Danes. Within.] Let her come in.
Laer. How now! what noise is that?

wear your rue with a difference.-There's a daisy. -I would give you some violets; but they withered good end,

Enter OPHELIA, fantastically dressed with Straws all, when my father died :-They say, he made a

and Flowers.

O heat, dry up my brains! tears seven times salt,
Burn out the sense and virtue of mine eye!-
By heaven, thy madness shall be paid with weight,
Till our scale turn the beam. O, rose of May!
Dear maid, kind sister, sweet Ophelia !

O, heavens! is't possible, a young maid's wits
Should be as mortal as an old man's life?
Nature is fine1 in love; and, where 'tis fine,
It sends some precious instance of itself
After the thing it loves.

Oph. They bore him barefac'd on the bier
Hey no nonny, nonny hey nonny :

And in his grave rain'd many a tear ;-
Fare you well, my dove!

Laer. Hadst thou thy wits, and didst persuade revenge,

It could not move thus.

Oph. You must sing, Down-a-down, an you call him a-down-a. O, how the wheel2 becomes it! it is the false steward, that stole his master's daughter. Laer. This nothing's more than matter. Oph. There's rosemary, that's for remembrance; 'pray you, love, remember: and there is pansies, that's for thoughts.3

Laer. A document in madness; thoughts and remembrance fitted.

Oph. There's fennel for you, and columbines :there's rue for you; and here's some for me :-we may call it, herb of grace o' Sundays:—you may

1 'Nature is fine in love.' The three concluding lines of this speech are not in the quarto. The meaning appears to be, Nature is refined or subtilised by love, the senses are rendered more ethereal, and being thus refined, some precious portions of the mental energies fly off, or are sent after the beloved object; when bereft of that object, they are lost to us, and we are left in a state of mental privation :

Even so by love the young and tender wit,
Is turn'd to folly.'
'Love is a smoke, rais'd with the fume of sighs;
Being urg'd, a fire sparkling in lovers' eyes;
Being vex'd, a sea nourish'd with lovers' tears:
What is it else?-a madness,' &c.

verse often interlaced, or the burden of a son, lie, a

For bonny sweet Robin is all my joy,—

[Singe
She turns to favour, and to prettiness.
Laer. Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself,

Oph. And will he not come again?
And will he not come again?
No, no, he is dead,

Go to thy death-bed,

He never will come again.
His beard was as white as snow,
All flaxen was his poll :

He is gone, he is gone,
And we cast away moan;
God 'a mercy on his soul !5

[Sings.

And of all christian souls! I pray God. God be
wi' you!
[Exit OPHELIA.
Laer. Do you see this, O, God?
King. Laertes, I must commune with your grief,
Or you deny me right. Go but apart,
Make choice of whom your wisest friends you will
And they shall hear and judge 'twixt you and me:
If by direct or by collateral hand
They find us touch'd, we will our kingdom give,
Our crown, our life, and all that we call ours,
To you in satisfaction; but, if not,
Be you content to lend your patience to us,

'Rosemarie is for remembrance
Betweene us day and night;
Wishing that I might alwaies have

You present in my sight.'
Rosemarie had this attribute because it was said to
strengthen the memory, and was therefore used as a to-
ken of remembrance and affection between lovers, and
was distributed as an emblem both at weddings and fu-
nerals. Why pansies (pensees) are emblems of thoughts
is obvious. Fennel was emblematic of flattery, and
Dare finocchio, to give fennel,' was in other words to
flatter, to dissemble,' according to Florio. Thus in .ne
ballad above cited:

'Fennel is for flatterers,
An evil thing 'tis sure.'

Browne, in his Britannia's Pastorals, says :

The columbine, in tawny often taken, Is then ascribed to such as are forsaken.' Rue was for ruth or repentance. It was also commonly called herbgrace, probably from being accounted a present remedy against all poison, and a potent auxiliary in exorcisms, all evil things fleeing from it. By wearing it with a difference (an heraldric term for a mark of distinction) Ophelia may mean that the queen should wear it as a mark of repentance; herself as a token of grief. The daisy was emblematic of a dissembler: Next them grew the dissembling daisy, to warne such light of love wenches not to trust every fair promise that such amorous batchelors make.'-Green's Quip for an Upstart Courtier. The violet is for faithfulness, and is thus characterised in The Lover's Nosegaie.

