And never, as it imports here, returns to disclose the mysteries of the world of shades. Bourn is boundary. Milt. Com. 313. See Warton's (9) Great pith and moment] Vigor. "We have "pith" of life, IV. 1. King. The quartos read pitch; which Mr. Ritson thinks preferable, as an allusion to throwing the bar, a manly exercise, usual in country villages. (10) Nymph, in thy orisons, &c.] Dr. Johnson thinks that "this is a touch of nature. Hamlet, at the sight of Ophelia, does not immediately recollect that he is to personate madness, but makes her an address grave and solemn, such as the foregoing meditation excited in his thoughts." And it may be, that, taken by surprise and struck with the propriety of closing his profound ineditations, he forgets for a moment that he has a part to act. Orison is from oraison, Fr. prayer. (11) How does your honour for this many a day] We have here a question respecting past time put in the present tense. By no grammatical allowance can does be made to represent has done ; but in familiar discourse, in dramatic dialogue, it may pass, and be classed with such anomalies as in the opening of this play"'Tis now struck twelve." (12) If you be honest and fair, your honesty should admit no discourse to your beauty] No address, approach to. If you really possess these qualities, chastity and beauty, and mean to support the character of both, your honesty should be so chary of your beauty, as not to suffer a thing so fragile to entertain discourse, or to be parleyed with. The lady, 'tis true, interprets the words otherwise; giving them the turn that best suited her purpose: and nothing is more frequent in our author, or more necessary to the craft of his vocation, than so to shape the phrase of his dialogue, as to accommodate it to the occasions of the succeeding speakers. Instead of "your honesty" the quartos read "you." (13) I have heard of your prattlings; God hath given you one pace, and you make yourselves another: you jig, you amble, you lisp.] For prattlings the quartos read paintings, and for pace, face. The author, says Dr. Johnson, probably wrote both. In support of the reading of the folios Mr. Douce says, "it has not been observed, that lisp, &c. seems to refer to prattlings, as jig and amble do to pace." Illustr. II. 241. That the reading of the quartos was no unjust representation of the manners of the age, which Mr. Steevens thinks our author, in the spirit of his contemporaries, meant here to satirize, may be inferred from a discourse of painting and tincturing women, 4to. 1616. An epigram, prefixed to it, is addressed " Ad Nigellam, magis rubicundam quam verecundam, summo candore." (14) To a nunnery, go] This part of Hamlet's conduct has been frequently charged as wantonly and unnecessarily harsh and brutal. It has to us, on the contrary, appeared to grow naturally and necessarily out of the cruel perplexity of his situation. Certainly it was not so felt by her who experienced it: neither does a disposition to such a carriage and conduct any way consist with his first feeling, when here he discovers her; for his language then, says Dr. Johnson, not recollecting that he is to personate madness, "is correct, consonant with his soliloquy, in which no disguise would be worn, and a touch of nature.' His change of tone was then an act of recollection, and was, as is conceived, persisted in as an act of necessity; and that tone probably heightened from the very circumstance of his having previously tripped, and thence under a stronger conviction of this necessity. Take a view of the state of his mind and his situation at this period. While deeply in love with Ophelia, to whom, by letter and otherwise, he had made the strongest protestations of it, his mind is overwhelmed by the sudden and mysterious death of his father, and the mysterious and scarcely less sudden marriage and coronation of his uncle and mother. Agitated, and with his faculties, from the effect of disappointed hope, suspicion, and fear, almost suspended, he sinks into despondence, and grows tired of life. Presently, by the preternatural disclosure made, his vengeance also is roused. Pledged too to the execution of it, and beset with spies, and danger and difficulty increasing round him, he becomes more and more indifferent to life, and even desirous of death. In this distracted and desperate state, and sworn to "bend every corporal agent," to strike that blow which would probably recoil upon himself, an object, the only one in this world that had any power to hold him to it, is thrown in his way. For a moment he forgets his situation; but recollection presently restores it, and, as a necessary precaution, dictates the course he pursues. Yet still, in spite of himself, we find him touching, again and again, the subject nearest his heart. It would have been base so to have trifled with her, as to have kept alive a flame which he was assured must soon be fatally extinguished. We fully approve, therefore, of the feeling of a distinguished modern actor, and fall in with the sentiment of a writer who witnessed it. He says, "After having gone to the extremity of the stage, from a pang of parting tenderness, Mr. Kean came back to press his lips to Ophelia's hand. It had an electrical effect on the house. It explained the character at once (and such as Shakespeare meant it) as one of disappointed hope, of bitter regret, of affection suspended, but not obliterated, by the cruelty of his fate, and the distraction of the scene around him." (15) The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, sword.] Dr. Farmer has shewn, that the collocation of words in exact correspondence with each other, was not insisted upon by our author; and that even