HOR. A truant difpofition, good my lord.
HAM. I would not hear your enemy say so
Nor fhall you do mine ear that violence,
To make it trufter of your own report
Against yourself: I know, you are no truant.
But what is your affair in Elfinore?

We'll teach you to drink deep, ere you depart.
HOR. My lord, I came to fee your father's funeral.
HAM. I pray thee, do not mock me, fellow-
student;

I think, it was to fee my mother's wedding.

HOR. Indeed, my lord, it follow'd hard upon. HAM. Thrift, thrift, Horatio! the funeral bak'd meats 4.

Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables. 'Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven'

--

the funeral bak'd meats-] It was anciently the general euftom to give a cold entertainment to mourners at a funeral. In diftant counties this practice is continued among the yeomanry. See The Tragique Hiftorie of the Faire Valeria of London, 1598: "His corpes was with funerall pompe conveyed to the church, and there follemnly enterred, nothing omitted which neceffitie or custom could claime; a fermon, a banquet, and like obfervations," Again, in the old romance of Syr Degore, bl. 1. no date :

"A great feafte would he holde
"Upon his quenes mornynge day,

"That was buryed in an abbay." COLLINS.

P.

See alfo Hayward's Life and Raigne of King Henrie the Fourth, 4to. 1599, p. 135: "Then hee [King Richard II.] was conveyed to Langley Abby in Buckinghamshire, and there obfcurely interred, without the charge of a dinner for celebrating the funeral."

MALONE.

dearest foe in heaven -] Deareft for direft, moft dreadful, moft dangerous, JOHNSON,

Dearest is most immediate, confequential, important. So, in Romeo and Juliet:

a ring that I must use

"In dear employment."

Or ever" I had feen that day, Horatio!—
My father, Methinks, I fee my father.

HOR.

My lord?

HAM. In my mind's eye," Horatio.

Where,

HOR. I faw him once, he was a goodly king. HAM. He was a man, take him for all in all, I fhall not look upon his like again.

HOR. My lord, I think I saw him yesternight. HAM. Saw! who?

HOR. My lord, the king your father.

Again, in Beaumont and Fletcher's Maid in the Mill: "You meet your dearest enemy in love,

"With all his hate about him." STEEVENS.

See Vol. XI. p. 650, n. 7. MALONE.

6 Or ever-] Thus the quarto, 1604. The folio reads-ere ever, This is not the only inftance in which a familiar phrafeology has been fubftituted for one more ancient, in that valuable copy. MALONE.

↑ In my mind's eye,] This expreffion occurs again in our author's Rape of Lucrece:

-himself behind

"Was left unseen, fave to the eye of mind."

Ben Jonfon has borrowed it in his Mafque called Love's Triumph through Callipolis :

"As only by the mind's eye may be seen."

Telemachus lamenting the absence of Ulyffes, is reprefented in like

manner:

Ὀσσόμενος πατέρ ̓ ἐσθλὸν ἐνὶ φρεσὶν. Οdyf. L. I. 115. STEVEN S. This expreffion occurs again in our author's 113th Sonnet:

"Since I left you, mine eye is in my mind." MALONE. 8 I shall not look upon his like again.] Mr. Holt propofes to read from an emendation of Sir Thomas Samwell, Bart. of Upton, near Northampton :

Eye shall not look upon his like again;

and thinks it is more in the true fpirit of Shakspeare than the other. So, in Stowe's Chronicle, p. 746: "In the greatest pomp that ever eye behelde." Again, in Sandys's Travels, p. 150: "We went this day through the most pregnant and pleasant valley that ever eye beheld." STEEVENS,

Нам.

The king my father!

HOR. Seafon your admiration for a while With an attent ear; till I may deliver,

Upon the witness of

This marvel to you.

Нам.

these gentlemen,

For God's love, let me hear.

HOR. Two nights together had these gentlemen, Marcellus and Bernardo, on their watch,

In the dead waift and middle of the night,'
Been thus encounter'd. A figure like your father,
Armed at point, exactly, cap-à-pé,

Appears before them, and, with folemn march,
Goes flow and ftately by them: thrice he walk'd,
By their opprefs'd and fear-furprized eyes,
Within his truncheon's length; whilft they, dis-
till'd

• Seafon your admiration-] That is, temper it. JOHNSON. * With an attent ear;] Spenfer, as well as our poet, uses attent for attentive. MALONE.

3 In the dead waist and middle of the night,] This ftrange phraseology feems to have been common in the time of Shakspeare. By waift is meant nothing more than middle; and hence the epithet dead did not appear incongruous to our poet. So, in Marston's Malecontent, 1604:

" "Tis now about the immodeft waist of night.”

i. e. midnight. Again, in The Puritan, a comedy, 1607: "—ere the day be spent to the girdle,-."

