[Footnote 2: This may well seem prating inconsistency, but I suppose
means that he must not be represented as without moderation in his
wickedness.]
[Footnote 3: _Untamed_, as a hawk.]
[Footnote 4: The lines are properly arranged in _Q_.
A sauagenes in vnreclamed blood,
Of generall assault.
--that is, 'which assails all.']
[Footnote 5: Here a hesitating pause.]
[Footnote 6: --with the expression of, 'Is that what you would say?']
[Footnote 7: 'a fetch with warrant for it'--a justifiable trick.]
[Footnote 8: Compare _sallied_, 25, both Quartos; _sallets_ 67, 103; and
see _soil'd_, next line.]
[Footnote 9: 'Addition,' epithet of courtesy in address.]
[Footnote 10: _Q_. has not this line]
[Page 68]
_Polon._ At closes in the consequence, I marry,
He closes with you thus. I know the Gentleman,
[Sidenote: He closes thus,]
I saw him yesterday, or tother day; [Sidenote: th'other]
Or then or then, with such and such; and as you say,
[Sidenote: or such,]
[Sidenote: 25] There was he gaming, there o'retooke in's Rouse,
[Sidenote: was a gaming there, or tooke]
There falling out at Tennis; or perchance,
I saw him enter such a house of saile; [Sidenote: sale,]
_Videlicet_, a Brothell, or so forth. See you now;
Your bait of falshood, takes this Cape of truth;
[Sidenote: take this carpe]
And thus doe we of wisedome and of reach[1]
With windlesses,[2] and with assaies of Bias,
By indirections finde directions out:
So by my former Lecture and aduice
Shall you my Sonne; you haue me, haue you not?
_Reynol._ My Lord I haue.
_Polon._ God buy you; fare you well, [Sidenote: ye | ye]
_Reynol._ Good my Lord.
_Polon._ Obserue his inclination in your selfe.[3]
_Reynol._ I shall my Lord.
_Polon._ And let him[4] plye his Musicke.
_Reynol._ Well, my Lord. _Exit_.
_Enter Ophelia_.
_Polon_. Farewell:
How now _Ophelia_, what's the matter?
_Ophe_. Alas my Lord, I haue beene so affrighted.
[Sidenote: O my Lord, my Lord,]
_Polon_. With what, in the name of Heauen?
[Sidenote: i'th name of God?]
_Ophe_. My Lord, as I was sowing in my Chamber, [Sidenote: closset,]
Lord _Hamlet_ with his doublet all vnbrac'd,[5]
No hat vpon his head, his stockings foul'd,
Vngartred, and downe giued[6] to his Anckle,
Pale as his shirt, his knees knocking each other,
And with a looke so pitious in purport,
As if he had been loosed out of hell,
[Footnote 1: of far reaching mind.]
[Footnote 2: The word windlaces is explained in the dictionaries as
_shifts, subtleties_--but apparently on the sole authority of this
passage. There must be a figure in _windlesses_, as well as in _assaies
of Bias_, which is a phrase plain enough to bowlers: the trying of other
directions than that of the _jack_, in the endeavour to come at one with
the law of the bowl's bias. I find _wanlass_ a term in hunting: it had
to do with driving game to a given point--whether in part by getting to
windward of it, I cannot tell. The word may come of the verb wind, from
its meaning '_to manage by shifts or expedients_': _Barclay_. As he has
spoken of fishing, could the _windlesses_ refer to any little instrument
such as now used upon a fishing-rod? I do not think it. And how do the
words _windlesses_ and _indirections_ come together? Was a windless some
contrivance for determining how the wind blew? I bethink me that a thin
withered straw is in Scotland called a _windlestrae_: perhaps such
straws were thrown up to find out 'by indirection' the direction of the
wind.
The press-reader sends me two valuable quotations, through Latham's
edition of Johnson's Dictionary, from Dr. H. Hammond (1605-1660), in
which _windlass_ is used as a verb:--
'A skilful woodsman, by windlassing, presently gets a shoot, which,
without taking a compass, and thereby a commodious stand, he could never
have obtained.'
'She is not so much at leasure as to windlace, or use craft, to satisfy
them.'
To _windlace_ seems then to mean 'to steal along to leeward;' would it
be absurd to suggest that, so-doing, the hunter _laces the wind_?
Shakspere, with many another, I fancy, speaks of _threading the night_
or _the darkness_.
Johnson explains the word in the text as 'A handle by which anything is
turned.']
[Footnote 3: 'in your selfe.' may mean either 'through the insight
afforded by your own feelings'; or 'in respect of yourself,' 'toward
yourself.' I do not know which is intended.]
[Footnote 4: 1st Q. 'And bid him'.]
[Footnote 5: loose; _undone_.]
[Footnote 6: His stockings, slipped down in wrinkles round his ankles,
suggested the rings of _gyves_ or fetters. The verb _gyve_, of which the
passive participle is here used, is rarer.]
[Page 70]
To speake of horrors: he comes before me.
_Polon._ Mad for thy Loue?
_Ophe._ My Lord, I doe not know: but truly I do feare it.[1]
_Polon._ What said he?
_Ophe._[2] He tooke me by the wrist, and held me hard;
Then goes he to the length of all his arme;
And with his other hand thus o're his brow,
He fals to such perusall of my face,
As he would draw it. Long staid he so, [Sidenote: As a]
At last, a little shaking of mine Arme:
And thrice his head thus wauing vp and downe;
He rais'd a sigh, so pittious and profound,
That it did seeme to shatter all his bulke, [Sidenote: As it]
And end his being. That done, he lets me goe,
And with his head ouer his shoulders turn'd, [Sidenote: shoulder]
He seem'd to finde his way without his eyes,
For out adores[3] he went without their helpe; [Sidenote: helps,]
And to the last, bended their light on me.
_Polon._ Goe with me, I will goe seeke the King, [Sidenote: Come, goe]
This is the very extasie of Loue,
Whose violent property foredoes[4] it selfe,
And leads the will to desperate Vndertakings,
As oft as any passion vnder Heauen, [Sidenote: passions]
That does afflict our Natures. I am sorrie,
What haue you giuen him any hard words of late?
_Ophe_. No my good Lord: but as you did command,
[Sidenote: 42, 82] I did repell his Letters, and deny'de
His accesse to me.[5]
_Pol_. That hath made him mad.
I am sorrie that with better speed and Judgement
[Sidenote: better heede]
[Sidenote: 83] I had not quoted[6] him. I feare he did but trifle,
[Sidenote: coted[6] | fear'd]
And meant to wracke thee: but beshrew my iealousie:
[Footnote 1: She would be glad her father should think so.]
[Footnote 2: The detailed description of Hamlet and his behaviour that
follows, must be introduced in order that the side mirror of narrative
may aid the front mirror of drama, and between them be given a true
notion of his condition both mental and bodily. Although weeks have
passed since his interview with the Ghost, he is still haunted with the
memory of it, still broods over its horrible revelation. That he had,
probably soon, begun to feel far from certain of the truth of the
apparition, could not make the thoughts and questions it had awaked,
cease tormenting his whole being. The stifling smoke of his mother's
conduct had in his mind burst into loathsome flame, and through her he
has all but lost his faith in humanity. To know his uncle a villain, was
to know his uncle a villain; to know his mother false, was to doubt
women, doubt the whole world.
In the meantime Ophelia, in obedience to her father, and evidently
without reason assigned, has broken off communication with him: he reads
her behaviour by the lurid light of his mother's. She too is false! she
too is heartless! he can look to her for no help! She has turned against
him to curry favour with his mother and his uncle!
Can she be such as his mother! Why should she not be? His mother had
seemed as good! He would give his life to know her honest and pure.
Might he but believe her what he had believed her, he would yet have a
hiding-place from the wind, a covert from the tempest! If he could but
know the truth! Alone with her once more but for a moment, he would read
her very soul by the might of his! He must see her! He would see her! In
the agony of a doubt upon which seemed to hang the bliss or bale of his
being, yet not altogether unintimidated by a sense of his intrusion, he
walks into the house of Polonius, and into the chamber of Ophelia.
