_Hamlet_, Act I. Sc. 4.
"The dram of eale
Doth all the noble substance of a doubt
To his own scandal."--_Quarto of 1604._
"The dram of eafe."
_Quarto of 1605._
"The dram of ill
Doth all the noble substance often dout,
To his own scandal."
_Knight and Collier._
I cannot look upon this emendation, although sanctioned by the two
latest editors of Shakspeare, as by any means a happy one. The original
word in the second quarto, "ease," so nearly resembles "eale" in the
first quarto (especially when printed with the old-fashioned long
"[s]"); and the subsequent transition from _ease_ to _base_ is so
extremely obvious, and at the same time so thoroughly consistent with
the sense, that it is difficult to imagine any plausible ground for the
rejection of _base_ in favour of _ill_. _Dram_ was formerly used (as
_grain_ is at present) to signify an indefinitely small quantity; so
that "the dram of base" presents as intelligible an expression as can be
desired.
But in addition to its easy deduction from the original, _base_
possesses other recommendations, in being the natural antagonist of
_noble_ in the line following, and in the capability of being understood
either in a moral or physical sense.
If the whole passage be understood as merely assertive, then _base_ may
have, in common with _ill_, a moral signification; but if it be
understood as a metaphorical allusion to substantial matter, in
illustration of the moral reflections that have gone before, then _base_
must be taken (which _ill_ cannot) in the physical sense, as a _base
substance_, and, as such, in still more direct antagonism to the _noble
substance_ opposed to it.
In a former paper I had occasion to notice the intimate knowledge
possessed by Shakspeare in the arcana of the several arts; and I now
recognise, in this passage, a metaphorical allusion to the degradation
of gold by the admixture of baser metal. _Gold_ and _lead_ have always
been in poetical opposition as types of the _noble_ and the _base_; and
we are assured by metallurgists, that if lead be added to gold, even in
the small proportion of one part in two thousand, the whole mass is
rendered completely brittle.
The question then is, in what way "the dram of base" affects "all the
noble substance?" Shakspeare says it renders it doubtful or suspicious;
his commentators _make him say_ that it _douts_ or extinguishes it
altogether! And this they do without even the excuse of an originally
imperfect word to exercise conjecture upon. The original word is
_doubt_, the amended one _dout_; and yet the first has been rejected,
and the latter adopted, in editions whose peculiar boast it is to have
restored, in every practicable instance, the original text.
Now, in my opinion, Shakspeare did not intend _doubt_ in this place, to
be a verb at all, but a noun substantive: and it is the more necessary
that this point should be discussed, because the amended passage has
already crept into our dictionaries as authority for the verb _dout_;
thus giving to a very questionable emendation the weight of an
acknowledged text. (Vide Todd's _Johnson_.)
Any person who takes the amended passage, as quoted at the head of this
article, and restores "dout," to its original spelling, will find that
the chief hindrance to a perfect meaning consists in the restriction of
_doth_ to the value of a mere expletive. Let this restriction be
removed, by conferring upon _doth_ the value of an _effective verb_, and
it will be seen that the difficulty no longer remains. The sense then
becomes, "the base _doth_ doubt to the noble," i.e. _imparts_ doubt to
it, or renders it doubtful. We say, a man's good actions _do him
credit_; why not also, his bad ones _do him doubt_? One phrase may be
less familiar than the other, but they are in strict analogy as well
with themselves as with the following example from the _Twelfth Night_,
which is exactly in point:
"Thou hast, Sebastian, done good feature shame."
Hence, since the original word is capable of giving a clear and distinct
meaning, there can be no possible excuse for displacing it, even if the
word to be substituted were as faultless as it is certainly the reverse.
For not only is _dout_ an apocryphal word, but it is _inelegant_ when
placed, as it must be in this instance, in connexion with the expletive
_doth_, being at the same time in itself a verb compounded of _do_.
Neither is the meaning it confers so clear and unobjectionable as to
render it desirable; for in what way can a very small quantity be said
to _dout_, or expel, a very large quantity? To justify such an
expression, the entire identity of the larger must be extinguished,
leaving no part of it to which _the scandal_ mentioned in the third line
could apply.
But an examination of the various places wherein scandal is mentioned by
Shakspeare, shows that the meaning attached by him to that word was
false imputation, or loss of character: therefore, in the contact of the
base and the noble, _the scandal_ must apply _to the noble substance_--a
consideration that must not be lost sight of in any attempt to arrive at
the true meaning of the whole passage.
So far, I have assumed that "often" (the third substitution in the
amended quotation) is the best representative that can be found for the
"of a" of the original; and inasmuch as it is confirmed by general
consent, and is moreover so redundant, in this place, that its absence
or presence scarcely makes any difference in the sense, it is not easily
assailable.
The best way, perhaps, to attempt to supplant it is to suggest a better
word--one that shall still more closely resemble the original letters in
sound and formation, and that shall, in addition, confer upon the sense
not a redundant but an effective assistance. Such a word is _offer_: it
is almost identical (in sound at least) with the original, and it
materially assists in giving a much clearer application to the last
line.
For these reasons, but especially for the last, I adopt _offer_, as a
verb in the infinitive ruled by _doth_, in the sense of causing or
compelling; a sense that must have been in familiar use in Shakspeare's
time, or it would not have been introduced into the translation of
Scripture.
In this view the meaning of the passage becomes, "The base _doth_ the
noble offer doubt, to his own scandal"--that is, causes the noble to
excite suspicion, to the injury of its own character.
Examples of _do_ in this sense are very numerous in Spenser; of which
one is (_F.Q._, iii. 2. 34.):
"To _doe_ the frozen cold away _to fly_."
And in Chaucer (_Story of Ugolino_):
"That they for hunger wolden _do_ him _dien_."
And in Scripture (2 Cor. viii. 1.):
"We _do_ you _to wit_ of the grace of God."
By this reading a very perfect and intelligible meaning is obtained, and
that too by the slightest deviation from the original yet proposed.
By throwing the action of offering doubt upon "the _noble substance_,"
it becomes the natural reference to "his own scandal" in the third line.
Hamlet is moralising upon the tendency of the "noblest virtues," "be
they as pure as grace, as infinite as man may undergo," to take, from
"the stamp of one defect," "_corruption in the general censure_" (a very
close definition of scandal); and he illustrates it by the metaphor:
"The dram of base
_Doth_ all the noble substance offer doubt,
To his own scandal."