For it is, as the air, invulnerable, And our vain blows malicious mockery. 'Tis here! [Exit Ghost. Ber. It was about to speak, when the cock crew. Upon a fearful summons. I have heard, The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn,5 Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat standing by the propriety of his addresses to the phantom. Such a man therefore must have known that "As easy might he the intrenchant air as commit any act of violence on the royal shadow. The words -Stop it, Marcellus,-and Do, if it will not stand-better suit the next speaker, Bernardo, who, in the true spirit of an unlettered officer, nihil non arroget armis. Perhaps the first idea that occurs to a man of this description, is to strike at what offends him. Nicholas Poussin, in his celebrated picture of the Crucifixion, has introduced a similar occurrence. While lots are casting for the sacred vesture, the graves are giving up their dead. This prodigy is perceived by one of the soldiers, who instantly grasps his sword, as if preparing to defend himself, or resent such an invasion from the other world. The two next speeches-'Tis here!-'Tis here!-may be allotted to Marcellus and Bernardo; and the third-'Tis gone! &c. to Horatio, whose superiority of character indeed seems to demand it. As the text now stands, Marcellus proposes to strike the Ghost with his partizan, and yet afterwards is made to descant on the indecorum and impotence of such an attempt. The names of speakers have so often been confounded by the first publishers of our author, that I suggest this change with less hesitation than I should express concerning any conjecture that could operate to the disadvantage of his words or meaning. Had the assignment of the old copies been such, would it have been thought liable to objection? Steevens. 5 The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn,] So, the quarto, 1604. Folio-te the day. In England's Parnassus, 8vo. 1600, I find the two following lines ascribed to Drayton, but know not in which of his poems they are found: "And now the cocke, the morning's trumpeter, Mr. Gray has imitated our poet: Awake the god of day; and, at his warning, "The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn, 6 Whether in sea &c.] According to the pneumatology of that time, every element was inhabited by its peculiar order of spirits, who had dispositions different, according to their various places of abode. The meaning therefore is, that all spirits extravagant, wandering out of their element, whether aërial spirits visiting earth, or earthly spirits ranging the air, return to their station, to their proper limits in which they are confined. We might read: And at his warning "Th' extravagant and erring spirit hies But this change, though it would smooth the construction, is not necessary, and, being unnecessary, should not be made against authority. Johnson. A Chorus in Andreini's drama, called Adamo, written in 1613, consists of spirits of fire, air, water, and hell, or subterraneous, being the exiled angels. "Choro di Spiriti ignei, aerei, acquatici, ed infernali," &c. These are the demons to which Shakspeare alludes. These spirits were supposed to controul the elements in which they respectively resided; and when formally invoked or commanded by a magician, to produce tempests, conflagrations, floods, and earthquakes. For thus says The Spanish Mandeville of Miracles, &c. 1600: "Those which are in the middle region of the ayre, and those that are under them nearer the earth, are those, which sometimes out of the ordinary operation of nature doe moove the windes with greater fury than they are accustomed; and do, out of season, congeele the cloudes, causing it to thunder, lighten, hayle, and to destroy the grasse, corne, &c. &c.—Witches and negromancers worke many such like things by the help of those spirits," &c. Ibid. Of this school therefore was Shakspeare's Prospero in The Tempest. T. Warton. Bourne of Newcastle, in his Antiquities of the common People, informs us, "It is a received tradition among the vulgar, that at the time of cock-crowing, the midnight spirits forsake these lower regions, and go to their proper places.