And with fuch maimed rites!" This doth betoken, The corfe, they follow, did with desperate hand Fordo its own life." 'Twas of fome eftate: 8 Couch we a while, and mark. [Retiring with HORATIO. That is Laertes, LAER. What ceremony elfe? A very noble youth: Mark. 1. PRIEST. Her obfequies have been as far enlarg'd As we have warranty: Her death was doubtful; 6 maimed rites!] Imperfect obfequies. JOHNSON. 7 Fordo its own life.] To fordo is to undo, to destroy. So, in Othello: 66 this is the night "That either makes me, or fordoes me quite." Again, in Acolaftus, a comedy, 1529:" -wolde to God it might be leful for me to fordoo myself, or to make an ende of me!" STEEVENS. 8 fome eftate:] Some perfon of high rank. JOHNSON. 9 1. Prieft.] This Prieft in the old quarto is called Do&or. Her obfequies have been as far enlarg'd STEEVENS. As we have warranty:] Is there any allufion here to the coroner's warrant, directed to the minifter and church-wardens of a parish, and permitting the body of a perfon, who comes to an untimely end, to receive chriftian burial? WHALLEY. 3 Shards,] i. e. broken pots or tiles, called pot-herds, tile-herds. So, in Job, ii. 8: "And he took him a potsherd, (i. e. a piece of a broken pot,) to fcrape himself withal," RITSON. Yet here fhe is allow'd her virgin crants, Her maiden ftrewments, and the bringing home Of bell and burial." LAER. Muft there no more be done? 1. PRIEST. No more be done! We should profane the fervice of the dead, LAER. Lay her i'the earth; 4allow'd her virgin crants,] Evidently corrupted from chants, which is the true word. A specific rather than a generic term being here required to answer to maiden firewments. WARBURTON. allow'd her virgin crants,] Thus the quarto, 1604. For this unusual word the editor of the firft folio fubstituted rites. By a more attentive examination and comparison of the quarto copies and the folio, Dr. Johnson, I have no doubt, would have been convinced that this and many other changes in the folio were not made by Shakspeare, as is fuggefted in the following note. MALONE. I have been informed by an anonymous correfpondent, that crants is the German word for garlands, and I fuppofe it was retained by us from the Saxons. To carry garlands before the bier of a maiden, and to hang them over her grave, is ftill the practice in rural parishes. Grants therefore was the original word, which the author, difcovering it to be provincial, and perhaps not understood, changed to a term more intelligible, but lefs proper. Maiden rites give no certain or definite image. He might have put maiden wreaths, or maiden garlands, but he perhaps bestowed no thought upon it; and neither genius nor practice will always fupply a hafty writer with the most proper diction. JOHNSON. In Minfheu's Dictionary, fee Beades, where roofen krants means fertum rofarium; and fuch is the name of a character in this play. TOLLET. Of bell and burial.] Burial, here fignifies interment in confecrated ground. WARBURTON. 6 To fing a requiem,] A requiem, is a mafs performed in Popish churches for the rest of the foul of a perfon deceafed. The folia reads-fing fage requiem. STEEVENS. And from her fair and unpolluted flesh When thou lieft howling. HAM. What, the fair Ophelia ! QUEEN. Sweets to the fweet: Farewell! [Scattering flowers. I hop'd, thou should'st have been my Hamlet's wife; I thought, thy bride-bed to have deck'd, fweet maid, And not have ftrew'd thy grave. LAER. O, treble woe Fall ten times treble on that curfed head, Whose wicked deed thy moft ingenious fenfe Depriv'd thee of!