Laer.

What out of this, my lord?

King. Laertes, was your father dear to you? Or are you like the painting of a sorrow,

A face without a heart?

Laer.

Why ask you this?

King. Not that I think, you did not love your

father;

But that I know, love is begun by time 16;
And that I

see, in

passages of proof,

Time qualifies the spark and fire of it.
There lives within the very flame of love
A kind of wick, or snuff, that will abate it:
And nothing is at a like goodness still;
For goodness, growing to a plurisy 17,

Dies in his own too-much: That we would do,
We should do when we would; for this would changes,
And hath abatements and delays as many,
As there are tongues, are hands, are accidents;
And then this should is like a spendthrift's sigh 18,

16 But that I know love is begun by time,' &c. 'As love is begun by time, and has its gradual increase, so time qualifies and abates it.' Passages of proof are transactions of daily experience. The next ten lines are not in the folio.

17 Plurisy is superabundance; our ancestors used the word in this sense, as if it came from plus, pluris, and not from λɛvρà. The disease was formerly thought to proceed from too much blood flowing to the part affected :

in a word,

Thy plurisy of goodness is thy ill.'

Massinger's Unnatural Combat.

18 Johnson says it is a prevalent notion that sighs impair the strength, and wear out the animal powers.' Steevens makes a ludicrous mistake in the quotation from the 'Governal of Helth,' wherein he takes sythes (times) to signify sighs. Shakspeare in King Henry VI. has blood-consuming sighs.' And in Fenton's Tragical Discourses :- Your scorching sighes that have already drained your body of his wholesome humoures.' The reading of the old copies, which I have restored, had been altered in the modern editions to a spendthrift sigh,' without reason. Mr. Blakeway justly observes, that Sorrow for neglected opportu

That hurts by easing. But, to the quick o'the ulcer: Hamlet comes back; What would you undertake, To show yourself in deed your father's son'

More than in words?

*Laer.

To cut his throat i'the church. King. No place, indeed, should murder sanctuarize;

Revenge should have no bounds. But, good Laertes, Will you do this, keep close within your chamber: Hamlet, return'd, shall know you are come home: We'll put on those shall praise your excellence, And set a double varnish on the fame

The Frenchman gave you; bring you, in fine, together,

And wager o'er your heads: he, being remiss 19,
Most generous and free from all contriving,
Will not peruse the foils; so that, with ease,
Or with a little shuffling, you may choose
A sword unbated 20, and, in a pass of practice 21,
Requite him for your father.

Laer.-
I will do't:
And, for the purpose, I'll anoint

my sword.
I bought an unction of a mountebank,
So mortal, that but dip a knife in it,

nities and time abused seems most aptly compared to the sigh of a spendthrift-good resolutions not carried into effect are deeply injurious to the moral character. Like sighs, they hurt by easing, they unburden the mind and satisfy the conscience, without producing any effect upon the conduct.'

19 He being remiss.' He being not vigilant; or incautious. 20 i. e. unblunted, to bate, or rather to rebate, was to make dull. Aciem ferre hebetare.' Thus in Love's Labour's Lost we have

That honour which shall bate his scythe's keen edge.' And in Measure for Measure :

rebate and blunt his natural edge.'

21 Pass of practice is an insidious thrust. Shakspeare, in common with many of his cotemporaries, always uses practice for art, deceit, treachery.

Where it draws blood no cataplasm so rare, Collected from all simples that have virtue Under the moon, can save the thing from death, That is but scratch'd withal: I'll touch my point With this contagion; that, if I gall him slightly, It may be death 22.

King. Let's further think of this; Weigh, what convenience, both of time and means, May fit us to our shape: If this should fail, And that our drift look through our bad performance, 'Twere better not assay'd: therefore this project Should have a back, or second, that might hold, If this should blast in proof 23. Soft;-let me see:— We'll make a solemn wager on your cunnings 24, I ha't:

When in your motion you are hot and dry,

(As make your bouts more violent to that end,)
And that he calls for drink, I'll have prepar'd 25 him
A chalice for the nonce; whereon but sipping,
If he by chance escape your venom'd stuck 26,
Our purpose may hold there. But stay, what noise?7?

