your hat" (Hazlitt's Dodsley, vol. xi. p. 265). It may be mentioned that one of the quotations for this word given by Nares is incorrect. Nares quotes Fairfax's Tasso, ix. 89: A thousand hardy Turks affront he had. Reference to the context will show that affront is not here used as a verb meaning to encounter, but adverbially in the sense of in front. Tasso merely says: "Mille Turchi avea qui." 299. Line 32: lawful espials.-These words are not in Qq. On espials Singer quotes Baret's Alvearie: "An espiall in warres, a scoutwatch, a beholder, a viewer." See I. Henry VI. note 93. 300. Line 43: Gracious. This very peculiar mode of addressing the King is, I fancy, intentionally peculiar. Coming from the over-familiar Polonius it is characteristic-a feebly jocose familiarity. 301. Lines 59, 60: Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, This rapid and commingled metaphor has given rise to a great deal of commentary. I do not think that any of the numerous attempts which have been made to reduce the expression to a literal consistency-desperate special pleadings which reach a climax in Hackett's profound suggestion, "The 'sea' here is the heart," &c.-can be accepted really as explanations. Shakespeare's idea, as the Clarendon Press edd. very sensibly say, "would be fully expressed by 'take arms against a host of troubles which break in upon us like a sea.'" Shakespeare's metaphors are the result, not of careful seeking, but of intuitive flashes; and for swift expressiveness they are unrivalled. Swift and subtle expressiveness is the first requirement of a metaphor; minute accuracy comes a long way after, and can be dispensed with, as Shakespeare saw, if by so doing the effect on the mind of the hearer or reader be increased. Theobald has noted that the expression a sea of troubles is the equivalent of the Greek xxx άacα. Since this was written, a very interesting letter from Dr. Furnivall has appeared in the Academy, May 29, 1889, on the metaphor, a sea of troubles, and its bearing on Hamlet's argument. I give the main part of it, though I doubt whether Shakespeare's "small Latin and less Greek was equal to so much research in the quest of so far-fetched a metaphor. The passage from Elian and those from Aristotle are quoted by Ingleby in The Still Lion, 1874, pp. 88, 89. Dr. Furnival writes: "Shakspere critics and students have hitherto failed to make clear the meaning of Hamlet's Or to take Armes against a Sea of troubles, because they have not been able to show that the Kelts, Gauls, and Kimbri, who were said to take arms against the oncoming billows and resist them, fought till they themselves were drowned, so that the lines above must be equivalent to Hamlet's not to be.' The reason is, that the said critics and students have, in their pride, not had recourse to that most helpful refuge for the destitute-those who have forgotten the little classics they once knew-Bohn's Library translations, and found in Strabo's Geography, Book VII., ch. ii. § 1, englisht by Falconer (Bohn, 1854, p. 449): Neither is it true, as has been related,1 that the Cimbri 2 take arms against the flood-tides, or that the Kelts, as an exercise of their intrepidity, suffer their houses to be washed away by them, and afterwards rebuild them with the notes: "On turning up the Nicolas-of-Damascus passage in the 'Excerpts and Fragments from the Histories of the Greek Nicolas of Damascus, with a Latin Version, Leipsic, 1804,' p. 144-5, I find that it runs thus . . . [in English] Kelts living near the sea think it disgraceful to fly from a falling wall or house. When a high wave [or tide] comes upon them from the sea, they meet it and withstand it till they are washed down [destroyed], that they, flying (taking to flight], may not be thought to fear death. "The fair inference from this passage is, that Hamlet's words, 'by opposing, end them, mean 'die,' though they seem to mean fight evils and conquer them. It also follows that 'To be, or not to be,' applies to this life, as most folks hold, and not to the future life; and that 'Whether 't is Nobler to end them is in apposition to, and expands 'To be, or not to be,' and is not an introductory adverb-clause to it, as some able men think, as if the sense was, 'Whether it