ation in our old dramas. For there being no change of Scene, it was necessary that the "unpleasant bodies" should be removed, in order that the play might go on with decorum.

ACT FOURTH.

Scene I.

26. Among a mineral:-Here mineral is used to mean a heap of ore, while ore itself, in the preceding line, has its radical meaning-gold.

Scene III.

21. politic worms:-Such worms as might breed in a politician's corpse. Singer suggests an allusion to the Diet of Worms. W. Hall Griffin adds that "the mention of 'emperor' makes it very probable." White says: "The reader will hardly fail to see the allusion in this passage to that assemblage, so whimsically named to an English ear, the Diet of Worms."

Scene IV.

6. our duty in his eye-Before his face: in his presence. So in Antony and Cleopatra, II. ii. 209, 210. "Her gentlewomen, tended her i' the eyes."

53-56. To stir without great argument (matter in dispute) is not rightly to be great, but to find quarrel in a straw when honour's at the stake is an attribute of true greatness. The not, as Furness argues, belongs to the copula, not to the predicate.

Scene V.

[Enter Queen, etc.] White distributes the speeches in this Scene according to the Folio. The Quartos bring in “a gentleman " with the Queen and Horatio, and assign to that nameless person the speeches which the Folio gives to Horatio, leaving him only two lines (""Twere good she were spoken with," etc.) in this whole Scene. The two lines which this arrangement as

signs to Horatio are the first two lines of the Queen's speech, according to the Folio; and they are, White thinks, much more appropriate as a reflection by which she is led to change her determination with regard to Ophelia than as a direct warning to a queen from a subject. They have hitherto been given either to Horatio or to the Queen as an outspoken speech. Hudson (Harvard ed.) makes this Sc. ii. and has "Enter the Queen and Horatio." Dowden and Rolfe agree with the present edition.

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21. Oph.:-The stage direction of Quarto 1 is: Enter Ofelia playing on a Lute, and her haire downe singing." For the traditional music of Ophelia's songs, see Furness, Hamlet, or E. W. Naylor, Shakespeare and Music, 1896.

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21. 'There is,” says Sir J. Reynolds, “no part of this play in its representation on the stage more pathetic than this Scene; which, I suppose, proceeds from the utter insensibility Ophelia has to her own misfortunes. A great sensibility, or none at all, seems to produce the same effects. In the latter case the audience supply what is wanting, and with the former they sympathize.”

51. The origin of the choosing of Valentines has not been clearly developed. Until the eighteenth century the custom survived in England of regarding the first girl seen by a man on the morning of St. Valentine's day as his "Valentine or sweetheart. And true-love or lover is the meaning implied here.

84. In hugger-mugger:—In confusion, hurry, secrecy, without decorum. This strange word is used in all these senses, and has very various spelling. In Golding's Ovid, Fol. 160 (ed. 1587), it occurs in the following couplet :—

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But let Ulysses tell you his [i.e., acts] doone all in hudther mudther

And whereunto the onlie right is privie and none other."

151. It shall as level to your judgement pierce :-So the Folio; the Quartos, "to your judgment peare”—an absurd reading (says White) which represents day as appearing level to the eye, instead of piercing level, i.e., directly, point blank to the eye.

161-163. Nature is delicate (or accomplished) in love, and sends Ophelia's sanity after Polonius as a precious token (or sample) of itself.

172. O, how the wheel becomes it!-A peculiar rhythm recurring at the end of each stave of a ballad, and which was sometimes produced by a repetition of the same words, themselves

nearly or quite senseless (as in the "Down a-down," which Ophelia has just sung), was called a wheel or burthen. There is a distinction made between the wheel and the burthen; but it does not seem to have been very closely observed of old.

181. rue::-The emblem of sorrow and repentance. See Richard II., III. iv. 105. The name herb-grace or herb of grace is found in the herbals and dictionaries. Given to the Queen. Ophelia wears her rue as the emblem of sorrow and of grace. "With a difference" had a heraldic meaning (slight distinctions in coats of arms borne by members of the same family), but that meaning is not required here. Skeat suggests that the difference is that of rue and "ruth" (referring to the passage in Richard II.).

181, 182. we may call it herb of grace o' Sundays:-This Sunday name of rue appears to have been worn every day and Sunday too. See Richard II., III. iv. 105, "I'll set a bank of rue, sour herb of grace."

Scene VII.

85. And they can well on horseback:-They are able or skilled horsemen.

123. a spendthrift sigh:-The Quarto of 1604 has, "a spend thrifts sigh," where the s is plainly but a careless addition. For in what way could a spendthrift's sigh hurt, more than a miser's, by easing? But as, according to the old saying, every sigh takes away a pound of flesh, or, as the ancients said, costs an ounce of blood, any sigh hurts by easing, and so is spendthrift.

ACT FIFTH.

Scene I.

