Hor. Do not, my lord. Ham. Why, what fhould be the fear? It waves me forth again;-I'll follow it. Hor. What, if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord? Or to the dreadful fummit of the cliff, That bettles o'er his bafe into the fea? 8 And there affume fome other horrible form, Ham. It waves me ftill: Go on, I'll follow thee. - Mar. You fhall not go, my lord. Ham. Hold off your hands. Hor. Be rul'd, you fhall not go. And makes each petty artery in this body [Breaking from them. By heaven, I'll make a ghoft of him that lets me : 2 7-pin's fee:] The value of a pin. JOHNSON. 8 deprive your fovereignty, &c.] Dr. Warburton would read deprave; but feveral proofs are given in the notes to King Lear of Shakspeare's ufe of the word deprice, which is the true reading. STEEVENS. I believe deprive in this place fignifics fimply to tale away. JOHNSON ? The very place] The four following lines added from the first edition. POPE I -puts toys of defperation,] Sec vol. vii. p. 8. EDITOR 2 that lets me :] See vol. i. p. 188. STEEVENS VOL. X X I fay, 1 I fay, away :-Go on,--I'll follow thee. [Exeunt Ghoft, and Hamlet. Hor. He waxes defperate with imagination. Mar. Let's follow; 'tis not fit thus to obey him. Hor. Have after :-To what iffue will this come? Mar. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. Hor. Heaven will direct it 3. Mar. Nay, let's follow him. SCENE NE V. A more remote Part of the Platform. Re-enter Ghoft, and Hamlet. [Exeunt. Ilam. Whither wilt thou lead me? fpeak, I'll go no further. Ghoft. Mark me. Ham. I will. Ghoft. My hour is almoft come, When I to fulphurous and tormenting flames Muft render up myself. Ham. Alas, poor ghoft! Ghoft. Pity me not, but lend thy serious hearing To what I fhall unfold. Ham. Speak, I am bound to hear. Ghost. So art thou to revenge, when thou shalt hear. Ham. What? Ghoft. I am thy father's fpirit; Doom'd for a certain term to walk the night; "Till 3 Heaven will direct it ;] Perhaps it may be more apposite to read "Heaven will detect it.” FARMER. Marcellus answers Horatio's question, "To what iffue will this come?" and Horatio alfo answers it himself with a pious re"Heaven will direct it." BLACKSTONE. fignation, confin'd to faft in fires,] We fhould read, 4 too faft in fires. 'Till the foul crimes, done in my days of nature, 5 Are burnt and purg'd away. But that I am forbid To tell the fecrets of my prifon-house, I could i. e. very clofely confined. The particle too is ufed frequently for the fuperlative moft, or very. WARBURTON. I am rather inclined to read, confin'd to lafting fires, to fires unremitted and unconfumed. The change is flight. JOHNSON, Doom'd for a certain time to walk the night, And for the day confin'd to fast in fires. Chaucer has a fimilar paffage with regard to punishments of hell. Parfon's Tale, p. 193. Mr. Urry's edition: "And moreover the mifefe of hell, fhall be in defaute of mete and drinke." SMITH. Nafh, in his Pierce Penniless's Supplication to the Devil, 1595, has the fame idea: "Whether it be a place of horror, ftench, and darkness, where men fee meat, but can get none, and are ever thrifty, &c." Before I had read the Perfoxes Tale of Chaucer, I fuppofed that he meant rather to drop a stroke of fatire on facerdotal luxury, than to give a serious account of the place of future torment. Chaucer, however, is as grave as Shakspeare. So likewife at the conclufion of an ancient pamphlet called The Wyll of the Devyll, bl. 1. no date : Thou fhalt lye in froft and fire "With fickneffe and hunger; &c." STEEVENS. s Are burnt and purg'd away.