not shame to tell you what it meanes.

Ophe. You are naught,[5] you are naught, Ile marke the Play.

[Footnote 1: The king, not the queen, is aimed at. Hamlet does not forget the injunction of the Ghost to spare his mother. 54.

The king should be represented throughout as struggling not to betray himself.]

[Footnote 2: Not in Q.]

[Footnote 3: skulking mischief: the latter word is Spanish, To mich is to play truant.

The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia, page 84.

My Reader tells me the word is still in use among printers, with the pronunciation mike, and the meaning to skulk or idle.]

[Footnote 4: —their part being speech, that of the others only dumb show.]

[Footnote 5: naughty: persons who do not behave well are treated as if they were not—are made nought of—are set at nought; hence our word naughty.

'Be naught awhile' (As You Like It, i. 1)—'take yourself away;' 'be nobody;' 'put yourself in the corner.']

[Page 142]

Enter[1] Prologue.

For vs, and for our Tragedie, Heere stooping to your Clemencie: We begge your hearing Patientlie.

Ham. Is this a Prologue, or the Poesie[2] of a [Sidenote: posie] Ring?

Ophe. 'Tis[3] briefe my Lord.

Ham. As Womans loue.

[4] Enter King and his Queene. [Sidenote: and Queene]

[Footnote A: Here in the Quarto:—

For women feare too much, euen as they loue,]

[Footnote B: Here in the Quarto:—

[Footnote 1: Enter not in Q.]

[Footnote 2: Commonly posy: a little sentence engraved inside a ring—perhaps originally a tiny couplet, therefore poesy, 1st Q., 'a poesie for a ring?']

[Footnote 3: Emphasis on ''Tis.']

[Footnote 4: Very little blank verse of any kind was written before Shakspere's; the usual form of dramatic verse was long, irregular, rimed lines: the Poet here uses the heroic couplet, which gives a resemblance to the older plays by its rimes, while also by its stately and monotonous movement the play-play is differenced from the play into which it is introduced, and caused to look intrinsically like a play in relation to the rest of the play of which it is part. In other words, it stands off from the surrounding play, slightly elevated both by form and formality. 103.]

[Footnote 5: 1st Q.

[Footnote 6: Here Hamlet gives the time his father and mother had been married, and Shakspere points at Hamlet's age. 234. The Poet takes pains to show his hero's years.]

[Footnote 7: This line, whose form in the Quarto is very careless, seems but a careless correction, leaving the sense as well as the construction obscure: 'Women's fear and love keep the scales level; in neither is there ought, or in both there is fulness;' or: 'there is no moderation in their fear and their love; either they have none of either, or they have excess of both.' Perhaps he tried to express both ideas at once. But compression is always in danger of confusion.]

[Page 144]

Ham. Wormwood, Wormwood. [Sidenote: Ham. That's wormwood[2]]

[Footnote 1: Is this to be supposed in the original play, or inserted by Hamlet, embodying an unuttered and yet more fearful doubt with regard to his mother?]

[Footnote 3: the urgencies; the motives.]

[Footnote 4: worldly advantage.]

[Footnote 5: 'Purpose holds but while Memory holds.']

[Footnote 6: 'Purpose is born in haste, but is of poor strength to live.']

[Footnote 7: Here again there is carelessness of construction, as if the Poet had not thought it worth his while to correct this subsidiary portion of the drama. I do not see how to lay the blame on the printer.—'Purpose is a mere fruit, which holds on or falls only as it must. The element of persistency is not in it.']

[Footnote 8: unavoidable—coming of necessity.]

[Footnote 9: 'Grief turns into joy, and joy into grief, on a slight chance.']

[Page 146]

Ham. If she should breake it now.[6]

Qu. Sleepe rocke thy Braine, [Sidenote: Sleepes[7]] And neuer come mischance betweene vs twaine, Exit [Sidenote: Exeunt.]

Ham. Madam, how like you this Play?

Qu. The Lady protests to much me thinkes, [Sidenote: doth protest]

Ham. Oh but shee'l keepe her word.

[Footnote A: Here in the Quarto:—

[Footnote 1: All that is wanted to make a real enemy of an unreal friend is the seasoning of a requested favour.]

[Footnote 2: 'Our thoughts are ours, but what will come of them we cannot tell.']

[Footnote 3: 'May Day and Night lock from me sport and repose.']

[Footnote 4: 'May strife pursue me in the world and out of it.']

[Footnote 5: In all this, there is nothing to reflect on his mother beyond what everybody knew.]

[Footnote 6: This speech is in the margin of the Quarto.]

[Footnote 7: Not in Q.]

[Footnote 8: 'May my trust and hope turn to despair.']

[Footnote 9: an anchoret's.]

[Page 148]

King. Haue you heard the Argument, is there no Offence in't?[1]

Ham. No, no, they do but iest, poyson in iest, no Offence i'th'world.[2]

King. What do you call the Play?

Ham. The Mouse-trap: Marry how? Tropically:[3] This Play is the Image of a murder done in Vienna: Gonzago is the Dukes name, his wife Baptista: you shall see anon: 'tis a knauish peece of worke: But what o'that? Your Maiestie, and [Sidenote: of that?] wee that haue free soules, it touches vs not: let the gall'd iade winch: our withers are vnrung.[4]

Enter Lucianus.[5]

This is one Lucianus nephew to the King.

Ham. I could interpret betweene you and your loue: if I could see the Puppets dallying.[6]

Ophe. You are keene my Lord, you are keene.

Ham. It would cost you a groaning, to take off my edge. [Sidenote: mine]

Ophe. Still better and worse.

Ham. So you mistake Husbands.[7] [Sidenote: mistake your] Begin Murderer. Pox, leaue thy damnable Faces, [Sidenote: murtherer, leave] and begin. Come, the croaking Rauen doth bellow for Reuenge.[8]

Powres the poyson in his eares.[10]

Ham. He poysons him i'th Garden for's estate: [Sidenote: A poysons | for his]

[Footnote 1: —said, perhaps, to Polonius. Is there a lapse here in the king's self-possession? or is this speech only an outcome of its completeness—a pretence of fearing the play may glance at the queen for marrying him?]

[Footnote 2: 'It is but jest; don't be afraid: there is no reality in it'—as one might say to a child seeing a play.]

[Footnote 3: Figuratively: from trope. In the 1st Q. the passage stands thus:

[Footnote 4: Here Hamlet endangers himself to force the king to self-betrayal.]

[Footnote 5: In Q. after next line.]

[Footnote 6: In a puppet-play, if she and her love were the puppets, he could supply the speeches.]

[Footnote 7: Is this a misprint for 'so you must take husbands'—for better and worse, namely? or is it a thrust at his mother—'So you mis-take husbands, going from the better to a worse'? In 1st Q.: 'So you must take your husband, begin.']

[Footnote 8: Probably a mocking parody or burlesque of some well-known exaggeration—such as not a few of Marlowe's lines.]

[Footnote 9: 'none beholding save the accomplice hour:'.]

[Footnote 10: Not in Q.]

[Page 150]

Ophe. The King rises.[1]

Ham. What, frighted with false fire.[2]

Qu. How fares my Lord?

Pol. Giue o're the Play.

King. Giue me some Light. Away.[3]

All. Lights, Lights, Lights. Exeunt [Sidenote: Pol. | Exeunt all but Ham. & Horatio.]

Manet Hamlet & Horatio.

Ham.[4] Why let the strucken Deere go weepe, The Hart vngalled play: For some must watch, while some must sleepe; So runnes the world away. Would not this[5] Sir, and a Forrest of Feathers, if the rest of my Fortunes turne Turke with me; with two Prouinciall Roses[6] on my rac'd[7] Shooes, get me [Sidenote: with prouinciall | raz'd] a Fellowship[8] in a crie[9] of Players sir. [Sidenote: Players?]

Hor. Halfe a share.

Ham. A whole one I,[10] [11] For thou dost know: Oh Damon deere, This Realme dismantled was of Loue himselfe, And now reignes heere. A verie verie Paiocke.[12]

Hora. You might haue Rim'd.[13]

Ham. Oh good Horatio, Ile take the Ghosts word for a thousand pound. Did'st perceiue?

Hora. Verie well my Lord.

Ham. Vpon the talke of the poysoning?

Hora. I did verie well note him.

Enter Rosincrance and Guildensterne.[14]

Ham. Oh, ha? Come some Musick.[15] Come the Recorders: [Sidenote: Ah ha,]

[Footnote 1: —in ill suppressed agitation.]

[Footnote 2: This speech is not in the Quarto.—Is the 'false fire' what we now call stage-fire?—'What! frighted at a mere play?']

[Footnote 3: The stage—the stage-stage, that is—alone is lighted. Does the king stagger out blindly, madly, shaking them from him? I think not—but as if he were taken suddenly ill.]

[Footnote 4: —singing—that he may hide his agitation, restrain himself, and be regarded as careless-mad, until all are safely gone.]

[Footnote 5: —his success with the play.]

[Footnote 6: 'Roses of Provins,' we are told—probably artificial.]

[Footnote 7: The meaning is very doubtful. But for the raz'd of the Quarto, I should suggest lac'd. Could it mean cut low?]

[Footnote 8: a share, as immediately below.]

[Footnote 9: A cry of hounds is a pack. So in King Lear, act v. sc. 3, 'packs and sects of great ones.']

[Footnote 10: I for ay—that is, yes!—He insists on a whole share.]

[Footnote 11: Again he takes refuge in singing.]

[Footnote 12: The lines are properly measured in the Quarto:

By Jove, he of course intends his father. 170. What 'Paiocke' means, whether pagan, or peacock, or bajocco, matters nothing, since it is intended for nonsense.]

[Footnote 13: To rime with was, Horatio naturally expected ass to follow as the end of the last line: in the wanton humour of his excitement, Hamlet disappointed him.]

[Footnote 14: In Q. after next speech.]

[Footnote 15: He hears Rosincrance and Guildensterne coming, and changes his behaviour—calling for music to end the play with. Either he wants, under its cover, to finish his talk with Horatio in what is for the moment the safest place, or he would mask himself before his two false friends. Since the departure of the king—I would suggest—he has borne himself with evident apprehension, every now and then glancing about him, as fearful of what may follow his uncle's recognition of the intent of the play. Three times he has burst out singing.

Or might not his whole carriage, with the call for music, be the outcome of a grimly merry satisfaction at the success of his scheme?]

[Page 152]

Guild. Good my Lord, vouchsafe me a word with you.

Ham. Sir, a whole History.

Guild. The King, sir.

Ham. I sir, what of him?

Guild. Is in his retyrement, maruellous distemper'd.

Ham. With drinke Sir?

Guild. No my Lord, rather with choller.[2] [Sidenote: Lord, with]

Ham. Your wisedome should shew it selfe more richer, to signifie this to his Doctor: for me to [Sidenote: the Doctor,] put him to his Purgation, would perhaps plundge him into farre more Choller.[2] [Sidenote: into more]

Guild. Good my Lord put your discourse into some frame,[3] and start not so wildely from my [Sidenote: stare] affayre.

Ham. I am tame Sir, pronounce.

Guild. The Queene your Mother, in most great affliction of spirit, hath sent me to you.

Ham. You are welcome.[4]

Guild. Nay, good my Lord, this courtesie is not of the right breed. If it shall please you to make me a wholsome answer, I will doe your Mothers command'ment: if not, your pardon, and my returne shall bee the end of my Businesse. [Sidenote: of busines.]

Ham. Sir, I cannot.

Guild. What, my Lord?

Ham. Make you a wholsome answere: my wits diseas'd. But sir, such answers as I can make, you [Sidenote: answere] shal command: or rather you say, my Mother: [Sidenote: rather as you] therfore no more but to the matter. My Mother you say.

[Footnote 1: These two lines he may be supposed to sing.]

[Footnote 2: Choler means bile, and thence anger. Hamlet in his answer plays on the two meanings:—'to give him the kind of medicine I think fit for him, would perhaps much increase his displeasure.']

[Footnote 3: some logical consistency.]

[Footnote 4: —with an exaggeration of courtesy.]

[Page 154]

Rosin. Then thus she sayes: your behauior hath stroke her into amazement, and admiration.[1]

Ham. Oh wonderfull Sonne, that can so astonish [Sidenote: stonish] a Mother. But is there no sequell at the heeles of this Mothers admiration? [Sidenote: admiration, impart.]

Rosin. She desires to speake with you in her Closset, ere you go to bed.

Ham. We shall obey, were she ten times our Mother. Haue you any further Trade with vs?

Rosin. My Lord, you once did loue me.

Ham. So I do still, by these pickers and [Sidenote: And doe still] stealers.[2]

Rosin. Good my Lord, what is your cause of distemper? You do freely barre the doore of your [Sidenote: surely barre the door vpon your] owne Libertie, if you deny your greefes to your your Friend.

Ham. Sir I lacke Aduancement.

Rosin. How can that be, when you haue the [Sidenote: 136] voyce of the King himselfe, for your Succession in Denmarke?

[3]

Ham. I, but while the grasse growes,[4] the [Sidenote: I sir,] Prouerbe is something musty.

Enter one with a Recorder.[5]

O the Recorder. Let me see, to withdraw with, [Sidenote: ô the Recorders, let mee see one, to] you,[6] why do you go about to recouer the winde of mee,[7] as if you would driue me into a toyle?[8]

Guild. O my Lord, if my Dutie be too bold, my loue is too vnmannerly.[9]

Ham. I do not well vnderstand that.[10] Will you, play vpon this Pipe?

Guild. My Lord, I cannot.

Ham. I pray you.

Guild. Beleeue me, I cannot.

Ham. I do beseech you.

[Footnote 1: wonder, astonishment.]

[Footnote 2: He swears an oath that will not hold, being by the hand of a thief.

In the Catechism: 'Keep my hands from picking and stealing.']

[Footnote 3: Here in Quarto, Enter the Players with Recorders.]

[Footnote 4: '… the colt starves.']

[Footnote 5: Not in Q. The stage-direction of the Folio seems doubtful. Hamlet has called for the orchestra: we may either suppose one to precede the others, or that the rest are already scattered; but the Quarto direction and reading seem better.]

[Footnote 6: —taking Guildensterne aside.]

[Footnote 7: 'to get to windward of me.']

[Footnote 8: 'Why do you seek to get the advantage of me, as if you would drive me to betray myself?'—Hunters, by sending on the wind their scent to the game, drive it into their toils.]

[Footnote 9: Guildensterne tries euphuism, but hardly succeeds. He intends to plead that any fault in his approach must be laid to the charge of his love. Duty here means homage—so used still by the common people.]

[Footnote 10: —said with a smile of gentle contempt.]

[Page 156]

Guild. I know no touch of it, my Lord.

Ham. Tis as easie as lying: gouerne these [Sidenote: It is] Ventiges with your finger and thumbe, giue it [Sidenote: fingers, & the vmber, giue] breath with your mouth, and it will discourse most [Sidenote: most eloquent] excellent Musicke. Looke you, these are the stoppes.

Guild. But these cannot I command to any vtterance of hermony, I haue not the skill.

Ham. Why looke you now, how vnworthy a thing you make of me: you would play vpon mee; you would seeme to know my stops: you would pluck out the heart of my Mysterie; you would sound mee from my lowest Note, to the top of my [Sidenote: note to my compasse] Compasse: and there is much Musicke, excellent Voice, in this little Organe, yet cannot you make [Sidenote: it speak, s'hloud do you think I] it. Why do you thinke, that I am easier to bee plaid on, then a Pipe? Call me what Instrument you will, though you can fret[1] me, you cannot [Sidenote: you fret me not,] [Sidenote: 184] play vpon me. God blesse you Sir.[2]

Enter Polonius.

Polon. My Lord; the Queene would speak with you, and presently.

Ham. Do you see that Clowd? that's almost in [Sidenote: yonder clowd] shape like a Camell. [Sidenote: shape of a]

Polon. By'th'Misse, and it's like a Camell [Sidenote: masse and tis,] indeed.

Ham. Me thinkes it is like a Weazell.

Polon. It is back'd like a Weazell.

Ham. Or like a Whale?[3]

Polon. Verie like a Whale.[4]

Ham. Then will I come to my Mother, by and by: [Sidenote: I will] [Sidenote: 60, 136, 178] They foole me to the top of my bent.[5] I will come by and by.

[Footnote 1: —with allusion to the frets or stop-marks of a stringed instrument.]

[Footnote 2: —to Polonius.]

[Footnote 3: There is nothing insanely arbitrary in these suggestions of likeness; a cloud might very well be like every one of the three; the camel has a hump, the weasel humps himself, and the whale is a hump.]

[Footnote 4: He humours him in everything, as he would a madman.]

[Footnote 5: Hamlet's cleverness in simulating madness is dwelt upon in the old story. See 'Hystorie of Hamblet, prince of Denmarke.']

[Page 158]

Polon.[1] I will say so. Exit.[1]

Enter King, Rosincrance, and Guildensterne.

Rosin. The single And peculiar[16] life is bound With all the strength and Armour of the minde,

[Footnote 1: The Quarto, not having Polon., Exit, or Ham., and arranging differently, reads thus:—

[Footnote 2: belches.]

[Footnote 3: —thinking of what the Ghost had told him, perhaps: it was the time when awful secrets wander about the world. Compare Macbeth, act ii. sc. 1; also act iii. sc. 2.]

[Footnote 4: The assurance of his uncle's guilt, gained through the effect of the play upon him, and the corroboration of his mother's guilt by this partial confirmation of the Ghost's assertion, have once more stirred in Hamlet the fierceness of vengeance. But here afresh comes out the balanced nature of the man—say rather, the supremacy in him of reason and will. His dear soul, having once become mistress of his choice, remains mistress for ever. He could drink hot blood, he could do bitter business, but he will carry himself as a son, and the son of his father, ought to carry himself towards a guilty mother—mother although guilty.]

[Footnote 5: Thus he girds himself for the harrowing interview. Aware of the danger he is in of forgetting his duty to his mother, he strengthens himself in filial righteousness, dreading to what word or deed a burst of indignation might drive him. One of his troubles now is the way he feels towards his mother.]

[Footnote 6: —who killed his mother.]

[Footnote 7: His words should be as daggers.]

[Footnote 8: Pretenders.]

[Footnote 9: reproached or rebuked—though oftener scolded.]

[Footnote 10: 'to seal them with actions'—Actions are the seals to words, and make them irrevocable.]

[Footnote 11: walk at liberty.]

[Footnote 12: get ready.]

[Footnote 13: He had, it would appear, taken them into his confidence in the business; they knew what was to be in their commission, and were thorough traitors to Hamlet.]

[Footnote 14: —holy and religious precaution for the sake of the many depending on him.]

[Footnote 15: Is there not unconscious irony of their own parasitism here intended?]

[Footnote 16: private individual.]

[Page 160]

Both. We will haste vs. Exeunt Gent

Enter Polonius.

[Footnote 1: The philosophy of which self is the centre. The speeches of both justify the king in proceeding to extremes against Hamlet.]

[Footnote 2: The same as to say: 'The passing, ceasing, or ending of majesty dies not—is not finished or accomplished, without that of others;' 'the dying ends or ceases not,' &c.]

[Footnote 4: heedless of their flattery. It is hardly applicable enough to interest him.]

[Footnote 5: 'Provide yourselves.']

[Footnote 6: fear active; cause of fear; thing to be afraid of; the noun of the verb fear, to frighten:

A Midsummer Night's Dream, act v. sc. i.]

[Footnote 7: Schmidt (Sh. Lex.) says of vantage means to boot. I do not think he is right. Perhaps Polonius means 'from a position of advantage.' Or perhaps 'The speech of vantage' is to be understood as implying that Hamlet, finding himself in a position of vantage, that is, alone with his mother, will probably utter himself with little restraint.]

[Footnote 8: This is the first proof positive of his guilt accorded even to the spectator of the play: here Claudius confesses not merely guilt (118), but the very deed. Thoughtless critics are so ready to judge another as if he knew all they know, that it is desirable here to remind the student that only he, not Hamlet, hears this soliloquy. The falseness of half the judgments in the world comes from our not taking care and pains first to know accurately the actions, and then to understand the mental and moral condition, of those we judge.]

[Footnote 9: —his present guilty indulgence—stronger than his strong intent to pray.]

[Page 162]

[Footnote 1: Referring to his double guilt—the one crime past, the other in continuance.

Here is the corresponding passage in the 1st Q., with the adultery plainly confessed:—

Enter the King.

[Footnote 2: both crimes.]

[Footnote 3: He could repent of and pray forgiveness for the murder, if he could repent of the adultery and incest, and give up the queen. It is not the sins they have done, but the sins they will not leave, that damn men. 'This is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.' The murder deeply troubled him; the adultery not so much; the incest and usurpation mainly as interfering with the forgiveness of the murder.]

[Footnote 4: Even hatred of crime committed is not repentance: repentance is the turning away from wrong doing: 'Cease to do evil; learn to do well.']

[Footnote 5: —caught and held by crime, as a bird by bird-lime.]

[Footnote 6: entangled.]

[Footnote 7: said to his knees. Point thus:—'Helpe Angels! Make assay—bow, stubborne knees!']

[Page 164]

Enter Hamlet.

King. My words flye vp, my thoughts remain below, Words without thoughts, neuer to Heauen go.[8] Exit.

Enter Queene and Polonius. [Sidenote: Enter Gertrard and]

Pol. He will come straight: [Sidenote: A will] Looke you lay home to him

[Footnote 1: In the 1st Q. this speech commences with, 'I so, come forth and worke thy last,' evidently addressed to his sword; afterwards, having changed his purpose, he says, 'no, get thee vp agen.']

