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And our affairs from England come too late :
The ears are senseless that should give us hearing:
To tell him his commandment is fulfill'd,
That Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead,
Where should we have our thanks?

HOR.
Not from his mouth,
Had it the ability of life to thank you :
He never gave commandment for their death.
But since, so jump upon this bloody question,
You from the Polack wars, and you from England,
Are here arriv'd, give order that these bodies
High on a stage be placed to the view;
And let me speak, to the yet unknowing world,
How these things came about: so shall you
Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts;
Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters;
Of deaths put on by cunning and forc'd cause;
And, in this upshot, purposes mistook
Fall'n on the inventors' heads: all this can I
Truly deliver.

FORT.

hear

Let us haste to hear it,

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a shall live behind me!] Compare ("Much Ado About Nothing," Act III. Sc. 1), "No lory lives behind the back of such,"

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ILLUSTRATIVE COMMENTS.

ACT I.

(1) SCENE I.

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 dooms-day with eclipse:]

Some depravation is manifest in the first two lines, and
Rowe, to connect them with what precedes, printed,—

"Stars shone with trains of fire, dews of blood fall,
Disasters veil'd the sun-"

Malone, with more plausibility and less violence, proposed to change "As stars" to Astres, observing, "The disagreeable recurrence of the word stars in the second line induces me to believe that As stars, in that which precedes, is a corruption. Perhaps Shakespeare wrote:

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"Preco diei jam sonat,
Noctis profundæ pervigil;
Nocturna lux viantibus,
A nocte noctem segregans.
Hoc excitatus Lucifer,
Solvit polum caligine;
Hoc omnis errorum chorus
Viam nocendi deserit.

Gallo canente spes redit," &c.

The superstition of a phantom disappearing on the crowing of a cock, Steevens has shown to be very ancient by a passage (Vit. Apol. iv. 16) where "Philostratus giving an account of the apparition of Achilles' shade to Apollonius Tyaneus, says that it vanished with a glimmer as soon as the cock crowed."

(3) SCENE II. And bow them to your gracious leave and pardon.] As an instance of the minute attention with which the finished play was elaborated from the early sketch, it may be noteworthy, that in the quarto of 1603, the motive of Laertes' visit to the court is said to be desire to attend the late king's funeral,

"King. And now Laertes what's the newes with you? You said you had a sute what is't Laertes?

Lea. My gratious Lord, your favorable licence,

Now that the funerall rites are all performed,

I may have leave to go againe to France,

For though the favour of your grace might stay mee,

Yet something is there whispers in my hart,

Which makes my minde and spirits bend all for France." But it evidently occurred to Shakespeare that the acknowledgment of such an object was as little consistent with the character of Laertes as it would be palatable to the living monarch, and, accordingly, in the augmented piece the reason given by Laertes for his coming is more courtier-like,

"To show my duty in your coronation."

(4) SCENE II.-Come away.] The dialogue between the King, the Queen, and Hamlet, in this scene was much expanded and improved after the first draft: in the newfound quarto it runs thus meagrely,—

"King. And now princely Sonne Hamlet,
What meanes these sad and melancholy moodes?
For your intent going to Wittenberg,
Wee hold it most unmeet and unconvenient,
Being the Joy and halfe heart of your Mother.
Therefore let mee intreat you stay in Court,
All Denmarkes hope our coosin and dearest Sonne.
Ham. My lord, ti's not the sable sute I weare:
No nor the teares that still stand in my eyes,
Nor the distracted haviour in the visage,
Nor all together mixt with outward semblance,

Is equall to the sorrow of my heart,

Him have I lost I must of force forgoe,

These but the ornaments and sutes of woe.

King. This shewes a loving care in you, Sonne Hamlet,

But you must thinke your father lost a father,

That father dead, lost his, and so shall be until the

Generall ending. Therefore cease laments,

It is a fault gainst heaven, fault gainst the dead,

A fault gainst nature, and in reasons

Common course most certaine,

None lives on earth, but hee is borne to die.

