Hamlet, Prince of Denmark

'Satisfy me home

What is become of her.'

32. them, i. e. mothers.

32, 33. To'o'er-hear of vantage' is to overhear from an advantageous position, such as Polonius would have when he could hear without Hamlet knowing that he was present.

31. Hanmer mended the defective metre by reading, 'Pray, alas! I cannot.' 39. For will' Hanmer read "'t will,' and Warburton 'th' ill.'

no change is required.

But

46. To wash it white as snow. Shakespeare doubtless had Psalm li. 7 in his mind.

47. to confront the visage of offence is to oppose directly, and so to break down, the sin.

50. pardon'd. So the folios. The quartos have pardon.'

56. retain the offence, retain the advantages gained by the offence. So 'theft' is used in a similar sense, iii. 2. 84, meaning the thing stolen. So also ambition' in line 55 means the attainment of ambition's end.

57, 58. These lines offer an example of that confusion of metaphor

so frequent in Shakespeare. Compare iii. 1. 59.

61. lies. Here Shakespeare uses the word in its legal sense.

62. his, neuter possessive.

Ib. we ourselves compell'd. The substantive verb is omitted, as in i. 2. 90. and Richard II, iv. 1. 129: 'And he himself not present.'

64. rests, remains. Compare 3 Henry VI, iv. 2. 13: And now what rests?'

68. limed, caught with bird-lime. Compare 2 Henry VI, ii. 4. 54: Have all limed bushes to betray thy wings.'

69. engaged, hampered, entangled.

73. pat, now. So the folios. The quartos read tamely 'but now.' Compare King Lear, i. 2. 146: Pat he comes, like the catastrophe of the old comedy.'

75. That would be scann'd, that ought to be closely examined. Compare will,' iv. 5. 3, and Macbeth, i. 7. 34; iv. 3. 194; and see Abbott,

§ 329.

79. hire and salary. So the folios. The quartos, by a singular misprint, have base and silly.'

80. full of bread. A scriptural phrase. Compare Ezekiel xvi. 49. 81. broad blown. Compare what the Ghost says of himself, i. 5. 76, &c. Ib. flush. So the quartos. The folios have 'fresh.' Flush' means full of sap and vigour. Compare Antony and Cleopatra, i. 4. 52, Flush youth revolt;' and Timon of Athens, v. 4. 8, The time is flush.'

I Henry IV, iv. I. IOI.

See also

83. our circumstance and course of thought, i. e. the circumstance and

course of our thought. We have a similar use of the possessive pronoun, i. 4. 73, and iii. 2. 304. Delius however joins 'our' to 'circumstance,' explaining thus: 'to conclude according to human relations and thoughts.' But the words will hardly bear this meaning. In the Two Gentlemen of Verona, i. 1. 36, and in Troilus and Cressida, iii. 3. 114, circumstance' means the details of an argument. So here 'circumstance of thought' means the details over which thought ranges and from which its conclusions are formed.

85. To take him, in taking him. For this indefinite use of the infinitive see Abbott, §§ 356, 357.

88. hent. The substantive 'hent' does not seem to occur elsewhere. The fourth folio substituted 'bent,' and a late quarto, that of 1676, 'time.' Warburton conjectured 'hest,' and Capell adopted Theobald's guess ‘hint.’ 'Hent,' as a verb, occurs in Winter's Tale, iv. 3. 133, and in Measure for Measure, iv. 6. 14, meaning to seize, to occupy. If therefore the text be right, 'hent' is equivalent to 'grip,' and Hamlet, as he leaves hold of his sword, bids it wait for a more terrible occasion to be grasped again.

93. trip, trip up. See 2 Henry IV, v. 2. 87: To trip the course of law.'

Scene IV.

1. home. See iii. 3. 29.

2. broad, unrestrained, open. Compare Macbeth, iii. 6. 21, 'broad words.' 4. heat, the anger of the king.

Ib. sconce. This is Hanmer's emendation for silence,' the reading of the quartos and folios. In the corresponding passage of the quarto of 1603, Corambis says, 'Ile shrowde my selfe behinde the arras.' Compare Merry Wives of Windsor, iii. 3. 96: 'I will ensconce me behind the arras.'

5. round. See ii. 2. 140.

7. fear me not. See i. 3. 51.

14. rood, from A. S. ród, cross, crucifix. The crucifix was placed over the screen between the nave and choir, hence called the 'rood-loft.' This oath is found in 2 Henry IV, iii. 2. 3, Richard III, iii. 2. 78, and Romeo and Juliet, i. 3. 36.

18. budge, stir. See Tempest, V. I. II:

'They cannot budge till your release.'

38. proof and bulwark. 'Proof,' used here adjectivally, is originally a substantive, as in Macbeth, i. 2. 54, 'lapp'd in proof,' and other passages, and thus suggests bulwark,' which would scarcely have been used for an adjective had it stood alone.

Ib. sense, feeling. Compare Troilus and Cressida, i. 1. 58:

'Spirit of sense

Hard as the palm of ploughman.'