22 Ritson has exclaimed with just indignation and abhorrence against the villanous assassinlike treachery of Laertes in this horrid plot: he observes There is more occasion that he should be pointed out for an object of abhorrence, as he is a character we are led to respect and admire in some preceding scenes.' In the old quarto of 1603 this contrivance originates with the king:

When you are hot, in midst of all your play,

Among the foils shall a keen rapier lie,

Steeped in a mixture of deadly poison,

That if it draws but the least dram of blood

In any part of him he cannot live.'

23 If this should blast in proof, as fire arms sometimes burst in proving their strength.

24 Cunning is skill.

25 The quarto reads prefar'd; the folio prepar'd. The modern editors read preferr'd, but I think without good reason.

26 A stuck is a thrust. Stoccata, Ital. Sometimes called a staccado in English.

27 But stay, what noise?' these words are not in the folio.

Enter Queen.

How now, sweet queen?

Queen. One woe doth tread upon another's heel, So fast they follow:-Your sister's drown'd, Laertes. Laer. Drown'd! O, where?

Queen. There is a willow grows ascaunt the brook, That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream: Therewith fantastick garlands did she make

Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples29,
That liberal 30 shepherds give a grosser name,
But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them:
There on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke;
When down her weedy trophies, and herself,
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide;
And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up:
Which time, she chanted snatches of old tunes 31
As one incapable 32 of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and indu'd 38
Unto that element: but long it could not be,
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,

;

28 Ascaunt, thus the quarto: the folio reads aslant. Ascaunce is the same as askew, sideways, overthwart; à travers, Fr.

29 The ancient botanical name of the long purples was testiculis morionis, or orchis priapiscus. The grosser name to which the queen alludes is sufficiently known in many parts of England. It had kindred appellations in other languages. In Sussex it is said to be called dead men's hands. Its various names may be seen in Lyte's Herbal, 1578, or in Cotgrave's Dictionary.

30 i. e. licentious. See Much Ado about Nothing, Act iv. Sc. 1, and Othello, Act ii. Sc. 1.

31 The quarto reads snatches of old lauds,' i. e. hymns. Hymns of praise were so called from the psalm Laudate Domi

num.

32 i. e. unsusceptible of it. See note 21, p. 276.

33 Indu'd was anciently used in the sense of endowed with qualities of any kind, as in the phrase a child indued with the grace and dexteritie that his father had.' Shakspeare may, however, have used it for habited, accustomed.

Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay

To muddy death.

Laer.

Alas then, she is drown'd?

Queen. Drown'd, drown'd.

Laer. Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia, And therefore I forbid my tears: But yet 34

It is our trick; nature her custom holds,

Let shame what it will: when these are gone,
say
The woman will be out 35.-Adieu, my lord!
I have a speech of fire, that fain would blaze,
But that this folly drowns 36 it.

[Exit.

King. Let's follow, Gertrude: How much I had to do to calm his rage! Now fear I, this will give it start again; Therefore, let's follow.

[Exeunt.

ACT V.

SCENE I. A Church Yard.

Enter Two Clowns, with Spades, &c.

1 Clo. Is she to be buried in christian burial, that wilfully seeks her own salvation?

2 Clo. I tell thee, she is; therefore make her grave straight1: the crowner hath set on her, and finds it christian burial.

34 Thus the quarto 1603 :

Therefore I will not drown thee in my tears,

Revenge it is must yield this heart relief,

For woe begets woe, and grief hangs on grief.'

35 Thus in King Henry V. Act iv. Sc. 6:

'But all my

mother came into my eyes,

And gave me up to tears.'

36 The folio reads-doubts it.

How Johnson could think that any particular mode of making Ophelia's grave was meant I cannot imagine. Nothing