Her maiden strewments, and the bringing home Of bell and burial 1. LAER. Must there no more be done? 1 PRIEST. No more be done! We should profane the service of the dead, LAER. Lay her i'the earth; And from her fair and unpolluted flesh, May violets spring!-I tell thee, churlish priest, Нам. What, the fair Ophelia! QUEEN. Sweets to the sweet: Farewell! [Scattering flowers. I hop'd, thou should'st have been my Hamlet's wife ; I thought, thy bride-bed to have deck'd, sweet maid, And not have strew'd thy grave. LAER. O, treble woe Fall ten times treble on that cursed head, Whose wicked deed thy most ingenious sense Depriv'd thee of!—Hold off the earth awhile, * First folio, t'have. upon it; and neither genius nor practice will always supply a hasty writer with the most proper diction. JOHNSON. In Minsheu's Dictionary, see Beades, where roosen krants means sertum rosarium; and such is the name of a character in this play. Tollet. The names-Rosenkrantz and Gyldenstiern occur frequently in Rostgaard's Delicia Poetarum Danorum. STEEVens. 4 bell and BURIAL.] Burial here signifies interment in consecrated ground. WARBUrton. 5 To sing a REQUIEM.] A requiem is a mass performed in Popish churches for the rest of the soul of a person deceased. The folio reads-sing sage requiem. STEEVENS. from her fair and unpolluted flesh May violets spring!] Thus, Persius, Sat. I.: e tumulo, fortunataque favilla, Nascentur viola? Till I have caught her once more in mine arms: HAM. [Advancing.] What is he, whose grief Bears such an emphasis? whose phrase of sorrow Conjures the wand'ring stars, and makes them stand Like wonder-wounded hearers? this is I, Hamlet the Dane. LAER. [Leaps into the Grave. The devil take thy soul! [Grappling with him. HAM. Thou pray'st not well. I pr'ythee, take thy fingers from my throat; Which let thy wisdom fear: Hold off thy hand. QUEEN. ALL'. Gentlemen, HOR. Hamlet, Hamlet! Good my lord, be quiet. [The Attendants part them, and they come out of the Grave. HAM. Why, I will fight with him upon this theme, Until my eyelids will no longer wag. QUEEN. O my son! what theme? HAM. I lov'd Ophelia ; forty thousand brothers QUEEN. For love of God, forbear him. *First folio, Sir. First folio, away thy hand. ↑ First folio, wiseness. § First folio, Come. All, &c.] This is restored from the quartos. STEEVENS. Woul't weep ? woul't fight? woul't fast? woul't tear thyself? 8 Woul't drink up Esil? eat a crocodile ? 8 Woul't drink up ESIL? eat a crocodile ?] This word bas through all the editions been distinguished by Italick characters, as if it were the proper name of some river; and so, I dare say, all the editors have from time to time understood it to be. But then this must be some river in Denmark; and there is none there so called; nor is there any near it in name, that I know of, but Yssel, from which the province of Overyssel derives its title in the German Flanders. Besides, Hamlet is not proposing any impossibilities to Laertes, as the drinking up a river would be: but he rather seems to mean,-Wilt thou resolve to do things the most shocking and distasteful to human nature; and, behold, I am as resolute. I am persuaded the poet wrote: "Wilt drink up Eisel? eat a crocodile ?" i. e. Wilt thou swallow down large draughts of vinegar? The proposition, indeed, is not very grand: but the doing it might be as distasteful and unsavoury as eating the flesh of a crocodile. And now there is neither an impossibility, nor an anticlimax: and the lowness of the idea is in some measure removed by the uncommon term. THEOBald. Sir T. Hanmer has, "Wilt drink up Nile? or eat a crocodile ? Hamlet certainly meant (for he says he will rant) to dare Laertes to attempt any thing, however difficult or unnatural; and might safely promise to follow the example his antagonist was to set, in draining the channel of a river, or trying his teeth on an animal whose scales are supposed to be impenetrable Had Shakspeare meant to make Hamlet say-Wilt thou drink vinegar? he probably would not have used the term drink up; which means, totally to exhaust; neither is that challenge very magnificent, which only provokes an adversary to hazard a fit of the heart-burn or the colick. The commentator's Yssell would serve Hamlet's turn or mine. This river is twice mentioned by Stowe, p. 735: "It standeth a good distance from the river Issell, but hath a sconce on Issell of incredible strength." Again, by Drayton, in the 24th song of his Polyolbion : And in King Richard II. a thought, in part the same, occurs, Act II. Sc. II.: "Is numb'ring sands, and drinking oceans dry." I'll do't.