Ham. Why, As by lot, God wot, 8 and then, you know, It came to pass, As most like it was,-The first row of the pious chanson will show you more ;9 for look, my abridgment comes. Enter Four or Five Players. You are welcome, masters; welcome, all :—I am glad to see thee well-welcome, good friends.-O, old friend! Why, thy face is valanced since I saw thee last; Com'st thou to beard me in Denmark?-What! my young lady and mistress! By'r-lady, your ladyship is nearer to heaven, than when I saw you last, by the altitude of a chopine. Pray God, your voice, like a piece of uncurrent gold, be not cracked within the ring. 3-Masters, you are all welcome. We'll e'en to't like French falconers, fly at any thing we see: We'll have a speech straight. Come, give us a taste of your quality; come,a passionate speech. 1 Play. What speech, my lord? Ham. I heard thee speak me a speech once, but it was never acted; or, if it was, not above once: for the play, I remember, pleased not the million: 'twas caviare to the general; but it was (as I received it, and others, whose judgments, in such matters, cried in the top of mine,) an excellent play; well digested in the scenes, set down with as much modesty as cunning. I remember, one said,there were no sallets in the lines, to make the matter savoury; nor no matter in the phrase, that might indite the author of affection;5 but called it, an honest method, as wholesome as sweet, and by very much more handsome than fine. One speech in it I chiefly loved : 'twas Æneas' tale to Dido; and thereabout of it especially, where he speaks of Priam's slaughter: If it live in your memory, begin at this line; let me see, let me see ; [8] The old song from which these quotations are taken, is printed in the 2d and 3d edit. of Dr. Percy's Reliques of ancient English poetry. STEEV. [9] The pious chansons were a kind of Christmas carols, containing some scriptural history thrown into loose rhymes, and sung about the streets by the common people when they went at that season to solicit alms. STEEV. [1] Fringed with a beard. The valance is the fringes or drapery hanging round the tester of a bed. MALONE. [2] A chioppine is a high shoe or clog, worn by the Italians. STEEVENS. [3] That is, cracked too much for use. This is said to a young player who acted the parts of women. JOHNSON [4] The caviare is the spawn of the sterlett, a fish of the sturgeon kind, which seldom grows above thirty inches long. It is found in many of the rivers of Russia, but the Volga produces the best and in the greatest plenty. STEEVENS. [5] Convict the author of being a fantastical affected writer. STEEV. [6] Honest for chaste. WARBURTON. The rugged Pyrrhus, like the Hyrcanian beast,'tis not so; it begins with Pyrrhus. The rugged Pyrrhus,—he, whose sable arms, To their lord's murder: Roasted in wrath, and fire, With eyes like carbuncles, the hellish Pyrrhus Old grandsire Priam seeks ;-So proceed you. Pol. 'Fore God, my lord, well spoken; with good accent, and good discretion. 1 Play. Anon he finds him Striking too short at Greeks; his antique sword, Repugnant to command: Unequal match'd, Of reverend Priam, seem'd i'the air to stick : But, as we often see, against some storm, Out, out, thou strumpet, Fortune! All you gods, [7] Gules is a term in the barbarous jargon peculiar to heraldry, and sig. nifies red. STEEVENS. In general synod, take away her power; Break all the spokes and fellies from her wheel, And bowl the round nave down the hill of heaven, As low as to the fiends! Pol. This is too long. Ham. It shall to the barber's, with your beard.— Pr'ythee, say on :—He's for a jig, or a tale of bawdry, or he sleeps:-say on: come to Hecuba. 1 Play. But who, ah wo! had seen the mobled queen3— Ham. The mobled queen? Pol. That's good; mobled queen is good. 1 Play. Run barefoot up and down, threat'ning the With bisson rheum :9 a clout upon that head, A blanket, in the alarm of fear caught up; Pol. Look, whether he has not turned his colour, and has tears in's eyes.-Pr'ythee, no more. Ham. 'Tis well; I'll have thee speak out the rest of this soon.-Good my lord, will you see the players well bestowed? Do you hear, let them be well used; for they are the abstract, and brief chronicles, of the time. After your death you were better have a bad epitaph, than their ill report while you live. Pol. My lord, I will use them according to their desert. Ham. Odd's bodikin, man, much better: Use every man after his desert,and who shall 'scape whipping? Use them after your own honour and dignity: The less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty. Take them in. Pol. Come, sirs. [Exit PoL. with some of the Players. [8] Mobled or mabled signifies veiled. So Sandys, speaking of the Turkish women, says, "their heads and faces are mabled in fine linen, that no more is to be seen of them than their eyes." Travels. WARBURTON. The ordinary morning head dress of ladies has always been called a mob cap. STEEVENS. [9] Bisson, or beesen, i. e. blind. A word still in use in some parts of the north of England. STEEVENS. Ham. Follow him, friends: we'll hear a play to-morrow.--Dost thou hear me, old friend; can you play the murder of Gonzago? 1 Play. Ay, my lord. Ham. We'll have it to-morrow night. You could, for a need, study a speech of some dozen or sixteen lines, which I would set down, and insert in't? could you not? 1 Play. Ay, my lord. 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. Res. Good my lord! [Exe. Ros. and GUIL. Ham. Ay, so, God be wi' you ;-Now I am alone. O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I ! Is it not monstrous, that this player here, But in a fiction, in a dream of passion, Could force his soul so to his own conceit, That from her working, all his visage wann'd; Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspéct,' A broken voice, and his whole function suiting With forms to his conceit? And all for nothing! For Hecuba! What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, That he should weep for her? What would he do, That I have? He would drown the stage with tears, Yet I, A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak, [1] The word aspect (as Mr. Farmer rightly observes) was in Shakspeare's time accented on the second syllable. STEEVENS. [2] The ear of all mankind. So before,-Caviare to the general, that is, to the multitude. JOHNSON. Why, I should take it: for it cannot be, Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words, A scullion! Fye upon't! foh! About my brains !4 Humph! I have heard, That guilty creatures, sitting at a play, Have by the very cunning of the scene They have proclaim'd their malefactions; For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak ACT III. SCENE I-A Room in the Castle. Enter King, Queen, PoLONIUS, OPHELIA, ROSENCRANTZ, and GUILDENSTERN. King. And can you, by no drift of conference 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; [3] Kindless-unnatural. JOHNSON. [4] Wits, to your work. Brain, go about the present business JOHNSON. 151 Tent him-search his wounds. [6] Blanch, i. e. shrink. JOHNSON. |