OPH. No, my lord.

HAM. I mean, my head upon your lap?"

OPH. Ay, my lord.

HAм. Do you think, I meant country matters?" OPH. I think nothing, my lord.

HAM. That's a fair thought to lie between maids'

legs.

OPH. What is, my lord?

HAM. Nothing.

OPH. You are merry, my lord.

HAM. Who, I?

OPH. Ay, my lord.

8

HAM. O! your only jig-maker. What should a

of gallantry. So, in The Queen of Corinth, by Beaumont and Fletcher :

"Ufhers her to her coach, lies at her feet

"At folemn mafques, applauding what the laughs at.” Again, in Gafcoigne's Greene Knight's farewell to Fancie: "To lie along in ladies lappes," &c. STEEVENS.

I mean, &c.] This fpeech and Ophelia's reply to it are omitted in the quartos. STEEVENS.

* Do you think, I meant country matters?] Dr. Johnson, from a cafual inadvertence, proposed to read-country manners. The old reading is certainly right. What Shakspeare meant to allude to, must be too obvious to every reader, to require any explanation. MALONE.

8 your only jig-maker.] There may have been fome humour in this paffage, the force of which is now diminished:

many gentlemen

"Are not, as in the days of understanding,

"Now fatisfied without a jig, which fince

"They cannot, with their honour, call for after

"The play, they look to be ferv'd up in the middle.” Changes, or Love in a Maze, by Shirley, 1632. In The Hog hath loft his Pearl, 1614, one of the players comes to folicit a gentleman to write a jig for him. A jig was not in

man do, but be merry? for, look you, how cheerfully my mother looks, and my father died within these two hours.

OPH. Nay, 'tis twice two months, my lord.

HAM. So long? Nay, then let the devil wear black, for I'll have a fuit of fables. O heavens!

Shakspeare's time only a dance, but a ludicrous dialogue in metre, and of the lowest kind, like Hamlet's converfation with Ophelia. Many of thefe jiggs are entered in the books of the Stationers' Company: Philips his Jigg of the flyppers, 1595. Kempe's Jigg of the Kitchen-stuff-woman, 1595." STEEVENS.

The following lines in the prologue to Fletcher's Love's Pilgrimage, confirm Mr. Steevens's remark:

66

for approbation,

A jig fhall be clap'd at, and every rhyme

"Prais'd and applauded by a clamorous chime.”

A jig was not always in the form of a dialogue. Many hiftorical ballads were formerly called jigs. See alfo p. 143, n. 6, and The Hiftorical Account of the English Theatres, Vol. II. MALONE.

A jig, though it fignified a ludicrous dialogue in metre, yet it alfo was used for a dance. In the extract from Stephen Goffon in the next page but one, we have,

66

tumbling, dancing of gigges." RITSON.

9 Nay, then let the devil wear black, for I'll have a fuit of fables.] The conceit of these words is not taken. They are an ironical apology for his mother's cheerful looks: two months was long enough in confcience to make any dead husband forgotten. But the editors, in their nonfenfical blunder, have made Hamlet fay just the contrary. That the devil and he would both go into mourning, though his mother did not. The true reading is-Nay, then let the devil wear black, 'fore I'll have a fuit of fable. 'Fore, i. e. before. As much as to fay,-Let the devil wear black for me, I'll have none. The Oxford editor defpifes an emendation fo eafy, and reads it thus,-Nay, then let the devil wear black, for I'll have a fuit of ermine. And you could expect no less, when fuch a critick had the dreffing of him. But the blunder was a pleasant The fenfelefs editors had wrote fables, the fur fo called, for fable, black. And the critick only changed this fur for that; by a like figure, the common people fay,-You rejoice the cockles of my heart, for the mufcles of my heart; an unlucky mistake of one shellfish for another. WARBURTON.

one.

I know not why our editors fhould with fuch implacable anger

die two months ago, and not forgotten yet? Then there's hope, a great man's memory may outlive

perfecute their precedeffors. Oi vexpoi pan daxo, the dead, it is true, can make no refiftance, they may be attacked with great fecurity; but fince they can neither feel nor mend, the fafety of mauling them feems greater than the pleasure; nor perhaps would it much misbeseem us to remember, amidst our triumphs over the nonfenfical and fenfeless, that we likewise are men; that debemur morti, and as Swift obferved to Burnet, shall soon be among the dead ourselves.

I cannot find how the common reading is nonfenfe, nor why Hamlet, when he laid afide his dress of mourning, in a country where it was bitter cold, and the air was nipping and eager, fhould not have a fuit of fables. I fuppofe it is well enough known, that the fur of fables is not black. JOHNSON.

A fuit of fables was the richest dress that could be worn in Denmark. STEEVENS.

Here again is an equivoque. In Malfinger's Old Law, we have,

A cunning grief,

"That's only faced with fables for a show,
"But gawdy-hearted. FARMER.

Nay, then let the devil wear black, for I'll have a fuit of fables.] Nay then, fays Hamlet, if my father be fo long dead as you fay, let the devil wear black; as for me, fo far from wearing a mourning dress, I'll wear the moft coftly and magnificent fuit that can be procured; a fuit trimmed with fables.