Que. Let not thy Mother loose her praiers Hamlet, Stay here with us, go not to Wittenberg.

Ham. I shall in all my best obey you Madam.

King. Spoke like a kinde and a most loving Sonne, And there's no health the King shall drinke to day, But the great Canon to the clowdes shall tell

The rowse the King shall drinke unto Prince Hamlet."

(5) SCENE II.

the funeral bak'd meats

Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.] "The practice of making entertainments at funerals which prevailed in this and other countries, and which is not even at present quite disused in some of the northern counties of England, was certainly borrowed from the cœna feralis of the Romans, alluded to in Juvenal's fifth satire, and in the laws of the twelve tables. It consisted of an offering of a small plate of milk, honey, wine, flowers, &c. to the ghost of the deceased. In the instances of heroes and other great characters, the same custom appears to have prevailed among the Greeks. With us the appetites of the living are consulted on this occasion. In the north this feast is called an arval or arvil-supper; and the loaves that are sometimes distributed among the poor, arval-bread.”— DOUCE.

(6) SCENE II.—

Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven
Ere ever I had seen that day.]

On this use of dear, some examples of which will be found at p. 449, Vol. I., Caldecott has a good note:

Throughout Shakespeare and all the poets of his and a much later day, we find this epithet applied to that person or thing, which, for or against us, excites the liveliest and strongest interest. It is used variously, indefinitely and metaphorically to express the warmest feelings of the soul its nearest, most intimate, home and heartfelt emotions: and here no doubt, though, as everywhere else, more directly interpreted signifying 'veriest, extremest,' must by consequence and figuratively import 'bitterest, deadliest, most mortal.' As extremes are said in a certain sense to approximate, and are in many respects alike or the same, so this word is made in a certain sense to carry with it an union of the fiercest opposites: it is made to signify the extremes of love and hatred.

"But to suppose, with Mr. Tooke (Divers. of Purl. II. 409), that in all cases it must at that time have meant 'injurious,' as being derived from the Saxon verb dere, to hurt, is perfectly absurd. Dr. Johnson's derivation of the word, as used in this place, from the Latin dirus, is doubtless ridiculous enough: but Mr. Tooke has not produced a single instance of the use of it, i. e. of the adjective, in the sense upon which he insists; except, as he pretends, from our author. In the instance cited in this place by Mr. Steevens, in support of the extraordinary interpretation ('most consequential, important,') he has here and elsewhere put upon the word, 'A ring, that I must use in deere employment' (Rom. & Jul. sc. last), although the word is spelt after the fashion of the Saxon verb, it is impossible to interpret it 'injurious;' its meaning being most clearly, anxious, deeply interesting.' 'Deere to me as are the ruddy drops that visit my sad heart.' Jul. Cæs. II. 2, Bru. cannot admit of interpretation in any other sense than that in which Gray's Bard understood it,

'Dear as the ruddy drops, that warm my heart.' "In Tr. & Cr. V. 3, Andromache says,

'Consort with me in loud and deere petition.'

And in Hector's answer the word occurs thrice so spelt: 'Life every man holds deere; but the deere man Holds honour far more precious, deere, than life.'

And it is no less than impossible, in either of these instances, to put the sense of injurious' upon this word. With his mind possessed by the Saxon verb, to hurt, Mr.

Tooke seems altogether to have forgotten the existence of the epithet, which answers to the Latin word charus. In the same sense it is used by Puttenham: The lacke of life is the dearest detriment of any other.' Arte of Engl. Poesie, 4to. 1589, p. 182. See dearly,' IV. 3, King; As you, &c. I. 3, Celia; and L. L. L. II. 1, Boyet; and dear guiltiness,' Ib. V. 2, Princess. We will add from Drayton's Moses his birth, 4to. 1630, B. I. that Sarah, about to expose her child, says, she has

'her minde of misery compacted, That must consent unto so deere a murther.'

i. e. distressing or heart-rending."

