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Hath in the skirts of Norway, here and there,
Shark'd' up a list of landless resolutes,
For food and diet, to some enterprise
That hath a stomach in't: which is no other,
(As it doth well appear unto our state,)
But to recover of us, by strong hand,
And terms compulsory, those 'foresaid lands
So by his father lost: And this, I take it,
Is the main motive of our preparations;
The source of this our watch; and the chief head
Of this post-haste and romage3 in the land.
[Ber. I think, it be no other, but even so:
Well may it sort, that this portentous figure
Comes armed through our watch; so like the king
That was, and is, the question of these wars.

4

5

Hor. A mote it is, to trouble the mind's eye.
In the most high and palmy" state of Rome,
A little ere the mightiest Julius fell,

The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead
Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets.

*

*

*

*

* 8

As, stars with trains of fire and dews of blood,
Disasters in the sun; and the moist star,"
Upon whose influence Neptune's empire stands,
Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse.
And even the like precurse of fierce events,-
As harbingers preceding still the fates,
And prologue to the omen1o coming on,
Have heaven and earth together demonstrated
Unto our climatures and countrymen.-]
Re-enter Ghost.

But, soft; behold! lo, where it comes again!
I'll cross it, though it blast me."-Stay, illusion!
If thou hast any sound, or use of voice,
Speak to me:

If there be any good thing to be done,
That may to thee do ease, and grace to me,
Speak to me:

If thou art privy to thy country's fate,
Which, happily, foreknowing, may avoid,
O, speak!

Or, if thou hast uphoarded in thy life
Extorted treasure in the womb of earth,
For which, they say, you spirits oft walk in death,
[Cock crows.
Speak of it :-stay, and speak.-Stop it, Marcellus.
Mar. Shall I strike at it with my partisan?
Hor. Do, if it will not stand.
Ber.
"Tis here!
Johnson explains it, full of spirit, not regulated or
guided by knowledge or experience,' and has been
hitherto uncontradicted.

1 i. e. snapped up or taken up hastily. Scroccare is properly to do any thing at another man's cost, to shark or shift for any thing. Scroccolone, a cunning shifter or sharker for any thing in time of need, namely for victuals; a tall trencher-man, shifting up and down for belly cheer. The same word also signifies to snap. This word has not yet lost its force in vulgar conversation.

2 Stomach is used for determined purpose. 3 Romage, now spelt rummage, and in common use as a verb, though not as a substantive, for making a thorough ransack or search, a busy and tumultuous

movement.

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We do it wrong, being so majestical,
To offer it the show of violence;
For it is, as the air, invulnerable,15
And our vain blows malicious mockery.

12

Ber. It was about to speak, when the cock crew, Hor. And then it started like a guilty thing Upon a fearful summons. I have heard, The cock, that is the trumpet of the morn,13 Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat Awake the god of day; and at his warning, Whether in sea or fire, in earth or air, The extravagant and erring14 spirit hies To his confine and of the truth herein This present object made probation.

Mar. It faded on the crowing of the cock.15 Some say, that ever 'gainst that season comes Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated, This bird of dawning singeth all night long: And then they say no spirit dares stir abroad; The nights are wholesome: then no planets strike, No fairy takes, 16 nor witch hath power to charm, So hallow'd and so gracious" is the time.

Hor. So I have heard, and do in part believe it. But look, the morn,18 in russet mantle clad, Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastern hill: Break we our watch up; and, by my advice, Let us impart what we have seen to-night Unto young Hamlet: for, upon my life, This spirit, dumb to us, will speak to him: Do you consent we shall acquaint him with it, As needful in our loves, fitting our duty?

Mar. Let's do't, I pray; and I this morning know Where we shall find him most convenient. [Exeunt. SCENE II. The same. A Room of State in the Enter the King, Queen, HAMLET, POLONIUS, LAERTES, VOLTIMAND, CORNELIUS, Lords, and Attendants.

same.

King. Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother's death

The memory be green; and that it us befitted
To bear our hearts in grief, and our whole kingdom
To be contracted in one brow of wo;
Yet so far hath discretion fought with nature,
That we with wisest sorrow think on him,
Together with remembrance of ourselves.
Therefore our sometime sister, now our queen,

have been occasioned by witchcraft, is the following: On Friday there appeared a tali man, who twice crossed him swiftly; and when the earl came to the place where he saw this man he fell sick.-Lodge's Illustrations of English History, vol. iii. p. 48.

