Queen. No more. Enter Ghost. A king Ham. Of shreds and patches:3 Save me, and hover o'er me with your wings, You heavenly guards!-What would your gracious figure? Queen. Alas, he's mad. Ham. Do you not come your tardy son to chide, Ghost. Do not forget: This visitation Ham. How is it with you, lady? Queen. Alas, how is't with you? 3 A king Of shreds and patches:] This is said, pursuing the idea of the vice of kings. The vice was dressed as a fool, in a coat of partycoloured patches. laps'd in time and passion,] That, having suffered time to slip, and passion to cool, lets go, &c. 5 Conceit in weakest bodies-] Conceit for imagination. 6 — like life in excrements,] Not only the hair of animals having neither life nor sensation was called an excrement, but the feathers of birds had the same appellation. Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper His form and cause conjoin'd, preaching to stones, My stern effects: then what I have to do Will want true colour; tears, perchance, for blood. Ham. Queen. No, nothing, but ourselves. Ham. Why, look you there! look, how it steals away! My father, in his habit as he liv'd! Look, where he goes, even now, out at the portal! [Exit Ghost. Queen. This is the very coinage of your brain: This bodiless creation ecstasy Is very cunning in. Ham. Ecstasy! My pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep time, 7 Would make them capable.] Capable here signifies intelligent; endued with understanding. My stern effects:] Effects for actions; deeds effected. Repent what's past; avoid what is to come; Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg; Yea, curb' and woo, for leave to do him good. Queen. O Hamlet! thou hast cleft my heart in twain. Ham. O, throw away the worser part of it, That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat To the next abstinence: the next more easy: [Pointing to POLONIUS. 9 do not spread the compost, &c.] Do not, by any new indulgence, heighten your former offences. 1 curb-] That is, bend and truckle, Fr. courber. To punish me with this, and this with me,] To punish me by making me the instrument of this man's death, and to punish this man by my hand. I must be cruel, only to be kind: Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind.- Queen. What shall I do? Ham. Not this, by no means, that I bid you do: Let the bloat king tempt you again to bed; Pinch wanton on your cheek; call you, his mouse; And let him, for a pair of reechy kisses," Or padling in your neck with his damn'd fingers, Make you to ravel all this matter out, That I essentially am not in madness, But mad in craft. "Twere good, you let him know: And break your own neck down. Queen. Be thou assur'd, if words be made of breath, And breath of life, I have no life to breathe Ham. I must to England; you know that? Let the bloat king-] This again hints at his intemperance. He had already drank himself into a dropsy. BLACKSTONE. his mouse;] Mouse was once a term of endearment. ―reechy kisses,] Reechy is smoky. The author meant to convey a coarse idea, and was not very scrupulous in his choice of an epithet. 5 6 —a gib,] Gib was a common name for a cat. 7 To try conclusions,] i. e. experiments. I must to England;] Shakspeare does not inform us how Hamlet came to know that he was to be sent to England. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were made acquainted with the King's intentions for the first time in the very last scene; and they do not appear to have had any communication with the Prince since that time: Queen. I had forgot; 'tis so concluded on. Alack, Ham. There's letters seal'd: and my two schoolfellows, Whom I will trust, as I will adders fang'd,'— Hoist' with his own petar: and it shall go hard, I'll lug the guts into the neighbour room:— [Exeunt severally; HAMLET dragging in Po LONIUS. adders fang'd,] That is, adders with their fangs or poisonous teeth, undrawn. Hoist, &c.] Hoist, for hoised; as past, for passed. 2 When in one line two crafts directly meet.] Still alluding to a countermine. 3 Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you:] Shakspeare has been unfortunate in his management of the story of this play, the most striking circumstances of which arise so early in its formation, as not to leave him room for a conclusion suitable to the importance of its beginning. After this last interview with the Ghost, the character of Hamlet has lost all its consequence. STEEVENS. |