Our poet furnished Hamlet with a fuit of fables on the prefent occafion, not, as I conceive, because fuch a dress was fuited to "a country where it was bitter cold, and the air was nipping and eager," (as Dr. Johnson fuppofed,) nor because "a fuit of fables was the richest drefs that could be worn in Denmark," (as Mr. Steevens has fuggested,) of which probably he had no knowledge, but because a fuit trimmed with fables was in Shakspeare's time the richeft drefs worn by men in England. We have had again and again occafion to obferve, that, wherever his fcene might happen to be, the customs of his own country were still in his thoughts.

By the ftatute of apparel, 24 Henry VIII. c. 13, (article furres,) it is ordained, that none under the degree of an earl may ufe fables.

Bishop fays in his Blossoms, 1577, fpeaking of the extravagance of those times, that a thousand ducates were fometimes given for "a face of fables."

his life half a year: But, by'r-lady, he must build churches then: or elfe fhall he fuffer not thinking on, with the hobby-horse;' whofe epitaph is, For, Q, for, O, the bobby-borfe is forgot.*

That a fuit of fables was the magnificent drefs of our author's time, appears from a paffage in Ben Jonfon's Difcoveries: "Would you not laugh to meet a great counsellor of ftate, in a flat cap, with his trunk-hofe, and a hobby-horfe cloak, [See fig. 5. in the plate annexed to King Henry IV. P. I. Vol. VIII.] and yond haberdasher in a velvet gown trimm'd with fables?”

Florio in his Italian Dictionary, 1598, thus explains zibilini: "The rich furre called fables."-Sables is the fkin of the fable Martin. See Cotgrave's French Dict. 1611: "Sebilline. Martre Sebel. The fable Martin; the beast whose skinne we call fables.”

2

MALONE.

but he must build churches then:] Such benefactors to fociety were fure to be recorded by means of the feaft-day on which the patron faints and founders of churches were commemorated in every parish. This cuftom having been long difufed, the names of the builders of facred edifices are no longer known to the vulgar, and are preferved only in antiquarian memoirs. STEEVENS.

3 fuffer not thinking on, with the hobby-borfe;] Amongst the Country May-games there was an hobby-horfe, which, when the puritanical humour of thofe times oppofed and difcredited thefe games, was brought by the poets and baliad-makers as an instance of the ridiculous zeal of the fectaries: from thefe ballads Hamlet quotes a line or two. WARBURTON.

4 O, the hobby-horfe is forgot.] In Love's Labour's Loft, this line is alfo introduced. In a fmall black letter book, entitled, Plays Confuted, by Stephen Goffon, I find the hobby-horse enumerated in the lift of dances: "For the devil (fays this author) beefide the beautie of the houses, and the ftages, fendeth in gearish apparell, mafkes, vauting, tumbling, dauncing of gigges, galiardes, morifces, hobbi-horfes," &c. and in Green's Tu Quoque, 1614, the fame expreffion occurs: "The other hobby-horfe I perceive is not forgotten."

In TEXNOTAMIA, or The Marriage of the Arts, 1618, is the following ftage-direction:

"Enter a hobby-horse, dancing the morrice," &c. Again, in Beaumont and Fletcher's Women Pleafed: "Soto. Shall the hobby-horse be forgot then, "The hopeful hobby-borje, fhall he lie founder'd?"

Trumpets found. The dumb show follows.

Enter a king and a queen, very lovingly; the queen embracing him, and he her. She kneels, and makes show of proteftation unto him. He takes her up, and declines his head upon her neck: lays him down upon a bank of flowers; fhe, feeing him afleep, leaves him. Anon, comes in a fellow, takes off his crown, kiffes it, and pours poifon in the king's ears, and exit. The queen returns; finds the king dead, and makes paffionate action. The poifoner, with fome two or three mutes, comes in again, feeming to lament with her. The dead body is carried away. The poifoner wooes the queen with gifts; fhe feems loath and unwilling awhile, but in the end, accepts his love. [Exeunt.

OPH. What means this, my lord?

HAM. Marry, this is miching mallecho; it means mischief.

The scene in which this paffage is, will very amply confirm all that Dr. Warburton has faid concerning the hobby-horfe.

Again, in Ben Jonfon's Entertainment for the Queen and Prince at Althorpe :

"But fee the bobby-horfe is forgot,
"Fool, it must be your lot,
"To fupply his want with faces

"And fome other buffoon graces."

See figure 5, in the plate at the end of the First Part of King Henry IV. with Mr. Tollet's observations on it. STEEVENS.

Marry, this is miching mallecho; it means mischief.] To mich fignified, originally, to keep hid and out of fight; and, as such men generally did it for the purposes of lying in wait, it then fignified to rob. And in this fenfe Shak fpeare ufes the noun, a micher, when fpeaking of Prince Henry amongst a gang of robbers. Shall the bleffed fun of heaven prove a micher? Shall the fon of England prove a thief? And in this fenfe it is used by Chaucer, in his tranflation of Le Roman de la Rofe, where he turns the word lierre, (which is larron, voleur,) by micher, WARBURTON,