ACT SECOND.

Scene I.

25. fencing:-Perhaps named to show how Polonius regards the other supposed outbreaks of his son-as to be classed with addiction to the fencing-school. Fencers, however, had a like legal disrepute with players. In Middleton's Spanish Gipsy, II. ii. Sancho comes in from playing with fencers," having lost cloak, band, and rapier at dice. The ill repute of fencers appears from other passages in Elizabethan drama. In Dekker's Gul's Horn-Booke he speaks of the danger to a rich young man of being set upon" by fencers and cony-catchers (Dekker, ed. Grosart, Vol. ii. p. 213).

65. windlasses :-Winding turns. So in Golding's Ovid, B. vii.:

"like a wily fox he runs not forth directly out,

Nor makes a windlasse over all the champion fields about "; and in Apollo Shroving: "See how fortune came with a windlace about again."

77. closet:-A private chamber, as in III. ii. 338. This is the only entirely sincere meeting of Hamlet with Ophelia in the play; and it is entirely silent-the hopeless farewell of Hamlet. Can her love discover him through his disguise of distraction? He reads nothing in her face but fright; he cannot utter a word, and feels that the estranging sea has flowed between them. In no true sense do they ever meet again.

III. with better heed and judgement:-The Folio has "with better speed," etc., meaning success. This was preferred by Theobald.

119. This must be made known to the King, for the hiding Hamlet's love might occasion more mischief to us from him and the Queen than the uttering or revealing it will occasion hate and resentment from Hamlet." Johnson, whose explanation this is, attributes the obscurity to the Poet's " affectation of concluding the scene with a couplet." There would surely have been more affectation in deviating from the universally established custom.

Scene II.

17. Whether aught to us unknown :-This line. absolutely neces

sary to the sense, is omitted from the Folio. It also omits but in Guildenstern's speech below, and Ay in the Queen's exclamation as the Ambassadors go out.

116-124. Doubt:-In the first two lines and the fourth the word means be doubtful that; in the third it means suspect. Hamlet's letter begins in the conventional lover's style, which perhaps was what Ophelia would expect from a courtly admirer; then there is a real outbreak of passion and self-pity; finally, in the word "machine," Hamlet indulges, after his manner, his own intellectuality, though it may baffle the reader; the letter is no more simple or homogeneous than the writer. T. Bright, in A Treatise of Melancholy (1586), explains the nature of the body as that of a machine, connected with the "soul" by the intermediate "spirit." He compares (p. 66) its action to that of a clock.

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160. he walks four hours together:-" The obvious reading," says White," for hours together,' has occurred to many critical readers; and to modern taste this would seem an improvement. But similar phrases, 'two hours,' 'three hours,' and 'four hours together,' are of common occurrence in old books." "Hanmer's emendation for," observes Dowden, "is specious. But Elze (Shakespeare Jahrbuch, B. xi.) has shown the use by Elizabethan writers of four, forty, forty thousand to express an indefinite number. Malone cites Webster, Duchess of Malfi: 'She will muse four hours together'; and Clarendon Press, Pattenham, Arte of English Poesie: 'laughing and gibing foure houres by the clocke.'"

66

182. being a god kissing carrion:-The old copies (except Quarto I, in which the passage is not found) have, a good kissing carrion." The correction, which is almost of the obvious sort, was made by Warburton, who improves the occasion in a small sermon, which the reader will find preserved in the Variorum editions.-This speech of Hamlet's has an intimate connection in thought and in expression with his next; the thought being one which his madness, real or affected, may excuse, but upon which it is not pleasant to dwell, much less to expatiate.— White.

269. beggars bodies:-The monarch or hero is an outstretched shadow; a shadow is thrown by a body; body is the opposite of shadow; therefore the opposite of monarch, and heroes, namely, beggars, are bodies. Whether at one or two removes-shadow, or shadow's shadow-it is a beggar who produces an ambitious monarch. Hamlet's private meaning may possibly be that his

uncle is a shadow—a mockery king-with a beggar for its substance. He purposely loses himself in his riddles, and, being incapable of reasoning, will to the court, where just thinking is out of place.

276. dreadfully attended:-Hamlet speaks like an honest man, but knows his meaning will not be understood; he is dreadfully attended, by Memory and Horror, and wronged Love, and the duty of Revenge. Let the courtiers suppose he has a madman's suspicions of dangerous followers.

for

335. humorous man:-"Not the funny man or jester but the actor who personated the fantastic characters the most part represented as capricious and quarrelsome" (Staunton). "Such characters as Faulconbridge, Jaques, and Mercutio" (Delius). The characters of the stock company suit the present play-King Claudius, who receives such tribute as he deserves from Hamlet; Laertes, the fencer; Hamlet, the lover, who sighs gratis; Polonius, who ends his part as most secret and most grave"; the Grave-digger; and Ophelia, who speaks her mind in madness somewhat too freely.