[Footnote 2: This indicates doubt of the Ghost still. He is unwilling to believe in him.]

[Footnote 3: grasp. This is the only instance I know of hent as a noun. The verb to hent, to lay hold of, is not so rare. 'Wait till thou be aware of a grasp with a more horrid purpose in it.']

[Footnote 4: —still addressed to his sword.]

[Footnote 5: Are we to take Hamlet's own presentment of his reasons as exhaustive? Doubtless to kill him at his prayers, whereupon, after the notions of the time, he would go to heaven, would be anything but justice—the murdered man in hell—the murderer in heaven! But it is easy to suppose Hamlet finding it impossible to slay a man on his knees—and that from behind: thus in the unseen Presence, he was in sanctuary, and the avenger might well seek reason or excuse for not then, not there executing the decree.]

[Footnote 6: 'waits for me.']

[Footnote 7: He seems now to have made up his mind, and to await only fit time and opportunity; but he is yet to receive confirmation strong as holy writ.

This is the first chance Hamlet has had—within the play—of killing the king, and any imputation of faulty irresolution therein is simply silly. It shows the soundness of Hamlet's reason, and the steadiness of his will, that he refuses to be carried away by passion, or the temptation of opportunity. The sight of the man on his knees might well start fresh doubt of his guilt, or even wake the thought of sparing a repentant sinner. He knows also that in taking vengeance on her husband he could not avoid compromising his mother. Besides, a man like Hamlet could not fail to perceive how the killing of his uncle, and in such an attitude, would look to others.

It may be judged, however, that the reason he gives to himself for not slaying the king, was only an excuse, that his soul revolted from the idea of assassination, and was calmed in a measure by the doubt whether a man could thus pray—in supposed privacy, we must remember—and be a murderer. Not even yet had he proof positive, absolute, conclusive: the king might well take offence at the play, even were he innocent; and in any case Hamlet would desire presentable proof: he had positively none to show the people in justification of vengeance.

As in excitement a man's moods may be opalescent in their changes, and as the most contrary feelings may coexist in varying degrees, all might be in a mind, which I have suggested as present in that of Hamlet.

To have been capable of the kind of action most of his critics would demand of a man, Hamlet must have been the weakling they imagine him. When at length, after a righteous delay, partly willed, partly inevitable, he holds documents in the king's handwriting as proofs of his treachery—proofs which can be shown—giving him both right and power over the life of the traitor, then, and only then, is he in cool blood absolutely satisfied as to his duty—which conviction, working with opportunity, and that opportunity plainly the last, brings the end; the righteous deed is done, and done righteously, the doer blameless in the doing of it. The Poet is not careful of what is called poetic justice in his play, though therein is no failure; what he is careful of is personal rightness in the hero of it.]

[Footnote 8: 1st Q.

So he goes to make himself safe by more crime! His repentance is mainly fear.]

[Page 166]

Ham. within. Mother, mother, mother.[3]

Qu. Ile warrant you, feare me not. [Sidenote: Ger. Ile wait you,] Withdraw, I heare him comming.

Enter Hamlet.[4]

Ham.[5] Now Mother, what's the matter?

Qu. Hamlet, thou hast thy Father much offended. [Sidenote: Ger.]

Ham. Mother, you haue my Father much offended.

Qu. Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue. [Sidenote: Ger.]

Ham. Go, go, you question with an idle tongue. [Sidenote: with a wicked tongue.]

Qu. Why how now Hamlet?[6] [Sidenote: Ger.]

Ham. Whats the matter now?

Qu. Haue you forgot me?[7] [Sidenote: Ger.]

Ham. Come, come, and sit you downe, you shall not boudge: You go not till I set you vp a glasse, Where you may see the inmost part of you? [Sidenote: the most part]

Qu. What wilt thou do? thou wilt not murther [Sidenote: Ger.] me?[10] Helpe, helpe, hoa. [Sidenote: Helpe how.]

Pol. What hoa, helpe, helpe, helpe. [Sidenote: What how helpe.]

Ham. How now, a Rat? dead for a Ducate, dead.[11]

[Footnote 1: The Quarto has not 'with him.']

[Footnote 2: He goes behind the arras.]

[Footnote 3: The Quarto has not this speech.]

[Footnote 4: Not in Quarto.]

[Footnote 5: 1st Q.

Ham. Mother, mother, O are you here? How i'st with you mother?

Queene How i'st with you?

Ham, I'le tell you, but first weele make all safe.

Here, evidently, he bolts the doors.]

[Footnote 6: 1st Q.

Queene How now boy?

Ham. How now mother! come here, sit downe, for you shall heare me speake.]

[Footnote 7: —'that you speak to me in such fashion?']

[Footnote 8: Point thus: 'so: you'—'would you were not so, for you are my mother.'—with emphasis on 'my.' The whole is spoken sadly.]

[Footnote 9: —'speak so that you must mind them.']

[Footnote 10: The apprehension comes from the combined action of her conscience and the notion of his madness.]

[Footnote 11: There is no precipitancy here—only instant resolve and execution. It is another outcome and embodiment of Hamlet's rare faculty for action, showing his delay the more admirable. There is here neither time nor call for delay. Whoever the man behind the arras might be, he had, by spying upon him in the privacy of his mother's room, forfeited to Hamlet his right to live; he had heard what he had said to his mother, and his death was necessary; for, if he left the room, Hamlet's last chance of fulfilling his vow to the Ghost was gone: if the play had not sealed, what he had now spoken must seal his doom. But the decree had in fact already gone forth against his life. 158.]

[Page 168]

Pol. Oh I am slaine. [1]Killes Polonius.[2]

Qu. Oh me, what hast thou done? [Sidenote: Ger.]

Ham. Nay I know not, is it the King?[3]

Qu. Oh what a rash, and bloody deed is this? [Sidenote: Ger.]

Ham. A bloody deed, almost as bad good Mother, [Sidenote: 56] As kill a King,[4] and marrie with his Brother.

Qu. As kill a King? [Sidenote: Ger.]

Qu. What haue I done, that thou dar'st wag thy tong, [Sidenote: Ger.] In noise so rude against me?[6]

Qu. Aye me; what act,[11] that roares so lowd,[12] and thunders in the Index.[13]

[Footnote 1: Not in Q.]

[Footnote 2: —through the arras.]

[Footnote 3: Hamlet takes him for, hopes it is the king, and thinks here to conclude: he is not praying now! and there is not a moment to be lost, for he has betrayed his presence and called for help. As often as immediate action is demanded of Hamlet, he is immediate with his response—never hesitates, never blunders. There is no blunder here: being where he was, the death of Polonius was necessary now to the death of the king. Hamlet's resolve is instant, and the act simultaneous with the resolve. The weak man is sure to be found wanting when immediate action is necessary; Hamlet never is. Doubtless those who blame him as dilatory, here blame him as precipitate, for they judge according to appearance and consequence.

All his delay after this is plainly compelled, although I grant he was not sorry to have to await such more presentable evidence as at last he procured, so long as he did not lose the final possibility of vengeance.]

[Footnote 4: This is the sole reference in the interview to the murder. I take it for tentative, and that Hamlet is satisfied by his mother's utterance, carriage, and expression, that she is innocent of any knowledge of that crime. Neither does he allude to the adultery: there is enough in what she cannot deny, and that only which can be remedied needs be taken up; while to break with the king would open the door of repentance for all that had preceded.]

[Footnote 5: He says nothing of the Ghost to his mother.]

[Footnote 6: She still holds up and holds out.]

[Footnote 7: 'makes Modesty itself suspected.']

[Footnote 8: 'makes Innocence ashamed of the love it cherishes.']

[Footnote 9: 'plucks the spirit out of all forms of contracting or agreeing.' We have lost the social and kept only the physical meaning of the noun.]

[Footnote 10: I cannot help thinking the Quarto reading of this passage the more intelligible, as well as much the more powerful. We may imagine a red aurora, by no means a very unusual phenomenon, over the expanse of the sky:—

(the earth, solid, material, composite, a corporeal mass in confrontment with the spirit-like etherial, simple, uncompounded heaven leaning over it)

With tristful (or heated, as the reader may choose) visage: as against the doom,

(as in the presence, or in anticipation of the revealing judgment)

Is thought sick at the act.

(thought is sick at the act of the queen)

My difficulties as to the Folio reading are—why the earth should be so described without immediate contrast with the sky; and—how the earth could be showing a tristful visage, and the sickness of its thought. I think, if the Poet indeed made the alterations and they are not mere blunders, he must have made them hurriedly, and without due attention. I would not forget, however, that there may be something present but too good for me to find, which would make the passage plain as it stands.

Compare As you like it, act i. sc. 3.

[Footnote 11: In Q. the rest of this speech is Hamlet's; his long speech begins here, taking up the queen's word.]

[Footnote 12: She still stands out.]

[Footnote 13: 'thunders in the very indication or mention of it.' But by 'the Index' may be intended the influx or table of contents of a book, at the beginning of it.]

[Page 170]

[Footnote A: Here in the Quarto:—

[Footnote B: Here in the Quarto:—

[Footnote 1: He points to the portraits of the two brothers, side by side on the wall.]

[Footnote 2: See Julius Caesar, act v. sc. 5,—speech of Antony at the end.]

[Footnote 4: —perhaps allied to the German heida, and possibly the English hoyden and hoity-toity. Or is it merely high-day—noontide?]

[Footnote 5: 'played tricks with you while hooded in the game of blind-man's-bluff?' The omitted passage of the Quarto enlarges the figure.

1st Q. 'hob-man blinde.']

[Footnote 6: madness.]

[Footnote 7: Attributing soul to sense, he calls its distinguishment choice.]

[Footnote 8: —emphasis on such.]

[Footnote 9: This spelling seems to show how the English word sans should be pronounced.]

[Footnote 10: —'be so dull.']

[Page 172]

Qu. No more.[8] [Sidenote: Ger.]

Enter Ghost.[9]

Qu. Alas he's mad.[11] [Sidenote: Ger.]

Ham. Do you not come your tardy Sonne to chide, That laps't in Time and Passion, lets go by[12] Th'important acting of your dread command? Oh say.[13]

[Footnote 1: —his mother's matronly age.]

[Footnote 2: She gives way at last.]

[Footnote 3: —spots whose blackness has sunk into the grain, or final particles of the substance.]

[Footnote 4: —transition form of tint:—'will never give up their colour;' 'will never be cleansed.']

[Footnote 5: He persists.]

[Footnote 6: —Claudius himself—his body no 'temple of the Holy Ghost,' but a pig-sty. 3.]

[Footnote 7: The clown of the old Moral Play.]

[Footnote 8: She seems neither surprised nor indignant at any point in the accusation: her consciousness of her own guiit has overwhelmed her.]

[Footnote 9: The 1st Q. has Enter the ghost in his night gowne. It was then from the first intended that he should not at this point appear in armour—in which, indeed, the epithet gracious figure could hardly be applied to him, though it might well enough in one of the costumes in which Hamlet was accustomed to see him—as this dressing-gown of the 1st Q. A ghost would appear in the costume in which he naturally imagined himself, and in his wife's room would not show himself clothed as when walking among the fortifications of the castle. But by the words lower down (174)—

My Father in his habite, as he liued,

the Poet indicates, not his dressing-gown, but his usual habit, i.e. attire.]

[Footnote 10: —almost the same invocation as when first he saw the apparition.]

[Footnote 11: The queen cannot see the Ghost. Her conduct has built such a wall between her and her husband that I doubt whether, were she a ghost also, she could see him. Her heart had left him, so they are no more together in the sphere of mutual vision. Neither does the Ghost wish to show himself to her. As his presence is not corporeal, a ghost may be present to but one of a company.]

[Footnote 12: 1. 'Who, lapsed (fallen, guilty), lets action slip in delay and suffering.' 2. 'Who, lapsed in (fallen in, overwhelmed by) delay and suffering, omits' &c. 3. 'lapsed in respect of time, and because of passion'—the meaning of the preposition in, common to both, reacted upon by the word it governs. 4. 'faulty both in delaying, and in yielding to suffering, when action is required.' 5. 'lapsed through having too much time and great suffering.' 6. 'allowing himself to be swept along by time and grief.'

Surely there is not another writer whose words would so often admit of such multiform and varied interpretation—each form good, and true, and suitable to the context! He seems to see at once all the relations of a thing, and to try to convey them at once, in an utterance single as the thing itself. He would condense the infinite soul of the meaning into the trembling, overtaxed body of the phrase!]

[Footnote 13: In the renewed presence of the Ghost, all its former influence and all the former conviction of its truth, return upon him. He knows also how his behaviour must appear to the Ghost, and sees himself as the Ghost sees him. Confronted with the gracious figure, how should he think of self-justification! So far from being able to explain things, he even forgets the doubt that had held him back—it has vanished from the noble presence! He is now in the world of belief; the world of doubt is nowhere!—Note the masterly opposition of moods.]

[Page 174]

Ham. How is it with you Lady?[6]

Qu. To who do you speake this? [Sidenote: Ger. To whom]

Ham. Do you see nothing there?

Qu. Nothing at all, yet all that is I see.[14] [Sidenote: Ger.]

Ham. Nor did you nothing heare?

Qu. No, nothing but our selues. [Sidenote: Ger.]

Ham. Why look you there: looke how it steals away: [Sidenote: 173] My Father in his habite, as he liued, Looke where he goes euen now out at the Portall. Exit. [Sidenote: Exit Ghost.]

[Footnote 1: The Ghost here judges, as alone is possible to him, from what he knows—from the fact that his brother Claudius has not yet made his appearance in the ghost-world. Not understanding Hamlet's difficulties, he mistakes Hamlet himself.]

[Footnote 2: He mistakes also, through his tenderness, the condition of his wife—imagining, it would seem, that she feels his presence, though she cannot see him, or recognize the source of the influence which he supposes to be moving her conscience: she is only perturbed by Hamlet's behaviour.]

[Footnote 3: —fighting within itself, as the sea in a storm may be said to fight.

He is careful as ever over the wife he had loved and loves still; careful no less of the behaviour of the son to his mother.

In the 1st Q. we have:—

[Footnote 4: —not used here for bare imagination, but imagination with its concomitant feeling:—conception. 198.]

[Footnote 5: His last word ere he vanishes utterly, concerns his queen; he is tender and gracious still to her who sent him to hell. This attitude of the Ghost towards his faithless wife, is one of the profoundest things in the play. All the time she is not thinking of him any more than seeing him—for 'is he not dead!'—is looking straight at where he stands, but is all unaware of him.]

[Footnote 6: I understand him to speak this with a kind of lost, mechanical obedience. The description his mother gives of him makes it seem as if the Ghost were drawing his ghost out to himself, and turning his body thereby half dead.]

[Footnote 7: 'as if there were life in excrements.' The nails and hair were 'excrements'—things growing out.]

[Footnote 8: Note the form an end—not on end. 51, 71.]

[Footnote 9: —all spoken coaxingly, as to one in a mad fit. She regards his perturbation as a sudden assault of his ever present malady. One who sees what others cannot see they are always ready to count mad.]

[Footnote 10: able to take, that is, to understand.]

[Footnote 11: —to the Ghost.]

[Footnote 12: 'what is in my power to do.']

[Footnote 13: Note antithesis here: 'your piteous action;' 'my stern effects'—the things, that is, 'which I have to effect.' 'Lest your piteous show convert—change—my stern doing; then what I do will lack true colour; the result may be tears instead of blood; I shall weep instead of striking.']

[Footnote 14: It is one of the constantly recurring delusions of humanity that we see all there is.]

[Page 176]

[Sidenote: 114] This bodilesse Creation extasie[1] is very cunning in.[2]

Qu. Oh Hamlet, [Sidenote: Ger.] Thou hast cleft my heart in twaine.

[Footnote A: Here in the Quarto:—

[Footnote 1: madness 129.]

[Footnote 2: Here is the correspondent speech in the 1st Q. I give it because of the queen's denial of complicity in the murder.

[Footnote 3: Not in Q.]

[Footnote 4: —time being a great part of music. Shakspere more than once or twice employs music as a symbol with reference to corporeal condition: see, for instance, As you like it, act i. sc. 2, 'But is there any else longs to see this broken music in his sides? is there yet another dotes upon rib-breaking?' where the broken music may be regarded as the antithesis of the healthful music here.]

[Footnote 5: swoln, pampered: an allusion to the purse itself, whether intended or not, is suggested.]

[Footnote 6: bend, bow.]

[Footnote 7: To assume is to take to one: by assume a virtue, Hamlet does not mean pretend—but the very opposite: to pretend is to hold forth, to show; what he means is, 'Adopt a virtue'—that of abstinence—'and act upon it, order your behaviour by it, although you may not feel it. Choose the virtue—take it, make it yours.']

[Footnote 8: This omitted passage is obscure with the special Shaksperean obscurity that comes of over-condensation. He omitted it, I think, because of its obscurity. Its general meaning is plain enough—that custom helps the man who tries to assume a virtue, as well as renders it more and more difficult for him who indulges in vice to leave it. I will paraphrase: 'That monster, Custom, who eats away all sense, the devil of habits, is angel yet in this, that, for the exercise of fair and good actions, he also provides a habit, a suitable frock or livery, that is easily put on.' The play with the two senses of the word habit is more easily seen than set forth. To paraphrase more freely: 'That devil of habits, Custom, who eats away all sense of wrong-doing, has yet an angel-side to him, in that he gives a man a mental dress, a habit, helpful to the doing of the right thing.' The idea of hypocrisy does not come in at all. The advice of Hamlet is: 'Be virtuous in your actions, even if you cannot in your feelings; do not do the wrong thing you would like to do, and custom will render the abstinence easy.']

[Footnote 9: I suspect it should be 'Of habits evil'—the antithesis to angel being monster.]

[Page 178]

Qu. What shall I do? [Sidenote: Ger.]

Qu. Be thou assur'd, if words be made of breath, [Sidenote: Ger.]

[Footnote A: Here in the Quarto;—

[Footnote B: Here in the Quarto:—

One word more good Lady.[17]]

[Footnote 1: In bidding his mother good night, he would naturally, after the custom of the time, have sought her blessing: it would be a farce now: when she seeks the blessing of God, he will beg hers; now, a plain good night must serve.]

[Footnote 2: Note the curious inverted use of pleased. It is here a transitive, not an impersonal verb. The construction of the sentence is, 'pleased it so, in order to punish us, that I must' &c.]

[Footnote 3: The noun to which their is the pronoun is heaven—as if he had written the gods.]

[Footnote 4: 'take him to a place fit for him to lie in.']

[Footnote 5: 'hold my face to it, and justify it.']

[Footnote 6: —omitting or refusing to embrace her.]

[Footnote 7: —looking at Polonius.]

[Footnote 8: Does this mean for himself to do, or for Polonius to endure?]

[Footnote 9: reeky, smoky, fumy.]

[Footnote 10: Hamlet considers his madness the same that he so deliberately assumed. But his idea of himself goes for nothing where the experts conclude him mad! His absolute clarity where he has no occasion to act madness, goes for as little, for 'all madmen have their sane moments'!]

[Footnote 11: a toad; in Scotland, a frog.]

[Footnote 12: an old cat.]

[Footnote 13: Experiments, Steevens says: is it not rather results?]

[Footnote 14: I fancy the story, which so far as I know has not been traced, goes on to say that the basket was emptied from the house-top to send the pigeons flying, and so the ape got his neck broken. The phrase 'breake your owne necke downe' seems strange: it could hardly have been written neck-bone!]

[Footnote 15: This passage would fall in better with the preceding with which it is vitally one—for it would more evenly continue its form—if the preceding devil were, as I propose above, changed to evil. But, precious as is every word in them, both passages are well omitted.]

[Footnote 16: Plainly there is a word left out, if not lost here. There is no authority for the supplied master. I am inclined to propose a pause and a gesture, with perhaps an inarticulation.]

[Footnote 17: —interrogatively perhaps, Hamlet noting her about to speak; but I would prefer it thus: 'One word more:—good lady—' Here he pauses so long that she speaks. Or we might read it thus:

Qu. One word more. Ham. Good lady? Qu. What shall I do?]

[Page 180]

[Sidenote: 128, 158] Ham. I must to England, you know that?[2]

Qu. Alacke I had forgot: Tis so concluded on. [Sidenote: Ger.]

Exit Hamlet tugging in Polonius.[6] [Sidenote: Exit.]

[7]

King. What Gertrude? How do's Hamlet?

Qu. Mad as the Seas, and winde, when both contend [Sidenote: Ger. | sea and] Which is the Mightier, in his lawlesse fit[9]

[Footnote A: Here in the Quarto:—

[Footnote B: Here in the Quarto:—

Bestow this place on vs a little while.[14]]

[Footnote 1: 1st Q.

[Footnote 3: 'My banishment will be laid to this deed of mine.']

[Footnote 4: —to rid his mother of it.]

[Footnote 5: It may cross him, as he says this, dragging the body out by one end of it, and toward the end of its history, that he is himself drawing toward an end along with Polonius.]

[Footnote 6: —and weeping. 182. See note 5, 183.]

[Footnote 7: Here, according to the editors, comes 'Act IV.' For this there is no authority, and the point of division seems to me very objectionable. The scene remains the same, as noted from Capell in Cam. Sh., and the entrance of the king follows immediately on the exit of Hamlet. He finds his wife greatly perturbed; she has not had time to compose herself.

[Footnote 8: I would have this speech uttered with pauses and growing urgency, mingled at length with displeasure.]

[Footnote 9: She is faithful to her son, declaring him mad, and attributing the death of 'the unseen' Polonius to his madness.]

