As bufh as death: anon, the dreadful thunder Out, out, thou ftrumpet, Fortune! All you gods, Break all the Spokes and fellies from her wheel, And bowl the round nave down the bill of heaven, As low as to the fiends! POL. This is too long. HAM. It fhall to the barber's, with your beard.Pr'ythee, say on :-He's for a jig, or a tale of bawdry, or he fleeps:-fay on: come to Hecuba. as we often fee, against some storm,- "Even as the wind is hufh'd before it raineth." This line leads me to fufpect that Shakspeare wrote the bold wind fpeechlefs. Many fimilar miftakes have happened in these plays, where the word ends with the fame letter with which the next begins. MALONE. 5 And never did the Cyclops' hammers fall On Mars's armour, &c.] This thought appears to have been adopted from the 3d Book of Sidney's Arcadia: " Vulcan, when he wrought at his wive's request Æneas an armour, made not his hammer beget a greater found than the fwords of thofe noble knights did" &c. STEEVENS. 6_ He's for a jig, or a tale of bawdry,] See note on your only jig-maker," A&t III. fc. ii. STEEVENS. A jig, in our poet's time, fignified a ludicrous metrical compofition, as well as a dance. Here it is used in the former fenfe. So, in Florio's Italian Dict. 1598: " Frottola, a countrie jigg, or round, or countrie fong, or wanton verfes. See The Hiftorical Account of the English Stage, &c. Vol. II. MALONE. 1. PLAY. But who, ab woe! had feen the mobled HAM. The mobled queen? POL. That's good? mobled queen is good. 1. PLAY. Run barefoot up and down, threat'ning the flames 1 But who, ah woe!] Thus the quarto, except that it has-a woe. A is printed inftead of ab in various places in the old copies. Woe was formerly used adjectively for woeful. So, in Antony and Cleopatra: "Woe, woe are we, fir, you may not live to wear The folio reads-But who, O who, &c. MALONE. 8 the mobled queen-] Mobled or mabled fignifies veiled. So, Sandys fpeaking of the Turkish women, fays, their heads and faces are mabled in fine linen, that no more is to be feen of them than Travels. WARBURTON. their eyes. Mobled fignifies huddled, grofsly covered. JOHNSON. I meet with this word in Shirley's Gentleman of Venice: "Mobbled nine days in my confidering cap, In the Weft this word is ftill used in the fame fense; and that is the meaning of mobble in Dr. Farmer's quotation. HOLT WHITE. The mabled queen, (or mbled queen, as it is fpelt in the quarto,) means, the queen attired in a large, coarfe, and careless head-drefs. a clout upon that head, A few lines lower we are told the had " where late the diadem stood.” To mab, (which in the North is pronounced mob, and hence the fpelling of the old copy in the prefent inftance,) fays Ray in his Dict. of North Country words, is "to drefs carelessly. Mabs are flatterns." The ordinary morning head-drefs of ladies continued to be diftinguished by the name of a mab, to almoft the end of the reign of George the Second. The folio reads-the inobled queen. MALONE. In the counties of Effex and Middlefex, this morning cap has always been called-a mob, and not a mab. My fpelling of the word therefore agrees with its moft familiar pronunciation. STEEVENS. With biffon rheum; a clout upon that head, ven, And paffion in the gods. POL. Look, whether he has not turn'd 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 foon.-Good my lord, will you fee the players well beftow'd? Do you hear, let them be well ufed; 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 defert. HAM. Odd's bodikin, man, much better: Use every man after his desert, and who fhall 'scape whipping? Ufe them after your own honour and 9 With biffon rheum;] Bissm or beefen, i. e. blind. A word still in ufe in fome parts of the North of England. So, in Coriolanus: "What harm can your biffon confpectuities glean out of this character?" STEEVENS. 9 — made milch-] Drayton in the 13th Song of his Poalbion gives this epithet to dew: " Exhaling the milch dew," &c. STEEVENS. dignity: The lefs they deferve, the more merit is in your bounty. Take them in. POL. Come, firs. HAM. Follow him, friends: we'll hear a play tomorrow.-Doft 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, ftudy a fpeech of fome dozen or fixteen lines, which I would fet down, and infert in't? could you not? 1. PLAY. Ay, my lord. HAM. Very well.-Follow that lord; and look you mock him not. [Exeunt POLONIUS and Players.] My good friends, [To Ros. and GUIL.] I'll leave you till night: you are welcome to Ellinore. Ros. Good my lord! [Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN. HAM. Ay, fo, God be wi' you :—Now I am alone. O, what a rogue and peafant flave am I! Is it not monstrous, that this player here,' Is it not monftrous, that this player here,] It fhould feem from the complicated nature of fuch parts as Hamlet, Lear, &c. that the time of Shakspeare had produced fome excellent performers. He would scarce have taken the pains to form characters which he had no profpect of feeing reprefented with force and propriety on the stage. His plays indeed, by their own power, must have given a different turn to acting, and almoft new-created the performers of his age. Mysteries, Moralities, and Enterludes, afforded no materials for art to work on, no difcriminations of character, or varieties of appropriated language. From tragedies like Cambyfes, Tamburlaine, and Jeronymo, nature was wholly banished; and the comedies of Gammer Gurton, Common Condycyons, and The Old Wives Tale, might have had juftice done to them by the lowest order of human beings. But in a fiction, in a dream of passion, San&ius his animal, mentifque capacius alte was wanting, when the dramas of Shakspeare made their first appearance; and to these we were certainly indebted for the excellence of actors who could never have improved fo long as their fenfibilities were unawakened, their memories burthened only by pedantick or puritanical declamation, and their manners vulgarized by pleafantry of as low an origin. STEEVENS. 3 — all bis vifage wann'd;] [The folio-warm'd.] This might do, did not the old quarto lead us to a more exact and pertinent reading, which is vifage wan'd; i. e. turned pale or wan. For fo the vifage appears when the mind is thus affectioned, and not warm'd or flufh'd. WARBURTON. 4 That, from her working, all his vifage wann'd; Tears in his eyes, distraction in's afpéct,] Wan'd (wann'd it fhould have been fpelt,) is the reading of the quarto, which Dr. Warburton, I think rightly, restored. The folio reads warm'd, for which Mr. Steevens contends in the following note: "The working of the foul, and the effort to fhed tears, will give a colour to the actor's face, instead of taking it away. The vifage is always warm'd and flufh'd by any unufual exertion in a paffionate speech; but no performer was ever yet found, I believe, whofe feelings were of fuch exquifite fenfibility as to produce palenefs in any fituation in which the drama could place him. But if players were indeed poffeffed of that power, there is no fuch circumftance in the fpeech uttered before Hamlet, as could introduce the wannefs for which Dr. Warburton contends." Whether an actor can produce palenefs, it is, I think, unneceffary to enquire. That Shakspeare thought he could, and confidered the fpeech in queftion as likely to produce wannefs, is proved decifively by the words which he has put into the mouth of Polonius in this fcene; which add fuch fupport to the original reading, that I have without hesitation reftored it. Immediately after the Player has finished his fpeech, Polonius exclaims, "Look, whether he has not turn'd his colour, and has tears in bis eyes." Here we find the effort to fhed tears, taking away, not gring a colour. If it be objected, that by turn'd his colour, Shakspeare meant that the player grew red, a paffage in King |