the history by Saxo Grammaticus; where I believe a young woman, from whom he took the idea of Ophelia, is employed to betray him." Comments on the Commentators, 8vo. 1807, p. 326. Though it does not distinctly appear in any part of this drama, that Hamlet knew that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were privy to this design of murdering him; yet throughout, as Mr. Pye says, he perfectly understood that they were creatures of the king, placed and brought from a distance for that sole purpose, as spies upon him: but it was not till after he discovered that his own murder was to have been effected by means in which they were at least chosen agents and instruments, that, in the moment of discovery and resentment, he retorted upon them as principals, and took a course of retaliation, which, în a drama at least, might well be allowed. Shriving-time is time of shrift, or confession. Skrifta ant. skripta, vox ecclesiastica, usurpata de confessione pœnitentium, idque vel de verbi divini ministro, qui confitentem peccatorem exaudit, illique viam ad resipiscendum commonstrat; vel etiam de actu peccata confitentis. Habemus eam ab Angliæ gentis primis evangelii præsonibus, quorum in Anglia scrift confessionem notat, scrifan delictorum confessionem excitare, skrive apud Chaucerum confiteri, alias reprehendere, gescrif, censura. A scribendo hæc omnia formata esse, eleganti dissertatione probatum dedit vir multe eruditionis H. Gramius: fuse docet in more positum fuisse, ut scripto consignarent veteres verbi divini ministri, qua pœna ecclesiastica satisfaciendum esset pro commissis peccatis." Ihre's Gloss. Suiog. 1769. This term seems to have obtained much in the same way as writ came into use for judicial process or legal instruments; as it was in writing, that the priest, at the time of confession, put down and delivered the penance enjoined. A secondary sense, as stated in Ihre, and better corresponding with its root, but now with us wholly out of use, is penance or punishment. "Riddling confession finds but riddling shrift." (43) Thrown out his angle for my proper life] i. e. his mortal engines. An angle in Shakespeare's time signified a fishing-rod. in Lyly's Sapho and Phao, 1591: So, "Phao. But he may bless fishing, that caught such a one in the sea. "Venus. It was not with an angle, my boy, but with a net." MALONE. (44) a chough; but, as I say, spacious in the possession of dirt] A vain and idle babbler, but possessed of large landed property. Buffon describes the Cornish chough, or red-legged crow, as elegant in figure, lively, restless. His manners are like those of a jackdaw: it is attracted by glittering objects." Bewick's Hist. of Birds, 8vo. 1797, I. 77. See II. H. IV. Falst. II. 3. 66 (45) hot for my complexion. Osr. Exceedingly, my lord; it is very sultry] " igniculum brumæ si tempore poscas, "Accipit endromidem; si dixeris æstuo, sudat." Juv. MALONE. The quartos read "hot, or my complexion." (46) Nay, in good faith; for mine ease, in good faith] This seems to have been the affected phrase of the time. Thus, in Marston's Malcontent, 160+: "I beseech you, sir, be covered. -No, in good faith, for my ease." And in other places. FARMER. It appears to have been the common language of ceremony in our author's time. "Why do you stand bareheaded? (says one of the speakers in Florio's SECOND FRUTES, 1591,) you do yourself wrong. Pardon me, good sir, (replies his friend;) I do it for my ease." Again, in A New Way to pay old Debts, by Massinger, 1633: 66 "You keep your hat off?" MALONE. See L. L. L. V. 1. Armado to Holofern. (47) the card or calendar of gentry] The card by which a gentleman is to direct his course; the calendar by which he is to choose his time, that what he does may be both excellent and seasonable. JOHNSON. See card, V. 1. Haml. (48) against the which he has imponed] Staked, pledged. The quartos read impawned: and Mr. Malone states, that pignare, Ital. signifies both to pawn and to lay a wager. And in the M. of V. Jessica says, "Why, if two Gods should play some heavenly match, and on the wager lay, there must be something else pawn'd," &c. III. 5. (49) hangers] Under this term were comprehended four graduated straps, &c. that hung down in a belt on each side of its receptacle for the sword. I write this, with a most gorgeous belt, at least as ancient as the time of James I. before me. It is of crimson velvet embroidered with gold, and had belonged to the Somerset family. In Massinger's Fatal Dowry, Liladam (who, when arrested as a gentleman, avows himself to have been a tailor,) says : "Grew suddenly out of a tailor's bodkin; "These hangers from my vails and fees in hell:" &c. i. e. the tailor's hell; the place into which shreds and remnants are thrown. K Again, in the Birth of Merlin, 1662 : "He has a fair sword, but his hangers are fallen.” -a rapier "Hatch'd with gold, with hilt and hangers of the new fashion," Rhodon and Iris, 1631. "The scaberd was of silver plate, with golden hangers gract." Chapman, II. XI. Mr. Pope mistook the meaning of this term, conceiving it to signify-short pendulous broad swords. STEEVENS. The word hangers has been misunderstood. That part of the girdle or belt by which the sword was suspended, was in our poet's time called the hangers. Minshieu, 1617: "The hangers of a sword. G. Pendants d'espée, L. Subcingulum," &c. So, in an Inventory found among the papers of Hamlet Clarke, an attorney of a court of record in London, in the year 