Johnson remarks that the speech of Horatio to the spectre is very elegant and noble, and congruous to the common traditions of the causes of apparitions. 12 Thus in Macbeth :

And

13

'As easy may'st thou the intrenchant air With thy keen sword impress.' in King John:

'Against the invulnerable clouds of heaven.' And now the cocke, the morning's trumpeter, Play'd hunts-up for the day-star to appear." Drayton. 14 'The extravagant and erring spirit. Extra-va4 All the lines within crotchets in this play are omit-gans, wandering about, going beyond bounds.' Thus in ted in the folio of 1623. The title-pages of the quartos Othello:- To an extravagant and wheeling stranger * of 1604 and 1605 declare this play to be enlarged to Erring is erraticus, straying or roving up and down. almost as much againe as it was, according to the true 15 This is a very ancient superstition. Philostratus, and perfect copie.' giving an account of the apparition of Achilles' shade to Apollonius of Tyanna, says, 'that it vanished with a little gleam as soon as the cock crowed.' There is a Hymn of Prudentius, and another of St. Ambrose, in which it is mentioned; and there are some lines in the latter very much resembling Horatio's speech. Mr. Douce has given them in his Illustrations of Shak.

5. e. fall in with the idea of, suit, accord. 6 i. e. theme, or subject.

7 i. e. victorious; the palm being the emblem of victory. Chapman, in his Middle Temple Masque, has high-palm'd hearts.'

8 A line or more is here supposed to be lost. 9 i. e. the moon.

'Not that night-wand'ring pale and watry star. Marlowe's Hero and Leander.

10 Omen is here put by a figure of speech for predicted event.

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16 i. e. no fairy blasts, or strikes. Merry Wives of Windsor, Act iv. Sc. 4:And there he blasts the tree and takes the cattle' See note on that passage.

11 The person who crossed the spot on which a spectre 17 It has already been observed that gracious is some was seen, became subject to its malignant influence. times used by Shakspeare for graced, favoured. Vide Among the reasons for supposing the death of Ferdi- note on As You Like It, Act. i. Sc 2. nand, Earl of Derby, (who died young, in 1594,) to 18 First quarto, 'sun'

The imperial jointress of this warlike state,
Have we, as 'twere, with a defeated joy,-
With one auspicious, and one dropping eye;
With mirth in funeral, and with dirge in marriage,
In equal scale weighing delight and dole,2
Taken to wife: nor have we herein barr'd
Your better wisdoms, which have freely gone
With this affair along:-For all our thanks.
Now follows, that you know, young Fortinbras,-
Holding a weak supposal of our worth;
Or thinking by our late dear brother's death,
Our state to be disjoint and out of frame,
Colleagued with this dream of his advantage,
He hath not fail'd to pester us with message,
Importing the surrender of those lands
Lost by his father, with all bands of law,
To our most valiant brother.-So much for him.
Now for ourself, and for this time of meeting.
Thus much the business is: We have here writ
To Norway, uncle of young Fortinbras,-
Who, impotent and bed-rid, scarcely hears
Of this his nephew's purpose,-to suppress
His further gait' herein; in that the levies,
The lists, and full proportions, are all made
Out of his subject:-and we here despatch
You, good Cornelius, and you, Voltimand,
For bearers of this greeting to old Norway;
Giving to you no further personal power
To business with the king, more than the scope
Of these related articles allow."
Farewell; and let your haste commend your duty.
Cor. Vol. In that, and all things, will we show
our duty.

King. We doubt it nothing; heartily farewell.
[Exeunt VOLTIMAND and CORNELIUS.
And now, Laertes, what's the news with you?
You told us of some suit; What is't, Laertes ?
You cannot speak of reason to the Dane,
And lose your voice: What would'st thou beg,
Laertes,

That shall not be my offer, not thy asking?
The head is not more native to the heart,
The hand more instrumental to the mouth,
Than is the throne of Denmark to thy father."
What would'st thou have, Laertes ?

