[LAERTES wounds HAMLET; then, in scuffling, they change rapiers, and a Union-a very rich pearl. The quartos read, onyx. So the quartos; in the folio, the line stands "Here's a napkin, rub thy brows." HAMLET wounds LAERTES. KING. Part them, they are incens'd. Look to the queen there, ho! LAER. Why, as a woodcock to mine own springe, Osric; HAM. How does the queen? KING. She swoons to see them bleed. QUEEN. No, no, the drink, the drink,-O my dear Hamlet! The drink, the drink;-I am poison'd! HAM. O villainy!-How? Let the door be lock'd: Treachery! seek it out. LAER. It is here, Hamlet: Hamlet, thou art slain; Then, venom, to thy work. OSR. AND LORDS. Treason! treason! KING. O, yet defend me, friends, I am but hurt. HAM. Here, thou incestuous, murd'rous, damned Dane, Drink off this potion :-Is thy union here? Follow my mother. LAER. He is justly serv'd; It is a poison temper'd by himself. Exchange forgiveness with me, noble Hamlet: HAM. Heaven make thee free of it! I follow thee. [The QUEEN falls. [Dies. [LAERTES falls. [Stabs the KING. [KING dies. [Dies. Give me the cup; let go; by heaven I'll have it. O, good Horatio, what a wounded name, Things standing thus unknown, shall live behind me! And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain, To tell my story. [March afar off, and shot within. What warlike noise is this? OSR. Young Fortinbras, with conquest come from Poland, The potent poison quite o'er-crows my spirit; On Fortinbras; he has my dying voice; So tell him, with the occurrents, more and less, Which have solicited. The rest is silence. HOR. Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince; And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest! Why does the drum come hither? [Dies. [March within. Enter FORTINBRAS, the English Ambassadors, and others. And let me speak, to the yet unknowing world, Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters; FORT. Let us haste to hear it, And call the noblest to the audience. For me, with sorrow I embrace my fortune; And from his mouth whose voice will draw on more: But let this same be presently perform'd, E'en while men's minds are wild; lest more mischance, FORT. Let four captains Bear Hamlet, like a soldier, to the stage; For he was likely, had he been put on, To have prov'd most royally: and, for his passage, Speak loudly for him. Take up the bodya:- such a sight as this Becomes the field, but here shows much amiss. Go, bid the soldiers shoot. [A dead March. [Exeunt, marching; after which a peal of ordnance is shot off. a Body, in the folio; in the quartos, bodies. Fortinbras has ordered This was a peculiar honour which he meant for him. We give the concluding stage-direction, as we find it in the folio. 66 Exeunt, bearing off the bodies," is a modern addition. 1 SCENE I.-"The cock, that is the trumpet to the occasional superiority over their author: "The morn," &c. THERE can be no doubt, we think, that this fine description is founded upon some similar description in the Latin language. The peculiar sense of the words extravagant, erring, confine, points to such a source. The first hymn of Prudentius has some similarity; but Douce has also found in the Salisbury collection of Hymns, printed by Pynson, a passage from a hymn attributed to St. Ambrose, in which the images may be more distinctly traced: "Preco diei jam sonat, Noctis profundæ pervigil; Hoc excitatus Lucifer, Solvit polum caligine; Viam nocendi deserit. Gallo canente spes redit," &c. 2 SCENE I." But, look, the morn," &c. Mr. Caldecott, in his valuable edition of 'Hamlet,' sometimes falls into that fault-finding tone by which most Shaksperean critics assert their TRAGEDIES-VOL. I. almost momentary appearance of the ghost, and the short conversations preceding and subsequent to it, could not have filled up the long twelve till morning." Such is Mr. Caldecott's interval of a winter's night in Denmark, from objection to this scene. But how does he know that it was a winter's night? Francisco, indeed, says "'t is bitter cold;" but even in the nights of the early summer of the north of Europe, during the short interval between twilight and sunrise, "the air bites shrewdly." That this was the season intended by Shakspere is indicated by Ophelia's flowers. Her pansies, her columbines, and her daisies belong not to the winter; and her "coronet weeds" were the field-flowers of the latter spring, hung upon the willow in full foliage, "That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream." |