Queen.

This is mere madness:

And thus awhile the fit will work on him;
Anon, as patient as the female dove,
When that her golden couplets are disclosed,
His silence will sit drooping."

Ham.

29

Hear you,

What is the reason that you use me thus ?
I lov'd you ever: But it is no matter;
Let Hercules himself do what he may,

him.

sir:

The cat will mew, and dog will have his day. [Exit. King. I pray you, good Horatio, wait upon [Exit HORATIO. [To LAERTES.] Strengthen your patience in our last night's speech;

We'll put the matter to the present push.

Good Gertrude, set some watch over your son.—
This grave shall have a living monument:

An hour of quiet shortly we shall see;

Till then, in patience our proceeding be. [Exeunt.

SCENE II. A Hall in the Castle.

Enter HAMLET and HORATIO.

Ham. So much for this, sir: now shall you see

the other.

You do remember all the circumstance?

29 The folio gives this speech to the King, in whose mouth it is about as proper as a diamond in a swine's snout.The golden couplets are the two eggs of the dove; the nestlings, when first hatched, being covered with a yellow down; and in her patient tenderness the mother rarely leaves the nest, till her little-ones attain to some degree of dove-discretion. — Disclose was often used for hatch. Thus in the Boke of St. Albans, 1496: " For to speke of hawkes Fyrst, they ben egges, and afterwarde they ben disclosyd hawkys." Again: "Comynly goshawkes ben disclosyd assoone as the choughs."

H.

Hor. Remember it, my lord!

Ham. Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fight

ing,

That would not let me sleep: methought, I lay
Worse than the mutines in the bilboes.'

Rashly,

And prais'd be rashness for it: let us know,
Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well,

When our deep plots do pall; and that should

teach us,

There's a divinity that shapes our ends,

Rough-hew them how we will,

Hor.

Ham. Up from my cabin,

That is most certain.

My sea-gown scarf'd about me,' in the dark
Grop'd I to find out them; had my desire;
Finger'd their packet; and, in fine, withdrew
To mine own room again: making so bold,
My fears forgetting manners, to unseal1
Their grand commission; where I found, Horatio,
O royal knavery! an exact command,

1 The bilboes were bars of iron with fetters annexed to them, by which mutinous or disorderly sailors were anciently linked together. The word is derived from Bilboa, in Spain, where the things were made. To understand the allusion, it should be known that as these fetters connected the legs of the offenders very closely together, their attempts to rest must be as fruitless as those of Hamlet, in whose mind there was a kind of fighting that would not let him sleep. The bilboes are still shown in the Tower, among the other spoils of the Armada. Mutines is for mutineers. King John, Act ii. sc. 2, note 10.

See

2 To pall was to fade or fall away; to become, as it were, dead, or without spirit: from the old French pasler. Thus in Antony and Cleopatra: "I'll never follow thy pall'd fortunes more."- The quartos have learn instead of teach.

3 Esclavine," says Cotgrave, "a sea-gowne, a coarse, highcollar'd and short-sleeved gowne, reaching to the mid-leg, and used mostly by seamen and sailors."

Unseal is shown to be

4 Thus the folio; the quartos, unfold. right by his resealing the packet. In the second line after, the quartos read "A royal knavery."

H.

Larded with many several sorts of reasons, Importing Denmark's health, and England's too, With, ho! such bugs and goblins in my life," That on the supervise, no leisure bated,

No, not to stay the grinding of the axe,

My head should be struck off.

Hor.

Is't possible?

Ham. Here's the commission: read it at more

leisure.

But wilt thou hear me how I did proceed?"

Hor. I beseech you.

Ham. Being thus benetted round with villains, —
Ere I could make a prologue to my brains,
They had begun the play, I sat me down,
Devis'd a new commission; wrote it fair.
I once did hold it, as our statists do,8

A baseness to write fair, and labour'd much
How to forget that learning; but, sir, now
It did me yeoman's service." Wilt thou know
The effect of what I wrote ?

Ay, good my lord.

Hor.
Ham. An earnest conjuration from the king,—

5 The Poet several times uses bugs for bugbears. See 3 Henry VI., Act v. sc. 2, note 1.

H.

6 The supervise is the looking over; no leisure bated means without any abatement or intermission of time.

H.

7 The quartos have now instead of me. 8 Statists are statesmen. Blackstone says, that "most of our great men of Shakespeare's time wrote very bad hands; their secretaries very neat ones." This must be taken with some qualification; for Elizabeth's two most powerful ministers, Leicester and Burleigh, both wrote good hands. It is certain that there were some who did write most wretched scrawls, but probably not from affectation; though it was accounted a mechanical and vulgar accomplishment to write a fair hand.

9 Sir Thomas Smyth says of the yeoman soldiers, that they were "the stable troop of footmen that affraide all France."

VOL. X.

31

H.

As England was his faithful tributary;

As love between them like the palm might flourish;
As peace should still her wheaten garland wear,

And stand a comma 'tween their amities; 10
And many such like ases of great charge,
That, on the view and knowing of these contents,
Without debatement further, more or less,

He should the bearers put to sudden death,
Not shriving-time allow'd.

Hor.

How was this seal'd?

Ham. Why, even in that was Heaven ordinant : I had my father's signet in my purse,

Which was the model of that Danish seal;
Folded the writ up in form of the other;
Subscrib'd it; gave't th' impression; plac'd it safely,
The changeling never known. Now, the next day
Was our sea-fight; and what to this was sequent
Thou know'st already.

Hor. So Guildenstern and Rosencrantz go to't. Ham. Why, man, they did make love to this employment : "1

11

They are not near my conscience; their defeat
Does by their own insinuation grow.

'Tis dangerous, when the baser nature comes
Between the pass and fell-incensed points

Of mighty opposites.

Hor.

Why, what a king is this!

?

Ham. Does it not, think thee, stand me now upon He that hath kill'd my king, and whor'd my mother; Popp'd in between th' election and my hopes; Thrown out his angle for my proper life,

10 This is oddly expressed, as Johnson observes; but the meaning appears to be, "Stand as a note of connexion between their amities, to prevent them from being brought to a period." 11 This line is met with only in the folio.

H.

And with such cozenage; is't not perfect conscience, To quit him with this arm? and is't not to be damn'd, To let this canker of our nature come

In further evil? 12

Hor. It must be shortly known to him from England,

What is the issue of the business there.

Ham. It will be short: the interim is mine;
And a man's life no more than to say, one.
But I am very sorry, good Horatio,
That to Laertes I forgot myself;

For by the image of my cause I see

The portraiture of his I'll count his favours:
But, sure, the bravery of his grief did put me
Into a towering passion.

Hor.

13

Peace! who comes here?

Enter OSRICK.

Osr. Your lordship is right welcome back to Denmark.

Ham. I humbly thank you, sir.-Dost know this water-fly? 14

14

Hor. No, my good lord.

Ham. Thy state is the more gracious; for 'tis a vice to know him. He hath much land, and fertile: let a beast be lord of beasts, and his crib shall stand at the king's mess: 'tis a chough; but, as I say, spacious in the possession of dirt.

12 The last two lines of this speech, and what follows, down to the entrance of Osrick, is not in the quartos.

I.

13 Rowe changed this to " I'll court his favour;" but there is no necessity for change. Hamlet means, "I'll make account of his favours," that is, of his good will; the general meaning of fuvours in the Poet's time.

14 In Troilus and Cressida, Thersites says, "How the poor world is pestered with such water-flies; diminutives of nature." The gnats and such like insects are not inapt emblems of such busy triflers as Osrick.