Laertes basely and dissemblingly seems to accept the apology: Laer. I do receive your offered love 'like love,

And will not wrong it.

Ham.

I embrace it 'freely;
And will this brother's wager frankly play.-
I'll be 'your foil, Laertes: in mine 'ignorance,
Your 'skill shall, like a star i' the darkest night,
Stick fiery offa indeed.

The King rises:

King. Set me the stoups of wine upon that table-
If Hamlet give the first or second hit,

Let all the battlements their ordnance fire:
The King shall drink to 'Hamlet's better breath;
And let the kettle to the trumpet speak,

The trumpet to the cannoneer without,

The cannons to the heavens. the heavens to earth,
"Now the King drinks to 'Hamlet!"—Come, begin ;—
And you, the judges, bear a wary eye.

The first passes result in Hamlet's success. The King says: King. Hamlet, 'this pearl is 'thine:-Give him the cup. Ham. I'll play this bout first: set it by awhile.

[Trumpets sound, and cannon are shot off.

The second passes are equally successful: again drums and trumpets sound in Hamlet's honour, and the long-throated artillery booms forth its applause. His mother says:

Queen. The 'Queen carouses to thy fortune, Hamlet.

The King hurriedly says to her:

King. Gertrude, do not drink. . . .

[Aside.] It is the 'poisoned cup: it is too late!

Laertes whispers to the King:

Laer. My lord, I'll 'hit him now. And yet it is almost Against my conscience!

Hamlet calls :

Ham. Come, for the 'third, Laertes. You but dally:
I pray you, pass with your best violence:

I am afeard you make a 'wanton of me.
Laer. Say you so? come on. Have at you now!

In this new encounter, Laertes gives the poisoned hit, and wounds Hamlet. This success fires the Prince, and, in the scuffle that ensues, they change weapons, and Hamlet wounds Laertes with his own foil. The Queen faints. Horatio rushes forward:

a that is, shine with flaming brilliancy.
a small metal drum. d fence (thrust).

b large cups or flagons. e trifler; an effeminate person.

Hor. They bleed on both sides.- How is it, my lord?—
How is 't, Laertes ?

Laer. Why, as a woodcock to mine own springe ;a

I am justly killed with mine 'own treachery.

The dying Prince asks for his mother :

Ham. How does the Queen?

King.

She swoons" to see them bleed.

Queen. No, no, the drink, the drink,-O my dear Hamlet! The drink, the drink! I am poison'd.

Hamlet exclaims:

Ham. O villainy!-Ho! let the doors be lock'd!

Treachery! seek it out.

The dying Laertes says:

Laer. It is here, Hamlet.

Hamlet, thou art 'slain;
No medicine in the world can do thee good:
In thee there is not half an hour of life;
The treacherous instrument is in thy hand,
Unbated and envenomed. The foul practice
Hath turned itself on 'me: lo! here I lie,

[S

She falls dead.

Never to rise again. Thy 'mother 's 'poisoned!... I can no more. The King, the 'King 's to blame! Ham. The 'point? envenomed too? Then, venom, to thy work!

[Stabs the

[Sta King.

The King

dies.

Here, thou incestuous, murderous, damnéd Dane, Drink off this potion! Follow my mother. [T The villain King is furiously stabbed by the frantic Prince. Laertes, in the agony of death, continues:

Laer. He is 'justly served;

It is a poison tempered by 'himself.

Exchange forgiveness with me, noble Hamlet;

Mine, and my 'father's death, come not upon 'thee,—
Nor thine on 'me!

Ham. 'Heaven make thee free of it! I'follow thee.-
You that look pale and tremble at this chance,
That are but mutes or audience to this act,
Had I but time, as this fell' sergeant, Death,
Is strict in his arrest,-oh! I could tell you,-

Laertes dies.

But let it be. Oh, good Horatio! what a wounded name, (Things standing thus unknown,) shall live behind me!

a snare, trap.

bO R. sounds.
e compounded,

cunbuttoned, sharp. d stratagem.
f cruel, g survive.

If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart,
Absent thee from felicity awhile,

And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain

To tell my story.

March afar off, and cannon fired.

[Mar

What warlike noise is this? Lord. Young Fortinbras, with conquest come from Poland, To the ambassadors of England gives

This warlike volley.

Ham.

O, I die, Horatio;

The potent poison quite o'er-crows my spirit:
I cannot live to 'hear the news from England;
But I do prophesy the election lights

On Fortinbras: he has 'my dying voice:
The rest is silence.

[Dies.

Hor. Now cracks a noble heart.-Good night, sweet

Prince;

And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!
END OF HAMLET, PRINCE OF DENMARK.

REPRINTS FROM THE FIRST QUARTO:

THE TRAGICALL HISTORIE OF HAMLET,
PRINCE OF DENMARKE,
1603.

COMPARE WITH THE TEXT OF THE FIRST FOLIO (1623) ON PAGE 182.
Ham. O that this too much grieu'd and sallied flesh
Would melt to nothing, or that the vniuersall
Globe of heauen would turne al to a Chaos!
O God within two moneths; no not two: maried,
Mine vncle: O let me not thinke of it,

My fathers brother: but no more like

My father, then I to Hercules.