Laer.
My dread lord,
Your leave and favour to return to France;

1 Thus the folio. The quarto reads:
With an auspicious and a dropping eye.'
The same thought occurs in The Winter's Tale :-
She had one eye declined for the loss of her husband,
another elevated that the oracle was fulfilled.' There
is an old proverbial phrase, To laugh with one eye,
and cry with the other."

2 i. e. grief.

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3 i. e. united to this strange fancy of, &c. 4 The folio reads, bonds; but bands and bonds sig nified the same thing in the poet's time.

5 Gait here signifies course, progress. Gait for road, way, path, is still in use in the north. We have this word again in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act

v. Sc. 2:

Every fairy takes his gait.'

From whence though willingly I came to Denmark,
To show my duty in your coronation;
Yet now, I must confess, that duty done,
My thoughts and wishes bend again toward France,
And bow them to your gracious leave and pardon.
King. Have you your father's leave? What says
Polonius?

Pol. He hath, my lord, [wrung from me my slow
leave,

By laboursome petition; and, at last,
Upon his will I seal'd my hard consent:]
I do beseech you, give him leave to go.
King. Take thy fair hour, Laertes; time be thine,
And thy best graces spend it at thy will.-
But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son,-
Ham. A little more than kin, and less than kind.
[Aside.
King. How is it that the clouds still hang on you?
Ham. Not so, my lord, I am too much i' the sun,1o
Queen. Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted colour off,
And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark.
Do not, for ever, with thy vailed lids11
Seek for thy noble father in the dust:
Thou know'st, 'tis common; all, that live, must die,
Passing through nature to eternity.

Ham. Ay, madam, it is common.
Queen.

If it be,

Why seems it so particular with thee?
Ham. Seems, madam! nay, it is; I know not

seems.

"Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,
Nor customary suits of solemn black,
Nor windy suspiration of forc'd breath,
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
Nor the dejected haviour of the visage,
Together with all forms, modes, shows of grief,
That can denote me truly: These, indeed, seem,
For they are actions that a man might play;
But I have that within, which passeth show;
These but the trappings and the suits of wo.12
King. 'Tis sweet and commendable in your na-
ture, Hamlet,

To give these mourning duties to your father:
But you must know your father lost a father;
That father lost, lost his ;13 and the survivor bound
In filial obligation, for some term.

13

This

8 In the first quarto this passage stands thus:'King. With all our heart, Laertes, fare thee well. Laert. I in all love and dutie take my leave. [Exit. The king's speech may be thus explained :-'Take an thy best virtues guide thee in spending of it at thy will.' auspicious hour, Laertes; be your time your own, and Johnson thought that we should read, And my best graces. The editors had rendered this passage doubly obscure by erroneously placing a colon at graces. 9 A little more than kin, and less than kind. passage has baffled the commentators, who are at issue about its meaning; but have none of them rightly explained it. A contemporary of the poet will lead us to its true meaning. A little more than kin has been rightly said to allude to the double relationship of the by blood and kindred by marriage. By less than kind king to Hamlet, as uncle and step-father, his kindrea Hamlet means degenerate and base. Going out of kinde, (says Baret,) which goeth out of kinde, which dothe or worketh dishonour to his kindred. Degener; 'Forligner, (says Cotgrave,) to degenerate, to grow out of kind, to differ in conditions with his ancestors.' That less than kind and out of kind have the same meaning, who can doubt? 10 It is probable that a quibble is intended between sun and son. The old spelling is sonne. 11 i. e. with eyes cast down.

6 The folio reads, More than the scope of these dilated articles allow. I have not scrupled to read reiated, upon the authority of the first quarto, as more intelligible. Malone says, 'the poet should have written allows; but the grammar and practice of Shakspeare's age was not strict in the concordance of plural and sin-forlignant.-Alvearie, K. 59. gular in noun and verb: and numerous examples might be adduced from his contemporaries to prove this. The question is, Are the writers of that time to be tried by modern rules of grammar, with which they were not acquainted? Steevens, with a sweeping assertion, which no one conversant with MSS. of the time will aflow, would attribute all such inaccuracies to illiterate transcribers or printers. We have Malone's assertion, that such errors are to be met with in almost every page of the first folio. The first quarto reads:no further personal power

To business with the king

Than those related articles do shew."

