145. "Pray God, your voice, like a piece of uncurrent gold, be not cracked within the ring.

There is here, I believe, a wanton reference to puberty, and the change in the tone of the voice which at that period takes place with young men. It is well known that the female characters on the stage were, in our author's time, represented by boys.

150. "The rugged Pyrrhus," &c.

Though few people, I believe, will be found agreeing in Dr. Warburton's notion, that Shakspeare had any thoughts of writing a play on the model of the Greek drama, or of departing from his own Gothic manner, yet the judgment which that critic has pronounced upon this episodic drama, will probably be considered as better founded than what Mr. Steevens has advanced. There can hardly be a serious doubt that the praise bestowed on it by Hamlet himself is sincere; and he must needs be mad, not in craft, but reality, if he had deliberately selected, for the purpose of probing the king's conscience, a composition that was nothing but contemptible bombast. I am pretty clearly of opinion, that the piece in question is the work of Shakspeare himself, and a good deal of it does him no discredit: but he seems to have thought it proper to make a distinction in the style of it, from that which prevails generally in the tragedy itself.

156. "Is it not monstrous, that this player here,

"But in a fiction, in a dream of passion, Could force his soul so to his own conceit, "That from her working, all his visage wann'd."

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Mr. Steevens would read "warm'd," according to the folio, instead of "wann'd," as exhibited in the quarto; the passion, as he the passion, as he argues, conducing rather to flush, than make pale, the actor's visage; and, further, the critic adds, because no performer was ever yet found whose feelings were of such exquisite sensibility as to produce paleness, in any situation in which the drama could place him." But the poet, who was himself an actor, understood this subject better than his commentator appears to do, and would have told Mr. Steevens, that there are many situations of the drama in which a performer of sensibility will turn pale, and be conscious also of the change, from sympathetic chilness produced by a sort of mechanical operation of the nerves; and this consciousness is illustrated in a passage of Antony and Cleopatra; where the queen, upon hearing of Antony's marriage with Octavia, exclaims-" I am påle, Charmian." The emotions and the countenance of a sensible actor, who does not o'erstep the modesty of nature," will always be in unison with his spectators and auditors, and the scene which will either "blanch" or redden their cheeks, will have the same effect on his, 158. "For Hecuba!"

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This might well be omitted, and the metre proceed without interruption,

"Yet I."

This fragment might be received in the following line, omitting two words that can be spared.

"Yet I, a (dull and) muddy-mettled rascal, peak."

160, "Ha!"

All these interruptions of the metre I take to be the gratuitous ejaculations of the player, among which I include this following:

"A scullion !-and foh!"

ACT III. SCENE I.

163. "Most like a gentleman,"

Something, I believe has been lost-perhaps, "With courtesy most like a gentleman."

164. "To any pastime ?"

More disorder in the metre. Perhaps, the sage ran thus:

Please your majesty,

pas

"It so fell out, that certain players we
"O'er-raught upon the way; of these we

told him."

Again, two hemistics within three lines. We might arrange

King.

"To hear and see the matter."

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With all my heart;

"And much content to see him so inclin'd."

"Content" is a substantive.

165. "

let":

We have closely sent for Ham

i. e. Covertly, with a concealed purpose, as in another place" a close intent.”

'Affront Ophelia."

I am afraid it will appear an idle task to endea

vour at repairing the various hemistics and the disturbed metre in this crude play: but some words have been lost-perhaps, such as these:

166. "O heavy burden!"

This I take to be interpolation of the actor.

Sir Walter Raleigh has this metaphor in the preface to his History of the World:

"For the sea of examples hath no bottom."

175. "I humbly thank you; well.".

More deficiency: I suppose there was added-
Indifferent well."

"I never gave you aught."

More mutilation. I suppose it should be: "You do mistake; I never gave you aught."

But presently the dialogue, as it is exhibited, degenerates into determinate prose.

"If you be honest and fair, you should admit no discourse to your beauty."

Every body, I believe, will here remark, in the words of Hamlet, "Nay, that follows not." The reading of the folio is good sense:

"Your honesty should admit no discourse to your beauty."

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The obscurity is in the expression-" admit no discourse to your beauty" which means allow, supply, afford no discourse;" i. e. your honesty should not enter into any discourse, &c. 176. "I lov'd you not."

As the speaker is now acting the madman, the inference which Mr. Steevens draws from this declaration, in his long note at the end of the play, is unfounded, and will constitute no part of that brutality with which the critic, rather too harshly, I believe, has branded the conduct of Hamlet, in this scene: had the prince been talking in his sane and sober mood, and told Ophelia that he no longer loved her, he would justly incur censure for so unkind and cruel a speech; but if to the language of madness, whether real or factitious, a meaning must be ascribed, it should rather be the reverse of that which the words themselves express; and Hamlet's telling the lady, at this time, that he no longer loved her, may be regarded as a token by which she was to perceive that his passion for her continued. 178. "The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, sword;

"The glass of fashion and the mould of form,

"Th' observ'd of all observers !"

The same reflection is uttered by Lady Percy, in application to Hotspur, in the Second Part of King Henry IV.

By his light,

"Did all the chivalry of England move "To do brave acts; he was indeed the glass "Wherein the noble youth did dress themselves."

And again,

"He was the mark and glass, copy and book, "That fashion'd others.'

"

185. "The very age and body of the time," &c. The " age of the time," as objected to by Dr. Johnson, is not, I believe, implied in the con