ACT II.

Scene I.

3. shall, used where we should now say will.' Compare iii. 2. 300, and Macbeth, iii. 4. 57:

If much you note him,

You shall offend him and extend his passion.'

Ib. marvellous, adjective for adverb. Compare i. 3. 116. 4. inquire, inquiry. So Pericles, iii. (Gower, 22):

'Fame answering the most strange inquire.'

So 'retire' is used as a substantive, King John, ii. 1. 326, and elsewhere. So 'converse,' ii. 1. 42. See note on i. 1. 57.

7. me, enclitic, here having the sense of the dative. Compare Merchant of Venice, ii. 2. 115: 'Give me your present to one Master Bassanio.' Ib. Danskers, Danes.

8. keep, live. See our note on Merchant of Venice, iii. 3. 19. Compare Troilus and Cressida, iv. 5. 278:

'In what place of the field does Calchas keep?'

10. encompassment and drift, scope and tendency. We have drift of circumstance,' iii. 1. 1.

II. more nearer. For this double comparative see Merchant of Venice iv. 1. 251:

'How much more elder art thou than thy looks!'

It occurs very frequently. In the present passage 'neerer' is corrected to 'neere' in the second folio, 1632, showing that the double comparative was then growing obsolete.

II, 12. nearer Than. The quartos and first folio read 'neerer Then,' 'than' being spelt in those days indifferently than' or 'then.' The second folio has 'Than,' and Pope, following a late quarto, that of 1676, reads near. Then,' &c. Taking the old punctuation, the sense seems to be Approach indirectly more near to your object than you could by direct and special questions.'

12. It is sometimes used indefinitely, as the object of a verb, without referring to anything previously mentioned, and seems to indicate a preexisting object in the mind of the person spoken of.' (Abbott, § 226.) Here the object is in the mind of the speaker.

13. Take you, assume.

19. put on him, attribute to him. See line 29, and compare Macbeth, ii.

4. 26:

Suspicion of the deed.'

20. rank, gross. See i. 5. 38.

22. slips. Compare Othello, iv. 1. 9: "Tis a venial slip.' Perhaps Shake

speare had the other sense of the word in his mind, as in 2 Henry IV, iii. 2.

214: graft with crab-tree slip.'

28. season. Compare i. 2. 192.

31. breathe, whisper. See i. 3. 130, and line 44 of this scene.

Ib. quaintly, skilfully.

Compare Merchant of Venice, ii. 4. 6: 'Tis vile, unless it may be quaintly order'd.'

32. taints, blemishes. Compare Antony and Cleopatra, v. i. 30: His taints and honours

Waged equal with him.'

34. unreclaimed, untamed. See Romeo and Juliet, iv. 2. 47: 'Since this same wayward girl is so reclaim'd.'

Cotgrave has 'Adomestiquer: To tame, reclaim, make gentle.' A term of falconry.

35. Of general assault, such as generally attack youth.

38. The quartos read 'wit.' The folios have warrant.' Either makes good sense. A fetch of wit' is a cunning contrivance: a 'fetch of warrant,' a justifiable contrivance, or rather one which has been found effectual. With the latter compare ' passages of proof' in iv. 7. III. In King Lear, ii. 4. 90, 'fetches' mean pretexts, excuses.

42. converse, conversation. See Othello, iii. I. 40, where 'converse' is accented as here.

Ib. him should be 'he whom.' So Coriolanus, v. 6. 5:

'Him I accuse

By this the city ports hath entered.'

See Abbott, § 208.

47. addition. See i. 4. 20.

51. leave, leave off. So 2 Henry VI, iii. 2. 333:

You bade me ban, and will you bid me leave?'

58. a', frequently used familiarly for 'he.'

Ib. o'ertook, i.e. by intoxication. One of the many euphemisms for drunk. Ib. rouse. See i. 2. 127.

64. of reach, far-sighted. See i. 4. 56. Compare Love's Labour's Lost, iv. 2. 30, 'we of taste and feeling.'

65. windlasses, winding and circuitous ways. So Golding's Ovid, quoted in the Edinburgh Review, July, 1869 :

'The winged God beholding them returning in a troupe,

Continued not directly forth but gan me down to stoupe,

And fetched a windlasse round about.'

Compare also Lyly's Euphues and his England (ed. Arber), p. 270: 'I now fetching a windlesse, that I myght better haue a shoote, was preuented with ready game.'

Ib. assays of bias, a metaphor from the game of bowls, in which the player does not aim at the Jack (or mistress,' as it was called in Shakespeare's

time) directly, but in a curve, so that the bias brings the ball round. 'Assays of bias' are therefore indirect attempts.

66. indirections, indirect methods.

We find out indirectly, says Polonius,

To wring

what we wish to know directly. See Julius Cæsar, iv. 3. 75:

From the hard hands of peasants their vile trash,

By any indirection.'

68. you have me, you understand me.

Compare iii. 2. 90.

71. Judge of his temptations by your own,' or, possibly, 'Conform your own conduct to his inclinations.'

76. God. So the quartos. Changed here as elsewhere in the folio of 1623, to heaven,' in pursuance of the Act to restrain the abuses of Players, quoted in our note to the Merchant of Venice, i. 2. 99.

77. closet. So the quartos. The folios have chamber.' 'Closet' was used for a private apartment. Hence the king's private secretary was called 'clerk of the closet.' We have the word again, iii. 2. 298, and King John, iv. 2. 267. 78. unbraced, unfastened. Compare Julius Cæsar, i. 3. 48:

·

And thus unbraced, Casca, as you see,

Have bared my bosom to the thunder-stone.'

And in the same play, ii. 2. 262:

'Is it physical

To walk unbraced and suck up the humours
Of the dank morning?'