Within two months, ere yet the salt of most
Vnrighteous teates had left their flushing

In her galled eyes: she married, O God, a beast
Deuoyd of reason would not haue made

Such speede: Frailtie, thy name is Woman,
Why she would hang on him, as if increase
Of appetite had growne by what it looked on.
O wicked wicked speede,

*

Ere yet the shooes were olde,

*

The which she followed my dead fathers corse
Like Nyobe, all teares: married, well it is not,

Nor it cannot come to good:

But breake my heart, for I must holde my tongue.

COMPARE ON PAGE 201.

Ham. Why what a dunghill idiote slaue am I?

Why these Players here draw water from eyes:

& overpowers. At the crowing of the cock all ghosts are said to disappear.

For Hecuba, why what is Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba?
What would he do and if he had my losse?

His father murdred, and a Crowne bereft him,

He would turne all his teares to droppes of blood,

Amaze the standers by with his laments,

Strike more then wonder in the iudiciall eares,
Confound the ignorant, and make mute the wise,
Indeede his passion would be generall.

Yet I like to an asse and Iohn a Dreames,
Hauing my father murdred by a villaine,

Stand still, and let it passe, why sure I am a coward:
Who pluckes me by the beard, or twites my nose,
Giue's me the lie i'th throate downe to the lungs,
Sure I should take it, or else I haue no gall,
Or by this I should a fatted all the region kites
With this slaues offell, this damned villaine,
Treacherous, bloody,amurderous villaine :

Why this is braue, that I the sonne of my deare father,
Should like a scalion, like a very drabbe

Thus raile in wordes. About my braine,

I haue heard that guilty creatures sitting at a play,
Hath, by the very cunning of the scene, confest a murder
Committed long before.

This spirit that I haue seene may be the Diuell,
And out of my weakenesse and my melancholy,

As he is very potent with such men,

Doth seeke to damne me, I will haue sounder proofes,
The play's the thing,

Wherein I'le catch the conscience of the King.

COMPARE ON PAGE 202.

Ham. To be, or not to be, I there's the point,

To Die, to sleepe, is that all? I all:

No, to sleepe, to dreame, I mary there it goes,
For in that dreame of death, when wee awake,
And borne before an euerlasting Iudge,
From whence no passenger euer retur'nd,
The vndiscouered country, at whose sight
The happy smile, and the accursed damn'd.

But for this, the ioyfull hope of this,

Whol'd beare the scornes and flattery of the world,
Scorned by the right rich, the rich curssed of the poore?
The widow being oppressed, the orphan wrong'd,

The taste of hunger, or a tirants raigne,

And thousand more calamities besides,
To grunt and sweate vnder this weary life,
When that he may his full Quietus make,

With a bare bodkin, who would this indure,
But for a hope of something after death?

Which pusles the braine, and doth confound the sence,
Which makes vs rather beare those euilles we haue,
Than flie to others that we know not of.

I that, O this conscience mades cowardes of vs all,
Lady in thy orizons, be all my sinnes remembred.

a substituted word.

exit.

OTHELLO,

THE MOOR OF VENICE.

Jealousy is the master passion of several Shakespearean heroesLeontes, in "The Winter's Tale"-Posthumus, in "Cymbeline"Ford, in "The Merry Wives of Windsor"-and chiefly "Othello." The author of "The Night Thoughts "Dr. Edward Young-in his Tragedy of "The Revenge," (an ambitious rival of Othello,) thus forcibly describes the passion of jealousy:

"I have turned o'er the catalogue of woes

Which sting the heart of man, and find none equal:
It is the hydra of calamities, the seven-fold death:
The jealous are the damned."

The outlines of the story Shakespeare derived from the Tale of the Moor in Giraldi Cinthio's "Hecatom mithi," written in Italian, but early translated into French, and thence into English. The date of composition is uncertain; but the Play is said to have been performed before Queen Elizabeth (in 1602a) by Burbidge's players,— Shakespeare's Company, and again before the Court, in 1605. It was at this time the policy of the Theatres not to print their most popular plays: so the first edition of this Tragedy did not appear until 1622-six years after the author's death-when it was issued as a separate quarto; a bookseller's speculative piracy, preceding by one year its publication in the first folio collection of Shakespeare's plays in 1623:—it contains many lines, and even speeches, not found in the quarto.b

The passions which the Tragedy of Othello excites must call forth general sympathy. All well-constituted minds, whether the inmates of the lofty mansion, or the lowly cot-all to whom household peace and honoured honourable love are dear, must follow, with intensity of interest, the windings of this plot from its commencement to its heart-rending catastrophe. Shakespeare, in this the greatest of the world's domestic dramas, has struck a chord which agonizingly and incessantly vibrates.

a In the account of the expenses incurred by Sir Thomas Egerton during his three days' entertainment at Harefield, there is the following entry:"6th Aug., 1602. Rewardes to the Vaulters, Players, and Dancers Of this £10 to Burbidge's players of Othello,. 64, 18, 10 "Richard Burbidge was not only the chief actor, but one of the principal proprietors, of the Theatres with which Shakespeare was connected. He died in 1619. His brief epitaph is very expressive-" Exit Burbidge."

b The folio (1623) contains 163 lines which are not in the quarto (1622), and the quarto has 10 lines which are not in the folio.

The following is the title of the First Quarto: "The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice. As it hath beene diverse times acted at the Globe and at Black Friars by his Majesties Servants. Written by William Shakespeare,"

232