Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works.18 Speak to her, Hamlet. Ham. How is it with you, lady? Queen. Alas! how is't with you, 19 That you do bend your eye on vacancy, His form and cause conjoin'd, preaching to stones, me; Lest with this piteous action you convert 21 My stern affects: then what I have to do Will want true colour; tears, perchance, for blood. Queen. To whom do you speak this? Ham. Do you see nothing there? Queen. Nothing at all; yet all that is I see. Ham. Nor did you nothing hear? 18 Conceit for conception, imagination. This was the common force of the word in the Poet's time. 19 That is, like excrements alive, or having life in them. Hair, nails, feathers, &c., were called excrements, as being without life. See The Winter's Tale, Act iv. sc. 3, note 47. H. 20 That is, would put sense and understanding into them. The use of capable for susceptible, intelligent, is not peculiar to Shakespeare. H. 21 Affects was often used for affections; as in Othello, "the young affects in me defunct." The old copies read effects, which was a frequent misprint for affects. Singer justly remarks, that "the piteous action' of the Ghost could not alter things already effected, but might move Hamlet to a less stern mood of mind." H. Queen. No, nothing, but ourselves. Ham. Why, look you there! look, how it steals away! My father, in his habit as he liv'd! Look, where he goes, even now, out at the portal! [Exit Ghost. Queen. This is the very coinage of your brain: This bodiless creation ecstasy Is very cunning in. Ham. Ecstacy! 22 My pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep time, And I the matter will re-word; which madness Infects unseen. 24 Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg; Yea, curb 25 and woo, for leave to do him good. 22 This word has occurred in the same sense before. See scene 1, of this Act, note 22. H. Dr. Ray, 23 Science has found the Poet's test a correct one. of Providence, in his work on the Jurisprudence of Insanity, thus states the point: "In simulated mania, the impostor, when requested to repeat his disordered idea, will generally do it correctly; while the genuine patient will be apt to wander from the track, or introduce ideas that had not presented themselves before." 24 That is, do not by any new indulgence heighten your former offences. 25 That is, bow. "Courber, Fr., to bow, crook, or curb." H. Queen. O, Hamlet! thou hast cleft my heart in twain. Ham. O! throw away the worser part of it, That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat, 26 That to the use of actions fair and good And that shall lend a kind of easiness To the next abstinence: the next more easy; With wondrous potency. Once more, good night! 26 A very obscure and elliptical passage, if indeed it be not corrupt. We have adopted Caldecott's pointing, which gives the meaning somewhat thus: "That monster, custom, who devours or eats out all sensibility or feeling as to what we do, though he be the devil or evil genius of our habits, is yet our good angel in this." Collier and Verplanck order the pointing thus: "Who all sense doth eat of habits, devil, is angel yet in this." Where the meaning is, "That monster, custom, who takes away all sense of habits, devil though he be, is still an angel in this respect." This also pleads a fair title to preference, and we find it not easy to choose between the two. Dr. Thirlby proposed to read, "Of habits evil;" which would give the clear and natural sense, that by custom we lose all feeling or perception of bad habits, and become reconciled to them as if they were nature. The probability, however, that an antithesis was meant between devil and angel, is against this reading; otherwise, we should incline to think it right. -The whole sentence is omitted in the folio; as is also the passage beginning with "the next more easy," and ending with "wondrous potency." H. 27 So the undated quarto and that of 1611; the others have either instead of master. Some editors, probably not knowing or not consulting the copies first mentioned, have supplied curb or quell after either. H. I'll blessing beg of you. For this same lord, [Pointing to POLONIUS. I do repent: but heaven hath pleas'd it so, The death I gave him. So, again, good night! — I must be cruel, only to be kind : Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind. Queen. What shall I do? Ham. Not this, by no means, that I bid you do : Or paddling in your neck with his damn'd fingers, 30 But mad in craft. "Twere good, you let him know; For who, that's but a queen, fair, sober, wise, Would from a paddock, from a bat, a gib,3 32 Such dear concernings hide? who would do so? Let the birds fly, and, like the famous ape, 28 The pronoun their refers, apparently, to heaven, which is here a collective noun, put for the heavenly powers. H. 29 The words "But one word more, good lady," are not in the folio. And in the next line but one, the folio has blunt instead of bloat. H. 30 Mouse was a term of endearment. Thus Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy: "Pleasant names may be invented, bird, mouse, lamb, puss, pigeon." 31 Reeky and reechy are the same word, and always applied to any vapourous exhalation, even to the fumes of a dunghill. See Coriolanus, Act ii. sc. 1, note 18. 32 A paddock is a toad; a gib, a cat. See Macbeth, Act i. sc. 1, note 3; and 1 Henry IV., Act i. sc. 2, note 6. H. 33 To try conclusions in the basket creep,* Queen. Be thou assur'd, if words be made of And breath of life, I have no life to breathe What thou hast said to me. 34 Ham. I must to England; you know that, I had forgot: 'tis so concluded on. Alack! Ham. There's letters seal'd; and my two school fellows, Whom I will trust, as I will adders fang'd, They bear the mandate; they must sweep my way, 35 Hoist with his own petar; and it shall go hard, 33 To try conclusions is to put to proof, or try experiments. See Antony and Cleopatra, Act v. sc. 2, note 33. Sir John Suckling possibly alludes to the same story in one of his letters: "It is the story after all of the jackanapes and the partridges; thou starest after a beauty till it be lost to thee, and then let'st out another, and starest after that till it is gone too." 34 "I confess," says Coleridge, "that Shakespeare has left the character of the Queen in an unpleasant perplexity. Was she, or was she not, conscious of the fratricide?" This perplexity," whatever it be, was doubtless designed by the Poet; for in the original form of the play she stood perfectly clear on this score; as appears from several passages in the quarto of 1603, which were afterwards disciplined out of the text. Thus, in one place of this scene, she says to Hamlet, But, as I have a soul, I swear to Heaven, I never knew of this most horrid murder." And in this place she speaks thus: "Hamlet, I vow by that Majesty, That knows our thoughts and looks into our hearts,. H. 35 Hoist for hoised. To hoyse was the old verb. A petar was a kind of mortar used to blow up gates. |