Pol. [Aside.] Still on my daughter.

Ham. Am I not i'the right, old Jephthah?

Pol. If you call me Jephthah, my lord, I have a daughter that I love passing well.

Ham. Nay, that follows not.

Pol. What follows, then, my lord?

Ham. Why,

As by lot, God wot,

And then, you know,

It came to pass, as most like it was,

The first row of the pious chanson will show you more; for look, where my abridgment comes.

Enter Four or Five Players.

40

Ye're welcome, masters; welcome, all. I am glad to see thee well: welcome, good friends. — O, old friend! Why, thy face is valanc'd 41 since I saw thee last com'st thou to beard me in Denmark? What! my young lady and mistress! By-'r-lady, your ladyship is nearer to heaven, than when I saw you last, by the altitude of a chopine." 'Pray God,

42

40 That is, probably, those who will abridge my talk. -"The pious chanson" is something to be sung or chanted; in the first quarto it is called "the godly ballad.” — “The first row," seems to mean "the first column."

41. That is, fringed with a beard.

H.

42 A chopine was a kind of high shoe, worn by the Spanish and Italian ladies, and adopted at one time as a fashion by the English. Coriate describes those worn by the Venetians as some of them "half a yard high." Bulwer, in his Artificial Changeling, complains of this fashion, as a monstrous affectation, "wherein our ladies imitate the Venetian and Persian ladies." Chapin is the Spanish name; and Cobarruvias countenances honest Tom Coriate's account of the preposterous height to which some ladies carried them. He tells an old tale of their being invented to prevent women's gadding, being first made of wood, and very heavy; and that the ingenuity of the women overcame this inconvenience

your voice, like a piece of uncurrent gold, be not crack'd within the ring.43 Masters, you are all welcome. We'll e'en to't like French falconers,44 fly at any thing we see: We'll have a speech straight. Come, give us a come, a passionate speech.

taste of your quality;

45

1 Play. What speech, my good lord? Ham. I heard thee speak me a speech once, but it was never acted; or, if it was, not above once for the play, I remember, pleas'd not the million; 'twas caviare to the general: but it was (as I receiv'd it, and others, whose judgments in such matters cried in the top of mine) an excellent play; well digested in the scenes, set down with as much modesty as cunning. I remember, one said there were no sallets in the lines to make the matter savoury, nor no matter in the phrase,

46

by substituting cork. Though they are mentioned under the name of cioppini by those who saw them in use in Venice, the dictionaries record them under the title of zoccoli.

43 The old gold coin was thin and liable to crack. There was a ring or circle on it, within which the sovereign's head, &c., was placed; if the crack extended beyond this ring, it was rendered uncurrent it was therefore a simile applied to any other debased or injured object. There is some humour in applying it to a cracked voice.

44 So the folio and the first quarto; the other quartos have friendly instead of French.

H.

45 Caviare was the pickled roes of certain fish of the sturgeon kind, called in Italy caviale, and much used there and in other countries. Great quantities were prepared on the river Volga formerly. As a dish of high seasoning and peculiar flavour, it was not relished by the many, that is, the general. A fantastic fellow, described in Jonson's Cynthia's Revels, is said to be learning to eat macaroni, periwinkles, French beans, and caviare, and pretending to like them.

46 The force of this phrase will appear by the following from A Banquet of Jests, 1665:- For junkets joci, and for sallets sales." "Sal. Salte, a pleasante and mery word, that maketh folke to laugh, and sometimes pricketh.". BARET.

47

that might indict the author of affectation; but call'd it an honest method, as wholesome as sweet, and by very much more handsome than fine. One speech in it I chiefly lov'd: 'twas Eneas' tale to Dido; and thereabout of it especially, where he speaks of Priam's slaughter. If it live in your memory, begin at this line: let me see, let me

see;

The rugged Pyrrhus, like th' Hyrcanian beast, — 'tis not so; it begins with Pyrrhus.

The rugged Pyrrhus, — he, whose sable arms,48
Black as his purpose, did the night resemble
When he lay couched in the ominous horse,
Hath now his dread and black complexion smear'd
With heraldry more dismal; head to foot
Now he is total gules; 49 horridly trick'd
With blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons;
Bak'd and impasted with the parching streets,
That lend a tyrannous and a damned light
To their lord's murder: Roasted in wrath and fire,
And thus o'er-sized with coagulate gore,
With eyes like carbuncles, the hellish Pyrrhus
Old grandsire Priam seeks:

So proceed you.

47 So the folio; the quartos, affection, which was sometimes used for affectation.— Indict is impeach or convict.

H.

