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And what make you from Wittenberg, Horatio?—
Marcellus?

Mar. My good lord,

Ham. I am very glad to see you; good even, sir.1
But what, in faith, make you from Wittenberg?
Hor. A truant disposition, good my lord.
Ham. I would not hear your enemy say so;
Nor shall you do mine ear that violence,
To make it truster of your own report
Against yourself: I know, you are no truant.
But what is your affair in Elsinore?

We'll teach you to drink deep, ere you depart.

Hor. My lord, I came to see your father's funeral.
Ham. I pray thee, do not mock me, fellow-student;
I think, it was to see my mother's wedding.

Hor. Indeed, my lord, it follow'd hard upon.
Ham. Thrift, thrift, Horatio! the funeral bak'd meats

what make you -] A familiar phrase for what are you doing. Johnson.

See Vol. V, p. 9, n. 4. Steevens.

1

good even, sir.] So the copies. Sir Thomas Hanmer and Dr. Warburton put it-good morning. The alteration is of no importance, but all licence is dangerous. There is no need of any change. Between the first and eighth scene of this Act it is apparent, that a natural day must pass, and how much of it is already over, there is nothing that can determine. The King has held a council. It may now as well be evening as morning. Johnson. The change made by Sir T. Hanmer might be justiñed by what Marcellus said of Hamlet at the conclusion of sc. i:

2

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and I this morning know

"Where we shall find him most convenient."

Steevens.

the funeral bak'd meats —] It was anciently the general custom to give a cold entertainment to mourners at a funeral. In distant counties this practice is continued among the yeomanry. See The Tragique Historie of the Faire Valeria of London, 1598: "His corpes was with funerall pompe conveyed to the church, and there sollemnly enterred, nothing omitted which necessitie or custom could claime; a sermon, a banquet, and like observations." Again, in the old romance of Syr Degore, bl. 1. no date: "A great feaste would he holde

"Upon his quenes mornynge day,

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"That was buryed in an abbay.' Collins.

See also, Hayward's Life and Raigne of King Henrie the Fourth, 4to. 1599, p. 135: "Then hee [King Richard II] was conveyed to Langley Abby in Buckinghamshire,-and there obscurely in

Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables. 'Would I had met my dearest foe in heavens Or ever I had seen that day, Horatio !-

My father,

Hor.

My lord?

Methinks, I see my father.

Ham. In my mind's eye, Horatio.

Where,

Hor. I saw him once, he was a goodly king.
Ham. He was a man, take him for all in all,

I shall not look upon his like again.

terred,-without the charge of a dinner for celebrating the funeral." Malone.

3

dearest foe in heaven-] Dearest for direst, most dreadful, most dangerous. Johnson.

Dearest is most immediate, consequential, important. So, in Romeo and Juliet:

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- a ring that I must use

"In dear employment."

Again, in Beaumont and Fletcher's Maid in the Mill: "You meet your dearest enemy in love,

"With all his hate about him." Steevens.

See Timon of Athens, Act V, sc. ii, Vol. XV. Malone.

Or ever-] Thus the quarto, 1604. The folio reads-ere ever. This is not the only instance in which a familiar phraseology has been substituted for one more ancient, in that valuable copy. Malone.

5 In my mind's eye,] This expression occurs again in our author's Rape of Lucrece:

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himself behind

"Was left unseen, save to the eye of mind."

Again, in Chaucer's Man of Lawes Tale:

"But it were with thilke eyen of his minde,

"With which men mowen see whan they ben blinde." Ben Jonson has borrowed it in his Masque called Love's Triumph through Callipolis:

"As only by the mind's eye may be seen."

Again, in the Microcosmos of John Davies of Hereford, 4to. 1605:

"And through their closed eies their mind's eye peeps." Telemachus lamenting the absence of Ulysses, is represented in like manner:

6. Οσσόμενος πατέρ' ἐσθλὸν ἐνὶ φρεσὶν.”

Odyss. L. I, 115.

Steevens.

This expression occurs again in our author's 113th Sonnet: "Since I left you, mine eye is in my mind." Malone.

Hor. My lord, I think I saw him yesternight.

Ham. Saw! who?

Hor. My lord, the king your father.

Ham.

The king my father! Hor. Season your admiration" for a while With an attent ear;8 till I may deliver, Upon the witness of these gentlemen, This marvel to you.

Ham.

For God's love, let me hear.

Hor. Two nights together had these gentlemen, Marcellus and Bernardo, on their watch,

In the dead waist and middle of the night,

Been thus encounter'd. A figure like your father,

6 I shall not look upon his like again.] Mr. Holt proposes to read, from an emendation of Sir Thomas Samwell, Bart. of Upton, near Northampton:

Eye shall not look upon his like again;

and thinks it is more in the true spirit of Shakspeare than the other. So, in Stowe's Chronicle, p. 746: "In the greatest pomp that euer eye behelde." Again, in Sandys's Travels, p. 150: "We went this day through the most pregnant and pleasant valley that ever eye beheld."

Again, in Sidney's Arcadia, Lib. III, p. 293, edit. 1633: -as cruell a fight as eye did ever see."

