Hor. If your mind dislike anything, obey it: I will forestall their repair hither, and say you are not fit. Ham. Not a whit: we defy augury; there is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 't is not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all. Since no man, of aught he leaves, knows, what is 't to leave betimes? Let be. Enter KING, QUEEN, LAERTES, Lords, OSRIC, and Attendants, with foils, &c. King. I do not fear it: I have seen you both: King. Come, Hamlet, come, and take this hand Your grace hath laid the odds o' the weaker side. from me. [The KING puts the hand of LAERTES into But since he 's bettered, we have therefore odds. that of HAMLET. Ham. Give me your pardon, sir: I have done you wrong; But pardon it, as you are a gentleman. How I am punished with a sore distraction. That might your nature, honor, and exception, Laer. This is too heavy; let me see another. If Hamlet give the first or second hit, cups; Give me the [LAERTES wounds HAMLET; then in scuffling, they change rapiers, and HAMLET wounds LAERTES. King. Part them, they are incensed. Ham. Nay, come again. [The QUEEN falls. Hor. - Never believe it; I am more an antique Roman than a Dane; Hor. They bleed on both sides. - How is it, Here's yet some liquor left. my lord? Osr. How is 't Laertes? Ham. As thou 'rt a man, Give me the cup; let go; by heaven, I'll have it. Laer. Why, as a woodcock to my own springe, O, good Horatio, What a wounded name, Osric: I am justly killed with mine own treachery. King. She swoons to see them bleed. Things standing thus unknown, shall live behind If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart, Queen. No, no, the drink, the drink!-O, my And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain, To tell my story. [March afar off, and shot within. dear Hamlet! The drink, the drink; I am poisoned! [Dies. Laer. It is here, Hamlet. Hamlet, thou art No medicine in the world can do thee good; NOTES. "BAR. Who's there? FRAN. Nay, answer me: stand, and unfold yourself.” Act I., Scene 1. The striking and eminently dramatic opening of this great tragedy has been often praised: but never with more taste and congenial spirit, than by Mrs. Radcliffe. "In nothing," says the very competent authority, "has Shakspeare been more successful, than in selecting circumstances of manners and appearance for his supernatural beings, which, though wild and remote, in the highest degree, from common apprehension, never shock the understanding by incompatibility with themselves; never compel us, for an instant, to recollect that he has a license for extravagance. Above every ideal being, is the ghost of Hamlet, with all its attendant incidents of time and place. The dark watch upon the remote platform; the dreary aspect of the night; the very expression of the officer on guard, The air bites shrewdly; it is very cold; the recollection of a star, an unknown world, are all circumstances which excite forlorn, melancholy, and solemn feelings, and dispose us to welcome, with trembling curiosity, the awful being that draws near; and to indulge in that strange mixture of horror, pity, and indignation, produced by the tale it reveals. Every minute circumstance of the scene between those watching on the platform, and of that between them and Horatio, preceding the entrance of the apparition, contributes to excite some feeling of dreariness, or melancholy, or solemnity, or expectation, in unison with, and leading on toward, that high curiosity and thrilling awe with which we witness the conclusion of the scene. So the first question of Bernardo, and the words in reply, Stand, and unfold yourself." But there is not a single circumstance in either dialogue, not even in this short one with which the play opens, that does not take its secret effect upon the imagination. It ends with Bernardo desiring his brother officer, after having asked whether he has had quiet watch,' to hasten the guard if he should chance to meet them; and we immediately feel ourselves alone on this dreary ground. "When Horatio enters, the challenge - -the dignified answers, 'Friends to this ground,' And liegemen to the Dane'- the question of Horatio to Bernardo touching the apparition- the unfolding of the reason why Horatio has consented to watch with them the minutes of this night' the sitting down together, while Bernardo relates the particulars of what they had seen for two nights-and, above all, the few lines with which he begins his story, Last night of all' -and the distinguishing, by the situation of 'yon same star,' the very point of time when the spirit had appeared-the abruptness with which he breaks off, the bell then beating one'-the instant appearance of the Ghost, as though ratifying the story for the very truth itself; -all these are circumstances which the deepest sensibility only could have suggested; and which, if you read them a thousand times, still continue to affect you almost as much as at first. I thrill with delightful awe, even while I recollect and mention them as instances of the exquisite art of the poet." "In the most high and palmy state of Rome, Act I., Scene 1. The whole of this fine passage is omitted in the first folio edition of Shakspeare. The second quarto (1609) is stated to be " enlarged to almost as much againe as it was;" and it is on this edition that the received text is mainly founded. It contains the