2 The wheel is the burthen of a ballad, from the Latin rota, a round, which is usually accompanied with a burthen frequently repeated. Thus also in old French, roterie signified such a round or catch, and rotuenge, or rotruhenge, the burthen or refrain as it is now called, Our old English term refrette, the foote of the dittie, a probably from refrain; or from refresteler, to pipe over again. It is used by Chaucer in The Testament of Love. This term was not obsolete in Cotgrave's time, though i would now be as difficult to adduce an instance of its use as of the wheel, at the same time the quotation will show that the down of a ballad was another term for the burthen. Refrain, the refret, burthen, or downe of a ballad.' All this discussion is rendered necessary, because Steevens unfortunately forgot to note from whence he made the following extract, though he knew it was from the preface to some black letter collection of songs or sonnets:-The song was accounted a good one, though it was not moche graced with the wheele, care, pensiveness. which in no wise accorded with the subject matter there of.' Thus also Nicholas Breton, in his Toyes for Idle Head, 1577:

'That I may sing full merrily

Not heigh ho wele, but care away.'

It should be remembered that the old musical instrument called a rote, from its wheel, was also termed vielle, juasi wheel. It must surely have been out of a mere spirit of controversy that Malone affected to think that the spinning-wheel was alluded to by Ophelia.

4 Thought, among our ancestors, was used for grief, Curarum volvere in pectore. He will die for sorrow and thought.'-Baret. Thus in Antony and Cleopatra :--

'Cleo. What shall we do, Enobarbus?
‹ Eno.

Think and die.'

of many old popular ballads. Bonny Robin' appears 5 Poor Ophelia in her madness remembers the ends to have been a favourite, for there were many others written to that tune. The editors have not traced the present one. It is introduced in Eastward Hoe, written of this play are apparently burlesqued. Hamlet is the by Jonson, Chapman, and Marston, where some parts name given to a foolish footman in the same scene. I know not why it should be considered an attack on Shakspeare; it was the usual license of comedy to sport. with every thing serious and even sacred. Hamlet Travestie may as well be called an invidious attack on Shakspeare.

3 Our ancestors gave to almost every flower and plant its emblematic meaning, and like the ladies of the east, made them almost as expressive as written language, in their hieroglyphical sense. Perdita, in The Winter's Tale, distributes her flowers in the same manner as Ophelia, and some of them with the same meaning. In The Handfull of Pleasant Delites, 1584, recently reprinted in Mr. Park's Heliconia, we have a ballad called 6 The folio reads common, which is only a varied or A Nosegaie alwales sweet for Lovers to send for To-thography of the same word. kens' where we find :-'We will devive and common of these matters.'- Baret

And we shall jointly labour with your soul
To give it due content.'

Laer.

Let this be so;

His means of death, his obscure funeral,2-
No trophy, sword, nor hatchment, o'er his bones,
No noble rite, nor formal ostentation,3-

Cry to be heard, as 'twere from heaven to earth,
That I must call❜t in question.

King.

So you shall;

And where the offence is, let the great axe fall. pray you, go with me.

I

[Exeunt. SCENE VI. Another Room in the same. Enter HORATIO and a Servant.

Hor. What are they that would speak with me?

Serv.

As by your safe.y, greatness, wisdom, all things else.
You mainly were stirr'd up.

King.
O, for two special reasons
Which may to you, perhaps, seem much unsinew'd,
But yet to me they are strong. The queen, his
mother,

Lives almost by his looks; and for myself,
(My virtue, or my plague, be it either which,
She is so conjunctive to my life and soul,
That, as the star moves not but in his sphere,
I could not but by her. The other motive,
Why to a public count I might not go,

Is, the great love the general gender bear him-
Who, dipping all his faults in their affection,
Would, like the spring that turneth wood to stone,
Sailors, sir;| Convert his gyves to graces; 10 so that my arrows,
Too slightly timber'd for so loud a wind,'
Let them come in. Would have reverted to my bow again,
And not where I had aim'd them.

They say, they have letters for you.

Hor.

[Exit Servant.

I do not know from what part of the world
I should be greeted, if not from Lord Hamlet.

Enter Sailors.

1 Sail. God bless you, sir.

Hor. Let him bless thee too.

1 Sail. He shall, sir, an't please him. There's

a letter for

Laer. And so have I a noble father lost;
A sister driven into desperate terms;
Whose worth, if praises may go back again,12
Stood challenger on mount of all the age

'or her perfections:-But my revenge will come.
King. Break not your sleeps for that: you must
not think,

sir: it comes from the ambassador That we are made of stuff so flat and dull, you, that was bound for England; if your name be Ho-That we can let our beard be shook with danger,13 ratio, as I am let to know it is. lov'd your father, and we love ourself; And think it pastime. You shortly shall hear more · And that, I hope, will teach you to imagine,How now ?14 what news?

