And, for your part," Ophelia, I do wish, To both your honours. ОРН. Madam, I wish it may. [Exit QUEEN. POL. Ophelia, walk you here:-Gracious, fo please you, We will beftow ourselves:-Read on this book; [To OPHELIA. That show of fuch an exercise may colour Your loneliness.—We are oft to blame in this,— 'Tis too much prov'd,'—that, with devotion's visage, And pious action, we do fugar o'er The devil himself. KING. O, 'tis too true! how smart A lafh that speech doth give my conscience! The harlot's cheek, beauty'd with plast'ring art, Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it,+ Than is my deed to my moft painted word: O heavy burden! [Afide. POL. I hear him coming; let's withdraw, my lord. [Exeunt King and POLONIUS. And, for your part,] Thus the quarto, 1604, and the folio. The modern editors, following a quarto of no authority, readfor my part. MALONE. 2 Your lonelinefs.] Thus the folio. The firft and fecond quartos read lowlinefs. STEEVENS. 3 'Tis too much prov'd,] It is found by too frequent experience. JOHNSON. more ugly to the thing that helps it,] That is, compared with the thing that helps it. JOHNSON. So, Ben Jonfon: "All that they did was picty to this." STEEVENS. Enter HAMLET. HAM. To be, or not to be,' that is the queftion:Whether 'tis nobler in the mind, to suffer To be, or not to be,] Of this celebrated foliloquy, which bursting from a man diftracted with contrariety of defires, and overwhelmed with the magnitude of his own purposes, is connected rather in the fpeaker's mind, than on his tongue, I fhall endeavour to discover the train, and to fhew how one fentiment produces another. Hamlet, knowing himfelf injured in the moft enormous and atrocious degree, and feeing no means of redrefs, but fuch as muft expofe him to the extremity of hazard, meditates on his fituation in this manner: Before I can form any rational scheme of action under this preffure of diftrefs, it is neceffary to decide, whether, after our prefent flate, we are to be, or not to be. That is the question, which, as it fhall be answered, will determine, whether 'tis nobler, and more suitable to the dignity of reafon, to fuffer the outrages of fortune patiently, or to take arms against them, and by oppofing end them, though perhaps with the lofs of life. If to die, were to fleep, no more, and by a fleep to end the miferies of our nature, fuch a fleep were devoutly to be wifhed; but if to fleep in death, be to dream, to retain our powers of fenfibility, we mult paufe to confider, in that fleep of death what dreams may come. This confideration makes calamity fo long endured; for who would bear the vexations of life, which might be ended by a bare bodkin, but that he is afraid of fomething in unknown futurity? This fear it is that gives efficacy to confcience, which, by turning the mind upon this regard, chills the ardour of refolution, checks the vigour of enterprize, and makes the current of defire ftagnate in inactivity. We may fuppofe that he would have applied thefe general obfer vations to his own cafe, but that he discovered Ophelia. JOHNSON. Dr. Johnfon's explication of the first five lines of this paffage is furely wrong. Hamlet is not deliberating whether after our prefent ftate we are to exist or not, but whether he fhould continue to live, or put an end to his life: as is pointed out by the second and the three following lines, which are manifeftly a paraphrase on the firft; "whether 'tis nobler in the mind to fuffer, &c. or to take arms." The queftion concerning our existence in a future ftate is not confidered till the tenth line:-" To fleep! perchance, to dream;" &c. The train of Hamlet's reafoning from the middle The flings and arrows of outrageous fortune; of the fifth line, "If to die, were to fleep," &c. Dr. Johnson has marked out with his ufual accuracy. In our poet's Rape of Lucrece we find the fame question ftated, which is propofed in the beginning of the prefent foliloquy: 66 - with herself she is in mutiny, "To live or die, which of the twain were better." MALONE. arrows of outrageous fortune;] "Homines nos ut effe meminerimus, eâ lege natos, ut omnibus telis fortunæ propofita fit vita noftra." Cic. Epift. Fam. v. 16. STEEVENS. 1 Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,] A fea of troubles among the Greeks grew into a proverbial ufage; xanãv daλacca, xxx sxviα. So that the expreffion figuratively means, the troubles of human life, which flow in upon us, and encompass us round, like a fea. THEOBALD. Mr. Pope propofed fiege. I know not why there fhould be fo much folicitude about this metaphor. Shakspeare breaks his metaphors often, and in this defultory speech there was lefs need of preferving them. JOHNSON. 