the poet found the proverb thus corrupted in the mouths of the people: so that the critick's alteration only serves to shew us the original of the expression. WARBURTON.

Similarity of sound is the source of many literary corruptions. In Holborn we have still the sign of the Bull and Gate, which exhibits but an odd combination of images. It was originally (as I learn from the title page of an old play) the Bullogne Gate, i. e. one of the gates of Bullogne; designed perhaps as a compliment to Henry VIII. who took the place in 1544.

The Bullogne mouth, now the Bull and Mouth, had probably the same origin, i. e. the mouth of the harbour of Bullogne. STEEVENS.

540. Buz, buz!] Buz, buz! are interjections employed to interrupt Polonius. Ben Jonson uses them often for the same purpose, as well as Middleton in A Mad World my Masters, 1608. STEEVENS.

Buz used to be an interjection at Oxford, when any one began a story that was generally known before. BLACKSTONE.

Buzzer, in a subsequent scene in this play, is used for a busy talker:

And wants not buzzers to infect his ear "With pestilent speeches."

It is therefore probable, from the answer of Polonius, that buz was used, as Dr. Johnson supposes, for an idle rumour without any foundation.

In Ben Jonson's Staple of News, the collector of mercantile intelligence is called Emissary Buz.

MALONE.

542. Then came, &c.] This seems to be a line of a ballad. JOHNSON. 545. tragical, &c.] The words within the crotchets I have recovered from the folio, and see no reason why they were hitherto omitted. There are many plays of the age, if not of Shakspere, that answer to these descriptions. STEEVENS. 547. -Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus too light: -] The tragedies of Seneca were translated into English by Thomas Newton and others, and published in 1581. One comedy of Plautus, viz. the Menæchmi, was likewise translated and published in 1565.

I believe the frequency of plays performed at publick schools, suggested to Shakspere the names of Seneca and Plautus as dramatick authors. WARTON.

548. For the law of writ, and the liberty, these are the only men. n.] All the modern editions have, the law of wit, and the liberty; but both my old copies have, the law of writ, I believe rightly. Writ, for writing, composition. Wit was not, in our author's time, taken either for imagination, or acuteness, or both together, but for understanding, for the faculty by which we apprehend and judge. Those who wrote of the human mind, distinguished its primary powers into wit and will. Ascham distinguishes boys of active and of tardy faculties into quick wits and slow wits.

JOHNSON.

The old copies are certainly right. Writ is used for writing by authors contemporary with Shakspere.

Thus,

Thus, in The Apologie of Pierce Pennilesse, by Thomas Nash, 1593: "For the lowsie circumstance of his poverty before his death, and sending that miserable writte to his wife, it cannot be but thou liest, learned Gabriel." Again, in bishop Earle's Character of a mere dull Physician, 1638: "Then followes a writ to his drugger, in a strange tongue, which he understands, MALONE. though he cannot conster."

561. Why, as by lot, God wot,-&c.] The old song from which these quotations are taken, I communicated to Dr. Percy, who has honoured it with a place in the second and third editions of his Reliques of ancient English Poetry. In the books belonging to the Stationers-Company, there is a late entry of this Ballad among others.

Vol. III. Dec. 14.

"Jeffa Judge of Israel," p. 93.

1624.

STEEVENS.

563. -the pious chansons—] It is pons chansons in the first folio edition. The old ballads sung on bridges, and from thence called Pons chansons. Hamlet is here repeating ends of old songs.

It is pons chansons in the quarto too. I whence the rubrick has been brought, yet

POPE.

know not

it has not the appearance of an arbitrary addition. The titles of old ballads were never printed red; but perhaps rubrick may stand for marginal explanation. JOHNSON.

There are five large vols. of ballads in Mr. Pepys's collection in Magdalen-College library, Cambridge, some as ancient as Henry VII.'s reign, and not one red letter upon any one of the titles.

GREY.
The

The first row of the RUBRICK will, &c.] The words, of the rubrich were first inserted by Mr. Rowe, in his edition in 1709. The old quartos in 1604, 1605, and 1611, read pious chanson, which gives the sense wanted, and I have accordingly inserted it in the text.

The pious chansons were a kind of Christmas carols, containing some scriptural history thrown into loose rhimes, and sung about the streets by the common people when they went at that season to solicit alms. Hamlet is here repeating some scraps from a song of this kind, and when Polonius inquires what follows them, he refers him to the first row (i. e. division) of one of these, to obtain the information he wanted. STEEVENS.

564. my abridgment-] He calls the players afterwards, the brief chronicles of the times; but I think he now means only those who will shorten my talk.

JOHNSON. An abridgment is used for a dramatick piece in the Midsummer Night's Dream, aết v. sc. 1.

"Say what abridgment have you for this evening "

But it does not commodiously apply to this passage.

STEEVENS.

Does not abridgment, in Midsummer Night's Dream, signify amusement to beguile the tediousness of the evening? or, in one word, pastime ?— HENLEY.

567. valanc'd-] Valanc'd means over hung with a canopy or tester like a bed. The folios read valiant which seems right. The comedian was pro

REMARKS.

bably "bearded like a pard."

571. by the altitude of a chioppine.] A chioppine is a high shoe worn by the Italians, as in Tho. Heywood's Challenge of Beauty, act v.

573. -be not crack'd crack'd too much for use.

STEEVENS.

within the ring.] That is This is said to a young

player who acted the parts of women.

JOHNSON.

I find the same phrase in The Captain, by Beaumont

and Fletcher :

"Come to be married to my lady's woman,

"After she's crack'd in the ring.'

574.

STEEVENS.

·French falconers] The amusement of falconry was much cultivated in France. In All's Well that Ends Well, Shakspere has introduced an astringer or falconer at the French court. Mr. Tollet, who has mentioned the same circumstance, likewise adds, that it is said in Sir Thomas Browne's Tracts, p. 116, that "the French seem to have been the first and noblest falconers in the western part of Europe;" and, that "the French king sent over his falconers to shew that sport to king James the First."

582.

See Weldon's Court of King James.
STEEVENS.

-caviare to the general:— Giles Fletcher in his Russe Commonwealth, 1591, p. 11, says, in Russia they have divers kinds of fish" very good and delicate as the Bellouga or Bellougina of four or five elnes long, the Ositrina or Sturgeon, but not so thick nor long. These four kind of fish breed in the Wolgha and are catched in great plenty, and served thence into the whole realme for a good food.

Of