[Footnote 10: This passage, like the rest, I hold to be omitted by Shakspere himself. It represents Hamlet as divining the plot with whose execution his false friends were entrusted. The Poet had at first intended Hamlet to go on board the vessel with a design formed upon this for the out-witting of his companions, and to work out that design. Afterwards, however, he alters his plan, and represents his escape as more plainly providential: probably he did not see how to manage it by any scheme of Hamlet so well as by the attack of a pirate; possibly he wished to write the passage (246) in which Hamlet, so consistently with his character, attributes his return to the divine shaping of the end rough-hewn by himself. He had designs—'dear plots'—but they were other than fell out—a rough-hewing that was shaped to a different end. The discomfiture of his enemies was not such as he had designed: it was brought about by no previous plot, but through a discovery. At the same time his deliverance was not effected by the fingering of the packet, but by the attack of the pirate: even the re-writing of the commission did nothing towards his deliverance, resulted only in the punishment of his traitorous companions. In revising the Quarto, the Poet sees that the passage before us, in which is expressed the strongest suspicion of his companions, with a determination to outwit and punish them, is inconsistent with the representation Hamlet gives afterwards of a restlessness and suspicion newly come upon him, which he attributes to the Divinity.

Neither was it likely he would say so much to his mother while so little sure of her as to warn her, on the ground of danger to herself, against revealing his sanity to the king. As to this, however, the portion omitted might, I grant, be regarded as an aside.]

[Footnote 11: —to be done to him.]

[Footnote 12: Hoised, from verb hoise—still used in Scotland.]

[Footnote 13: a kind of explosive shell, which was fixed to the object meant to be destroyed. Note once more Hamlet's delight in action.]

[Footnote 14: —said to Ros. and Guild.: in plain speech, 'Leave us a little while.']

[Page 182]

[Footnote 1: the royal plural.]

[Footnote 2: He knows the thrust was meant for him. But he would not have it so understood; he too lays it to his madness, though he too knows better.]

[Footnote 3: 'he, although mad'; 'his nature, in spite of his madness.']

[Footnote 4: by his weeping, in the midst of much to give a different impression.]

[Footnote 5: We have no reason to think the queen inventing here: what could she gain by it? the point indeed was rather against Hamlet, as showing it was not Polonius he had thought to kill. He was more than ever annoyed with the contemptible old man, who had by his meddlesomeness brought his death to his door; but he was very sorry nevertheless over Ophelia's father: those rough words in his last speech are spoken with the tears running down his face. We have seen the strange, almost discordant mingling in him of horror and humour, after the first appearance of the Ghost, 58, 60: something of the same may be supposed when he finds he has killed Polonius: in the highstrung nervous condition that must have followed such a talk with his mother, it would be nowise strange that he should weep heartily even in the midst of contemptuous anger. Or perhaps a sudden breakdown from attempted show of indifference, would not be amiss in the representation.]

[Footnote 6: 'both countenance with all our majesty, and excuse with all our skill.']

[Footnote 7: In the Quarto a line back.]

[Footnote 8: Not in Q.]

[Page 184]

Enter Hamlet. [Sidenote: Hamlet, Rosencrans, and others.]

Ham. Safely stowed.[2] [Sidenote: stowed, but soft, what noyse,]

Gentlemen within. Hamlet. Lord Hamlet?

Ham. What noise? Who cals on Hamlet? Oh heere they come.

Enter Ros. and Guildensterne.[4]

Ro. What haue you done my Lord with the dead body?

Rosin. Tell vs where 'tis, that we may take it thence, And beare it to the Chappell.

Ham. Do not beleeue it.[6]

Rosin. Beleeue what?

[Sidenote: 156] Ham. That I can keepe your counsell, and not mine owne. Besides, to be demanded of a Spundge, what replication should be made by the Sonne of a King.[7]

Rosin. Take you me for a Spundge, my Lord?

Ham. I sir, that sokes vp the Kings Countenance, his Rewards, his Authorities, but such Officers do the King best seruice in the end. He keepes them like an Ape in the corner of his iaw,[8] first [Sidenote: like an apple in] mouth'd to be last swallowed, when he needes what you haue glean'd, it is but squeezing you, and Spundge you shall be dry againe.

Rosin. I vnderstand you not my Lord.

[Footnote A: Here in the Quarto:—

[Footnote 1: unhappily.]

[Footnote 2: He has hid the body—to make the whole look the work of a mad fit.]

[Footnote 3: This line is not in the Quarto.]

[Footnote 4: Not in Q. See margin above.]

[Footnote 5: He has put it in a place which, little visited, is very dusty.]

[Footnote 6: He is mad to them—sane only to his mother and Horatio.]

[Footnote 7: euphuistic: 'asked a question by a sponge, what answer should a prince make?']

[Footnote 8: 1st Q.:

[Footnote 9: Here most modern editors insert, 'so, haply, slander'. But, although I think the Poet left out this obscure passage merely from dissatisfaction with it, I believe it renders a worthy sense as it stands. The antecedent to whose is friends: cannon is nominative to transports; and the only difficulty is the epithet poysned applied to shot, which seems transposed from the idea of an unfriendly whisper. Perhaps Shakspere wrote poysed shot. But taking this as it stands, the passage might be paraphrased thus: 'Whose (favourable) whisper over the world's diameter (from one side of the world to the other), as level (as truly aimed) as the cannon (of an evil whisper) transports its poisoned shot to his blank (the white centre of the target), may shoot past our name (so keeping us clear), and hit only the invulnerable air.' ('the intrenchant air': Macbeth, act v. sc. 8). This interpretation rests on the idea of over-condensation with its tendency to seeming confusion—the only fault I know in the Poet—a grand fault, peculiarly his own, born of the beating of his wings against the impossible. It is much as if, able to think two thoughts at once, he would compel his phrase to utter them at once.]

[Footnote 10:

for the harlot king Is quite beyond mine arm, out of the blank And level of my brain, plot-proof;

The Winter's Tale, act ii. sc. 3.

My life stands in the level of your dreams,

Ibid, act iii. sc. 2.]

[Footnote 11: two ff for two long ss.]

[Page 186]

Ham. I am glad of it: a knavish speech sleepes in a foolish eare.

Rosin. My Lord, you must tell us where the body is, and go with us to the King.

Ham. The body is with the King, but the King is not with the body.[1] The King, is a thing——

Guild. A thing my Lord?

Ham. Of nothing[2]: bring me to him, hide Fox, and all after.[3] Exeunt[4]

Enter King. [Sidenote: King, and two or three.]

Rosin. Where the dead body is bestow'd my Lord, We cannot get from him.

King. But where is he?[8]

Rosin. Without my Lord, guarded[9] to know your pleasure.

King. Bring him before us.

Rosin. Hoa, Guildensterne? Bring in my Lord. [Sidenote: Ros. How, bring in the Lord. They enter.]

Enter Hamlet and Guildensterne[10]

King. Now Hamlet, where's Polonius?

[Footnote 1: 'The body is in the king's house, therefore with the king; but the king knows not where, therefore the king is not with the body.']

[Footnote 2: 'A thing of nothing' seems to have been a common phrase.]

[Footnote 3: The Quarto has not 'hide Fox, and all after.']

[Footnote 5: He is a hypocrite even to himself.]

[Footnote 6: This had all along helped to Hamlet's safety.]

[Footnote 7: 'must be made to look the result of deliberate reflection.' Claudius fears the people may imagine Hamlet treacherously used, driven to self-defence, and hurried out of sight to be disposed of.]

[Footnote 8: Emphasis on he; the point of importance with the king, is where he is, not where the body is.]

[Footnote 9: Henceforward he is guarded, or at least closely watched, according to the Folio—left much to himself according to the Quarto. 192.]

[Footnote 10: Not in Quarto.]

[Page 188]

Ham. At Supper.

King. At Supper? Where?

Ham. Not where he eats, but where he is eaten, [Sidenote: where a is] a certaine conuocation of wormes are e'ne at him. [Sidenote: of politique wormes[1]] Your worm is your onely Emperor for diet. We fat all creatures else to fat vs, and we fat our selfe [Sidenote: ourselves] for Magots. Your fat King, and your leane Begger is but variable seruice to dishes, but to one [Sidenote: two dishes] Table that's the end.

King. What dost thou meane by this?[2]

Ham. Nothing but to shew you how a King may go a Progresse[3] through the guts of a Begger.[4]

King. Where is Polonius.

Ham. In heauen, send thither to see. If your Messenger finde him not there, seeke him i'th other place your selfe: but indeed, if you finde him not [Sidenote: but if indeed you find him not within this] this moneth, you shall nose him as you go vp the staires into the Lobby.

King. Go seeke him there.

[Footnote A: Here in the Quarto:—

King Alas, alas.[9]

Ham. A man may fish with the worme that hath eate of a King, and eate of the fish that hath fedde of that worme.]

[Footnote 1: —such as Rosincrance and Guildensterne!]

[Footnote 2: I suspect this and the following speech ought by the printers to have been omitted also: without the preceding two speeches of the Quarto they are not accounted for.]

[Footnote 3: a royal progress.]

[Footnote 4: Hamlet's philosophy deals much now with the worthlessness of all human distinctions and affairs.]

[Footnote 5: 'and we care for your safety as much as we grieve for the death of Polonius.']

[Footnote 6: 'With fierie Quicknesse.' Not in Quarto.]

[Footnote 7: fair—ready to help.]

[Footnote 8: attend, wait.]

[Footnote 9: pretending despair over his madness.]

[Page 190]

Ham. For England?

King. I Hamlet.

Ham. Good.

King. So is it, if thou knew'st our purposes.

Ham. I see a Cherube that see's him: but [Sidenote: sees them,] come, for England. Farewell deere Mother.

King. Thy louing Father Hamlet.

Hamlet. My Mother: Father and Mother is man and wife: man and wife is one flesh, and so [Sidenote: flesh, so my] my mother.[1] Come, for England. Exit

[Footnote 1: He will not touch the hand of his father's murderer.]

[Footnote 2: 'at his heels.']

[Footnote 3: 'belongs to.']

[Footnote 4: 'as my great power may give thee feeling of its value, seeing the scar of my vengeance has hardly yet had time to heal.']

[Footnote 5: 'and thy fear uncompelled by our presence, pays homage to us.']

[Footnote 6: 'set down to cool'; 'set in the cold.']

[Footnote 7: mandate: 'Where's Fulvia's process?' Ant. and Cl., act i. sc. 1. Shakespeare Lexicon.]

[Footnote 8: hectic fever—habitual or constant fever.]

[Footnote 9: 'whatever my fortunes.']

[Footnote 10: The original, the Quarto reading—'my ioyes will nere begin' seems to me in itself better, and the cause of the change to be as follows.

In the Quarto the next scene stands as in our modern editions, ending with the rime,

This was the act-pause, the natural end of act iii.

But when the author struck out all but the commencement of the scene, leaving only the three little speeches of Fortinbras and his captain, then plainly the act-pause must fall at the end of the preceding scene. He therefore altered the end of the last verse to make it rime with the foregoing, in accordance with his frequent way of using a rime before an important pause.

It perplexes us to think how on his way to the vessel, Hamlet could fall in with the Norwegian captain. This may have been one of Shakspere's reasons for striking the whole scene out—but he had other and more pregnant reasons.]

[Footnote 11: Here is now the proper close of the Third Act.]

[Footnote 12: Commencement of the Fourth Act.

Between the third and the fourth passes the time Hamlet is away; for the latter, in which he returns, and whose scenes are contiguous, needs no more than one day.]

[Footnote 13: 'claims a convoy in fulfilment of the king's promise to allow him to march over his kingdom.' The meaning is made plainer by the correspondent passage in the 1st Quarto:

[Footnote 14: 'where to rejoin us.']

[Page 192]

Cap. I will doo't, my Lord.

For. Go safely[3] on. Exit. [Sidenote: softly]

[4] Enter Queene and Horatio. [Sidenote: Enter Horatio, Gertrard, and a Gentleman.]

Qu. I will not speake with her.

Hor.[5] She is importunate, indeed distract, her [Sidenote: Gent.] moode will needs be pittied.

Qu. What would she haue?

Hor. She speakes much of her Father; saies she heares [Sidenote: Gent.]

[Footnote A: Here in the Quarto:—

Enter Hamlet, Rosencraus, &c.

Ham. Good sir whose powers are these?

Cap. They are of Norway sir.

Ham. How purposd sir I pray you?

Cap. Against some part of Poland.

Ham. Who commaunds them sir?

Cap. The Nephew to old Norway, Fortenbrasse.

Ham. Goes it against the maine of Poland sir, Or for some frontire?

Ham. Why then the Pollacke neuer will defend it.

Cap. Yes, it is already garisond.

Cap. God buy you sir.

Ros. Wil't please you goe my Lord?

[Sidenote: 187, 195] Ham. Ile be with you straight, goe a little before.[9] [10]How all occasions[11] doe informe against me,

[Continued on next text page.]]

[Footnote 1: 'we shall pay our respects, waiting upon his person.']

[Footnote 2: 'let,' imperative mood.]

[Footnote 3: 'with proper precaution,' said to his attendant officers.]

[Footnote 4: This was originally intended, I repeat, for the commencement of the act. But when the greater part of the foregoing scene was omitted, and the third act made to end with the scene before that, then the small part left of the all-but-cancelled scene must open the fourth act.]

[Footnote 6: exaggeration.]

[Footnote 7: —probably a small outlying island or coast-fortress, not far off, else why should Norway care about it at all? If the word frontier has the meaning, as the Shakespeare Lexicon says, of 'an outwork in fortification,' its use two lines back would, taken figuratively, tend to support this.]

[Footnote 8: The meaning may be as in the following paraphrase: 'This quarrelling about nothing is (the breaking of) the abscess caused by wealth and peace—which breaking inward (in general corruption), would show no outward sore in sign of why death came.' Or it might be forced thus:—

But it may mean:—'The war is an imposthume, which will break within, and cause much affliction to the people that make the war.' On the other hand, Hamlet seems to regard it as a process for, almost a sign of health.]

[Footnote 9: Note his freedom.]

[Footnote 10: See 'examples grosse as earth' below.]

[Footnote 11: While every word that Shakspere wrote we may well take pains to grasp thoroughly, my endeavour to cast light on this passage is made with the distinct understanding in my own mind that the author himself disapproved of and omitted it, and that good reason is not wanting why he should have done so. At the same time, if my student, for this book is for those who would have help and will take pains to the true understanding of the play, would yet retain the passage, I protest against the acceptance of Hamlet's judgment of himself, except as revealing the simplicity and humility of his nature and character. That as often as a vivid memory of either interview with the Ghost came back upon him, he should feel rebuked and ashamed, and vexed with himself, is, in the morally, intellectually, and emotionally troubled state of his mind, nowise the less natural that he had the best of reasons for the delay because of which he here so unmercifully abuses himself. A man of self-satisfied temperament would never in similar circumstances have done so. But Hamlet was, by nature and education, far from such self-satisfaction; and there is in him besides such a strife and turmoil of opposing passions and feelings and apparent duties, as can but rarely rise in a human soul. With which he ought to side, his conscience is not sure—sides therefore now with one, now with another. At the same time it is by no means the long delay the critics imagine of which he is accusing himself—it is only that the thing is not done.

In certain moods the action a man dislikes will therefore look to him the more like a duty; and this helps to prevent Hamlet from knowing always how great a part conscience bears in the omission because of which he condemns and even contemns himself. The conscience does not naturally examine itself—is not necessarily self-conscious. In any soliloquy, a man must speak from his present mood: we who are not suffering, and who have many of his moods before us, ought to understand Hamlet better than he understands himself. To himself, sitting in judgment on himself, it would hardly appear a decent cause of, not to say reason for, a moment's delay in punishing his uncle, that he was so weighed down with misery because of his mother and Ophelia, that it seemed of no use to kill one villain out of the villainous world; it would seem but 'bestial oblivion'; and, although his reputation as a prince was deeply concerned, any reflection on the consequences to himself would at times appear but a 'craven scruple'; while at times even the whispers of conscience might seem a 'thinking too precisely on the event.' A conscientious man of changeful mood wilt be very ready in either mood to condemn the other. The best and rightest men will sometimes accuse themselves in a manner that seems to those who know them best, unfounded, unreasonable, almost absurd. We must not, I say, take the hero's judgment of himself as the author's judgment of him. The two judgments, that of a man upon himself from within, and that of his beholder upon him from without, are not congeneric. They are different in origin and in kind, and cannot be adopted either of them into the source of the other without most serious and dangerous mistake. So adopted, each becomes another thing altogether. It is to me probable that, although it involves other unfitnesses, the Poet omitted the passage chiefly from coming to see the danger of its giving occasion, or at least support, to an altogether mistaken and unjust idea of his Hamlet.]

[Page 194]

[Continuation of quote from Quarto from previous text page:—

[Footnote 1: trifles.]

[Footnote 2: doubtfully.]

[Footnote 3: 'there is nothing in her speech.']

[Footnote 4: 'the formless mode of it.']

[Footnote 5: 'to gathering things and putting them together.']

[Footnote 6: guess.]

[Footnote 7: Ophelia's words.]

[Footnote 8: I am in doubt whether this passage from 'What is a man' down to 'unused,' does not refer to the king, and whether Hamlet is not persuading himself that it can be no such objectionable thing to kill one hardly above a beast. At all events it is far more applicable to the king: it was not one of Hamlet's faults, in any case, to fail of using his reason. But he may just as well accuse himself of that too! At the same time the worst neglect of reason lies in not carrying out its conclusions, and if we cannot justify Hamlet in his delay, the passage is of good application to him. 'Bestiall oblivion' does seem to connect himself with the reflection; but how thoroughly is the thing intended by such a phrase alien from the character of Hamlet!]

[Footnote 9: —the mental faculty of running hither and thither: 'We look before and after.' Shelley: To a Skylark.]

[Footnote 10: —the forgetfulness of such a beast as he has just mentioned.]

[Footnote 11: —the consequences. The scruples that come of thinking of the event, Hamlet certainly had: that they were craven scruples, that his thinking was too precise, I deny to the face of the noble self-accuser. Is that a craven scruple which, seeing no good to result from the horrid deed, shrinks from its irretrievableness, and demands at least absolute assurance of guilt? or that 'a thinking too precisely on the event,' to desire, as the prince of his people, to leave an un wounded name behind him?]

[Footnote 12: This passage is the strongest there is on the side of the ordinary misconception of the character of Hamlet. It comes from himself; and it is as ungenerous as it is common and unfair to use such a weapon against a man. Does any but St. Paul himself say he was the chief of sinners? Consider Hamlet's condition, tormented on all sides, within and without, and think whether this outbreak against himself be not as unfair as it is natural. Lest it should be accepted against him, Shakspere did well to leave it out. In bitter disappointment, both because of what is and what is not, both because of what he has done and what he has failed to do, having for the time lost all chance, with the last vision of the Ghost still haunting his eyes, his last reproachful words yet ringing in his ears, are we bound to take his judgment of himself because it is against himself? Are we bound to take any man's judgment because it is against himself? I answer, 'No more than if it were for himself.' A good man's judgment, where he is at all perplexed, especially if his motive comes within his own question, is ready to be against himself, as a bad man's is sure to be for himself. Or because he is a philosopher, does it follow that throughout he understands himself? Were such a man in cool, untroubled conditions, we might feel compelled to take his judgment, but surely not here! A philosopher in such state as Hamlet's would understand the quality of his spiritual operations with no more certainty than another man. In his present mood, Hamlet forgets the cogency of the reasons that swayed him in the other; forgets that his uppermost feeling then was doubt, as horror, indignation, and conviction are uppermost now. Things were never so clear to Hamlet as to us.

But how can he say he has strength and means—in the position in which he now finds himself? I am glad to be able to believe, let my defence of Hamlet against himself be right or wrong, that Shakspere intended the omission of the passage. I lay nothing on the great lack of logic throughout the speech, for that would not make it unfit for Hamlet in such mood, while it makes its omission from the play of less consequence to my general argument.]

[Footnote 13: threaten. This supports my argument as to the great soliloquy—that it was death as the result of his slaying the king, or attempting to do so, not death by suicide, he was thinking of: he expected to die himself in the punishing of his uncle.]

[Footnote 14: He had had no chance but that when the king was on his knees.]

[Footnote 15: 'a fancy and illusion.']

[Footnote 16: 'which is too small for those engaged to find room to fight on it.']

[Footnote 17: 'continent,' containing space.]

[Footnote 18: This soliloquy is antithetic to the other. Here is no thought of the 'something after death.']

[Footnote 19: If, with this speech in his mouth, Hamlet goes coolly on board the vessel, not being compelled thereto (190, 192, 216), and possessing means to his vengeance, as here he says, and goes merely in order to hoist Rosincrance and Guildensterne with their own petard—that is, if we must keep the omitted passages, then the author exposes his hero to a more depreciatory judgment than any from which I would justify him, and a conception of his character entirely inconsistent with the rest of the play. He did not observe the risk at the time he wrote the passage, but discovering it afterwards, rectified the oversight—to the dissatisfaction of his critics, who have agreed in restoring what he cancelled.]

[Page 196]

Enter Ophelia distracted.[7]

Ophe. Where is the beauteous Maiesty of Denmark.

Qu. How now Ophelia? [Sidenote: shee sings.]

Ophe. How should I your true loue know from another one? By his Cockle hat and staffe, and his Sandal shoone.

Qu. Alas sweet Lady: what imports this Song?

Ophe. Say you? Nay pray you marke. He is dead and gone Lady, he is dead and gone, At his head a grasse-greene Turfe, at his heeles a stone. [Sidenote: O ho.]

Enter King.

Qu. Nay but Ophelia.

Ophe. Pray you marke. White his Shrow'd as the Mountaine Snow. [Sidenote: Enter King.]