passage in question, and many others of great importance which are not found in the folio. The whole of the characteristic scene in the fourth act, between Hamlet and the Captain of Fortinbras, is not in that copy: in its turn, however, it contains some valuable matter which is wanting in the quarto. Indeed, it would be highly injudicious to follow either version implicitly, although upon the whole, the quarto affords, singly considered, the most full and satisfactory text. Malone's reasons for preferring the quarto editions of those plays which did not appear for the first time in the folio, are thus stated in the preface to his edition of 1790:- Fifteen of Shakspeare's plays were printed in quarto antecedent to the first complete collection of his works, which was published by his fellow-comedians, in 1623. These plays are: A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM,' 'LOVE'S LABOR'S LOST, ROMEO AND JULIET,' 'HAMLET,' the Two Parts of HENRY IV.,' RICHARD II.,' RICHARD III.,'MERCHANT OF VENICE, HENRY V.,' MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.'MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR,' TROILUS AND CRESSIDA, KING LEAR,' OTHELLO.' "The players, when they mention these copies, represent them all as mutilated and imperfect; but this was merely thrown out to give an additional value to their own edition, and is not strictly true of any but two of the whole number: THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR,' and HENRY V. With respect to the other thirteen copies, though undoubtedly they were all surreptitious—that is, stolen from the . play-house, and printed without the consent of the author or pro prietors - they, in general, are preferable to the exhibition of the same plays in the folio, for this plain reason: because, instead of printing these plays from a manuscript, the editors of the folio, to save labor, or from some other motive, printed the greater part of them from the very copies which they represented as maimed and imperfect; and frequently from a late, instead of the earliest, edition; in some instances, with additions and alterations of their own. Thus, therefore, the first folio, as far as respects the plays above enumerated, labors under the disadvantage of being, at least, a second, and in some cases a third, edition of these quartos. I do not, however, mean to say, that many valuable corrections of passages, undoubt edly corrupt in the quartos, are not found in the folio copy; or that a single line of these plays should be printed by a careful editor, without a minute examination and collation of both copies; but those quartos were in general the basis on which the folio editors built, and are entitled to our particular attention and examination as first editions. "It is well known to those who are conversant with the business of the press, that (unless when the author corrects and revises his own works) as editions of books are multiplied, their errors are mul The preceding excellent remarks are extracted from a posthumous tiplied also; and that, consequently, every such edition is more or paper by Mrs. Radcliffe, on "THE SUPERNATURAL IN POETRY." *This is a lapse of memory in the writer. The words here quoted are used by Hamlet at the commencement of Scene 4. The occasion, however, is similar. less correct, as it approaches nearer to, or is more distant from, the first." After these remarks, the writer proceeds to give, in support of his main position," a few instances of the gradual progress of corrup tion:" from these instances, we will extract two, as among the most striking: "In the original copy of " HENRY IV.," Part I., printed in 1598 (act iv., scene 4), we find : And what with Owen Glendower's absence thence, (Who with them was a rated sinew too),' &c. "In the fourth quarto, printed in 1608, the article being omitted by the negligence of the compositor, and the line printed thus: 6 Who with them was rated sinew too;' the editor of the next quarto (which was copied by the folio), instead of examining the first edition, amended the error (leaving the metre still imperfect), by reading: 'Who with them was rated firmly too." The instance of gradual perversion just cited, is simply curious: that which follows has the additional value of drollery:- Malone proceeds: "Away to heaven, respective lenity, And fire-eyed fury be my conduct now!' says Romeo, when provoked by the appearance of his rival. Instead of this, which is the reading of the quarto (1597), the line in the quarto (1599) is thus corruptly exhibited; And fire end fury be my conduct now!' In the subsequent quarto copy, and was substituted for end; and accordingly, in the folio, the poet's fine imagery is entirely lost, and Romeo exclaims: And fire and fury be my conduct now!'" From these examples, it will appear that the patient plodding of Shakspeare's editors has not been the useless and ridiculous thing it is often represented. In further justice to Malone (who has, it seems to us, been somewhat harshly censured), we subjoin his statement of the praiseworthy efforts he made to secure correctness in his own edition: "Having often experienced the fallaciousness of collation by the eye, I determined, after I had adjusted the text in the best manner in my power, to have every proof-sheet of my work read aloud to me, while I perused the first folio for those plays which first