Hamlet
Act I Sc. 1
“With what we two nights have seen.”
“Of unimproved mettle hot and full.”
I prefer ‘inapproved,’ of the 4to 1603.
“Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets
As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood,
Disasters in the sun.”
One line at least, as Malone also saw, has been lost after the first. Perhaps for ‘disasters’ we might read distempers: “distemperature of the sun” (1 Hen. IV. v. 1).
Sc. 2
“And what make you from Wittenberg, Horatio?”
I suspect that here and in a following line, and in ii. 2, we should read ‘makes,’ with an ellipsis of be. The answers seem to indicate it.
“Take thy fair hour, Laertes. Time be thine,
And thy best graces; spend it at thy will.”
I think we should read ‘my best’ for the sake of sense.
“Mine do I impart toward you. For your intent.”
“He was a man, take him for all in all....
I shall not look upon his like again.”
There is an evident aposiopesis here.
Sc. 3
“Forward not permanent, sweet but not lasting.”
The metre requires the addition of a syllable. In the next line the folio omits ‘perfume and’—a clear proof of the omissions made by printers.
“The friends thou hast and their adoption tried.”
The more appropriate term would seem to be adaption.
“Are of a most select and generous chief in that.”
This is not sense; so some read
“Are most select and generous, chief in that.”
Steevens read choice for ‘chief’; and I have adopted his reading. The more appropriate term, however, would have been taste.
“Or—not to crack the wind of the poor phrase
To wrong it thus—you’ll tender me a fool.”
This—with the omission of To, which had probably been effaced in the MS.—is the reading of the 4tos, and is most probably correct. (Introd. p. 79.) The editors of the folio, not seeing any sense in ‘Wrong,’ read ‘Roaming,’ which makes no sense at all; neither indeed does ‘To wrong’ make a very good one. We might read—supposing the allusion to be to a horse—To run, as in “You run this humour out of breath” (Com. of Err. i. 1). In King John (ii. 1) we have ‘roam’ for run.
“Breathing like sanctified and pious bonds.”
Theobald, who is usually followed, read bawds for ‘bonds’; but surely bawds could not with any propriety be called ‘sanctified and pious.’ The truth is, the poet’s word was ‘bonds,’ but the editors have not understood it, Singer, for example, calling it nonsense. The whole passage is merely a poetic periphrasis of seduction under promise of marriage; and had the word been Sounding, not ‘Breathing,’ there would probably have been no mistake.
“Have you so slander any moment leisure.”
Collier’s folio reads squander, which may be right; but we have “She slanders so her judgement” (Cymb. iii. 5), and “To slander music any more than once” (Much Ado, ii. 3). In ‘any moment leisure’ the structure is perfectly correct.
Sc. 4
“The King doth wake to-night, and takes his rouse,
Keeps wassail, and the swaggering upspring reels.”
Here ‘wake’ is like watch (see Macb. ii. 2), sits up late. In the next line I would for ‘swaggering’ read staggering. ‘Upspring’ is probably used collectively for the risers from the table, a mode of expression not yet obsolete. “The space was filled by the in-rush before he had time to make his way out.”—Mrs. Gaskell, Sylvia’s Lovers, ch. xii.
“The dram of eale
Doth all the noble substance, of a doubt
To his own scandal....—Look, my lord! it comes.”
This passage is not in the folio. As in 4to 1604, where it occurs, we have in ii. 1 ‘a deale’ for ‘a devil,’ I here read evil for ‘eale’; in both cases vi may have been written like a; and for ‘of a doubt,’ which is to be found nowhere else, out o’ doubt, or perhaps ‘out of a doubt:’ some read often dout. The sentence, we may see, is not complete, and it should also be recollected that the language of the whole of the speech is involved, as if the speaker was thinking of something else, and merely talking against time.
“Making night hideous and we fools of nature.”
Grammar would require us for ‘we.’
Sc. 5
“Hear what?—I am thy father’s spirit.”
The repetition of Hear from preceding line seems necessary. Omissions of this kind are not unfrequent.
“And for the day confin’d to fast in fires.”
Heath proposed lasting for ‘fast in,’ but, I think, with a loss of vigour, if a gain of correctness. ‘Confin’d’ may here signify limited, restrained. See on M. for M. iv. 3.
“That roots itself in ease on Lethe wharf.”
The folio reads rots, which Mr. Dyce adopts.
“Of life, of crown, of queen, at once despatch’d.”
So the originals read, except 4to 1603, which has depriv’d, perhaps a better reading. ‘Despatch’d,’ which seems to be more forceable, is to be taken in the sense of dépêché, Fr., hurried away, and ‘of’ in its original sense of from.
“Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin.”
Better to read ‘blossom’ and ‘sins.’
“O horrible! O horrible! most horrible.”
Beyond question, as Johnson saw, this exclamation belongs to Hamlet. Ham. and Ghost had been effaced.
“But come; swear here, as before, never, so help you Mercy.”
The sense demands swear.