Scene II.

3. But soft, omitted in the folios.

6. Compounded it with dust. So 2 Henry IV, iv. 5. 116: 'Only compound me with forgotten dust.'

12. of, by. See Macbeth, iii. 6. 27.

Ib. replication, reply. Used of echo, Julius Cæsar, i. 1. 51. In law it has the technical sense of the reply of the plaintiff in matters of fact to the defender's plea.' (Webster, s. v.)

15. countenance, favour. So in i. 3. 113, and v. I. 26, and Coriolanus, v. 6. 40: He waged me with his countenance.'

16. authorities, officers of authority.

17. like an ape. The quarto of 1603 has as an Ape doth nuttes,' which Staunton has introduced into the text, thus certainly made clearer.

22. a knavish speech sleeps in a foolish ear. This sentence, now become proverbial, like so many passages in Hamlet, is probably of Shakespeare's coinage.

26. The body is with the king, &c. Hamlet is talking nonsense designedly.

29. A thing of nothing, a thing of no value. Nares quotes Beaumont and Fletcher's Humorous Lieutenant, iv. 6:

'And though a thing of nothing, thy thing ever.'

The phrase is of frequent occurrence. We find a thing of nought,' Psalm cxliv. 4 (Prayer Book version).

Ib. Hide fox, and all after. A children's game apparently, like 'All hid,' 'Hide-and-seek.' In Much Ado about Nothing, ii. 3. 44, Warburton has with great probability conjectured 'hid fox' for 'kid fox.'

Scene III.

21. Your, used here as in iii. 2. 108.

24. variable, various, as in iii. I. 172.

26-28. The king's exclamation and Hamlet's following speech are omitted in the folios.

27. hath eat. The same form of the participle is in Richard II, v. 5. 85. 34. nose, smell, as in Coriolanus, v. i. 28: Still to nose the offence.' 40. dearly, heartily.

42. With fiery quickness, with hot haste. These words are omitted in the quartos.

43. at help. For the phrase compare at friend,' Winter's Tale, v. 1. 140. In the next line the folios read at bent. Compare 'at foot' line 53. 44. tend, attend, wait, as in i. 3. 83.

53. at foot, at heel, close to his steps.

Compare iii. 3. 4.

At' is commonly used to signify price.

54. I'll have him hence. 57. at aught, at any value. 58. As, used in parenthetical expressions with the sense of for so.' Compare iv. 7. 157.

59. cicatrice. Here used in its proper sense of scar of a wound, as in Coriolanus, ii. 1. 164: 'There will be large cicatrices to show the people, when he shall stand for his place.' It is used improperly in As You Like It, iii. 5. 23:

'Lean but upon a rush,

The cicatrice and capable impressure

Thy palm some moment keeps.'

60. free awe, awe still felt, though no longer enforced by the presence of Danish armies.

61. coldly set, treat with indifference, esteem slightly. 'Set' would not have been thus used had it not been familiar in the phrases 'set at nought,' 'set at a pin's fee,' &c.

62. process, procedure, action.

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63. congruing. So the quartos. The folios have conjuring,' probably a misprint, although it yields a fair sense.

65. a hectic. We find this word used as a substantive in Cotgrave: 'Hectique: Sicke of an Hectick, or continuall Feauer.' This is the only passage where it occurs in Shakespeare either as substantive or adjective.

67. For 'haps' Johnson conjectured 'hopes.'

Ib. were ne'er begun. So the folios. The quartos will nere begin.'

3. Craves.

Scene IV.

So the quartos. The folios read 'Claimes.'

6. in his eye, in his presence. Compare i. 2. 116, and Antony and Cleopatra, ii. 2. 212:

'Her gentlewomen, like the Nereides,

So many mermaids, tended her i' the eyes.'

And Twelfth Night, ii. 2. 16: 'If it be worth stooping for, there it lies in your eye.'

8. softly, gently, slowly. Compare Bacon, Essay vi. p. 19: 'Like the going softly by one that cannot well see.'

9. Enter Hamlet, &c. This, with all the rest of the scene, is omitted in the folios.

Ib. powers, forces. 'Power' is also used in the singular with the same sense, as in Macbeth, iv. 3. 185.

14. old Norway. See i. 2. 28.

15. the main, the chief power. See ii. 2. 56.

17. For the metre's sake Pope read 'speak it,' and Capell speak, sir.

20. five ducats, five. Theobald conjectured 'five ducats fine,' but he did not adopt it in his text. The meaning is 'I would not farm it on the condition of paying a rent of five ducats, only five.'

22. ranker, more abundant, richer. The word is always used elsewhere in a bad sense.

Ib. sold in fee, sold in fee-simple, with absolute possession. For 'fee' compare i. 4. 65, and our note on Macbeth, iv. 3. 196.

27. imposthume, an abscess. supposed to be a corruption of Johnson's Dictionary, s. v.).

The word is also written impostem' and is apostem' from the Greek άπóστημа (Todd's The Latin apostema,' an abscess, is used by Pliny, xxx. 5. 12. Cotgrave (French Dict.) gives, Apostume: f. An Impostume; an inward swelling full of corrupt matter.'

34. market of his time, 'that for which he sells his time' (Johnson): or possibly, the business in which he employs his time.'

36. discourse, range of reasoning faculty. Compare i. 2. 150.

39. fust, grow stale or mouldy. The word does not occur elsewhere in Shakespeare. It is perhaps formed from 'fusty' which is derived from the French fusté.

40, 41. scruple Of thinking, scruple which consists in thinking or results from thinking.

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45. Sith sithence, since. Compare iv. 7. 3. Shakespeare uses all these forms without any distinction. See ii. 2. 6.