48 Schlegel observes, that "this speech must not be judged by itself, but in connexion with the place where it is introduced. To distinguish it as dramatic poetry in the play itself, it was necessary that it should rise above the dignified poetry of that in the same proportion that the theatrical elevation does above simple nature. Hence Shakespeare has composed the play in Hamlet altogether in sententious rhymes, full of antithesis But this solemn and measured tone did not suit a speech in which violent emotion ought to prevail; and the Poet had no other expedient than the one of which he made use, overcharging the pathos."

49 Gules red, in the language of heraldry: to trick is to colour. The folio has to take instead of total.

Pol. 'Fore God, my lord, well spoken; with good accent, and good discretion.

1 Play.
Anon he finds him
Striking too short at Greeks; his antique sword,
Rebellious to his arm, lies where it falls,
Repugnant to command. Unequal match'd,
Pyrrhus at Priam drives; in rage, strikes wide;
But with the whiff and wind of his fell sword
Th' unnerved father falls. Then senseless Ilium,
Seeming to feel this blow, with flaming top
Stoops to his base; and with a hideous crash
Takes prisoner Pyrrhus' ear: for, lo! his sword,
Which was declining on the milky head
Of reverend Priam, seem'd i'the air to stick:
So, as a painted tyrant, Pyrrhus stood;
And, like a neutral to his will and matter,
Did nothing.

But, as we often see, against some storm,
A silence in the heavens, the rack stand still,50
The bold winds speechless, and the orb below
As hush as death; anon the dreadful thunder
Doth rend the region: so, after Pyrrhus' pause,
A roused vengeance sets him new a-work;
And never did the Cyclops' hammers fall
On Mars's armour, forg'd for proof eterne,
With less remorse than Pyrrhus' bleeding sword
Now falls on Priam.-

Out, out, thou strumpet, Fortune! All you gods,
In general synod, take away her power;

Break all the spokes and fellies from her wheel,
And bowl the round nave down the hill of heaven,
As low as to the fiends!

51

50 For the meaning of rack see The Tempest, Act iv. sc. 1, note 16; also, 3 Henry VI., Act ii. sc. 1, note 4.

H.

51 To the remarks of Schlegel on this speech should be added those of Coleridge, as the two appear to have been a coincidence of thought, and not a borrowing either way: "This admirable substitution of the epic for the dramatic, giving such reality to the

Pol. This is too long.

Ham. It shall to the barber's, with your beard. 'Pr'ythee, say on:-He's for a jig,52 or a tale of bawdry, or he sleeps. -Say on: come to Hecuba.

1 Play. But who, O! who had seen the mobled 53 queen

Ham. The mobled queen?

Pol. That's good; mobled queen is good.

1 Play. Run barefoot up and down, threatening the
flames

With bisson rheum; 54 a clout upon that head,
Where late the diadem stood; and, for a robe,
About her lank and all o'er-teemed loins,
A blanket, in th' alarm of fear caught up;
Who this had seen, with tongue in venom steep'd
'Gainst fortune's state would treason have pronounc'd:

dramatic diction of Shakespeare's own dialogue, and authorized, too, by the actual style of the tragedies before his time, is well worthy of notice. The fancy, that a burlesque was intended, sinks below criticism: the lines, as epic narrative, are superb. In the thoughts, and even in the separate parts of the diction, this description is highly poetical in truth, taken by itself, that is its fault, that it is too poetical! -the language of lyric vehemence and epic pomp, and not of the drama. But if Shakespeare had made the diction truly dramatic, where would have been the contrast between Hamlet and the play in Hamlet?"

H.

52 Giga, in Italian, was a fiddle, or crowd; gigaro, a fiddler, or minstrel. Hence a jig was a ballad, or ditty, sung to the fiddle. 66 Frottola, a countrie gigge, or round, or country song or wanton verse." As the itinerant minstrels proceeded they made it a kind of farcical dialogue; and at length it came to signify a short merry interlude: "Farce, the jigg at the end of an enterlude, wherein some pretie knaverie is acted."

53 Thus the first quarto; the other quartos have a woe instead of O! who. The folio agrees with the first quarto, except that it misprints inobled for mobled. — Mobled is hastily or carelessly dressed. To mob or mab is still used in the north of England for to dress in a slatternly manner; and Coleridge says "mob-cap is still a word in common use for a morning cap."

H.

54 Bisson is blind. Bisson rheum is therefore blinding tears See Coriolanus, Act ii. sc. 1, note 5; and Act iii. sc. 1, note 11.