7 The various parts of the body enumerated are not more allied, more necessary to each other, than the throne of Denmark (i. e. the king) is bound to your father to do him service.

Vail your regard

Upon a wrong'd, I'd fain have said a maid.'
Measure for Measure, vol. i

12

'My grief lies all within,

And these external manners of lament
Are merely shadows to the unseen grief,
That swells with silence in the tortur'd soul

King Richard II.

13 i. e. your father lost a father, (your grandfather, which lost grandfather also lost his father. The first quarto reads, 'That father dead, lost his'

To do obsequious sorrow. But to persevere
In obstinate condolement,2 is a course
Of impious stubbornness; 'tis unmanly grief:
It shows a will most incorrect to heaven ;3
A heart unfortified, or mind impatient;
An understanding simple and unschool'd:
For what, we know, must be, and is as common
As any the most vulgar thing to sense,
Why should we, in our peevish opposition,
Take it to heart? Fie! 'tis a fault to heaven,
A fault against the dead, a fault to nature,
To reason most absurd; whose common theme
Is death of fathers, and who still hath cried,
From the first corse, till he that died to-day,

This must be so. We pray you, throw to carth
This unprevailing wo; and think of us
As of a father: for let the world take note,
You are the most immediate to our throne;
And with no less nobility of love,"

Than that which dearest father bears his son,
Do I impart toward you. For your intent
n going back to school in Wittenberg,
at is most retrograde to our desire :
And, we beseech you, bend' you to remain
Here, in the cheer and comfort of our eye,
Our chiefest courtier, cousin, and our son,
Queen. Let not thy mother lose her prayers,
Hamlet;

I pray thee, stay with us, go not to Wittenberg.
Ham. I shall in all my best obey you, madam.
King. Why, 'tis a loving and a fair reply;
Be as ourself in Denmark.-Madam, come;
This gentle and unforc'd accord of Hamlet
Sits smiling to my heart: in grace whereof
No jocund health, that Denmark drinks to-day,
But the great cannon to the clouds shall tell;
And the king's rouse the heaven shall bruit again,
Respeaking earthly thunder. Come away.

[Exeunt King, Queen, Lords, &c. POLO-
NIUS, and LAERTES.

Ham. O, that this too too solid flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!

1 Obsequious sorrow is dutiful, observant sorrow. Shakspeare seems to have used this word generally with an allusion to obsequies, or funeral rites 2 Condolement for grief.

3 'It shows a will most undisciplined towards hea. veri.'

4 Unprevailing was used in the sense of unavailing as late as Dryden's time, He may often prevail himself of the same advantages in English.'-Essay on Dramatic Poetry, 1st ed.

And dyvers noble victoryes, as the history doth ex

press,

That he atchyved to the honour of the town, Could not him prevayle whan Fortune lyst to frown.' Metrical Visions by G. Cavendish, p. 81. 5 This was a common form of figurative expression. The Ghost, describing his affection for the Queen, says:

To me, whose love was of that dignity,” 6 1. e. dispense, bestow. Thus Dryden :'High state and honours to others impart, But give me your heart.'

7 To bend is to incline. The moste parte bende to, &c. In hoc consilium maxime inclinant,' &c.-Baret. 8 The quarto of 1603 reads:

'The rouse the king shall drink unto the prince.' A rouse appears to have been a deep draught to the health of any one, in which it was customary to empty the glass or vessel. Its etymology is uncertain; but I suspect it to be only an abridgment of carouse, which is used in the same sense. See Peacham's Complete Gentleman, 1627, p. 194.

Carouse, seems to have come to us from the French, who again appear to have derived it from the German gar-auss, to drink all out: at least so we may judge from the following passage in Rabelais, B. iii. Prologue: -'Enfans, beuvez a plein godets. Si bon ne vous semble, laissez le. Je ne suis de ces importuns lifrelofres, qui par force, par outrage, et violence contraignent les gentils compagnons trinquer, boire caraus, et allauz.'

The reader may consult Mr. Gifford's Massinger, vol i. p. 240.

9 To resolve had anciently the same meaning as to dissolve To thaw or resolve that which is frozen;

Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
His canon1gainst self-slaughter! O, God. 0,
God!