Hor. [Reads.] Horatio, when thou shalt have overlooked this, give these fellows some means to the king; they have letters for him. Ere we were two days old at sea, a pirate of very warlike appointment gave us chase: Finding ourselves too slow of sail, we put on a compelled valour; and in the grapple I boarded them on the instant, they got clear of our ship; so I alone became their prisoner. They have dealt with me like thieves of mercy; but they knew what they did; I am to do a good turn for them. Let the king have the letters I have sent; and repair thou to me with as much haste as thou wouldst fly death. I have words to speak in thine ear, will make thee dumb; yet are they much too light for the bore of the matter. These good fellows will bring thee where I am. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern hold their course for England: of them I have much to tell thee. Farewell.

He that thou knowest thine, Hamlet.
Come, I will give you way for these your letters;
And do't the speedier, that you may direct me
To him from whom you brought them. [Exeunt.
SCENE VII. Another Room in the same. Enter
King and LAERTES.

King. Now must your conscience my acquittance
seal,

And you must put me in your heart for friend;
Sith you have heard, and with a knowing ear,
That he, which hath your noble father slain,
Pursu'd my life.

Laer.
It well appears :-But tell me,
Why you proceeded not against these feats,
So crimeful and so capital in nature,

1 Thus in the quarto, 1603 :

King. Content you, good Laertes, for a time,
Although I know your grief is as a flood,
Brim full of sorrow; but forbear a while,
And think already the revenge is done

On him that makes you such a hapless son.

'Laer. You have prevail'd, my lord, awhile I'll strive
To bury grief within a tomb of wrath,
Which once unhearsed, then the world shall hear
Laertes had a father he held dear.

'King. No more of that, ere many days be done
You shall hear that you do not dream upon.'
2 Folio-burial.

3 The funerals of knights and persons of rank were made with great ceremony and ostentation formerly. Sir John Hawkins, (himself of the order,) observes that 'the sword, the helmet, the gauntlet, spurs, and tabard, are still hung over the grave of every knight.'rtan 4 Quarto sea-faring men. 5 Folio-it came.

6 Folio-your.

Letters, my lord, from Hamiet
This is to your majesty; this to the queen.
King. From Hamlet! who brought them?
Mess. Sailors, my lord, they say: I saw them not ;
They were given me by C.audio, he receiv'd them
Of him that brought them.15
Laertes, you shall hear them:---
[Exit Messenger.
[Reads.] High and mighty, you shall know, I am
set naked on your kingdom. To-morrow shall I beg
leave to see your kingly eyes: when I shall, first ask-
ing your pardon thereunto, recount the occasion of my
sudden and more strange return.
Hamlet.
What should this mean! Are all the rest come back?
Or is it some abuse, and no such thing?
Laer, Know you the hand?

King.
And, in a postscript here, he says, alone:
'Tis Hamlet's character. Naked,-
Can you advise me?

Laer. I am lost in it, my lord. But let him come;
It warms the very sickness in my heart,
That I shall live and tell him to his teeth,
Thus diddest thou.

7 The bore is the caliber of a gun. The matter, (says 16 First folio omitting Ay, my lord, reads, If so you'll Hamlet,) would carry heavier words

not c'er-rule me to a peace.

King. To thine own peace. If he be now re- | Your sudden coming o'er, to play with you.

turn'd,

As checking at his voyage, and that he means
No more to undertake it,—I will work him
To an exploit, now ripe in my device,
Under the which he shall not choose but fall:

And for his death no wind of blame shall breathe
But even his mother shall uncharge the practice,
And call it accident.

Laer.

My lord, I will be rul'd;
The rather, if you
could devise it so,
That I might be the organ.
King.
It falls right.
You have been talk'd of since your travel much,
And that in Hamlet's hearing, for a quality
Wherein, they say, you shine: your sum of parts
Did not together pluck such envy from him,
As did that one; and that, in my regard,
Of the unworthiest siege.2

Laer.

What part is that, my lord?
King. A very riband in the cap of youth,
Yet needful too; for youth no less becomes
The light and careless livery that it wears,
Than settled age his sables and his weeds,
Importing health and graveness.3-Two months
since,

Here was a gentleman of Normandy,

I have seen myself, and serv'd against the French,
And they can well on horseback: but this gallant
Had witchraft in't; he grew unto his seat;
And to such wondrous doing brought his horse,
As he had been incorps'd and demi-natur'd
With the brave beast: so far he topp'd my thought,
That I, in forgery of shapes and tricks,4
Come short of what he did.