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7 Season your admiration —] That is, temper it. 8 With an attent ear;] Spenser, as well as our tent for attentive. Malone.

Steevens.

Johnson. poet, uses at

In the dead waist and middle of the night,] This strange phraseology seems to have been common in the time of Shakspeare. By waist is meant nothing more than middle; and hence the epithet dead did not appear incongruous to our poet. So, in Marston's Malecontent, 1604:

""Tis now about the immodest waist of night." i. c. midnight. Again, in The Puritan, a comedy, 1607: " the day be spent to the girdle, —”

ere

In the old copies the word is spelt wast, as it is in the second Act, sc. ii: "Then you live about her wast, or in the middle of her favours." The same spelling is found in King Lear, Act IV, sc. vi: "Down from the wast, they are centaurs." See also, Minsheu's Dict. 1617: "Wast, middle, or girdle-steed." We have the same pleonasm in another line in this play:

"And given my heart a working mute and dumb." All the modern editors read-In the dead waste &c. Malone. Dead waste may be the true reading. See Vol. II, p. 35, n. 2.

Steevens.

Armed at point,1 exactly, cap-à-pe,

Appears before them, and, with solemn march,
Goes slow and stately by them: thrice he walk'd,
By their oppress'd and fear-surprized eyes,

Within his truncheon's length; whilst they, distill'd
Almost to jelly with the act of fear,

Stand dumb, and speak not to him. This to me
In dreadful secrecy impart they did;

And I with them, the third night kept the watch:
Where, as they had deliver'd, both in time,
Form of the thing, each word made true and good,
The apparition comes: I knew your father;
These hands are not more like.

Ham.

But where was this?

Mar. My lord, upon the platform where we watch'd. Ham. Did you not speak to it?s

1 Armed at point,] Thus the quartos. The folio: Arm'd at all points. Steevens.

2 with the act of fear,] Fear was the cause, the active cause that distilled them by the force of operation which we strictly call act in voluntary, and power in involuntary agents, but popularly call act in both. Johnson.

The folio reads-bestil'd. Steevens.

Did you not speak to it?] Fielding, who was well acquainted with vulgar superstitions, in his Tom Jones, B. XI, ch. ii, observes that Mrs. Fitzpatrick, "like a ghost, only wanted to be spoke to," but then very readily answered. It seems from this passage, as well as from others in books too mean to be formally quoted, that spectres were supposed to maintain an obdurate silence, till interrogated by the people to whom they appeared.

The drift therefore of Hamlet's question is, whether his father's shade had been spoken to; and not whether Horatio, as a particular or privileged person, was the speaker to it. Horatio tells us he had seen the late king but once, and therefore cannot be imagined to have any particular interest with his apparition.

The vulgar notion that a ghost could only be spoken to with propriety and effect by a scholar, agrees very well with the character of Marcellus, a common officer; but it would have disgraced the Prince of Denmark to have supposed the spectre would more readily comply with Horatio's solicitation, merely because it was that of a man who had been studying at a university. We are at liberty to think the Ghost would have replied to Francisco, Bernardo, or Marcellus, had either of them ventured to question it. It was actually preparing to address Horatio, when the cock crew. The convenience of Shakspeare's play, however, required that the phantom should continue dumb till

Hor.

My lord, I did;

But answer made it none: yet once, methought,
It lifted up its head, and did address

Itself to motion, like as it would speak :

.4

But, even then, the morning cock crew loud ;*
And at the sound it shrunk in haste away,
And vanish'd from our sight.

Ham.

'Tis very strange.

Hor. As I do live, my honour'd lord, 'tis true; And we did think it writ down in our duty,

To let you know of it.

Ham. Indeed, indeed, sirs, but this troubles me. Hold you the watch to-night?

All.

Ham. Arm'd, say you?
All.

We do, my lord.

Arm'd, my lord.

Hamlet could be introduced to hear what was to remain concealed in his own breast, or to be communicated by him to some intelligent friend, like Horatio, in whom he could implicitly confide.

By what particular person, therefore, an apparition which exhibits itself only for the purpose of being urged to speak, was addressed, could be of no consequence.

Be it remembered like wise, that the words are not as lately pronounced on the stage,-" Did not you speak to it?"-but"Did you not speak to it?"-How aukward will the innovated sense appear, if attempted to be produced from the passage as it really stands in the true copies!

Did you not speak to it?

The emphasis, therefore, should most certainly rest on-speak. Steevens.

4the morning cock crew loud;] The moment of the evanescence of spirits was supposed to be limited to the crowing of the cock. This belief is mentioned so early as by Prudentius, Cathem. Hymn. I, v. 40. But some of his commentators prove it to be of much higher antiquity.

It is a most inimitable circumstance in Shakspeare, so to have managed this popular idea, as to make the Ghost, which has been so long obstinately silent, and of course must be dismissed by the morning, begin or rather prepare to speak, and to be interrupted, at the very critical time of the crowing of a cock.

Another poet, according to custom, would have suffered his Ghost tamely to vanish, without contriving this start, which is like a start of guilt. To say nothing of the aggravation of the future suspense, occasioned by this preparation to speak, and to impart some mysterious secret. Less would have been expected, had nothing been promised. T. Warton.

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