NOTES TO HAMLET. ACT I. (1) 'Tis now struck twelve-'tis bitter cold] Although, as confounding time past and present, this use of 'tis for 'thas is anomalous, yet, as familiar language, it is common and allowed. We also say, "It is gone twelve." The instance in the text recurs in the opening of Sc. 4. "It is struck twelve." And in M. ado &c. we have-" Don Pedro is approached." I. 1. Messenger. 'My sister's man is certainly miscarried." See "bitter business," soliloq. Haml. III. (2) The rivals of my watch] i. e. associates, partners. Thus to heave "Dru. Sejanus, Act. I. 4to. 1605. Steevens instances Heywood's Rape of Lucrece, 1636: "Tullia. Aruns, associate him! "Aruns. A rival with my brother." Our author uses rivality in the same sense, in Anth. and Cleop. III. 5. Eros; corrival in 1 H. IV. I. 3. Hotsp. and IV. 3. Archb. and competitor throughout his works. Mr. Todd, whose useful labours increase the stock, as well as facilitate and open the avenues to our literature, shews the primary sense of this word from rivus, in Morin's Dict. Etym. Fr. and Gr." Rivalis designe proprement ceux qui ont droit d'usage dans une même ruisseau; et comme cet usage est souvent pour eux un sujet de contestations, on a transporté cette signification de rivalis à ceux qui ont les mêmes prétentions à une chose." (3) liegemen to the Dane] Lige, Fr. i. e. bound, ligatus, owing allegiance. Minshieu says, "Liege or liefe man, is he that oweth legeancie (from liga, Ital. a band or obligation) to B his liege lord; and that liege lord signifies he who acknowledges no superior." In the sense of "sovereign," it occurs in L. L. L.: Liege of all loiterers and malecontents." III. 1. Bir. And, equivocally rather, in Puttenham's Arte of Engl. Poesie, 4to. 1589, p. 182. "He lost, besides his children and his wife, "His realme, renowne, liege, libertie and life." See lieger, M. for M. III. 1. Isab. and sovereign liege. R. II. I. 1. Norf. (4) Give you good night] i. e. may it be given! May he, who has the power of giving, so dispense: or, I give you good night, in a sense similar to the Latin, dare salutem. "Qua, nisi tu dederis, caritura est ipsa, salutem Ov. Phædra Hippolyto, 1. "Give In the M. W. of W. Mrs. Quickly says to Falstaff, your worship good morrow." In the Avare of Moliere, Harpagon is ridiculously described, as having so much dislike to the word give, as never to say, 'I give you good day,' but 'I lend you,' &c. 'Je vous prête,' &c. (5) along With us, to watch the minutes] counted passage. Steevens cites i. e. tedious, slowly "I promise ere the minutes of the night." Ford's Fancies chaste and noble, Act V. With the quartos the modern editors place the comma after along instead of us. (6) Thou art a scholar, speak to it, Horatio] It has always been a vulgar notion that spirits and supernatural beings can only be spoken to with propriety or effect by persons of learning. It grows still longer, ""Tis steeple-high now; and it sails away, nurse. "And that will daunt the devil." B. and Fl.'s. Night walker, Toby. So the Butler, in Addison's Drummer, recommends the Steward to speak Latin to the Ghost. REED. It was so conceived, because exorcisms were usually performed in Latin. Douce's Illustr. 8vo. 1807. II. 220. After this speech, in the quarto of 1611 (enlarged to almost as much again as the original copy) followed that of Horatio : Most like it horrowes me with feare and wonder." And this appears to us to be the true and better reading. It is natural, that the surprise and terror of the speaker should bear : some proportion to the degree of his former confidence and incredulity and the art and address of our poet is shewn by making Horatio's answer (a reply not to the last speech and request made, but an observation upon an observation of a preceding speaker) expressive of that alarm in which he was absorbed and in the same way in Jul. Cæs. I. 3. does Cinna, the conspirator, by passing over the only question asked and eagerly adverting to matter of more immediate interest, disclose the agitation and fever of his mind. But, for the purpose, it is presumed, of making this answer more obviously intelligible, our Player Editors, or the taste of the age twelve years afterwards, interposed this speech of Barnardo's : "Looks it not like the king? mark it, Horatio." (7) It harrows me with fear and wonder] i. e. distracts, or tears to pieces like an harrow, a drag with iron teeth to break the clods of earth after ploughing, from Aro, Lat. to plough; which is as elucidated by Dr. Johnson, "to practise aration." Interpreting harrow in this place "disturb, put into commotion," he derives the noun from charroue, Fr. and harcke, Germ. a rake; and would read harry from harer, Fr. But harrie, says Minshieu, to " turmoile or vex" is from har, Sax. intorsio, tormentum. It should seem that they are considered as one and the same word by Tyrwhitt, who interprets it elsewhere, as Steevens does here, to conquer or subdue." He says, "by him that harwed helle," is harried. Sax. harrassed, subdued. Ch. Mill. T. v. 3512; and adds, "Our ancestors were very fond of a story of Christ's exploits in his Descensus ad inferos, which they called the harrowing of helle. They took it, with several others of the same stamp, from the gospel of Nicodemus." Fabr. Cod. Apoc. N. T. There is a poem upon this subject in MS. Bodl. 1687. "How Jesu Crist herowed helle; Tyrwhitt's Chaucer, Vol. II. 430. 