Qu. Alas looke heere my Lord,

[Sidenote: 246] Ophe. Larded[8] with sweet flowers: [Sidenote: Larded all with] Which bewept to the graue did not go, [Sidenote: ground | Song.] With true-loue showres,

[Footnote 1: 'present them,'—her words, that is—giving significance or interpretation to them.]

[Footnote 2: If this would, and not the might of the Quarto, be the correct reading, it means that Ophelia would have something thought so and so.]

[Footnote 3: —changing her mind on Horatio's representation. At first she would not speak with her.]

[Footnote 4: 'minds that breed evil.']

[Footnote 5: —as a quotation.]

[Footnote 6: Instance, the history of Macbeth.]

[Footnote 7: 1st Q. Enter Ofelia playing on a Lute, and her haire downe singing.

Hamlet's apparent madness would seem to pass into real madness in Ophelia. King Lear's growing perturbation becomes insanity the moment he sees the pretended madman Edgar.

The forms of Ophelia's madness show it was not her father's death that drove her mad, but his death by the hand of Hamlet, which, with Hamlet's banishment, destroyed all the hope the queen had been fostering in her of marrying him some day.]

[Footnote 8: This expression is, as Dr. Johnson says, taken from cookery; but it is so used elsewhere by Shakspere that we cannot regard it here as a scintillation of Ophelia's insanity.]

[Page 198]

King. How do ye, pretty Lady? [Sidenote: you]

Ophe. Well, God dil'd you.[1] They say the [Sidenote: good dild you,[1]] Owle was a Bakers daughter.[2] Lord, wee know what we are, but know not what we may be. God be at your Table.

[Sidenote: 174] King. Conceit[3] vpon her Father.

Ophe. Pray you let's haue no words of this: [Sidenote: Pray lets] but when they aske you what it meanes, say you this:

[4] To morrow is S. Valentines day, all in the morning betime,
And I a Maid at your Window to be your Valentine.
Then vp he rose, and don'd[5] his clothes, and dupt[5] the chamber dore,
Let in the Maid, that out a Maid, neuer departed more.

King. Pretty Ophelia.

Ophe. Indeed la? without an oath Ile make an [Sidenote: Indeede without] end ont.[6]

King. How long hath she bin this? [Sidenote: beene thus?]

Ophe. I hope all will be well. We must bee patient, but I cannot choose but weepe, to thinke they should lay him i'th'cold ground: My brother [Sidenote: they wouid lay] shall knowe of it, and so I thanke you for your good counsell. Come, my Coach: Goodnight Ladies: Goodnight sweet Ladies: Goodnight, goodnight. Exit[7]

[Footnote 1: 1st Q. 'God yeeld you,' that is, reward you. Here we have a blunder for the contraction, 'God 'ild you'—perhaps a common blunder.]

[Footnote 2: For the silly legend, see Douce's note in Johnson and
Steevens.]

[Footnote 3: imaginative brooding.]

[Footnote 4: We dare no judgment on madness in life: we need not in art.]

[Footnote 5: Preterites of don and dup, contracted from do on and do up.]

[Footnote 6: —disclaiming false modesty.]

[Footnote 7: Not in Q.]

[Page 200]

Enter a Messenger.

Qu. Alacke, what noyse is this?[9]

King. Where are my Switzers?[10] [Sidenote: King. Attend, where is my Swissers,] Let them guard the doore. What is the matter?

Mes. Saue your selfe, my Lord. [Sidenote: 120] The Ocean (ouer-peering of his List[11]) Eates not the Flats with more impittious[12] haste

[Footnote 1: —each alone, like scouts.]

[Footnote 2: stirred up like pools—with similar result.]

[Footnote 3: because of.]

[Footnote 4: The king wished to avoid giving the people any pretext or cause for interfering: he dreaded whatever might lead to enquiry—to the queen of course pretending it was to avoid exposing Hamlet to the popular indignation. Hugger mugger—secretly: Steevens and Malone.]

[Footnote 5: The phrase has the same visual root as beside herself—both signifying 'not at one with herself.']

[Footnote 6: If the Quarto reading is right, 'this wonder' means the hurried and suspicious funeral of his father. But the Folio reading is quite Shaksperean: 'He keeps on (as a garment) the wonder of the people at him'; keeps his behaviour such that the people go on wondering about him: the phrase is explained by the next clause. Compare:

K. Henry IV. P. I. act iii. sc. 1.]

[Footnote 7: 'wherein Necessity, beggared of material, will not scruple to whisper invented accusations against us.']

[Footnote 8: —the name given to a certain small cannon—perhaps charged with various missiles, hence the better figuring the number and variety of 'sorrows' he has just recounted.]

[Footnote 9: This line not in Q.]

[Footnote 10: Note that the king is well guarded, and Hamlet had to lay his account with great risk in the act of killing him.]

[Footnote 12: I do not know whether this word means pitiless, or stands for impetuous. The Quarto has one t.]

[Page 202]

Qu. How cheerefully on the false Traile they cry, [Sidenote: A noise within.] Oh this is Counter you false Danish Dogges.[4]

Noise within. Enter Laertes[5]. [Sidenote: Laertes with others.]

King. The doores are broke.

Laer. Where is the King, sirs? Stand you all without. [Sidenote: this King? sirs stand]

All. No, let's come in.

Laer. I pray you giue me leaue.[6]

All. We will, we will.

Laer. I thanke you: Keepe the doore. Oh thou vilde King, giue me my Father.

Qu. Calmely good Laertes.

[Footnote 1: Head is a rising or gathering of people—generally rebellious, I think.]

[Footnote 2: Antiquity and Custom.]

[Footnote 3: This refers to the election of Claudius—evidently not a popular election, but effected by intrigue with the aristocracy and the army: 'They cry, Let us choose: Laertes shall be king!'

We may suppose the attempt of Claudius to have been favoured by the lingering influence of the old Norse custom of succession, by which not the son but the brother inherited. 16, bis.]

[Footnote 4: To hunt counter is to 'hunt the game by the heel or track.' The queen therefore accuses them of not using their scent or judgment, but following appearances.]

[Footnote 5: Now at length re-appears Laertes, who has during the interim been ripening in Paris for villainy. He is wanted for the catastrophe, and requires but the last process of a few hours in the hell-oven of a king's instigation.]

[Footnote 6: The customary and polite way of saying leave me: 'grant me your absence.' 85, 89.]

[Footnote 7: grows calm.]

[Footnote 8: In taking vengeance Hamlet must acknowledge his mother such as Laertes says inaction on his part would proclaim his mother.

The actress should here let a shadow cross the queen's face: though too weak to break with the king, she has begun to repent.]

[Footnote 9: fear for.]

[Footnote 10: The consummate hypocrite claims the protection of the sacred hedge through which he had himself broken—or crept rather, like a snake, to kill. He can act innocence the better that his conscience is clear as to Polonius.]

[Footnote 11: 'can only peep through the hedge to its desire—acts little of its will.']

[Page 204]

Laer. Where's my Father? [Sidenote: is my]

King. Dead.

Qu. But not by him.

King. Let him demand his fill.

King. Who shall stay you?[1]

Laer. My Will, not all the world,[1] [Sidenote: worlds:] And for my meanes, Ile husband them so well, They shall go farre with little.

Laer. None but his Enemies.

King. Will you know them then.

[Footnote 1:

or,

so playing on the two meanings of the word stay. Or it might mean: 'Not all the world shall stay my will.']

[Footnote 2: swoop-stake—sweepstakes.]

[Footnote 3: 'and be loser as well as winner—' If the Folio's is the right reading, then the sentence is unfinished, and should have a dash, not a period.]

[Footnote 4: A curious misprint: may we not suspect a somewhat dull joker among the compositors?]

[Footnote 6: 'a true son to your father.']

[Footnote 7: 'feel much grief for it.']

[Footnote 5: Laertes is a ranter—false everywhere.

Plainly he is introduced as the foil from which Hamlet 'shall stick fiery off.' In this speech he shows his moral condition directly the opposite of Hamlet's: he has no principle but revenge. His conduct ought to be quite satisfactory to Hamlet's critics; there is action enough in it of the very kind they would have of Hamlet; and doubtless it would be satisfactory to them but for the treachery that follows. The one, dearly loving a father who deserves immeasurably better of him than Polonius of Laertes, will not for the sake of revenge disregard either conscience, justice, or grace; the other will not delay even to inquire into the facts of his father's fate, but will act at once on hearsay, rushing to a blind satisfaction that cannot even be called retaliation, caring for neither right nor wrong, cursing conscience and the will of God, and daring damnation. He slights assurance as to the hand by which his father fell, dismisses all reflection that might interfere with a stupid revenge. To make up one's mind at once, and act without ground, is weakness, not strength: this Laertes does—and is therefore just the man to be the villainous, not the innocent, tool of villainy. He who has sufficing ground and refuses to act is weak; but the ground that will satisfy the populace, of which the commonplace critic is the fair type, will not satisfy either the man of conscience or of wisdom. The mass of world-bepraised action owes its existence to the pressure of circumstance, not to the will and conscience of the man. Hamlet waits for light, even with his heart accusing him; Laertes rushes into the dark, dagger in hand, like a mad Malay: so he kill, he cares not whom. Such a man is easily tempted to the vilest treachery, for the light that is in him is darkness; he is not a true man; he is false in himself. This is what comes of his father's maxim:

Like the aphorism 'Honesty is the best policy,' it reveals the difference between a fact and a truth. Both sayings are correct as facts, but as guides of conduct devilishly false, leading to dishonesty and treachery. To be true to the divine self in us, is indeed to be true to all; but it is only by being true to all, against the ever present and urging false self, that at length we shall see the divine self rise above the chaotic waters of our selfishness, and know it so as to be true to it.

Of Laertes we must note also that it is not all for love of his father that he is ready to cast allegiance to hell, and kill the king: he has the voice of the people to succeed him.]

[Page 206]

A noise within. [2]Let her come in.

Enter Ophelia[3]

Ophe. They bore him bare fac'd on the Beer. [Sidenote: Song.] [Sidenote: bare-faste] Hey non nony, nony, hey nony:[8] And on his graue raines many a teare, [Sidenote: And in his graue rain'd] Fare you well my Doue.

Laer. Had'st thou thy wits, and did'st perswade Reuenge, it could not moue thus.

Ophe. You must sing downe a-downe, and [Sidenote: sing a downe a downe, And] you call him[9] a-downe-a. Oh, how the wheele[10] becomes it? It is the false Steward that stole his masters daughter.[11]

Laer. This nothings more then matter.[12]

Ophe. There's Rosemary,[13] that's for Remembraunce. Pray loue remember: and there is [Sidenote: , pray you loue] Paconcies, that's for Thoughts. [Sidenote: Pancies[14]]

Laer. A document[15] in madnesse, thoughts and remembrance fitted.

Ophe. There's Fennell[16] for you, and Columbines[16]: ther's Rew[17] for you, and heere's some for

[Footnote 1: 'pierce as directly to your judgment.'

But the simile of the day seems to favour the reading of the Q.—'peare,' for appear. In the word level would then be indicated the rising sun.]

[Footnote 2: Not in Q.]

[Footnote 3: 1st Q. 'Enter Ofelia as before.']

[Footnote 4: To render it credible that Laertes could entertain the vile proposal the king is about to make, it is needful that all possible influences should be represented as combining to swell the commotion of his spirit, and overwhelm what poor judgment and yet poorer conscience he had. Altogether unprepared, he learns Ophelia's pitiful condition by the sudden sight of the harrowing change in her—and not till after that hears who killed his father and brought madness on his sister.]

[Footnote 5: 1st Q.

[Footnote 6: delicate, exquisite.]

[Footnote 7: 'where 'tis fine': I suggest that the it here may be impersonal: 'where things, where all is fine,' that is, 'in a fine soul'; then the meaning would be, 'Nature is fine always in love, and where the soul also is fine, she sends from it' &c. But the where may be equal, perhaps, to whereas. I can hardly think the phrase means merely 'and where it is in love.' It might intend—'and where Love is fine, it sends' &c. The 'precious instance of itself,' that is, 'something that is a part and specimen of itself,' is here the 'young maid's wits': they are sent after the 'old man's life.'—These three lines are not in the Quarto. It is not disputed that they are from Shakspere's hand: if the insertion of these be his, why should the omission of others not be his also?]

[Footnote 8: This line is not in Q.]

[Footnote 9: 'if you call him': I think this is not a part of the song, but is spoken of her father.]

[Footnote 10: the burden of the song: Steevens.]

[Footnote 11: The subject of the ballad.]

[Footnote 12: 'more than sense'—in incitation to revenge.]

[Footnote 13: —an evergreen, and carried at funerals: Johnson.

The Winter's Tale, act iv. sc. 3.]

[Footnote 14: penseés.]

[Footnote 15: a teaching, a lesson—the fitting of thoughts and remembrance, namely—which he applies to his intent of revenge. Or may it not rather be meant that the putting of these two flowers together was a happy hit of her madness, presenting the fantastic emblem of a document or writing—the very idea of which is the keeping of thoughts in remembrance?]

[Footnote 16: —said to mean flattery and thanklessness—perhaps given to the king.]

[Footnote 17: Repentance—given to the queen. Another name of the plant was Herb-Grace, as below, in allusion, doubtless, to its common name—rue or repentance being both the gift of God, and an act of grace.]

[Page 208]

me. Wee may call it Herbe-Grace a Sundaies: [Sidenote: herbe of Grace a Sondaies, you may weare] Oh you must weare your Rew with a difference.[1] There's a Daysie,[2] I would giue you some Violets,[3] but they wither'd all when my Father dyed: They say, he made a good end; [Sidenote: say a made]

For bonny sweet Robin is all my ioy.

Laer. Thought, and Affliction, Passion, Hell it selfe: [Sidenote: afflictions,] She turnes to Fauour, and to prettinesse.

[Sidenote:Song.]

Ophe. And will he not come againe, [Sidenote: will a not] And will he not come againe: [Sidenote: will a not] No, no, he is dead, go to thy Death-bed, He neuer wil come againe. His Beard as white as Snow, [Sidenote: beard was as] All[4] Flaxen was his Pole: He is gone, he is gone, and we cast away mone, Gramercy[5] on his Soule. [Sidenote: God a mercy on] And of all Christian Soules, I pray God.[6] [Sidenote: Christians soules,] God buy ye.[7] Exeunt Ophelia[8] [Sidenote: you.]

Laer. Do you see this, you Gods? [Sidenote: Doe you this ô God.]

Laer. Let this be so:[12] His meanes of death,[13] his obscure buriall; [Sidenote: funerall,] No Trophee, Sword, nor Hatchment o're his bones,[14]

[Footnote 1: —perhaps the heraldic term. The Poet, not Ophelia, intends the special fitness of the speech. Ophelia means only that the rue of the matron must differ from the rue of the girl.]

[Footnote 2: 'the dissembling daisy': Greene—quoted by Henley.]

[Footnote 3: —standing for faithfulness: Malone, from an old song.]

[Footnote 4: 'All' not in Q.]

[Footnote 5: Wherever else Shakspere uses the word, it is in the sense of grand merci—great thanks (Skeat's Etym. Dict.); here it is surely a corruption, whether Ophelia's or the printer's, of the Quarto reading, 'God a mercy' which, spoken quickly, sounds very near gramercy. The 1st Quarto also has 'God a mercy.']

[Footnote 6: 'I pray God.' not in Q.]

[Footnote 7: 'God b' wi' ye': good bye.]

[Footnote 8: Not in Q.]

[Footnote 9: 'I must have a share in your grief.' The word does mean commune, but here is more pregnant, as evidenced in the next phrase, 'Or you deny me right:'—'do not give me justice.']

[Footnote 10: 'touched with the guilt of the deed, either as having done it with our own hand, or caused it to be done by the hand of one at our side.']

[Footnote 11: We may paraphrase thus: 'Be pleased to grant us a loan of your patience,' that is, be patient for a while at our request, 'and we will work along with your soul to gain for it (your soul) just satisfaction.']

[Footnote 12: He consents—but immediately re-sums the grounds of his wrathful suspicion.]

[Footnote 13: —the way in which he met his death.]

[Footnote 14: —customary honours to the noble dead. A trophy was an arrangement of the armour and arms of the dead in a set decoration. The origin of the word hatchment shows its intent: it is a corruption of achievement.]

[Page 210]

King. So you shall: And where th'offence is, let the great Axe fall. I pray you go with me.[3] Exeunt

Enter Horatio, with an Attendant. [Sidenote: Horatio and others.]

Hora. What are they that would speake with me?

Ser. Saylors sir, they say they haue Letters [Gent. Sea-faring men sir,] for you.

Hor. Let them come in,[4] I do not know from what part of the world I should be greeted, if not from Lord Hamlet.

Enter Saylor. [Sidenote: Saylers.]

Say. God blesse you Sir.

Hor. Let him blesse thee too.

Say. Hee shall Sir, and't[5] please him. There's [Sidenote: A shall sir and please] a Letter for you Sir: It comes from th'Ambassadours [Sidenote: it came frõ th' Embassador] that was bound for England, if your name be Horatio, as I am let to know[6] it is.

Reads the Letter[7]

Horatio, When thou shalt haue ouerlook'd this, [Sidenote: Hor. Horatio when] giue these Fellowes some meanes to the King: They haue Letters for him. Ere we were two dayes[8] old at Sea, a Pyrate of very Warlicke appointment gaue vs Chace. Finding our selues too slow of Saile, we put on a compelled Valour. In the Grapple, I boarded [Sidenote: valour, and in the] them: On the instant they got cleare of our Shippe, so I alone became their Prisoner.[9] They haue dealt with mee, like Theeues of Mercy, but they knew what they did. I am to doe a good turne for them. Let [Sidenote: a turne] the King have the Letters I haue sent, and repaire thou to me with as much hast as thou wouldest flye [Sidenote: much speede as] death[10] I haue words to speake in your eare, will [Sidenote: in thine eare]

[Footnote 1: 'formal ostentation'—show or publication of honour according to form or rule.]

[Footnote 2: 'so that I must call in question'—institute inquiry; or '—that (these things) I must call in question.']

[Footnote 3: Note such a half line frequently after the not uncommon closing couplet—as if to take off the formality of the couplet, and lead back, through the more speech-like, to greater verisimilitude.]

[Footnote 4: Here the servant goes, and the rest of the speech Horatio speaks solus. He had expected to hear from Hamlet.]

[Footnote 5: 'and it please'—if it please. An for if is merely and.]

[Footnote 6: 'I am told.']

[Footnote 7: Not in Q.]

[Footnote 8: This gives an approximate clue to the time between the second and third acts: it needs not have been a week.]

[Footnote 9: Note once more the unfailing readiness of Hamlet where there was no question as to the fitness of the action seemingly required. This is the man who by too much thinking, forsooth, has rendered himself incapable of action!—so far ahead of the foremost behind him, that, when the pirate, not liking such close quarters, 'on the instant got clear,' he is the only one on her deck! There was no question here as to what ought to be done: the pirate grappled them; he boarded her. Thereafter, with his prompt faculty for dealing with men, he soon comes to an understanding with his captors, and they agree, upon some certain condition, to put him on shore.

He writes in unusual spirits; for he has now gained full, presentable, and indisputable proof of the treachery which before he scarcely doubted, but could not demonstrate. The present instance of it has to do with himself, not his father, but in itself would justify the slaying of his uncle, whose plausible way had possibly perplexed him so that he could not thoroughly believe him the villain he was: bad as he must be, could he actually have killed his own brother, and such a brother? A better man than Laertes might have acted more promptly than Hamlet, and so happened to do right; but he would not have been right, for the proof was not sufficient.]

[Footnote 10: The value Hamlet sets on his discovery, evident in his joyous urgency to share it with his friend, is explicable only on the ground of the relief it is to his mind to be now at length quite certain of his duty.]

[Page 212]

make thee dumbe, yet are they much too light for the bore of the Matter.[1] These good Fellowes will bring [Sidenote: the bord of] thee where I am. Rosincrance and Guildensterne, hold their course for England. Of them I haue much to tell thee, Farewell. He that thou knowest thine. [Sidenote: So that thou knowest thine Hamlet.] Hamlet.

Enter King and Laertes.[2]

[Footnote 1: Note here also Hamlet's feeling of the importance of what has passed since he parted with his friend. 'The bullet of my words, though it will strike thee dumb, is much too small for the bore of the reality (the facts) whence it will issue.']

[Footnote 2: While we have been present at the interview between Horatio and the sailors, the king has been persuading Laertes.]

[Footnote 3: an ear of judgment.]

[Footnote 4: 'thought then to have killed me.']

[Footnote 5: faits, deeds.]

[Footnote 6: 'deeds so deserving of death, not merely in the eye of the law, but in their own nature.']

[Footnote 7: powerfully.]

[Footnote 8: 'unsinewed.']

[Footnote 9: 'either-which.']

[Footnote 10: 'moves not but in the moving of his sphere,'—The stars were popularly supposed to be fixed in a solid crystalline sphere, and moved in its motion only. The queen, Claudius implies, is his sphere; he could not move but by her.]

[Footnote 11: Here used in the sense of the Fr. 'genre'—sort. It is not the only instance of the word so used by Shakspere.

The king would rouse in Laertes jealousy of Hamlet.]

[Page 214]

Enter a Messenger. [Sidenote: with letters.]

How now? What Newes?

Mes. Letters my Lord from Hamlet.[7] This to [Sidenote: Messen. These to] your Maiesty: this to the Queene.

King. From Hamlet? Who brought them?

Mes. Saylors my Lord they say, I saw them not: They were giuen me by Claudio, he recciu'd them.[8] [Sidenote: them Of him that brought them.]

