Than a command to parley. For lord Hamlet, larger tether-] A string to tie horses. POPE. Tether is that string by which an animal, set to graze in grounds uninclosed, 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 sake 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 Glossary to Gawin Douglass's translation of Virgil. So, in King John: "This bawd, this broker," &c. See also, Vol. XV. p. 478, n. 2. In our author's Lover's Complaint we again meet with the same expression, applied in the same manner: "Know, vows are ever brokers to defiling." MALONE. 7 Breathing like sanctified and pious bonds,] On which the editor, Mr. Theobald, remarks, Though all the editors have swallowed this reading implicitly, it is certainly corrupt; and I have been surprized how men of genius and learning could let it pass without some suspicion. What idea can we frame to ourselves of a breathing bond, or of its being sanctified and pious, &c. But he was too hasty in framing ideas before he understood those already framed by the poet, and expressed in very plain words. Do not believe (says 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 suspicion? WARBURTON. Theobald for bonds substitutes bawds. JOHNSON. Notwithstanding Warburton's elaborate explanation of this passage, I have not the least doubt but Theobald is right, and The better to beguile. This is for all, 8 I would not, in plain terms, from this time forth, [Exeunt. Indeed the pre that we ought to read bawds instead of bonds. sent reading is little better than nonsense. Polonius had called Hamlet's vows, brokers, but two lines before, a synonymous word to bawds, and the very title that Shakspeare gives to Pandarus, in his Troilus and Cressida. words implorators of unholy suits, are an exact description of a bawd; and all such of them as are crafty in their trade, put on the appearance of sanctity, and are "not of that die which their investments show." M. MASON. The The old reading is undoubtedly the true one. Do not, says Polonius, believe his vows, for they are merely uttered for the purpose of persuading you to yield to a criminal passion, though they appear only the genuine effusions of a pure and lawful affection, and assume 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, "And seal'd false bonds of love, as oft as mine." Again, in The Merchant of Venice: "O, ten times faster 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 elsewhere expressed it: "A contract and eternal bond of love." Dr. Warburton certainly misunderstood this passage; and when he triumphantly asks "why may not this pass without suspicion?" if he means his own comment, the answer is, because it is not perfectly accurate. MALone. મ 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 so disgrace your most idle moments, as not to find better employment for them than lord Hamlet's conversation. JOHNSON. SCENE IV. The Platform. Enter HAMLET, HORATIO, and MARCELLUS. HAM. The air bites shrewdly; it is very cold. HOR. It is a nipping and an eager air.9 IAM. What hour now? HOR. I think, it lacks of twelve. MAR. No, it is struck. 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 rouse,1 Keeps wassel, and the swaggering up-spring3 recls; 9 an eager air.] That is, a sharp air, aigre, Fr. So, in a subsequent scene: 1 "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." It should seem 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 rousa, the Switzer's stoop of rhenish," &c. STEEVENS. Keeps wassel,] See Vol. X. p. 88, n. 4. Again, in The Hog hath lost his Pearl, 1614: And, as he drains his draughts of Rhenish down, HOR. HAM. Ay, marry, is't: Is it a custom? But to my mind,-though I am native here, "By Croesus name and by his castle, i. e. devotes his nights to jollity. STEEVENS. 3 the swaggering up-spring-] The blustering upstart. 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; Spring was anciently the name of a tune: so in Beaumont and we will meet him, “And strike him such new springs-.” This word is used by G. Douglas in his translation of Virgil, and, I think, by Chaucer. Again, in an old Scots proverb: "Another would play a spring, ere you tune your pipes." Iliad: 66 STEEVENS. thus bray out-] So, in Chapman's version of the 5th he laid out such a throat "As if nine or ten thousand men had brayd out all their breaths 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 west, 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'dat height, That, for some vicious mole of nature in them, 6 They clepe us, drunkards,] And well our Englishmen might; for in Queen 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 stab 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 predecessor. 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 toasts, was carried away in his chair, and that all the officers of the court were drunk." STEEVENS. See also the Nuga Antiquæ, Vol. II. p. 133, for the scene of drunkenness introduced into the court of James I. by the King of Denmark, in 1606. Roger Ascham in one of his Letters, mentions being present at an entertainment where the Emperor of Germany seemed in drinking to rival the King of Denmark: "The Emperor, (says he) drank the best that ever I saw; he had his head in the glass five times as long as any of us, and never drank less than a good quart at once of Rhenish wine." REED. The pith and marrow of our attribute.] The best and most valuable part of the praise that would be otherwise attributed to JOHNSON. us. • That, for some 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 sentiment in The Rape of Lucrece : "For marks descried in man's nativity "Are nature's fault, not their own infamy." |