-] Gawin Douglas really changes the Platonic hell into the "punytion of Saulis in purgatory:" and it is obfervable, that when the ghoft informs Hamlet of his doom there, "Till the foul crimes done in his days of nature "Are burnt and purg'd away, the expreffien is very fimiliar to the bishop's: I will give you his verfion as concifely as I can ; "It is a nedeful thyng to fuffer panis and torment-Sum in the wyndis, fum under the watter, and the fire uthir fum: thus the mony vices "Contrakkit in the corpis be done away Sixte Book of Eneados, fol. p. 191. Shakspeare might have found this expreffion in the Hyflorie of Hamblet, bl. 1. F. 2. edit. 1608: "He fet fire in the foure cor ners of the hal, in fuch fort, that of all that were as then therein not one efcaped away, but were forced to purge their finnes by fire." MALONE. Shakspeare talks more like a Papift, than a Platonist; but the language of bishop Douglas is that of a good Protestant: X 2 "Thus I could a tale unfold, whofe lightest word And each particular hair to ftand on end To cars of flesh and blood :-Lift, lift, O lift!- Ham. O heaven! Ghoft. Revenge his foul and moft unnatural murder 7. Ham. Murder? Ghoft. Murder moft foul, as in the beft it is; "Thus the mony vices "Contrakkit in the corpis be done away Thefe are the very words of our Liturgy, in the commendatory • fretful porpentine:] The quartos read fearful porpentine. Either may ferve. This animal is at once irafcible and timid. The fame image occurs in the Romant of the Rofe, where Chaucer is dẹferibing the perfonage of danger: Like harpe urchons his beere was grow." An urchin is a hedge-hog. STEEVENS. Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.] As a proof that this play was written before 1597, of which the contrary has been afferted by Mr. Holt in Dr. Johnfon's appendix, I must borrow, as ufual, from Dr. Farmer. Shakspeare is faid to have been no "extraordinary actor; and that the top of his performance was the "Ghoft in his own Hamlet. Yet this chef d'œuvre did not pleafe ; "I will give you an original ftroke at it. Dr. Lodge published "in the year 1596 a pamphlet called Wit's Miferic, or the World's "Madness, difcovering the incarnate devils of the age, quarto. "One of thefe devils is, Hate virtue, or forrow for another man's "good fucceffe, who, fays the doctor, is a foule lubber, and looks as pale as the vizard of the Ghoff, which cried fo miferably at the "theatre, Hamlet's revenge." STEEVENS. Ham. Hafte me to know it; that I, with wings as fwift As meditation, or the thoughts of love, May fweep to my revenge. Ghost. I find thee apt; 9 And duller fhould't thou be than the fat weed That rots itself in eafe on Lethe's wharf, Wouldst thou not ftir in this. Now, Hamlet, hear; 'Tis given out, that, fleeping in my orchard, A ferpent ftung me; fo the whole ear of Denmark Rankly abus'd but know, thou noble youth, 8 As meditation, or the thoughts of love,] This fimilitude is extremely beautiful. The word meditation is confecrated, by the myftics, to fignify that stretch and flight of mind which aspires to the enjoyment of the fupreme good. So that Hamlet, confidering with what to compare the iwiftnefs of his revenge, choofes two of the most rapid things in nature, the ardency of divine and human paffion, in an enthufiaft and a lover. WARBURTON. The comment on the word meditation is fo ingenious, that I hope it is juft. JOHNзON. 9 And duller fhouldst thou be than the fat weed That roots itself in cafe on Lethe's wharf, &c.] Shakspeare, apparently through ignorance, makes Roman Catholics of thele Pagan Danes; and here gives a defcription of purgatory; but yet, mixes it with the Pagan fable of Lethe's whart. Whether he did it to infinuate to the zealous Proteftants of his time, that thei agan and Popish purgatory stood both upon the fame footing of credibility, or whether it was by the fame kind of licentious inadvertance that Michael Angelo brought Charon's bark into his picture of the Laft Judgment, is not eafy to decide. WARBURTON. That rots itself, &c.] The quarto reads-That roots itself. Mr. POPE follows it. OTWAY has the fame thought: like a coarfe and ufclefs dunghill weed "Fix'd to one fpot, and rot just as I grow." The fuperiority of the reading of the folio is to me apparent to be in a crefent ftate (i. e. to root itfelf) affords an idea of activity; to rot better fuits with the dullnefs and inaction to which the Ghoft refers. Nevertheless, the accufative cafe (if) may feem to demand the verb roots. STEEVENS. |