King. Laertes you shall heare them:[9] Leaue vs. Exit Messenger[10]

High and Mighty, you shall know I am set naked on your Kingdome. To morrow shall I begge leaue to see your Kingly Eyes[11] When I shall (first asking your Pardon thereunto) recount th'Occasions [Sidenote: the occasion of my suddaine returne.] of my sodaine, and more strange returne.[12] Hamlet.[13] What should this meane? Are all the rest come backe? [Sidenote: King. What]

[Footnote 1: 'would convert his fetters—if I imprisoned him—to graces, commending him yet more to their regard.']

[Footnote 2: arm'd is certainly the right, and a true Shaksperean word:—it was no fault in the aim, but in the force of the flight—no matter of the eye, but of the arm, which could not give momentum enough to such slightly timbered arrows. The fault in the construction of the last line, I need not remark upon.

I think there is a hint of this the genuine meaning even in the blundered and partly unintelligible reading of the Quarto. If we leave out 'for so loued,' we have this: 'So that my arrows, too slightly timbered, would have reverted armed to my bow again, but not (would not have gone) where I have aimed them,'—implying that his arrows would have turned their armed heads against himself.

What the king says here is true, but far from the truth: he feared driving Hamlet, and giving him at the same time opportunity, to speak in his own defence and render his reasons.]

[Footnote 3: extremes? or conditions?]

[Footnote 4: 'With many a tempest hadde his berd ben schake.'—Chaucer, of the Schipman, in The Prologue to The Canterbury Tales.]

[Footnote 5: —hear of Hamlet's death in England, he means.

At this point in the 1st Q. comes a scene between Horatio and the queen, in which he informs her of a letter he had just received from Hamlet,

Horatio does not mention the pirates, but speaks of Hamlet 'being set ashore,' and of Gilderstone and Rossencraft going on to their fate. The queen assures Horatio that she is but temporizing with the king, and shows herself anxious for the success of her son's design against his life. The Poet's intent was not yet clear to himself.]

[Footnote 6: Here his crow cracks.]

[Footnote 7: From 'How now' to 'Hamlet' is not in Q.]

[Footnote 8: Horatio has given the sailors' letters to Claudio, he to another.]

[Footnote 9: He wants to show him that he has nothing behind—that he is open with him: he will read without having pre-read.]

[Footnote 10: Not in Q.]

[Footnote 11: He makes this request for an interview with the intent of killing him. The king takes care he does not have it.]

[Footnote 12: 'more strange than sudden.']

[Footnote 13: Not in Q.]

[Page 216]

Laer. Know you the hand?[3]

Kin. 'Tis Hamlets Character, naked and in a Postscript here he sayes alone:[4] Can you aduise [Sidenote: deuise me?] me?[5]

Kin. If it be so Laertes, as how should it be so:[6] How otherwise will you be rul'd by me?

[Footnote A: Here in the Quarto:—

Laer. My Lord I will be rul'd, The rather if you could deuise it so That I might be the organ.

Laer. What part is that my Lord?

[Footnote 2: I incline to the Q. reading here: 'or is it some trick, and no reality in it?']

[Footnote 3: —following the king's suggestion.]

'Alone'—to allay suspicion of his having brought assistance with him.]

[Footnote 5: Fine flattery—preparing the way for the instigation he is about to commence.]

[Footnote 6: Point thus: '—as how should it be so? how otherwise?—will' &c. The king cannot tell what to think—either how it can be, or how it might be otherwise—for here is Hamlet's own hand!]

[Footnote 7: provided.]

[Footnote 8: A hawk was said to check when it forsook its proper game for some other bird that crossed its flight. The blunder in the Quarto is odd, plainly from manuscript copy, and is not likely to have been set right by any but the author.]

[Footnote 9: 'shall not give the practice'—artifice, cunning attempt, chicane, or trick—but a word not necessarily offensive—'the name it deserves, but call it accident:' 221.]

[Footnote 10: 'Some' not in Q.—Hence may be either backwards or forwards; now it is used only forwards.]

[Footnote 11: travels.]

[Footnote 12: 'all your excellencies together.']

[Footnote 13: seat, place, grade, position, merit.]

[Footnote 14: 'A very riband'—a mere trifling accomplishment: the u of the text can but be a misprint for n.]

[Footnote 15: youth obj., livery nom. to becomes.]

[Footnote 16: 'than his furs and his robes become settled age.']

[Footnote 17: Warburton thinks the word ought to be wealth, but I doubt it; health, in its sense of wholeness, general soundness, in affairs as well as person, I should prefer.]

[Page 218]

Laer. A Norman was't?

Kin. A Norman.

Laer. Vpon my life Lamound. [Sidenote: Lamord.]

Kin. The very same.

Laer. I know him well, he is the Brooch indeed, And Iemme of all our Nation, [Sidenote: all the Nation.]

Laer. Why out of this, my Lord? [Sidenote: What out]

Kin. Laertes was your Father deare to you? Or are you like the painting[11] of a sorrow, A face without a heart?

Laer. Why aske you this?

Kin. Not that I thinke you did not loue your Father, But that I know Loue is begun by Time[12]:

[Footnote A: Here in the Quarto:—

; the Scrimures[13] of their nation He swore had neither motion, guard nor eye, If you opposd them;]

[Footnote 1: I think the can of the Quarto is the true word.]

[Footnote 2: —in his horsemanship.]

[Footnote 3: There is no mistake in the order 'had he beene'; the transposition is equivalent to if: 'as if he had been unbodied with, and shared half the nature of the brave beast.'

These two lines, from As to thought, must be taken parenthetically; or else there must be supposed a dash after Beast, and a fresh start made.

'But he (as if Centaur-like he had been one piece with the horse) was no more moved than one with the going of his own legs:'

'it seemed, as he borrowed the horse's body, so he lent the horse his mind:'—Sir Philip Sidney. Arcadia, B. ii. p. 115.]

[Footnote 4: '—surpassed, I thought.']

[Footnote 5: 'in invention of.']

[Footnote 6: Emphasis on did, as antithetic to forgery: 'my inventing came short of his doing.']

[Footnote 7: 'it would be a sight indeed to see you matched with an equal.' The king would strengthen Laertes' confidence in his proficiency.]

[Footnote 8: 'made him so spiteful by stirring up his habitual envy.']

[Footnote 9: All invention.]

[Footnote 10: Here should be a dash: the king pauses. He is approaching dangerous ground—is about to propose a thing abominable, and therefore to the influence of flattered vanity and roused emulation, would add the fiercest heat of stimulated love and hatred—to which end he proceeds to cast doubt on the quality of Laertes' love for his father.]

[Footnote 11: the picture.]

[Footnote 12: 'through habit.']

[Footnote 13: French escrimeurs: fencers.]

[Page 220]

Laer. To cut his throat i'th'Church.[3]

[Footnote A: Here in the Quarto:—

[Footnote 1: 'passages of proofe,'—trials. 'I see when it is put to the test.']

[Footnote 2: 'time modifies it.']

[Footnote 3: Contrast him here with Hamlet.]

[Footnote 4: careless.]

[Footnote 5: examine—the word being of general application then.]

[Footnote 6: unblunted. Some foils seem to have been made with a button that could be taken—probably screwed off.]

[Footnote 7: Whether practice here means exercise or cunning, I cannot determine. Possibly the king uses the word as once before 216—to be taken as Laertes may please.]

[Footnote 8: In the 1st Q. this proposal also is made by the king.]

[Footnote 9:

[Footnote 10: To understand this figure, one must be familiar with the behaviour of the wick of a common lamp or tallow candle.]

[Footnote 11: 'nothing keeps always at the same degree of goodness.']

[Footnote 12: A plurisie is just a too-muchness, from plus, pluris—a plethora, not our word pleurisy, from [Greek: pleura]. See notes in Johnson and Steevens.]

[Footnote 13: The sense here requires an s, and the space in the Quarto between the e and the comma gives the probability that a letter has dropt out.]

[Footnote 14: Modern editors seem agreed to substitute the adjective spendthrift: our sole authority has spendthrifts, and by it I hold. The meaning seems this: 'the would changes, the thing is not done, and then the should, the mere acknowledgment of duty, is like the sigh of a spendthrift, who regrets consequences but does not change his way: it eases his conscience for a moment, and so injures him.' There would at the same time be allusion to what was believed concerning sighs: Dr. Johnson says, 'It is a notion very prevalent, that sighs impair the strength, and wear out the animal powers.']

[Page 222]

Enter Queene.

Queen. One woe doth tread vpon anothers heele, So fast they'l follow[12]: your Sister's drown'd Laertes. [Sidenote: they follow;]

Laer. Drown'd! O where?[13]

[Footnote 2: proper arrangement.]

[Footnote 3: 'fit us exactly, like a garment cut to our shape,' or perhaps 'shape' is used for intent, purpose. Point thus: 'shape. If this should faile, And' &c.]

[Footnote 4: This seems to allude to the assay of a firearm, and to mean 'burst on the trial.' Note 'assaid' two lines back.]

[Footnote 5: There should be a pause here, and a longer pause after commings: the king is contriving. 'I ha't' should have a line to itself, with again a pause, but a shorter one.]

[Footnote 6: Veney, venue, is a term of fencing: a bout, a thrust—from venir, to come—whence 'commings.' (259) But cunnings, meaning skills, may be the word.]

[Footnote 7: 'As' is here equivalent to 'and so.']

[Footnote 8: —to the end of making Hamlet hot and dry.]

[Footnote 9: for the special occasion.]

[Footnote 10: thrust. Twelfth Night, act iii. sc. 4. 'he gives me the stuck in with such a mortal motion.' Stocco in Italian is a long rapier; and stoccata a thrust. Rom. and Jul., act iii. sc. 1. See Shakespeare-Lexicon.]

[Footnote 11: 'may' does not here express doubt, but intention.]

[Footnote 12: If this be the right reading, it means, 'so fast they insist on following.']

[Footnote 13: He speaks it as about to rush to her.]

[Footnote 14: —the choice of Ophelia's fantastic madness, as being the tree of lamenting lovers.]

[Footnote 15: —always busy with flowers.]

[Footnote 16: Ranunculus: Sh. Lex.]

[Footnote 17: —specially descriptive of the willow.]

[Footnote 18: her wild flowers made into a garland.]

[Footnote 19: The intention would seem, that she imagined herself decorating a monument to her father. Hence her Coronet weeds and the Poet's weedy Trophies.]

[Footnote 20: Sliver, I suspect, called so after the fact, because slivered or torn off. In Macbeth we have:

But it may be that sliver was used for a twig, such as could be torn off.

Slip and sliver must be of the same root.]

[Page 224]

Laer. Alas then, is she drown'd? [Sidenote: she is]

Queen. Drown'd, drown'd.

[10]Enter two Clownes.

Clown. Is she to bee buried in Christian buriall, [Sidenote: buriall, when she wilfully] that wilfully seekes her owne saluation?[11]

Other. I tell thee she is, and therefore make her [Sidenote: is, therefore] Graue straight,[12] the Crowner hath sate on her, and finds it Christian buriall.

Clo. How can that be, vnlesse she drowned her selfe in her owne defence?

Other. Why 'tis found so.[13]

[Footnote 1: They were not lauds she was in the habit of singing, to judge by the snatches given.]

[Footnote 2: not able to take in, not understanding, not conscious of.]

[Footnote 3: clothed, endowed, fitted for. See Sh. Lex.]

[Footnote 4: Could the word be for buoy—'her clothes spread wide,' on which she floated singing—therefore her melodious buoy or float?]

[Footnote 5: How could the queen know all this, when there was no one near enough to rescue her? Does not the Poet intend the mode of her death given here for an invention of the queen, to hide the girl's suicide, and by circumstance beguile the sorrow-rage of Laertes?]

[Footnote 6: 'I cannot help it.']

[Footnote 7: 'when these few tears are spent, all the woman will be out of me: I shall be a man again.']

[Footnote 8: douts: 'this foolish water of tears puts it out.' See Q. reading.]

[Footnote 9: Here ends the Fourth Act, between which and the Fifth may intervene a day or two.]

[Footnote 10: Act V. This act requires only part of a day; the funeral and the catastrophe might be on the same.]

[Footnote 11: Has this a confused connection with the fancy that salvation is getting to heaven?]

[Footnote 12: Whether this means straightway, or not crooked, I cannot tell.]

[Footnote 13: 'the coroner has settled it.']

[Footnote 14: The Clown's blunder for defendendo.]

[Page 226]

for heere lies the point; If I drowne my selfe wittingly, it argues an Act: and an Act hath three branches. It is an Act to doe and to performe; [Sidenote: it is to act, to doe, to performe, or all: she] argall[1] she drown'd her selfe wittingly.

Other. Nay but heare you Goodman Deluer. [Sidenote: good man deluer.]

Clown. Giue me leaue; heere lies the water; good: heere stands the man; good: If the man goe to this water and drowne himsele; it is will he nill he, he goes; marke you that? But if the water come to him and drowne him; hee drownes not himselfe. Argall, hee that is not guilty of his owne death, shortens not his owne life.

Other. But is this law?

Clo. I marry is't, Crowners Quest Law.

Other. Will you ha the truth on't: if this had [Sidenote: truth an't] not beene a Gentlewoman, shee should haue beene buried out of[2] Christian Buriall. [Sidenote: out a]

Clo. Why there thou say'st. And the more pitty that great folke should haue countenance in this world to drowne or hang themselues, more then their euen[3] Christian. Come, my Spade; there is no ancient Gentlemen, but Gardiners, Ditchers and Graue-makers; they hold vp Adams Profession.

Other. Was he a Gentleman?

Clo. He was the first that euer bore Armes. [Sidenote: A was]

[4]Other. Why he had none.

Clo. What, ar't a Heathen? how dost thou vnderstand the Scripture? the Scripture sayes Adam dig'd; could hee digge without Armes?[4] Ile put another question to thee; if thou answerest me not to the purpose, confesse thy selfe——

Other. Go too.

Clo. What is he that builds stronger then either the Mason, the Shipwright, or the Carpenter?

Other. The Gallowes-maker; for that Frame outliues a thousand Tenants. [Sidenote: that outliues]

[Footnote 1: ergo, therefore.]

[Footnote 2: without. The pleasure the speeches of the Clown give us, lies partly in the undercurrent of sense, so disguised by stupidity in the utterance; and partly in the wit which mainly succeeds in its end by the failure of its means.]

[Footnote 3: equal, that is fellow Christian.]

[Footnote 4: From 'Other' to 'Armes' not in Quarto.]

[Page 228]

Clo. I like thy wit well in good faith, the Gallowes does well; but how does it well? it does well to those that doe ill: now, thou dost ill to say the Gallowes is built stronger then the Church: Argall, the Gallowes may doe well to thee. Too't againe, Come.

Other. Who builds stronger then a Mason, a Shipwright, or a Carpenter?

Clo. I, tell me that, and vnyoake.[1]

Other. Marry, now I can tell.

Clo. Too't.

Other. Masse, I cannot tell.

Enter Hamlet and Horatio a farre off.[2]

Clo. Cudgell thy braines no more about it; for your dull Asse will not mend his pace with beating, and when you are ask't this question next, say a Graue-maker: the Houses that he makes, lasts [Sidenote: houses hee makes] till Doomesday: go, get thee to Yaughan,[3] fetch [Sidenote: thee in, and fetch mee a soope of] me a stoupe of Liquor.

Sings.[4]

[Sidenote: Enter Hamlet & Horatio]

Ham. Ha's this fellow no feeling of his businesse, [Sidenote: busines? a sings in graue-making.] that he sings at Graue-making?[6]

Hor. Custome hath made it in him a property[7] of easinesse.

Ham. 'Tis ee'n so; the hand of little Imployment hath the daintier sense.

Clowne sings.[8]

But Age with his stealing steps [Sidenote Clow. Song.] hath caught me in his clutch: [Sidenote: hath clawed me]

[Footnote 1: 'unyoke your team'—as having earned his rest.]

[Footnote 2: Not in Quarto.]

[Footnote 3: Whether this is the name of a place, or the name of an innkeeper, or is merely an inexplicable corruption—some take it for a stage-direction to yawn—I cannot tell. See Q. reading.

It is said to have been discovered that a foreigner named Johan sold ale next door to the Globe.]

[Footnote 4: Not in Quarto.]

[Footnote 5: A song ascribed to Lord Vaux is in this and the following stanzas made nonsense of.]

[Footnote 6: Note Hamlet's mood throughout what follows. He has entered the shadow of death.]

[Footnote 7: Property is what specially belongs to the individual; here it is his peculiar work, or personal calling: 'custom has made it with him an easy duty.']

[Footnote 8: Not in Quarto.]

[Page 230]

And hath shipped me intill the Land, [Sidenote: into] as if I had neuer beene such.

Ham. That Scull had a tongue in it, and could sing once: how the knaue iowles it to th' grownd, [Sidenote: the] as if it were Caines Iaw-bone, that did the first [Sidenote: twere] murther: It might be the Pate of a Polititian which [Sidenote: murder, this might] this Asse o're Offices: one that could circumuent [Sidenote: asse now ore-reaches; one that would] God, might it not?

Hor. It might, my Lord.

Ham. Or of a Courtier, which could say, Good Morrow sweet Lord: how dost thou, good Lord? [Sidenote: thou sweet lord?] this might be my Lord such a one, that prais'd my Lord such a ones Horse, when he meant to begge [Sidenote: when a went to] it; might it not?[1]

Hor. I, my Lord.

Ham. Why ee'n so: and now my Lady Wormes,[2] Chaplesse,[3] and knockt about the Mazard[4] [Sidenote: Choples | the massene with] with a Sextons Spade; heere's fine Reuolution, if [Sidenote: and we had] wee had the tricke to see't. Did these bones cost no more the breeding, but to play at Loggets[5] with 'em? mine ake to thinke on't. [Sidenote: them]

Clowne sings.[6]

Ham. There's another: why might not that bee the Scull of of a Lawyer? where be his [Sidenote: skull of a] Quiddits[7] now? his Quillets[7]? his Cases? his [Sidenote: quiddities] Tenures, and his Tricks? why doe's he suffer this rude knaue now to knocke him about the Sconce[8] [Sidenote: this madde knaue] with a dirty Shouell, and will not tell him of his Action of Battery? hum. This fellow might be in's time a great buyer of Land, with his Statutes, his Recognizances, his Fines, his double

[Footnote 1: To feel the full force of this, we must call up the expression on the face of 'such a one' as he begged the horse—probably imitated by Hamlet—and contrast it with the look on the face of the skull.]

[Footnote 2: 'now the property of my Lady Worm.']

[Footnote 3: the lower jaw gone.]

[Footnote 4: the upper jaw, I think—not the head.]

[Footnote 5: a game in which pins of wood, called loggats, nearly two feet long, were half thrown, half slid, towards a bowl. Blount: Johnson and Steevens.]

[Footnote 6: Not in Quarto.]

[Footnote 7: a lawyer's quirks and quibbles. See Johnson and Steevens.

1st Q.

[Footnote 8: Humorous, or slang word for the head. 'A fort—a head-piece—the head': Webster's Dict.]

[Page 232]

Vouchers, his Recoueries: [1] Is this the fine[2] of his Fines, and the recouery[3] of his Recoueries,[1] to haue his fine[4] Pate full of fine[4] Dirt? will his Vouchers [Sidenote: will vouchers] vouch him no more of his Purchases, and double [Sidenote: purchases & doubles then] ones too, then the length and breadth of a paire of Indentures? the very Conueyances of his Lands will hardly lye in this Boxe[5]; and must the Inheritor [Sidenote: scarcely iye; | th'] himselfe haue no more?[6] ha?

Hor. Not a iot more, my Lord.

Ham. Is not Parchment made of Sheep-skinnes?

Hor. I my Lord, and of Calue-skinnes too. [Sidenote: Calues-skinnes to]

Ham. They are Sheepe and Calues that seek [Sidenote: which seek] out assurance in that. I will speake to this fellow: whose Graue's this Sir? [Sidenote: this sirra?]

Clo. Mine Sir: [Sidenote: Clow. Mine sir, or a pit]

O a Pit of Clay for to be made, for such a Guest is meete.[7]

Ham. I thinke it be thine indeed: for thou liest in't.

Clo. You lye out on't Sir, and therefore it is not [Sidenote: tis] yours: for my part, I doe not lye in't; and yet it [Sidenote: in't, yet] is mine.

Ham. Thou dost lye in't, to be in't and say 'tis [Sidenote: it is] thine: 'tis for the dead, not for the quicke, therefore thou lyest.

Clo. Tis a quicke lye Sir, 'twill away againe from me to you.[8]

Ham. What man dost thou digge it for?

Clo. For no man Sir.

Ham. What woman then?

Clo. For none neither.

Ham. Who is to be buried in't?

Clo. One that was a woman Sir; but rest her Soule, shee's dead.

[Footnote 1: From 'Is' to 'Recoueries' not in Q.]

[Footnote 2: the end.]

[Footnote 3: the property regained by his Recoveries.]

[Footnote 4: third and fourth meanings of the word fine.]

[Footnote 5: the skull.]

[Footnote 6: 'must the heir have no more either?'

1st Q.

and must The honor (owner?) lie there?]

[Footnote 7: This line not in Q.]

[Footnote 8: He gives the lie.]

[Page 234]

Ham. How absolute[1] the knaue is? wee must [Sidenote: 256] speake by the Carde,[2] or equiuocation will vndoe vs: by the Lord Horatio, these three yeares[3] I haue [Sidenote: this three] taken note of it, the Age is growne so picked,[4] [Sidenote: tooke] that the toe of the Pesant comes so neere the heeles of our Courtier, hee galls his Kibe.[5] How [Sidenote: the heele of the] long hast thou been a Graue-maker? [Sidenote: been Graue-maker?]