46. gross, large, obvious. Lear, iv. 6. 14:

The word is used in its primary sense in King

The crows and choughs that wing the midway air
Show scarce so gross as beetles.'

50. Makes mouths. See ii. 2. 353.

51. unsure, insecure, uncertain. So Macbeth, v. 4. 19:
Thoughts speculative their unsure hopes relate."
53, 54. Pope made a bold alteration here, and read
'Tis not to be great,
Never to stir without great argument,'

supposing that the sentence as it stood was contradictory.

But the meaning

is: When honour is at stake, it is the greatest of all "arguments" and the slightest pretext justifies a quarrel then.'

54. argument, subject, matter in dispute. Compare Troilus and Cressida, i. I. 95:

I cannot fight upon this argument;

It is too starved a subject for my sword."

58. blood, which is stirred by passion, is here, as frequently, antithetical to reason and reflection. See iii. 2. 64.

61. trick of fame. The words of fame' belong both to 'fantasy' and 'trick': a deceptive appearance or artifice which promises fame.

62. plot of ground. So Richard II, ii. 1. 50:

This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.'

64. continent, here used in its primitive sense, that which holds or contains. Compare Antony and Cleopatra, iv. 14. 40:

'O cleave, my sides!

Heart, once be stronger than thy continent,

Crack thy frail case!'

Scene V.

The stage direction in the folios is Enter Queene and Horatio,' and the two speeches assigned in the quartos to 'a Gentleman' are given in the folios to Horatio. Lines II-13, so cautiously obscure, seem better suited to an ordinary courtier than to Horatio.

2. distract, the abbreviated form of the participle which, as we have already mentioned, is common in the case of verbs ending in a dental. Shakespeare also used the forms 'distracted,' 'distraught.'

3. will. Compare iii. 3. 75.

5. There's tricks. See iii. 4. 199.

6. enviously. Envy' frequently means hatred, malice,' as in Merchant of Venice, iv. I. 10, and Henry VIII, iii. 1. 113:

'You turn the good we offer into envy.'

See also Julius Cæsar, iii. 2. 179. In Ophelia's distraction she conceives hatred of the most trivial and innocent things.

9. collection, attempt to gather meaning from her disjointed speech. Compare Cymbeline, v. 5. 430:

This label on my bosom; whose containing

Is so from sense in hardness, that I can

Make no collection of it.'

Ib. aim. The quartos have yawne,' doubtless a misprint from 'ayme' as the word is spelt in the first and second folios. 'Aim' means here 'to guess,' as in Romeo and Juliet, i. I. 211:

'I aim'd so near when I supposed you loved.'

12. might. So the quartos. The folios read would.' The general sense of this ill-expressed sentence is more easily understood than paraphrased. The speaker is afraid of committing himself to any definite statement. If he had spoken out he would have said: 'Her words and gestures lead one to infer that some great misfortune has happened to her.'

14-16. The quartos continue Horatio's speech to include the words 'let her come in.' The folios give the whole from ""Twere good' to 'spilt,' to the Queen. The arrangement in the text was first suggested by Blackstone. 15. ill-breeding minds, minds that conceive mischief.

18. Each trifle seems prelude to some great disaster. substantive, see Sonnet xxxv. 7:

For amiss' as a

'Myself corrupting, salving thy amiss.'

And Sonnet cli. 3. Steevens quotes from Lyly's Woman in the Moon, 1597: 'Pale be my looks, to witness my amiss.'

19. jealousy, suspicion. So in Henry V, iv. 1. 302: Your nobles jealous of your absence.' The meaning is: Guilt is so full of suspicion that it unskilfully betrays itself in fearing to be betrayed.'

21. The quarto of 1603 has here a stage-direction: 'Enter Ofelia playing on a Lute, and her haire downe singing.' The other quartos have merely

'Enter Ophelia'; the folios, Enter Ophelia distracted.'

26. shoon. This form of the plural was already archaic in Shakespeare's time. The only other passage of his plays in which it occurs is in a speech of Jack Cade's, 2 Henry VI, iv. 2. 195:

'Spare none but such as go in clouted shoon.'

36. larded, garnished, dressed with. The word occurs again in a metaphorical sense, v. 2. 20. And in Ben Johnson's Sejanus, iii. 2, p. 86, ed. Gifford :

'A quiet and retired life

Larded with ease and pleasure.'

Cotgrave (French Dict.) gives 'Larder. To lard; to sticke, season, or dresse with lard.'

37. did go. Pope's emendation for ' did not go,' which is the reading of both quartos and folios. The quartos have ground,' except that of 1603,

which agrees with the folios in reading ' graue.'

6

40. God'ild you, God yield you, God reward you. The quartos have 'good dild you.' See As You Like It, iii. 3. 76: God 'ild you for your last company.' Antony and Cleopatra, iv. 2. 33: the gods yield you for 't.' Tennyson, Gareth and Lynette, l. 18, Heaven yield her for it.' Ib. the owl was a baker's daughter. Douce relates a story told by the common people in Gloucestershire, how that our Saviour, asking for bread, was churlishly received by a baker's daughter, whom in punishment he transformed into an owl. The words of Ophelia which follow are also suggested by her recollection of this story.

43. Conceit, thought, imagination, as in ii. 2. 533, 537. Ophelia seems to blend in her mind the death of her father with the loss of her lover, though the king attributes her madness entirely to the former cause.

46. St. Valentine's day, February 14. No reason has been assigned for the customary celebration of this day, except that it is about the pairing time of birds.

57. this is, to be pronounced as one syllable.

The

58. The quartos read, And now behold, O Gertrude, Gertrude.' addition interrupts the regular flow of the metre; the author probably wrote at first the words 'And now behold,' and then 'O Gertrude, Gertrude,' as a substitute for them. We therefore follow the folios.