is nobler to suffer ills here, or resist them, the question is, is there a future life. Shakspere, no doubt, got his sea-metaphor-first, from an after continuer of Holinshed: A Registre of Hystories written in Greeke by Ælianus, a Romane, and de liuered in Englishe. by Abraham Fleming.' London, 1576. the Twelfth Booke, leaf 127, back: OF THE AUDACITIE AND BOULDNES OF THE PEOPLE CELTAE. The people Celtae are most ready, and able, to take any kinde of daungerous aduenture, and are not afrayde of any blustringe storme. They count runninge away so reprochfull, that oftentimes they will skarce moue when a house is ruinous, and ready to fall vpon their heades, or when it burneth eagerly in euery corner, and is in a bright flame rounde about them: Moreouer some of them are so boulde, or rather desperate, that they throw themselues into ye fomey floudes with their swordes drawne in their handes, and shaking their iauelines, as though they were of force and violence to withstand the rough waues, to resist the strength of the streame, and to make the floudes affraide least they should be wounded with their weapons. "But Shakspere might also well have seen the passage above from Nicolas of Damascus (born 64 B.C.), for it had appeared in print in 1593-at Heidelberg, says the Museum Catalogue; Geneva, the Bibliog. Univ. —both in its original Greek and a Latin translation opposite, by N. Cragius.. "The first Quarto of 'Hamlet' (1603) has not the allusion to the Keltic custom, but only reads in sc. vi. (after II. ii. 169): Ham. To be, or not to be, I there's the point, "Aristotle, says Mr. W. A. Harrison, refers to the Kelts 1 Aristotle, Ethics, Eudem., lib. iii., cap. 1, Nicolas of Damascus, and Aelian, Var. Histor., lib. xii., cap. 23, have attributed the like extravagant proceedings to the Kelts or Gauls. Nicolas of Damas. cus, Reliq., pp. 272, 273. says that the Kelts resist the tides of the ocean with their swords in their hands, till they perish in the waters, in order that they may not seem to fear death by taking the precaution to fly. 2 The Cimbri inhabited Denmark and the adjacent regions, p. 292. in the Nicomachean as well as in the Eudemian Ethics (Book III., cap 1). The latter passage is: He is not a brave man who exposes himself to danger knowingly, in consequence of fury [ded up), like the Celtae who take up arms and rush upon the waves of the sea.... "The former passage is in the Nicomachean Ethics (Book III., cap. 4, vii.): But the man who, like the Celts, fears nothing, neither earthquake nor waves, may be called, not courageous, but rather mad or insensate. Mr. Irving sends the following note, giving a somewhat different view of the passage, from "God in Shakspeare," by "Clelia," 1890: "In modern editions there is always a note of interrogation (?) where in the 1623 edition there was a colon (:). If a note of interrogation (?) in the fifth line were correct, we should have the question asked, "Is it nobler in the mind to consent to life or to consent to suicide?" And the question would be thus answered: "It is nobler in the mind to consent to suicide, because death is more desirable than life, and because a brave man should risk the mere possibility that the soul may be immortal, and that present conduct may affect injuriously happiness in another world." But if this be, as indeed it is, completely unsatisfactory as an answer to the question supposed, then surely it will be our bounden duty to the poet to examine the opening lines as originally printed not as a question, and to accept the meaning they shall then appear to have, if any, and if less in conflict with the soliloquy as a whole. Is it noble in the mind at all to do what is simply desirable? And when the mind acknowledges the possibility of immortality, acknowledges a portentous risk in suicide, can it be considered noble in the mind to be reckless of this risk? No, to both questions. "My final reason for not accepting this 'emendation, this grotesque protest against itself-?, is that there was never any need to change the colon in the 1623 edition, even if a question was asked. But no question was asked, and so the change entirely destroyed the sense of this whole soliloquy. I will now restore the sense, so long lost. Here it is in paraphrase: "Whether it is nobler in the mind to bear evil or resist it, after all the great question is, Is there a life after death? If there be not, let death come and end all. If there be,-ah, that is the thought which makes men endure the ills of life. Conscience makes cowards of them. They dare not die. And thus, conscience, and thinking generally, stand as with me in the way of action." 