Quintilian, a classical and critical author, thought such scrupulous arrangement unnecessary, though writing in prose. "Princes are the glass, the school, the book, "Where subjects eyes do learn, do read, do look." Tarq. and Lucrece. And in Quintilian: "Multum agit sexus, ætas, conditio; ut in fœminis, senibus, pupillis, liberos, parentes, conjuges, alligantibus." (16) That unmatch'd form and feature of blown youth, Blasted with ecstasy:] That matchless form of blooming youth mildewed and distracted. "The feature or fashion, or the proportion and figure of the whole body. Conformatio quædam et figura totius oris et corporis, σvμuerpia." Baret's Alvearie, fo. 1580. In the sense of the entire figure it is used in Cymb. V. 5. Iach. "For feature laming "The shrine of Venus, or straight pight Minerva." And so Mr. Steevens shews it was used by Spenser. "Thus when they had the witch disrobed quite, "Which the fair feature of her limbs did hide." Ib. III. 9. Blown is ripe, out of the bud. For feature the quartos read stature. Ecstasy is being carried out of oneself, distraction, alienation of mind. "Nor sense to ecstasy was e'er so thrall'd." Mr. Steevens quotes Gaw. Dougl. "In ecstasy she stood, and mad almaist." III. 4. Haml. (17) robustious perriwig-pated fellow] Boisterous and pompous in deportment and dress making a false and extravagant show of passion. Mr. Steevens cites Every Woman in her Humour, 1609: "as none wear hoods but monks and ladies, and feathers but fore-horses, &c.-none perriwigs but players and pictures." (18) groundlings] The part of the audience that answered to our upper gallery. Ben Jonson mentions the groundlings with contempt: "The understanding gentlemen of the ground here." And in The Case is Alter'd, 1609: "— a rude barbarous crew that have no brains, and yet grounded judgements; they will hiss any thing that mounts above their grounded capacities." "Be your stage-curtains artificially drawn, and so covertly shrowded that the squint-eyed groundling may not peep in?" Lady Alimony, 1659. In our early play-houses the pit had neither floor nor benches. The groundling, in its primitive signification, means a fish which always keeps at the bottom of the water. STEEVENS. The groundling and gallery commoner are classed together in Decker's Guls Hornbook, 1609, p. 27. (19) capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb shows, and noise] i. e. have a capacity for nothing but dumb shows; understand nothing else. So, in Heywood's History of Women, 1624: "I have therein imitated our historical and comical poets, that write to the stage; who, lest the auditory should be dulled with serious discourses, in every act present some zany, with his mimick gesture, to breed in the less capable mirth and laughter." MALONE. These are shows too confusedly conducted to explain themselves. In Heywood's play of the Four Prentices of London, 1615, the Presenter says: "I must entreat your patience to forbear "While we do feast your eye and starve your ear. "Their infant fortunes I will soon express:" &c. Then follow the dumb shows, which well deserve the character Hamlet has already given of this species of entertainment, as may be seen from the following passage: "Enter Tancred, with Bella Franca richly attired, she somewhat affecting him, though she makes no show of it." Surely this may be called an inexplicable dumb show. STEEVENS. For the order of these dumb shews Mr. Steevens refers to Gascoigne and Kilwolmersh's Jocasta, 1566. (20) Termagant] Termagaunt (says Dr. Percy, at the end of K. Estmere, vol. I.) is the name given in the old romances to the god of the Sarazens; in which he is constantly linked with Mahound, or Mohammed. Thus, in the legend of SYR GUY, the Soudan swears: "So helpe me Mahowne of might, "And Termagaunt, my God so bright." And Hall, Sat. I. And let whirlwinds and confusion teare "The center of our state; let giants reare "Hill upon hill; let westerne Termagant "Shake heaven's vault." Marston, Sat. VII. Termagant is also mentioned by Spenser in his Fairy Queen, and by Chaucer in The Tale of Sir Topas: and by Beaumont and Fletcher, in King or no King, as follows: "This would make a saint swear like a soldier, and a soldier like Termagant.” And in Massinger's Picture: 66 a hundred thousand Turks "Assail'd him, every one a Termagaunt." STEEVENS. And in Bale's Acts of English Votaries: Grennyng upon her, lyke Termagauntes in a play.” RITSON. "This Saracen deity is constantly called Tervagan in an old romance in the Bodleian library (and Ritson derives it from ter and vagans, the action of turning three times round in ancient magical incantations) says Tyrwhitt: and Ritson quotes Ariosto: "Bestemmiando, Macone, et Trivigante." And Mr. Todd adds: "Invocando Apollino, et Trivigante, "Brusantino, Angelica, Inamorata." 1553. c. xxvii. p. 167. "And Mahound and Termagant come against us, we'll fight with them." Hist. of the Tryall of Chevalry, 4to. Lond. printed by Simon Stafford. "And oftentimes by Termagant and Mahound swore." See Ritson's Metrical Romances, I. 260. (21) — out-herods Herod] The character of Herod in the ancient mysteries, was always a violent one. See the Coventria Ludus among the Cotton MSS. Vespasian D. VIII: "Now I regne lyk a kyng arrayd ful rych, 66 Rollyd in rynggs and robys of array, Dukys with dentys I drive into the dych; "My dedys be full dowty demyd be day." Again, in The Chester Whitsun Plays, MS. Harl. 1013: "I kynge of kynges, non soe keene, "I sovraigne sir, as well is seene, "I tyrant that maye bouthe take and teene "Castell, tower, and towne; "I welde this worlde withouten wene, "I beate all those unbuxome beene; "I drive the devills alby dene 66 Deep in hell adowne. • Mahound. |