Page images
PDF
EPUB

I believe we should point thus:

Thou know'st-'tis common-all that live," &c. i. e. Thou knowest this truth-nay, it is known to all men-it is "a common proof.

[ocr errors]

"I have that within, which passeth shew; These, but the trappings," &c.

[ocr errors]

So says Richard II.

My grief lies all within,

"And these external manners of lament "Are merely shadows to the unseen grief "That swells with silence in the tortur'd soul."

"'Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet."

The hypermeter here was probably occasioned by the poet's having altered the expression, without expunging what he meant to amit; or else by the transcriber's resolution to retain the old word, while he inserted the new; the line at first might have been

""Tis commendable in your nature, Hamlet."

The desire of more animation, perhaps, suggested the epithet " sweet," and, what the author undoubtedly would have expunged, might, by haste or ignorance, have been retained: a similar fatality has attended another line in this speech, where, by an error of the press, the word lost," having carelessly been caught from the preceding line, continues to be twice repeated, in defiance of propriety and the metre:

[ocr errors]

Your father lost a father,

"That father (lost, lost) his, and the survivor bound," &c.

These lines were doubtless intended to run thus:

[blocks in formation]
[ocr errors]

""Tis sweet and commendable in you, Hamlet."

And,

"That father his; and the survivor bound," &c.

Mr. Pope, indeed, very properly corrected the last line, which, nevertheless, is still exhibited in its old deformity.

[ocr errors]

35.

66

The most vulgar thing to sense.”

"Vulgar," for trite, common.

"From the first corse, till he that died to-day." The construction here is elliptic, or broken. "From the first corse till-he that died to-day," (will illustrate my position.)

37.

[ocr errors]

38.

Bend you to remain.”

Yield, comply with our entreaty.

Resolve itself into a dew !" Resolve, says Mr. Steevens, is the same as "dissolve."

I cannot directly agree with the critic: "resolve," seems to have an active, as dissolve a neuter sense.

39. "

The uses of this world!"

"The

"This world" appears not to be mentioned in any reference or contradistinction to the world hereafter, as some actors would express. uses of this world," is merely "the habitudes and usages of life."

40. "

He might not beteem the winds of

heaven

"Visit her face too roughly."

I cannot be reconciled to "beteem," and know

not what word to propose in its place. The sentiment Rowe seems to have made use of, in Jane Shore:

"I thought the gentlest breeze that wakes the spring

"Too rough to breathe on her."

41. "By what it fed on: And yet, within a month."

"And" should be omitted here, as useless to the sense, and burthensome to the metre. And again, the next line,

"Let me not think on't; Frailty, thy name is woman,"

should be,

"Let me not think;-Frailty, thy name is

woman."

42. "Horatio,or I do forget myself."

I am not certain whether the latter part of this line is spoken familiarly-" I forget myself," for I forget-or emphatically, with compliment to Horatio; whom the speaker would say he valued as himself. "This surely is my friend Horatio, or I have lost the knowledge even of myself."

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

I'll change that name with you. Dr. Johnson's explanation may be right; but perhaps Hamlet means to say, that between Horatio and himself the name of friend shall be current-Do not call yourself my servant-you are my friend-so I shall call you, and so I would have you call me. If this be the sense, the line

should be pointed thus:

66

Sir, my good friend; I'll change that name with you."

43. "We'll teach you to drink deep, ere you depart.

Hamlet would intimate that drunkenness was the only thing that could be learned at the usurper's court.

45. "He was a man, take him for all in all, "I shall not look upon his like again."

This, I believe, is not rightly pointed. I take it to be a thought twice broken or interrupted, Horatio had called Hamlet's father " a goodly king."-" O!" exclaims the prince, "he was a man," but not knowing which excellence to prefer in describing him, he breaks off with the general remark" take him for all in all-" yet here again, not knowing adequate terms of applause, he concludes abruptly-" I shall not look upon his like again.

"Saw! who?"

This is a common ellipsis, rather than wrong grammar.

i. e.. Who (was it whom you saw ?)" "In the dead waist and middle of the night."

[ocr errors]

The quarto of 1637 reads "vast," and that, perhaps, is right; but the folio has " wast, which appears more naturally, and with better sense, than "waist" affords, to suggest "waste. Milton has an expression somewhat similar:

[merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors]

A modern actor of great merit, while he keeps what ay I wonder caprice in the rear of good sense, endeavours, in this scene, to impress a meaning which I suppose could never have occurred to any body but himself-a distinction as to the persons he is addres sing:

"Did you not speak to it?"

This conceit, no doubt, arises from a passage in Horatio's description, where he says, of Marcellus and Bernardo, that they stood dumb; but it is a petty distinction, unworthy of the actor I allude to, and incompatible with the spirit of the scene, which prompts Hamlet to ask merely the question,-if they had not drawn the ghost into conversation? Hamlet did not care who it was that spoke; all he wanted was, that the ghost should have been spoken to. From this question, there is no inference that what had been said about the silence of Bernardo and Marcellus, was unattended to by Hamlet; his words, on the contrary, refer to that very remark; as if he had said,

"What! and did ye not speak to it?"

"Did you not speak to it ?"

This censure (in which Mr. Steevens also concurs) of the emphasis lately introduced in de ivering this passage on the stage, is very justiy called forth. The desire of novelty, and the atfectation of superior acuteness, frequently betrays the actor alluded to into egregious errors.

What Bishop Hurd says of writers, may (mutatis mutandis) be applied to this actor's performances. "When a writer, who (as we have seen) is driven by so many powerful motives to

180/5-

after

« PreviousContinue »