Ham. Very well. Follow that lord; and look you mock him not. [Exit Player.]-My good friends, [To Ros. and GUIL.] I'll leave you till night: you are welcome to Elsinore. Ros. Good my lord! Ham. Ay, so, God b' wi' ye. [Exeunt ROSE. and GUILD Now I am alone. A broken voice, and his whole function suiting What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, That he should weep for her? What would he do, 63 That I have? He would drown the stage with tears, Yet I, 64 A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak, A damn'd defeat was made.65 Am I a coward? 66 62 Conceit is used repeatedly by the Poet for conception or imagination. 63 The hint or prompt-word, a technical phrase among players. "A prompter," says Florio," one who keepes the booke for the plaiers, and teacheth them or schollers their kue." 64 This John was probably distinguished as a sleepy, apathetic fellow, a sort of dreaming or droning simpleton or flunky. The only other mention of him that has reached us is in Armin's Nest of Ninnies, 1608: "His name is John, indeed, says the cinnick, but neither John a-nods nor John a-dreams, yet either, as you take it." 65 Thus Chapman, in his Revenge for Honour: "That he might in the mean time make a sure defeat on our good aged father's life." 66 This was giving one the lie with the most galling additions and terms of insult, or belaboring him with extreme provocation, and then rubbing it in; so that the not resenting it would stamp him as the most hopeless of cowards. So, in King Richard II., when Norfolk would drive home his charge upon Bolingbroke with the utmost force, he exclaims: "As low as to thy heart, through the false passage of thy throat, thou liest." 67 'Zounds, I should take it; for it cannot be Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave; A scullion! Fie upon't! foh! - About, my brain!" I've heard Have by the very cunning of the scene For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak 80 67 Lack gall to make me feel the bitterness of oppression. The gentleness of doves and pigeons was supposed to proceed from their not having any gall in them. 68 All the kites of the element, or of the airy region, the sky. So, in one of the Player's speeches a little before: "Anon the dreadful thunder doth rend the region." See page 176, note 7. 69 Kindless is unnatural. See page 525, note 8.- - Observe how Hamlet checks himself in this strain of objurgation, and then, in mere shame of what he has just done, turns to ranting at himself for having ranted. 70 By all the best and all the worst passions of his nature. In the preceding line, the quarto of 1611 and some copies of the undated quarto read as in the text: the other quartos and the folio have "the son of the dear murdered," which some modern editors prefer. 71" About, my brain," is nothing more than "to work, my brain." The phrase to go about a thing, is still common. 72 To tent was to probe, to search a wound. To blench is to shrink or start. 73 That Hamlet was not alone in the suspicion here started, appears from Sir Thomas Browne's Religio Medici: "I believe that those apparitions and ghosts of departed persons are not the wandering souls of men, but the unquiet walks of devils, prompting and suggesting us into mischief, blood, and villainy; instilling and stealing into our hearts that the blessed spirits are More relative than this: 74 the play's the thing [Exit. ACT III. SCENE I. Elsinore. A Room in the Castle. Enter the KING, the QUEEN, POLONIUS, OPHELia, RosenCRANTZ, and GUILDENSTERN. King. And can you, by no drift of circumstance, Get from him why he puts on this confusion, Grating so harshly all his days of quiet With turbulent and dangerous lunacy? Ros. He does confess he feels himself distracted; When we would bring him on to some confession Queen. Did he receive you well? Ros. Most like a gentleman. Guil. But with much forcing of his disposition. Ros. Niggard of question; but, of our demands, Most free in his reply. Queen. Did you assay him to any pastime? Ros. Madam, it so fell out, that certain players To hear of it. They are about the Court; This night to play before him. Pol. 'Tis most true. And he beseech'd me to entreat your Majesties To hear and see the matter. King. With all my heart; and it doth much content me To hear him so inclin'd. Good gentlemen, give him a further edge, And drive his purpose on to these delights. [Exeunt ROSE. and GUILD. not at rest in their graves, but wander, solicitous of the affairs of the world." To abuse, in the Poet's language, is to deceive, or practise upon with illusions. 74 Grounds stai ding in closer and clearer relation with the matter alleged by the Ghost. 1 O'er-raught is overtook, raught being the old form of reached, King. Sweet Gertrude, leave us too: For we have closely sent for Hamlet hither, Her father and myself, lawful espials, Will so bestow ourselves that, seeing, unseen, That thus he suffers for. Queen. I shall obey you: And for your part, Ophelia, I do wish That your good beauties be the happy cause : Of Hamlet's wildness: so shall I hope your virtues To both your honours. Oph. Madam, I wish it may. [Exit QUEEN. Pol. Ophelia, walk you here. Gracious, so please you, We will bestow ourselves. — [To ОPH.] Read on this book; That show of such an exercise may colour Your loneliness. We're oft to blame in this, that with devotion's visage "Tis too much prov'd, - King. O, 'tis too true! [Aside.] How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience. The harlot's cheek, beautied with plastering art, Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it' Than is my deed to my most painted word: O heavy burden! Pol. I hear him coming: let's withdraw, my lord. [Exeunt KING and POLONIUE that is the question: Enter HAMLET. Ham. To be, or not to be, Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them. To die; -to sleep,- The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep; 2 Affront was sometimes used for meet, or, as it is explained a little after, encounter. So, in Cymbeline, iv. 3: "Your preparation can affront no less than what you hear of." 8 Not more ugly in comparison with the thing that helps it. To is in sev eral places so used by the Poet. To sleep! perchance to dream; -ay, there's the rub; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, 6 That patient merit of th' unworthy takes, Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought;" Oph. I pray you, now receive them. 4 "This mortal coil" is the tumult and bustle of this mortal life; or, as Wordsworth has it, "the fretful stir unprofitable, and the fever of the world." Perhaps coil here means, also, the body. 5 That is, the consideration that induces us to undergo the calamity of so ong a life. This use of respect is very frequent. See page 101, note 16. So the folio; the quartos, despis'd. The folio reading is the stronger; for if a love unprized be hard to bear, a love scorned must be much harder. 7 The allusion is to the term quietus est, used in settling accounts at exchequer audits. Thus, in Sir Thomas Overbury's character of a Franklin: "Lastly, to end him, he cares not when his end comes; he needs not feare his audit, for his quietus is in heaven."- Bodkin was the ancient term for a small dagger. 8 So the folio; the quartos, "who would fardels bear." I prefer "who'd these fardels bear," because it makes what follows more continuous with what precedes; and it seems more natural that Hamlet should still keep his mind on the crosses already mentioned. Fardel is an old word for burden. 9 The pale complexion of grief. See page 203, note 10. 10 Thus the folio; the quartos have well but once. The repetition seems very apt and forcible, as suggesting the opposite of what the word means. |