80. down-gyved to his ancle, hanging like gyves, or fetters, about his ancle. 82. purport, accented on the last syllable.

84. he repeated. When a proper name is separated from its verb by an intervening clause, then, for clearness, the redundant pronoun is often inserted. (Abbott, § 242.) See i. 2. 22. In order to complete the line Pope read, 'thus he comes before me.'

90. perusal, examination.

So Romeo and Juliet, v. 3. 74: 'Let me peruse this face.' Compare also Richard II, iii. 3. 53, and Troilus and Cressida, iv. 5. 232.

91. As, as if. See i. 2. 217.

Ib. Pope read 'Long time stay'd he so,' but see i. 1. 95.

92. shaking of. Compare 3 Henry VI, ii. 5. 3 :

'The shepherd blowing of his nails.'

And King Lear, ii. 1. 41. 95. As. So the quartos.

The folios have That.' Foras' thus used

compare Love's Labour 's Lost, ii. 1. 174:

'You shall be so received

As you shall deem yourself lodged in my heart.'

95. bulk. Cotgrave has Buste: the whole bulke or body of a man from

his face to his middle.' Compare Lucrece, 467 :

'Her heart...

Beating her bulk.'

100. bended. We have this form of the preterite in Coriolanus, ii. 1. 281 : The nobles bended,

As to Jove's statue.'

101. go seek. See i. 5. 132.

102. ecstasy, madness. See iii. 1. 160; iii. 4. 74, 135, 136, and Macbeth, iii. 2. 22.

103. fordoes, destroys. See v. I. 244. For,' like the German ver, has a negative sense in composition, as forget,' 'forgo,' forbear,' 'forbid,' 'forswear.' Sometimes also, like ver, it is intensive, as in 'forgive,' ' forwearied,' 'forspent.'

IIO. access, accented sometimes on the first and sometimes on the second syllable. For the latter, see Macbeth, i. 5. 45:

It means observed,' as

"Stop up the access and passage to remorse.'
112. quoted. Spelt 'coted' in the quartos.
in Troilus and Cressida, iv. 5. 233:

'I have with exact view perused thee, Hector,
And quoted joint by joint.'

And Romeo and Juliet, i. 4. 31:

'What curious eye doth quote deformities?'

The word is indifferently spelt cote,' 'coat' (or 'coate'), and quote in the old editions. The side (Fr. côté) or margin of a book was the place for observations or quotations. See v. 2. 147.

113. beshrew, a mild form of imprecation frequent in Shakespeare. See Merchant of Venice, ii. 6. 52.

Ib. jealousy, suspicion. The word is used by Shakespeare in a wider sense than it is now. Compare As You Like It, ii. 7. 151:

Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel.'

And see Twelfth Night, iii. 3. 8:

'Jealousy what might befall your travel.'

And King Lear, i. 4. 75: Mine own jealous curiosity.' 'To jealous' is provincially used for 'to suspect.'

114. proper, appropriate. Compare 2 Henry IV, i. 3. 32:

'Imagination proper to madmen.'

115. cast means to 'contrive,' 'design,' 'plan.' Fairy Queen, i. 5. 12:

Compare Spenser's

7

Of all attonce he cast avengd to be.' Cotgrave translates the French minuter, 'to deuise, cast, or lay the first proiect of a designe.' 'The vice of age,' says Johnson, is too much suspicion. Men long accustomed to the wiles of life cast commonly beyond themselves, let their cunning go farther than reason can attend it.'

118, 119. which . . . love. In the couplets which conclude scenes the

sense is frequently sacrificed to the rhyme. The sense here seems to be— Hamlet's mad conduct might cause more grief if it were hidden than the revelation of his love for Ophelia would cause hatred, i. e. on the part of the King and Queen. Yet the Queen afterwards expresses her approval of the match, iii. 1. 38. Compare also v. 1. 231–234.

2. Moreover that, besides that.

Scene II.

5. so call it. With this, the reading of the quartos, transformation' must be pronounced as five syllables. The folios read, 'so I call it.'

6. Sith nor. This is the reading of the quartos. The folios have 'Since not.' And similarly in line 12 the quartos have sith,' the folios 'since.' Mr. Marsh (Lectures on the English Language, pp. 584-586) says that in the latter half of the sixteenth century 'good authors established a distinction between the forms, and used sith only as a logical word, an illative, while sithence and since, whether as prepositions or as adverbs, remained mere narrative words confined to the signification of time after.' Shakespeare, it is clear, did not observe this distinction, whether we take the quartos or the folios to represent his exact text.

8, 9. put him So much from, &c. Compare Romeo and Juliet, iii. 5. 109: To put thee from thy heaviness.'

10. dream of. The 'of' is superfluous, as in Richard III, 3. 6: 'What would betide of me?' And see Measure for Measure, iv. 4. 29:

For my authority bears of a credent bulk.'

The folios have heredeeme of.'

11. of so young days. Compare Acts viii. 11: 'Of long time he had bewitched them with sorceries.'

12. neighbour'd to, intimately associated with. We have this participle in Henry V, i. 1. 62.

Ib. haviour. See i. 2. 81. The folio reading is 'humour.'

13. That is redundant.

14. companies. See i. 1. 173.

...

17. Whether . . . thus. This line is omitted in the folios. Whether,' as here, is frequently pronounced in the time of a monosyllable.

22. gentry, courtesy, as in v. 2. 107.

26. remembrance. So in Two Gentlemen of Verona, ii. 2. 5:

'Keep this remembrance for thy Julia's sake.'

And Merchant of Venice, iv. I. 422:

'Take some remembrance of us as a tribute.'

་

27. of, used in the sense of over,' as in line 286 of this scene for 'on.' 30. bent. See i. 2. 115.

38. Heavens. Compare Antony and Cleopatra, i. 2. 64: