OPH. Belike, this show imports the argument of the play. Enter Prologue. HAM. We shall know by this fellow *: the players cannot keep counsel; they'll tell all. OPH. Will he tell us what this show meant ? * First folio, these fellows. † First folio, they. The word miching is daily used in the West of England for playing truant, or sculking about in private for some sinister purpose; and malicho, inaccurately written for malheco, signifies mischief; so that miching malecho is mischief on the watch for opportunity. When Ophelia asks Hamlet-" What means this?" she applies to him for an explanation of what she had not seen in the show and not, as Dr. Warburton would have it, the purpose for which the show was contrived. Besides, malhechor no more signifies a poisoner, than a perpetrator of any other crime. HENLEY. If, as Capell declares, (I know not on what authority) Malicho be the Vice of the Spanish Moralities, he should at least be distinguished by a capital. FARMER. It is not, however, easy to be supposed that our readers discover pleasantry or even sense in "this is miching [or munching] mallico," no meaning as yet affixed to these words has entitled them to escape a further investigation. Omit them, and the text unites without their assistance: 66 Oph. What means this, my lord? "Ham. Marry, it means mischief." Among the Shakspearian memoranda of the late Dr. Farmer, I met with the following-" At the beginning of Grim the Collier of Croydon, the Ghost of Malbecco is introduced as a prolocutor." Query, therefore, if the obscure words already quoted, were not originally:"This is mimicking Malbecco;" a private gloss by some friend on the margin of the MS. Hamlet, and thence ignorantly received into the text of Shakspeare." It remains to be observed, that the mimickry imagined by Dr. Farmer, must lie in our author's stage-directions, &c. which, like Malbecco's legend, convey a pointed censure on the infidelity of married women. Or, to repeat the same idea in different words— the drift of the present dumb show and succeeding dialogue, was considered by the glosser as too congenial with the well-known invective in Spenser's Fairy Queen, book iii. or the contracted copy from it in the Induction to Grim the Collier, &c. a comedy which was acted many years before it was printed. See Mr. Reed's Old Plays, vol. xi. p. 189. STEEVENS. HAM. Ay, or any show that you'll show him: Be not you ashamed to show, he'll not shame to tell you what it means. OPH. You are naught, you are naught; I'll mark the play. PRO. For us, and for our tragedy, Here stooping to your clemency, We beg your hearing patiently. HAM. Is this a prologue, or the posy of a ring? OPH. 'Tis brief, my lord. HAM. As woman's love. Enter a King and a Queen. P. KING. Full thirty times hath Phoebus' carts gone round Neptune's salt wash, and Tellus' orbed ground'; 4 Be not you ashamed to show, &c.] The conversation of Hamlet with Ophelia, which cannot fail to disgust every modern reader, is probably such as was peculiar to the young and fashionable of the age of Shakspeare, which was, by no means, an age of delicacy. The poet is, however, blameable; for extravagance of thought, not indecency of expression, is the characteristick of madness, at least of such madness as should be represented on the scene. STEEVENS. But how is he blameable if he did not produce it as a characteristic of madness; and if it was, as Mr. Steevens has remarked, the fashionable style of conversation at that time? BosWELL. cart A chariot was anciently so called. Thus, Chaucer, in The Knight's Tale, Mr. Tyrwhitt's edit. v. 2024 : "The carter overidden with his cart." STEEVENS. Mr. Steevens's quotation from Chaucer will not prove what he produces it for. Our old poet has introduced circumstances much more lowly than that of a carter overridden by his cart; for in stance: "The coke yscalled for all his long ladell." BOSWELL. 6 Full thirty times hath Phoebus' cart gone round Neptune's salt wash, &c.] This speech of the Player King appears to me as a burlesque of the following passage in The Comicall Historie of Alphonsus, by R. G. 1599: "Thrise ten times Phoebus with his golden beames And thirty dozen moons, with borrow'd sheen, About the world have times twelve thirties been; Since love our hearts, and Hymen did our hands, Unite commutual in most sacred bands. P. QUEEN. So many journeys may the sun and moon Make us again count o'er, ere love be done! "Thrise ten times Ceres hath her workemen hir'd, "And fild her barnes with frutefull crops of corne, "Since first in priesthood I did lead my life." TODD. 7 — orbed ground;] So, also, in our author's Lover's Complaint: "Sometimes diverted, their poor balls are tied "To the orbed earth." STEEVENS. 