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HAM. Bid the players make haste.—

[Exit POLONIUS.

Will you two help to hasten them?

BOTH. Ay, my lord.

[Exeunt ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN. HAM. What, ho; Horatio!

Enter HORATIO.

HOR. Here, fweet lord, at your service. HAM. Horatio, thou art e'en as just a man As e'er my converfation cop'd withal.

HOR. O, my dear lord,

Нам.

Nay, do not think I flatter: For what advancement may I hope from thee, That no revenue haft, but thy good spirits,

To feed, and clothe thee? Why should the poor be flatter'd?

No, let the candied tongue lick abfurd pomp; And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee, Where thrift may follow fawning. Doft thou hear? Since my dear foul was miftrefs of her choice, And could of men diftinguish her election,

She hath feal'd thee for herfelf: for thou haft been

9 the pregnant hinges of the knee,] I believe the fense of pregnant in this place is, quick, ready, prompt. JOHNSON.

See Vol. IV. p. 182, n. 6. STEEVENS.

2 — my dear foul-] Perhaps my clear foul. JOHNSON. Dear foul is an expreffion equivalent to the pia yśvala, Píner rog, of Homer. STEEVENS.

3 And could of men diftinguish her election,

She bath feal'd thee for herself:] Thus the quarto. The folio thus:

And could of men diftinguish, her election

Hath feal'd thee &c. STEEVENS.

As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing;
A man, that fortune's buffets and rewards
Haft ta'en with equal thanks: and bless'd are those,
Whofeblood and judgement are fo well co-mingled,s
That they are not a pipe for fortune's finger
To found what ftop the pleafe: Give me that man
That is not paffion's flave, and I will wear him
In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart,
As I do thee.-Something too much of this.-
There is a play to-night before the king;
One scene of it comes near the circumftance,
Which I have told thee of my father's death.
I pr'ythee, when thou feest that act a-foot,
Even with the very comment of thy foul
Obferve my uncle: if his occulted guilt
Do not itself unkennel in one fpeech,
It is a damned ghoft that we have feen;
And my imaginations are as foul

As Vulcan's ftithy." Give him heedful note:

Mr. Ritfon prefers the reading of the quarto, and observes, that to diftinguish her election, is no more than to make her election. Diftinguish of men, he adds, is exceeding harsh, to say the best of it.

REED.

4 Whofe blood and judgement-] According to the doctrine of the four humours, defire and confidence were feated in the blood, and judgement in the phlegm, and the due mixture of the humours. made a perfect character. JOHNSON.

5 co-mingled,] Thus the folio. The quarto reads-comedled; which had formerly the fame meaning, MALONE.

6

Vulcan's ftithy.] Stithy is a smith's anvil. JOHNSON.

So, in Troilus and Creffida:

"Now by the forge that flithied Mars's helm."

Again, in Greene's Card of Fancy, 1608: " determined to strike on the fith while the iron was hot."

Again, in Chaucer's celebrated defcription of the Temple of Mars, Mr. Tyrwhitt's edit. ver. 2028:

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"That forgeth fharp fwerdes on his faith." STEEVENS.

For I mine eyes will rivet to his face;
And, after, we will both our judgements join
In cenfure of his seeming.

HOR.

Well, my lord:

If he fteal aught, the whilft this play is playing, And scape detecting, I will pay the theft.

HAM. They are coming to the play; I must be idle:

Get you a place.

Danish march. A flourish. Enter King, Queen, POLONIUS, OPHELIA, ROSENCRANTZ, GUILDENSTERN, and Others.

KING. How fares our coufin Hamlet?

HAM. Excellent, i'faith; of the camelion's difh: I eat the air, promise-cramm'd: You cannot feed capons fo.

KING. I have nothing with this answer, Hamlet; thefe words are not mine.

My lord,- you

HAM. No, nor mine now." play'd once in the university, you say?

8

[TO POLONIUS.

7 nor mine now.] A man's words, fays the proverb, are his own no longer than he keeps them unfpoken. JOHNSON.

8 -you play'd once in the univerfity, you fay?] It fhould feem from the following paffage in Vice Chancellor Hatcher's letters to Lord Burghley on June 21, 1580, that the common players were likewife occafionally admitted to perform there: "Whereas it hath pleafed your honour to recommend my lorde of Oxenford his players, that they might fhow their cunning in feveral plays already practifed by 'em before the Queen's majefty"————(denied on account of the peftilence and commencement :)" of late we denied the like to the Right Honourable the Lord of Leicester his fervants." FARMER.