Ever since the night of the apparition, the court, from the behaviour
assumed by Hamlet, has believed his mind affected; and when he enters
her room, Ophelia, though such is the insight of love that she is able
to read in the face of the son the father's purgatorial sufferings, the
picture of one 'loosed out of hell, to speak of horrors,' attributes all
the strangeness of his appearance and demeanour, such as she describes
them to her father, to that supposed fact. But there is, in truth, as
little of affected as of actual madness in his behaviour in her
presence. When he comes before her pale and trembling, speechless and
with staring eyes, it is with no simulated insanity, but in the agonized
hope, scarce distinguishable from despair, of finding, in the testimony
of her visible presence, an assurance that the doubts ever tearing his
spirit and sickening his brain, are but the offspring of his phantasy.
There she sits!--and there he stands, vainly endeavouring through her
eyes to read her soul! for, alas,
there's no art
To find the mind's construction in the face!
--until at length, finding himself utterly baffled, but unable, save by
the removal of his person, to take his eyes from her face, he retires
speechless as he came. Such is the man whom we are now to see wandering
about the halls and corridors of the great castle-palace.
He may by this time have begun to doubt even the reality of the sight he
had seen. The moment the pressure of a marvellous presence is removed,
it is in the nature of man the same moment to begin to doubt; and
instead of having any reason to wish the apparition a true one, he had
every reason to desire to believe it an illusion or a lying spirit.
Great were his excuse even if he forced likelihoods, and suborned
witnesses in the court of his own judgment. To conclude it false was to
think his father in heaven, and his mother not an adulteress, not a
murderess! At once to kill his uncle would be to seal these horrible
things irrevocable, indisputable facts. Strongest reasons he had for not
taking immediate action in vengeance; but no smallest incapacity for
action had share in his delay. The Poet takes recurrent pains, as if he
foresaw hasty conclusions, to show his hero a man of promptitude, with
this truest fitness for action, that he would not make unlawful haste.
Without sufficing assurance, he would have no part in the fate either of
the uncle he disliked or the mother he loved.]
[Footnote 3: _a doors_, like _an end_. 51, 175.]
[Footnote 4: _undoes, frustrates, destroys_.]
[Footnote 5: See quotation from _1st Quarto,_ 43.]
[Footnote 6: _Quoted_ or _coted: observed_; Fr. _coter_, to mark the
number. Compare 95.]
[Page 72]
It seemes it is as proper to our Age, [Sidenote: By heauen it is]
To cast beyond our selues[1] in our Opinions,
As it is common for the yonger sort
To lacke discretion.[2] Come, go we to the King,
This must be knowne, which being kept close might moue
More greefe to hide, then hate to vtter loue.[3] [Sidenote: Come.]
_Exeunt._
_SCENA SECUNDA._[4]
_Enter King, Queene, Rosincrane, and Guildensterne Cum alijs.
[Sidenote: Florish: Enter King and Queene, Rosencraus and
Guyldensterne.[5]]
_King._ Welcome deere _Rosincrance_ and _Guildensterne_.
Moreouer,[6] that we much did long to see you,
The neede we haue to vse you, did prouoke
[Sidenote: 92] Our hastie sending.[7] Something haue you heard
Of _Hamlets_ transformation: so I call it, [Sidenote: so call]
Since not th'exterior, nor the inward man [Sidenote: Sith nor]
Resembles that it was. What it should bee
More then his Fathers death, that thus hath put him
So much from th'understanding of himselfe,
I cannot deeme of.[8] I intreat you both, [Sidenote: dreame]
That being of so young dayes[9] brought vp with him:
And since so Neighbour'd to[10] his youth,and humour,
[Sidenote: And sith | and hauior,]
That you vouchsafe your rest heere in our Court
Some little time: so by your Companies
To draw him on to pleasures, and to gather
[Sidenote: 116] So much as from Occasions you may gleane,
[Sidenote: occasion]
[A]
That open'd lies within our remedie.[11]
[Footnote A: _Here in the Quarto_:--