11, 12. three branches:-Shakespeare seems to have read or heard of Plowden's report of Hales v. Petit. Sir James Hales had drowned himself; the coroner's jury returned a verdict of felo de se. Dame Hales's counsel argued that the act of suicide cannot be completed in a man's lifetime. Walsh, Serjeant, contra replied that "the act consists of three parts"—the imagination, the resolution, and the execution.

65. In youth, when I did love, etc. :-The three staves sung by the Grave-digger are from a ballad attributed to Lord Vaux, called "The Aged Lover renounceth Love," which will be found in Book II. of Vol. I. of Percy's Reliques. The clown's text, however, is most corrupt. For the traditional music-the tune of The Children in the Wood-see Furness (from Chappell), p. 385.

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170. thirty years:-Hamlet's age-thirty-is here fixed in a twofold way-by the date of the Grave-digger's service and by the number of years since Yorick's death. Gonzago and his wife, who represent the elder Hamlet and Gertrude, have been married thirty years. It is true, however, that passages in earlier scenesin particular the scene of Laertes parting from Ophelia-lead us to conceive Hamlet as younger. He is a student of Wittenberg; but it is a foreign university. Prof. Hales has quoted a passage from Nash, Pierce Penniless's Supplication, on the late age at which the Danes commenced education: 'You shall see a great boy weeping under the rod when he is thirty years old." In the Quarto of 1603 Hamlet's age is not fixed, and he seems younger throughout. Perhaps in recasting the play Shakespeare felt that Hamlet's weight of thought implied an age beyond that of very early manhood, and failed to harmonize the earlier and later presentations of his hero. His Troilus is under twentythree; Florizel looks about twenty-one; Cymbeline's sons are twenty-three and twenty-two; Hamlet is surely older than these youths. The heyday of Gertrude's blood is tame; she may be forty-five or forty-six: yet, like Gonzago's wife, who is of that age, she may have the power to charm. However we account for the inconsistency, we must accept dates so carefully determined.

288. eisel:-Criticism has not advanced much beyond Theobald's suggestions of 1733, that the Quarto of 1604 Esill and the Folio Esile mean either eisel, vinegar, or some river; and of the names of rivers none is more plausible than Theobald's "Yssel, in the German Flanders." Parallels for the hyperbole of drinking a river can be pointed out in several Elizabethan writers, in Greene's Orlando Furioso, in Eastward Hoe, and elsewhere. The proposal Nilus has only the crocodile to favour it. An English Esill has not been found, though there is an Iseldun (according to Sharon Turner, the Down of the Yssel). On the other hand, it has been shown that "drink up" does not necessarily mean exhaust; it may mean drink eagerly, quaff. In Sonnets, cxi., Shakespeare names "potions of eisel as a bitter and disagreeable remedy for strong infection." The word was used (see New Eng. Dict.) for

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the vinegar rejected by Christ upon the cross. The chief objection to eisel, vinegar, seems to be, as Theobald puts it, that the proposition was not very grand." This objection would be met if we could find any special propriety in the proposition. Now vinegar, even in small quantities, as we learn from William Vaughan's Directions for Health (ed. 7, 1633, p. 47, first published about 1607), while it allays heat and choler, “hurteth them that be sorrowfull." There may be irony in Hamlet's choice.

288. eat a crocodile?-Hamlet's challenge to revolting featshalf-passionate, half-ironical-receives more point if we remember that in current natural history the crocodile was a monster of the serpent tribe. See Topsell's Historie of Serpents. T. Bright regards the crocodile's bite as poisonous, like an asp's.

299. her golden couplets are disclosed:-Her two eggs are hatched. So in III. i. 172 of this play, "And I do doubt the hatch and the disclose," etc.

Scene II.

12. Up from my cabin:—All from Rashly in Hamlet's previous speech to these words is parenthetical.

17. to unseal:-The Quartos, "to unfold," the terminal syllable being probably caught from the line above. Here Shakespeare would have avoided a rhyme; and from Hamlet's fourth speech below it is plain that he broke a seal.

148, 149. against the which he has imponed:-This is Osric's affected pronunciation of impawned. See Hamlet's second speech below. White contracts, impon'd, and declares that by the uncontracted spelling usually given, imponed, the point is lost.

155. I knew you must be edified by the margent:—Receive an explanation like that furnished by a marginal note.

167, 168. twelve for nine:-The word passes seems to mean passes which count, the same as hits; the encounter is to continue until one party has made a dozen hits. The King wagers that Laertes-famous as a fencer, and therefore able to afford his rival odds-will not have made his twelve hits until Hamlet's hits are nine; if Hamlet falls short of nine, Laertes wins. Other explanations will be found in Furness.

187. He did comply with his dug:-He exchanged compliments. See in this play, II. ii. 387, 388, "let me comply with you." Some doubt has been thrown upon this definition of comply; but its