302. Line 65: ay, there's the RUB.-See Richard II. note 242. The word is a technical term in the game of bowls. 303. Line 67: When we have shuffled off this mortal COIL. -The word coil is often used by Shakespeare in its old sense (not yet quite evaporated) of turmoil or troublesome confusion. This mortal coil might thus mean what Poe terms "the fever called living." There is also the other sense of coil, as in a coil of ropes; so that with the general idea of turmoil there may be a special reference to something coiled round the body, entangling and fettering it, or to the body as what Fletcher (Bonduca, iv. 1) calls the "case of flesh." 304 Line 70: the whips and scorns of TIME. It is not perhaps necessary to take time as necessarily meaning "the times," but the word had formerly that signification. Hunter (Illustrations of Shakespeare, ii. 240) quotes the following example from Taylor the Water-Poet: Mock'd in rhyme, And made the only scornful theme of time; and the Clarendon Press edd., giving the quotation, add another from Southwell, Saint Peter's Complaint, stanza v, 1. 4, p. 12, ed. Grosart: The scorne of Time, the infamy of Fame. 305. Line 71: the PROUD man's contumely.-The Ff. have poore in place of the proud of Qq. The latter seems decidedly the most expressive, and has been adopted all but universally. The two expressions are of course really synonymous, only, as Corson remarks (Jottings on the Text of Hamlet, p. 24): "the genitive is differently used: in the first, it is objective, 'the poor man's contumely,' meaning the contumely or contemptuous treatment the poor man suffers; in the second, it is subjective, 'the proud man's contumely,' meaning the contumely or contemptuous treatment the proud man exercises." Johnson acutely remarks that "Hamlet, in his enunciation of miseries, forgets, whether properly or not, that he is a prince, and mentions many evils to which inferior stations only are exposed." To Mr. Furness it is "evident that Shakespeare is speaking in his own person:" but why? Surely it is not necessary to suffer all “the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to" in order to record them burningly in a dramatic soliloquy. 306. Line 72: The pangs of DESPIS'D love.-This is the reading of Q. 2 and Q. 3.; the Ff. have dispriz'd, i.e. undervalued, which a few editors adopt, including Furness, who defends the reading not only on sentimental grounds, but as durior lectio. The word disprize occurs once elsewhere in the Folio, Troilus and Cressida, iv. 5. 74: disprizing the Knight oppos'd," where the Q. has misprizing. Either reading gives an admirable sense, and Corson throws out an ingenious suggestion on behalf of the Ff. by saying that "a disprized or undervalued love, a love that is only partially appreciated and responded to, would be apt to suffer more pangs than a despised love." This subtle point in love's casuistry can only be elucidated by the help of those whom it particularly concerns. 307. Line 75: quietus.-This is a legal term, from the writ beginning Quietus est, for an acquittance or settlement of account. Compare the Italian form of receipt, per quietanza." Cotgrave has: "Descharge: f. A discharge; acquittance; Quietus est." Compare Sonnet cxxvi. 11, 12: Her audit, though delay'd, answer'd must be, and see also Webster, Duchess of Malfy, i. 1: I sign your Quietus est. 308. Line 76: a bare BODKIN.-Bodkin is an old word for a dagger. Chaucer uses it in speaking of the murder of Cæsar (Monkes Tale, 1. 