Lends the tongue vows: these blazes, daughter, 4-these blazes, daughter,] Some epithet to blazes was probably omitted, by the carelessness of the transcriber or compositor, in the first quarto, in consequence of which the metre is defective. MALONE. 5 Set your entreatments-) Entreatments here mean company, conversation, from the French entrétien. JOHNSON. Entreatments, I rather think, means the objects of entreaty; the favours for which lovers sue. In the next scene we have a word of a fimilar formation: 6 "As if it fome impartment did defire," &c. MALONE. -larger tether-] A string to tie horses. POPE. Tether is that string by which an animal, set to graze in grounds uninclofed, is confined within the proper limits. JOHNSON. So, in Greene's Card of Fancy, 1601 :-" To tye the ape and the bear in one tedder." Tether is a string by which any animal is fastened, whether for the fake of feeding or the air. STEEVENS. ↑ Do not believe his vows, for they are brokers-] A broker in old English meant a bawd or pimp. See the Gloffary to Gawin Douglafs's tranflation of Virgil. So, in King John: "This bawd, this broker," &c. See also Vol. XI. p. 450, n. 9. In our author's Lover's Complaint we again meet wtih the fame expression, applied in the same manner: “ Know, τους are ever brokers to defiling." MALONE. * Breathing like fanctified and pious bonds,] On which the editor, 1 : : The better to beguile. This is for all, Mr. Theobald, remarks, Though all the editors have fwallowed this reading implicitly, it is certainly corrupt, and I have been furprized how men of genius and learning could let it pafs without fome Suspicion. What idea can we frame to ourselves of a breathing bond, or of its being fanctified and pions, &c. But he was too hafty in framing ideas before he understood those already framed by the poet, and expressed in very plain words. Do not believe (fays Polonius to his daughter) Hamlet's amorous vows made to you; which pretend religion in them (the better to beguile) like those sanctified and pious vows [or bonds] made to heaven. And why should not this pass without fufpicion? WARBURTON. Theobald for bonds substitutes bawds. JOHNSON. Notwithstanding Warburton's elaborate explanation of this pafsage, I have not the least doubt but Theobald is right, and that we ought to read bawds instead of bonds. Indeed the present reading is little better than nonsense. Polonius had called Hamlet's vows, brokers, but two lines before, a fynonymous word to bawds, and the very title that Shakfpeare gives to Pandarus, in his Troilus and Cressida. The words implorators of unholy fuits, are an exact description of a bawd; and all fuch of them as are crafty in their trade, put on the appearance of sanctity, and are "not of that die which their investments shew." M. MASON. The old reading is undoubtedly the true one. Do not, fays Polonius, believe his vows, for they are merely uttered for the purpose of perfuading you to yield to a criminal paffion, though they appear only the genuine effufions of a pure and lawful affection, and affume the semblance of those sacred engagements entered into at the altar of wedlock. The bonds here in our poet's thoughts were bonds of love. So, in his 142d Sonnet: those lips of thine, "That have profan'd their scarlet ornaments, Again, in The Merchant of Venice: O, ten times fafter Venus pigeons fly, "To seal love's bonds new made, than they are wont " Sanctified and pious bonds," are the true bonds of love, or, as our poet has elfewhere expressed it, "A contract and eternal bond of love." Dr. Warburton certainly misunderstood this passage; and when he triumphantly asks " may not this pass without fufpicion?" if he means his own comment, the answer is, because it is not perfectly accurate. MALONE. I would not, in plain terms, from this time forth, SCENE IV. [Exeunt. Enter HAMLET, HORATIO, and MARCELLUS. HAM. The air bites shrewdly; it is very cold. Hor. It is a nipping and an eager air.* HAM. What hour now? HOR. MAR. No, it is struck. I think, it lacks of twelve. HOR. Indeed? I heard it not; it then draws near the season, Wherein the spirit held his wont to walk. [A flourish of trumpets, and ordnance shot off, within. What does this mean, my lord? HAM. The king doth wake to-night, and takes his roufe, 9 I would not, in plain terms, from this time forth, Have you so slander any moment's leisure,] Polonius says, in plain terms, that is, not in language less elevated or embellished than before, but in terms that cannot be misunderstood: I would not have you fo disgrace your most idle moments, as not to find better employment for them than lord Hamlet's conversation. JOHNSON. 2 an eager air.] That is, a sharp air, aigre, Fr. So, in a subsequent scene: " And curd, like eager droppings into milk." MALONE. takes his rouse,] A rouse is a large dose of liquor, a debauch. So, in Othello: “ they have given me a rouse already." 3 : Keeps waffel, and the swaggering up-spring reels; HOR. Is it a custom? HAM. Ay, marry, is't: It should feem from the following passage in Decker's Gul's Hornbook, 1609, that the word rouse was of Danish extraction: "Teach me, thou soveraigne skinker, how to take the German's upsy freeze, the Danish roufa, the Switzer's stoop of rhenish," &c. STEEVENS. 4 Keeps wassel,] See Vol. VII. p. 396, n. 4. Again, in The Hog hath lost his Pearl, 1614: By Croefus name and by his castle, i. e. devotes his nights to jollity. STEEVENS. 5 JOHNSON. It appears from the following passage in Alphonsus Emperor of Germany, by Chapman, that the up-spring was a German dance: "We Germans have no changes in our dances; " An almain and an up-fpring, that is all." Spring was anciently the name of a tune, so in Beaumont and Fletcher's Prophetess: - we will meet him, " And strike him such new springs-." This word is used by G. Douglas in his tranflation of Virgil, and, I think, by Chaucer. Again, in an old Scots proverb: " Another would play a spring, ere you tune your pipes." STEEVENS. 6 This heavy-headed revel, east and west,] This heavy-headed revel makes us traduced east and west, and taxed of other nations. JOHNSON. By east and weft, as Mr. Edwards has observed, is meant, throughout the world; from one end of it to the other. - This and the following twenty-one lines have been restored from the quarto. MALONE. Makes us traduc'd, and tax'd of other nations: From our achievements, though perform'd at height, The pith and marrow of our attribute. 8 That, for fome vicious mole of nature in them, They clepe us, drunkards,] And well our Englishmen might; for in Q. Elizabeth's time there was a Dane in London, of whom the following mention is made in a collection of characters entitled Looke to it, for Ile ftab ye, no date: " You that will drinke Keynaldo unto deth, "The Dane that would carowse out of his boote." Mr. M. Mason adds, that " it appears from one of Howell's letters, dated at Hamburgh in the year 1632, that the then King of Denmark had not degenerated from his jovial predeceffor.-In his account of an entertainment given by his majesty to the Earl of Leicester, he tells us, that the king, after beginning thirty-five toafts, was carried away in his chair, and that all the officers of the court were drunk." STEEVENS. See also the Nugæ Antique, Vol. II. p. 133, for the scene of drunkenness introduced into the court of James I. by the King of Denmark, in 1606. REED. * The pith and marrow of our attribute.] The best and most valuable part of the praise that would be otherwise attributed to us. JOHNSON. That, for fome vicious mole of nature in them, As, in their birth, (wherein they are not guilty, Since nature cannot choose his origin, We have the same senti ment in The Rape of Lucrece : "For marks descried in men's nativity "Are nature's fault, not their own infamy." Mr. Theobald, without necessity, altered mole to mould. The reading of the old copies is fully supported by a passage in King John: " Patch'd with foul moles, and eye-offending marks." MALONE. |