Still am I call'd ;-unhand me, gentlemen ; [Breaking from them. By heaven, I'll make a ghost of him that lets me 2: I say, away:-Go on, I'll follow thee. [Exeunt Ghost and HAMLET. HOR. He waxes desperate with imagination. MAR. Let's follow; 'tis not fit thus to obey him. HOR. Have after:-To what issue will this come? mark. HOR. Heaven will direct it3. MAR. Nay, let's follow him. [Exeunt. "Into the great Nemean lion's grove." Our poet's conforming in this instance to Latin prosody was certainly accidental, for he, and almost all the poets of his time, disregarded the quantity of Latin names. So, in Locrine, 1595, (though undoubtedly the production of a scholar,) we have Amphion instead of Amphion, &c. See also p. 203, n. 1. MALONE. The true quantity of this word was rendered obvious to Shakspeare by Twine's translation of part of the Æneid, and Golding's version of Ovid's Metamorphosis. STEEVENS. 2 - I'll make a GHOST of him that LETS me:] "Villains set down the corse, or by St. Paul, "I'll make a corse of him that disobeys." Richard III. Act I. Sc. I. BLAKEWAY. To let among our old authors signifies to prevent, to hinder. It is still a word current in the law, and to be found in almost all leases. STEEVENS. So, in No Wit like a Woman's, a comedy, by Middleton, 1657: "That lets her not to be your daughter now." MALONE. 3 Heaven will DIRECT it.] Perhaps it may be more apposite to read, "Heaven will detect it." FARMER. Marcellus answers Horatio's question, "To what issue will this come?" and Horatio also answers it himself with a pious resignation, "Heaven will direct it." BLACKSTONE. SCENE V. A more remote Part of the Platform. Re-enter Ghost and HAMLET. HAM. Whither* wilt thou lead me? speak, I'll go My hour is almost come, Alas, poor ghost! When I to sulphurous and tormenting flames Must render up myself. Нам. GHOST. Pity me not, but lend thy serious hearing To what I shall unfold. Нам. Speak, I am bound to hear. GHOST. So art thou to revenge, when thou shalt hear. HAM. What? GHOST. I am thy father's spirit; Doom'd for a certain term to walk the night; * First folio, where. • Doom'd for a certain term to walk the night; And, for the day, confin'd to FAST in fires,] Chaucer has a similar passage with regard to the punishments of hell, Parson's Tale, p. 193, Mr. Urry's edition: "And moreover the misese of hell, shall be in defaute of mete and drinke." SMITH. Nash, in his Pierce Penniless his Supplication to the Devil, 1595, has the same idea: "Whether it be a place of horror, stench and darkness, where men see meat, but can get none, and are ever thirsty," &c. Before I had read the Persones Tale of Chaucer, I supposed that he meant rather to drop a stroke of satire on sacerdotal luxury, than to give a serious account of the place of future torment. Chaucer, however, is as grave as Shakspeare. So, likewise at the conclusion of an ancient pamphlet called The Wyll of the Devyll, bl. 1. no date : "Thou shalt lye in frost and fire "With sicknesse and hunger;" &c. Till the foul crimes, done in my days of nature, Are burnt and purg'd away 5. But that I am forbid To tell the secrets of my prison-house, I could a tale unfold, whose lightest word Would harrow up thy soul; freeze thy young blood; Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres ; Again, in Love's Labour's Lost: 66 - love's fasting pain.". It is observable, that in the statutes of our religious houses, most of the punishments affect the diet of the offenders. But for the foregoing examples, I should have supposed we ought to read—" confin'd to waste in fires." STEEVENS. This passage requires no amendment. As spirits were supposed to feel the same desires and appetites that they had on earth, to fast might be considered as one of the punishments inflicted on the wicked. M. MASON. 5 Are burnt and purg'd away.] Gawin Douglas really changes the Platonic hell into the "punytion of saulis in purgatory:" and it is observable, that when the Ghost informs Hamlet of his doom there 66 Till the foul crimes done in his days of nature "Are burnt and purg'd away—" the expression is very similar to the Bishop's. I will give you his version as concisely as I can : "It is a nedeful thyng to suffer panis and torment ;-Sum in the wyndis, sum under the watter, and in the fire uthir sum: thus the mony vices 66 Contrakkit in the corpis be done away "And purgit." 