714, ed. Morris): And in the capitoll anoon him hent Randolph uses the word in the same connection in The Muses Looking Glass, 1638, ii. 2: App. A rapier's but a bodkin. Dei. And a bodkin Is a most dangerous weapon: since I read -Works, ed. W. C. Hazlitt, 1875, p. 202. In Scot's Discoverie of Witchcraft (Nicholson's Reprint, p. 291) there is a cut of these bodkins used in juggling tricks. Perhaps, however, as Mr. Marshall says in his Study of Hamlet, "bodkin here does not mean dagger, but a woman's bodkin, or perhaps a 'writing steel,' or 'stylus.' (See the passage quoted in Richardson's Dictionary sub' Bodkin,' from Holland's translation of Suetonius-doe nothing else but catch flies, and with the sharp point of a bodkin or writing-steel prick them through.') I think there is no doubt that Hamlet wishes to mention the most contemptible instrument which could take away his life" (p. 156, n.). 309. Line 76: who would FARDELS bear.-Ff. have these fardels, which is perhaps right, as, though the metre is not improved, the sense gains somewhat by the massing together of all the evils specified, under the contemptuous term, these fardels. The word means a bundle or burden. Cotgrave has "Fardeau: a fardle, burthen, trusse, packe, bundle." Furness quotes Acts xxi. 15, version of 1581: "after these days we trussed up our fardels and went vp to Jerusalem." Shakespeare uses the word only here and in The Winter's Tale, where it recurs many times in the 4th and 5th acts, always in reference to the bundle found with Perdita (see note 203). 66 310. Line 77: To GRUNT and sweat under a weary life. -The word grunt has seen better days. Steevens quotes several testimonies to its respectability; but neither Turberville nor Stanyhurst is a great authority. The latter translates supremum congemuit"-"for sighing it grunts"-but then Stanyhurst's translation of the first four books of the Eneid (Leyden, 1582) is probably the most outrageous specimen extant of printed English. Chaucer, however, has (Monkes Tale, line 718, ed. Morris): But never gront he at no strook but oon. And Cotgrave defines gronder, “. also to grunt, groane, grumble, &c." In Tottel's Miscellany, 1557, in Nicholas Grimald's The death of Zoroas, &c., we have: Here grunts, here grones, echwhere strong youth is spent. -Arber's Reprint, p. 120. And in Armin's Nest of Ninnies, 1608, we find: "the fat fooles of this age will gronte and sweat under this massie burden," &c. -Sh. Soc. ed. Collier, p. 26. Pope of course altered grunt into groan, having a certain colour for his linguistic prudery in the following line in Julius Cæsar, iv. 1. 22: To groan and sweat under the business. Groan was first introduced into the text in the Q. of 1676. 311. Lines 79, 80: The undiscover'd country from whose bourn No traveller returns. It certainly seems strange that Hamlet should give utterance to this sentiment when he has just had "ocular Malone ingeniously demonstration to the contrary. remarks: "Our poet without doubt in the passage before us intended to say, that from the unknown region of the dead no traveller returns with all his corporeal powers; such as he who goes on a voyage of discovery brings back, when he returns to the port from which he sailed." Perhaps this may be so; but it seems to me quite possible that the passage had been written by Shakespeare on another occasion-jotted down perhaps on his "tables" --and that in introducing it here he overlooked the contradiction which the words as they stand certainly do imply. The thought here expressed is, one need hardly say, the common property of all writers, as it must be the inevitable reflection of all thinkers. Douce compares Job x. 21 and xvi. 22, and Malone cites Marlowe, Edward II. v. 6: weep not for Mortimer, That scorns the world, and, as a traveller, Goes to discover countries yet unknown. -Works, ed. Dyce (Moxon), p. 221. Steevens makes the inevitable comparison with Catullus, iii. 11, 12: Qui nunc it per iter tenebricosum Illuc, unde negant redire quemquam. 312. Line 83: Thus conscience does make cowards of us all.- Compare Richard III. i. 4. 137, et seq., where the thought is further developed. Of us all is omitted in the Qq. 313. Line 85: the pale cast of THOUGHT.--Shakespeare probably had in mind both meanings of the word thought, its customary one, and the other meaning, of anxious care, familiar to us from Matthew vi. 34: "Take therefore no thought for the morrow," which the Revised Version renders, "Be not anxious for the morrow." 