Laer.

King. A Norman.

A Norman was't?

Laer. Upon my life, Lamord.
King,

The very same.

Laer. I know him well: he is the brooch, indeed, And gem of all the nation.

King. He made confession of you;
And gave you such a masterly report,
For art and exercise in your defence,"
And for your rapier most especial,

That he cried out, 'twould be a sight indeed,
If one could match you: the scrimers of their
nation,

He swore, had neither motion, guard, nor eye,
If you oppos'd them: Sir, this report of his
Did Hamlet so envenom with his envy,
That he could nothing do, but wish and beg

From men of royal siege.* 3 i. e. implying or denoting gravity and attention to health. If we should not rather read wealth for health, That I, in forgery of shapes and tricks.' That I, in imagining and describing his feats,' &c. 5 Science of defence, i. e. fencing.

4

6 Scrimers, fencers, from escrimeur, Fr. This unfavourable description of French swordsmen is not in the folio.

7 But that I know love is begun by time,' &c. 'As love is begun by time, and has its gradual increase, so time qualifies and abates it.' Passages of proof are transactions of daily experience. The next ten lines are not in the folio.

8 Plurisy is superabundance; our ancestors used the word in this sense, as if it came from plus, pluris, and not from pleura. The disease was formerly thought to proceed from too much blood flowing to the part affected :

in a word,

Thy plurisy of goodness is thy ill.'

Massinger's Unnatural Combat. 9 Johnson says it is a prevalent notion that sighs impair the strength, and wear out the animal powers.' Steevens makes a ludicrous mistake in the quotation

Now, out of this,

Laer.

What out of this, my lord?
King. Laertes, was your father dear to you?
Or are you like the painting of a sorrow,
A face without a heart?
Laer.
Why ask you this?
King. Not that I think, you did not love
father;

But that I know, love is begun by time
And that I see, in passages of proof,
Time qualifies the spark and fire cf it.
There lives within the very flame of love

A kind of wick, or snuff, that will abate it:
And nothing is at a like goodness still;
For goodness, growing to a plurisy,

your

Dies in his own too-much: That we would do,
We should do when we would; for this would
changes,

And hath abatements and delays as many,
As there are tongues, are hands, are accidents
And then this should is like a spendthrift's sigh,
That hurts by easing. But, to the quick o' the ulcer
Hamlet comes back; What would you undertake,
To show yourself in deed your father's son
More than in words?

Laer.
To cut his throat i' the church.
King. No place, indeed, should murder sanc.
tuarize;

Revenge should have no bounds. But, good Laertes.
Will you do this, keep close within your chamber:
Hamlet, return'd, shall know you are come home :
We'll put on those shall praise your excellence,
And set a double varnish on the fame
The Frenchman gave you; bring you, in fine, to
gether,

And
wager o'er your heads: he, being remiss,'
Most generous and free from all contriving,
Will not peruse the foils: so that, with ease,
Or with a little shuffling, you may choose
A sword unbated,11 and in a pass of practice,12
Requite him for your father.

Laer.
I will do't:
And, for the purpose, I'll anoint my sword.
I bought an unction of a mountebank,
So mortal, that but dip a knife in it,
Where it draws blood no cataplasm so rare,
Collected from all simples that have virtue
Under the moon, can save the thing from deatn.
That is but scratch'd withal: I'll touch my point
With this contagion; that, if I gall him slightly,
It may be death.13

from the 'Governal of Helth,' wherein he takes sythes
(times) to signify sighs. Shakspeare in King Henry
VI. has blood-consuming sighs.' And in Fenton's
Tragical Discourses:
Discourses: 'Your scorching sighes that
have already drained your body of his wholesome hu-
moures. The reading of the old copies, which I have
restored, had been altered in the modern editions to a
spendthrift sigh,' without reason. Mr. Blakeway
justly observes, that Sorrow for neglected opportu
nities and time abused seems most aptly compared to
the sigh of a spendthrift-good resolutions not carried
into effect are deeply injurious to the moral character
Like sighs, they hurt by easing, they unburden the
mind and satisfy the conscience, without producing any
effect upon the conduct.'

10 'He being remiss.' He being not vigilant; or in cautious.

11 i. e. unblunted, to bate, or rather to rebate, was to make dull. Aciem ferre hebetare.' Thus in Love's Labour's Lost we have

"That honour which shall bate his scythe's keen edge And in Measure for Measure :

-rebate and blunt his natural edge.' 12 Pass of practice is an insidious thrust. Shakspeare, in common with many of his contemporaries. always uses practice for art, deceit, treachery.

13 Ritson has exclaimed with just indignation and abhorrence against the villanous assassin-like treachery of Laertes in this horrid plot : he observes, 'There is more occasion that he should be pointed out for an object of abhorrence, as he is a character we are led to respec and admire in some preceding scenes.' In the old quarte of 1603 this contrivance originates with the king · ·

1 Clo. What is he, that builds stronger than either the mason, the shipwright, or the carpenter? 2 Clo. The gallows-maker, for that frame outlives a thousand tenants.

which this ass now o'erreaches ; one that would
circumvent God, might it not?
Hor. It might, my lord.

Ham. Or of a courtier; which could say, Goodmorrow, sweet lord! How dost thou, good lord? This might be my lord such-a-one, that praised my lord such-a-one's horse, when he meant to beg it; might it not ?5

Ham. Why, e'en so: and now my lady Worm's ; chapless, and knocked about the mazzard with a 1 Clo. I like thy wit well, in good faith; the gal-sexton's spade: Here's fine revolution, an we had ows does well: But how does it well? it does the trick to see't. Did these bones cost no more well to those that do ill: now thou dost ill, to say, the breeding, but to play at loggats' with them? the gallows is built stronger than the church; argal, mine ache to think on't.

the gallows may do well to thee. To't again: come.

2 Clo. Who builds stronger than a măson, a shipwright or a carpenter?

1 Clo. Ay, tell me that, and unyoke.2 2 Clo. Marry, now I can tell.

1 Clo. To't.

2 Clo. Mass, I cannot tell.

Enter HAMLET and HORATIO, at a distance. 1 Clo. Cudgel thy brains no more about it; for your dull ass will not mend his pace with beating: and, when you are asked this question next, say, a grave-maker; the houses that he makes, last till doomsday. Go, get thee to Vaughan, and fetch me a stoup of liquor. [Exit 2 Clown.

1 Clown digs, and sings. In youth, when I did love, did love,3 Methought, it was very sweet,

To contract, O, the time, for, ah, my behove,
O, methought there was nothing meet.

Ham. Has this fellow no feeling of his business? he sings at grave-making.

Hor. Custom hath made it in him a property of easiness.

Ham. 'Tis e'en so: the hand of little employment hath the daintier sense.

1 Clo. But age, with his stealing steps

Hath claw'd me in his clutch,

And hath shipped me into the land,
As if I had never been such.

[Throws up a scull.

Ham. That scull had a tongue in it, and could sing once: How the knave jowls it to the ground, as if it were Cain's jawbone, that did the first murder! This might be the pate of a politician,

1 This speech and the next, as far as arms, is not in the quarto.

2 'Ay, tell me that, and unyoke.' This was a common phrase for giving over or ceasing to do a thing, a metaphor derived from the unyoking of oxen at the end of their labour. Thus in a Dittie of the Workmen of Dover, preserved in the additions to Holinshed :

'My bow is broke, I would unyoke, 8 Quiddits are quirks, or subtle questions: and quilMy foot is sore, I can worke no more." lets are nice and frivolous distinctions. The etymology These pithy questions were doubtless the fireside amuse of this last foolish word has plagued many learned ment of our rustic ancestors. Steevens mentions a col-heads. I think that Blount, in his Glossography, clearly lection of them in print, preserved in a volume of scarce tracts in the university library at Cambridge, D. 5. 2. "The innocence of these demaundes joyous (he says) may deserve a praise not always due to their delicacy.' 3 The original ballad from whence these stanzas are 9 See Comedy of Errors, Act i. Sc. 2. note. taken is printed in Tottel's Miscellany, or 'Songes and 10 Shakspeare here is profuse of his legal learning. Sonnettes' by Lord Surrey and others, 1575. The bal- Ritson, a lawyer, shall interpret for him: A recovery lad is attributed to Lord Vaux, and is printed by Dr. Percy with double voucher, is the one usually suffered, and is in the first volume of his Reliques of Antient Poetry. so called from two persons (the latter of whom is al The ohs and the ahs were most probably meant to ex-ways the common crier, or some such inferior person,) press the interruption of the song by the forcible e nis-being successively voucher, or called upon to warrant sion of the grave digger's breath at each stroke of the mattock. The original runs thus :

'I lothe that I did love;

In youth that I thought swete:
As time requires for my behove,
Methinks they are not mete.
'For age with stealing steps

Hath claude me with his crouch;
And lusty youth away he leaps,
As there had bene none such

4 The folio reads—ore-offices