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From the first corse, till he that died to-day,
This must be 80. We pray you, throw to earth
This unprevailing woe; and think of us
As of a father: for let the world take note,
You are the most immediate to our throne;
And, with no less nobility of love,"

Than that which dearest father bears his son,
Do I impart toward you. For your intent

▲ And, with no less nobility of love,] Nobility, for magnitude.

Warburton.

Nobility is rather generosity. Johnson. By nobility of love, Mr. Heath understands, eminence and distinction of love.

Malone.

So, afterwards, the Ghost, describing his affection for the Queen :

"To me, whose love was that of dignity" &c. Steevens. Do I impart toward you.] I believe impart is, impart myself, communicate whatever I can bestow. Johnson.

The crown of Denmark was elective. So, in Sir Clyomon, Knight of the Golden Shield, &c. 1599:

"And me possess for spoused wife, who in election am

"To have the crown of Denmark here, as heir unto the same." The king means, that as Hamlet stands the fairest chance to be next elected, he will strive with as much love to ensure the crown to him, as a father would show in the continuance of heirdom to a son. Steevens.

I agree with Mr. Steevens, that the crown of Denmark (as in most of the Gothick kingdoms) was elective, and not hereditary; though it must be customary, in elections, to pay some attention to the royal blood, which by degrees produced hereditary succession. Why then do the rest of the commentators so often treat Claudius as an usurper, who had deprived young Hamlet of his right by heirship to his father's crown? Hamlet calls him drunkard, murderer, and villain; one who had carried the election by low and mean practices; had

had

66 Popp'd in between the election and my hopes.”

"From a shelf the precious diadem stole,

"And put it in his pocket:"

but never hints at his being an usurper. His discontent arose from his uncle's being preferred before him, not from any legal right which he pretended to set up to the crown. Some regard was probably had to the recommendation of the preceding prince, in electing the successor. And therefore young Hamlet had "the voice of the king himself for his succession in Denmark;" and he at his own death prophecies that "the election would light on Fortinbras, who had his dying voice," conceiving that by the death of his uncle, he himself had been king for

In going back to school in Wittenberg,
It is most retrograde to our desire:
And, we beseech you, bend you to remain
Here, in the cheer and comfort of our eye,
Our chiefest courtier, cousin, and our son.

Queen. Let not thy mother lose her prayers, Hamlet;
I pray thee, stay with us, go not to Wittenberg.
Ham. I shall in all my best obey you, madam.
King. Why, 'tis a loving and a fair reply;
Be as ourself in Denmark.-Madam, come;
This gentle and unforc'd accord of Hamlet
Sits smiling to my heart: in grace whereof,
No jocund health, that Denmark drinks to-day,
But the great cannon to the clouds shall tell;
And the king's rouse1 the heaven shall bruit again,

an instant, and had therefore a right to recommend. When, in the fourth Act, the rabble wished to choose Laertes king, I understand that antiquity was forgot, and custom violated, by electing a new king in the life-time of the old one, and perhaps also by the calling in a stranger to the royal blood. Blackstone. 6 to school in Wittenberg,] In Shakspeare's time there was an university at Wittenberg, to which he has made Hamlet propose to return.

The university of Wittenberg was not founded till 1502, consequently did not exist in the time to which this play is referred. Malone.

Our author may have derived his knowledge of this famous university from The Life of Iacke Wilton, 1594, or The History of Doctor Faustus, of whom the second report (printed in the same year) is said to be " written by an English gentleman, student at Wittenberg, an University of Germany in Saxony." Ritson.

7- - bend you to remain —] i. e. subdue your inclination to go from hence, and remain, &c. Steevens.

8 Sits smiling to my heart:] Thus, the dying Lothario: "That sweet revenge comes smiling to my thoughts." Steevens. Sits smiling to my heart :] Surely it should be:

Sits smiling on my heart. Ritson.

To my heart, I believe, signifies-near to, close, next to, my heart. Steevens.

9 No jocund health,] The King's intemperance is very strongly impressed; every thing that happens to him gives him occasion to drink. Johnson.

1

the king's rouse -] i. e. the king's draught of jollity. See Othello, Act II, sc. iii. Steevens.

So, in Marlowe's Tragical Historie of Doctor Faustus:

"He tooke his rouse with stoopes of Rhennish wine." Ritson.

Re-speaking earthly thunder. Come away.

[Exeunt King, Queen, Lords, &c. PoL. and Laer. Ham. O, that this too too solid flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew !2

Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd

His canon 'gainst self-slaughter!3 O God! O God!
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!

Fy on 't! O fy! 'tis an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed; things rank, and gross in nature,
Possess it merely. That it should come to this!
But two months dead!-nay, not so much, not two:
So excellent a king; that was, to this,

Hyperion to a satyr:5 so loving to my mother,

2 resolve itself into a dew!] Resolve means the same as dissolve. Ben Jonson uses the word in his Volpone, and in the

same sense:

"Forth the resolved corners of his eyes."

Again, in The Country Girl, 1647:

66 my swoln grief, resolved in these tears."