314. Line 86: And enterprises of great PITH and moment. -Qq. here read pitch, and the Cambridge editors prefer this reading, stating in a note: "In this doubtful passage we have retained the reading of the Quartos, although the players' Quartos of 1676, 1683, 1695, 1703, have, contrary to their custom, followed the Folios, which may possibly indicate that 'pith' was the reading according to stage tradition." "Pith and marrow" occurs in i. 4. 22; pitch is used in Twelfth Night, i. 1. 12, &c. Either word is quite appropriate, and if one is a printers' error for the other, it is impossible to tell, or even to conjecture, which is the true reading. On the whole pith seems to me preferable. Corson (Jottings on the Text of Shakespeare's Hamlet, pp. 24, 25) gives a number of quotations from Shakespeare in defence of this reading. 315. Line 87: With this regard their currents turn AWRY.-Ff. have away, doubtless a printers' error, in any case a weaker reading. 316. Line 97: My honour'd lord, YOU know right well you did. -All the Qq. print you, the Ff. I. Corson defends the latter reading by suggesting that Ophelia's meaning is "The remembrances you gave me may have been trifles to you, such trifles as left no impression on your mind of your having given them; but I know right well they did, as they were most dear to me at the time" (Jottings, p. 25). The Qq. reading, however, still seems to me the more natural of the two. 317. Lines 106-108: That if you be honest and fair, YOUR HONESTY should admit no discourse to your beauty.-This is the reading of Ff.; the Qq. print you. Caldecott well explains the passage, which has sometimes been misunderstood: "If you really possess these qualities, chastity and beauty, and mean to support the character of both, your honesty should be so chary of your beauty as not to suffer a thing so fragile to entertain discourse, or to be parleyed with.' The lady, 't is true, interprets the words otherwise, giving them the turn that best suited her purpose.' " 318. Lines 130, 131: What should such fellows as I do crawling between HEAVEN AND EARTH?-This is the reading of Ff. and of Q. 1; the other Qq. have earth and heaven. There is not much to choose between the two readings. The Cambridge editors follow the Ff. in the Cambridge edition, the Qq. in the Globe and Clarendon Press editions. 319. Line 135: no where.-Ff. print no way. 320. Lines 149–153: I have heard of your PAINTINGS too, well enough; God has given you one FACE, and you make yourselves another: you JIG, you AMBLE, and you lisp, and NICKNAME God's creatures.-F. 1 has pratlings for paintings, and instead of face, pace. Both readings I take to be mere misprints, though a faint defence has been set up on the ground that lisp, in the succeeding clause, gives countenance to prattlings, and jig and amble to pace. Jig is spelt gig in the Qq., gidge in the Ff.; and the former read and amble instead of you amble. Compare Love's Labour's Lost, iii. 1. 11, 12: "to jig off a tune at the tongue's end;" and Julius Cæsar, iv. 3. 137: What should the wars do with these jigging fools! See note 350 below, where jig is spelt gigge in the quotation from Florio. Amble is used of an affected smoothness of gait. (See note 41 to Richard III.) Nickname is used as a verb only here and in Love's Labour's Lost, v. 2. 349; as a substantive only in Romeo and Juliet, ii. 1. 12. 321. Line 159: The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's eye, tongue, sword.-This is very likely a misprint, soldier's and scholar's having been accidentally transposed; and several editors have adopted the more precise reading, which is indeed that of Q. 1. But Farmer quotes in defence of the reading of Qq. and Ff., Lucrece, 615, 616, in which a similar transposition occurs, perhaps, however, for the sake of the rhyme: For princes are the glass, the school, the book, 322. Line 166: Like sweet bells jangled out of tune and harsh. This is the reading of Ff., which I prefer to Capell's usually followed emendation: Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh. Qq. have jangled out of time, no doubt a misprint. 323. Line 174: the hatch and the DISCLOSE.- Disclose is a technical term, explained in the passage quoted by Steevens from Randle Holme, Academy of Armory and Blazon, bk. ii. ch. ii. p. 238: "Disclose is when the young just peeps through the shell. It is also taken for the laying, hatching, or bringing forth young: as 'she disclosed three birds.'" See below, v. 1. 