(7) SCENE IV.—

The king doth wake to-night, and takes his rouse, Keeps wassail, and the swaggering up-spring reels.] "Wake" here means a wake-feast or watch-festival, originally a nocturnal entertainment held to celebrate the dedication of a church (vigilia); but it subsequently came to be used for any night revel. 66 Rouse," in reality the Danish Ruus, a deep draught, act of intoxication, or surfeit in drinking, was employed by our old writers with great laxity; sometimes it is used indifferently with carouse, to signify a bumper,

"Cas. 'Fore heaven, they have given me a rouse already. Mon. Good faith, a little one; not past a pint, as I am a soldier." Othello, Act II. Sc. 3.

Again,

"Nor. I have took since supper,

A rouse or two too much, and, by the gods,
It warms my blood."

The Knight of Malta, Act III. Sc. 4.
While in a previous passage of the present play,-

"And the king's rouse the heaven shall bruit again,
Re-speaking earthly thunder,”—

it plainly imports not simply a deep draught, but the accompaniment of some outcry, similar, perhaps, to our "hip, hip, hurrah!”

Of" Wassail," from the Saxon was hael, abundant illustration will be found in the Variorum Shakespeare, and in Douce; but the expression, "swaggering up-spring reels," still admits of farther explanation. At one time it was generally believed to be a derogatory epithet applied by Hamlet to the upstart king, until Steevens proved by a quotation from Chapman's "Alphonsus, Emperor of Germany,"

"We Germans have no changes in our dances;
An almain and an up-spring, that is all,"

that a particular kind of dance was meant. Up-spring, indeed, is from the Anglo-Saxon, and also the Danish Opspringer, and the Low-Dutch Op-springen, to leap up; and the "upspring reels" we conceive to have been some boisterous dance in which the performers joined hands in a ring and then indulged in violent leaps and shoutings, somewhat in the manner of our leaping dances or Hoppings at a country wake.

(8) SCENE IV.

Shall in the general censure take corruption
From that particular fault.]

In "The Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven," of Arthur
Dent, 1590, we have a dilatation of the same idea :-

"Phil. I do verily thus think, that as sin generally doth stain every man's good name, which all are chary and tender of; so especially it doth blot those which are in high places, and of special note for learning, wisdom, and godliness.

Theol. You have spoken most truly, and agreable to the Scriptures. For the Scriptures saith, 'As a dead fly causeth the apo

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thecary's ointment to stink, so doth a little folly him that is in reputation for wisdom and honour:' where Solomon sheweth, That if a fly get into the apothecary's box of ointment, and die, and putrefy in it, she marreth it, though it be never so pretious: even so, if a little sin get into the heart, and break out in the forehead of a man of great fame for some singular gift, it will blear him, though he be never so excellent."

And Nash, in his "Pierce Penniless's Supplication to the Devil," 1592, complaining of drunkenness, observes:-"A mightie deformer of men's manners and features is this unnecessary vice of all others. Let him bee indued with never so manie vertues, and have as much goodly proportion and favour, as Nature can bestow upon a man, yet if hee be thirstie after his owne destruction, and hath no ioy nor comfort, but when he is drowning his soule in a gallon pot, that one beastly imperfection wil utterly obscure all that is commendable in him, and all his goode qualities sinke like lead downe to the bottome of his carrowsing cups, where they will lye, like lees and dregges, dead and unregarded of any man."

(9) SCENE V.—

The glow-worm shows the matin to be near,
And gins to pale his uneffectual fire.]

"It was the popular belief that ghosts could not endure
the light, and consequently disappeared at the dawn of
day. This superstition is derived from our northern an-
cestors, who held that the sun and everything containing
light or fire had the property of expelling demons and
spirits of all kinds. With them it seems to have originated
in the stories that are related in the Edda concerning the
battles of Thor against the giants and evil demons, wherein
he made use of his dreadful mallet of iron, which he hurled
against them as Jupiter did his thunderbolts against the
Titans. Many of the transparent precious stones were
supposed to have the power of expelling evil spirits; and
the flint and other stones found in the tombs of the
northern nations, and from which fire might be extracted,
were imagined, in like manner, to be efficacious in confining
the manes of the dead to their proper habitations. They
were called Thor's hammers."-DOUCE

ACT II.