In the old copies the word is fpelt waft, as it is in the second act, fc. ii: "Then you live about her waft, or in the middle of her favours." The fame fpelling is found in King Lear, Act IV. fc. vi: "Down from the waft, they are centaurs. See alfo Minfheu's Dict. 1617: "Waft, middle, or girdle-fteed." We have the fame pleonafm in another line in this play:

"And given my heart a working mute and dumb." All the modern editors read-In the dead waste &c. MALONE. Dead wafte may be the true reading. See Vol. III. p. 36, n. 4.

Armed at point,] Thus the quartos.
Arm'd at all points. STEEVENS.

The folio:

STEEVENS.

Almoft to jelly with the act of fear,')
Stand dumb and speak not to him. This to me
In dreadful secrecy impart they did;

And I with them, the third night, kept the watch:
Where, as they had deliver'd, both in time,
Form of the thing, each word made true and good,)
The apparition comes: I knew your father;
Thefe hands are not more like.

Нам.

But where was this?

MAR. My lord, upon the platform where we watch'd.

HAM. Did you not speak to it?"

5 — with the ad of fear,] Fear was the caufe, the active cause that diffilled them by that force of operation which we strictly call at in voluntary, and power in involuntary agents, but popularly call act in both. JOHNSON.

The folio reads-bestil'd. STEEVENS.

6 Did you not speak to it?] Fielding, who was well acquainted with vulgar fuperftitions, in his Tom Jones, B. XI. ch. ii. obferves that Mrs. Fitzpatrick, "like a ghoft, only wanted to be spoke to,” but then very readily anfwered. It feems from this paffage, as well as from others in books too mean to be formally quoted, that fpectres were fuppofed to maintain an obdurate filence, till interrogated by the people to whom they appeared.

The drift therefore of Hamlet's queftion is, whether his father's fhade had been spoken to; and not whether Horatio, as a parti cular or privileged perfon, was the fpeaker to it. Horatio tells us he had feen the late king but once, and therefore cannot be ima gined to have any particular intereft with his apparition.

The vulgar notion that a ghoft could only be spoken to with propriety and effect by a scholar, agrees very well with the cha racter of Marcellus, a common officer; but it would have difgraced the Prince of Denmark to have fuppofed the fpectre would more readily comply with Horatio's folicitation, merely because it was that of a man who had been studying at a univerfity.

We are at liberty to think the Ghoft would have replied to Fran cifco, Bernardo, or Marcellus, had either of them ventured to queftion it. It was actually preparing to addrefs Horatio, when the cock crew. The convenience of Shakspeare's play, however, required that the phantom should continue dumb, till Hamlet could

HOR. My lord, I did;

But anfwer made it none: yet once, methought,
It lifted up its head, and did address
Itself to motion, like as it would speak:

But, even then, the morning cock crew loud;"
And at the found it fhrunk in hafte away,
And vanish'd from our fight.

HAM.

'Tis very strange.

HOR. As I do live, my honour'd lord, 'tis true; And we did think it writ down in our duty, To let you know of it.

be introduced to hear what was to remain concealed in his own breaft, or to be communicated by him to fome intelligent friend, like Horatio, in whom he could implicitly confide.

By what particular perfon therefore an apparition which exhibits itfelf only for the purpose of being urged to fpeak, was addreffed, could be of no confequence.

Be it remembered likewife, that the words are not as lately pronounced on the stage,-" Did not you speak to it?"-but-" Did you not speak to it?"-How aukward will the innovated fenfe appear, if attempted to be produced from the paffage as it really stands in the true copies!

Did you not speak to it?

The emphafis, therefore, fhould most certainly rest on-speak.

STEEVENS.

7 —the morning cock crew loud;] The moment of the evanefcence of fpirits was fuppofed to be limited to the crowing of the cock. This belief is mentioned fo early as by Prudentius, Cathem. Hymn. I. v. 40. But fome of his commentators prove it to be of much higher antiquity.

It is a moft inimitable circumftance in Shakspeare, so to have managed this popular idea, as to make the Ghoft, which has been fo long obftinately filent, and of courfe must be difmiffed by the morning, begin or rather prepare to fpeak, and to be interrupted, at the very critical time of the crowing of a cock.

Another poet, according to cuftom, would have fuffered his ghoft tamely to vanifh, without contriving this ftart, which is like a ftart of guilt. To fay nothing of the aggravation of the future fufpence, occafioned by this preparation to fpeak, and to impart fome mysterious fecret. Lefs would have been expected, had nothing been promifed. T. WARTON,