-Hence it is, (says he) that in country places, where the way of life requires more early labour, they always go chearfully to work at that time; whereas if they are called abroad sooner, they imagine every thing they see, a wandering ghost." And he quotes on this occasion, as all his predecessors had done, the well-known lines from the first hymn of Prudentius. I know not whose translation he gives us, but there is an old one by Heywood. The pious chansons, the hymns and carrols, which Shakspeare mentions presently, were usually copied from the elder Christian poets. Farmer. The extravagant and erring spirit hies Mar. It faded on the crowing of the cock." 7 The extravagant-] i. e. got out of his bounds. Warburton. So, in Nobody and Somebody, 1598: “. they took me up for a 'stravagant." Shakspeare imputes the same effect to Aurora's harbinger in the the last scene of the third Act of the Midsummer Night's Dream. See Vol. II, p. 330. Steevens. 8 erring spirit,] Erring is here used in the sense of wan dering. Thus, in Chapman's version of the fourth Book of Homer's Odyssey, Telemachus calls Ulysses— My erring father: -" And in the ninth Book, Ulysses describing himself and his com panions to the Cyclop, says― 66 erring Grecians we, "From Troy were turning homewards” Erring, in short, is erraticus. Steevens. 9 It faded on the crowing of the cock,] This is a very ancient superstition. Philostratus giving an account of the apparition of Achilles' shade to Apollonius Tyaneus, says that it vanished with a little glimmer as soon as the cock crowed. Vit. Apol. iv, 16. Steevens. Faded has here its original sense; it vanished. Vado, Lat. So, in Spenser's Fairy Queen, Book I, c. v, st. 15 : "He stands amazed how he thence should fade." That our author uses the word in this sense, appears from the following lines: I 66 The morning cock crew loud; "And at the sound it shrunk in haste away, “And vanish'd from our sight." Malone. can walk. dares stir abroad;] Thus the quarto. The folio readsSteevens. Spirit was formerly used as a monosyllable: sprite. The quarto, 1604, has-dare stir abroad. Perhaps Shakspeare wrote-no spirits dare stir abroad. The necessary correction was made in a late quarto of no authority, printed in 1637. Malone. 2 No fairy takes,] No fairy strikes with lameness or diseases. This sense of take is frequent in this author. Johnson. Hor. So have I heard, and do in part believe it Mar. Let's do 't, I pray; and I this morning know Where we shall find him most convenient. SCENE II. [Exeunt. The same. A Room of State in the same. Enter the King, Queen, HAMLET, POLONIUS, LAERTES, VOLTIMAND, CORNELIUS, Lords, and Attendants. King. Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother's death The memory be green; and that it us befitted To bear our hearts in grief, and our whole kingdom To be contracted in one brow of woe; Yet so far hath discretion fought with nature, So, in The Merry Wives of Windsor: "And there he blasts the tree, and takes the cattle." Steevens. 3 high eastern hill:] The old quarto has it better eastard. Warburton. The superiority of the latter of these readings is not, to me at least, very apparent. I find the former used in Lingua, &c. 1607: 66 and overclimbs "Yonder gilt eastern hills." Again, in Browne's Britannia's Pastorals, Book IV, Sat. iv, p. 75, edit. 1616: "And ere the sunne had clymb'd the easterne hils." Again, in Chapman's version of the thirteenth Book of Homer's Odyssey: 66 Ulysses still "An eye directed to the eastern hill.” Eastern and eastward, alike signify toward the east. Steevens. 4 wrote and that it us befitted -] Perhaps our author elliptically That we with wisest sorrow think on him, Now follows, that you know, young Fortinbras,— Or thinking, by our late dear brother's death, To our most valiant brother.-So much for him. 5 With one auspicious, and one dropping eye;] Thus the folio. The quarto, with somewhat less of quaintness: With an auspicious and a dropping eye. The same thought, however, occurs in The Winter's Tale: "She had one eye declined for the loss of her husband; another ele vated that the oracle was fulfilled." After all, perhaps, we have here only the ancient proverbial phrase "To cry with one eye and laugh with the other," buckram'd by our author for the service of tragedy. See Ray's Collection, edit. 1768, p. 188. Steevens. • Colleagued with this dream of his advantage,] The meaning is,-He goes to war so indiscreetly, and unprepared, that he has no allies to support him but a dream, with which he is colleagued or confederated. Warburton. This dream of his advantage (as Mr. Mason observes) means only “this imaginary advantage, which Fortinbras hoped to derive from the unsettled state of the kingdom." Steevens. |