How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on't! O, fie! 'tis an unweeded garden

That grows to seed; things rank, and gross in na

ture,

Possess it merely.11 That it should come to this! But two months dead!-nay, not so much, not two. So excellent a king; that was, to this,

Hyperion' to a satyr: so loving to my mother, That he might not beteem13 the winds of heaven Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth! Must I remember? why, she would hang on him, As if increase of appetite had grown

By what it fed on: And yet, within a month,
Let me not think on't ;-Frailty, thy name is wo
man!

A little month; or ere those shoes were old,
With which she follow'd my poor father's body,
Like Niobe, all tears;-why she, even she,→
O, heaven! a beast, that wants discourse of reason,14
Would have mourn'd longer,-married with my
uncle,

My father's brother; but no more like my father,
Than I to Hercules: Within a month;
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,
She married :-O, most wicked speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
It is not, nor it cannot come to, good;
But break, my heart: for I must hold my tongue!
Enter HORATIO, BERNARDO, and MARCELLUS.
Hor. Hail to your lordship!
Ham,
I am glad to see you well;
Horatio, or I do forget myself.
Hor. The same, my lord, and your poor servant

ever.

Ham. Sir, my good friend; I'll change that name with you.

regelo.-The snow is resolved and melted. To till the another word in a Latin sense; but it is not peculiar to ground, and resolve it into dust.'-Cooper. This is

Shakspeare.

10 The old copy reads, cannon; but this was the old spelling of canon, a law or decree.

11 i. e. absolutely, solely, wholly. Mere, Lat. 12 Hyperion, or Apollo, always represented as a model of beauty.

13 i. e. deign to allow. This word being of uncommon occurrence, it was changed to permitted by Rowe; and to let e'en by Theobald. Steevens had the merit of pointing out the passage in Golding's Ovid, which settles its meaning:

Yet could he not beteeme

The shape of any other bird than egle for to seeme nulla tamen alite verti

Dignatur, nisi quæ possit sua fulmine ferre." Rowe has an elegant imitation of this passage :— 'I thought the gentlest breeze that wakes the spring Too rough to breathe upon her.'

The word occurs again in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act i. Sc. 2.

14 Oh heaven! a beast that wants discourse of reason.' Mr. Gifford, in a note on Massinger, vol. L p. 149, is of opinion that we should read, 'discourse and reason.' It has, however, been shown by several quo tations that discourse of reason' was the phraseology of Shakspeare's time; and, indeed, the poet again uses the same language in Troilus and Cressida, Act ii. Sc. 2: is your blood

So madly hot, that no discourse of reason— can qualify the same.' In the language of the schools, Discourse is that rational act of the mind by which we deduce or infer one thing from another. Discourse of reason therefore may mean ratiocination. Brutes have not this reason. ing faculty, though they have what has been called instinct and memory. Hamlet opposes the discursive power of the intellect of men to the instinct of brutes in Act iv. Sc. 4, which may tend to elucidate his present meaning, if the reader has any doubts. The first quarto reads, a beast devoid of reason.' We have discourse of thought, for the discursive range of thought, in Othello, Act iv. Sc. 2.

And what make you1 from Wittenberg, Horatio ?— Marcellus?

Mar. My good lord,

Ham. I am very glad to see you; good even, sir. But what, in faith, make you from Wittenberg? Hor. A truant disposition, good my lord.

Ham. I would not hear your enemy say so: Nor shall you do mine ear that violence, To make it truster of your own report Against yourself: I know you are no truant. But what is your affair in Elsinore? We'll teach you to drink deep ere you depart. Hor. My lord, I came to see your father's fune

ral.

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Hor. Season your admiration for a while With an attent ear; till I may deliver, Upon the witness of these gentlemen, This marvel to you.

Ham.

For God's love, let me hear.

Hor. Two nights together had these gentlemen,
Marcellus and Bernardo, on their watch,
In the dead waste and middle of the night,
Been thus encounter'd. A figure like your father,
Armed to point, exactly, cap-à-pé,

Appears before them, and, with solemn march,
Goes slow and stately by them: thrice he walk'd,
By their oppress'd and fear-surprised eyes,
Within his truncheon's length; whilst they, distill'd"
Almost to jelly with the act of fear,

Stand dumb, and speak not to him. This to me
In dreadful secrecy impart they did;
And I with them, the third night kept the watch;
Where, as they had deliver'd, both in time,
Form of the thing, each word made true and good,
The apparition comes; I knew your father;
These hands are not more like.
Ham.