8-sheen,] Splendor, lustre. JOHNSON. 9 - even as they love;] Here seems to have been a line lost, which should have rhymed to love. JOHNSON. This line is omitted in the folio. Perhaps a triplet was designed, and then instead of love, we should read lust. The folio gives the next line thus: "For women's fear and love holds quantity." STEEVENS. Some trace of the lost line is found in the quartos, which read: "Either none in neither aught," &c. Perhaps the words omitted might have been of this import: Either none they feel, or an excess approve ; In neither aught, or in extremity.' In two preceding passages in the quarto, half a line was inadvertently omitted by the compositor. See p. 307, "then senseless Ilium, seeming," &c. and p. 328, "thus conscience does make cowards of us all : "-the words in Italick characters are not found in the quarto. MALONE. Mr. Malone, in his Appendix to Mr. Steevens's Shakspeare, 1778, had hastily observed, in the foregoing note, "There is, I believe, no instance of a triplet being used in our author's time;" but having discovered his mistake, expunged the remark in his own edition. Mr. Steevens, most disingenuously, restored it to its former place, in order that he might triumphantly refute, in the And women's fear and love hold quantity; In neither aught, or in extremity. Now, what my love is, proof hath made you know; And as my love is siz'd, my fear is so1. Where love is great 2, the littlest doubts are fear; Where little fears grow great, great love grows there. P. KING. 'Faith, I must leave thee, love, and note below, an acknowledged error; and Mr. Gifford, misled by this interpolation, has animadverted upon Mr. Malone. BosWELL. Every critick, before he controverts the assertions of his predecessor, ought to adopt the resolution of Othello: "I'll see, before I doubt; what I doubt, prove." In Phaer and Twine's Virgil, 1584, the triplets are so frequent, that in two opposite pages of the tenth book, not less than seven are to be met with. They are likewise as unsparingly employed in Golding's Ovid, 1587. Mr. Malone, in a note on The Tempest, Act V. Sc. I. has quoted a passage from this very work, containing one instance of them. In Chapman's Homer they are also used, &c. &c. &c. In The Tempest, Act IV. Sc. I. Many other examples of them occur in Love's Labour's Lost, Act III. Sc. I. as well as in The Comedy of Errors, Act II. and III. &c. &c.-and, yet more unluckily for my opponent, the Prologue to the Mock Tragedy, now under consideration, consists of a triplet, which in our last edition stood at the top of the same page in which he supposed no instance of a triplet being used in our author's time." STEEVENS. 66 And as my love is siz'D, my fear is so.] Cleopatra expresses herself much in the same manner, with regard to her grief for the loss of Antony: 66 66 our size of sorrow, Proportion'd to our cause, must be as great "As that which makes it." THEOBALD. 2 Where love, &c.] These two lines are omitted in the folio. 3 STEEVENS. OPERANT powers-] Operant is active. Shakspeare gives it in Timon of Athens as an epithet to poison. Heywood has likewise used it in his Royal King and Loyal Subject, 1637 : And thou shalt live in this fair world behind, P. QUEEN. O, confound the rest! Such love must needs be treason in my breast: None wed the second, but who kill'd the first. P. QUEEN. The instances, that second marriage move, Are base respects of thrift, but none of love; When second husband kisses me in bed. P. KING. I do believe, you think what now you speak; But, what we do determine, oft we break. Which now, like fruit unripe, sticks on the tree; To Their own enactures with themselves destroy": * First folio, wormwood, wormwood. may my operant parts "Each one forget their office!" The word is now obsolete. STEEVENS. 4 The INSTANCES,] The motives. JOHNSON. 5 PURPOSE is but the SLAVE to memory;] So, in K. Henry IV. Part I.: "But thought's the slave of life. STEEVENS. 6 what to ourselves is debt :] The performance of a resolution, in which only the resolver is interested, is a debt only to himself, which he may therefore remit at pleasure. JOHNSON. 7 The violence of either grief or joy Their Own ENACTURES with themselves destroy:] What grief |