To his confine; and of the truth herein
This present object made probation.

Mar. It faded on the crowing of the cock.
Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long;
And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad,
The nights are wholesome, then no planets strike,

157. on] at Q'76.

158. say] fayes Ff.

160. The] This Qq, Cap. Jen. Steev. Var. Coll. Sing. Del. El. Ktly.

161. then] Om. F ̧F2F.

dare stir] Cald. dare furre Q,

155

160

Q3 Q4 dare stirre Q. dares fir Q'76, Cap. Jen. Steev. Var. Coll. El. dare walke Q,, Ktly. can walke Ff, Johns. Knt, Sing. Dyce i, White, Del. dares walk Rowe. walks Pope+.

161. abroad] abraode QQ3.

My erring father.'-Chapman's Odyssey, lib. iv. Erring Grecians we, From Troy returning homewards.'-Ib. lib. ix. CLARENDON: In Wiclif's version of Jude, 13, the planets are called 'erringe sterris.'

155. confine] CLARENDON: The same accent occurs in Temp. IV, i, 121; King John, IV, ii, 246. Accent on first syllable in Rich. II: I, iii, 137.

156. probation] CLARENDON: Proof. Cotgrave gives, Probation: A probation, proofe.' Conf. Oth. III, iii, 365.

158. 'gainst] ABBOTT, 142: Used metaphorically to express time. See III, iv, 50: as against the doom,' i. e. as though expecting doomsday.

158. season] MOLTKE: This passage, in connection with Francisco's remark, 'Tis bitter cold,' I, i, 8, and then with, But two months dead,' I, ii, 138, and lastly with,'Sleeping within my orchard,' I, v, 59, intimates to us in the clearest manner the time of year in which Sh. wishes us to conceive the opening of this tragedy— namely, in winter, but a little before Advent; for, two months previously, about September, the older Hamlet could have taken his after-dinner nap in the open air. CALDECOTT (in a note on the morn,' line 166) says, that the almost momentary appearance of the Ghost, and the short conversations preceding and subsequent to it, could not have filled up the long interval of a winter's night in Denmark, from twelve till morning. KNIGHT asks, How do we know it was a winter's night? Francisco, indeed, says 'tis bitter cold;' but even in the nights of early summer in the north of Europe, during the short interval between twilight and sunrise, the air bites shrewdly.' That this was the season intended by Sh. is indicated by Ophelia's flowers. Her pansies, her columbines, and her daisies belong not to winter, and her 'coronet of weeds' were the field flowers of the latter spring hung upon the willow in full foliage, That shows its hoar leaves in the glassy stream.' Knight might have added that the reference to the dew of yon high eastern hill' is also inappropriate to midwinter.

161. dare stir] WHITE: A much inferior reading to that of Ff.

162. planets] NARES: The planets were supposed to have the power of doing sudden mischief by their malignant aspect, which was conceived to strike objects. CLARENDON cites Tit. And. II, iv, 14, and Cor. II, ii, 117. We still have moon

No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallow'd and so gracious is the time.

Hor. So have I heard, and do in part believe it.
But look, the Morn, in russet mantle clad,
Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastern hill.
Break we our watch up; and by my advice,
Let us impart what we have seen to-night

163. fairy] Faiery FF.

3

takes] talkes F ̧F2 talks F ̧F ̧.
nor] no F, Rowe +, Cap.

164. hallow'd] hollow'd F2

the] that Qa, Jen. Coll. El.

White, Moltke.

166, 167. Om. Coll. (MS).

165

167. yon] yon' Cap. yond' Coll. Ei. White.

eastern] eastward Qq, Warb.

Cap. Jen. El. Glo.+.

168. advice] aduife Qq.

struck.' [Thus Florio: Assiderare: to blast or strike with a planet, to be taken.— ED.]

163. takes] DYCE: To bewitch, to affect with malignant influence, to strike with disease. See Merry Wives, IV, iv, 32. CLARENDON: The adjective 'taking,' for infectious, occurs in Lear, II, iv, 160. And 'taking,' as a substantive in the sense

of infection, is found in Lear, III, iv, 58.

164. gracious] CALDECOTT: Partaking of the nature of the epithet with which it is associated, with blessedness;' participating in a heavenly quality, of grace in its scriptural sense; not in the sense in which it is used in King John, III, iv, 81. Frequently, in Sh., it does not mean, as has been interpreted, graceful, elegant, winning, pleasing simply, but touched with something holy, instinct with goodness.

165. in part believe] CLARKE: This assent of Horatio's to so imaginative a creed is peculiarly appropriate, coming, as it does, immediately upon a supernatural appearance, when his mind is softened to impressions, and is prepared to admit the possi bility of spiritual wonders. MOBERLY: A happy expression of the half-sceptical, half-complying spirit of Shakespeare's time, when witchcraft was believed, antipodes doubted.