Clo. Of all the dayes i'th'yeare, I came too't [Sidenote: Of the dayes] that day[6] that our last King Hamlet o'recame [Sidenote: ouercame] Fortinbras.

Ham. How long is that since?

Clo. Cannot you tell that? euery foole can tell [Sidenote: 143] that: It was the very day,[6] that young Hamlet was [Sidenote: was that very] borne,[8] hee that was mad, and sent into England, [Sidenote: that is mad]

Ham. I marry, why was he sent into England?

Clo. Why, because he was mad; hee shall recouer [Sidenote: a was mad: a shall] his wits there; or if he do not, it's no great [Sidenote: if a do | tis] matter there.

Ham. Why?

Clo. 'Twill not be scene in him, there the men [Sidenote: him there, there] are as mad as he.

Ham. How came he mad?

Clo. Very strangely they say.

Ham. How strangely?[7]

Clo. Faith e'ene with loosing his wits.

Ham. Vpon what ground?

Clo. Why heere in Denmarke[8]: I haue bin sixeteene [Sidenote: Sexten] [Sidenote: 142-3] heere, man and Boy thirty yeares.[9]

Ham. How long will a man lie 'ith' earth ere he rot?

Clo. Ifaith, if he be not rotten before he die (as [Sidenote: Fayth if a be not | a die] we haue many pocky Coarses now adaies, that will [Sidenote: corses, that will] scarce hold the laying in) he will last you some [Sidenote: a will] eight yeare, or nine yeare. A Tanner will last you nine yeare.

[Footnote 1: 'How the knave insists on precision!']

[Footnote 2: chart: Skeat's Etym. Dict.]

[Footnote 3: Can this indicate any point in the history of English society?]

[Footnote 4: so fastidious; so given to picking and choosing; so choice.]

[Footnote 5: The word is to be found in any dictionary, but is not generally understood. Lord Byron, a very inaccurate writer, takes it to mean heel:

Childe Harold, Canto 1. St. 67.

It means a chilblain.]

[Footnote 6: Then Fortinbras could have been but a few months younger than Hamlet, and may have been older. Hamlet then, in the Quarto passage, could not by tender mean young.]

[Footnote 7: 'In what way strangely?'—in what strange way? Or the How may be how much, in retort to the very; but the intent would be the same—a request for further information.]

[Footnote 8: Hamlet has asked on what ground or provocation, that is, from what cause, Hamlet lost his wits; the sexton chooses to take the word ground materially.]

[Footnote 9: The Poet makes him say how long he had been sexton—but how naturally and informally—by a stupid joke!—in order a second time, and more certainly, to tell us Hamlet's age: he must have held it a point necessary to the understanding of Hamlet.

Note Hamlet's question immediately following. It looks as if he had first said to himself: 'Yes—I have been thirty years above ground!' and then said to the sexton, 'How long will a man lie i' th' earth ere he rot?' We might enquire even too curiously as to the connecting links.]

[Page 236]

Ham. Why he, more then another?

Clo. Why sir, his hide is so tan'd with his Trade, that he will keepe out water a great while. And [Sidenote: a will] your water, is a sore Decayer of your horson dead body. Heres a Scull now: this Scul, has laine in [Sidenote: now hath iyen you i'th earth 23. yeeres.] the earth three and twenty years.

Ham. Whose was it?

Clo. A whoreson mad Fellowes it was; Whose doe you thinke it was?

Ham. Nay, I know not.

Clo. A pestlence on him for a mad Rogue, a pou'rd a Flaggon of Renish on my head once. This same Scull Sir, this same Scull sir, was Yoricks [Sidenote: once; this same skull sir, was sir Yoricks] Scull, the Kings Iester.

Ham. This?

Clo. E'ene that.

Ham. Let me see. Alas poore Yorick, I knew [Sidenote: Ham. Alas poore] him Horatio, a fellow of infinite Iest; of most excellent fancy, he hath borne me on his backe a [Sidenote: bore] thousand times: And how abhorred[1] my Imagination [Sidenote: and now how | in my] is, my gorge rises at it. Heere hung those [Sidenote: it is:] lipps, that I haue kist I know not how oft. Where be your Iibes now? Your Gambals? Your Songs? Your flashes of Merriment that were wont to set the Table on a Rore? No one[2] now to mock your [Sidenote: not one] own Ieering? Quite chopfalne[3]? Now get you to [Sidenote: owne grinning,] my Ladies Chamber, and tell her, let her paint an [Sidenote: Ladies table,] inch thicke, to this fauour[4] she must come. Make her laugh at that: prythee Horatio tell me one thing.

Hor. What's that my Lord?

Ham. Dost thou thinke Alexander lookt o'this [Sidenote: a this] fashion i'th' earth?

Hor. E'ene so.

Ham. And smelt so? Puh.

[Footnote 1: If this be the true reading, abhorred must mean horrified; but I incline to the Quarto.]

[Footnote 2: 'Not one jibe, not one flash of merriment now?']

[Footnote 3: —chop indeed quite fallen off!]

[Footnote 4: to this look—that of the skull.]

[Page 238]

Hor. E'ene so, my Lord.

Ham. To what base vses we may returne Horatio. Why may not Imagination trace the Noble dust of Alexander, till he[1] find it stopping a [Sidenote: a find] bunghole.

Hor. 'Twere to consider: to curiously to consider [Sidenote: consider too curiously] so.

Ham. No faith, not a iot. But to follow him thether with modestie[2] enough, and likeliehood to lead it; as thus. Alexander died: Alexander was [Sidenote: lead it. Alexander] buried: Alexander returneth into dust; the dust is [Sidenote: to] earth; of earth we make Lome, and why of that Lome (whereto he was conuerted) might they not stopp a Beere-barrell?[3]

Laer. What Cerimony else?

Ham. That is Laertes, a very Noble youth:[7] Marke.

Laer. What Cerimony else?[8]

[Footnote 1: Imagination personified.]

[Footnote 2: moderation.]

[Footnote 3: 'Loam, Lome—grafting clay. Mortar made of Clay and Straw; also a sort of Plaister used by Chymists to stop up their Vessels.'—Bailey's Dict.]

[Footnote 4: a sudden puff or blast of wind.

Hamlet here makes a solemn epigram. For the right understanding of the whole scene, the student must remember that Hamlet is philosophizing—following things out, curiously or otherwise—on the brink of a grave, concerning the tenant for which he has enquired—'what woman then?'—but received no answer.]

[Footnote 5: 'the corpse was of some position.']

[Footnote 6: 'let us lie down'—behind a grave or stone.]

[Footnote 7: Hamlet was quite in the dark as to Laertes' character; he had seen next to nothing of him.]

[Footnote 8: The priest making no answer, Laertes repeats the question.]

[Footnote 9: warrantise.]

[Footnote 10: This casts discredit on the queen's story, 222. The priest believes she died by suicide, only calls her death doubtful to excuse their granting her so many of the rites of burial.]

[Footnote 11: 'settled mode of proceeding.'—Schmidt's Sh. Lex.—But is it not rather the order of the church?]

[Page 240]

Laer. Must there no more be done?

Ham. What, the faire Ophelia?[7]

Ham.[12] What is he, whose griefes [Sidenote: griefe] Beares such an Emphasis? whose phrase of Sorrow

[Footnote 1: 'Shardes' not in Quarto. It means potsherds.]

[Footnote 2: chaplet—German krantz, used even for virginity itself.]

[Footnote 3: strewments with white flowers. (?)]

[Footnote 4: the burial service.]

[Footnote 5: as an exclamation, I think.]

[Footnote 6: Is the word sage used as representing the unfitness of a requiem to her state of mind? or is it only from its kindred with solemn? It was because she was not 'peace-parted' that they could not sing rest to her.]

[Footnote 7: Everything here depends on the actor.]

[Footnote 8: I am not sure the queen is not apostrophizing the flowers she is throwing into or upon the coffin: 'Sweets, be my farewell to the sweet.']

[Footnote 9: The Folio may be right here:—'Oh terrible wooer!—May ten times treble thy misfortunes fall' &c.]

[Footnote 10: This stage-direction is not in the Quarto.

Here the 1st Quarto has:—

Ham. Beholde tis I, Hamlet the Dane.]

[Footnote 11: The whole speech is bravado—the frothy grief of a weak, excitable effusive nature.]

[Footnote 12: He can remain apart no longer, and approaches the company.]

[Page 242]

Coniure the wandring Starres, and makes them stand [Sidenote: Coniues] Like wonder-wounded hearers? This is I, Hamlet the Dane.[1]

Laer. The deuill take thy soule.[2]

King. Pluck them asunder.

Qu. Hamlet, Hamlet. [Sidenote: All. Gentlemen.]

Gen. Good my Lord be quiet. [Sidenote: Hora. Good]

Ham. Why I will fight with him vppon this Theme, Vntill my eielids will no longer wag.[4]

Qu. Oh my Sonne, what Theame?

Ham. I lou'd Ophelia[5]; fortie thousand Brothers Could not (with all there quantitie of Loue) Make vp my summe. What wilt thou do for her?[6]

King. Oh he is mad Laertes.[7]

Qu. For loue of God forbeare him.

[Footnote 1: This fine speech is yet spoken in the character of madman, which Hamlet puts on once more the moment he has to appear before the king. Its poetry and dignity belong to Hamlet's feeling; its extravagance to his assumed insanity. It must be remembered that death is a small affair to Hamlet beside his mother's life, and that the death of Ophelia may even be some consolation to him.

In the Folio, a few lines back, Laertes leaps into the grave. There is no such direction in the Q. In neither is Hamlet said to leap into the grave; only the 1st Q. so directs. It is a stage-business that must please the common actor of Hamlet; but there is nothing in the text any more than in the margin of Folio or Quarto to justify it, and it would but for the horror of it be ludicrous. The coffin is supposed to be in the grave: must Laertes jump down upon it, followed by Hamlet, and the two fight and trample over the body?

Yet I take the 'Leaps in the grave' to be an action intended for Laertes by the Poet. His 'Hold off the earth a while,' does not necessarily imply that the body is already in the grave. He has before said, 'Lay her i'th' earth': then it was not in the grave. It is just about to be lowered, when, with that cry of 'Hold off the earth a while,' he jumps into the grave, and taking the corpse, on a bier at the side of it, in his arms, calls to the spectators to pile a mountain on them—in the wild speech that brings out Hamlet. The quiet dignity of Hamlet's speech does not comport with his jumping into the grave: Laertes comes out of the grave, and flies at Hamlet's throat. So, at least, I would have the thing acted.

There is, however, nothing in the text to show that Laertes comes out of the grave, and if the manager insist on the traditional mode, I would suggest that the grave be represented much larger. In Mr. Jewitt's book on Grave-Mounds, I read of a 'female skeleton in a grave six feet deep, ten feet long, and eight feet wide.' Such a grave would give room for both beside the body, and dismiss the hideousness of the common representation.]

[Footnote 2: —springing out of the grave and flying at Hamlet.]

[Footnote 3: Note the temper, self-knowledge, self-government, and self-distrust of Hamlet.]

[Footnote 4: The eyelids last of all become incapable of motion.]

[Footnote 5: That he loved her is the only thing to explain the harshness of his behaviour to her. Had he not loved her and not been miserable about her, he would have been as polite to her as well bred people would have him.]

[Footnote 6: The gallants of Shakspere's day would challenge each other to do more disagreeable things than any of these in honour of their mistresses.

'Ésil. s.m. Ancien nom du Vinaigre.' Supplement to Academy Dict., 1847.—'Eisile, vinegar': Bosworth's Anglo-Saxon Dict., from Somner's Saxon Dict., 1659.—'Eisel (Saxon), vinegar; verjuice; any acid': Johnson's Dict.

1st Q. 'Wilt drinke vp vessels.' The word up very likely implies the steady emptying of a vessel specified—at a draught, and not by degrees.]

[Footnote 7: —pretending care over Hamlet.]

[Footnote 8: Emphasis on Be, which I take for the imperative mood.]

[Footnote 9: The moment it is uttered, he recognizes and confesses to the rant, ashamed of it even under the cover of his madness. It did not belong altogether to the madness. Later he expresses to Horatio his regret in regard to this passage between him and Laertes, and afterwards apologizes to Laertes. 252, 262.

Perhaps this is the speech in all the play of which it is most difficult to get into a sympathetic comprehension. The student must call to mind the elements at war in Hamlet's soul, and generating discords in his behaviour: to those comes now the shock of Ophelia's death; the last tie that bound him to life is gone—the one glimmer of hope left him for this world! The grave upon whose brink he has been bandying words with the sexton, is for her! Into such a consciousness comes the rant of Laertes. Only the forms of madness are free to him, while no form is too strong in which to repudiate indifference to Ophelia: for her sake, as well as to relieve his own heart, he casts the clear confession of his love into her grave. He is even jealous, over her dead body, of her brother's profession of love to her—as if any brother could love as he loved! This is foolish, no doubt, but human, and natural to a certain childishness in grief. 252.

Add to this, that Hamlet—see later in his speeches to Osricke—had a lively inclination to answer a fool according to his folly (256), to outherod Herod if Herod would rave, out-euphuize Euphues himself if he would be ridiculous:—the digestion of all these things in the retort of meditation will result, I would fain think, in an understanding and artistic justification of even this speech of Hamlet: the more I consider it the truer it seems. If proof be necessary that real feeling is mingled in the madness of the utterance, it may be found in the fact that he is immediately ashamed of its extravagance.]

[Page 244]

Ham. Heare you Sir:[6] What is the reason that you vse me thus? I loud' you euer;[7] but it is no matter:[8] Let Hercules himselfe doe what he may, The Cat will Mew, and Dogge will haue his day.[9] Exit. [Sidenote: Exit Hamlet and Horatio.]

[Footnote 1: I hardly know which to choose as the speaker of this speech. It would be a fine specimen of the king's hypocrisy; and perhaps indeed its poetry, lovely in itself, but at such a time sentimental, is fitter for him than the less guilty queen.]

[Footnote 2: 'covered with a yellow down' Heath.]

[Footnote 3: The singular is better: 'the pigeon lays no more than two eggs.' Steevens. Only, couplets might be used like twins.]

[Footnote 4: —hatched, the sporting term of the time.]

[Footnote 5: 'The pigeon never quits her nest for three days after her two young ones are hatched, except for a few moments to get food.' Steevens.]

[Footnote 6: Laertes stands eyeing him with evil looks.]

[Footnote 8: Here he retreats into his madness.]

[Footnote 9: '—but I cannot compel you to hear reason. Do what he will, Hercules himself cannot keep the cat from mewing, or the dog from following his inclination!'—said in a half humorous, half contemptuous despair.]

[Footnote 10: 'into immediate train'—to Laertes.]

[Footnote 11: life-like, or lasting?]

[Footnote 12: —again to Laertes.]

[Footnote 13: —when Hamlet is dead.]

[Page 246]

Enter Hamlet and Horatio.

Ham. So much for this Sir; now let me see the other,[1] [Sidenote: now shall you see] You doe remember all the Circumstance.[2]

Hor. Remember it my Lord?[3]

Hor. That is most certaine.

Hor. Ist possible?

Ham. Here's the Commission, read it at more leysure:

[Footnote 1: I would suggest that the one paper, which he has just shown, is a commission the king gave to himself; the other, which he is about to show, that given to Rosincrance and Guildensterne. He is setting forth his proof of the king's treachery.]

[Footnote 2: —of the king's words and behaviour, possibly, in giving him his papers, Horatio having been present; or it might mean, 'Have you got the things I have just told you clear in your mind?']

[Footnote 3: '—as if I could forget a single particular of it!']

[Footnote 4: The Shaping Divinity was moving him.]

[Footnote 5: The fetters called bilboes fasten a couple of mutinous sailors together by the legs.]

[Footnote 6: Does he not here check himself and begin afresh—remembering that the praise belongs to the Divinity?]

[Footnote 7: pall—from the root of pale—'come to nothing.' He had had his plots from which he hoped much; the king's commission had rendered them futile. But he seems to have grown doubtful of his plans before, probably through the doubt of his companions which led him to seek acquaintance with their commission, and he may mean that his 'dear plots' had begun to pall upon him. Anyhow the sudden 'indiscretion' of searching for and unsealing the ambassadors' commission served him as nothing else could have served him.]

[Footnote 8: —even by our indiscretion. Emphasis on shapes.]

[Footnote 9: Here is another sign of Hamlet's religion. 24, 125, 260. We start to work out an idea, but the result does not correspond with the idea: another has been at work along with us. We rough-hew—block out our marble, say for a Mercury; the result is an Apollo. Hamlet had rough-hewn his ends—he had begun plans to certain ends, but had he been allowed to go on shaping them alone, the result, even had he carried out his plans and shaped his ends to his mind, would have been failure. Another mallet and chisel were busy shaping them otherwise from the first, and carrying them out to a true success. For success is not the success of plans, but the success of ends.]

[Footnote 10: Emphasize I and them, as the rhythm requires, and the phrase becomes picturesque.]

[Footnote 11: 'got my fingers on their papers.']

[Footnote 12: Emphasize royal.]

[Footnote 13: A bug is any object causing terror.]

[Footnote 14: immediately on the reading.]

[Footnote 15: —no interval abated, taken off the immediacy of the order respite granted.]

[Page 248]

But wilt thou heare me how I did proceed? [Sidenote: heare now how]

Hor. I beseech you.

Hor. I, good my Lord.

Hor. How was this seal'd?

Hor. So Guildensterne and Rosincrance, go too't.

[Footnote 1: —the nearest, Rosincrance and Guildensterne: Hamlet was quite satisfied of their villainy.]

[Footnote 2: 'I had no need to think: the thing came to me at once.']

[Footnote 3: Note Hamlet's rapid practicality—not merely in devising, but in carrying out.]

[Footnote 4: statesmen.]

[Footnote 5: 'Yeomen of the guard of the king's body were anciently two hundred and fifty men, of the best rank under gentry, and of larger stature than ordinary; every one being required to be six feet high.'—E. Chambers' Cyclopaedia. Hence 'yeoman's service' must mean the very best of service.]

[Footnote 6: Note our common phrase: 'I wrote to this effect.']

[Footnote 7: 'as he would have Peace stand between their friendships like a comma between two words.' Every point has in it a conjunctive, as well as a disjunctive element: the former seems the one regarded here—only that some amities require more than a comma to separate them. The comma does not make much of a figure—is good enough for its position, however; if indeed the fact be not, that, instead of standing for Peace, it does not even stand for itself, but for some other word. I do not for my part think so.]

[Footnote 8: Dr. Johnson says there is a quibble here with asses as beasts of charge or burden. It is probable enough, seeing, as Malone tells us, that in Warwickshire, as did Dr. Johnson himself, they pronounce as hard. In Aberdeenshire the sound of the s varies with the intent of the word: 'az he said'; 'ass strong az a horse.']

[Footnote 9: To what purpose is this half-voyage to England made part of the play? The action—except, as not a few would have it, the very action be delay—is nowise furthered by it; Hamlet merely goes and returns.

To answer this question, let us find the real ground for Hamlet's reflection, 'There's a Divinity that shapes our ends.' Observe, he is set at liberty without being in the least indebted to the finding of the commission—by the attack, namely, of the pirate; and this was not the shaping of his ends of which he was thinking when he made the reflection, for it had reference to the finding of the commission. What then was the ground of the reflection? And what justifies the whole passage in relation to the Poet's object, the character of Hamlet?

This, it seems to me:—

Although Hamlet could not have had much doubt left with regard to his uncle's guilt, yet a man with a fine, delicate—what most men would think, because so much more exacting than theirs—fastidious conscience, might well desire some proof more positive yet, before he did a deed so repugnant to his nature, and carrying in it such a loud condemnation of his mother. And more: he might well wish to have something to show: a man's conviction is no proof, though it may work in others inclination to receive proof. Hamlet is sent to sea just to get such proof as will not only thoroughly satisfy himself, but be capable of being shown to others. He holds now in his hand—to lay before the people—the two contradictory commissions. By his voyage then he has gained both assurance of his duty, and provision against the consequence he mainly dreaded, that of leaving a wounded name behind him. 272. This is the shaping of his ends—so exactly to his needs, so different from his rough-hewn plans—which is the work of the Divinity. The man who desires to know his duty that he may do it, who will not shirk it when he does know it, will have time allowed him and the thing made plain to him; his perplexity will even strengthen and purify his will. The weak man is he who, certain of what is required of him, fails to meet it: so never once fails Hamlet. Note, in all that follows, that a load seems taken off him: after a gracious tardiness to believe up to the point of action, he is at length satisfied. Hesitation belongs to the noble nature, to Hamlet; precipitation to the poor nature, to Laertes, the son of Polonius. Compare Brutus in Julius Caesar—a Hamlet in favourable circumstances, with Hamlet—a Brutus in the most unfavourable circumstances conceivable.]

[Page 250]

Hor. Why, what a King is this?[6]

[Footnote 1: This verse not in Q.]

[Footnote 2: destruction.]

[Footnote 3: 'Their destruction they have enticed on themselves by their own behaviour;' or, 'they have crept into their fate by their underhand dealings.' The Sh. Lex. explains insinuation as meddling.]