4to. ed. and for this sense see "" I repent me much that I so harried him." Ant. and Cl. III. 3. Cl. It is somewhat singular, that we find the word harow in the same tale "Let be, Nicholas, "Or I wol crie out harow and alas v. 3286, referred, by Tyrwhitt, to a different origin: he "rather believes haro to be derived from two Islandic words, once probably common to all the Scandinavian nations, har, altus, and op, clamor; and adds, that haroep, or harop, was used by some of the inhabitants of the Low Countries in the sense of harou by the Normans." Ibid. Vol. II. Warton says, "this was an exclamation of alarm and terror, and an outcry upon the name of Rou or Rollo, for help." Todd's Spencer, III. 414. But as the three words harrow, harrie, and harow, are, under various spellings, confounded by glossographers, they may all not unreasonably be referred to the same source. The words appear, thus variously represented, in our different old writers: "Harro, harrow, Io, eheu; a Fr. haro, an outcry for help, much the same as the English hue and cry: vide Menage." Gloss. to Gaw. Douglas's Virg. Fo. 1710. "Hery, hary, hubbilschow. These are words expressive of hurry and confusion. Hiry, hary, seem to be a corruption of the Fr. haro, or the cry à l'aide, like huetium in our old laws, and hue in English. Hubbilschow* is used with us for uproar." Ancient Scottish Poems from MS. of G. Bannatyne, 1770. p. 173, "With bludy ene rolling ful thrawynlie "Oft and richt schrewitly wold sche clepe and crye, G. Dougl. Virg. p. 220. "Advocates and attorneys in open audience at the barre looke as tho they would eat one another, crying Harrol for justice on their client's side." R. C.'s Hen. Steph. Apology for Herodotus, fo. 1608, p. 342. An instance in which the word occurs in Ascham's Toxophilus has given occasion to a strange perversion of the text one of the infinite number of instances in which the ignorance and presumption of Editors has gone a great way towards blotting from the page of history, together with all traces of the character of their author's style, the evidence of our ancient usages. "One of the players shall have a payre of false dyse and cast them out upon the boarde, the honest man shall take them and cast them as he did the other, the thirde shall espye them to be false dyse and shall cry out haroe with all the othes under God, that he hath falsely wonne their money, and then there is nothing but hould thy throte from my dagger." 4to. 1571, fo. 14, b. Such is the original: but in a book published under the name of " James Bennet, Master of the Boarding School at Hoddesdon, Herts," by Davies and Dodsley, 4to. without date, intitled * Hubbub, or, as they pronounce it, hoobboob, is at this day an exclamation of a similar import in South Wales: and in Warwickshire they have a proverbial distich," Hoo roo the devil's to do." : the English Works and Life of Roger Ascham (in which the dedication and life at least are the work of Dr. Johnson), instead of "crye out, haroe," the editor has given crye out harde," altering as well the punctuation as the word itself and in this very ridiculous depravation he has been followed by Mr. Walters, a Glamorganshire clergyman, in an 8vo. edition, 1788, and in an edition of all his English Works, 8vo. 1815, White, Fleet-street. From this Norman usage, Ritson says the word " is erroneously supposed by some to be a corruption of Ha Rou,* i. e. Rollo, Duke of Normandy: Pharroh, however, was the old war cry of the Irish. Camd. Britann. 1695, p. 1047, and Spenser's View of Ireland. The word too, or crie de guerre, of Joan of Arc, was Hara ha. Howell's Letters, 8vo. 1726, p. 113. Anc. Metrical Romances, III. 349, 8vo. 1802. : : But, whatever its real origin, the tradition of the country, and the form of the invocation of their revered chieftain (à l'aide, mon prince), demonstrates what must have been the opinion of the inhabitants of Normandy and its adjacent isles upon this subject and in those islands this form of invocation is continued to the present day. The 53d chapter of the Grand Coustumier de Normandie treats De Haro, rendered in the Latin text or translation, "De clamore, qui dicitur Harou." It states, "that in his court of Haro the Duke of Normandy makes inquest, whether this cry is raised with just cause or otherwise, heavy penalties attending a false clamour and directs, that it shall not be raised, unless in criminal cases or offences against the state." Rouen, Fo. 1539, fo. 10 and 74. But the practise is, and as far as appears, ever has been, directly opposite and we are well informed, that in Jersey and Guernsey it is the constant usage, interjetter le clameur de haro, in civil cases, to prevent trespass or entry under the colour of right; and if any such inroad is repeated after this cry has been raised, heavy penalties ensue. That it ever could have been confined to criminal cases will hardly be allowed, if any credit is due to the story recorded of the stoppage of the Conqueror's funeral. He had violently dispossessed the owner of the ground, in which it was proposed to deposit his remains. The owner, conceiving this to be a new invasion of his property, and possibly that the death of the invader operated as a renewal of those rights, a suspension of the exercise of which he had hitherto been compelled to acquiesce under, threw in the clameur de haro. Falle, from Paulus Emilius, states his challenge to have been made in these words: "Qui regna oppressit armis, me quoque metu mortis hactenus oppressit. Ego, injuriæ superstes, pacem mortuo non dabo. In quem infertis hunc hominem locum, meus est. In alienum Raoul is the real and proper name, Rou or Ro the abbreviation, Rollo the latinised name, and now universally adopted; in the same way as we say Thuanus for De Thou. From whatever other sources derived, this word may have been engrafted into our language, it seems clear, that it has been transmitted to us by our Norman ancestors. |