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But where was this?

1 i. e. what do you. Vide note ou Love's Labour's Lost, Act iv. Sc. 3.

2 It was anciently the custom to give an entertainment at a funeral. The usage was derived from the Roman cana funeralis; and is not yet disused in the North, where it is called an arvel supper.

3 See note on Twelfth Night, Act v. Sc. 1. 4 This is the reading of the quarto of 1604. The first quarto and the folio read, Ere I had ever.' himself behind

5

Was left unseen, save to the eye of mind.' Rape of Lucrece. Chaucer has the expression in his Man of Lawe's Tale :

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In sorrow than in anger.

Ham.

Hor. Nay, very pale. Ham.

A countenance more

Pale, or red?

And fix'd his eyes upon you?

Hor. Most constantly. Ham.

I would, I had been there.

Hor. It would have much amaz'd you.
Ham.

Very like: Stay'd it long?

Very like,

Hor. While one with moderate haste might tell

a hundred.

Mar. Ber. Longer, longer.

Hor. Not when I saw it.

Ham.

His beard was grizzled? no?

it will.

Hor. It was as I have seen it in his life, A sable silver'd.10 Ham. I will watch to-night; Perchance, 'twill walk again. Hor. I warrant you, Ham. If it assume my noble father's person, I'll speak to it, though hell itself should gape, And bid me hold my peace. I pray you all, If you have hitherto conceal'd this sight, Let it be tenable11 in your silence still; And whatsoever else shall hap to-night, Give it an understanding, but no tongue; I will requite your loves: So, fare you well: Upon the platform, 'twixt eleven and twelve, I'll visit you.

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8 'It is a most inimitable circumstance in Shakspeare so to have managed this popular idea, as to make the Ghost, which has been so long obstinately silent, and of course must be dismissed by the morning, begin or rather prepare to speak, and to be interrupted at the very critical time by the crowing of a cock. Another poet, according to custom, would have suffered his ghost tamely to vanish, without contriving this start, which is like a start of guilt: to say nothing of the aggravation of the future suspense occasioned by this preparation to speak, and to impart some mysterious secret. Less speak-would have been expected if nothing had been pro

But it were with thilke eyen of his mind, Which men mowen see whan they ben blinde.' And Ben Jonson, in his Masque of Love's Triumphs:As only by the mind's eye may be seen.' And Richard Rolle, in his Speculum Vitæ, MS. ing of Jacob's Dream :

That Jacob sawe with gostly eye.'

i. e. the eye of the mind or spirit.

6 The first quarto, 1603, has:-

'In the dead vast and middle of the night.' suffer the following note to stand as I had written it

previous to the discovery of that copy.

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We have that vast of night' in The Tempest, Act i.
Sc. 2. Shakspeare has been unjustly accused of in-tos, tenable. The folio of 1623 treble.

11 The quarto of 1603 reads tenible. The other quar

My father's spirit in arms! all is not well;
I doubt some foul play: 'would, the night were come!
Till then sit still, my soul: Foul deeds will rise,
Though all the earth o'erwhelm them, to men's eyes.
[Exit.
SCENE III. A Room in Polonius' House. Enter
LAERTES and OPHELIA.

Laer. My necessaries are embark'd; farewell:
And, sister, as the winds give benefit,
And convoy is assistant, do not sleep,
But let me hear from you.

Oph.

Do you doubt that?

Laer. For Hamlet, and the trifling of his favour,
Hold it a fashion, and a toy in blood;

A violet in the youth of primy nature,
Forward, not permanent, sweet, not lasting,
The perfume and suppliance of a minute;'
No more.

Oph. No more but so?
Laer.