appeared in that edition; and for all those which had been previously printed, the first quarto copy, excepting only in the instances of THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR,' and HENRY V.,' which, being either sketches or imperfect copies, could not be wholly relied on. *** I had, at the same time, before me a table which I had formed of the variations between the quarto and the folio. By this laborious process, not a single innovation, made either by the editor of the second folio, or any of the modern editors, could escape me." "The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets. *** As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood, &c. Act I., Scene 1. After the word "streets," in the above quotation, a line is, with great probability, supposed to be lost, and a blank space, or a line who twice crossed swiftly; and when the Earl of Derby came to the place where he saw this man, he fell sick." "The glowworm shews the matin to be near, And 'gins to pale his uneffectual fire."— Act I., Scene 4. In the paper by Mrs. Radcliffe, to which we have before alluded, there are some further fine observations on the Ghost scenes of Hamlet, which we subjoin, as infinitely superior in interest to mere verbal criticism: "I should never be weary of dwelling on the perfection of Shakspeare, in his management of every scene connected with that most solemn and mysterious being, which takes such entire possession of the imagination that we hardly seem conscious we are beings of this world while we contemplate the extravagant and erring spirit.' The spectre departs, accompanied by natural circumstances as touching as those by which he had approached. It is by the strange light of the glowworm, which 'gins to pale his uneffectual fire;' it is at the first scent of the morning air-the living breath-that the apparition retires. "I have sometimes thought, as I walked in the deep shade of the North Terrace of Windsor Castle, when the moon shone on all beyond, that the scene must have been present in Shakspeare's mind when he drew the night scenes in Hamlet: and as I have stood on the platform, which there projects over the precipice, and have heard only the measured step of a sentinel, or the clink of his arms, and have seen his shadow passing by moonlight, at the foot of the high eastern tower, I have almost expected to see the royal shade, armed cap-s-pe, standing still on the lonely platform before me. The very star-yon same star, that's westward from the pole'-seemed to watch over the western towers of the Terrace, whose high dark lines marked themselves upon the heavens. All has been so still and shadowy, so great and solemn, that the scene appeared fit for no mortal business, nor no sound that the earth owes.' Did you ever observe the fine effect of the eastern tower, when you stand near the western end of the North Terrace, and its tall profile rears itself upon the sky, from nearly the base to the battled top; the lowness of the parapet permitting this? It is most striking at night, when the stars appear at different heights, upon the tall dark line, and when the Fentinel on watch moves a shadowy figure at its foot." It is in this congenial spirit that Shakspeare should be read. Such poetic associations give additional interest even to the time-honored towers and terraces of royal Windsor. "My liege, and madam, to expostulate, What majesty should be, what duty is,” &c. Act II., Scene 2. Johnson has discussed the conflicting qualities in the character of Polonius, in one of his best notes. "Polonius," he remarks, ** is a man bred in courts; exercised in business: stored with observation; confident in his knowledge; proud of his eloquence; and declining into dotage. His mode of oratory is designed to ridicule the practice of those times, of prefaces that made no introduction, and of method that embarrassed rather than explained. This part of his character is accidental, the rest natural. Such a man is positive and of dashes, is usually left for it: we have, however, thought a minor confident, because he knows that his mind was once strong, and mark of omission [***] sufficient for the purpose. Something is evidently wanting to connect the passage commencing "As stars with trains of fire," &c., with that which immediately precedes it. "I'll cross it, though it blast me."— Act I., Scene 1. knows not that it is become weak. Such a man excels in general principles, but fails in particular application; he is knowing in retro spect, and ignorant in foresight. While he depends upon his memory, and can draw from his depositories of knowledge, he utters weighty sentences, and gives useful counsel; but as the mind in its enfeebled state cannot be kept long busy and intent, the old man is subject to the dereliction of his faculties; he loses the order of his ideas, and It was an ancient superstition that the person who crossed the spot on which a spectre was seen, became thus subject to its malig-entangles himself in his own thoughts, till he recovers the leading nant influence. Ferdinand, Earl of Derby, died young, in 1594; and among the reasons for supposing him to have been killed by witchcraft, was the following:-"On Friday, there appeared a tall man, principle and falls into his former train. The idea of dotage encroaching upon wisdom, will solve all the phenomena of the character of Polonius." |