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HAMLET.

P. 7.-as, by the same co-mart,] Co-mart is, I suppose, a joint bargain, a word perhaps of our poet's coinage. A mart signifying a great fair or market, he would not have scrupled to have written-to mart, in the sense of to make a bargain. In the preceding speech we find mart used for bargain or purchase. MAL.

P. 37. And all we mourn for.] The ridicule of this character is here admirably sustained. He would not only be thought to have discovered this intrigue by his own sagacity, but to have remarked all the stages of Hamlet's disorder, from his sadness to his raving, as regularly as his physician could have done; when all the while the madness was only feigned. The humour of this is exquisite from a man who tells us, with a confidence peculiar to small politicians, that he could find

“Where truth was hid, though it were hid indeed
"Within the centre."

WARB.

P. 42. -an aiery of children, &c.] Relating to play houses then contending, the Bankside, the Fortune, &c. played by the children of his majesty's chapel.

POPE.

It relates to the young singing men of the chapel royal, or St. Paul's, of the former of whom perhaps the earliest mention occurs in an anonymous puritanical pamphlet, 1569, entitled The Children of the Chapel stript and whipt: "Plaies will neuer be supprest, while her maiesties unfledged minions flaunt it in silkes and sattens. They had as well be at their popish seruice in the deuil's garments," &c.-Again, ibid: "Euen in her maiesties chapel do these pretty upstart youthes profane the Lordes day by the lasciuious writhing of their tender limbes, and gorgeous decking of their apparell, in feigning bawdie fables gathered from the idolatrous heathen poets," &c.

STE.

P. 50. To be, or not to be,] Of this celebrated soliloquy, which bursting from a man distracted with contrariety of desires and overwhelmed with the magnitude of his own purposes, is connected rather in the speaker's mind, than on his tongue, I shall endeavour to discover the train, and to show how one sentiment produces another.

Hamlet, knowing himself injured in the most enormous and atrocious degree, and seeing no means of redress, but such as must expose him to the extremity of hazard, meditates on his situation in this manner: Before I can form any rational scheme of action under this pressure of distress, it

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is necessary to decide, whether, after our present state, we are to be, or not to be. That is the question, which, as it shall be answered, will determine, whether 'tis nobler, and more suitable to the dignity of reason, to suffer the outrages of fortune patiently, or to take arms against them, and by opposing end them, though perhaps with the loss of life. If to die, were to sleep, no more, and by a sleep to end the miseries of our nature, such a sleep were devoutly to be wished; but if to sleep in death, be to dream, to retain our powers of sensibility, we must pause, to consider, in that sleep of death what dreams may come. This consideration makes calamity so long endured; for who would bear the vexations of life, which might be ended by a bare bodkin, but that he is afraid of something in unknown futurity This fear it is that gives efficacy to conscience, which, by turning the mind upon this regard, chills the ardour of resolution, checks the vigour of enterprize, and makes the current of desire stagnate in inactivity.

We may suppose that he would have applied these general observations to his own case, but that he discovered Ophelia.

JOH.

Dr. Johnson's explication of the first five lines of this pas sage is surely wrong. Hamlet is not deliberating whether after our present state we are to exist or not, but whether he should continue to live, or put an end to his life as is pointed out by the second and the three following lines, which are manifestly a paraphrase on the first: "whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer, &c. or to take arms." The question concerning our existence in a future state is not considered till the tenth line :-" To sleep! perchance, to dream;" &c. MAL.

P. 57. -The dumb show follows,] and appears to contain every circumstance of the murder of Hamlet's father. Now there is no apparent reason why the Usurper should not be as much affected by this mute representation of his crimes,as he is afterwards when the same action is accompanied by words.

I once conceived this might have been a kind of direction to the players, which was from mistake inserted in the editions; but the subsequent conversation between Hamlet and Ophelia, entirely destroys such a notion. PYE.

I cannot reconcile myself to the exhibition in dumb show, preceding the interlude, which is injudiciously introduced by the author, and should always be omitted on the stage; as we cannot well conceive why the mute representation of his crime should not affect as much the conscience of the ing, as the scene that follows it. M. MASON.

P. 81.

-the owl was a baker's daughter.] This is a common story amongst the vulgar in Gloucestershire, and is thus related : "Our Saviour went into a baker's shop where they were baking, and asked for some bread to eat. The mistress of the shop immediately put a piece of dough into the oven to bake for him; but was reprimanded by her daughter, who insisting that the piece of dough was too large, reduced it to a very small size. The dough, however, immediately afterwards began to swell, and presently became of a most enormous size. Whereupon the baker's daughter cried out, Heugh, heugh, heugh,' which owl-like noise probably induced our Saviour for her wickedness to transform her into that bird." This story is often related to children, in order to deter them from such illiberal behaviour to poor people. DOUCE.

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P. 82. Like to a murdering piece,] The small cannon', which are, or were used in the forecastle, half-deck, or steerage of a ship of war, were within this century, called murdering-pieces.

MAL.

Perhaps what is now, from the manner of it, called a swivel. It is mentioned in Sir T. Roes Voiage to the E. Indies, at the end of Della Valle's Travels, 1665: "-the East India company had a very little pinnace...mann'd she was with ten men, and had only one small murdering-piece within her." Probably, it was never charged with a single ball, but always with shot, pieces of old iron, &c. RITSON.