(1) SCENE I.- Perpend.] Dr. Johnson's analysis of Polonius has been justly commended for its perspicacity and discrimination. It is certainly an admirable interpretation, and leaves us at a loss to understand how a writer who exhibits such judgment and astuteness in the delineation of this particular character should have failed so signally in his appreciation of nearly every other one of Shakespeare's, which he has attempted to unfold.

"Polonius is a man bred in courts, exercised in business, stored with observation, confident in his knowledge, proud of his eloquence, and declining into dotage. His mode of oratory is truly represented as designed to ridicule the practice of those times, of prefaces that made no introduction, and of method that embarrassed rather than exaccidental, the rest plained. This part of his character

is natural. Such a man is positive and confident, because he knows that his mind was once strong, and knows not that it is become weak. Such a man excels in general principles, but fails in the particular application. He is knowing in retrospect, and ignorant in foresight. While he depends upon his memory, and can draw from his repositories of knowledge, he utters weighty sentences, and gives useful counsel; but as the mind in its enfeebled state cannot be kept long busy and intent, the old man is subject to sudden dereliction of his faculties, he loses the order of his ideas, and entangles himself in his own thoughts, till he recovers the leading principle, and falls again into his former train. This idea of dotage encroaching upon wisdom, will solve all the phænomena of the character of Polonius."

(2) SCENE II. [Reads.] For if the sun breed maggots in
dead dog, being a god kissing carrion.] In this passage,
famous rather from the discussion it has occasioned than
for any sublimity of reflection or beauty of language, we
adopt the now almost universally accepted correction of
a good" of the old editions.
Warburton-"a god" for "
At the same time we dissent toto cælo from the reasoning
by which he and other commentators have sought to
connect"For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog,
being a god kissing carrion," with what Hamlet had pre-
viously said. The circumstance of the prince coming in
reading, that he evinces the utmost intolerance of the old
courtier's interruptions, and rejoices in his departure,
serve, in our opinion, to show that Shakespeare intended
the actor should manifest his wish to be alone, after the

words, "Ay, sir; to be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand," in the most unmistakeable manner, by walking away and appearing to resume his study:-that then, finding Polonius still watching him, he should turn sharply round with the abrupt question, "Have you a daughter?" It is this view of the stage business which prompted us to print the passage above, as something read, or affected to be read, by Hamlet,-an innovation-if it be one, (for we are ignorant whether it has been suggested previously)— that will the more readily be pardoned, since the passage as usually exhibited has hitherto defied solution.

(3) SCENE II.-Ay, that they do, my lord; Hercules and his load too.] The allusion is doubtless, as Steevens surmised, to the Globe Theatre on the Bankside, the sign of aiery which was, Hercules carrying the Globe; and the " of children," against whom this satire was levelled, were, as he observes, "the young singing men of the Chapel Royal or St. Paul's; of the former of whom, perhaps, the earliest mention occurs in an anonymous puritanical pamphlet, 1569, entitled, "The Children of the Chapel stript and whipt:'-'Plaies will never be supprest, while her maiesties unfledged minions flaunt it in silkes and sattens; They had as well be at their popish service in the devil's Even in her maiesties Again, ibid.: garments,' &c. chapel do these pretty upstart youthes profane the Lordes day by the lascivious writhing of their tender limbes, and gorgeous decking of their apparell, in feigning bawdie fables gathered from the idolatrous heathen poets,' &c. Concerning the performances and success of the latter in attracting the best company, I also find the following passage in Jack Drum's Entertainment, or Pasquil and Katherine,' 1601:—

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