[Footnote 4: With the concern of Horatio for the fate of Rosincrance and Guildensterne, Hamlet shows no sympathy. It has been objected to his character that there is nothing in the play to show them privy to the contents of their commission; to this it would be answer enough, that Hamlet is satisfied of their worthlessness, and that their whole behaviour in the play shows them merest parasites; but, at the same time, we must note that, in changing the commission, he had no intention, could have had no thought, of letting them go to England without him: that was a pure shaping of their ends by the Divinity. Possibly his own 'dear plots' had in them the notion of getting help against his uncle from the king of England, in which case he would willingly of course have continued his journey; but whatever they may be supposed to have been, they were laid in connection with the voyage, not founded on the chance of its interruption. It is easy to imagine a man like him, averse to the shedding of blood, intending interference for their lives: as heir apparent, he would certainly have been listened to. The tone of his reply to Horatio is that of one who has been made the unintending cause of a deserved fate: the thing having fallen out so, the Divinity having so shaped their ends, there was nothing in their character, any more than in that of Polonius, to make him regret their death, or the part he had had in it.]

[Footnote 5: The 'mighty opposites' here are the king and Hamlet.]

[Footnote 6: Perhaps, as Hamlet talked, he has been parenthetically glancing at the real commission. Anyhow conviction is growing stronger in Horatio, whom, for the occasion, we may regard as a type of the public.]

[Footnote 7: 'thinkst thee,' in the fashion of the Friends, or 'thinke thee' in the sense of 'bethink thee.']

[Footnote 8: 'Does it not rest now on me?—is it not now my duty?—is it not incumbent on me (with lie for stand)—"is't not perfect conscience"?']

[Footnote 9: Note 'my king' not my father: he had to avenge a crime against the state, the country, himself as a subject—not merely a private wrong.]

[Page 252]

Hor. It must be shortly knowne to him from England What is the issue of the businesse there.[7]

[Footnote 1: Here is the charge at length in full against the king—of quality and proof sufficient now, not merely to justify, but to compel action against him.]

[Footnote 2: He was such a fine hypocrite that Hamlet, although he hated and distrusted him, was perplexed as to the possibility of his guilt. His good acting was almost too much for Hamlet himself. This is his 'coozenage.'

After 'coozenage' should come a dash, bringing '—is't not perfect conscience' (is it not absolutely righteous) into closest sequence, almost apposition, with 'Does it not stand me now upon—'.]

[Footnote 3: Here comes in the Quarto, 'Enter a Courtier.' All from this point to 'Peace, who comes heere?' included, is in addition to the Quarto text—not in the Q., that is.]

[Footnote 4: I would here refer my student to the soliloquy—with its sea of troubles, and the taking of arms against it. 123, n. 4.]

[Footnote 5: These three questions: 'Does it not stand me now upon?'—'Is't not perfect conscience?'—'Is't not to be damned?' reveal the whole relation between the inner and outer, the unseen and the seen, the thinking and the acting Hamlet. 'Is not the thing right?—Is it not my duty?—Would not the neglect of it deserve damnation?' He is satisfied.]

[Footnote 6: 'is it not a thing to be damned—to let &c.?' or, 'would it not be to be damned, (to be in a state of damnation, or, to bring damnation on oneself) to let this human cancer, the king, go on to further evil?']

[Footnote 7: '—so you have not much time.']

[Footnote 8: 'True, it will be short, but till then is mine, and will be long enough for me.' He is resolved.]

[Footnote 9: Now that he is assured of what is right, the Shadow that waits him on the path to it, has no terror for him. He ceases to be anxious as to 'what dreams may come,' as to the 'something after death,' as to 'the undiscovered country,' the moment his conscience is satisfied. 120. It cannot now make a coward of him. It was never in regard to the past that Hamlet dreaded death, but in regard to the righteousness of the action which was about to occasion his death. Note that he expects death; at least he has long made up his mind to the great risk of it—the death referred to in the soliloquy—which, after all, was not that which did overtake him. There is nothing about suicide here, nor was there there.]

[Footnote 10: 'a man's life must soon be over anyhow.']

[Footnote 11: The approach of death causes him to think of and regret even the small wrongs he has done; he laments his late behaviour to Laertes, and makes excuse for him: the similarity of their condition, each having lost a father by violence, ought, he says, to have taught him gentleness with him. The 1st Quarto is worth comparing here:—

Enter Hamlet and Horatio

[Footnote 12: 'I will not forget,' or, 'I will call to mind, what merits he has,' or 'what favours he has shown me.' But I suspect the word 'count' ought to be court.—He does court his favour when next they meet—in lovely fashion. He has no suspicion of his enmity.]

[Page 254]

Hor. Peace, who comes heere?

Enter young Osricke.[3] [Sidenote: Enter a Courtier.]

Osr. Your Lordship is right welcome back to [Sidenote: Cour.] Denmarke.

Ham. I humbly thank you Sir, dost know this [Sidenote: humble thank] waterflie?[4]

Hor. No my good Lord.

Ham. Thy state is the more gracious; for 'tis a vice to know him[5]: he hath much Land, and fertile; let a Beast be Lord of Beasts, and his Crib shall stand at the Kings Messe;[6] 'tis a Chowgh[7]; but as I saw spacious in the possession of dirt.[8] [Sidenote: as I say,]

Osr. Sweet Lord, if your friendship[9] were at [Sidenote: Cour. | Lordshippe[?]] leysure, I should impart a thing to you from his Maiesty.

Ham. I will receiue it with all diligence of [Sidenote: it sir with] spirit; put your Bonet to his right vse, 'tis for the [Sidenote: spirit, your] head.

Ham. No, beleeue mee 'tis very cold, the winde is Northerly.

Osr. It is indifferent cold[11] my Lord indeed. [Sidenote: Cour.]

Ham. Mee thinkes it is very soultry, and hot [Sidenote: But yet me | sully and hot, or my] for my Complexion.[12]

Osr. Exceedingly, my Lord, it is very soultry, [Sidenote: Cour.] as 'twere I cannot tell how: but my Lord,[13] his [Sidenote: how: my Lord] Maiesty bad me signifie to you, that he ha's laid a [Sidenote: that a had] [Sidenote: 244] great wager on your head: Sir, this is the matter.[14]

Ham. I beseech you remember.[15]

Osr. Nay, in good faith, for mine ease in good [Sidenote: Cour. Nay good my Lord for my ease]

[Footnote 1: the great show; bravado.]

[Footnote 2: —with which fell in well the forms of his pretended madness. But that the passion was real, this reaction of repentance shows. It was not the first time his pretence had given him liberty to ease his heart with wild words. Jealous of the boastfulness of Laertes' affection, he began at once—in keeping with his assumed character of madman, but not the less in harmony with his feelings—to outrave him.]

[Footnote 3: One of the sort that would gather to such a king—of the same kind as Rosincrance and Guildensterne.

In the 1st Q. 'Enter a Bragart Gentleman.']

[Footnote 4: —to Horatio.]

[Footnote 5: 'Thou art the more in a state of grace, for it is a vice to know him.']

[Footnote 6: 'his manger shall stand where the king is served.' Wealth is always received by Rank—Mammon nowhere better worshipped than in kings' courts.]

[Footnote 7: 'a bird of the crow-family'—as a figure, 'always applied to rich and avaricious people.' A chuff is a surly clown. In Scotch a coof is 'a silly, dastardly fellow.']

[Footnote 8: land.]

[Footnote 9: 'friendship' is better than 'Lordshippe,' as euphuistic.]

[Footnote 10: 'I thanke your Lordship; (puts on his hat) 'tis very hot.']

[Footnote 11: 'rather cold.']

[Footnote 12: 'and hot—for my temperament.']

[Footnote 13: Not able to go on, he plunges into his message.]

[Footnote 14: —takes off his hat.]

[Footnote 15: —making a sign to him again to put on his hat.]

[Page 256]

faith[1]: Sir, [A] you are not ignorant of what excellence Laertes [B] is at his weapon.[2] [Sidenote: Laertes is.[2]]

Ham. What's his weapon?[3]

Osr. Rapier and dagger. [Sidenote: Cour.]

Ham. That's two of his weapons: but well.

Osr. The sir King ha's wag'd with him six [Sidenote: Cour. The King sir hath wagerd] Barbary Horses, against the which he impon'd[4] as I [Sidenote: hee has impaund] take it, sixe French Rapiers and Poniards, with

[Footnote A: Here in the Quarto:—

[5] here is newly com to Court Laertes, belieue me an absolute gentlemen, ful of most excellent differences,[6] of very soft society,[7] and great [Sidenote: 234] showing[8]: indeede to speake sellingly[9] of him, hee is the card or kalender[10] of gentry: for you shall find in him the continent of what part a Gentleman would see.[11]

[Sidenote: 245] Ham.[12] Sir, his definement suffers no perdition[13] in you, though I know to deuide him inuentorially,[14] would dosie[15] th'arithmaticke of memory, and yet but yaw[16] neither in respect of his quick saile, but in the veritie of extolment, I take him to be a soule of great article,[17] & his infusion[18] of such dearth[19] and rarenesse, as to make true dixion of him, his semblable is his mirrour,[20] & who els would trace him, his vmbrage, nothing more.[21]

Cour. Your Lordship speakes most infallibly of him.[22]

Ham. The concernancy[23] sir, why doe we wrap the gentleman in our more rawer breath?[24]

Cour. Sir.[25]

Hora. Ist not possible to vnderstand in another tongue,[26] you will too't sir really.[27]

Ham. What imports the nomination of this gentleman.

Cour. Of Laertes.[28]

Hora. His purse is empty already, all's golden words are spent.

Ham. Of him sir.[29]

Cour. I know you are not ignorant.[30]

Ham. I would you did sir, yet in faith if you did, it would not much approoue me,[31] well sir.

Cour.]

[Footnote B: Here in the Quarto:—

Ham. I dare not confesse that, least I should compare with him in excellence, but to know a man wel, were to knowe himselfe.[32]

Cour. I meane sir for this weapon, but in the imputation laide on him,[33] by them in his meed, hee's vnfellowed.[34]]

[Footnote 1: 'in good faith, it is not for manners, but for my comfort I take it off.' Perhaps the hat was intended only to be carried, and would not really go on his head.]

[Footnote 2: The Quarto has not 'at his weapon,' which is inserted to take the place of the passage omitted, and connect the edges of the gap.]

[Footnote 3: So far from having envied Laertes' reputation for fencing, as the king asserts, Hamlet seems not even to have known which was Laertes' weapon.]

[Footnote 4: laid down—staked.]

[Footnote 5: This and the following passages seem omitted for curtailment, and perhaps in part because they were less amusing when the fashion of euphuism had passed. The good of holding up the mirror to folly was gone when it was no more the 'form and pressure' of 'the very age and body of the time.']

[Footnote 6: of great variety of excellence.]

[Footnote 7: gentle manners.]

[Footnote 8: fine presence.]

[Footnote 9: Is this a stupid attempt at wit on the part of Osricke—'to praise him as if you wanted to sell him'—stupid because it acknowledges exaggeration?]

[Footnote 10: 'the chart or book of reference.' 234.]

[Footnote 11: I think part here should be plural; then the passage would paraphrase thus:—'you shall find in him the sum of what parts (endowments) a gentleman would wish to see.']

[Footnote 12: Hamlet answers the fool according to his folly, but outdoes him, to his discomfiture.]

[Footnote 13: 'his description suffers no loss in your mouth.']

[Footnote 14: 'to analyze him into all and each of his qualities.']

[Footnote 15: dizzy.]

[Footnote 16: 'and yet would but yaw neither' Yaw, 'the movement by which a ship deviates from the line of her course towards the right or left in steering.' Falconer's Marine Dictionary. The meaning seems to be that the inventorial description could not overtake his merits, because it would yaw—keep turning out of the direct line of their quick sail. But Hamlet is set on using far-fetched and absurd forms and phrases to the non-plussing of Osricke, nor cares much to be correct.]

[Footnote 17: I take this use of the word article to be merely for the occasion; it uas never surely in use for substance.]

[Footnote 18: '—the infusion of his soul into his body,' 'his soul's embodiment.' The Sh. Lex. explains infusion as 'endowments, qualities,' and it may be right.]

[Footnote 19: scarcity.]

[Footnote 20: '—it alone can show his likeness.']

[Footnote 21: 'whoever would follow in his footsteps—copy him—is only his shadow.']

[Footnote 22: Here a pause, I think.]

[Footnote 24: 'why do we presume to talk about him with our less refined breath?']

[Footnote 25: The Courtier is now thoroughly bewildered.]

[Footnote 26: 'Can you only speak in another tongue? Is it not possible to understand in it as well?']

[Footnote 27: 'It is your own fault; you will court your fate! you will go and be made a fool of!']

[Footnote 28: He catches at the word he understands. The actor must here supply the meaning, with the baffled, disconcerted look of a fool who has failed in the attempt to seem knowing.]

[Footnote 29:—answering the Courtier.]

[Footnote 30: He pauses, looking for some out-of-the-way mode wherein to continue. Hamlet takes him up.]

[Footnote 31: 'your witness to my knowledge would not be of much avail.']

[Footnote 32: Paraphrase: 'for merely to know a man well, implies that you yourself know.' To know a man well, you must know his knowledge: a man, to judge his neighbour, must be at least his equal.]

[Footnote 33: faculty attributed to him.]

[Footnote 34: Point thus: 'laide on him by them, in his meed hee's unfellowed.' 'in his merit he is peerless.']

[Page 258]

their assignes,[1] as Girdle, Hangers or so[2]: three of [Sidenote: hanger and so.] the Carriages infaith are very deare to fancy,[3] very responsiue[4] to the hilts, most delicate carriages and of very liberall conceit.[5]

Ham. What call you the Carriages?[6]

Osr. The Carriages Sir, are the hangers. [Sidenote: Cour. The carriage]

Ham. The phrase would bee more Germaine[7] to the matter: If we could carry Cannon by our sides; [Sidenote: carry a cannon] I would it might be Hangers till then; but on sixe [Sidenote: it be | then, but on, six] Barbary Horses against sixe French Swords: their Assignes, and three liberall conceited Carriages,[8] that's the French but against the Danish; why is [Sidenote: French bet] this impon'd as you call it[9]? [Sidenote: this all you[9]]

Osr. The King Sir, hath laid that in a dozen [Sidenote: Cour. | layd sir, that] passes betweene you and him, hee shall not exceed [Sidenote: your selfe and him,] you three hits;[10] He hath one twelue for mine,[11] [Sidenote: hath layd on twelue for nine,] and that would come to imediate tryall, if your [Sidenote: and it would] Lordship would vouchsafe the Answere.[12]

Ham. How if I answere no?[13]

Osr. I meane my Lord,[14] the opposition of your [Sidenote: Cour.] person in tryall.

Ham. Sir, I will walke heere in the Hall; if it please his Maiestie, 'tis the breathing time of day [Sidenote: it is] with me[15]; let the Foyles bee brought, the Gentleman willing, and the King hold his purpose; I will win for him if I can: if not, Ile gaine nothing but [Sidenote: him and I | I will] my shame, and the odde hits.[16]

Ham. To this effect Sir, after what flourish your nature will.

Osr. I commend my duty to your Lordship. [Sidenote: Cour.]

Ham. Yours, yours [18]: hee does well to commend [Sidenote: Ham. Yours doo's well[18]] it himselfe, there are no tongues else for's tongue, [Sidenote: turne.]

[Footnote A: Here in the Quarto:—

Hora. I knew you must be edified by the margent[19] ere you had done.]

[Footnote 1: accompaniments or belongings; things assigned to them.]

[Footnote 2: the thongs or chains attaching the sheath of a weapon to the girdle; what the weapon hangs by. The 'or so' seems to indicate that Osricke regrets having used the old-fashioned word, which he immediately changes for carriages.]

[Footnote 3: imagination, taste, the artistic faculty.]

[Footnote 4: 'corresponding to—going well with the hilts,'—in shape, ornament, and colour.]

[Footnote 5: bold invention.]

[Footnote 6: a new word, unknown to Hamlet;—court-slang, to which he prefers the old-fashioned, homely word.]

[Footnote 7: related; 'akin to the matter.']

[Footnote 8: He uses Osricke's words—with a touch of derision, I should say.]

[Footnote 9: I do not take the Quarto reading for incorrect. Hamlet says: 'why is this all——you call it —? —?' as if he wanted to use the word (imponed) which Osricke had used, but did not remember it: he asks for it, saying 'you call it' interrogatively.]

[Footnote 10: 1st Q

that yong Leartes in twelue venies 223 At Rapier and Dagger do not get three oddes of you,]

[Footnote 11: In all printer's work errors are apt to come in clusters.]

[Footnote 12: the response, or acceptance of the challenge.]

[Footnote 13: Hamlet plays with the word, pretending to take it in its common meaning.]

[Footnote 14: 'By answer, I mean, my lord, the opposition &c.']

[Footnote 15: 'my time for exercise:' he treats the proposal as the trifle it seems—a casual affair to be settled at once—hoping perhaps that the king will come with like carelessness.]

[Footnote 16: the three.]

[Footnote 17: To Osricke the answer seems too direct and unadorned for ears royal.]

[Footnote 18: I cannot help here preferring the Q. If we take the Folio reading, we must take it thus: 'Yours! yours!' spoken with contempt;—'as if you knew anything of duty!'—for we see from what follows that he is playing with the word duty. Or we might read it, 'Yours commends yours,' with the same sense as the reading of the Q., which is, 'Yours,' that is, 'Your lordship—does well to commend his duty himself—there is no one else to do it.' This former shape is simpler; that of the Folio is burdened with ellipsis—loaded with lack. And surely turne is the true reading!—though we may take the other to mean, 'there are no tongues else on the side of his tongue.']

[Footnote 19: —as of the Bible, for a second interpretative word or phrase.]

[Page 260]

Hor. This Lapwing runs away with the shell on his head.[1]

[Sidenote: 98] Ham. He did Compile[2] with his Dugge before [Sidenote: Ham. A did sir[2] with] hee suck't it: thus had he and mine more of the [Sidenote: a suckt has he | many more] same Beauy[3] that I know the drossie age dotes [Sidenote: same breede] on; only got the tune[4] of the time, and outward [Sidenote: and out of an habit of[5]] habite of encounter,[5] a kinde of yesty collection, [Sidenote: histy] which carries them through and through the most fond and winnowed opinions; and doe but blow [Sidenote: prophane and trennowed opinions] them to their tryalls: the Bubbles are out.[6] [Sidenote: their triall, the]

Hor. You will lose this wager, my Lord. [Sidenote: loose my Lord.]

Ham. I doe not thinke so, since he went into France, I haue beene in continuall practice; I shall [Sidenote: 265] winne at the oddes:[7] but thou wouldest not thinke [Sidenote: ods; thou] how all heere about my heart:[8] but it is no matter[9] [Sidenote: how ill all's heere]

Hor. Nay, good my Lord.

Ham. It is but foolery; but it is such a kinde of gain-giuing[10] as would perhaps trouble a woman, [Sidenote: gamgiuing.]

Hor. If your minde dislike any thing, obey.[11] [Sidenote: obay it.] I will forestall[12] their repaire hither, and say you are not fit.

Ham. Not a whit, we defie Augury[13]; there's a [Sidenote: there is speciall] [Sidenote: 24, 125, 247] speciall Prouidence in the fall of a sparrow.[14] If

[Footnote A: Here in the Quarto:—

Enter a Lord.[15]

Lord. My Lord, his Maiestie commended him to you by young Ostricke,[16] who brings backe to him that you attend him in the hall, he sends to know if your pleasure hold to play with Laertes, or that you will take longer time?[17]

Ham. I am constant to my purposes, they followe the Kings pleasure, if his fitnes speakes, mine is ready[18]: now or whensoeuer, prouided I be so able as now.

Lord. The King, and Queene, and all are comming downe.

Ham. In happy time.[19]

Lord. The Queene desires you to vse some gentle entertainment[20] Laertes, before you fall to play.

Ham. Shee well instructs me.]

[Footnote 1: 'Well, he is a young one!']

[Footnote 2: 'Com'ply,' with accent on first syllable: comply with means pay compliments to, compliment. See Q. reading: 'A did sir with':—sir here is a verb—sir with means say sir to: 'he sirred, complied with his nurse's breast before &c.' Hamlet speaks in mockery of the affected court-modes of speech and address, the fashion of euphuism—a mechanical attempt at the poetic.]

[Footnote 3: a flock of birds—suggested by 'This Lapwing.']

[Footnote 4: 'the mere mode.']

[Footnote 5: 'and external custom of intercourse.' But here too I rather take the Q. to be right: 'They have only got the fashion of the time; and, out of a habit of wordy conflict, (they have got) a collection of tricks of speech,—a yesty, frothy mass, with nothing in it, which carries them in triumph through the most foolish and fastidious (nice, choice, punctilious, whimsical) judgments.' Yesty I take to be right, and prophane (vulgar) to have been altered by the Poet to fond (foolish); of trennowed I can make nothing beyond a misprint.]

[Footnote 6: Hamlet had just blown Osricke to his trial in his chosen kind, and the bubble had burst. The braggart gentleman had no faculty to generate after the dominant fashion, no invention to support his ambition—had but a yesty collection, which failing him the moment something unconventional was wanted, the fool had to look a discovered fool.]

[Footnote 7: 'I shall win by the odds allowed me; he will not exceed me three hits.']

[Footnote 8: He has a presentiment of what is coming.]

[Footnote 10: 'a yielding, a sinking' at the heart? The Sh. Lex. says misgiving.]

[Footnote 11: 'obey the warning.']

[Footnote 12: 'go to them before they come here'—'prevent their coming.']

[Footnote 13: The knowledge, even, of what is to come could never, any more than ordinary expediency, be the law of a man's conduct. St. Paul, informed by the prophet Agabus of the troubles that awaited him at Jerusalem, and entreated by his friends not to go thither, believed the prophet, and went on to Jerusalem to be delivered into the hands of the Gentiles.]