66 how A fimilar phrafe occurs in Rycharde Moryfine's tranflation of Ludovicus Vives's Introduction to Wyfedome, 1544: great a fea of euils euery day ouerunneth" &c. The change, however, which Mr. Pope would recommend, may be justified from a paffage in Romeo and Juliet, fcene the last: "You-to remove that fiege of grief from her—.” STEEVENS. One cannot but wonder that the smallest doubt fhould be entertained concerning an expreffion which is fo much in Shakspeare's manner; yet, to preferve the integrity of the metaphor, Dr. Warburton reads affail of troubles. In the Prometheus Vin&tus of Æschylus a fimilar imagery is found: Δυσχείμερον γε πέλαγος ατήρας δνης. "The ftormy fea of dire calamity." and in the fame play, as an anonymous writer has obferved, (Gent. Magazine, Aug. 1772,) we have a metaphor no lefs harsh than that of the text: Θολεροι δε λόγοι παίουσ' είκη Στυγνής προς κύμασιν αυτης οι "My plaintive words in vain confufedly beat 66 Against the waves of hateful mifery." Shakspeare might have found the very phrafe that he has em And, by oppofing, end them?-Todie,-to fleep,No more; and, by a fleep, to fay we end The heart-ach, and the thousand natural fhocks For who would bear the whips and fcorns of time,' ployed, in The Tragedy of Queen Cordila, MIRROUR FOR MAGISTRATES, 1575, which undoubtedly he read : "For lacke of frendes to tell my feas of giltleffe smart." MALONE. Menander ufes this very expreffion. Fragm. p. 22. Amftel. 12mo. 1719: 8 Εις πέλαγος αυτον εμβαλεις γαρ πραγμάτων. "In mare moleftiarum te conjicies." HOLT WHITE. To die,-to fleep,] This paffage is ridiculed in The Scornful Lady of Beaumont and Fletcher, as follows: 66 be deceas'd, that is, afleep, for fo the word is taken. To fleep, to die; to die, to fleep; a very figure, fir." &c. &c. 9 STEEVENS. mortal coil,] i. e. turmoil, buftle. WARBURTON. A paffage refembling this, occurs in a poem entitled A dollfull Difcours of two Straungers, a Lady and a Knight, published by Churchyard, among his Chippes, 1575: 2 "Yea, baking off this finfull foyle, 66 "Me thincke in cloudes I fee, Among the perfite chofen lambs, "A place preparde for mee." STEEVENS. There's the respect,] i. e. the confideration. See Vol. XI. p. 284, n. 6. MALONĖ. 3the whips and fcorns of time,] The evils here complained of are not the product of time or duration fimply, but of a corrupted age or manners. We may be fure, then, that Shakspeare wrote: -the whips and fearns of th' time. and the defcription of the evils of a corrupt age, which follows, confirms this emendation. WARBURTON. The oppreffor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,+ It may be remarked, that Hamlet, in his enumeration of miferies, forgets, whether properly or not, that he is a prince, and mentions many evils to which inferior ftations only are expofed. JOHNSON. I think we might venture to read-the whips and scorns o'the times, i. e. of times fatirical as the age of Shakspeare, which probably furnished him with the idea. In the reigns of Elizabeth and James (particularly in the former) there was more illiberal private abuse and peevith fatire publifhed, I have than in any others I ever knew of, except the present one. many of these publications, which were almost all pointed at individuals. Daniel, in his Mufophilus, 1599, has the fame complaint: Whips and Scorns are furely as infeparable companions, as publick punishment and infamy. Quips, the word which Dr. Johnson would introduce, is derived, by all etymologists, from whips. Hamlet is introduced as reafoning on a queftion of general concernment. He therefore takes in all fuch evils as could befall mankind in general, without confidering himself at prefent as a prince, or wishing to avail himself of the few exemptions which high place might once have claimed. In part of King James I'ft Entertainment passing to his Coronation, by Ben Jonfon and Decker, is the following line, and note on that line: "And firft account of years, of months, OF TIME." "By time we understand the prefent." This explanation affords the fenfe for which I have contended, and without change. STEEVENS. The word whips is used by Marston in his Satires, 1599, in the fenfe required here: "Ingenuous melancholy, "Inthrone thee in my blood; let me entreat, Stay his quick jocund fkips, and force him run "A fad-pac'd courfe, untill my whips be done." the proud man's contumely,] MALONE. |