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or time to act them in: What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves, all; believe none of us: Go thy ways to a nunnery. Where's your father?

OPH. At home, my lord.

HAM. Let the doors be shut upon him; that he may play the fool no where but in's own house. Farewell.

OPH. O, help him, you sweet heavens!

HAM. If thou doft marry, I'll give thee this plague for thy dowry; Be thou as chafte as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a nunnery; farewell: Or, if thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool; for wife men know well enough, what monfters you make of them. To a nunnery, go; and quickly too. Farewell.

OPH. Heavenly powers, restore him! HAM. I have heard of your paintings too, well enough; God hath given you one face, and you

* I have heard of your paintings too, well enough; &c.] This is according to the quarto; the folio, for painting, has prattlings, and for face, has pace, which agrees with what follows, you jig, you amble. Probably the author wrote both. I think the common reading beft. JOHNSON.

I would continue to read, paintings, because these deftructive aids of beauty feem, in the time of Shakspeare, to have been general objects of fatire. So, in Drayton's Mooncalf:

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No fooner got the teens,

" But her own natural beauty she disdains;

"With oyls and broths most venomous and base
"She plaisters over her well-favour'd face;
" And those sweet veins by nature rightly plac'd
"Wherewith she seems that white skin to have lac'd,

She foon doth alter; and, with fading blue,
"Blanching her bofom, the makes others new."

STEEVENS.

make yourselves another: you jig, you amble, and you lifp, and nick-name God's creatures, and make your wantonness your ignorance: Go to; I'll no more of't; it hath made me mad. I say, we will have no more marriages: those that are married already, all but one, shall live; the rest shall keep as they are. To a nunnery, go. [Exit HAMLET. OPH. O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown! The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue,

fword: 4

The expectancy and rofe of the fair ftate,
The glass of fashion, and the mould of form,
The observ'd of all observers! quite, quite down!

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God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another:] In Guzman de Alfarache, 1623, p. 13, we have an invec tive against painting in which is a fimilar passage: " O filthinesse, above all filthinesse! O affront, above all other affronts! that God having given thee one face, thou shouldst abuse his image and make thyselfe another." REED.

*-make your wantonness your ignorance :) You mistake by wanton affectation, and pretend to mistake by ignorance.

JOHNSON.

3-all but one, shall live ;) By the one who shall not live, he means his step-father. MALONE.

4 The courtier's, foldier's, Scholar's, eye, tongue, fword:] The poet certainly meant to have placed his words thus:

The courtier's, Scholar's, foldier's, eye, tongue, fword; otherwise the excellence of tongue is appropriated to the foldier, and the fcholar wears the fword. WARNER.

This regulation is needless. So, in Tarquin and Lucrece : "Princes are the glass, the school, the book, "Where subjects eyes do learn, do read, do look." And in Quintilian: "Multum agit sexus, ætas, conditio; ut in fæminis, fenibus, pupillis, liberos, parentes, conjuges, alligantibus."

FARMER.

$ The glass of fashion,] " Speculum confuetudinis." Cicero.

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STEEVENS.

-the mould of form,] The model by whom all endeavoured to form themselves. JOHNSON.

:

And I, of ladies most deject1 and wretched,
That suck'd the honey of his musick vows,
Now fee that noble and most sovereign reason,
Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh;
That unmatch'd form and feature of blown youth,
Blasted with ecstasy: O, woe is me!

To have feen what I have seen, see what I fee!

Re-enter King and POLONIUS.

KING. Love! his affections do not that way
tend;

Nor what he spake, though it lack'd form a little,
Was not like madness. There's something in his

foul,

O'er which his melancholy fits on brood;

And, I do doubt, the hatch, and the disclose,

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-moft deject-) So, in Heywood's Silver Age, 1613:

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-What knight is that

" So paffionately deject?" STEEVENS.

-out of tune-) Thus the folio. The quarto-out of time. STEEVENS.

These two words in the hand-writing of Shakspeare's age are almost indiftinguishable, and hence are frequently confounded in the old copies, See Vol. IV. p. 63, n. 8. MALONE.

-and feature-] Thus the folio. The quartos readftature. STEEVENS,

with ecstasy:] The word ecstasy was anciently used to

fignify some degree of alienation of mind.

So, Gawin Douglas, translating-ftetit acri fixa dolore:
"In ecstasy she stood, and mad almaist."

See Vol. III. p. 113, n. 9; and Vol. VII. p. 464, п. 4.

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STEEVENS,

-the disclose,] This was the technical term. So, in The

Maid of Honour, by Maffinger:

"One aierie with proportion ne'er difclofes

"The eagle and the wren." MALONE.

Will be fome danger: Which for to prevent,
I have, in quick determination,

Thus set it down; He shall with speed to England,
For the demand of our neglected tribute:
Haply, the seas, and countries different,
With variable objects, shall expel
This something-fettled matter in his heart;
Whereon his brains still beating, puts him thus
From fashion of himself. What think you on't?

POL. It shall do well: But yet I do believe,
The origin and commencement of his grief
Sprung from neglected love.-How now, Ophelia?
You need not tell us what lord Hamlet said;
We heard it all. My lord, do as you please;
But, if you hold it fit, after the play,
Let his queen mother all alone entreat him
To show his grief; let her be round with him;
And I'll be plac'd, so please you, in the ear
Of all their conference: If she find him not,
To England fend him; or confine him, where
Your wisdom best shall think.

KING.

It shall be fo:

Madness in great ones must not unwatch'd go.

Again, in the fifth act of the play now before us; "Ere that her golden couplets are difclos'd."

See my note on this passage. STEEVENS.

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[Exeunt.

4-be round with him ;) To be round with a person, is to reprimand him with freedom. So, in A Mad World, my Masters, by Middleton, 1608: "She's round with her i'faith." MALONE.

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HAM. Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue: but if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus; but ufe all gently: for in the very torrent, tempeft, and (as I may fay) whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance, that may give it smoothness. O, it offends me to the foul, to hear a robustious perriwig-pated fellow tear a paffion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings; who, for the most part, are capable

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perriwig-pated-) This is a ridicule on the quantity of false hair worn in Shakspeare's time, for wigs were not in common ufe till the reign of Charles II. In The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Julia fays" I'll get me such a colour'd perriwig."

Goff, who wrote several plays in the reign of James I. and was no mean scholar, has the following lines in his tragedy of The Courageous Turk, 1632:

"

- How now, you heavens,

"Grow you fo proud you must needs put on curl'd locks, " And clothe yourselves in perriwigs of fire?"

Players, however, seem to have worn them most generally. So, in Every Woman in her Humour, 1609: “ but monks and ladies; and feathers but fore-horfes, &c;-none _ as none wear hoods perriwigs but players and pictures. STEEVENS.

-the groundlings;] The meaner people then feem to have fat below, as they now fit in the upper gallery, who, not well understanding poetical language, were sometimes gratified by a

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