POL. How say you by that? [Aside.] Still harping on my daughter :-yet he knew me not at first; he said, I was a fishmonger: He is far gone, far gone: and, truly in my youth I suffered much extremity for love; very near this. I'll speak to him again. What do you read, my lord? HAM. Words, words, words! POL. What is the matter, my lord? POL. I mean, the matter that you read, my lord. HAM. Slanders, sir: for the satirical rogue says here, that old men have grey beards; that their 8 not ventured to expunge a note written by a great critick, and applauded by a greater. STEEVENS. 7 conception is a blessing; &c.] Thus the quarto. The folio reads thus: 66 - - conception is a blessing; but not as your daughter may conceive. Friend, look to't." The meaning seems to be, conception (i. e. understanding) is a blessing; but as your daughter may conceive (i. e. be pregnant,) friend, look to't, i. e. have a care of that. The same quibble occurs again in the first scene of King Lear: "Kent. I cannot conceive you, sir. "Glo. Sir, this young fellow's mother could." STEEVENS. The word not, I have no doubt, was inserted by the editor of the folio, in consequence of his not understanding the passage. A little lower we find a similar interpolation in some of the copies, probably from the same cause: "You cannot, sir, take from me any thing that I will not more willingly part withal, except my life." MALONE. Slanders, sir: for the satirical rogue says here, that old men &c.] By the satirical rogue he means Juvenal in his 10th Satire: "Da spatium vitæ, multos da Jupiter annos: Nothing could be finer imagined for Hamlet, in his circum faces are wrinkled; their eyes purging thick amber, and plum-tree gum; and that they have a plentiful lack of wit, together with most weak hams: All of which, sir, though I most powerfully and potently believe, yet I hold it not honesty to have it thus set down; for yourself, sir, shall be as old as I am, if, like a crab, you could go backward. POL. Though this be madness, yet there's method in it. [Aside.] Will you walk out of the air, my lord? HAM. Into my grave? POL. Indeed, that is out o'the air.-How preg stances, than the bringing him in reading a description of the evils of long life. WARBURTON. Had Shakspeare read Juvenal in the original, he had met with and "De temone Britanno, Excidet Arviragus" "Uxorem, Posthume, ducis?" We should not then have had continually in Cymbeline, Arvirāgus, and Posthumus. Should it be said that the quantity in the former word might be forgotten, it is clear from a mistake in the latter, that Shakspeare could not possibly have read any one of the Roman poets. There was a translation of the 10th Satire of Juvenal by Sir John Beaumont, the elder brother of the famous Francis: but I cannot tell whether it was printed in Shakspeare's time. In that age of quotation, every classick might be picked up by piecemeal. I forgot to mention in its proper place, that another description of Old Age in As you like it, has been called a parody on a passage in a French poem of Garnier. It is trifling to say any thing about this, after the observation I made in Macbeth: but one may remark once for all, that Shakspeare wrote for the people; and could not have been so absurd as to bring forward any allusion, which had not been familiarized by some accident or other. FARMER. nant sometimes his replies are!' a happiness that often madness hits on, which reason and sanity could not so prosperously be delivered of. I will leave him, and suddenly contrive the means of meeting. between him and my daughter.-My honourable lord, I will most humbly take my leave of you. HAM. You cannot, sir, take from me any thing that I will more willingly part withal; except my life, except my life, except my life. POL. Fare you well, my lord. HAM. These tedious old fools! Enter ROSENCRANTZ2 and GUILDENSTern. POL. You go to seek the lord Hamlet; there he is. Ros. God save you, sir! GUIL. My honour'd lord! Ros. My most dear lord!— [TO POLONIUS. [Exit POLONIUS. HAM. My excellent good friends! How dost thou, Guildenstern? Ah, Rosencrantz! Good lads, how do ye both? Ros. As the indifferent children of the earth. GUIL. Happy, in that we are not overhappy; On fortune's cap we are not the very button. 9 How pregnant &c.] Pregnant is ready, dexterous, apt. So, in Twelfth Night: 1 66 a wickedness "Wherein the pregnant enemy doth much." Steevens. and suddenly &c.] This and the greatest part of the two following lines, are omitted in the quartos. STEEVENS. Rosencrantz-] There was an embassador of that name in England about the time when this play was written. STEEVENS, 2 HAM. Nor the soles of her shoe? Ros. Neither, my lord. HAM. Then you live about her waist, or in the middle of her favours? GUIL. 'Faith, her privates we. HAM. In the secret parts of fortune? O, most true; she is a strumpet. What news? Ros. None, my lord; but that the world's grown honest. HAM. Then is dooms-day near: But your news is not true. [Let me3 question more in particu lar: What have you, my good friends, deserved at the hands of fortune, that she sends you to prison hither? GUIL. Prison, my lord! HAM. Denmark's a prison. Ros. Then is the world one. HAM. A goodly one; in which there are many confines, wards, and dungeons; Denmark being one of the worst. Ros. We think not so, my lord. HAM. Why, then 'tis none to you; for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so: to me it is a prison. Ros. Why, then your ambition makes it one; 'tis too narrow for your mind. HAM. O God! I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space; were it not that I have bad dreams. 3 [Let me &c.] All within the crotchets is wanting in the quartos. STEEVENS. GUIL. Which dreams, indeed, are ambition; for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.3 HAM. A dream itself is but a shadow. Ros. Truly, and I hold ambition of so airy and light a quality, that it is but a shadow's shadow. HAM. Then are our beggars, bodies; and our monarchs, and outstretch'd heroes, the beggars' shadows Shall we to the court? for, by my fay, I cannot reason. Ros. GUIL. We'll wait upon you. HAM. No such matter: I will not sort you with the rest of my servants; for, to speak to you like an honest man, I am most dreadfully attended.] But, in the beaten way of friendship, what make you at Elsinore? Ros. To visit you, my lord; no other occasion. HAM. Beggar that I am, I am even poor in thanks; but I thank you: and sure, dear friends, my thanks are too dear, a halfpenny.5 Were you not sent for? 3 the shadow of a dream.] Shakspeare has accidentally inverted an expression of Pindar, that the state of humanity is Guias "ovag, the dream of a shadow. JOHNSON. So, Davies: "Man's life is but a dreame, nay, less than so, So, in the tragedy of Darius, 1603, by Lord Sterline : STEEVENS. * Then are our beggars, bodies;] Shakspeare seems here to design a ridicule of those declamations against wealth and greatness, that seem to make happiness consist in poverty. JOHNSON. 5 too dear, a halfpenny.] i. e. a halfpenny too dear: they are worth nothing. The modern editors read-at a halfpenny. MALONE. |