310. 324. Line 192: To show his GRIEF.-Ff. have griefs, which is followed by Furness, who cites Corson's explanation that griefs grievances, as it does in iii. 2. 352. 325. Line 194: If she FIND him not.-Compare All's Well, ii. 3. 216, 217: "I have now found thee; when I lose thee again, I care not;" where found is used, in double entendre, for found out, as it is, entirely, here. ACT III. SCENE 2. 326. François-Victor Hugo, in the Introduction to his translation of the play (ed. 1873, p. 77, translated in Furness, New Var. Ed. vol. ii. p. 390), has the following admirable note on the strict dramatic relevancy of the Players scenes: "Erudite critics, while acknowledging the fine wisdom of Hamlet's counsels to the players, have nevertheless stoutly denied the dramatic propriety of introducing these counsels at all. The two scenes, in which Hamlet makes the actors rehearse, have been regarded by these critics as hors-d'œuvre, very magnificent, it is true, but none the less as hors-d'œuvre. Herein lies, in my opinion, a very grave error. Hamlet wishes to have a piece acted, the sight of which will force the guilty King to reveal his crime. It is readily perceived that the manner in which this piece is to be interpreted is of great importance to him. Hamlet has before him mere strolling players, buffoons addicted to low clap-trap or grotesque contortions, decked out in ridiculous costume. Wherefore, if the scene to be acted before Claudius has not due decorum, if one of the actors mouths it like a town crier, if another has his periwig befrouzled, if the clown, just at the most important point, cuts some of the wretched jokes that clowns are so fond of, why then, forsooth, the whole effect that Hamlet is aiming at is ruined. The terrible tragedy, whereof the last scene is to be acted off the stage, will end like a farce in a market-place amid peals of laughter. But if, on the other hand, the acting proceeds smoothly, the result is sure. The more natural the actor, the deeper will be Claudius's emotion; the truer the acting of the fictitious murderer, the more manifest will be the panic of the real one. It is therefore essential that Hamlet should have the piece rehearsed with the greatest care before it is performed in public." 327. Line 7: the whirlwind of passion.—This is the reading of Ff., and is followed by many editors. Qq. have "whirlwind of your passion." It is difficult to decide between the two readings, but the Qq. reading is held by some to be more characteristic in its cumulative vehemence. 328. Line 10: to HEAR a ROBUSTIOUS PERIWIG-PATED fellow. Instead of hear, Ff. have see, which some defend. But, as Furness says: "the 'ears of the groundlings' are not 'split' by what they see." ."-Robustious is used again by Shakespeare in Henry V. iii. 7. 158, 159: "the men do sympathize with the mastiffs in robustious and rough coming on." It occurs in the quotation from Taylor given in note 273 to Henry VIII. Mr. Browning has the word in his Parleyings (1887), p. 219: Join in, give voice robustious rude and rough, Periwig-pated, used of players, is explained by Steevens' quotation from Every Woman in her Humour (1609): “As none wear hoods but monks and ladies; and feathers but fore-horses, &c.-none periwigs but players and pictures." 329. Line 12: the groundlings.-This was a common term of contempt for "the understanding gentlemen of the ground" (Ben Jonson, Bartholomew Fair, Induction, p. 366, ed. Gifford), or that part of the audience who paid a penny for admission, and stood on the unfloored ground in the pit of the theatre. See Dekker's Gull's Hornbook, ch. vi.: "your groundling and gallery-commoner buys his sport by the penny, and, like a haggler, is glad to utter it again by retailing." Nares cites Lady Alimony, i. 1: "Besides, sir, all our galleries and ground-stands are furnished, and the groundlings within the yard grow infinitely unruly." 330. Line 15: I WOULD have such a fellow whipped.—So Qq.; Ff. have could, which seems a little more considerate. 331. Line 15: Termagant.