10 King. How is it that the clouds still hang on you? Ham. Not so, my lord, I am too much i'the sun 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 lids 11 Seek for thy noble father in the dust: Thou know'st, 'tis common; all, that live, must die, Ham. Ay, madam, it is common. 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, To give these mourning duties to your father: 10 It is probable that a quibble is intended between sun and The old spelling is sonne. son. 11 i. e. with eyes cast down. 12 Vail your regard Upon a wrong'd, I'd fain have said a maid.' Measure for Measure, vol. i. 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. But you must know your father lost a father; term Of impious stubbornness; 'tis unmanly grief: 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' 14 Obsequious sorrow is dutiful, observant sorrow. Shakspeare seems to have used this word generally with an allusion to obsequies, or funereal rites. 15 Condolement for grief. 16 It shows a will most undisciplined towards heaven.' 17 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 express, That he atchyved to the honor of the town, Could not him prevayle whan Fortune lyst to frown.' Metrical Visions, by G. Cavendish, p. 81. 18 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.' Than that which dearest father bears his son, And, we beseech you, bend 20 you to remain Queen. Let not thy mother lose her prayers, I pray thee, stay with us, go not to Wittenberg. 19 i. e. dispense, bestow. Thus Dryden : High state and honours to others impart, But give me your heart.' 20 To bend is to incline. The moste parte bende to, &c: In hoc consilium maxime inclinant,' &c.-Baret. 21 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 compaignons trinquer, boire caraus, et allauz.' The reader may consult Mr. Gifford's Massinger, vol. i. p. 240. Ham. O, that this too too solid flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve 22 itself into a dew! Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd His canon 23 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! O God! Fye on't! O fye! 'tis an unweeded garden Hyperion25 to a satyr: so loving to my mother, 22 To resolve had anciently the same meaning as to dissolve. To thaw or resolve that which is frozen; regelo.-The snow is resolved and melted. To till the ground, and resolve it into dust.'-Cooper. This is another word in a Latin sense; but it is not peculiar to Shakspeare. 23 The old copy reads, cannon; but this was the old spelling of canon, a law or decree. 24 i. e. absolutely, solely, wholly. Mere, Lat. 25 Hyperion, or Apollo, always represented as a model of beauty. Shakspeare has been followed by Gray in the accentuation of this name: Hyperion's march and glittering shafts of war.' Sir William Alexander and Drummond have accented it properly, Hyperion. 26 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: 6 Yet could he not beteeme The shape of any other bird than egle for to seeme.' Dignatur, nisi quæ possit sua fulmine ferre.' Rowe has an elegant imitation of this passage: 'I thought the gentlest breeze that wakes the spring The word occurs again in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act i. VOL. X. R 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,- A little month; or ere those shoes were old, O heaven! a beast, that wants discourse of reason 27, uncle, My father's brother; but no more like my father, Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears But break, my heart: for I must hold my tongue! 27 Oh heaven! a beast that wants discourse of reason.' Mr. Gifford, in a note on Massinger, vol. i. p. 149, is of opinion that we should read, ' discourse and reason.' It has, however, been shown by several quotations 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 reasoning 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. |