HAM. O, that this too too solid flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew !5 Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd

His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! O God! How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable

So, in Marlowe's Tragical Historie of Doctor Faustus:
"He tooke his rouse with stoopes of Rhennish wine."

RITSON.

resolve itself into a dew!] Resolve means the same as dissolve. Ben Jonson uses the word in his Volpone, and in the

same sense:

"Forth the resolved corners of his eyes.'

Again, in The Country Girl, 1647:

-my swoln grief, resolved in these tears." Pope has employed the same word in his version of the second Iliad, 44:

"Resolves to air, and mixes with the night.”

STEEVENS.

Again, in Giles Fletcher's Russe Commonwealth, 1591: "In winter time, when all is covered with snow, the dead bodies (so many as die all the winter time) are piled up in a house in the suburbs, like billets on a woodstack, as hard with the frost as a very stone, 'till the spring tide come and resolve the frost, what time every man taketh his dead friend and committeth him to the ground." REED.

6

Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd

His canon 'gainst self-slaughter!] The generality of the editions read-cannon, as if the poet's thought were,-Or that the Almighty had not planted his artillery, or arms of vengeance, against self-murder. But the word which I restored (and which was espoused by the accurate Mr. Hughes, who gave an edition of this play) is the true reading, i. e. that he had not restrained suicide by his express law and peremptory prohibition.

THEOBALD.

There are yet those who suppose the old reading to be the true one, as they say the word fixed seems to decide very strongly in its favour. I would advise such to recollect Virgil's expression: "fixit leges pretio, atque refixit." STEEVENS.

If the true reading wanted any support, it might be found in Cymbeline:

Seem to me all the uses of this world!

Fye on't! O fye! 'tis an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed; things rank, and gross in na-

ture,

Possess it merely." That it should come to this! But two months dead!-nay, not so much, not

two:

So excellent a king; that was, to this,
Hyperion to a satyr: so loving to my mother,

8

'gainst self-slaughter

"There is a prohibition so divine,
"That cravens my weak hand."

In Shakspeare's time canon (norma) was commonly spelt cannon.

MALONE. 7-merely.] is entirely, absolutely. See Vol. IV. p. 9, n. 3; and Vol. XVI. p. 139, n. 8. STEEVENS.

• So excellent a king; that was, to this,

Hyperion to a satyr:] This similitude at first sight seems to be a little far-fetched; but it has an exquisite beauty. By the Satyr is meant Pan, as by Hyperion, Apollo. Pan and Apollo were brothers, and the allusion is to the contention between those gods for the preference in musick. WARBURTON.

All our English poets are guilty of the same false quantity, and call Hyperion Hyperion; at least the only instance I have met with to the contrary, is in the old play of Fuimus Troes, 1633: 66 Blow gentle Africus,

"Play on our poops, when Hyperion's son
"Shall couch in west."

Shakspeare, I believe, has no allusion in the present instance, except to the beauty of Apollo, and its immediate opposite, the deformity of a Satyr. STEEVENS.

Hyperion or Apollo is represented in all the ancient statues, &c. as exquisitely beautiful, the satyrs hideously ugly.-Shakspeare may surely be pardoned for not attending to the quantity of Latin names, here and in Cymbeline; when we find Henry Parrot, the author of a collection of Epigrams printed in 1613, to which a Latin preface is prefixed, writing thus:

"Posthumus, not the last of many more,

"Asks why I write in such an idle vaine," &c. Laquei ridiculosi, or Springes for Woodcocks, 16mo. sign. c. 3. MALONE.

That he might not beteem the winds of heaven" Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth!

That he might not beteem the winds of heaven-] In former editions:

That he permitted not the winds of heaven-. This is a sophisticated reading, copied from the players in some of the modern editions, for want of understanding the poet, whose text is corrupt in the old impressions: all of which that I have had the fortune to see, concur in reading:

-so loving to my mother,

That he might not beteene the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly.

Beteene is a corruption without doubt, but not so inveterate a one, but that, by the change of a single letter, and the separation of two words mistakenly jumbled together, I am verily persuaded, I have retrieved the poet's reading

That he might not let e'en the winds of heaven &c.

