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LAER. A touch, a touch, I do confefs.
KING. Our fon fhall win.

QUEEN.

He's fat, and scant of breath."—

Here, Hamlet, take my napkin, rub thy brows: The queen caroufes to thy fortune, Hamlet.' HAM. Good madam,—

KING.

Gertrude, do not drink.

QUEEN. I will, my lord;-I pray you, pardon

me.

KING. It is the poison'd cup; it is too late.

[Afide. HAM. I dare not drink yet, madam; by and by. QUEEN. Come, let me wipe thy face."

2 Queen. He's fat, and feant of breath.] It feems that Job Lorin, who was the original Falstaff, was no lefs celebrated for his performance of Henry VIII. and Hamlet. See the Hiftoria Hiftrionica, &c. If he was adapted, by the corpulence of his figure, to appear with propricty in the two former of these characters, Shakspeare might have put this obfervation into the mouth of her majefty, to apologize for the want of fuch elegance of perfon as an audience might expect to meet with in the reprefentative of the youthful prince of Denmark, whom Ophelia fpeaks of as "the glafs of fashion and the mould of form." This, however, is mere conjecture, as Jofeph Taylor likewife acted Hamlet during the life of Shakspeare. STEEVENS.

The author of Hiftoria Hiftrionica, and Downes the prompter, concur in saying that Taylor was the performer of Hamlet. Roberts the player alone has afferted, (apparently without any authority,) that this part was performed by Lowin. MALONE.

3 The queen caroufes to thy fortune, Hamlet.] i. e. (in humbler language) drinks good luck to you. A fimilar phrase occurs in David and Bethfabe, 1599:

"With full caroufes to his fortune past." STEEVENS.

4 Come, let me wipe thy face.] Thefe very words (the prefent repetition of which might have been fpared) are addressed by Doll Tearfheet to Falftaff, when he was heated by his purfuit of Piftol. See Vol. IX. p. 95. STEEVENS.

I

LAER. My lord, I'll hit him now.

I do not think it.

KING.
LAER. And yet it is almost against my confcience.

[Afide.

HAM. Come, for the third, Laertes: You do but dally;

pray you, pafs with your beft violence;

I am afeard, you make a wanton of me.'

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LAER. Say you fo? come on.
OSR. Nothing neither way.

LAER. Have at you now.

[They play.

[LAERTES wounds HAMLET; then, in Scuffling, they change rapiers, and HAMLET wounds LAERTES.

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HOR. They bleed on both fides :-How is it, my

lord?

OSR. How is't, Laertes?

you make a wanton of me.] A rvanton was a man feeble and effeminate. In Cymbeline, Imogen fays, I am not

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-fo citizen a wanton, as

"To feem to die, ere fick." JOHNSON.

Rather, you trifle with me as if you were playing with a child. So, in Romeo and Juliet:

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I would have thee gone,

"And yet no further than a wanton's bird,

"That lets it hop a little from her hand,

“And with a filk thread pulls it back again." RITSON.

A paffage in King John fhows that wanton here means a man feeble and effeminate, as Dr. Johnfon has explained it:

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Shall a beardlefs bay,

"A cocker'd filken wanton, brave our fields,

"And flesh his fpirit in a warlike foil," &c. MALONE.

LAER. Why, as a woodcock to my own fpringe, Ofrick;

I am juftly kill'd with mine own treachery.

HAM. How does the queen?

KING.

She fwoons to fee them bleed.

QUEEN. No, no, the drink, the drink,—O my dear Hamlet!

The drink, the drink ;—I am poison'd!

[Dies.

HAM. O villainy !-Ho! let the door be lock'd: Treachery! feek it out. [LAERTES falls. LAER. It is here, Hamlet: Hamlet, thou art

flain;

No medicine in the world can do thee good,
In thee there is not half an hour's life;
The treacherous inftrument is in thy hand,
Unbated, and envenom'd: the foul practice
Hath turn'd itself on me; lo, here I lie,
Never to rife again: Thy mother's poifon'd;
I can no more;-the king, the king's to blame.
HAM. The point

Envenom'd too!-Then, venom, to thy work.
[Stabs the King.