166, 167. HUNTER (ii, 216): It must have been in emulation of these lines that Milton wrote, 'Now morn her rosy steps in th' eastern clime Advancing, sowed the earth with orient pearls.'-Par. Lost, v, 1. We have the same characteristics of morning in both. Russet,' rosy; 'eastern hill,' eastern clime; the dew,' orient pearls. STRACHEY (p. 27): We are brought out of the cold night into the warm sunshine, and we realize, in this lyrical movement, that harmony of our feelings which it was one of the objects of the Chorus to produce in the Greek Tragedy.

167. eastern] WARBURTON pronounced in favor of eastward. STEEVENS denied its superiority, and cited, -Ulysses still An eye directed to the eastern hillChapman's Odyssey, lib. xiii. STAUNTON prefers eastern' as more in accordance with the poetical phraseology of the period. Thus Spenser charmingly ushers in the morn, — cheareful Chaunticlere with his note shrill Had warned once, that Phoebus' fiery Car In haste was climbing up the Eastern Hill, Full envious that Night so long his room did fill.’

168. Break we] See I, i, 33.

Unto young Hamlet; for, upon my life,

This spirit, dumb to us, will speak to him.
Do you consent we shall acquaint him with it,
As needful in our loves, fitting our duty?

Mar. Let's do't, I pray; and I this morning know
Where we shall find him most conveniently.

170

[Exeunt. 175

SCENE II. A room of state in the Castle.

Flourish. Enter the KING, QUEEN, HAMLET, POLONIUS, LAERTES, VOLTIMAND, CORNELIUS, Lords, and Attendants.

King. Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother's death

170. Hamlet] Coleridge (p. 151): Note the unobtrusive and yet fully adequate mode of introducing the main character, 'young Hamlet,' upon whom is transferred all the interest excited for the acts and concerns of the king his father.

171. dumb] TSCHISCHWITZ quotes from SIMROCK (p. 488) that only those persons have any influence over spirits, who are themselves guileless, such as Priests, young scholars, &c. This essential qualification Horatio attributes to Hamlet.

173. loves] CLARENDON (Note on Rich. II: IV, i, 315): The plural is frequently used by Sh. and writers of the 16th and 17th centuries when designating an attribute common to many, in cases where it would now be considered a solecism. Thus sights,' Lear, IV, vi, 35; Rich. III: IV, i, 25; Timon, I, i, 255; Pericles, I, i, 74; so 'loves,' 'consents,' Two Gent. I, iii, 48, 49; 'wills' in Hen. VIII: III, i, 68; see also Ham. I, ii, 14, 250, 253; II, ii, 14; IV, vii, 30; Mach. III, i, 121.

173. duty] HUDSON: These last three speeches are admirably conceived. The speakers are in a highly kindled state; when the Ghost vanishes, their terror presently subsides into an inspiration of the finest quality, and their intense excitement, as it passes off, blazes up in a subdued and pious rapture of poetry.

Scene II.] COLERIDGE: The audience are now relieved by a change of scene to the royal court, in order that Ham. may not have to take up the leavings of exhaustion. In the king's speech, observe the set and pedantically antithetic form of the sentences when touching that which galled the heels of conscience, the strain of undignified rhetoric,-and yet in what follows concerning the public weal, a certain appropriate majesty. Indeed was he not a royal brother?

The memory be green, and that it us befitted

To bear our hearts in grief and our whole kingdom
To be contracted in one brow of woe,

Yet so far hath discretion fought with nature
That we with wisest sorrow think on him,
Together with remembrance of ourselves.
Therefore our sometime sister, now our queen,
The imperial jointress of this warlike state,
Have we, as 'twere with a defeated joy,—
With one auspicious and one dropping eye,
With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage,

2. us befitted] fitted Pope, Theob. Han. Warb.

3. bear] bathe Coll. (MS) El.

6. wisest] wiser Seymour.

8. sometime] fometimes Ff, Rowe.

9. of] to Qq, Glo.

11, 12, 13. Om. Coll. (MS).

II.

2

5

ΙΟ

one...one] an...a Qq, Glo. +, Hal. 12. dirge] dirdge Q2Q3.

2. that] TSCHISCHWITZ: The simpler form that' was used instead of the fuller form though that,' just as in French after quoique subordinate clauses are introduced by que. [See also ABBOTT, 284.]

2. befitted] STEEVENS: Perhaps Sh. elliptically wrote 'and us befitted,' i. e. ' and that it befitted us.' SEYMOUR (ii, 141): Read, 'The memory's green; and it befitted us.' The greenness of the memory is not hypothetic, but real, and the proper mood of the verb could not be mistaken, if, for though,' we substitute as.

justice.'