-Dost thou come here to whine ? But in an old Latin account of Denmark and the neighbouring provinces, I find the names of several rivers little differing from Esil, or Eisell, in spelling or pronunciation. Such are the Essa, the Oesil, and some others. The word, like many more, may indeed be irrecoverably corrupted; but, I must add, that few authors later than Chaucer or Skelton made use of eysel for vinegar: nor has Shakspeare employed it in any other of his plays. The poet might have written the Weisel, a considerable river which falls into the Baltick ocean, and could not be unknown to any prince of Denmark. STEEVENS. On the phrase drink up no stress can be laid, for our poet has employed the same expression in his 114th Sonnet, without any idea of entirely exhausting, and merely as synonymous to drink : "Or whether doth my mind, being crown'd with "Drink up the monarch's plague, this flattery?" Again, in the same Sonnet : 66 'tis flattery in my seeing, "And my great mind most kingly drinks it up.” Again, in Timon of Athens: 66 And how his silence drinks up his applause." you, In Shakspeare's time, as at present, to drink up, often meant no more than simply to drink. So, in Florio's Italian Dictionary, 1598: "Sorbire, to sip or sup up any drink." In like manner we sometimes say, "when you have swallowed down this potion," though we mean no more than-when you have swallowed this potion. Yet although in my former edition I adopted Mr. Theobald's interpretation, I am now convinced that Mr. Steevens's is the true one. This sort of hyperbole was common among our ancient poets. So, in Eastward Hoe, 1609 : "Come drink up Rhine, Thames, and Meander dry," So also, in Greene's Orlando Furioso, 1599: "Else would I set my mouth to Tygris' streames, Again, in Marlowe's Jew of Malta: "As sooner shalt thou drink the ocean dry, Our author has a similar exaggeration in Troilus and Cressida, Act III. Sc. II. : "When we (i. e. lovers) vow to weep seas, live in fire, eat rocks, tame tigers," &c. In Chaucer's Romaunt of the Rose, we find the following lines: "He underfongeth a grete paine, "That undertaketh to drink up Seine." Boswell. Be buried quick with her, and so will I : QUEEN. This is mere madness': When that her golden couplets are disclos'd', Нам. Hear you, sir; What is the reason that you use me thus ? The cat will mew, and dog will have his day. [Erit. 9 This is mere madness:] This speech in the first folio is given to the King. MALONE. When that her golden couplets are DISCLOS'D,] To disclose was anciently used for to hatch. So, in The Booke of Huntynge, Hawkyng, Fyshing, &c. bl. 1. no date: "First they ben eges; and after they ben disclosed, haukes; and commonly goshaukes ben disclosed as sone as the choughes." To exclude is the technical term at present. During three days after the pigeon has hatched her couplets, (for she lays no more than two eggs,) she never quits her nest, except for a few moments in quest of a little food for herself; as all her young require in that early state, is to be kept warm, an office which she never entrusts to the male. STEEVENS. The young nestlings of the pigeon, when first disclosed, are callow, only covered with a yellow down and for that reason stand in need of being cherished by the warmth of the hen, to protect them from the chillness of the ambient air, for a considerable time after they are hatched. HEATH. The word disclose has already occurred in a sense nearly allied to hatch, in this play: "And I do doubt, the hatch and the disclose "Will be some danger." MALONE. * What is the reason that you use me thus ? I LOV'D YOU EVER :] So, in A Midsummer-Night's Dream, Helena says to her rival |