-Termagant, so frequently alluded to in the plays of the period, is represented in the early metrical romances as the god of the Saracens; as in Guy of Warwick, where the Soudan says: So helpe me Mahoune of might And Termagaunt my God so bright. Ritson quotes Bale's Acts of English Octaries, Reliques, i. 77: "Grennyng upon her lyke Termagauntes in a play." His character, from all accounts, must have been extremely outrageous and violent. Shakespeare uses the word in one other place, but as an adjective, I. Henry IV. v. 4. 114: "that hot termagant Scot." 332. Line 16: it out-herods Herod.-Herod was the typi eal tyrant of the mystery-plays. Furness gives some specimens of his diction (Var. Ed. p. 227), with the significant stage-direction (Coventry miracle-play of the Nativity, Marriott, p. 83): "Here Erode ragis in thys pagond, and in the strete also." Compare Chaucer, The Miller's Tale (Harl. MS. lines 3383, 3384): Som tyme to schewe his lightnes and maistrye 333. Line 27: pressure.-Shakespeare only uses the word pressure in one other place, ante, i. 5. 100: All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past. 334. Line 36: nor man.-The Ff. have or Norman, which is an evident misprint of the reading in the text, that of the Qq., nor man. Q. 1 has nor Turk. 335. Line 38: had made MEN.-Theobald's suggestion, adopted by Rann and Furness, "had made them," is ingenious, and may very possibly be right. But I do not think the reading of Qq. and Ff. must necessarily give bad sense; for Hamlet is merely recording his sensations on looking at certain actors, who had made him wonder at men being so unlike humanity. Compare Lear, ii. 2. 59-65: speak no more than is set down for them, &c.-The advice which Hamlet here gives to the comic actors who insist upon giving their own "gag" in place of, or in addition to, the words "set down for them," is not inapplicable to-day; in Shakespeare's time it was greatly needed. "The clown," says Malone, “ very often addressed the audience, in the midst of the play, and entered into a contest of raillery and sarcasm with such of the audience as chose to engage with him"--after the manner, one may suppose, of some modern "artistes of the musichall. 337. Lines 59, 60: Horatio, thou art e'en as just a man As E'ER my CONVERSATION COP'D WITHAL. Elze notes the imitation of this in Nat. Field's A Woman is a Weathercock: "One-and-thirty good morrows to the fairest, wisest, richest widow that ever conversation coped withal." 338. Line 66: And crook the PREGNANT hinges of the knee.-Furness admirably defines the word pregnant, in its present use, as "pregnant, because untold thrift is born from a cunning use of the knee." 339. Line 67: fawning. So Qq. Ff. have faining, which, says Stratmann (Dictionary of Old English, s. v. "fainen," apud Furness), is not a misprint, but another form of fawning, just as good, if not better. 340. Lines 68-70: Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice, This is the reading of Ff. Qq. have: -distinguish her election, S' hath [she hath] seal'd thee for herself; which here and there an editor has been found to prefer 341. Line 74: Whose blood and judgment are so well COMMINGLED.-Qq. print comedled. The word commedled was in use in the sense of commingled. Compare Webster, The White Devil, iii. 1: "Religion, O, how it is commedled with policy!" (Works, p. 25). 342. Line 84: the very comment of THY soul.-Ff. here read my, a pretty evident misprint, which Knight endeavours to defend on psychological grounds. The defence seems to me extremely weak. "Hamlet," he says, "having told Horatio the circumstances' of his father's death, and imparted his suspicions of his uncle, entreats his friend to observe his uncle with the very comment of my soul,'-Hamlet's soul.' Surely Dyce is right in replying, that what Hamlet wanted was for Horatio to observe the king on his own account, quite independently And after we will both our judgments join In censure of his seeming. 343. Line 89: stithy.-Stithy (as also stithe, the reading of Ff.) is and was used both for a smith's anvil and for his shop. Here it evidently means the latter. Shakespeare employs the word as a verb in Troilus and Cressida, iv. 5. 255:"the forge that stithied Mars his helm." 344 Line 95: I must be IDLE.-Compare iii. 4. 12: Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue: |