P. 84. There's rosemary, that's for remembrance ;—and there is pansies, that's for thoughts.] Pansies is for thoughts; because of its name, Pensees; but why rosemary indicates remembrance, except that it is an ever-green, and carried at funerals, I have not discovered.

JOH.

Rosemary was anciently supposed to strengthen the memory, and was not only carried at funerals, but worn at weddings. STE.

P. 85. There's fennel for you, and columbines :] Greene, in his Quip for an Upstart Courtier, 1620, calls fennel, women's weeds: "fit generally for that sex, sith while they are maidens, they wish wantonly."

STE.

Columbine was an emblem of cuckoldom on account of the horns of its nectaria, which are remarkable in this plant. It was also emblematical of forsaken lovers. Ophelia gives her fennel and columbines to the king.

WHITE.

MAL.

P. 85. -there's rue for you ;] Ophelia means, I think, that the Queen may with peculiar propriety on Sundays,

when she solicits pardon for that crime which she has so much occasion to rue and repent of, call her rue, herb of grace.

Ophelia, after having given the Queen rue to remind her of the sorrow and contrition she ought to feel for her incestuous marriage, tells her, she may wear it with a difference, to distinguish it from that worn by Ophelia herself; because her tears flowed from the loss of a father, those of the Queen ought to flow for her guilt. MAL.

P. 85. There's a daisy :] Greene, in his Quip for an Upstart Courtier, has explained the significance of this flower : "Next them grew the dissembling daisie, to warne such light-of-love wenches not to trust every faire promise that such amorous bachelors make them." HENLEY. The violet is thus characterized in an old collection of Sonnets :

"Violet is for faithfulnesse,

"Which in me shall abide ;

"Hoping likewise that from your heart

"You will not let it slide."

MAL.

P. 94. -to play at loggats with them ?] This is a game played in several parts of England even at this time. A stake is fixed into the ground; those who play, throw loggats at it, and he that is nearest the stake, wins: I have seen it played in different counties at their sheep-shearing feasts, where the winner was entitled to a black fleece, which he afterwards presented to the farmer's maid to spin for the purpose of making a petticoat, and on condition that she knelt down on the fleece to be kissed by all the rusticks present.

STE.

A loggat-ground, like a skittle ground, is strewed with ashes, but is more extensive. A bowl much larger than the jack of the game of bowls is thrown first. The pins, which I believe are called loggats, are much thinner, and lighter at one extremity than the other. The bowl being first thrown, the players take the pins up by the thinner and lighter end, and fling them towards the bowl, and in such a manner that the pins may once turn round in the air, and slide with the thinner extremity foremost towards the bowl. The pins are about one or two and twenty inches long.

BLOUNT.

P. 95. -the age is grown so picked,] So smart, so sharp, says Sir T. Hanmer, very properly; but there was, I think, about that time, a picked shoe, that is, a shoe with a long pointed toe, in fashion, to which the allusion seems likewise to be made. Every man now is smart; and every man now is a man of fashion.

Jou.

This fashion of wearing shoes with long pointed toes was carried to such excess in England, that it was restrained at last by proclamation so long ago as the fifth year of Edward IV. when it was ordered, "that the beaks or pykes of shoes and boots should not pass two inches, upon pain of cursing by the clergy, and forfeiting twenty shillings, to be paid, one noble to the king, another to the cordwainers of London, and the third to the chamber of London -and for other countries and townes the like order was taken.-Before this time, and since the year 1482, the pykes of shoes and boots were of such length, that they were fain to be tied up to the knee with chains of silver, and gilt, or at least silken laces." STE.

P. 100. -mutines in the bilboes.] The bilboes is a bar of iron with fetters annexed to it, by which mutinous or disorderly sailors were anciently linked together. The word is derived from Bilboa, a place in Spain where instruments of steel were fabricated in the utmost perfection. To understand Shakspeare's allusion completely, it should be known, that as these fetters connect the legs of the offenders very close 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 Every motion of one must disturb his partner in confinement. The bilboes are still shown in the Tower of London, among the other spoils of the Spanish Armada. STE

P. 111. And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!] Let us review for a moment the behaviour of Hamlet, on the strength of which Horatio founds this eulogy, and recommends him to the patronage of angels.

Hamlet, at the command of his father's ghost, undertakes with seeming alacrity to revenge the murder; and declares he will banish all other thoughts from his mind. He makes, however, but one effort to keep his word, and that is, when he mistakes Polonius for the king. On another occasion, he defers his purpose till he can find an opportunity of taking his uncle when he is least prepared for death,that he may insure damnation to his soul. Though he assassinated Polonius by accident, yet he deliberately procures the execution of his school-fellows, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who appear not, from any circumstances in this play, to have been acquainted with the treacherous purposes of the mandate they were employed to carry. To embitter their fate, and hazard their punishment beyond the grave, he denies them even the few moments necessary for a brief confession of their sins. Their end (as he declares in a subsequent conversation with Horatio) gives him no concern, for they obtru~ 13*

VOL. IX.

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