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60. "Not to crack the wind of the poor phrase."

Not to run it too hard-he had echoed it twice already, in a breath.

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The adjective for the adverb.

62. "But mere implorators of unholy suits." Perhaps "mere" should be removed.

"Breathing like sanctified and pious bonds," &c.

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The sense of this passage appears to have been mistaken by Dr. Warburton, and not accurately conceived by the succeeding commentators, "Implorators breathing like bonds," i. e. Breathing as bonds breathe," is an expression not easily to be understood; but the meaning and the construction I take to be this: "His vows are implorators, breathing like bonds, (i. e. similar bonds, or sanctified vows) to those which are breathed by implorators of unholy suits."

A thought resembling this occurs in Othello: "When devils would their blackest sins put on,. They do suggest at first with heavenly shews."

63. "

So slander any moment's leisure."

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To slander is to abuse; and to misemploy being also to abuse, the poet thought he might say, "slander" for "misemploy."

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This unnecessary hemistic I take to be interpolation the last line in Polonius's speech is de fective these words, I suppose, belong to it:

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SCENE IV.

64. "Indeed? I heard it not; it then draws near the season.”

This line is overloaded." I heard it not" is implied in," indeed!" We might read:

"Indeed? why then it does draw near the hour." Takes his rouse."

A stimulating draught, what bestirs his sluggish spirit.

65. "Ay, marry, is't."

Some words have been lost; perhaps these, of an antique date.

66. "

Soil our addition.”

Stain our character and name.

70. Angels and ministers of grace defend us."

So exclaims Penitent on the appearance of the devil in Mrs. Hairbrain's shape, in A Mad World My Masters:

"Shield me, ye ministers of faith and grace." Questionable shape."

72. "

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Questionable," I believe, here means, as Sir T. Hanmer explains, dubious, exciting question.

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I'll call thee, Hamlet!

King! father! royal Dane! O answer

me."

This address we have lately heard, at one of the great theatres, uttered thus:

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I'll call thee, Hamlet!

King! father!-Royal Dane, O answer me.'

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Absurd! Hamlet knows not by what gracious or acceptable title to salute the spectre; and here he is at once made to be familiar with him.

Royal Dane, O answer me"-no. "Dane" is used with emphatic dignity, as, in the first scene, the king says,

"You cannot speak of reason to the Dane, "And lose your voice."

Royal Dane! is the height of the vocative climax :

73. "What may this mean, "That thou, dead corse,

"Revisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon, "Making night hideous; and we fools of nature," &c.

It is not easy to reconcile this passage, as it stands, to any thing like just construction:-at first it will appear to involve only one of those careless errors, whereby the accusative case is often put into the place of the nominative, and pice versa, and that here, if we should read "us, instead of "we," all would be right; but this will not do; for it should then appear that "our dispositions were shaken by ourselves." "We fools of nature" is, perhaps, merely a parenthetic apostrophe, (O fools of nature that we are); and then it remains to reconcile the conjunction at once to the participial and the infinitive modes, "making night hideous, and (making it) to shake our souls," &c.

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Incapacitate your governing or supreme intellect; strip it of its attributes.

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To let, undoubtedly, signifies "to hinder," but I cannot help considering this expression as the offspring of that preposterous disposition which often prevails in these works, to "palter with us in a double sense."

77. "Heaven will direct it."

Will take care of Denmark, or the state of Denmark.

77.

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SCENE V.

Speak, I am bound to hear.”.

"Speak" appears to be an idle interpolation:

Lend thy serious hearing

"To what I shall unfold."

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78. "What?"

I am bound to hear."

Some words, I suppose, have been lost: perhaps the verse proceeded thus:

"So art thou to revenge, when thou shalt hear."

Ham. " Revenge! what? how?"

Gh.

79.

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I am thy father's spirit."

But that I am forbid."

This is exuberant; I suppose we should read: But being forbid."

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i. e. Only that I am forbid.

Harrow up thy soul."

See note on, "It harrows me with fear," scene 1st, p. 138 of this Vol.

80.

If thou didst ever thy dear father love,”

Ham. “Ŏ heaven!”

This apostrophe by Hamlet I have always considered as interpolated; it is not, indeed, an unnatural exclamation, but it is unnecessary, and interrupts the metre.-It was, I doubt not, the gratuitous ejaculation of one of the actors, and so taken down by the transcriber. Of the same description is the hypermeter immediately following: "Murder!"

Ham. Ghost."

Murder most foul, as in the

best it is."

The Ghost's repetition of "murder" is quite superfluous.

81. "And duller should'st thou be than the fat weed

"That rots itself in ease on Lethe wharf." The authority of the quarto editions being, in my opinion, of more value than that of the folio, I generally prefer it, and, in the present instance, I think the early reading the better of the two, roots itself." But there is a passage in Julius Cæsar, "rots itself with motion," which appears to countenance the altered reading.

82. "Now wears his crown.”

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O my prophetic soul! my uncle.'

There is disorder here that wants correction:

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My uncle!

Incestuous, adulterate beast."

"To those of mine."

I always suspect corruption or loss when I meet with a hemistic:-perhaps there was added here;

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