39. wag thy tongue. So in Henry VIII, i. 1. 33: · No discerner

Durst wag his tongue in censure.'

40, 41. Such an act That. Compare Winter's Tale, i. 2. 263: 'Such allow'd infirmities that honesty

Is never free of.'

44. sets a blister there, brands as a harlot.

ii. 2. 138.

Compare Comedy of Errors,

46. contraction, the making of the marriage contract. The word has probably never been used, before or since, in the same sense.

48. rhapsody. The meaning of the word here is well illustrated by the following passage from Florio's Montaigne, p. 68, ed. 1603: This concerneth not those mingle-mangles of many kindes of stuffe, or as the Grecians call them Rapsodies.'

49. this solidity and compound mass means the earth. and Cressida, i. 3. 85:

Compare Troilus

The heavens themselves, the planets and this centre.' In Shakespeare's conception the earth was an immoveable mass at the centre of the universe. See note on ii. 2. 160.

50. tristful, sorrowful, occurs once more in Shakespeare, I Henry IV, ii. 4.

Ib. the doom. See Macbeth, ii. 3. 83: The great doom's image.'

51. thought-sick, sick with anxiety. See iii. 1. 85.

Ib. act. Compare Macbeth, i. 3. 128:

'As happy prologues to the swelling act

Of the imperial theme.'

52. index. The index, or table of contents, was usually prefixed to the book in Shakespeare's time. Hence what Hamlet has said is termed the index or preface, to his coming speech. Compare Othello, ii. 1. 263: 'An index and obscure prologue.' See also Richard III, ii. 2. 149.

53. Hamlet here points to two full-length portraits hanging on the wall of the queen's closet.

54. counterfeit. See Merchant of Venice, iii. 2. 116: Fair Portia's counterfeit'; i. e. her picture. Here of course the word is used as an adjective. It is given by Cotgrave as an equivalent to the French pourtraict.

Ib. presentment, representation. The word occurs in Timon of Athens, i. I. 27, in a different sense. In Milton's Comus, line 156, we have,

Of power to cheat the eye with blear illusion,

And give it false presentments.'

56. Hyperion. See note on i. 2. 140.

58. station, attitude in standing. So in Antony and Cleopatra, iii. 3. 22: 'Her motion and her station are as one.'

58. Malone supposes that Shakespeare may have derived this image of Mercury New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill' from Phaer's Translation of the Æneid (ed. 1620), book iv. [line 246 &c.]:

'And now approaching neere, the top he seeth and mighty lims

Of Atlas Mountain tough, that Heauen on boystrous shoulders beares,

There first on ground with wings of might doth Mercury arriue.' The first seven books of Phaer's translation were published in 1558, the whole Æneid in 1573, the two last books and the major part of the tenth being translated by Thomas Twyne.

65. wholesome. See iii. 2. 231, 284.

66, 67. The epithet 'fair' seems either to have suggested the word

moor' in the following line or to have been suggested by it.

66. leave, leave off, cease. See line 34 of this scene, and ii. I. 51. Compare also Lucrece, 148:

So that in venturing ill we leave to be

The things we are for that which we expect?'

67. batten, feed grossly, grow fat. Cotgrave gives 'to battle' as equivalent to Prendre chair,' s. v. Chair.' The word 'battels' is no doubt derived from the same root. Wedgwood connects it with Old English 'bet,' our better.' It occurs transitively in Marlowe's Jew of Malta, Act iii: 'Why, master, will you poison her with a mess of rice porridge? that will preserve life, make her round and plump, and batten more than you are aware' (p. 163, ed. Dyce, 1862). So Milton, Lycidas, 29:

'Battening our flocks with the fresh dews of night.' And intransitively in Ben Jonson's Fox, i. I: With these thoughts so battens.' 69. hey-day occurs only as an exclamation in three other passages of Shakespeare. Steevens quotes from a play of Ford:

• Must

The hey-day of your luxury be fed

Up to a surfeit?'

The meaning is obvious, but the derivation uncertain.

71-76. Sense... difference. Omitted in the folios.

71, 72. Sense is here, as in line 38, feeling, and motion is emotion, as in Measure for Measure, i. 4. 59:

The wanton stings and motions of the sense.' Warburton unnecessarily changed it to 'notion.'

73. apoplex'd, We have apoplex,' for ' apoplexy,' in Ben Jonson's Fox, i. I, p. 188, ed. Gifford: 'How does his apoplex ?' And in Beaumont and Fletcher's Philaster, ii. 2: 'She's as cold of her favour as an apoplex.' The word is not found in Shakespeare; for the reading 'apoplex' in 2 Henry IV, iv. 4. 130 is a conjectural emendation made by Pope for the metre's sake.

Ib. madness would not err, i.e. would not err so, the sense being completed by what follows.

74. ecstasy. See note on ii. I. 102.

75. quantity, portion. Some disparagement is implied in the word, as in King John, v. 4. 23:

'Retaining but a quantity of life.'

Livros