Think it no more:
For nature, crescent, does not grow alone
In thews, and bulk; but, as this temple waxes,
The inward service of the mind and soul
Grows wide withal. Perhaps, he loves you now;
And now no soil, nor cautel3 doth besmirch
The virtue of his will: but, you must fear,
His greatness weigh'd, his will is not his own;
For he himself is subject to his birth:
He may not, as unvalued persons do,
Carve for himself; for on his choice depends
The safety and health of the whole state;"
And therefore must his choice be circumscribed
Unto the voice and yielding of that body,
Whereof he is the head: Then if he says he loves

you,

It fits your wisdom so far to believe it,
As he in his particular act and place
May give his saying deed; which is no further,
Than the main voice of Denmark goes withal.
Then weigh what loss your honour may sustain,
If with too credent ear you list his songs;
Or lose your heart; or your chaste treasure open
To his unmaster'd' importunity.
Fear it, Ophelia, fear it, my dear sister;
And keep you in the rear of your affection,
Out of the shot and danger of desire.
The chariest maid is prodigal enough,

If she unmask her beauty to the moon:

Virtue itself scapes not calumnious strokes :

1 This is the reading of the quarto copy. The folio has

sweet, not lasting,

The suppliance of a minute."

It is plain that perfume is necessary to exemplify the idea of sweet not lasting. The suppliance of a minute' should seem to mean supplying or enduring only that short space of time, as transitory and evanescent. The simile is eminently beautiful: it is to be regretted that it should be obscured by an unusual word.

2 i. e. sinews and muscular strength. Vide note on the Second Part of King Henry IV. Act iii. Sc. 2.

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I stay too long;-But here my father comes.
Enter POLONIUS.

A double blessing is a double grace;
Occasion smiles upon a second leave.

Pol. Yet here, Laertes! aboard, aboard, for
shame;

The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail,
And you are staid for: There,-my blessing with
you;

[Laying his Hand on LAERTES' Head.
And these few precepts in thy memory
Look thou character.i1 Give thy thoughts no tongue
Nor any unproportion'd thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hooks of steel;12
But do not dull thy palm' with entertainment
Of each new hatch'd, unfledg'd comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel: but, being in,
Bear it that the opposer may beware of thee.
Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice:
Take each man's censure,14 but reserve thy judg

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thy tables are within my brain Full character'd with lasting memory.'

12 The old copies read, with hoops of steel.' 13 But do not dull thy palm.' This figurative ex depression means, do not blunt thy feeling by taking every new acquaintance by the hand, or by admitting him to the intimacy of a friend.'

3 Cautel is cautious circumspection, subtlety, or ceit. Minsheu explains it, a crafty way to deceive.' Thus, in a Lover's Complaint:

In him a plenitude of subtle matter,
Applied to cautels, all strange forms receives."
And in Coriolanus:-

be caught by cautelous baits and practice.' The virtue of his will,' means his virtuous intentions. 4 Besmirch is besmear, or sully.

Thus
The

5 The safety and health of the whole state." the quarto of 1604. In the folio it is altered to sanctity,' &c., supposing the metre defective. safety is used as a trisyllable by Spenser and others. Thus Hall, in his first Satire, b. iii.:

But

'Nor fish can dive so deep in yielding sea, Though Thetis self should swear her safety.' 6 If with too credulous ear you listen to his songs.' 7 Licentious.

14 i. e. judgment, opinion; censura, Lat. Thus in King Henry VI. Part II. :

The king is old enough to give his censure.' 15 The quarto of 1603, reads:

'Are of a most select and generall chief in this. The folio:

Are of a most select and generous cheff, in that. The other quartos give the line :

'As of a most select and generous, cheese in that' 'Or of a most select and generous, cheese in that. Malone has tried to torture the passage into a meaning, by supposing an allusion to the chief or upper part of a shield in heraldry. But the redundancy of the line, and discrepancy of the copies, evidently show it to be corrupt. The simple emendation by omitting of a, an 8 i. e. the most cautious, the most discreet. In the proper punctuation of the line, make all clear. Green's Never too Late, 1616: Love requires not The nobility of France are most select and highchastity, but that her soldiers be chary. And again :-minded (generosus) chiefly in that;' chief being an ad. She lives chastly enough that lives charily. We have jective used adverbially. We have generous for high chariness in The Merry Wives of Windsor; and un-minded, noble, in Othello, and in Measure for Measure. chary in Twelfth Night, Act ili. Sc. 4 16 i. e. thrift, economical prudence

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