See Oth. I, iii, 346.

4. woe] CLARENDON: Mourning brow. See Love's Lab. Lost, V, ii, 754; the mourning brow of progeny.' For similar phrases, see IV, vi, 19; Lear, I, iv, 306, 'brow of youth'= youthful brow; Mer. of Ven. II, viii, 42, 'mind of love' = loving mind; and 1 Hen. IV: IV, iii, 83, brow of 10. defeated] CLARENDON: Disfigured, marred. II. auspicious... dropping] STEEVENS: See the same thought in Wint. Tale, V, ii, 8o. It is only the ancient proverbial phrase, 'To cry with one eye and laugh with the other.' MALONE says that dropping may mean depressed or cast down; there could be little hesitation in rejecting this interpretation had not WHITE so far adopted it as to substitute in the text drooping in place of dropping,' 'considering,' he says, 'the sense required, the distinction made between "drop" and "droop" in Shakespeare's day as in our own, and remembering how common an error is the reduplication of the wrong letter in both type-setting and chirography.' FRANCKE refers to the Homeric phrase, dakpvóev yeλáoaoa, Iliad, vi, 484, and to Odyssey, xix, 471, and Sophocles, Electra, 1920.

12. mirth...dirge] MOBERLY: The studied antitheses repeated over and over in this speech give it a very artificial appearance. The king's politic and parliamentary reasons for marrying the queen remind us of the similar motives which an eminent writer supposes to have influenced Henry VIII in his prompt remarriages.

13. dole] SANDYS (Sh. Illust. by the Dialect of Cornwall, Sh. Soc. Papers, vol. iii, p. 25): A person in grief is said in Cornwall to be bedoled.

In equal scale weighing delight and dole,—
Taken to wife; nor have we herein barr'd
Your better wisdoms, which have freely gone
With this affair along. For all, our thanks.
Now follows, that you know, young Fortinbras,
Holding a weak supposal of our worth,

Or thinking by our late dear brother's death
Our state to be disjoint and out of frame,
Colleagued with this dream of his advantage,
He hath not fail'd to pester us with message,
Importing the surrender of those lands.
Lost by his father, with all bonds of law,

16. along. For...thanks] Johns. along (for...thanks.) Pope, Theob. Warb. Cap. Jen. Coll. along (for all our thankes) Qq. along, for all our thankes. Ff, Rowe.

17. follows,...know,] Theob. fol lowes...knowe Qq. followes,...know Ff, Rowe, Pope.

21. Colleagued] Coleagued QQ,

14. to wife ;] See Macb. IV, iii, 10.

13

15

20

Colegued Q Collegued Q. Co-leagued
Cap.

21. this] the Ff, Knt, Coll. Dyce, Sta. White, Ktly, Del.

his] this Coll. (MS).

24. with] by Pope+.

bonds] bands Qq, Pope+, Cap. Jen. Steev. Cald. Var. Coll. El. White, Huds.

14. barr'd] CALDECOTT: Excluded, acted without the concurrence of. CLARENDON cites Cymb. I, i, 82, where it means thwarted.'

17. that you know,] WALKER (Crit. iii, 261): Sh. can never have written anything so harsh and obscure as this. Point, Now follows that you know: young Fortinbras,' &c. If, indeed, this correction has not been made already, as I think it has. [THEOBALD made it (Sh. Rest. p. 5), using a comma instead of a colon.] 20. disjoint] For other instances of the omission, in participles, of ed after d or t, see WALKER ( Crit. ii, 324) and ABBOTT, & 342, also deject,' III, i, 155; bloat,' III, iv, 182; 'hoist,' III, iv, 207; distract,' IV, v, 2; also Mach. III, vi, 38. 21. Colleagued] From the definition of the word 'Collogue, blanditiis tentare, given by Skinner, THEOBALD suggested collogue, that is, he being flattered, imposed on, cajol'd by the dream of his Advantage;' he, however, did not adopt it in his text, but HANMER did. See ABBOTT, p. 16, ‘Colleagued' for Co-leagued.

21. dream] WARBURTON: He goes to war so unprepared that he has no allies but a dream, with which he is confederated. CLARENDON: With this imaginary superiority for his only ally.

22. pester] See Mach. V, ii, 23. WALKER (Crit. ii. 351): To pester a place or person, for to crowd, to throng them; to be in a person's way.

22. message] See Macb. II, iv, 14; V, i, 22. WALKER (Vers. 253): Surely 'message' in the singular is not grammar. [Walker would print message'; the apostrophe indicating the plural.] See also ABBOTT, 8 471.

23. Importing] ABBOTT, p. 16: Used for importuning.