THEOBALD

The obsolete and corrupted verb-beteene, (in the first folio) which should be written (as in all the quartos) beteeme, was changed, as above, by Mr. Theobald; and with the aptitude of his conjecture succeeding criticks appear to have been satisfied. Beteeme, however, occurs in the tenth Book of Arthur Golding's version of Ovid's Metamorphosis, 4to. 1587; and, from the corresponding Latin, must necessarily signify, to vouchsafe, deign, permit, or suffer:

66 -Yet could he not beteeme

"The shape of anie other bird than egle for to seeme."

66 -nulla tamen alite verti

Sign. R. 1. b.

Dignatur, nisi quæ possit sua fulmina ferre." V. 157. Jupiter (though anxious for the possession of Ganymede) would not deign to assume a meaner form, or suffer change into an humbler shape, than that of the august and vigorous fowl who bears the thunder in his pounces.

The existence and signification of the verb beteem being thus established, it follows, that the attention of Hamlet's father to his queen was exactly such as is described in the Enterlude of the Life and Repentaunce of Marie Magdalaine, &c. by Lewis Wager, 4to. 1567:

"But evermore they were unto me very tender,

They would not suffer the wynde on me to blowe."

I have therefore replaced the ancient reading, without the slightest hesitation, in the text.

Must I remember? why, she would hang on him, As if increase of appetite had grown

By what it fed on: And yet, within a month,Let me not think on't;-Frailty, thy name is wo man!

A little month; or ere those shoes were old,
With which she follow'd my poor father's body,
Like Niobe, all tears;'-why she, even she,-
O heaven! a beast, that wants discourse of reason,
Would have mourn'd longer,-married with my
uncle,

My father's brother; but no more like my father,
Than I to Hercules: Within a month;

Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears

This note was inserted by me in The Gentleman's Magazine, some years before Mr. Malone's edition of our author (in which the same justification of the old reading-beteeme, occurs,) had made its appearance. STEEVENS.

This passage ought to be a perpetual memento to all future editors and commentators to proceed with the utmost caution in emendation, and never to discard a word from the text, merely because it is not the language of the present day.

Mr. Hughes or Mr. Rowe, supposing the text to be unintelligible, for beteem boldly substituted permitted. Mr. Theobald, in order to favour his own emendation, stated untruly that all the old copies which he had seen, read beteene. His emendation appearing uncommonly happy, was adopted by all the subsequent editors.

We find a sentiment similar to that before us, in Marston's Insatiate Countess, 1613:

she had a lord,

"Jealous that air should ravish her chaste looks."

MALONE.

Like Niobe, all tears;] Shakspeare might have caught this idea from an ancient ballad intitled The falling out of Lovers is the renewing of Love:

"Now I, like weeping Niobe,

* May wash my handes in teares," &c.

Of this ballad Amantium iræ &c. is the burden. STEEVEens.

Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,
She married:-O most wicked speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
It is not, nor it cannot come to, good;

But break, my heart; for I must hold my tongue!

Enter HORATIO, BERNARDO, and MARCELLUS.

HOR. Hail to your lordship!

HAM.

I am glad to see you well: Horatio, or I do forget myself.

HOR. The same, my lord, and your poor servant

ever.

HAM. Sir, my good friend; I'll change that name with you.

2

And what make you3 from Wittenberg, Horatio?Marcellus?

MAR. My good lord,——————

HAM. I am very glad to see you; good even,

sir.4

But what, in faith, make you from Wittenberg?

-I'll change that name-] I'll be your servant, you shall be my friend. JOHNSON.

3- what make you-] A familiar phrase for what are you doing. JOHNSON.

See Vol. VIII. p. 4, n. 7. STEEVENS.

good even, sir.] So the copies. Sir Thomas Hanmer and Dr. Warburton put it-good morning. The alteration is of no importance, but all licence is dangerous. There is no need of any change. Between the first and eighth scene of this Act it is apparent, that a natural day must pass, and how much of it is already over, there is nothing that can determine. The King has held a council. It may now as well be evening as morning. JOHNSON.