Pope has employed the same word in his version of the second Iliad, 44:

"Resolves to air, and mixes with the night." Steevens.

3 Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd

His canon 'gainst self-slaughter!] The generality of the editions read-cannon, as if the poet's thought were,-Or that the Almighty had not planted his artillery, or arms of vengeance, against self-murder. But the word which I restored (and which was espoused by the accurate Mr. Hughes, who gave an edition of this play) is the true reading, i. e. that he had not restrained suicide by his express law and peremptory prohibition. Theobald. There are yet those who suppose the old reading to be the true one, as they say the word fixed seems to decide very strongly in its favour. I would advise such to recollect Virgil's expression : fixit leges pretio, atque refixit." Steevens. If the true reading wanted any support, it might be found in Cymbeline:

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66

·'gainst self-slaughter

"There is a prohibition so divine,
"That cravens my weak hand.”

In Shakspeare's time canon (norma) was commonly spelt cannon.

Malone.

4 merely.] is entirely, absolutely. See Vol. II, p. 12, n. 2; and Coriolanus, Act III, sc. i, Vol. XIII.

Steevens.

5 So excellent a king; that was, to this, Hyperion to a satyr:] This similitude at first sight seems to

That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth!
Must I remember? why, she would hang on him,

be a little far-fetched; but it has an exquisite beauty. By the Satyr is meant Pan, as by Hyperion, Apollo. Pan and Apollo were brothers, and the allusion is to the contention between those gods for the preference in musick. Warburton.

All our English poets are guilty of the same false quantity, and call Hyperion Hyperion; at least the only instance I have met with to the contrary, is in the old play of Fuimus Troes, 1633: Blow gentle Africus,

"Play on our poops, when Hyperion's son
"Shall couch in west."

Shakspeare, I believe, has no allusion in the present instance, except to the beauty of Apollo, and its immediate opposite, the deformity of a Satyr. Steevens.

6 That he might not beteem the winds of heaven -] In former editions:

That he permitted not the winds of heaven

This is a sophisticated reading, copied from the players in some of the modern editions, for want of understanding the poet, whose text is corrupt in the old impressions: all of which that I have had the fortune to see, concur in reading:

one,

--so loving to my mother,

That he might not beteene the winds of heaven

Visit her face too roughly.

Beteene is a corruption without doubt, but not so inveterate a but that, by the change of a single letter, and the separation of two words mistakenly jumbled together, I am verily persuaded, I have retrieved the poet's reading

That he might not let e'en the winds of heaven &c.

Theobald. The obsolete and corrupted verb-beteene, (in the first folio) which should be written (as in all the quartos) beteeme, was changed, as above, by Mr. Theobald; and with the aptitude of his conjecture succeeding criticks appear to have been satisfied. Beteeme, however, occurs in the tenth Book of Arthur Gold-, ing's version of Ovid's Metamorphoses, 4to. 1587; and, from the corresponding Latin, must necessarily signify, to vouchsafe, deign, permit, or suffer:

66

Yet could he not beteeme

"The shape of anie other bird than egle for to seeme." Sign. R. 1. b.

nulla tamen alite verti

"Dignatur, nisi quæ possit sua fulmina ferre." V. 157. Jupiter (though anxious for the possession of Ganymede) would not deign to assume a meaner form, or suffer change into an humbler shape, than that of the august and vigorous fowl who bears the thunder in his pounces.

As if increase of appetite had grown

By what it fed on: And yet, within a month,

Let me not think on 't;-Frailty, thy name is woman!—
A little month; or ere those shoes were old,
With which she follow'd my poor father's body,
Like Niobe, all tears ;7-why she, even she,-

O heaven! a beast, that wants discourse of reason,
Would have mourn'd longer,-married with my uncle,
My father's brother; but no more like my father,
Than I to Hercules: Within a month;

Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,
She married:-O most wicked speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
It is not, nor it cannot come to, good;

But break, my heart; for I must hold my tongue!
Enter HORATIO, BERNARDO, and MARCELLUS.
Hor. Hail to your lordship!

Ham.

I am glad to see you well: Horatio, or I do forget myself.

Hor. The same, my lord, and your poor servant ever. Ham. Sir, my good friend; I'll change that name with

you.

The existence and signification of the verb beteem being thus established, it follows, that the attention of Hamlet's father to his queen was exactly such as is described in the Enterlude of the Life and Repentance of Marie Magdalaine, &c. by Lewis Wager,

4to. 1567:

"But evermore they were unto me very tender,

"They would not suffer the wynde on me to blowe.”

I have therefore replaced the ancient reading, without the slightest hesitation, in the text.

This note was inserted by me in The Gentleman's Magazine, some years before Mr. Malone's edition of our author (in which the same justification of the old reading-beteeme, occurs,) had made its appearance. Steevens.

7 Like Niobe, all tears;] Shakspeare might have caught this idea from an ancient ballad entitled The falling out of Lovers is the renewing of Love:

"Now I, like weeping Niobe,

"May wash my handes in teares," &c.

Of this ballad Amantium ire &c. is the burden.

8

Steevens.

I'll change that name -] I'll be your servant, you shall be my friend. Johnson.

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