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"Or to take arms against the assay of troubles." Assay" is attack, it is used in that sense by Spenser : and our author has it in a preceding scene of the play, 66 assay of arms." In the reading thus proposed, it will be seen that there is a perfect uniformity of thought, a perfect integrity of expression; "taking up arms to repel an attack," while in "taking up arms to repel a sea," the want of that integrity is apparent; nay the sentiment is even absurd. Assay, and a sea, would be easily confounded, when sound only was perhaps attended to by the transcriber. I must here take occasion to observe that much has been said respecting the mixed metaphors, the heterogeneous images, which the pages of Shakespeare, as it is said, continually offer to our view. I find, however, on a close examination of the text, that this charge of incongruity is unfounded, and that it has arisen chiefly from the ignorance and inattention of the earlier editors, who have brought in so many and foul corruptions, that the Temple of Nature has nearly become an Augean stable. This I maintain to be the case, for when these sordities are swept away, a scene of magnificence is at once presented to us: beautiful though devoid of art. B.

Ham. When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

-mortal coil,] i. e. turmoil, bustle. WARB.

"When we have shuffled off this mortal coil," i. e. When we have shaken off the shackles, which at present bind or hold us.

Coil is used in allusion to the coiling or strengthening of a rope by winding it in the form of a ring, whence coil is fetter. B.

Ham. For who would bear the whips and scorns

of time,

-the whips and scorns of time,] The evils here complained of are not the product of time or duration simply, but of a corrupted age or manners. We may be sure, then, that Shakspeare wrote:

the whips and scorns of th' time. And the description of the evils of a corrupt age, which follows, confirms this emendation. WARB.

I doubt whether the corruption of this passage is not more than the editor has suspected. Whips and scorns have no great connection with one another, or with time: whips and scorns are evils of very different magnitude, and though at all times scorn may be endured, yet the times that put men ordinarily in danger of whips are very rare. Falstaff has said, that the courtiers would whip him with their fine wits; but I know not that whip can be used for a scoff or insult, unless its meaning be fixed by the whole expression.

I am afraid lest I should venture too far in correcting this passage. If whips be retained, we may read,

For who would bear the whips and scorns of tyrants. But I think that quip, a sneer, a sarcasm, a contemptuous jest, is the proper word, as suiting very exactly with scorn. What then must be done with time? it suits no better with the new reading than with the old, and tyrant is an image too bulky and serious. I read, but not confidently :

For who would bear the quips and scorns of title.

It may be remarked, that Hamlet, in his enumeration of miseries, forgets, whether properly or not, that he is a prince, and mentions many evils to which inferior stations only are exposed. JouN.

Quips, the word which Dr. Johnson would introduce, is derived, by all etymologists, from whips.

concernment.

Hamlet is introduced as reasoning on a question of general He therefore takes in all such evils as could befall mankind in general, without considering himself at present as a prince, or wishing to avail himself of the few excmptions which high place might once have claimed. STEEV.

"For who would bear the whips and scorns of time." This reading I cannot by any means admit, and must of course be unsatisfied with the explications, which here are given of it. A clearer sense will be found in,

"For who would bear the scores of weapon'd time.” "Scores" in the sense of stripes, hurts, bodily injuries. "Weapon'd time." "Time always armed; who is ever assailing and doing us mischief."

Scores and scorns might be easily confounded either by transcriber or printer; while weapon'd and whip and are so much alike in sound that in reading aloud the ear might be deceived in regard to them, as we find of many expressions of the poety when well considering his works.

I formerly thought that we might read,

"Scores of whiphand time."

"Scores" will then signify charges against, imputations. The sense of the passage this-"Time who always has the whiphand, the advantage: who, while we are endeavouring to seize on and engage him for our particular purposes, is still too nimble for us: Time, likewise, who is ever preferring some charge, who is ever laboring an impeachment of our character." This agrees with the slanderous quality of Time, as represented in Troilus and Cressida.

Beauty, wit, high birth, desert in service,

"Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all
"To envious and calumniating Time."