OSR. AND LORDS. Treafon! treafon!

KING. O, yet defend me, friends, I am but hurt. HAM. Here, thou incestuous, murd'rous, damned

Dane,

Drink off this potion :-Is the union here?"

Follow my mother.

[King dies.

5 Is the union here?] In this place likewife the quarto reads, an onyx. STEEVENS.

Is the union here?] Thus the folio. In a former paffage in the quarto, 1604, for union we had unice; here it has onyx.

It should feem from this line, and Laertes's next fpeech, that Hamlet here forces the expiring king to drink fome of the poisoned cup, and that he dies while it is at his lips. MALONE.

LAER.

He is juftly ferv'd; It is a poifon temper'd by himself.Exchange forgiveness with me, noble Hamlet: Mine and my father's death come not upon thee; Nor thine on me! [Dies.

HAM. Heaven make thee free of it! I follow thee.
I am dead, Horatio:-Wretched queen, adieu !—
You that look pale and tremble at this chance,
That are but mutes or audience to this act,"
Had I but time, (as this fell fergeant, death,
Is ftrict in his arrest,); O, I could tell you,—
But let it be:-Horatio, I am dead;

Thou liv'ft; report me and my cause aright
To the unfatisfied.

HOR.

Never believe it;

I am more an antique Roman than a Dane,
Here's yet fome liquor left.

HAM.
As thou'rt a man,-
Give me the cup; let go; by heaven, I'll have it.—
O God!-Horatio, what a wounded name,
Things standing thus unknown, fhall live behind
me??

If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart,
Abfent thee from felicity a while,

6 That are but mutes or audience to this act,] That are either mere anditors of this catastrophe, or at most only mute performers, that fill the ftage without any part in the action. JOHNSON.

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(as this fell fergeant, death,

Is firia in his arreft,)] So, in our poet's 74th Sonnet :

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when that fell arreft,

"Without all bail, fhall carry me away,-." MALONE.

A ferjeant is a bailiff, or sheriff's officer. RITSON.

8 O God!-Horatio, &c.] Thus the quarto, 1604. Folio: O good Horatio. MALONE.

9 —shall live behind me?] Thus the folio. The quartos read-fhall I leave behind me. STEEVENS.

And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain,

To tell my story.—

[March afar off, and shot within.
What warlike noife is this?

OSR. Young Fortinbras, with conqueft come from
Poland,

To the ambaffadors of England gives

This warlike volley.

HAM.

O, I die, Horatio;

The potent poifon quite o'er-crows my fpirit;' I cannot live to hear the news from England: But I do prophecy, the election lights

On Fortinbras; he has my dying voice;

The potent poifon quite o'er-crows my Spirit;] Thus the firft quarto, and the firft folio. Alluding, I fuppofe, to a victorious cock exulting over his conquered antagonist. The fame word occurs in Lingua, &c. 1607:

"Shall I? th' embaffadrefs of gods and men,

"That pull'd proud Phoebe from her brightfome sphere,
"And dark'd Apollo's countenance with a word,
"Be over-crow'd, and breathe without revenge?"

Again, in Hall's Satires, Lib. V. Sat. ii:

"Like the vain bubble of Iberian pride,

"That over-croweth all the world befide."

This phrafe often occurs in the controverfial pieces of Gabriel Harvey, 1593, &c. STEEVENS.

This word, [o'er-crows] for which Mr. Pope and fucceeding editors have fubitituted over-grows, is ufed by Holinfhed in his Hiftory of Ireland: "Thefe noblemen laboured with tooth and nayle to over-crowe, and confequently to overthrow, one another." Again, in the epiftle prefixed to Nafhe's Apologie of Pierce Penni leffe, 1593: About two yeeres fince a certayne demi-divine took upon him to fet his foote to mine, and over-crowe mee with comparative terms."

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I find the reading which Mr. Pope and the fubfequent editors adopted, (o'ergrows,) was taken from a late quarto of no authority, printed in 1637. MALONE.

The accepted reading is the more quaint, the rejected one, the more elegant of the two; at leat Mr. Rowe has given the latter to his dying Ameltris in The Ambitious Stepmother:

"The gloom grows d'er me." STEEVENS.

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