346. Referring, no doubt, to the order of the Privy Council, June, 1600. By this order, the players were inhibited from acting in or near the city during the season of Lent, besides being very much restricted at all other seasons, and hence "chances it they travel," or stroll into the country.

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354. cry out on the top of question:-Clamour forth the height of controversy, utter shrilly the extreme matter of debate. Cry out may be regarded as a verb; to "cry on" is frequent in Shakespeare; cry out on may be a combination of the two; question is a matter in dispute; the top of question is the matter in dispute pushed to extremity. Other explanations have been proposed. Clarendon Press: " Probably, to speak in a high key, dominating conversation." For question in this sense, see Merchant of Venice, IV. i. 70. In Armin's Nest of Ninnies, p. 55 (Sh. Soc. reprint) occurs: "Cry it up in the top of question." Prof. Hales' notes from Adam Bede: "Mrs. Poyser keeps at the top o' the talk like a fife."

362. no longer than they can sing?-Until their voices break at puberty.

387, 388. let me comply with you:-To comply here means to observe the forms of courtesy or civility. So in V. ii. 187.

394-396. I am but mad

hawk from a handsaw:-I am mad only in one point of the compass. T. Bright, in A Treatise

of Melancholy (1586), mentions the southeast winds as the most suitable for sufferers from melancholy (Chap. xxxix.). Burton gives other opinions. A southerly wind would, according to Bright, favour Hamlet's sanity. North and northwest, we may infer, would be the most unfavourable. The word hawk was and is used for a plasterer's tool, but no example has been found earlier than 1700. Hack, however, is an Elizabethan name for a tool for breaking or chopping up, and for agricultural tools of the mattock, hoe, and pick-axe type (New Eng. Dict.). Handsaw might suggest hack, for we find in 1 Henry IV, II. iv. 181, 182, "My sword hacked like a handsaw." It is, however, generally assumed that handsaw here is a corruption of heronshaw or hernsew; no other instances of the phrase (except as quotations from Shakespeare) have been found" (New Eng. Dict.). J. C. Heath (Quoted in Clarendon Press) explains: the heron flying down the north wind is ill seen, the spectator looking south towards the sun; flying north, on a south wind, it can be easily distinguished from the hawk. Does Hamlet imagine the two courtiers as hawks loosed to pursue him? Elsewhere he compares them to hunters driving him unto the toils. The south wind is generally represented by Shakespeare as a wind of evi! contagion. Does Hamlet mean that he can recognize the King's birds of chase flying on an ill wind?

420. Jephthah:-Steevens communicated the pious chanson to Percy; a reprint from a black-letter copy will be found in Child's English and Scottish Ballads. Hamlet quotes from the first stanza. Jephthah sacrificed his daughter; before her death she went into the wilderness to bewail her virginity. So with Ophelia.

436. the first row of the pious chanson, etc.:-Hamlet calls the ballad from which he has been quoting, the pious chanson—in the Quarto of 1603, "the godly ballet "-on account of the biblical character of its subject. His quotations are all from the first stave; and to the first row, i.e., line or column, he refers his hearers for more, he being cut short in his recital, "for look, where my abridgement comes." It is possible, however, that both here and in A Midsummer-Night's Dream, V. i. 39, abridgement means that which shortens time-pastime; though there it is applied to things, here to persons.

444. by the altitude of a chopine:-The Italian ciopinno, a strange device, which is thus described in Raymond's Mercurio Italiano, London, 1647. “The Ladies have found out a devise

very different from all other European Dresses. They weare their owne, or a counterfeit haire below the shoulders, trim'd with gemmes and Flowers, their coats halfe too long for their bodies, being mounted on their Chippeens, (which are as high as a man's leg). They walke between two handmaids, majestically deliberating of every step they take. This fashion was invented, and appropriated to the Noble Venetians wives, to be constant to distinguish them from the Courtesans, who goe covered in a vaile of White Taffety."

472. 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."

573. peasant slave:-Furness says: "It is shown by Furnivall in Notes and Queries, 12th April and 3rd May 1873, that it was possible for Shakespeare to have seen in the flesh some of the bondmen or 'peasant slaves' of England."

578. In's aspect:-Here aspect is to be accented on the last syllable.

602. But I am pigeon-liver'd and lack gall:-It was supposed that pigeons and doves owed their gentleness of disposition to the absence of gall.

"A Milk-white Doue upon her hand shee brought,

So tame 'twould goe returning at her call, About whose Necke was in a Choller wrought 'Only like me my Mistress hath no gall.'"

Drayton's Ninth Eclogue.

624, 625. That Hamlet was not alone in the suspicion here started, appears from Sir Thomas Browne's Religio Medici, 1642: "I believe that those apparitions and ghosts of departed persons are not the wandering souls of men, but the unquiet walks of devils, prompting and suggesting us unto mischief, blood, and villainy; instilling and stealing into our hearts that the blessed