1611, and printed in the Gentleman's Magazine, Vol. LVIII. P. 111: "Item, One payre of girdle and hangers, of silver purle, and cullored silke. " Item, One payre of girdler and hangers upon white sattene." The hangers ran into an oblique direction from the middle of the forepart of the girdle across the left thigh, and were attached to the girdle behind. MALONE. (50) edified by the margent] The margins of books in our author's day were stuffed with comments and references. Drayton in his Polyolbion says, "If he have other authority for it, I would his margine had bin but so kinde, as to have imparted it." Fo. 1622, p. 277. Mr. Steevens cites Decker's Honest Whore: I read Strange comments in those margins of your looks." (51) The French bet against the Danish] For this, the reading of the quartos, the folios give but; manifestly a false print. The folio of 1632, which does not appear ever to have consulted the quartos, reads and points the passage thus: "that's the French, but against, &c." (52) He hath one twelve for mine] So the folios. In all the language concerning this wager, there is an obscurity and inconsistency, which it would be a hopeless attempt to explain, or to reconcile. Here indeed Osric uses simple terms; or one might be led to think, that it was meant that he should throughout confound himself with his own fantasticality; and that his ideas were to ask for as much unriddling as his phraseology. (53) the breathing time of day with me] "But, for your health and your digestion sake, "An after-dinner's breath." Tr. and Cress. II. 3. Patrocl. (54) This lapwing runs away with the shell on his head] Prematurely hasty, starts almost before he has means, ere he has found legs or message to carry or be carried. Mr. Steevens cites Jonson's Staple of News: "To mount their boxes reverently, and drive And Greene's Never too Late, 1616: “ Are you no sooner hatched, with the lapwing, but you will run away on your head?” And Chapman's Revenge for Honour: with the shell "Boldness enforces youth to hard atchievements (55) He did comply with his dug, before he sucked it] Was complaisant with, treated it with apish ceremony. There is a passage in an old author, which so closely resembles the foregoing, that we may conceive the idea, and partly the phrase itself, to have been caught, or rather copied, by Shakespeare from thence. "Flatterie hath taken such habit in man's affections, that it is in moste men altera natura: yea, the very sucking babes hath a kind of adulation towards their nurses for the dugge." Ulpian Fulwel's Arte of Flatterie, 4to. 1579. Preface to the Reader. Compliment is the word here used by most of the modern editors, who interpret comply in that sense both here and in II. 2. Haml., "let me comply with you in this garb." And Mr. Reed, who instances Fuller's Holy Warre, p. 80: " Some weeks were spent in complying, entertainments, and visiting," adds, "To compliment was, however, by no means an unusual term in Shakespeare's time." In Herrick's Poems, 8vo. 1648, we find a singular use of this word in the sense of enfold or encircle, and plainly as a derivative from the Latin complico. "O'ercast a rug of carded wool; "Which, spunge-like, drinking in the dull "Light of the moon, seem'd to comply "Cloudlike the daintie Deitie." "By "Whom faire Corinna sits, and doth comply "With yvorie wrists his Laureat head." p. 241. (56) commended him to you] Made a gracious and respectful intimation. "The mayster commaundeth hym to you. Herus meus salutes tibi impertit." Vulgaria Stanbrigi, 4to. Wynk. de Worde. ""Tis a word "Of commendation sent from Valentine, "Deliver❜d by a friend." Two G. of V. Prot. I. 2. (57) the readiness is all. Since no man has aught of what he leaves, what is't to leave betimes? Let be] "Ripeness is all," is a reflection upon leaving life made by Edgar in Lear, V. 2. Then "since no man has (i. e. has any secure hold, or can properly be denominated the possessor, of) any portion of that which he leaves, or must leave, behind him, of what moment is it, that this leave-taking, or the parting with a possession so frail, should be made early? Let things take their course!" The reading of the quartos, adopted by the modern editors, is "Since no man of aught he leaves, knows, what is't to leave betimes? Let be." And this, Dr. Johnson says, may mean, " since no man knows aught of the state of life which he leaves, since he cannot judge what other years may produce, why should he be afraid of leaving life betimes? Why should he dread an early death, of which he cannot tell whether it is an exclusion of happiness, or an interception of calamity? I despise the superstition of augury and omens, which has no ground in reason or piety; my comfort is, that I cannot fall but by the direction of Providence." (58) But in my terms of honour, I stand aloof] passage somewhat similar in The Maid's Tragedy: "Eved. Will you forgive me then? There is a STEEVENS. (59) in the cup an union] In the first quarto we have unice, which in the subsequent quarto copies was made onyx. An union is a very precious pearl. See Bullokar's English Expositor, 1616, and Florio's Ital. Dict. 1598, in v. MALONE. "Ay, were it Cleopatra's union." Solim. and Perseda. "And hereupon it is that our dainties and delicates here at Rome, &c. call them unions, as a man would say singular and by themselves alone." Holland's Plin. Nat. Hist. In If you know not Me, you know Nobody, P. II. 1606, Sir Thomas Gresham says: |