[Footnote 14: One of Shakspere's many allusions to sayings of the Lord.]

[Footnote 15: Osricke does not come back: he has begged off but ventures later, under the wing of the king.]

[Footnote 16: May not this form of the name suggest that in it is intended the 'foolish' ostrich?]

[Footnote 17: The king is making delay: he has to have his 'union' ready.]

[Footnote 18: 'if he feels ready, I am.']

[Footnote 19: 'They are well-come.']

[Footnote 20: 'to be polite to Laertes.' The print shows where to has slipped out.

The queen is anxious; she distrusts Laertes, and the king's influence over him.]

[Page 262]

Kin. Come Hamlet come, and take this hand from me.

[Footnote 1: 'it'—death, the end.]

[Footnote 2: His father had been taken unready. 54.]

[Footnote 3: Point: 'all. Since'; 'leaves, what'—'Since no man has anything of what he has left, those who left it late are in the same position as those who left it early.' Compare the common saying, 'It will be all the same in a hundred years.' The Q. reading comes much to the same thing—'knows of ought he leaves'—'has any knowledge of it, anything to do with it, in any sense possesses it.'

We may find a deeper meaning in the passage, however—surely not too deep for Shakspere:—'Since nothing can be truly said to be possessed as his own which a man must at one time or another yield; since that which is own can never be taken from the owner, but solely that which is lent him; since the nature of a thing that has to be left is not such that it could be possessed, why should a man mind parting with it early?'—There is far more in this than merely that at the end of the day it will be all the same. The thing that ever was really a man's own, God has given, and God will not, and man cannot, take away. Note the unity of religion and philosophy in Hamlet: he takes the one true position. Note also his courage: he has a strong presentiment of death, but will not turn a step from his way. If Death be coming, he will confront him. He does not believe in chance. He is ready—that is willing. All that is needful is, that he should not go as one who cannot help it, but as one who is for God's will, who chooses that will as his own.

There is so much behind in Shakspere's characters—so much that can only be hinted at! The dramatist has not the word-scope of the novelist; his art gives him little room; he must effect in a phrase what the other may take pages to. He needs good seconding by his actors as sorely as the composer needs good rendering of his music by the orchestra. It is a lesson in unity that the greatest art can least work alone; that the greatest finder most needs the help of others to show his findings. The dramatist has live men and women for the very instruments of his art—who must not be mere instruments, but fellow-workers; and upon them he is greatly dependent for final outcome.

Here the actor should show a marked calmness and elevation in Hamlet. He should have around him as it were a luminous cloud, the cloud of his coming end. A smile not all of this world should close the speech. He has given himself up, and is at peace.]

[Footnote 4: Note in this apology the sweetness of Hamlet's nature. How few are alive enough, that is unselfish and true enough, to be capable of genuine apology! The low nature always feels, not the wrong, but the confession of it, degrading.]

[Footnote 5: —the wrong of his rudeness at the funeral.]

[Footnote 6: all present.]

[Footnote 7: —true in a deeper sense than they would understand.]

[Footnote 8: 'that might roughly awake your nature, honour, and exception,':—consider the phrase—to take exception at a thing.]

[Footnote 9: It was by cause of madness, not by cause of evil intent. For all purpose of excuse it was madness, if only pretended madness; it was there of another necessity, and excused offence like real madness. What he said was true, not merely expedient, to the end he meant it to serve. But all passion may be called madness, because therein the mind is absorbed with one idea; 'anger is a brief madness,' and he was in a 'towering passion': he proclaims it madness and so abjures it.]

[Footnote 10: 'refuses the wrong altogether—will in his true self have nothing to do with it.' No evil thing comes of our true selves, and confession is the casting of it from us, the only true denial. He who will not confess a wrong, holds to the wrong.]

[Footnote 11: All here depends on the expression in the utterance.]

[Footnote 12: This line not in Q.]

[Footnote 13: This is Hamlet's summing up of the whole—his explanation of the speech.]

[Footnote 14: 'so far as this in your generous judgment—that you regard me as having shot &c.']

[Footnote 15: Brother is much easier to accept, though Mother might be in the simile.

To do justice to the speech we must remember that Hamlet has no quarrel whatever with Laertes, that he has expressed admiration of him, and that he is inclined to love him for Ophelia's sake. His apology has no reference to the fate of his father or his sister; Hamlet is not aware that Laertes associates him with either, and plainly the public did not know Hamlet killed Polonius; while Laertes could have no intention of alluding to the fact, seeing it would frustrate his scheme of treachery.]

[Page 264]

Ham. I do embrace it freely, [Sidenote: I embrace] And will this Brothers wager frankely play. Giue vs the Foyles: Come on.[3]

Laer. Come one for me.[4]

Ham. Ile be your foile[5] Laertes, in mine ignorance, [Sidenote: 218] Your Skill shall like a Starre i'th'darkest night,[6] Sticke fiery off indeede.

Laer. You mocke me Sir.

Ham. No by this hand.[7]

King. Giue them the Foyles yong Osricke,[8] [Sidenote: Ostricke,[8]] Cousen Hamlet, you know the wager.

Ham. Verie well my Lord, Your Grace hath laide the oddes a'th'weaker side, [Sidenote: has]

[Footnote 1: 'in my own feelings and person.' Laertes does not refer to his father or sister. He professes to be satisfied in his heart with Hamlet's apology for his behaviour at the funeral, but not to be sure whether in the opinion of others, and by the laws of honour, he can accept it as amends, and forbear to challenge him. But the words 'Whose motiue in this case should stirre me most to my Reuenge' may refer to his father and sister, and, if so taken, should be spoken aside. To accept apology for them and not for his honour would surely be too barefaced! The point concerning them has not been started.

But why not receive the apology as quite satisfactory? That he would not seems to show a lingering regard to real honour. A downright villain, like the king, would have pretended its thorough acceptance—especially as they were just going to fence like friends; but he, as regards his honour, will not accept it until justified in doing so by the opinion of 'some elder masters,' receiving from them 'a voice and precedent of peace'—counsel to, and justification, or example of peace. He keeps the door of quarrel open—will not profess to be altogether friends with him, though he does not hint at his real ground of offence: that mooted, the match of skill, with its immense advantages for villainy, would have been impossible. He means treachery all the time; careful of his honour, he can, like most apes of fashion, let his honesty go; still, so complex is human nature, he holds his speech declining thorough reconciliation as a shield to shelter his treachery from his own contempt: he has taken care not to profess absolute friendship, and so left room for absolute villainy! He has had regard to his word! Relieved perhaps by the demoniacal quibble, he follows it immediately with an utterance of full-blown perfidy.]

[Footnote 2: Perhaps ungorg'd might mean unthrottled.]

[Footnote 3: 'Come on' is not in the Q.—I suspect this Come on but a misplaced shadow from the 'Come one' immediately below, and better omitted. Hamlet could not say 'Come on' before Laertes was ready, and 'Come one' after 'Give us the foils,' would be very awkward. But it may be said to the attendant courtiers.]

[Footnote 4: He says this while Hamlet is still choosing, in order that a second bundle of foils, in which is the unbated and poisoned one, may be brought him. So 'generous and free from all contriving' is Hamlet, (220) that, even with the presentiment in his heart, he has no fear of treachery.]

[Footnote 5: As persons of the drama, the Poet means Laertes to be foil to Hamlet.—With the play upon the word before us, we can hardly help thinking of the third signification of the word foil.]

[Footnote 6: 'My ignorance will be the foil of darkest night to the burning star of your skill.' This is no flattery; Hamlet believes Laertes, to whose praises he has listened (218)—though not with the envy his uncle attributes to him—the better fencer: he expects to win only 'at the odds.' 260.]

[Footnote 7: —not 'by these pickers and stealers,' his oath to his false friends. 154.]

[Footnote 8: Plainly a favourite with the king.—He is Ostricke always in the Q.]

[Footnote 9: 'seen you both play'—though not together.]

[Footnote 10: Point thus:

'Since'—'since the time I saw him.']

[Page 266]

Laer. This is too heauy, Let me see another.[1]

Ham. This likes me well, These Foyles haue all a length.[2] Prepare to play.[3]

Osricke. I my good Lord. [Sidenote: Ostr.]

Ham. Come on sir.

Laer. Come on sir. They play.[8] [Sidenote: Come my Lord.]

Ham. One.

Laer. No.

Ham. Iudgement.[9]

Osr. A hit, a very palpable hit. [Sidenote: Ostrick.]

Laer. Well: againe. [Sidenote: Drum, trumpets and a shot. Florish, a peece goes off.]

King. Stay, giue me drinke. Hamlet, this Pearle is thine, Here's to thy health. Giue him the cup,[10]

Trumpets sound, and shot goes off.[11]

Ham. Ile play this bout first, set by a-while.[12] [Sidenote: set it by] Come: Another hit; what say you?

Laer. A touch, a touch, I do confesse.[13] [Sidenote: Laer. | doe confest.]

King. Our Sonne shall win.

[Footnote 1: —to make it look as if he were choosing.]

[Footnote 2: —asked in an offhand way. The fencers must not measure weapons, because how then could the unbated point escape discovery? It is quite like Hamlet to take even Osricke's word for their equal length.]

[Footnote 3: Not in Q.]

[Footnote 4: 'or be quits with Laertes the third bout':—in any case, whatever the probabilities, even if Hamlet be wounded, the king, who has not perfect confidence in the 'unction,' will fall back on his second line of ambush—in which he has more trust: he will drink to Hamlet, when Hamlet will be bound to drink also.]

[Footnote 5: The Latin unio was a large pearl. The king's union I take to be poison made up like a pearl.]

[Footnote 6: —a well-known one in the crown.]

[Footnote 7: —of whom Osricke was one.]

[Footnote 8: Not in Q.]

[Footnote 9: —appealing to the judges.]

[Footnote 10: He throws in the pearl, and drinks—for it will take some moments to dissolve and make the wine poisonous—then sends the cup to Hamlet.]

[Footnote 11: Not in Q.]

[Footnote 12: He does not refuse to drink, but puts it by, neither showing nor entertaining suspicion, fearing only the effect of the draught on his play. He is bent on winning the wager—perhaps with further intent.]

[Footnote 13: Laertes has little interest in the match, but much in his own play.]

[Page 268]

Ham. Good Madam.[2]

King. Gertrude, do not drinke.

Qu. I will my Lord; I pray you pardon me.[3]

[Sidenote: 222]King. It is the poyson'd Cup, it is too late.[4]

Ham. I dare not drinke yet Madam, By and by.[5]

Qu. Come, let me wipe thy face.[6]

Laer. My Lord, Ile hit him now.

King. I do not thinke't.

Laer. And yet 'tis almost 'gainst my conscience.[7] [Sidenote: it is | against]

Ham. Come for the third. Laertes, you but dally, [Sidenote: you doe but] I pray you passe with your best violence, I am affear'd you make a wanton of me.[8] [Sidenote: I am sure you]

Laer. Say you so? Come on. Play.

Osr. Nothing neither way. [Sidenote: Ostr.]

Laer. Haue at you now.[9]

In scuffling they change Rapiers.[10]

King. Part them, they are incens'd.[11]

Ham. Nay come, againe.[12]

Osr. Looke to the Queene there hoa. [Sidenote: Ostr. | there howe.]

Hor. They bleed on both sides. How is't my [Sidenote: is it] Lord?

Osr. How is't Laertes? [Sidenote: Ostr.]

Laer. Why as a Woodcocke[13] To mine Sprindge, Osricke, [Sidenote: mine owne sprindge Ostrick,] I am iustly kill'd with mine owne Treacherie.[14]

Ham. How does the Queene?

King. She sounds[15] to see them bleede.

Qu. No, no, the drinke, the drinke[16]

[Footnote 1: She is anxious about him. It may be that this speech, and that of the king before (266), were fitted to the person of the actor who first represented Hamlet.]

[Footnote 2: —a simple acknowledgment of her politeness: he can no more be familiarly loving with his mother.]

[Footnote 3: She drinks, and offers the cup to Hamlet.]

[Footnote 4: He is too much afraid of exposing his villainy to be prompt enough to prevent her.]

[Footnote 5: This is not meant by the Poet to show suspicion: he does not mean Hamlet to die so.]

[Footnote 6: The actor should not allow her: she approaches Hamlet; he recoils a little.]

[Footnote 7: He has compunctions, but it needs failure to make them potent.]

[Footnote 8: 'treat me as an effeminate creature.']

[Footnote 9: He makes a sudden attack, without warning of the fourth bout.]

[Footnote 10: Not in Q.

The 1st Q. directs:—They catch one anothers Rapiers, find both are wounded, &c.

The thing, as I understand it, goes thus: With the words 'Have at you now!' Laertes stabs Hamlet; Hamlet, apprised thus of his treachery, lays hold of his rapier, wrenches it from him, and stabs him with it in return.]

[Footnote 11: 'they have lost their temper.']

[Footnote 12: —said with indignation and scorn, but without suspicion of the worst.]

[Footnote 13: —the proverbially foolish bird. The speech must be spoken with breaks. Its construction is broken.]

[Footnote 14: His conscience starts up, awake and strong, at the approach of Death. As the show of the world withdraws, the realities assert themselves. He repents, and makes confession of his sin, seeing it now in its true nature, and calling it by its own name. It is a compensation of the weakness of some that they cannot be strong in wickedness. The king did not so repent, and with his strength was the more to blame.]

[Footnote 15: swounds, swoons.]

[Footnote 16: She is true to her son. The maternal outlasts the adulterous.]

[Page 270]

Ham. Oh Villany! How? Let the doore be lock'd. Treacherie, seeke it out.[1]

Ham. The point envenom'd too, Then venome to thy worke.[6] Hurts the King.[7]

All. Treason, Treason.

King. O yet defend me Friends, I am but hurt.

[Footnote 1: The thing must be ended now. The door must be locked, to keep all in that are in, and all out that are out. Then he can do as he will.]

[Footnote 2: —laying his hand on his heart, I think.]

[Footnote 3: In Q. Hamlet only once.]

[Footnote 4: scheme, artifice, deceitful contrivance; in modern slang, dodge.]

[Footnote 5: He turns on the prompter of his sin—crowning the justice of the king's capital punishment.]

[Footnote 6: Point: 'too!'

1st Q. Then venome to thy venome, die damn'd villaine.]

[Footnote 7: Not in Quarto.

The true moment, now only, has at last come. Hamlet has lived to do his duty with a clear conscience, and is thereupon permitted to go. The man who asks whether this be poetic justice or no, is unworthy of an answer. 'The Tragedie of Hamlet' is The Drama of Moral Perplexity.]

[Footnote 8: A grim play on the word Union: 'follow my mother'. It suggests a terrible meeting below.]

[Footnote 9: Not in Quarto.]

[Footnote 10: His better nature triumphs. The moment he was wounded, knowing he must die, he began to change. Defeat is a mighty aid to repentance; and processes grow rapid in the presence of Death: he forgives and desires forgiveness.]

[Footnote 11: Not in Quarto.]

[Footnote 12: Note how heartily Hamlet pardons the wrong done to himself—the only wrong of course which a man has to pardon.]

[Footnote 13: supernumeraries. Note the other figures too—audience, act—all of the theatre.]

[Page 272]

Hor. Neuer beleeue it. [Sidenote: 134] I am more an Antike Roman then a Dane: [Sidenote: 135] Heere's yet some Liquor left.[2]

Enter Osricke.

Osr. Yong Fortinbras, with conquest come from Poland To th'Ambassadors of England giues this warlike volly.[6]

[Footnote 1: His care over his reputation with the people is princely, and casts a true light on his delay. No good man can be willing to seem bad, except the being good necessitates it. A man must be willing to appear a villain if that is the consequence of being a true man, but he cannot be indifferent to that appearance. He cannot be indifferent to wearing the look of the thing he hates. Hamlet, that he may be understood by the nation, makes, with noble confidence in his friendship, the large demand on Horatio, to live and suffer for his sake.]

[Footnote 2: Here first we see plainly the love of Horatio for Hamlet: here first is Hamlet's judgment of Horatio (134) justified.]

[Footnote 3: —for having killed his uncle:—what, then, if he had slain him at once?]

[Footnote 4: Horatio must be represented as here giving sign of assent.

1st Q.

[Footnote 5: Not in Q.]

[Footnote 6: The frame is closing round the picture. 9.]

[Footnote 7: Shakspere more than once or twice makes the dying prophesy.]

[Footnote 8: His last thought is for his country; his last effort at utterance goes to prevent a disputed succession.]

[Footnote 9: 'greater and less'—as in the psalm,

[Footnote 10: led to the necessity.]

[Footnote 11: These interjections are not in the Quarto.]

[Footnote 12: Not in Q.

All Shakspere's tragedies suggest that no action ever ends, only goes off the stage of the world on to another.]

[Page 274]

Fortin. Where is this sight?

Hor. What is it ye would see; [Sidenote: you] If ought of woe, or wonder, cease your search.[1]

[Footnote 1: —for here it is.]

[Footnote 2: the heap of game after a hunt.]

[Footnote 3: 'Havoc's victims cry out against him.']

[Footnote 4: in preparation.]

[Footnote 5: All the real actors in the tragedy, except Horatio, are dead.]

[Footnote 6: This line may be taken as a parenthesis; then—'come too late' joins itself with 'to tell him.' Or we may connect 'hearing' with 'to tell him':—'the ears that should give us hearing in order that we might tell him' etc.]

[Footnote 7: They thus inquire after the successor of Claudius.]

[Footnote 8: —the mouth of Claudius.]

[Footnote 9: —even if it had.]

[Footnote 10: 'so exactly,' or 'immediately'—perhaps opportunely—fittingly.]

[Footnote 11: dispute, strife.]

[Footnote 12: —addressed to Fortinbras, I should say. The state is disrupt, the household in disorder; there is no head; Horatio turns therefore to Fortinbras, who, besides having a claim to the crown, and being favoured by Hamlet, alone has power at the moment—for his army is with him.]

[Footnote 13: —those of Claudius.]

[Footnote 14: 'just judgments brought about by accident'—as in the case of all slain except the king, whose judgment was not accidental, and Hamlet, whose death was not a judgment.]

[Footnote 15: —those of the queen, Polonius, and Ophelia.]

[Footnote 17: —those of the king and Polonius.]

[Footnote 18: 'and in this result'—pointing to the bodies—'purposes which have mistaken their way, and fallen on the inventors' heads.' I am mistaken or mistook, means I have mistaken; 'purposes mistooke'—purposes in themselves mistaken:—that of Laertes, which came back on himself; and that of the king in the matter of the poison, which, by falling on the queen, also came back on the inventor.]

[Footnote 19: The Quarto is correct here, I think: 'rights of the past'—'claims of descent.' Or 'rights of memory' might mean—'rights yet remembered.'

Fortinbras is not one to miss a chance: even in this shadowy 'person,' character is recognizably maintained.]

[Page 276]

Exeunt Marching: after the which, a Peale [Sidenote: Exeunt.] of Ordenance are shot off.

[Footnote 1: 'which must now be claimed'—except the Quarto be right here also.]

[Footnote 2: The Quarto surely is right here.]

[Footnote 3: —Hamlet's mouth. The message he entrusted to Horatio for Fortinbras, giving his voice, or vote, for him, was sure to 'draw on more' voices.]

[Footnote 4: 'lest more mischance happen in like manner, through plots and mistakes.']

[Footnote 5: 'had he been put forward'—had occasion sent him out.]

[Footnote 6: 'to have proved a most royal soldier:'—A soldier gives here his testimony to Hamlet's likelihood in the soldier's calling. Note the kind of regard in which the Poet would show him held.]

[Footnote 7: —the passage of his spirit to its place.]

[Footnote 8: —military mourning or funeral rites.]

[Footnote 9: imperative mood: 'let the soldier's music and the rites of war speak loudly for him.' 'Go, bid the souldiers shoote,' with which the drama closes, is a more definite initiatory order to the same effect.]

[Footnote 10: The end is a half-line after a riming couplet—as if there were more to come—as there must be after every tragedy. Mere poetic justice will not satisfy Shakspere in a tragedy, for tragedy is life; in a comedy it may do well enough, for that deals but with life-surfaces—and who then more careful of it! but in tragedy something far higher ought to be aimed at. The end of this drama is reached when Hamlet, having attained the possibility of doing so, performs his work in righteousness. The common critical mind would have him left the fatherless, motherless, loverless, almost friendless king of a justifiably distrusting nation—with an eternal grief for his father weighing him down to the abyss; with his mother's sin blackening for him all womankind, and blasting the face of both heaven and earth; and with the knowledge in his heart that he had sent the woman he loved, with her father and her brother, out of the world—maniac, spy, and traitor. Instead of according him such 'poetic justice,' the Poet gives Hamlet the only true success of doing his duty to the end—for it was as much his duty not to act before, as it was his duty to act at last—then sends him after his Ophelia—into a world where true heart will find true way of setting right what is wrong, and of atoning for every ill, wittingly or unwittingly done or occasioned in this.

It seems to me most admirable that Hamlet, being so great, is yet outwardly so like other people: the Poet never obtrudes his greatness. And just because he is modest, confessing weakness and perplexity, small people take him for yet smaller than themselves who never confess anything, and seldom feel anything amiss with them. Such will adduce even Hamlet's disparagement of himself to Ophelia when overwhelmed with a sense of human worthlessness (126), as proof that he was no hero! They call it weakness that he would not, foolishly and selfishly, make good his succession against the king, regardless of the law of election, and careless of the weal of the kingdom for which he shows himself so anxious even in the throes of death! To my mind he is the grandest hero in fiction—absolutely human—so troubled, yet so true!]