That you know aught of me: this not to do,

So grace and mercy at your most need help

you, Swear.

Ghost. [Beneath] Swear.

180

Ham. Rest, rest, perturbed spirit! [They swear.]
So, gentlemen,

With all my love I do commend me to you:
And what so poor a man as Hamlet is

May do, to express his love and friending to

you,

God willing, shall not lack. Let us go in to-
gether;

And still your fingers on your lips, I pray.
The time is out of joint: O cursed spite,
That ever I was born to set it right!
Nay, come, let's go together.

190

[Exeunt.

187. "Let us go in together"; "This part of the scene after Hamlet's interview with the Ghost has been charged with an improbable eccentricity. But the truth is, that after the mind has been stretched beyond its usual pitch and tone, it must either sink into exhaustion and inanity, or seek relief by change. It is thus well known, that persons conversant in deeds of cruelty contrive to escape from conscience by connecting something of the ludicrous with them, and by inventing grotesque terms and a certain technical phraseology to disguise the horror of their practices. Indeed, paradoxical as it may appear, the terrible by a law of the human mind always touches on the verge of the ludicrous. Both arise from the perception of something out of the common order of things, something, in fact, out of its place; and if from this we can abstract the danger, the uncommonness alone will remain, and the sense of the ridiculous be excited. The close alliance of these opposites-they are not contraries-appears from the circumstance, that laughter is equally the expression of extreme anguish and horror as of joy: as there are tears of sorrow and tears of joy, so there is a laugh of terror and a laugh of merriment. These complex causes will naturally have produced in Hamlet the disposition to escape from his own feelings of the overwhelming and supernatural by a wild transition to the ludicrous, a sort of cunning bravado, bordering on the flights of delirium" (Coleridge).-H. N. H.

ACT SECOND

SCENE I

A room in Polonius's house.

Enter Polonius and Reynaldo.

Pol. Give him this money and these notes, Reynaldo.

Rey. I will, my lord.

Pol. You shall do marvelous wisely, good Reynaldo,

Before you visit him, to make inquire

Of his behavior.

Rey.

My lord, I did intend it.

Pol. Marry, well said, very well said. Look you,

sir,

Inquire me first what Danskers are in Paris,
And how, and who, what means, and where they
keep,

What company, at what expense, and finding
By this encompassment and drift of question 10
That they do know my son, come you more

nearer

Than your particular demands will touch it:

The stage direction in Qq.:-Enter old Polonius, with his man or two; Ff., Polonius and Reynaldo; in Q. 1, Reynaldo is called Montano, hence perhaps the reading of later Qq.-I. G.

4. "to make inquire"; so Qq.; Ff. read, “you make inquiry.”—I. G.

Take you, as 'twere, some distant knowledge of

him,

As thus, 'I know his father and his friends,

And in part him:' do you mark this, Reynaldo? Rey. Aye, very well, my lord.:

Pol. 'And in part him; but' you may say, 'not well: But if 't be he I mean, he's very wild,

Addicted so and so;' and there put on him

What forgeries you please; marry, none so
rank

As
may dishonor him; take heed of that;
But, sir, such wanton, wild and usual slips
As are companions noted and most known
To youth and liberty.

Rey.

As gaming, my lord.

20

Pol. Aye, or drinking, fencing, swearing, quarrel

ing,

Drabbing: you may go so far.

Rey. My lord, that would dishonor him.

Pol. Faith, no; as you may season it in the charge. You must not put another scandal on him, That he is open to incontinency;

30

That's not my meaning: but breathe his faults so quaintly

That they may seem the taints of liberty,

The flash and outbreak of a fiery mind,
A savageness in unreclaimed blood,
Of general assault.

27. "fencing, swearing, quarreling"; "the cunning of fencers is now applied to quarrelling; they thinke themselves no men, if, for stirring of a straw, they prove not their valure uppon some bodies fleshe." (Gosson's Schole of Abuse, 1579).-H. N. H.

Rey.

But, my good lord,—

Pol. Wherefore should you do this?

Rey.

Pol.

I would know that.

Aye, my lord,

Marry, sir, here's my drift, And I believe it is a fetch of warrant:

You laying these slight sullies on my son,

As 'twere a thing a little soil'd i' the working, 40
Mark you,

Your party in converse, him you would sound,
Having ever seen in the prenominate crimes
The youth you breathe of guilty, be assured
He closes with you in this consequence;
'Good sir,' or so, or 'friend,' or 'gentleman,'
According to the phrase or the addition
Of man and country.

Rey.
Very good, my lord.
Pol. And then, sir, does he this he does-what
was I about to say? By the mass, I was 50
about to say something: where did I leave?
Rey. At 'closes in the consequence,' at 'friend
or so,' and 'gentleman.'

Pol. At 'closes in the consequence,' aye, marry;

He closes with you thus: 'I know the gentleman;
I saw him yesterday, or t' other day,

Or then, or then, with such, or such, and, as you
say,

There was a' gaming, there o'ertook in 's rouse,
There falling out at tennis:' or perchance,
'I saw him enter such a house of sale,'

Videlicet, a brothel, or so forth.

60

Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth:
And thus do we of wisdom and of reach,
With windlasses and with assays of bias,
By indirections find directions out:
So, by my former lecture and advice,

How now, Ophelia! what's the matter?

Oph. O, my lord, my lord, I have been so affrighed!

Pol. With what, i' the name of God?

Oph. My lord, as I was sewing in my closet,
Lord Hamlet, with his doublet all unbraced,
No hat upon his head, his stockings foul'd,
Ungarter'd and down-gyved to his ankle;
Pale as his shirt, his knees knocking each other,
And with a look so pitious in purport

As if he had been loosed out of hell

To speak of horrors, he comes before me. Pol. Mad for thy love?

Oph.

My lord, I do not know,

But truly I do fear it.

80

71. "observe his inclination in you"; that is, in your own person; add your own observations of his conduct to these inquiries respecting him.-H. N. H.