-Hold off the earth a while, Till I have caught her once more in mine arms: [Leaps into the grave. Now pile your duft upon the quick and dead; Till of this flat a mountain you have made, To o'er-top old Pelion, or the skyish head Of blue Olympus. HAM. [Advancing.] What is he, whose grief Bears fuch an emphafis? whose phrase of forrow Conjures the wand'ring ftars, and makes them stand Like wonder-wounded hearers? this is I, Hamlet the Dane. LAER. [Leaps into the grave. HAM. Thou pray'st not well. I pr'ythee, take thy fingers from my throat; 7from her fair and unpolluted fleb May violets Spring!] Thus, Perfius, Sat. I: e tumulo, fortunataque favilla, "Nafcentur viola?" STEEVENS. Yet have I in me fomething dangerous, Which let thy wifdom fear: Hold off thy hand. KING. Pluck them afunder. QUEEN. ALL. Gentlemen, HOR. Hamlet, Hamlet! Good my lord, be quiet. [The Attendants part them, and they come out of the grave. HAM. Why, I will fight with him upon this theme, Until my eyelids will no longer wag. QUEEN. O my fon! what theme? HAM. I lov'd Ophelia; forty thousand brothers Could not, with all their quantity of love Make up my fum.-What wilt thou do for her? KING. O, he is mad, Laertes. QUEEN. For love of God, forbear him. HAM. 'Zounds, fhow me what thou'lt do: Woul't weep? woul't fight? woul't faft? woul't tear thyfelf? Woul't drink up Efil? eat a crocodile?? All. &c.] This is reftored from the quartos. STEEVENS. 9 Woul't drink up Efil? eat a crocodile?] This word has through all the editions been diftinguished by Italick characters, as if it were the proper name of fome river; and fo, I dare fay, all the editors have from time to time understood it to be. But then this must be fome river in Denmark; and there is none there fo called; nor is there any near it in name, that I know of but rel, from which the province of Overyffel derives its title in the German Flanders. Befides, Hamlet is not propofing any impoffibilities to Laertes, as the drinking up a river would be: but he rather feems to mean,-Wilt thou refolve to do things the most shocking and diftafteful to human nature; and, behold, I am as refolute. I am perfuaded the poet wrote: Wilt drink up Eifel? eat a crocodile? i. e. Wilt thou fwallow down large draughts of vinegar? The I'll do't.-Doft thou come here to whine? propofition, indeed, is not very grand: but the doing it might be as diftafteful and unfavoury as eating the flesh of a crocodile. And now there is neither an impoffibility, nor an anticlimax: and the lowness of the idea is in fome measure removed by the uncommon term. THEOBALD. Sir T. Hanmer has, Wilt drink up Nile? or eat a crocodile? Hamlet certainly meant (for he fays he will rant) to dare Laertes to attempt any thing, however difficult or unnatural; and might fafely promife to follow the example his antagonist was to fet, in draining the channel of a river, or trying his teeth on an animal whofe fcales are fuppofed to be impenetrable. Had Shakspeare meant to make Hamlet fay-Wilt thou drink vinegar? he probably would not have ufed the term drink up; which means, totally to exhauft; neither is that challenge very magnificent, which only provokes an adverfary to hazard a fit of the heart-burn or the colick. The commentator's Yell would ferve Hamlet's turn or mine. This river is twice mentioned by Stowe, p. 735: "It standeth a good diftance from the river Iffell, but hath a fconce on Isfell of incredible ftrength." Again, by Drayton, in the 24th Song of his Polyolbion: "The one o'er Ifell's banks the ancient Saxons taught; "At Over-Ifell refts, the other did apply:-." And in King Richard II. a thought, in part the fame, occurs, A&t II. fc. ii: "Is numb'ring fands, and drinking oceans dry." But in an old Latin account of Denmark and the neighbouring provinces, I find the names of feveral rivers little differing from Efil, or Eifill, in fpelling or pronunciation. Such are the Ea, the Oefil, and fome others. The word, like many more, may indeed be irrecoverably corrupted; but, I must add, that few authors later than Chaucer or Skelton make use of eyfel for vinegar: nor has Shakspeare employed it in any other of his plays. The poet might have written the Weifel, a confiderable river which falls into the Baltic ocean, and could not be unknown to any prince of Denmark. STEEVENS. [wouldeft thou] and perhaps The quarto, 1604, has efil. Eifil or eifel is vinegar. The Woul't is a contraction of wouldeft, ought rather to be written woul't. In the folio the word is fpelt efile. |