66 Sixte Book of Eneados, fol. p. 191. FARMER. Shakspeare might have found this expression in The Hystorie of Hamblet, bl. I. F. 2, edit. 1608: He set fire in the foure corners of the hal, in such sort, that of all that were as then therein not one escaped away, but were forced to purge their sinnes by fire." MALONE. Shakspeare talks more like a Papist, than a Platonist; but the language of Bishop Douglas is that of a good Protestant: "Thus the mony vices "Contrakkit in the corpis be done away "And purgit." These are the very words of our Liturgy, in the commendatory prayer for a sick person at the point of departure, in the office for the visitation of the sick :-"Whatsoever defilements it may have contracted-being purged and done away." WHALLEY. Make thy two EYES, like stars, START FROM THEIR SPHERES :] So, in our poet's 108th Sonnet: Thy knotted and combined locks to part, To ears of flesh and blood :-List, list, O list!— HAM. O heaven! GHOST. Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder". HAM. Murder? GHOST. Murder most foul, as in the best it is; *First folio, knotty. † First folio, list, Hamlet, oh list. "How have mine eyes out of their spheres been fitted, "In the distraction of this madding fever!" MALONE. 7-FRETFUL porcupine:] The quartos read-fearful, &c. Either epithet may serve. This animal is at once irascible and timid. The same image occurs in The Romaunt of the Rose, where Chaucer is describing the personage of danger : "Like sharpe urchons his heere was grow." An urchin is a hedge-hog. The old copies, however, have-porpentine, which is frequently written by our ancient poets instead of porcupine. So, in Skialetheia, a collection of Epigrams, Satires, &c. 1598: "Porpentine-backed, for he lies on thornes." STEEVENS. 8 Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.] As a proof that this play was written before 1597, of which the contrary has been asserted by Mr. Holt in Dr. Johnson's Appendix, I must borrow, as usual, from Dr. Farmer: " Shakspeare is said to have been no extraordinary actor; and that the top of his performance was the Ghost in his own Hamlet. Yet this chef d'œuvre did not please: I will give you an original stroke at it. Dr. Lodge published in the year 1596, a pamphlet called Wit's Miserie, or the World's Madness, discovering the incarnate Devils of the Age, quarto. One of these devils is, Hate-virtue, or sorrow for another man's good successe, who, says the doctor, is a foule lubber, and looks as pale as the vizard of the Ghost, which cried so miserably at the theatre, Hamlet revenge." STEEVENS. I suspect that this stroke was levelled not at Shakspeare, but at the performer of the Ghost in an older play on this subject, exhibited before 1589. See An Attempt to ascertain the Order of Shakspeare's Plays. MALONE. But this most foul, strange, and unnatural. HAM. Haste me* to know it; that I, with wings as swift As meditation, or the thoughts of love, May sweep to my revenge. GHOST. I find thee apt; And duller should'st thou be than the fat weed *First folio, Haste, haste me. 9 As meditation, or the thoughts of love,] This similitude is extremely beautiful. The word meditation is consecrated, by the mysticks, to signify that stretch and flight of mind which aspires to the enjoyment of the supreme good. So that Hamlet, considering with what to compare the swiftness of his revenge. chooses two of the most rapid things in nature, the ardency of divine and human passion, in an enthusiast and a lover. WARBURTON. The comment on the word meditation is so ingenious, that I hope it is just. JOHNSON. And duller should'st thou be than the fat weed That roots itself in ease on Lethe wharf,] Shakspeare, apparently through ignorance, makes Roman Catholicks of these Pagan Danes; and here gives a description of purgatory; but yet mixes it with the Pagan fable of Lethe's wharf. Whether he did it to insinuate to the zealous Protestants of his time, that the Pagan and Popish purgatory stood both upon the same footing of credibility, or whether it was by the same kind of licentious inadvertence that Michael Angelo brought Charon's bark into his picture of the Last Judgment, is not easy to decide. WARBURTON. "That roots itself in ease," &c. Thus the quarto 1604. The folio reads-That rots itself,' &c. I have preferred the reading of the original copy. Indeed in general the readings of the original copies, when not corrupt, ought, in my opinion, not to be departed from, without very strong reason. That roots itself in ease, means, whose sluggish root is idly extended. The modern editors read-Lethe's wharf; but the reading of the old copy is right. So, in Sir Aston Cockain's Poems, 1658, p. 177: 66 fearing these great actions might die, Neglected cast all into Lethe lake." MALONE. "That rots itself in ease, &c." The quarto reads-That roots itself. Mr. Pope follows it. Otway has the same thought: like a coarse and useless dunghill weed Fix'd to one spot, and rot just as I grow." 66 66 |