I readily acknowledge that the proposed reading "whip hand" is neither easy nor elegant. Yet the epithet has in it something that may be called forcible: while it will be thought, perhaps, to have much of the manner of Shakspeare.

These emendations were made, as already hinted, at different times; he, therefore, who disapproves of the text, will make choice of that which appears to be best.

B.

Ham. When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear, To groan and sweat under a weary life; But that the dread of something after death,The undiscover'd country, from whose bourn No traveller returns-puzzles the will;

And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of;

might his quietus make

With a bare bodkin?-] The first ex pression probably alluded to the writ of discharge, which was formerly granted to those barons and knights who personally attended the king on any foreign expedition. This discharge was called a quietus. It is at this time the term for the acquittance which every sheriff receives on settling his accounts at the exchequer.

The word is used for the discharge of an account, by Webster, in his Dutchess of Malfy, 1623 :

"You had the trick in audit time to be sick
"Till I had signed your quietus."

Again,

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"And 'cause you shall not come to me in debt
(Being now my steward) here upon your lips
"I sign your Quietus."

A bodkin was the ancient term for a small dagger.

So, in the Second part of the Mirrour of Knighthood, 4to. bl. 1. 1598- "Not having any more weapons but a poor poynado, which usually he did weare about him, and taking it in his hand, delivered these speeches unto it: Thou silly bodkin shalt finish the piece of worke, &c."

In the margin of Stowe's Chronicle, edit. 1614, it is said, that Cæsar was slain with bodkins; and in The Muses' Lookingglass, by Randolph, 1638 :

"Apho. A rapier's but a bodkin.

"Deil. And a bodkin

"Is a most dang'rous weapon: since I read
"Of Julius Cæsar's death 1 durst not venture
"Into a taylor's shop for fear of bodkins."

Again in The Custom of the Country, by Beaumont and Fletcher:
-Out with your bodkin,

66

"Your pocket dagger, your stilletto."

Again, in Sapho and Phao, 1591:-" there will be a desperate fray between two, made at all weapons, from the brown bill to the bedkin.”

Again in in Chaucer, as he is quoted at the end of a pamphlet called the Serpent of Division, &c. whereunto is annexed the Tragedy of Gorboduc, &c. 1591:

"With bodkins was Cæsar Julius

"Murder'd at Rome, of Brutus Crassus." STEEV.

-Might his quietus make,'-How is it possible that quietus should in this place have any allusion to the discharge of an account. Make his quietus' is―kill himself. Quietus is one of the names of Pluto.

B.

To groan and sweat-] All the old copies have, to grunt and sweat. It is undoubtedly the true reading, but can scarcely be borne by modern ears. Joun.'

The change made by the editors, is however supported by the following lines in Julius Cæsar, act iv. sc. I.:

"To groan and sweat under the businesse."

This word occurs in the Death of Zoroas, by Nicholas Grimoald, a fragment in blank verse, printed at the end of Lord Surry's poems :

-none the charge could give:

"Here grunts; here grones; echwhere strong youth is

spent."

And Stanyhurst in his translation of Virgil, 1582, for supremum congemuit gives us: "—for sighing it grunts." STEEV. That undiscover'd country from whose bourn

No Traveller returns-] Hamlet himself has just had ocular demonstration that travellers do sometimes return from this strange country. Shakspeare, however, appears to have seldom compared the different parts of his plays, and contented himself with general truths. It would have been easy to have writtenFew travellers return. MAL.

No traveller returns.' The officiousness of the commentators, in many instances, awakens something like indiguation in one's breast. Here is a passage which Mr. Malone does not understand; and in consequence of this, and without questioning his own fallibility, he sets about making an awkward apology for the mistake of the Poet.

What ocular demonstration had Hamlet, that the traveller to the undiscover'd country (as Shakspeare chooses, though not very correctly to express it) does at any time return? The critic we are to suppose would allude to the ghost? But I will venture to assert that the author would never consider an apparition, a supernatural agent; that, in short, which has no reality, as a traveller who was returned from a distant place. Had this indeed been the case, had such been really his notion, he would not have written the lines in question, or in doing so he would have fallen into a gross and extravagant error-an error by the

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