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123. “Yourself, sir, shall be as old as I am, if, like a crab, you could go backward"

This is not conclusive. The quarto reads: "For yourself, sir, shall grow old as I am, if, like a crab, you could go backward." Perhaps, we should read

&c.

"For yourself, sir, will grow old as I am, if,"

It is, perhaps, superfluous to remark, that Hamlet, in his sarcastic vein, is inferring that he is the old man, whose deformity and weakness corresponds with "the satirical rogue's" description, which, though undoubtedly true (as he says) with respect to him, he yet condemns, because Polonius, notwithstanding his present youth and comeliness, will grow old-old even as himself—that is, adds he, (with more seriousness) if the order of nature were reversed, and the course of your life should go backward.

127. "Your discovery."

Your disclosure of what you were enjoined to

conceal.

:

"I have of late

"Lost all my mirth," &c.

Thomson seems to have had Hamlet in view, when he wrote the following lines:

""Tis nought but gloom around; the darken'd

sun

"Loses his light; the rosy-bosom'd spring "To weeping fancy pines-and yon bright arch, "Contracted, bends into a dusky vault.

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130. "And the lady shall say her mind freely, or the blank verse shall halt for't."

The scene shall be subject to no restraint; each character shall be freely represented; or if the lady, through affectation of delicacy, should suppress any thing, her omission will be detected n the lameness of the metre.

137. "There was-no money bid for argument.", Contention was deem'd worthless.

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Much throwing about of brains."

In Much Ado About Nothing, Benedick says, "If a man will be beaten with brains, he shall wear nothing handsome about him."

138. “Gentlemen, you are welcome to Elsi

nore.

"Your hands. Come then," &c.

Hamlet, hearing that the players are approaching, is impatient to receive them, but chooses first to dismiss Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, with civility. You are welcome. Your hands. The form and the appurtenance of welcome is just what fashion makes it. Let me tell you, in this plain and cordial manner, that you are welcome, and let not the more ceremonious deportment, which it will become me, by and by, to use towards the players, be mistaken by you for superior respect. 143. "My abridgement."

Hamlet here uses "abridgement" in a double sense as a dramatic scene-an epitome or brief representation of life; and as the occasion of cutting short his speech to Polonius.

145.

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Pray God, your voice, like a piece of uncurrent gold, be not cracked within the ring.

There is here, I believe, a wanton reference to puberty, and the change in the tone of the voice which at that period takes place with young men. It is well known that the female characters on the stage were, in our author's time, represented by boys.

150. "The rugged Pyrrhus," &c.

Though few people, I believe, will be found agreeing in Dr. Warburton's notion, that Shakspeare had any thoughts of writing a play on the model of the Greek drama, or of departing from his own Gothic manner, yet the judgment which that critic has pronounced upon this episodic' drama, will probably be considered as better founded than what Mr. Steevens has advanced. There can hardly be a serious doubt that the praise bestowed on it by Hamlet himself is sincere; and he must needs be mad, not in craft, but reality, if he had deliberately selected, for the purpose of probing the king's conscience, a composition that was nothing but contemptible bombast. I am pretty clearly of opinion, that the piece in question is the work of Shakspeare himself, and a good deal of it does him no discredit: but he seems to have thought it proper to make a distinction in the style of it, from that which prevails generally in the tragedy itself.

156. "Is it not monstrous, that this player here,

"But in a fiction, in a dream of passion, "Could force his soul so to his own conceit, "That from her working, all his visage

wann'd."

Mr. Steevens would read "warm'd," according to the folio, instead of "wann'd," as exhibited in the quarto; the passion, as he argues, conducing rather to flush, than make pale, the actor's visage; and, further, the critic adds, because "no performer was ever yet found whose feelings were of such exquisite sensibility as to produce paleness, in any situation in which the drama could place him." But the poet, who was himself an actor, understood this subject better than his commentator appears to do, and would have told Mr. Steevens, that there are many situations of the drama in which a performer of sensibility will turn pale, and be conscious also of the change, from sympathetic chilness produced by a sort of mechanical operation of the nerves; and this consciousness is illustrated in a passage of Antony and Cleopatra; where the queen, upon hearing of Antony's marriage with Octavia, exclaims I am pale, Charmian." The emotions and the countenance of a sensible actor, who does not o'erstep the modesty of nature," will always be in unison with his spectators and auditors, and the scene which will either "blanch" or redden their cheeks, will have the same effect on his. 158. "For Hecuba!"

66

66

This might well be omitted, and the metre proceed without interruption.

"Yet I."

This fragment might be received in the following line, omitting two words that can be spared.

"Yet I, a (dull and) muddy-mettled rascal, peak."

160, "Ha!"

All these interruptions of the metre I take to be the gratuitous ejaculations of the player, which I include this following:

among

"A scullion !-and foh !”

ACT III. SCENE I.

163. "Most like a gentleman,"

Something, I believe has been lost-perhaps, "With courtesy most like a gentleman."

164. "To any pastime ?"

More disorder in the metre. Perhaps, the sage ran thus:

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66

Please your majesty,

pas

"It so fell out, that certain players we O'er-raught upon the way; of these we told him."

Again, two hemistics within three lines. We might arrange

King.

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"And much content to see him so inclin'd."

"Content" is a substantive.

165. "

let.".

We have closely sent for Ham

i. e. Covertly, with a concealed purpose, as in another place" a close intent.”

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