The practice of acting Latin plays in the univerfities of Oxford

POL. That did I, my lord; and was accounted a good actor.

HAM. And what did you enact?

POL. I did enact Julius Cæfar: I was kill'd i'the Capitol; Brutus kill'd me.

and Cambridge, is very ancient, and continued to near the middle of the last century. They were performed occafionally for the entertainment of princes and other great perfonages; and regularly at Chriftmas, at which time a Lord of mifrule was appointed at Oxford, to regulate the exhibitions, and a fimilar officer with the title of Imperator, at Cambridge. The most celebrated actors at Cambridge were the ftudents of St. John's and King's colleges: at Oxford, thofe of Chrift-Church. In the hall of that college a Latin comedy called Marcus Geminus, and the Latin tragedy of Proge, were performed before Queen Elizabeth in the year 1566; and in 1564, the Latin tragedy of Dido was played before her majesty, when the vifited the univerfity of Cambridge. The exhibition was in the body or nave of the chapel of King's college, which was lighted by the royal guards, each of whom bore a stafftorch in his hand. See Peck's Defider. Cur. p. 36, n. x. The actors in this piece were all of that college. The author of the tragedy, who in the Latin account of this royal visit, in the Mufeum, [MSS. Baker, 7037, p. 203,] is faid to have been Regalis Collegii olim focius, was, I believe, John Rightwife, who was elected a fellow of King's college, in 1507, and according to Anthony Wood," made the tragedy of Dido out of Virgil, and acted the fame with the scholars of his school [St. Paul's, of which he was appointed mafter in 1522,] before Cardinal Wolfey with great applaufe." In 1583, the fame play was performed at Oxford, in Christ-Church hall, before Albertus de Alafco, a Polish prince Palatine, as was William Gager's Latin comedy, entitled Rivales. On Elizabeth's fecond vifit to Oxford, in 1592, a few years before the writing of the prefent play, fhe was entertained on the 24th and 26th of September, with the reprefentation of the last-mentioned play, and another Latin comedy, called Bellum Grammaticale. MALONE.

9 I did ena& Julius Cæfar:] A Latin play on the subject of Cæfar's death was performed at Chrift-Church in Oxford, in 1582; and feveral years before, a Latin play on the fame fubject, written by Jacques Grevin, was acted in the college of Beauvais, at Paris. I fufpect that there was likewife an English play on the story of

HAM. It was a brute part of him,' to kill fo capital a calf there.-Be the players ready?

Ros. Ay, my lord; they stay upon your patience.* QUEEN. Come hither, my dear Hamlet, fit by

me.

HAM. No, good mother, here's metal more attractive.

POL. Oho! do you mark that? [To the King. HAM. Lady, fhall I lie in your lap?

[Lying down at OPHELIA's feet.

Cæfar before the time of Shakspeare. See Vol. XII. p. 238, and the Efay on the Order of Shakspeare's Plays, Vol. I.

MALONE.

I was kill'd i'the Capitol;] This, it is well known, was not the cafe; for Cæfar, we are exprefsly told by Plutarch, was killed in Pompey's portico. But our poet followed the received opinion, and probably the reprefentation of his own time, in a play on the fubject of Cæfar's death, previous to that which he The notion that Julius Cæfar was killed in the Capitol is as old as the time of Chaucer:

wrote.

"This Julius to the capitolie wente

"Upon a day, as he was wont to gon,
"And in the capitolie anon him hente
"This falfe Brutus, and his other foon,

"And fticked him with bodekins anon

"With many a wound," &c. The Monkes Tale.

Tyrwhitt's edit. Vol. II. p. 31. MALONE. 3 It was a brute part of him,] Sir John Harrington in his Metamorphofis of Ajax, 1596, has the fame quibble: "O braveminded Brutus! but this I muft truly fay, they were two brutish parts both of him and you; one to kill his fons for treason, the other to kill his father in treafon." STEEVENS.

4 they stay upon your patience.] May it not be read more intelligibly, they flay upon your pleasure. In Macbeth it is: "Noble Macbeth, we ftay upon your leifure."

JOHNSON.

5 at Ophelia's feet.] To lie at the feet of a mistress during any dramatick reprefentation, feems to have been a common act

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